EQ2 adds Battlegrounds

[Sky]

Why? I don't even know why they have a pvp server, though. Pvp already sucks dev resources and fucks with pve balance, so of course we should highlight the great pvp of EQ2 and it's totally unbalanced classes and equipment. When you have an older game, the best thing is to add features that really stack on the development man-hours. Fuck solo dungeons, add group pvp!

And it's for max-level characters, which despite playing years of EQ2 and actually trying last year, I don't have, so I'm biased.

http://eq2players.station.sony.com/gameinfo/battlegrounds

[Nebu]

WoW class balance sucks ass and yet its pvp is quite successful. Participation is all about the rewards.  IF the EQ2 team can get the rewards right, then you'll see participation.  

I personally don't see EQ2 PvP being all that fun even with good itemization.  The combat pace is just too slow.  I played on the pvp server when it was in beta and there were too many serious issues to make it even remotely enjoyable.  

[Koyasha]

Slow combat pace is good in my opinion.  Not that I'm saying EQ2 specifically makes for good pvp, I don't even know since I've barely played that game, ever, but I'm just saying, slow combat pace?  I like that.  Means there's time to think.  Decide.  Choose.  Fast-paced pvp always feels to me much more like the need to learn everything to such a reflexive degree that I function automatically.

[Redgiant]

Well, since I have an 80 Illy and there is nothing at all I can do while moving, I am not even interested in bothering to be fodder.

[Numtini]

Slower combat is definitely good for PVP.

But I have heard a lot of people list a lot of things they would like for EQ2 that other games have and not once was instanced battlegrounds something anyone had any interest in.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Why?

$

[Nonentity]

Having played on the EQ2 PVP server, I can say that there is nothing slow paced about it. It's maybe 1.5x the time of a WoW pvp combat encounter.

[Count Nerfedalot]

Slower combat is definitely good for PVP.

But I have heard a lot of people list a lot of things they would like for EQ2 that other games have and not once was instanced battlegrounds something anyone had any interest in.

I'll second that.  Nobody I know in EQ2 gives a rat's ass about PvP. 

Unfortunately, that is probably the problem.  Sony is hoping that by revamping a badly implemented and never used portion of the game, hordes of players will suddenly see the light and come throw money at them.  After all, it worked so well the last time they tried it!  The revised and vastly improved (at great effort) EQ2 available now is growing their subscriber base like, um, er, well, OK, so changing the game from a stinking pile into one of the richest PvE games currently available didn't exactly bring in the masses it likely would have had it released in its improved state.  But it did save a game that almost certainly would be dead by now had they not done it. 

So maybe the lack of compelling PvP is the missing magic ingredient?  Yeah, that must be the ticket!  By spending the effort to revamp and  polish the till now totally ignored PvP aspects of the game, stuff that basically none of their existing customers care about, they will be sure to steal a march on Blizzard and eat their lunch in this surprise foray into a new and improved gaming experience (the NAIGE  )!  After all, ignoring their existing base and trying to whore themselves out to the masses interested in a different play style from what their game previously offered also worked so brilliantly well the last time they tried it!

Personally, as a mostly PvE player, this really ticks me off.  (heh, can you tell yet?  )

And it's not because I begrudge the PvP players their place in my games, as long as it doesn't affect me.  But there's the rub.  NO MMO that I've ever heard of has EVER managed, after launch or even after early beta, to enhance or even balance PvP without hurting their PvE game, often drastically.  Not EQ, not DAoC, not CoH, and not even WoW.  While it should theoretically be possible to completely disassociate PvE from PvP, scaling abilities differently, limiting loot to benefitting only in the mode it was earned in, etc, nobody has been willing or able to actually DO that.  Instead, balanced-well-enough-that-everyone-can-still-have-fun classes like ranged dps, crowd controllers, and anyone with long-cooldown get-out-of-jail-free special capabilities like paladins, monks, shadowknights and etc, ALWAYS end up getting changed in ways that impact their PvE game during the process of trying to tighten up the balance issues to support enjoyable PvP. 

See, when balancing PvE, while it's a very important issue, a "close enough" solution is good enough.  There may still be some FoTM issues and such, but as long as every class is still fun to play (and has access to all of the content - meaning usefulness in the end game), they all will be played.  This is NOT true of PvP.  Even the slightest imbalance between classes will result in large portions of the player base not having fun.  Every imbalance MUST be jumped on and neutralized as soon as it is discovered and that need for fast action always seems to result in the nerf effects spilling over into the PvE game as well as PvP.

Also consider that EQ2 is a game which has spent several years tearing down the barriers it had initially set up between the "good" and "evil" races.  These days, there is no restriction on communicating, grouping, raiding or even guilding between good and evil, and switching sides has become trivial.  So now, a playerbase that has largely been trained to see itself as one big group, is going to be thrust into a situation where there are now "us" and "them" conflicts with no communication barriers.  So the entire population is going to be bombarded with all the trash talk and e-peen waving that comes with internet competition.  Something SURE to be considered a welcome new social dynamic in the already uneasy mixture of playstyles and personality types crowded into a single space.

tl;dr version:  wtf are they thinking?  Did they learn NOTHING from the NGE? 

[Grimwell]

Did they learn NOTHING from the NGE? 

Really? This is something that SOE should not have done because of a lesson learned via the NGE? Really???

How exactly does adding on a new system for a game, without taking away from the old system at all equate to a NGE situation?

When you cry wolf over ever little thing, people tend to stop listening.

[Margalis]

Less of an NGE situation and more of a why bother situation. Hard to imagine EQ2 luring in a new audience at this point. And if not many players are interested it won't do much for retention either as it requires a baseline interest level to be worthwhile to anyone.

If this launches with a bunch of other changes that break the game then we can call it an NGE situation.

[Koyasha]

Well, some people are going to cry wasted dev time on this no matter how it's cut, and they may have a point.  However, as long as the game remains balanced for what it apparently does well, the pve, and doesn't screw that pve balance for the sake of balancing in pvp, then at worst it's wasted dev time, and at best it'll attract some people to come play or help keep existing players.

It's only if they fall into the trap of messing with pve in ways that make it less fun in order to achieve that pvp balance that this will have been a really bad decision, because that's going to be hurting the audience that does like the game now, in favor of an unknown.  And as Count Nerfedalot says, that is a very easy trap to fall into, and historically a very common one, so it's understandable that people are afraid that this sort of pvp focus is going to wind up having fun stuff that works perfectly well start getting nerfed in the name of balance.

[Count Nerfedalot]

Well, some people are going to cry wasted dev time on this no matter how it's cut, and they may have a point.  However, as long as the game remains balanced for what it apparently does well, the pve, and doesn't screw that pve balance for the sake of balancing in pvp, then at worst it's wasted dev time, and at best it'll attract some people to come play or help keep existing players.

It's only if they fall into the trap of messing with pve in ways that make it less fun in order to achieve that pvp balance that this will have been a really bad decision, because that's going to be hurting the audience that does like the game now, in favor of an unknown.  And as Count Nerfedalot says, that is a very easy trap to fall into, and historically a very common one, so it's understandable that people are afraid that this sort of pvp focus is going to wind up having fun stuff that works perfectly well start getting nerfed in the name of balance.

This. 

Also, there have been some major changes to basic class combat abilities under development on the test server the past several months, often for no apparent reason at all as they were working fine before (Paladins' aggro management abilities, for example).  And many of those changes have been felt as nerfs to core capabilities which were already well-balanced making the need for the changes a mystery.  Learning that all along they have been working on a secret project to expand their PvP game/audience casts a whole new light on the possible motivations behind those otherwise inexplicable nerfs. 

Detrimental changes to the PvE experience that come as a side effect or consequence of changing the game to make PvP work better in a game where PvP is an interest to a trivial minority of the existing customers really is the same kind of mistake that brought us the NGE.  Sure, the magnitude of the mistake is (probably) of a different order, but the nature of it, and the broken thought- and decision making- processes that birth it are identical. 

Given the lack of details I didn't even get into speculating on the less obvious ways this could hurt the existing player's game experience.  EQ2 is a complex game with a lot of interrelated systems combining to deliver the overall experience.  It has a very healthy economy which a large portion of player base participates in. It features a huge number of classes, all well balanced and able to access all of the content (ie nobody is shut out of raids due to their class having nothing to offer). It has a fairly deep crafting system that includes such rare (for MMO) features as the ability to advance your crafting skills to max without having to advance your combat skills, the ability to craft equipment that is useful for your character AT THAT TIME (you don't have to be adventure level 50 to craft something useful to a 40th level), and the ability to craft some of the best equipment available to players at every level of the game from level 1 to well into the end game.  It has harvesting as a separate system from crafting with separate skill progression, yet is both tightly integrated to crafting (crafters are the ONLY market for harvested goods, NPCs wont buy them) and to adventuring (it is marginally possible to harvest a few resources in places well above your adventuring level, but it is FAR more productive for a higher level character).

Any bleedover from this tacked on new PvP stuff has the high potential of disrupting the delicate balance of those systems.  Any gear, resources, skills, faction, or anything else that is useful in any way in the PvE environment, even furniture or clothing which is more desirable than that currently available through PvE, but which can only (or even just more readily) be acquired from the PvP environment WILL disrupt that balance to the detriment of the PvE players.

We don't know, yet, that there is any bleedover.  The EQ2 live team has shown a remarkable (almost unique in this industry) talent for learning from and avoiding other peoples mistakes, so maybe they have kept the new PvP completely isolated from the existing PvE, more like LotRO monster play and less like the various WoW PvP venues.  Maybe.

But as I pointed out, NOBODY else in the history of MMOs has succeeded at doing this post launch, so the odds don't seem very good.  And they've already shown their willingness to accept those "minor" perturbations of the existing balance by adding a lot of highly desireable furniture and clothing items to their cash shop, to the dismay of the crafters who suddenly found a lot of their crafted goods less desired by the community.

[Sky]

How exactly does adding on a new system for a game, without taking away from the old system at all

Yes, trying to balance for niche pvp play doesn't take away from pve play at all  More group content, for a tiny niche of the population, and balancing woes galore. It takes away from the old system because people were working on the new system.

Again, how about striking pvp entirely from the EQ landscape and focusing on catering to the spectrum of pve players. Although I'm of course referring to better solo options, I favor a balanced approach that maximizes soloing/grouping/raiding across the board..without penalizing anyone else.

But that's tough to figure out, I guess. So just add some battlegrounds!

Seriously, we have a small but pretty steady EQ2 following here, and there is only one person who sounds even remotely interested. And by interested, I mean has done regular EQ2 pvp for more than five minutes.

It's kind of odd how much my interest in EQ2 has diminished after Scott left. They're chasing a different dragon these days.

[Grimwell]

All of which is fine and well, and useful criticism. I was objecting to calling this an NGE. That phrase gets used far too much where it has no context at all.

Tweaks to classes for "balance" have been discussed and whatnot for over a year. In fact, just about one year ago I was helping handle the fallout from changes that were made to the fighter classes. They weren't communicated well and the surprise added to the complaint pile. The changes were reversed, but the notion of class changes was left on the plate, discussed at Fan Faire, etc. -- and are unrelated to the Battlegrounds.

[Draegan]

I agree it's not NGE worthy, but I'm still scratching my head about this addition.  I never got into EQ2 at all, never passed level 20 myself, but I always thought the game was more about PVE than anything else.

[Sky]

All of which is fine and well, and useful criticism. I was objecting to calling this an NGE. That phrase gets used far too much where it has no context at all.

Tweaks to classes for "balance" have been discussed and whatnot for over a year. In fact, just about one year ago I was helping handle the fallout from changes that were made to the fighter classes. They weren't communicated well and the surprise added to the complaint pile. The changes were reversed, but the notion of class changes was left on the plate, discussed at Fan Faire, etc. -- and are unrelated to the Battlegrounds.

Right. The NGE thing was stupid. Know your posters :)

Class balance != class PVP balance, and pvp balance is much more important than pve balance. I remember the fighter changes, but since I play solo I really didn't notice much of anything (was it even live?). I'll withhold a rant about how raid players are fucking crazy and too focused on the game to enjoy it.   

[Numtini]

I'd like to think that SOE will be the company that doesn't screw up PVE balance to placate the small percent who PVP. But so far, I've never seen a company not give into the screaming pvp board warriors.

[Kovacs]

 Did they learn NOTHING from the NGE?  

You've got to be kidding me.


Edit:  I may as well add something constructive. I played on the PvP server at launch and thought it was decent in groups but had some obviously unbalanced classes.  When I say unbalanced I generally mean that at the time certain classes (e.g. Swash/Dirge) were good in both solo and group PvP without being forced to specialise or trade off any of their PvE advantages.  

Also, given that the PvE game is going through a new round of balancing issues with the aborted hate changes, retasking summoners and rogues etc. and that the call for PvP was so underwhelming Venekor was just merged I'm not sure that creating an entirely new PvP system was a good use of resources.  

[ezrast]

80-90 only confuses me. As I recall from my short stint on the PvP servers, even the game's current PvP player base would rather just PvP at 15 or so than level to cap. They're certainly not going to entice any new players with cap-only BGs, not when you can level exclusively through BGs in WoW and WAR. And, as has been said, the current 80-90 base will probably only see this as, at best, a distraction while they wait for the raid to start.

Only thing that makes sense is that 10-19, etc., tiers are in production and this is just the testing bed to make sure the system isn't broken before they implement it across all levels.

[Shatter]

All of which is fine and well, and useful criticism. I was objecting to calling this an NGE. That phrase gets used far too much where it has no context at all.

Tweaks to classes for "balance" have been discussed and whatnot for over a year. In fact, just about one year ago I was helping handle the fallout from changes that were made to the fighter classes. They weren't communicated well and the surprise added to the complaint pile. The changes were reversed, but the notion of class changes was left on the plate, discussed at Fan Faire, etc. -- and are unrelated to the Battlegrounds.

Since I havent played EQ2 in a while, nor did I ever PvP in it(still find it hard to imagine PvP in EQ2 but thats just me) I will assume there are currently some classes and / or abilities considered to be overpowered by the general PvPers.  If so, are you in fact going to "balance" abilities and/or classes since this game addition will, or at least is intended to draw more people to Eq2 PvP?

[Soln]

I never understood why there wasn't some consensual PvP in EQ2 given they have a good and evil side.  With separate zones, etc.  The Betrayal Quest between sides was one of the best things I've ever played in an MMO. Loved it.  It gave my toon an actual history. And seeing good/evil races in a good/evil starting zone always seemed pretty cool. Made me feel unique. Would've been even cooler if we had PvP :)

[Count Nerfedalot]

All of which is fine and well, and useful criticism. I was objecting to calling this an NGE. That phrase gets used far too much where it has no context at all.

Tweaks to classes for "balance" have been discussed and whatnot for over a year. In fact, just about one year ago I was helping handle the fallout from changes that were made to the fighter classes. They weren't communicated well and the surprise added to the complaint pile. The changes were reversed, but the notion of class changes was left on the plate, discussed at Fan Faire, etc. -- and are unrelated to the Battlegrounds.

Perhaps you missed the fact that at no point did I call this an NGE?  If mentioning the NGE in any context makes you as a Sony person butthurt, well, tough.  That's your history, you guys brought it on yourselves, you'll have to deal with it.  What I did ask was "Did they learn NOTHING from the NGE?"    Since the post and context in which I asked that question was ridiculously long and reading is hard and all, I'll sum up the specific lesson I was hinting at in short easy words:

Dance with the girl that brought you to the party.

[Soln]

I know who said that!   

[RhyssaFireheart]

I just heard about the battlegrounds today and at first glance, I'm all for them.  But I started EQ2 on Nagafen and have played PvP in all the games I've played over the years, starting with AC (WTH does everyone forget about AC?)

As long as it's not going to be required for anything, I'll be happy to check out the Battlegrounds for a change of pace.  I think that's where you're going to draw in players - something different to do that doesn't involve raiding or finding a group to do X dungeon for the nth time on your whatever number alt.  Running across an actual brand new to gaming or EQ2 is so rare that it's practically a celebration when it happens.  Plus it could be an attempt to draw off some players who enjoy that aspect of gaming but in general prefer to play PvE normally.

I really wish SOE would freaking give up their stubbornness about adding more char slots.  I have 2 chars still on Nagafen that I refuse to delete (one for name reasons, one because she's holding our original guild name there still) and 4 on AB that I'm actively playing.  That leaves me 1 slot open if I ever want to make a new char (I'd love to try out a mystic) or else I have to delete an existing character.  Not an option on the latter.  And I don't have a computer that I want to try running 2 instances of EQ2 on just so I can get a second account either. *sigh*  Seven slots per server would  be fine with me even.

[NiX]

Perhaps you missed the fact that at no point did I call this an NGE?  If mentioning the NGE in any context makes you as a Sony person butthurt, well, tough.  That's your history, you guys brought it on yourselves, you'll have to deal with it.  What I did ask was "Did they learn NOTHING from the NGE?"    Since the post and context in which I asked that question was ridiculously long and reading is hard and all, I'll sum up the specific lesson I was hinting at in short easy words:

Dance with the girl that brought you to the party.

I saw your NGE comment and stopped reading. Not to mention you're bordering on Wall Of Text territory here. Also, if you're not calling it an NGE or even remotely trying to imply it's the same, then do tell what they were supposed to learn.. from something that's not related to Battleground PVP. Never make changes? Ever? Good idea!

[statisticalfool]

Dance with the girl that brought you to the party.

See, a complaint about this is a complaint about focus. You are asserting: they are working on X, and they shouldn't, because Y is their core strength and X never will be.

That is not related to the NGE. I think the pithy lesson you were looking for was:

Dance with the girl that brought you to the party, not cut her open, rip out all her organs, and replace them with cyborg parts built from a LEGO mindstorms set you're pretty sure stopped working a few months ago.

Small difference.

[Sheepherder]

But as I pointed out, NOBODY else in the history of MMOs has succeeded at doing this post launch, so the odds don't seem very good.

Warcraft didn't launch with a functional pvp system.

[Kageru]

WoW is probably the best example of after-thought PvP damaging the PvE game balance so not sure you are really making the point you wanted.

And thanks to EQ2flames for reminding me that Pardo said as much,

"We didn’t engineer the game and classes and balance around it, we just added it on, so it continues to be very difficult to balance. Is WoW a PvE cooperative game, or a competitive PvP game? There’s constant pressure on the class balance team, there’s pressure on the game itself, and a lot of times players who don’t PvP don’t understand why their classes are changing. I don’t think we ever foresaw how much tuning and tweaking we’d have to do to balance it in that direction."

[Sheepherder]

WoW is probably the best example of after-thought PvP damaging the PvE game balance so not sure you are really making the point you wanted.

Pardo said it was hard, not that it damaged PvE.  Regardless, I concede the point: WoW is clearly in a bad state right now.  I mean, clearly.

[Grimwell]

All of which is fine and well, and useful criticism. I was objecting to calling this an NGE. That phrase gets used far too much where it has no context at all.

Tweaks to classes for "balance" have been discussed and whatnot for over a year. In fact, just about one year ago I was helping handle the fallout from changes that were made to the fighter classes. They weren't communicated well and the surprise added to the complaint pile. The changes were reversed, but the notion of class changes was left on the plate, discussed at Fan Faire, etc. -- and are unrelated to the Battlegrounds.

Perhaps you missed the fact that at no point did I call this an NGE?  If mentioning the NGE in any context makes you as a Sony person butthurt, well, tough.  That's your history, you guys brought it on yourselves, you'll have to deal with it.  What I did ask was "Did they learn NOTHING from the NGE?"    Since the post and context in which I asked that question was ridiculously long and reading is hard and all, I'll sum up the specific lesson I was hinting at in short easy words:

Dance with the girl that brought you to the party.

If we are going to mince words no - you didn't call it an NGE. You did reference the NGE and in the context you were indeed comparing this change to the one made there. If you don't think you were, then you were using words wrong.

The NGE is indeed SOE's history, and before my time. I'll dance with my bitch just fine thank you. Don't go throwing my brothers old hag in my direction and telling me that I have to hump her leg because he did too. She's not mine, and I'm not interested.

[Count Nerfedalot]

The NGE is indeed SOE's history, and before my time. I'll dance with my bitch just fine thank you. Don't go throwing my brothers old hag in my direction and telling me that I have to hump her leg because he did too. She's not mine, and I'm not interested.

Oh, way to go twisting an analogy beyond all possible reason.  OK, I can play along.  So you are calling the existing (and mostly PvE) EQ2 playerbase your brother's old hag?  That's going to endear you to them real well.  Almost makes one misty-eyed recalling the days of Absor and Abashi.

No?  That's not what you meant?  OK.  Stop exaggerating, twisting and then arguing with a throwaway snarky comment.  And I'll refrain from replying in kind AND stop poking that painful wound with a stick.  Apparently that particular TLA is another way to Godwin a thread worthy of a Corrolary.

Truce?

[tkinnun0]

Pardo said it was hard, not that it damaged PvE.

"a lot of times players who don’t PvP don’t understand why their classes are [nerfed]"

[statisticalfool]

Pardo said it was hard, not that it damaged PvE.

"a lot of times players who don’t PvP don’t understand why their classes are [nerfed]"

Pardo said it was hard, and cost more resources then they had expected. Could they have had have launched another raid or two, or added a bunch of smaller things in each X.0 version of WoW if they had ignored PvP beyond "hey, you can duel"? Sure.

But after some really clumsy, horrible implementations, they've now got a large chunk of their playerbase who PvPs casually, and a significant chunk for whom that's the game they're around there for. They put in the time to build another core competency, and it costs them time/resources, but I'm pretty sure one of the hooks that keeps people in WoW is that there's a lot of different things to be doing, based on your whim.

Similarly, max-level BGs in EQ2 may seem as clumsy as the first honor system, and if that's all they're going to do, then sure, shoot em up. But my guess is that this is part of a large scale effort to add another way of playing. You can argue that EQ2 is so heavily focused that having more game modes is not going to slow attrition/bring growth, but that's an argument I'm not sure is obvious (other than yada, yada, EQ2 will never have 10 million subscribers).

[devildog]

I played eq2 specifically for the pvp when they opened Nagafen. I accept that i'm probably a minority, but this announcement definitely got my attention. I loved the small group vs. small group combat at times in the open world, but several factors brought that to a close after a short period of "wild west" type action early on. The zerg, camping, zone hopping, hackers, etc. brought that to a screeching halt. At this point i would gladly settle for bgs minus hackers in eq2 instead of arena in WoW for my gaming fix.

There were plenty of bad things about eq2 and i'm sure those who played know the pros and cons, so i won't even go into that. I personally loved the combat system in eq2 and thought the ability for tanks to taunt in pvp was pretty revolutionary. Maybe i missed a game that brought this to the table previously, but i finally found a game where a tank had a role in pvp for once. I was pretty impressed by that alone. Yea, it's a team game, but it seemed like you could form competent teams from just about anything and be competitive without being pigeon-holed into x/y/z or go home. I'm sure it isn't an earth-shattering system to many people, but i thought it was different enough from WoW, DAoC, and SB to grab me for a while.

I will probably take a look at this again and see how it goes. My main concern now is if they have a population to drive something like this.

- Typhoid

[SnakeCharmer]

The NGE is indeed SOE's history, and before my time. I'll dance with my bitch just fine thank you. Don't go throwing my brothers old hag in my direction and telling me that I have to hump her leg because he did too. She's not mine, and I'm not interested.

Oh, way to go twisting an analogy beyond all possible reason.  OK, I can play along.  So you are calling the existing (and mostly PvE) EQ2 playerbase your brother's old hag?  That's going to endear you to them real well.  Almost makes one misty-eyed recalling the days of Absor and Abashi.

No?  That's not what you meant?  OK.  Stop exaggerating, twisting and then arguing with a throwaway snarky comment.  And I'll refrain from replying in kind AND stop poking that painful wound with a stick.  Apparently that particular TLA is another way to Godwin a thread worthy of a Corrolary.

Truce?

He's not talking about the playerbase, dude.  He's talking about the NGE specifically - as in RADICAL OVERARCHING (over arching?) GAMEPLAY MECHANICS.  As in completely changing the game.

Yeesh.