Heroic character learning curveFollow

It's cool that you've got her going again.

The "curve" is an interesting thing to talk about. Having been on/off with the game a bunch of times rather than taking a huge break I think there is a real difference between those two situations (and the players that have never left and/or dabbled in other games).

EQ has a lot of unnecessary complication, much of it from expansion bloat (gotta have sell features so things get made new/different instead of simple).

I'll give a single example in an attempt to not wall-of-text: healing spells

originally the devs made a bunch of heal spells that crossed classes and you got them at different levels. Then they decided that each class needed everything unique (and some made the argument that spell costs should be more level consistent). 15 years later look at the vendors, research, spell book slot, programming code, dev time, etc. space that is taking up.

Meanwhile, other games do "trimming" or "squash" to keep the game reasonable. For EQ this would mean or would have meant (when dev resources could have gone to it):

1) put all the single-target heals* (*and every other heal line, just giving an example) back into one spell line. Design them up to the level 200 cleric and then backfill them onto the other classes as balance dictates. Note that other games rebalanced their low level game to not be 7 spells in a line before level 50 when the average player was getting to that level 10x faster than in the past. Heals go across a lot of classes... something like lifetap recourses not so much, but the saving is still there.

2) Standardize spell cost. The game is far beyond needing spell/ability acquisition as a plat-sink or barrier. Most games auto-grant your level appropriate abilities when you get the level. I like the lore of having to go to the vendor... but the run around Norrath to get all your spells has been gone a long time.


Apply this logic to AA (they have a bit actually), mod 2s, focus effects (please... this started out so straightforward). They did it with leadership abilities (and so much could actually be put into AA instead of onto gear. One of the bigger complaints I have heard from returning players over the years is how complicated the character sheet and gear has gotten).

Take her to Doomfire to show her the Vow and Ward lines. It's awesome there and good AA even in the late 80's early 90's. Take her either to the tables or the castles.

It's funny how people can play at overlapping times and have different experiences.

My original main was a cleric and I did some pacify pulling. Then my brother talked me into playing a chanter for his guild and I did lots of it. I really enjoyed being a chanter puller but as the game evolved that precision and control wasn't what most people I encountered wanted as even scrub pickup groups could handle multiples through off-tanking and root parking. The irony was when my brother and his then-wife would set up a pick up group and do it our way about 2/3 of the people that flowed through our groups would be amazed at our kill rate and lack of deaths, but that was a preset trio cherry-picking content to suit our way of doing it.

Most of the time I have played either class in the last 7-8 years it hasn't been a factor in the crowds I have been playing with and/or the content I have been into.

LDon era we were guilded with an erudite paladin that was the pacify king of the server. He was extremely popular as a dungeon puller.

I sometimes think they gave too many tricks to too many classes as the game has gone on.


Thanks for jarring me down a walk down pacify memory lane.

Setting up and testing spell sets, AA combos and discipline timers/macros took weeks, literally. And that doesn't include labor added when trying new macro combos after leveling up. Misunderstanding spell descriptions and how the spells actually functioned was - and is - a constant problem.

The latency generated between wireless towers near my house - combined with normal peak packet delay/loss - would mean some of the more complex macro-sets would fail to work properly.

Things that caused me grief and lots of wasted time:

Incorrect macro command line coding?
Sluggish SOE servers?
Failed AA name/number transliterations?
Incorrect spell timer transcriptions?

I experienced this firsthand this weekend.

I remember the cleric spell Sanctuary as a really crap ability. Back in the day, when cast, it would send you into this ridiculous animation of constantly sitting and then standing to wave your arms like a propeller, but it didn't really DO anything (it was supposed to alert you to mobs getting near). On Sunday, my friend used the AA ability and it turned out to be kinda like rogue evade. She pulled a lizardman patroller, ran to my SK and then hit sanctuary and the mob immediately started pummeling me.

I can't speak for the AA ability but the spell is still junk

It's a holdover from when casters needed their book open to meditate. It was supposed to give an indication that something was coming close since you couldn't what was going on around you. Never really worked well though and was mainly used to annoy people in the market zones (EC tunnels, N. Freeport, GFay bank).

"You feel as though you are being watched"
"You feel as though you are being watched"
"You feel as though you are being watched"
"You feel as though you are being watched"
"You feel as though you are being watched"
"You feel as though you are being watched"

Although not very useful (and even less these days where you no longer meditate blind), it is an example of the varied spells of Everquest and how the developers tried to put in interesting spells besides just "Attack Spells", "Heals" and "Buffs". One of the things that always set EQ apart from games that came later.

Idol of Malos looked really cool, plus the animation is hilarious. Imagine one of those old vibrating football game tables with all the players randomly skittering about - that's what Idol of Malos does.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/0f/b1/7f/0fb17f5667a41708a551a2b746dad30e.jpg


The little totem doesn't seem to do much to mobs, but it angers/aggros group members like you wouldn't believe.

edit: dilldoe not allowed.

Edited, Sep 26th 2015 9:17am by Trappin