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Georgeson: "Unlocking [tiers] is a matter of days and weeks, not years.""
Bidwood
Member Posts: 554
On tiers: While trying to get a handle on the new concepts of EverQuest Next, some folks latched onto the term tiers as a substitute for levels. Georgeson, however, explained that the two are not just interchangeable terms for the same idea. Tier doesn't equate to power level -- it means capability. Higher tiers mean that players have a handle on how the game is played, from how to do combat to how to manipulate their skills to make various builds. It also means that they have a more robust selection of skills, giving them more flexibility to deal with situations. Unlocking tiers is a matter of demonstrating you know what's going on in the game. And moving up tiers is not going to be a laborious process: Georgeson stated, "Unlocking them is a matter of days and weeks, not years."
Comments
These guys should stop talking and just make the damn game. Let us know when its finished.
SWG sort of had tiers, albeit only two tiers. If I recall correctly, you had a basic tier and then a specialization tier. Each tier had a number of skills you could unlock by gaining xp.
For example, you had the crafting tier, and then a specialization tier in, say, Droid Engineer.
why do people want to play a game for days and weeks ? Instead of Long term ? why would you enjoy getting every skill in a few weeks ? then there is no more skills to get after that hahah
people suck these days if you want to know the truth haha it is a lot more fun working hard for a long time to accomplish something then just being handed it in the first weeks or days of playing
Well to be honest, if some people put as much effort into real world endeavors as they do into MMOs (or gaming in general), they might actually do great things in this world. Working hard in the real world = good, and should be rewarded.
Working hard and spending countless hours moving pixels around in a game? Not so much.
yaa maybe if each of the classes takes a few weeks...and you can try all 40 of them Might be cool that way
soo excited for this game damn haha hope its not a let down
There is still going to be rare items in the game that will take a long time to get. Some classes are not easy to unlock. There is no endgame in a sandbox, you have the freedom to do what you want to do the first time you log into the game.
Days or weeks to advance to the next tier of the current class... no mention on how hard/easy it is to find the classes, nor if all of them tier up equally.
Even if you do find some classes, who says the skills they each have even play well together... I can see it taking HUGE time investments to make an ultimate build... and anyone who wants to imitate it, will have to put in a lot of effort as well, since there is no surefire way to get the class that you want the moment you want it.
"Curioser and curioser."
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
I hope it's stuff like this... I am a mage and can use "upheaval" when I reach the next tier. I can then become a druid and create a pit of quicksand at tier 2... so while I'm not really increasing my DPS, I could break a bridge from under someone and cause them to fall into the quicksand which would otherwise be easy for them to avoid.
That way you can become more useful with tiers, but not categorically more powerful. It's like a swiss army knife v.s. a regular knife.. with more functionality, but not necessarily stronger steel or a sharper edge.
What I think they are getting at is that all players will have relatively similar power levels. Someone playing for 2 weeks will have similar HP, attack damage, etc. as someone playing for 1 year. The person playing 1 year will have many more abilities, customizibility, and access to many more abilities. Also, gear doesn't make you much more powerful (in the raw stat power sense), but enhances your abilities/gives you new abilities. There are several big implications to this:
1. All areas will remain relevant to all players (no more out-leveling certain zones or dungeons),
2. A newer player will be able to group with veterans (somewhat) effectively,
3. Depending on how PVP works, skill will be more of a factor than level/gear,
4. I'm not sure how this will scale to end-game if a player can raid 10 minutes after creating a character, and
5. People are going to have a really hard time swallowing the fact that they aren't really getting much stronger after playing for long periods of time. WTF! My fireball is always gonna do 20 damage??
I could be wrong about this idea. We will just have to wait and see (we will know more tomorrow).
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
What I get out of it is that tiers are actually not so much steps in character power as they are levels of players skill. So maybe tier 1 is for casuals and tier 4 is for hardcore players. To advance to tier 4 you have to do the really hard tier 4 content.
Traditional games don't have this. All of levelling content is very easy. There is only a increase in difficulty when you switch to endgame raiding.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Yes...the difficulty is really dealing with the lowest common denominator in the group (ie the people being carried) not with the encounters. Raiding is only a challenge if you have a lacking group composition (not enough cc in the old days, or not enough heals) and have to actually be creative on how to beat the encounter with limited resources.
Just because every car has similar features doesn't mean that Ferraris are copies of Model Ts. Progress requires failure and refining.
EQ Next is a sandbox, levels and the end game gear treadmill to keep max level players busy are not needed for it too be fun. There is no endgame, the classes and gears are just tools for you to go play in the sand. Sandboxes are about in living in the world and exploring it and nothing in the game stays static, the game is changing everyday because of what players and the emergent Ai monsters are doing in it. Every time you log in it will be a new experience because you have no idea what's going on around the world tell you find it. Yes I do think the player who just looted the rare epic sword off a Demon on the very bottom tier will be more powerful then some one logging in for the first time.
...I know that it's bad form to answer a question with a question....but...
Perhaps because EQN's system doesn't act like those you mentioned and you're only assuming that it does based on the limited information they've released and before it is entirely unveiled?
Most people don't want to play 40 classes, they are happy with one or a small number.
Partly true.
Unlocking the tiers themselves seems to me as a loosely-based form of leveling (vertical progression). The reason that is vertical is because higher tiers are more powerful than lower ones.
But the abilities gained with each tier is purely a form of horizontal expansion.
So maybe one could think of it as a hybrid?
This is how I picture it:
I don't think an average gamer only plays 5 to 10 hours per week...I think that is the definition of a casual gamer.
But lets say it only takes10 to 20 hours to tier up (I am assuming that means max tier in a class)...then "IF" you can actually access 40 classes (because you won't be able to given the evil/good nature of some classes making them diametrically opposites and hence unattainable to some races/classes) that would only take 400 to 800 hours to tier up all classes. Let's assume that only 10 of the 40 classes are unattainable for a given player (due to race/other class choices) that means 300 to 600 hours to max out all classes for a typical player. For a hardcore gamer that will be about one month. For what I'd call an average gamer that would be about 6 months. Casual gamer maybe 12 months.
I don't see this as enough progression.
....that is because the progression isn't suppose to be in the tiers, because tiers are not levels, because this isn't a themepark?
this game is sounding more and more like something that will be fun to mess around with when you are bored and in between games.
at least its F2P, that's for damn sure.
Sandbox is not about levels and gear grinding, its concepts are giving the players the freedom to do what they want to do and being active in a world that can be built and destroyed by players and monsters. If you are bored go dig a hole and the game will spawn a adventure for you to do, jumping into that hole is your choice. There always something to do as oppose to sitting around drooling on your keyboard waiting for a queue to pop in a normal themepark game.
At first i thought about the "The secret World"tiered and levelless character progression to compare what they want to do.
You have there "classes" too, just in form of different weapons(Blades(melee+tank),Pistols(rangedps+CC),Bloodmagic(Heal+Barriers). Split up into two tiers, the first tier split into two and the second tier split into six sub"skilltrees", and every new skill costed more Skillpoints, and higher tiered Skills even more. But higher tiered skills weren't meant to be stronger but more diverse. Like the tier1 blood heal also put a small barrier, but the tier2 heal was less strong, but with a stronger barrier.
In theory that system was good, but they ruined(atleast in my eyes) this with a geargrind and some unbalanced skills and encounters who are a lot easier for ranged ones(assault rifle was one of the best options for dps), but nearly to none encounter where it is good to be melee.
Back to EQN:
What Georgeson announced"Unlocking tier is a matter of days and weeks" is that a tier could take some days, another some weeks.
Say Warrior starts at tier 1, it will need around 2 days to unlock tier 2, another 6 days for tier 3 and 14 days for tier 4. this would mean around 22 days(and we dont know how much tiers are planned).
If we expand this on 40 classes: 22days for tier4 multiplicated with 40 classes= 880 Days ~ 2 years and 5 Months.
Even longer to unlock everything if we take more tiers into it, the time to unlock some classes and the announcment of additional classes after release .
If you ask me, this could mean you can get fast some more diverse skills but you need very long to get every possible option.