Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
"Levelling up" in Everquest Next
rungard
Member Posts: 1,035
i am really really really hoping for a better system than the previous offerings. I hope that they do not have " levels" or experience in the game.
i would really love a hybrid system like eve online does so you can really pace yourself and not be focused on getting that level. I would also like there to be multiple ways to improve from multiple source. A track for your god, one for your class, one for your race and once for a player chosen organization or three.
like above some skills should be trainable after a certain time ( not time played), others should be findable, some should be required to be crafted and still others you need repeated exposure to the skill to begin learning it.
dont put us on a levelling treadmill. Make the game for a 5 year arc.
Comments
No thanks.
Besides, skill systems like this don't work. Look at UO or Darkfall. People just get the same skills that "work", and everyone turns out the same.
I'd rather have a system like Vanilla or BC WoW, where you have your 9-10 classes, three or four talent trees, and each tree makes you a unique type of character. Also, AA abilities from EQ to further customize your character. Racial abilities with some good utility to further define characters.
Player customization, and diversity among players is more important to me than EQ:N being "Revolutionary". Look at how that turned out for GW2... The game is trash.
Class systems create a system that makes character more 'unique'... which is a real funny way to really put it considering its restricting the skills you have, but over-all it prevents that 'one build' from happening. It provides more control and really makes it so players have certain options and can't just be 'jack of all trades' and focus on what skills work best in the game and create an army of clones using the same abilities and weapons.
I doubt the 'level up' system will be taken away (possibly modified maybe) since lets face it, it really makes us feel like we are making progress. I'll bet a good chunk of eve players feel a lack of progression particularly starting out due to the way its set up time based. Leveling up gives a sense of accomplishment even if its not that massive compared to making $1 which is a tiny tiny sliver of what a top earning player gets in the same period of time.
Levels exist (even in FPS games now!) because it gives a nice stepping ladder of achievement to make you feel like you progressed placed. It could possibly use a system similiar to AA where its not as strict as regular levels, but I'm sure they will exist in some form.
Games that are made for people like you are a dime a dozen luckily.
The rest of us...not so much...
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Sounds pretty perfect. Give us different playing paths, give it to us all from day one and let us choose how to play.
but i think alot more is necessary than that.
for instance i think if they have the old eq factions and you join "Freeport Guards" some of the skills you could access have everything to do with the freeport guards. I cant remember all the factions now, but it offers each one the chance to be unique in its own right, and as a player it makes more sense that if you join one of those organizations you can access their unique skills.
do the dame for deities which were big in eq, but for the deities i would make the deities killable as they were in eq, and when your deity is killed you temporarily lose your deity powers until they regenerate. They could even put in teleports to defend your deity if they are being attacked.
and your race should also have a plethora of options available that you can choose from based on your participation in racial activities ( elves killing orks, helping build kelethin, improving other elvish factions etc).
all your choices should carry weight and it should not all be from your class with a few accessory abilities thrown in.
when you have 4 different streams of abilities you dont need exp or level anymore since you will be working on all 4 streams that are more or less faction based rather than just gaining exp.
an example with the freeport guards. You get an ability for each rank you rise in the guards, and you rise in rank for patrolling the freeport newbie areas, guard/defend the gate, arrest/kill trespassers in freeport, improve guard posts, build new guard posts and other activities linked to what "freeport guards" would want.
of course this playstyle would not resemble at all what you need to do for serving your deity or advancing your faction goals.
they could put it in a way where you get the first three (race/deity/class) and the fourth one is your choice, and everytime you reach the top of the chosen one your allowed to add a new one.
that would be almost unlimited advancement
EQNext= Hybrid not a total sandbox game.
can you elaborate? Its based off of original eq. Remember in eq there were lots of factions to play around with, and there were also lots of gods, and lots of races who had unique abilities. Your class was the focus, but the other things added a ton of great gameplay to eq before it went off the rails with raiding.
This is just an extrapolation of what the real guts of eq was, and what eq next could be. It was always there.
classes i agree with but i have yet to see anything that would give me the impression that you would be levelling up like in traditional eq.
What!?! UO had hundreds (maybe thousands) unique builds. Sure there were the min/maxers and the flavor of the month builds but class base systems with talent trees are no different.
I say to hell with designing games around power games and min/maxers. Give me a world to tool around in and give me actual control over my character.
Crap really! I'm no purist but playing what someone else's thinks my character should be pretty much scraps EQ Next as a sandbox IMHO. How can there be any sand when you don't not had complete control over your avatar in the game.
That would indeed be pretty cool. I hope they implement something like this.
classes i agree with but i have yet to see anything that would give me the impression that you would be levelling up like in traditional eq.
I cannot say for sure but i would happily bet all my yearly income that EQNext will have an xp system for gaining levels. Seems to me that you are taking smeds sandbox comment as literal when i dont think he meant total sandbox but more hybrid.We know it will be seamless but will it be a total open world like Vanguard which has no instances.
I like your ideas by the way but i dont think we will see a couple of them. I played EQ for six years so i can see all your comments as good.
Smedley said it won't be a skill based system so I think we can safely assume it will be level based. He also said it will have a raiding endgame.
So basically what we know about it so far is that it will have classes, levels, and a gear grind raiding endgame.
What we don't know is in what way (if any) it will be sandboxy.
This is completely moot based on UO and Darkfall having different skill systems. They both have skills. One has a cap, while the other does not. One is balanced, while the other is not. You can't compare them or even use them together as an example.
Every game, no matter what type of progression system, has flavor of the month classes or skills. You want diversity, yet you don't want a system that allows you to do anything you want. I love systems like this, because It makes me think when I want to make something truly unique, and actually have it work. I'd rather be able to be exactly what I want, than to be restricted to what the developers want. Or maybe I'll put it this way. I'd rather have the option of trying to make anything I want, than to be forced into what someone else wants. I don't understand your stance on this.
A lot of people like GW2. Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean there aren't many people who do.
"I also said in there that it will still be very familiar to you, but what I meant by that statement is that we're changing what an MMO is. MMO means something now, and it means the same thing to everybody because it's the same game. EverQuest, WoW, SWTOR all use the same core loot gameplay, which is kill stuff, get reward, get loot, level up. Very few games have broken out of that mold. One or two have. EVE Online is a great example; it's not standard level-based gameplay, although I'm not saying we're going to a big skill-based system. You're still going to recognize the roleplaying game heritage in it." Smed 2012 SOE Live
what i read there is a heratige=class based system, but i dont read a gear grinding endgame or levels there. I read the opposite.
I am not aganst levelling as long as there is diversity.
Love your ideas about making things mean something, for example faction. faction is still one of the best most under used but great mechanics in mmos. EQs faction system was great. you could easily make youself kill on sight to a faction, but getting back out was difficult so it became an important decision.
Your idea about diversity in paths is the best idea as it is something that again EQ did well. We levels faction and AAs. AAs made my Ranger a god when played right. i could crowd control better than most chanters.
I just pray that they put in the same effort ad thought into progression as you have.
And imagine a game with risk/reward again after all these years.......just keep super fast travel out so we can have difficult dungeons to get to that will reward us.
in my opinion many of the things that made everquest great have been left in the shadows by pretty much all mmo;s that have come out since. Faction was one of the best and it was very organic. You know your advancing because it tells you, but i loved that you would have to actually go check and see if you would still be killed or not or if they would even talk to you.
When he says that they aren't going to a skill based system in that quote I take that to mean classes and levels. If it's not skill based and it's not level based then what else would it be?
Ok, on the raiding thing I'm just going to copy paste the relevant part of the quote from another thread.
--------------------------------------
Smedley said:
" You make your expansion, the real hardcore players consume it in a month, and they're doing the raids over and over and over until the next round of live content that we put in. Typically, three or four times a year, we as MMO companies put new endgame in there to keep the raiders happy.
We absolutely need to build that style of content into every game we make because players want that."
----------------------------------------------
He says they need that in every game and he said that when talking about EQ next. I don't see any other interpretation except that EQ next will have the standard issue endgame where you raid over and over and over to gear up so that you can move on to the next raid and so on.
I like earning exp and leveling, even in my sandboxes
"What we want is a dynamic world that gives all those other possibilities and doesn't just say OK, go to raid X with group composition of X, Y, Z, and kill the dragon for the 52nd time to get the tier 800 gear. It's this rinse-and-repeat gameplay that's got to change, and so we're changing it.
what would you say this means? I never said there wouldnt or shouldnt be raids in eq next. I just wouldnt expect them to be EQ EQ2 or WOW raids. I think they will be guild oriented and not individual reward oriented which makes sense in a game that will have alot of building features.
He was saying that the most hardcore of raiders burn through new content too quickly and need something more to do between expansions. They just need something more to mess around with while they wait for the next teir of raids to be released and that is the "other possibilities" he was talking about. Or at least that's how I read it.
I don't know what this other stuff might be exactly but I doubt if it's going to change the nature of the raiding endgame. He clearly said that they want the normal sort of raiding endgame but that they need something for the people who burn through content to quickly too keep them busy between expansions for the sake of retention.
So to me this says----same ol' same ol' but with....um, interior decorating or something to fart around with if you've maxed out before the next expansion put's you back on the treadmill.
Yes, I'm extremely cynical, jaded, and "glass half empty" after all these years. But why shouldn't I be? We've seen so much bullsh-t, misleading hype over the years I am frankly astonished that not everyone is as cynical and mistrusting as I am. Basically, if someone in the industy doesn't spell out PRECISELY what they are doing with a game I expect the worst. If they leave themselves any wiggle room I assume they fully intend to wiggle their way down the craptastic path.
I kind of read that as not having a structured T1-10 or whatever raiding system in place. Not like this dungeon / raid is for T1, once you're done grinding your gear out of this one dungeon / raid you are adequately geared for the next T2 dungeon / raid and so on. Hopefully a bit more like EQ which had multiple areas for different types of gear, some crafting in place for the odds and ends pieces at the VERY least and some quested armor sets from the higher teir raids and dungeons that are comparable to the raid dropped gear. Thinking like the Velious armor sets or even the Ornate armor from PoP that provided solid upgrades for single groups or good sellables to spend on better things.
Played: EQ1 (10 Years), Guild Wars, Rift, TERA
Tried: EQ2, Vanguard, Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Runes of Magic and countless others...
Currently Playing: GW2
Nytlok Sylas
80 Sylvari Ranger
Leveling was changed from 40 Battle ranks to 100. (expansive) (acts as an Alterneate Advancment system from the start)
Player created (initiated) missions were added. (sandbox)
Resource and territory control become the main focus. (sandbox)
What that tells me is their idea of end game might come from player (guild) created (or assisted / initiated) content. This content might have prerequisites to activate which might have something to do with a resource and territory control.
The class system of EQ live has a lot of potential to expand on while maintaining the core mechanics of each class. A planetside Cert (skill points?) type system unique for each class would be an interesting concept so that everyone starts at a point where they have access to "end game" while allowing for specialized and long term (AA) growth.
I dont think "XP" is going to change i think theres going to be a lot of high fantasy -grind- left in the game to go out and experience. But i think the focus will be taken away from the static respawning world and be placed on guild or faction based (PVP) conflict over some kind of control.
(older) People want a modern PvE EQlive (i do as well) but i can't justify the value in it. Raids and PvE are already made to perfection in WoW nobody is looking for another game that offers the same type of experience . They have to offer something unique that you cannot get in WoW.
Actually I see no connection between a game being a sandbox with classes or a skill system. A sandbox is defined by the level if interaction with the world and not with how you advance your character.
The problem with sandbox games is that so few represent most players experience with them that they they think those games are the only way to make a sandbox game. This is the farthest from the truth.
You stay sassy!