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No class/race restriction
TheRealFantomex
Member Posts: 36
As per the RT Response today, there will be no restrictions. They put forth a fairly good argument for no restrictions. Thoughts?
EverQuest Nexus - http://www.eqnexus.com
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I do like restrictions in other games, however for Everquest Next I think they made a very good decision for the health of the game, and I agree,OP, that it was communicated quite well in the video.
Yeah same here. I do respect that they actually explained their choice to go against that opinion. I just hope that doesn't mean that a race is just a skin (still watching the video).
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Considering the game they are building - where consequences are supposed to matter - it doesn't make sense to create these artificial restrictions of who can become what. Let the game's mechanics create these restrictions by forcing players to do good deeds to collect the "good" classes and perform evil deeds to collect the "evil" classes, etc.
I don't want the choice to be made for me when i start, becoming what you want to become is supposed to be one of the main draws of this game.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
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I was one of the 40% that voted for lore based class restrictions. It feels so much more like a breathing world when lore interacts with the game. I so badly want lore to dictate what races are magical, stronger or wiser, but I could see how it would ruin EQN's game-play, because of their ogre warrior example.
Having tiered your character to such a point and wanting to maximize your characters ability only to be stopped by lore would be very grueling to see. Then having to re-create your character to match the play style you want would be greatly disheartening. Then to add salt into the wound of the already dying lore class restrictions, they bring up adding new playable classes and how they would arbitrarily have to restrict certain races. That would suckkkkkkk.
Overall I am not happy with the outcome, but I can accept their reasons why they are doing it for the better of the game.
I think all these things are doable without making outright restrictions. There are plenty of ways to make it more challenging for a certain race to become a certain class without outright restricting it. Just look at EQ2, it's a lot more painful for a Fae to become a SK than for an Arasai, so most people will take Arasai if they want a butterfly SK, yet if one reallly wants to, they can jump through all the hoops and still manage the Fae SK if they really really want to.
And if you look at the stats for what races end up as what classes in EQ2 - despite all combinations being possible - you will still find that for the most part, classes are made up of those races that you expect.
As far as (for example) a race's size determining it's strength, this makes sense in a world without magic. In world of magic, where 10 points of strength comes from your race and the next 500 points of strength come from all the magical stuff you wear, it's not a realistic limitation lorewise.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
I don't have any problem with no restrictions, though I did like them in EQ1, but I'm worried about how they are going to pull all their ideas off and still making combat challenging. With all this freedom some builds are going to be OP and some gimpy, with most in the middle, I guess. I know they said content will change to fit small or larger group/multiple groups, but as far as individual combat how will they make it challenging for OP, middle or gimp/weaker builds? Champ online had the best character create/open skill/ability system I've seen, where you could make pretty much whatever you could think of. To balance this they made everything but the 6-full team instanced missions so overly easy that it got boring even with the fun combat, and the few hard missions would wipe group repeatedly (partly difficulty and part no one knew how to group since you didnt need to for other 98% content) and u would just run back from the front door to jump back in-grew tiresome quickly.
I'm really looking forward to EQN, but all their really good ideas won't mean much if there's no challenge for most the content (having 8 hard dungeons to repeat would be boring quick). Hopefully, they have a better plan than most games out lately to balance the action, open ability system and content difficulty.
Thats a point of not choosing the class/race restrictions. In earlier games when you play a race that is most likely evil(like Orcs or Dark Elves), you only have to choose from the Evil classes because your Race is Evil. But in EQN its all about personal choices. Even if the "plurality" of the Dark Elves is Evil this doesn't means ALL are evil so restrictions by race are not good. If you want to be a good Dark Elf do good things. You maybe have it harder to be accepted as a good guy because of your race but its a restriction that has much more in common with a life of consequences then plain restrictions by "your Born as evil race and will never ever be able to be good". Which doesn't even make sense
As an example from our history. In WW2 the Germans were by most considered as evils. Does that means all German's were Evil ? Not at all. Fact would be, most of them were not evil at all but good/neutral or at least just doing their orders.
I'm really happy with their decision here. IMO, no race/class restrictions is the way to go for THIS game. Here is why I think race/class restrictions would be bad:
1. It would give certain players penalties in the metagame. Say that somebody comes up with an amazing rogue build that uses skills from the Warrior, Tempest, and Mage classes. Well if you are playing a dwarf for example, and they can't be mages..this completely locks you out of that build. This is just one example, but restricting players from certain classes could flat out make some races "better," and this isn't something I would want to see.
2. It would remove the ability to take one character through the entire game and try everything. I honestly like the idea of being able to have one character and potentially make him a master of every class in the game...this sounds really cool to me. If there are race/class restrictions, then I would have to make alts to try other classes...AND I would have to do a lot of repeat grinding on classes I've already played to get cross-class abilities for my alt.
3. It would damage the main benefit of EQN's class system which is FREEDOM. Race/class restrictions remove your freedom to play what class you want, when you want. For example, if I make an alt human so I can be a mage, then I can no longer spend exp I gain with my main dwarf warrior on my mage class. This means I'm forced to play the mage (and maybe not play with friends) if I want to level him.
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Seems some people have forgotten what the "RP" in rpg stands for.
Look at how famous and well known Drizzt is, a Dark Elf who forsakes the normal "evil" ways of the drow.
In an RPG the player, not the developer, should be given the choice to make their character how they want.
That isn't to say there can't be logical things, like a character making "good" choices unlocking the paladin class and skills where an "evil" player who does bad things unlocks a dread knight or something like that.
The choices should be logical and choices made BY the player, not by the developer without any input from the player.
In EQ2 you could have a dark elf paladin but you had to take a lengthy betrayal quest that you had to do before level 17,this was impossible to accomplish solo because you had to kill a level 18^^^ near the end of the quest,which encouraged the person to ask in chat for help,which may of led to making new friends which in turn helped the community grow et cetera.
This kind of game play is dead now,MMORPG games have devolved into single player crapfests,I expect EQN will be the champion of these for at least 2 months.
I found the video to be quite disconcerting. They are arguing that their game should not be a game of consequence. They are forgetting that replayability of the game is a core value, so that if, in their example, an Ogre realizes at level 20 that they would prefer to be a bard rather than a warrior, well, then, all they need to do is roll a new character. I don't see why this is viewed by them as some sort of negative outcome that is bad for the community. If all players stick with one character because it can do all jobs then all of the lesser zones will become ghost towns.
I mean, even taking out restrictions, are they really going to have it so that an Ogre can be just as skilled a rogue as a Halfling would? Really? Are we going to see Ratonga Main Tanks?
This is very disappointing news and more evidence that they are falling into the trap of getting sucked into following poll results; players are just not the right people to be making these kind of decisions as they don't fully understand how all of the pieces fit together.
One of them commented on having to spend 30 minutes to figure out character creation. What is the problem here? Character creation SHOULD take a long time, players should understand the options before making decisions, and many players should realize later that they made some mistakes with race or class selections. This is perfectly acceptable and is part of the experience of playing a new MMORPG game.
RE-ROLL
I agree! +1
I'm in agreement with your points, but I think there should be stat differences between races, so that while you might want to make a gnome warrior, you're going to suffer a strength penalty that might prohibit you from using certain weapons cause are too big for you, and let you be proficient in others due to perhaps increase dexterity vs a lumbering Orc.
I prefer MMO's to have limitations which force players to make some hard choices as they build up their character.
Everything should come with pluses and minuses to the action.
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The absence of stat differences would be, in my opinion, a deal breaker. But back to race restrictions, they need to be less lazy and at minimum make it very difficult for some races to get access to some classes, i.e., grind appropriate faction, reject the teachings of certain opposing classes, and have performance penalties, too.
I voted for no restrictions for the very reasons they mention in the video, I'm glad they went this route. I would hate to find a class that I really want to play and NOT be able to play it just because of my race.
And taking from FFXIV and The Secret World, the whole one character thing, I dig it.
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I would have no problem with stat differences. I would just prefer that they either be fairly minor, or they not be such that one race is flat out "better" at being physical classes, while another race is flat out better at being magical classes etc...
I like when the stat differences still make it so each class is equally viable...but you just have different aspects of the class you are better at. For example, High Elf paladins in EQ1 were physically much weaker than the other races, BUT they had a very high wisdom score so their magic was better.
I also really like "flavor" differences in races, differences that make the race "play" differently but don't really give them large advantages. Like the fact that humans needed help to see at night in EQ1, but elven races had infravision.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
That's the problem. This decision probably means that they follow the same route as most other recent MMOs: Races don't really mean anything, they are just a cosmetic thing. I think they missed a chance here to do something different then other MMOs once again.
We are used to it because most games handle it like this, but if I think about it, it kind of breakes my immersion if the 10 foot 500 pounds ogre that makes the ground shake with every footstep is somehow the sneaky guy in the group. If you ask me this is almost Terry Pratchett territory.
The option they rejected was "I'd like to see certain races restricted to certain classes based on lore" If you turn it around, it says "I want all kinds of race/class combinations even if they contradict lore." It is a matter of taste at what point something clearly contradicts lore, but for me the words "ogre" and "sneaking" pretty much exclude each other.
And as others already said, it should be a difficult task to become a dark elf paladin. If you want to play a strange race/class combination you should at least have to work for it, otherwise it wouldn't be special at all.
There also is a general problem I have with this decision. It trades off immersion for convenience. Its the same thing as with having no death penalty, instant travel and 100% soloable content.
I think they explained their decision very well, and they have all the logic behind their decision. Having a class restriction based on race in a MMO where you have 40+ classes to mix, it would simply put you in a totally unfair decision where you have decide something at a time simply without any facts to base your decision on. And I see no real benefit on restriction besides RP-wise. So if you are a roleplayer, just restrict yourself and let others do their stuff.
It was the only reasonable decision given it is an open modular system.
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you have also to consider that simple rerolling to get another class is not that easy in this game. What if you get after one month of playing the opportunity to get the "insert class". But you cant get it because you are an Ogre. so Re-rolling means you have to play another month to "maybe" get the class at the same point.
With the game design in emergent AI and Multiclassing its logical that they cant use the old ways. Or as they said, if they introduce a new class that is not avaible to your race, is punishing you for a choice you did before you even started the game.
But they can make race penalties/advantages to classes. Like the Ogre Rouge is far easier to spot then a dwarf. But on the other hand he may have greater strength and stamina. Give and take.
Since when is Tuesday a direction?
Well, that's disappointing. It makes races more unique when restricted to certain classes. Let's take WoW for example. In classic, paladins were restricted to humans only, and shamans were restricted to tauren. Then when BC came, they gave both sides paladins and shamans, but at least they weaved them into the lore, by giving them draenei (shaman) and blood elves (paladins). It made the alliance and horde rivalry more interesting in terms of lore. Lotro is another example, which works really well with that lore (i haven't played in 5 years or more so it might've changed). Then with GW2, there wasn't any restrictions, which made it more generic to me, and didn't make for interesting character personas.