Tag: EverQuest

Welcome to the City of Heroes!

Gaming

With the NDA lifted, lets talk about City of Heroes.

First off, to see lots about the game, go to the official site at http://www.coh.com. If you want to look at the powers and plan a character offline, get the tool at http://coh.blacklistguild.com/.

Now… on to my thoughts…

The Character Creator: There are literally millions of costumes you can create here. And unless you are trying to make a costume similar to a well known comic character or are going for something very simple (white tights with a red star on the chest) its unlikely that you’ll see someone in the same suit (similar, possibly, but not identical). The only issues I have with character creation are things like: Not being able to make a full “skeletal” robot (they have the arms, but no legs to match); no capes, trenchcoats, jackets, or robes (they do have tails, but they are fairly rigid – this is all due to the choice of doing the game in OpenGL instead of Direct3D); and no “colored” hair (your hair is all one color, you can’t have a stripe or otherwise altered hair).

Its been hinted at that there will be some way to alter your appearance later in the game, at a cost of influence, or something, but for now, expect your costume to be static after creation.

Gameplay: You are a hero, you defeat bad guys. In that, read, there is no PvP. Everything in CoH, for now, is PvE (player versus environment). You can run out in the street and fight thugs, you can get missions to find stolen objects or break up some bad guy’s sinister plan.

In the game, you can either go solo, or you can group with up to 7 other people at once. Street events tend to be doable with 1-3 people fairly easily, though some city zones and some encounters require more firepower than a hero can do alone. Missions do tailor to the group going in though, so if you go in solo the mission will be “easier” than if you go in with 7 other people, although you may finish faster with a group than you could solo. Neither grouping nor soloing is clearly more efficient in City of Heroes, although, like any game, a good soloer is always better than a bad group.

The game tailors well to time restrictions as well. If you want to just pop in and fight for 20-30 minutes, you can. If you want to spend all day doing missions and task forces, you can do that too.

Archtypes and Powers: In the game there are serveral archtypes to choose from: Blaster, Controller, Defender, Scrapper, and Tanker. Blasters are primarily range damage, Controllers are range with mainly healing and hold powers (snares, roots, mezzes), Defenders are buffers/debuffers with ranger, Scrappers are melee damage, and Tankers are melee damage absorbers.

Within each archtype, there are primary and secondary power sets. With each of those lies nuance for the archtype. For example, a Force Field Defender buffs and shields his group, while a Dark Miasma Defender debuffs the bad guys, both are defenders but both are played very differently.

There are also Power Pools that are available to all archtypes. These are things like Flight, Superspeed, Leadership, Medicine, etc. Essentially, they allow you to have a travel power and/or augment your archtype with a skill you are missing.

Every even level (2, 4, 6, … ) you will get a new power.

Items and Equipment: The costume you create in the beginning is how you will always look. Throughout the game the items you get will be Inspirations and Enhancements.

Inspirations are temporary buffs or instant effects. Healing, Endurance recovery, defence, accuracy, damage, resistances… even a revive (more on this later).

Enhancements are what make your powers better, and allow avenues for making yours different from someone else in the same powerset. Each power lists the enhancements it can take: more damage, more range, reduce cost, more defence, more debuffing, etc.. and each power starts with one enhancement slot. Every odd level (3, 5, 7, … ) you get more slots to put on the powers you choose. There are three kinds of enhancements: Generic, Dual Origin, Single Origin. Think of them as 10%, 25%, 40%, while those numbers may not be correct, it helps to visualize what they help you do. As with any math in games, going larger is easier than going smaller. If you slot 5 Single Origin damage increasers into a power, you will increase the damage by 200%. Increasers are calculated at x + (x * .4) + (x * .4) + (x * .4) + (x * .4) + (x * .4) = 3x. However, reducers are limited in that they cannot cross 0. So if you slot 5 Single Origin refresh time reducers, you will not get x – (x * .4) – (x * .4) – (x * .4) – (x * .4) – (x * .4) = -x. It has not been determined at this time if you simply cap at a certain point, or if its dimishing returns: (((((x * .6) * .6) * .6) * .6) * .6) = .07776x.

Enhancements also have a level. If you are level 10, only enhancements level 7 through 13 will function for you. Anything 14+ you can’t slot in, and anything 6- will be “red” and not providing any benefit. As you adventure though, you can either get new enhancements (through drop or from a store), or you can combine enhancements to keep them up. A level 6 + a level 6 = a level 6+. 6+ is effectively level 7. If you then combine a level 6+ and a level 7, you get a 7+ (8). But, if you combine a level 6+ with another 6, you get a 6++, which is also effectively 8, but cannot be combined further.

Death: City of Heroes is not modern comics. Frank Miller doesn’t live here. This is the Golden Age, and no one dies. When you defeat a foe, he’s carted off to prison (not shown, the body just fades away). This is visually indicated by the fact that his health and enduance are never empty, just reduced to a minimal amount and he falls to the floor.

Heroes aren’t defeated either. They go to the hospital, or they can be revived on the spot through a number of powers or an awaken inspiration.

The penalty for defeat in CoH is an experience debt. When you are defeated, you earn a debt equal to approximately 10% of the current level’s total exp (last I heard they were talking about knocking this to 5%, as well as levelling it off so that at high levels, the debt isn’t astronomical). If your level takes 2000 exp to complete from start to finish, a defeat earns you 200 debt. Your max debt is half your current level (some say equal to the level, but I’ve never earned enough debt to test that out), so 1000 in this example. While you have debt, half the exp you earn will go to debt, and half to regular exp. So in reality, you never “lose” exp, you simply level at half speed until you work off the debt.

In practice, I found that I rarely cared about my debt, although it did prevent me from trying something stupid more than once or twice. When I lost a mission fight, I would try again, but if I lost twice, I would go find something else to do until I either came up with a new strategy or levelled.

Missions: This is were most of the game is at. You can go earn exp on the streets, but inside a mission, you don’t have to search for the bad guys. You also earn experience for completing the mission in addition to anything you earn fighting.

Missions tailor themselves to the player a bit, as well as to the group. The larger your group, the more foes… to a point. Every mission has an intended level as well, so if you get a mission at level 6, then don’t do it and go back to it at level 12, the guys inside will still be level 6. The same is true all the way up, but the missions scale a bit (at level 10 I got a mission and all the foes were level 10, I didn’t finish it, I came back later at level 11, and all the foes were level 11… when I went back at 14, they were still level 11).

Some missions are “busy work”. “Go clean up the streets!”, “Go Patrol!”, etc… other missions are part of a story, “Find the missing scientist.” followed by “The scientist is safe, but they have his plans, get them back.” followed by “The plans are in our hands, but these clues indicate the 5th Column are up to something big, find out what it is.” etc… Its worth it to read the story, unless you just don’t care and want to level to 40 (the current max) as soon as you can.

Overall and Final Thoughts:

I’ve played EverQuest for almost 5 years, and while it may partially be wanting to seek something new, City of Heroes just seems to be a fantastic game. In the 5 months I’ve been beta testing, the replayability of it just soars past EQ. No camps, easy to get groups or solo, custimization of the character both look and powers, the flexibility of gameplay to time investment… Is it a perfect game? No. But its really quite well done.

So far, I’ve found no archtype that I couldn’t solo or group well with once I learned its strengths and weaknesses. Every problem I have with the game at this point is purely cosmetic:

– I’d love to see capes, jackets, robes…

– I’d love to see player housing, or at the least, more “public” housing, bars, bowling alleys, gyms, etc…

– I’d love to see an arena or “danger room” where I can play against other players in a controlled area. I’m not a huge fan of open PvP, but sometimes playing against other people is fun because they can be unpredictable in ways AI can’t.

Some people want to see crafting, but I don’t. I don’t see a need for it other than to cater to people who like combining stuff into other stuff to sell or trade, and there are plenty of games with crafting out there already.

My final thoughts on this game… I love it. I’m definately going to buy it. I don’t know if its going to push EverQuest completely off my PC, but it will definately give me something to do when there is nothing to raid and no one to group with.

The World of EverQuest before the Planes of Power

Random Thoughts

This was originally posted in a thread on the Monkly-Business message board, so forgive the places where it refers to another post:

Before the books, because the world was “larger” and travel time existed, people would go to a zone, and stay there or near there for a while.

I went to Unrest at level 23. Thankfully I had killed enough goblins in my younger days to earn the respect of the dwarves of Kaladim. I fought in Unrest on most days I logged in. Sometimes I would travel out to the Ocean of Tears and play on the islands, but most it was Unrest. There were up to 60 people in that zone in prime time, mostly the same people. We got to know each other, grouped in the various rooms of the house, met on early Sunday mornings to “break” the house. When the Ghost was on the lawn, it was a good day in Unrest. I finally left Unrest for good at level 34.

Like with my fishing trip story above, many of the people I met in Unrest, I still talk to. I show up at a public PoP raid and I’ll get a tell, “Hey man, been back to Unrest lately?”. A couple of us are even going to meet up in the next couple of days and go kill the Fabled version of the Ghost for old times sake.

Unrest isn’t a special place though… I have friends from my days in the Oasis as well… and the people I met in Frontier Mountains… and the Dreadlands. The reason we grouped so often was because travel time was non-trivial. People stuck around an area longer.

And most importantly though, there are people who were levelling up at the same time I was that I never met, because they chose a different path… they chose different zones to hang around in. Some of the oldest uber guilds on most servers were born out of Lower Guk and SolB and the times people spent together day after day, and the stories they share…

I feel for the people who only started EQ after PoP… they may enjoy the game, they may love it, but in the game we have now, its just not possible to have the same find of experience that people had before PoP. Travel is bordering trivial… its so easy to get to so many places, any zone not within 2 or 3 of a PoK book is empty… People don’t hang around a zone anymore… zip zip, they are off to the other side of the world… the guys you group with today are gone tomorrow… You can follow them, but its just not the same.

LDoN is bringing a little of that back… not the travel, but with people wanting to adventure in the same places over and over, you can meet the same folks again and again… there is a warrior I met doing Tak dungeons… 4 or 5 times he happened to be LFG when I was making a Tak group… since then we’ve done 30 or so adventures together, I’ve taken him with me to BoT groups and other places… and there are others as well… the spirit of the old dungeons is there… but it is a ghost.. a shadow of its former self.

This is what I want in Vanguard… I want a world thats big, where travel is non-trivial, where you stay in the places you know, and every now and then adventure off to the places you don’t… The world of EQ was different a long time ago. And every game that has come out since has in one way or another tried to “improve” on it by making things less non-trivial, easier. As much as people complain about the grind in EQ, people come back because most other games are so non-grinding that there is no real sense of accomplishment. In EQ, going through 59 was a trial by fire… it took forever… when you got 60, everyone in the zone cheered! Other games don’t have that, and that’s why EQ stays so popular.

Nothing worthwhile is ever easy.

Anyway… enough of a ramble from me… I’m sure the people who don’t get it, won’t read it anyway…

A Glimmer of Hope.

Gaming

Last night I was able to participate in a unique (in my experience) raid in EverQuest: Xegony in the Plane of Air.

Normal raids in EQ run a simple pattern. 1) Clear guards. 2) Set up, buff, etc. 3) Pull boss. 4) Tanks in front, complete heal chain, everyone else to the sides and back. 5) Pound on it until its dead.

The Xegony raid is different.

We set up beside some rocks on an island in the Plane of Air. The Main Tank, Secondary Tank and Third Tank, along with their complete heal chain compatriots, set up behind us. Xegony was pulled to there and the Tank set in. At 90% health, a wave of other spawns “woke up” and started to move toward her. The rest of the raid charged to meet them. We fought, a named spawn and 5 guards. Meanwhile, the Main Tank is “soloing” Xegony. Every 15% of her health, another wave would wake up, and we’d charge, north or south depending on the call, to meet and stop them. Xegony actually died while we were stilling fighting the last wave… the raid never fully engaged her.

It was a blast! Most raids are mind numbingly boring, turn attack on, mash a special attack key every now and then, with your biggest concern being if you are standing in the right place and making sure you aren’t stealling aggro from the tank. This was just so much more. It was a much needed breath of fresh air (pardon the pun) in EverQuest.

I think I’m ready to keep going now… and while my faith in SOE’s customer service and some of their design decisions (berserkers?? fu!) hasn’t been turned around, I’m at least happy to know that there might still be a few folks in there who actually understand what is fun in gaming.

Let`s talk about aggro.

Gaming

Okay, I know this topic is supposed to be for issues moving toward fixing and balancing EverQuest, but the monks over at Monkly-Business managed to get my hackles up and I need to vent.

I have, in all the time I have been playing a monk in EverQuest (since September 1999), read many many guides and theories about how the game of EverQuest, and aggro in particular, works.

Focusing on the aggro guides, it is my opinion and observation that every single one of them is lacking, is flawed. Every guide can have a hole poked in it by providing a situation where their explanation fails. And their failing is all, just about every one of them, in the same place: the view the player character as an inactive participant in game mechanics.

Lets begin with the simple theory that most guides follow: monster aggression radius. Every monster in the game has a radius that it is aggressive within. If a player enters that radius, the monster becomes active or aggro. Most of these guide believe that all aggression is assigned to the monster, and that it is a series of concentric circles (although sometimes a single circle is used), with the outter circles being the lowest level and the inner circles the highest. They believe this because if you have a monster who is level 40, he will attack a level 1 immediately upon entering any aggression circle, but a level 40 player has to get closer to aggro, and a level 65 player might be unable to aggro it at all (the single circle theory applies to monsters like the undead who in many cases will attack a level 65 player as quick as it will attack a level 1 player, even when the undead is level 1). Much of the game appears to subscribe to this theory, and this is why it has become popular.

Much, not all.

Enter ‘sneak’. Sneak is a skill that allows a player to appear indifferent when it is within the back arc of a monster. See, a monster isn’t just a circle of aggression, he faces a direction as well. With sneak, you can stand inches from a monster without aggro as long as you are behind it. How does this break the circles theory of aggro? A player using sneak will be able to approach a monster much closer from the front as well. Now, it doesn’t work as well as from behind, however, you will be able to get closer (sometimes almost imperceptibly closer) to the monster using sneak than without.

In an attempt to explain this, the aggro guides state than sneak reduces the effective aggro radius on the monster. Now, from a programming stand point, this is beyond idiocy. The amount of coding and server processing that would be required for all monsters to maintain an aggro radius for sneaking and non-sneaking characters and to keep track of which circle to apply to a character would be horrendous. Its just not feasable to code players as inactive and foist all the load of nuance onto the server.

Now on to what I believe and in practice has shown to be true.

Player characters are active participants in the game. If you view the game as a monster having an aggro radius and the player having an aggro radius, all the flaws of the other aggro guides disappear.

First, instead of having an inactive player enter the active monster’s radius, you have two radii, and aggro occurs when the two overlap. As a player levels, his natural radius gets smaller, allowing him to get closer to monsters. The radius of the monster and of the player have properties that also interact to decide if the monster will attack at all. To a level 65, some level 40 monsters will ignore you, others will attack if you hang around too long or too close.

Seconds, this accounts for sneak. Sneak has two effects, reduction of the player’s radius, and indifferent faction when in the back arc of a mob’s vision (which incidentally extends infinitely – or at least to the edge of the zone). From behind the mob, the player is indifferent, so his radius doesn’t matter. From the front, his radius is smaller, thus allowing him to get closer to the monster before it reacts to him.

My original theory was purely based on single radius player vs single radius monster. Over time however I learned that monsters appear to have two radii: active and passive. And it stands to reason that players might have them as well, although I have not been able to test this. On a monster, the active aggro radius is something it cannot ignore. When a player enters it, it will attack (faction permitting). The passive radius however, allows for the player to pass in and out without aggression. My assumption and experience has shown me that when you enter the passive radius you are assigned a position on the monster’s “watch” list. The longer you stay, the higher your count on the watch list. When you exceed a certain count, the monster becomes active at attacks. This is evident in that sometimes you can stand near a mob for several server ticks and then suddenly it will attack.

Monsters also have two assist radii: general and help. The general assist radius applies to any monster within it. If you aggro a monster, all monsters within its general radius will aggro as well. The help radius is larger, and is triggered when a monster is not passively aggro’d. For example, if you shoot an arrow or throw a dagger at the monster and cause damage it will “yell” for help. All monsters in the help radius will assist. This theory is clear when you can passively aggro (standing too close) a monster and get him alone, but throwing a dagger at him will get you all his friends.

There are also coding errors evident in EverQuest that support this. Places where a monster appears to have a large general assist radius, but have a zero range help radius, where you can use an arrow to single pull one target out of a group, but getting close to him will get you all of them.

This leads into lull. Lull reduces the aggression radii and all assist radii to zero (actually to a number just slightly above zero since standing on top of it or pulling another monster directly through it will cause agro).

This all leads into assists and chains. Some theories would have you believe that there is primary aggro and secondary aggro, and that monsters will only assist another monster that has primary aggro, and further that monsters will not assist a monster with secondary aggro. Thus far, I have not found any evidence of this. Every example I have seen can be explained some other way. The best example people have is that you can root a monster next to a target you want to pull, then what you want has secondary aggro and can be dragged through other monsters and they will not assist. However, most examples of this also state that the person uses invis after gaining aggro. When a player is invisible, any monster that tries to assist an aggro monster will get an ‘invalid target’ and not assist, not because of what level of aggro, but because it cannot see what its trying to assist on, so it fails. There is one, and I want to emphasize that it is a single solitary example, where a monk pulls a named monster in EQ through a building of other monsters and no monsters assist without using invis. Since this is the only example of this and cannot be repeated elsewhere, it is an anomoly, and likely a bug in the coding of that named monster, a case where his assist radii are coded badly and cause this behavior.

Anyway, enough ranting out of me. It all boils down to one simple thing, everything in EverQuest makes more sense when you view a player as an active participant in the game.

Sony is retarded.

Gaming

Normally I would refrain from insulting multi-national mega corporations, but in this case, at least from the perspective of the Sony Online Entertainment division that is over EverQuest, its a fact.

Go read the websites for the warriors, rogues and monks over the past year. Look at every idea they posted on how to bring melees back into balance.

Done?

Okay, warriors got new taunt skills. With the splitting of disciplines, all melees got a method to more often boost their damage through their use. Monks are getting (if it ever makes it off the test server) an essentially single target lull to assist in splitting spawns.

Now, do you remember all the other stuff you read? Ranged damage, group auras, directed attacks, etc, etc… SOE is implementing all that stuff too, only not for the people who need it. Instead, they are making a new class, the Berserker.

I mean, why enhance the classes you have when you can add a new one? Why make three classes better and more desirable to play when you can make yet another addition to the already overcrowded loot pool on raids?

When beastlords were introduced, they were nice. You could play in groups and you could solo. But in groups they really weren’t needed. Anyone can DPS, shaman have better buffs… so what to do? Why, give beastlords a unique skill! Lets give them a mana and hit points regen buff that stacks with just about everything. Give them a buff that works as a mass group buff heal. Basically, you see, they introduced a new class, then that class complained that they weren’t wanted on raids, so SOE made them desired for raids. So now we will get Berserkers, and then they will complain that they don’t have a role.. so SOE will find a way to give them one.

But most important to keep in mind about the berserker class, it is designed to do one thing.. attract new customers. At some point, there is an accountant at Sony who doesn’t care what is good for the game, nor what is good for its players, he only knows that a new player shells out $60 for a copy of the game with all the expansions, and that equals 3 or 4 months of an active account. So they want sales, and lots of them, because high sales means they financially buy 3 to 4 months to keep thinking of a way to keep the players playing, to keep them subscribed.

Mark my words. Gates of Discord will be released, and within 3 months, Berserkers will be tweaked, and the other melees will be told “With the expansion behind us, we can now address your concerns.”

Ideas on hold…

Gaming

SOE is going to be introducing an all new melee combat system. So, to that end, I am going to withhold judgements and further suggestions until I see what they come up with.

Either it’ll be good, or it might be bad enough that I give up on EverQuest.

The Normal Progression…

Gaming

I’ve been discussing the problems with character balance in EverQuest with a few people recently, and I think we finally nailed down the problem with why the pure melees have fallen behind and more importantly why the perception of pure melees of themselves is so bad.

It boils down to the “Natural Progression” of a character through his life in game from level 1 to 65 (currently).

Let’s take the pure casters first. They start with spells. Intelligence casters get new ones every 4 levels until 24, then every 5 levels after that until 49. For wisdom casters, the priests, its spells every 5 levels from the beginning. In this progression to 49 they also gain specialization (20 for intelligence, 30 for wisdom), and through items they gain focus effects that can change the power, duration and cost of their spells. At 50 they begin to get new spells every level, 50 itself holds very little, but 51 to 65 ranges from 3 to 8 or so new spells per level, some more usefull that others, but they gain spells none-the-less. They also gain more items, and with those items can gain focus effects to further enhance their spells.

The Hybrids experience the same progression as their caster parent, only to a lesser and slower degree, with spells being at levels 9, 15, 22, 30, 39, 44 and 49. But at 50 they start to gain spells at every level up through 65 just like their caster parent. The penatly they suffer here is that they do not get all the spells of the parent class, but they also gain a few speciallized spells that they alone have. They gain also through items and focus effects, although sometimes to get these effects they will have to sacrifice other stats… but that is as it should be. They also gain melee skills as they level. Most of them get their last melee skill at level 40 (rangers get their last at 35) and those skill cap out slightly lower than their parent melee class. Above 50, hybrids get disciplines – 2 each, one damage dealing, one damage avoiding or recovering.

Pure melees get melee skills and items. Their melee skills stop at 30 or 35. Their items possess no focus effects (currently their are items in the Plane of Time that have melee focus effects, however, after strenuous testing, where caster focus effects return an average 6% increase in power per effect, melee effects return an average 0.5% increase in power, and these are not available to everyone). Above 50, pure melees get disciplines – one per level although not totalling 10 because some levels are skipped on the way to 60. Beyond this, a pure melees only method of advancing themselves is through items and pure level mathematics of the game (a level 55 monk will take less damage than a 54 monk during a fight all other things equal due to the small effect that level has in all game calculations), and their items don’t yield to them as much as the same items yield to the hybrid (wisdom, intelligence, mana, and spell focus effects).

What’s missing here is that beyond disciplines (most of which are situational, short duration, long reuse skills) a pure melee has little to look forward to as he levels except for the pursuit of more and better items. This has the effect of making playing a pure melee feel extremely one dimensional.

Pure melees, in my opinion, need to get more special attacks. I’ve written before about combat styles, and while I still think that idea has alot of merit, in my mind more special attacks would actually go much further to alter not only the game, but the perception of those who play it.

For Warriors:
As it is now, a warrior gets Kick, Bash (if he uses a shield), and Taunt. One of the current issues with warriors is that while they numerically should be the superior choice for all a group’s tanking needs, they lack the most important feature that is truely required, that of being able to reliably hold and control aggro (the attention of the mob). At first, not being able to as reliably hold aggro seems like a decent trade off for the up to one thousand hit points he may have over the other plate tanks, however, upon playing in actual environments it becomes apparent that maintaining agro is actually more important than hit points as long as the hit points of the tank are high enough to survive a few rounds of combat without healing. With 70-75% slows available to high level groups, attaining a point of survivability is almost trivial, and being able to maintain aggro (or more importantly to pull aggro back off the slower) far outdistances the other factors of tanking.

To that end, what I would suggest for warriors would be a series of special attacks along the lines of kicks, slams, slaps, pushes. There would be two lines within the warrior attacks, the first would be aimed at helping resolve the aggro issues with a low damage high taunt attack. This would allow for the warrior to juggle his taunt key with this attack for a more readily available aggro increase. The second attack would be higher damage, but lower taunt. This would allow a warrior to increase his damage in situations where he is not tanking, or does not need the additional aggro of the high taunt attack.

For Rogues:
The only problem I see with rogues is one similar to clerics. A cleric gets complete heal at level 39 and will use it forever. A rogue gets backstab at level 10 and uses it forever.

There isn’t really a problem with this except in that rogues have little to look forward to as I described above. So what I would propose is giving rogues a series of attacks similar to backstab in that they need to be executed from behind the target, but of increasing damage as the rogue levels. Similar to the warrior, I would give rogues two lines of attacks. The first would be extremely high damage line. Every new attack in this line would be stronger with a higher minimum hit and higher maximum hit. The second line would be half the power of the first line, but have a built in “evade” that lowers them on the aggro list, a distracting blow if you will. This would allow rogues to choose between the evading attack when they need to reduce aggro, but go for the high damage when aggro isn’t a concern.

For Monks:
Monk are supposed to be martial artists. As such, for them I see a simple continuation of the series of skills they already have. These upgraded attacks however would have various attributes, pushes, 0 second stun, a crippling attack that would through melee debuff the ATK of the mob, and other similar things.

In all these cases, it would allow all pure melees to have actual class related skills to look forward to as they levelled in addition to their gear, so in that respect it would allieviate the problem that pure melees don’t benefit from levels as much as other classes.

Pure Melees: Balance

Gaming

When people think about games like EverQuest, if you ask them about class balance will probably tell you that either the casters, or the hybrids will be the hardest to balance. But in truth, the hybrids are easiest, followed by casters, and leaving the melees at the hardest to balance.

It almost seems illogical that the simplest classes would be so hard to balance, however it is exactly that simplicity that makes it so hard.

With casters, if you have an imbalance, you have give them new spell lines, remove spell lines, play with damage caps and resist rates, mana costs, etc… spells open themselves to alot of “wiggle room” in their design, both in direct use by the caster and in direct effect on the target.

Hybrids have the spell flexibility of casters, even if it is to a muted level, as well as having an avenue for melee damage output, damage avoidance, mitigation, etc… all the melee skills.

A pure melee has only those melee skills. The only way to balance a melees is by giving him new armor and weapons, or changing the effect of the weapons on a target. The problem with changing the effect on a target is that those changes will inherantly filter down to the hybrids. The hybrids might be well balanced, but when you make melee skill changes you may unbalance them inadvertantly. The problem with armor and weapons is that its boring.. and frankly, just how big a sword do you give them? And if you give them class restricted weapons, especially no-drop weapons, as loot, you basically place a hole in the loot table that even the most diverse guild will eventually arrive at. Once all the rogues have the new weapon, it becomes rot loot.

Before going on with my ideas on balance, let me just lay down one thing you must understand before going on… Active vs Passive. In EverQuest, pure melees are largely active for the first few seconds of combat. The mob comes in, you move around, get set, assist. Once combat is fully engaged, the pure melee classes become passive. Warriors get taunt and kick, rogues get backstab, and monks get flying kick or other alternate attacks, and they all get disciplines, but by and large you turn on auto-attack and then hit one key until the mob is dead. Hybrids and Casters on the other hand are different. Hybrids remain active all the time, and casters become active after the mob is set (or before in the case of clerics healing melees and enchanters controlling mobs on multiple target pulls). The biggest play advantage they have is that using their choice of spells and skills they can help affect and control the fight in a way that a pure melee cannot.

That said, most of my ideas are not just for pure balance, but also to make the pure melee classes more active in their combat rolls.

The first item I would suggest toward melee balance would be to unlink the disciplines they already have. While I see much merit in the idea that I have to wait an hour to repeat a discipline that is of great use, I do not see why that should prevent be from using a little use, or moderate use discipline. Allowing pure melees unlinked disciplines would go toward them having a more active role in combat.

The next thing I would suggest is to give pure melees “specializations” similar to what casters get for their schools of magic. Allow a pure melee at level 20 or 30 put a point into the specialization for all his available weapon skills, with only one able to go above a skill of 50. As skill in the specialization grows, have it factor into a pure melee’s ATK or “to hit” mathematics so that they become more effective with that weapon type over the others. Not so dramatically such that using a non specialized weapon will cut your damage output in half, but enough so that the player would come to prefer a certain type over others. Of course, like the casters, offering a way to reset and respecialize later would be best to help reduce the impact of mistakes or changes in preference.

Another thing I propose is to give melees more avenues for balance in the form of Fighting Styles.

At just a quick glance at speedy implementation, you can give the pure melees mana to manage the use of these styles, making it act the way that Bard mana does now. These styles would alter the melee attack slightly, offering a way for a pure melee to interact and affect the course of battle in more ways than turning on auto-attack and hitting a special attack key.

A few simple examples of what might be done:

  • Offensive Stance: This would increase the melee damage, which decreasing defensive skills. More damage for less armor class.
  • Defensive Stance: The brother to the offensive, increaing defence skills while lowering damage output. More armor class for less damage.
  • Forceful Blows: Cut the damage of blows in half, but add in a greater chance to interrupt spells.
  • Slashing Blows: Increase damage output for mana cost per tick, increased damage only applies to mobs tagged “fleshy”. The idea being that you are slashing and tearing the skin for more damage.
  • Crushing Blows: Increase damage output for mana cost per tick, increased damage only applies to mobs tagged “non-fleshy”. The idea being that you are trying harder to break the bones of undead or the shell of a bug, etc, monsters with an outter layer that is not flesh.
  • Precision Strikes: Quadruple the damage per hit, while tripling the delay between hits for a mana per tick cost.
  • Critical Study: Every critical hit becomes a crippling blow, every crippling blow becomes a doubled crippling blow for a mana per tick cost.

These are, of course, just simple examples that would need to be greatly tested and tweaked before implementation, but I think something of this sort would help give pure melees more to do, and more avenues for balance without greatly overhauling the classes.

In any event, I don’t think that balance of the melees can be achieved with directed changes to the existing structure. Simply adding more damage per second, or more “tankability” won’t cut it. I strongly believe the only way to properly balance the melees is to broaden these simple classes and make more ways to improve them slightly as opposed to having to improve their one or two ways greatly just to see a difference.