EverquestNext - Catch All

ranalin wrote:

Just a shout out for their round table, but more importantly they show them using the Oculus Rift!!! 2:13

"do you wanna ride the rollercoaster.."

SOE Gamescom presentation of EQNext and Landmark provides some updated info for Landmark, starting around the 13min mark:

http://www.twitch.tv/everquestnext_e...

Female dwarfs get beards...

Armor Customization...

I hope female dwarf beards aren't mandatory...

cool article on the AI and trinity...

http://www.eqnexus.com/2013/09/utili...

This change in combat procedure then contributes to the idea of emergent AI. The dragon is no longer performing scripted abilities at established time intervals. The dragon is now able to weigh everything coming at it and make an intelligent decision based on percentages of survival. The emergent part of this is that it is not only able to do this once. It is able to constantly reassess what is coming at it and change accordingly. Let’s look at the above scenario again. The dragon realizes it should be attacking the mage in order to increase its chance of survival and so it turns to the mage. The mage sees this and instinctively switches to its rogue abilities in order to maximize its dexterity and defense and become more elusive. The dragon is able to analyze this change of strategy by the player. It then reassesses all of the probabilities again and now comes to a different conclusion. Now the dragon says “I should be targeting that cleric and casting a spell that interrupts the cleric.” Thus, not only does it change targets but also changes its strategy based on the strategy changes of the players. The dragon is able to constantly reassess its situation and constantly change what it is doing in order to always have a maximum chance of survivability. That translates into encounters that will never be exactly the same unless we as players behave in the exact same way, every time.

This change to the core procedure of combat necessitates an equivalent change to what we have known as the “holy trinity.” I would think this is why SOE has been saying not that the trinity is dead but that it will be different. The Holy Trinity was born out of the way encounters used to work. It does not fit in perfectly to how they likely will work. Think about it. What good is the Holy Trinity when the dragon no longer only responds to threat and can instead measure all of the variables presented to it and adapt its combat approach? Will we still need classes that are based in defense, offense, healing and support? Yes, we will, but the way they all interact within the combat system will change because they have to. It will no longer be as simple as a threat and dps race with healing. We will constantly be changing our tactics because the monsters will be doing the same.

Wouldn't mind seeing that in sp games.

Half of me says that sounds really neat.

The other half says that sounds an awful lot like a cheating boss. I guess it depends on how well they simulate reaction time of the boss. If it is near instantaneous or faster than players can conceivably react and coordinate to, players will feel cheated...

Plus, I wonder if this will still end up like zerging. Everyone will run dps until the boss turns on them and they will switch to tank/healer until the boss loses interest.

Now don't get me wrong, I have heard of crazy WoW stories where a bunch of rogues evasion tanked a boss by ping ponging the aggro back and forth. And that seems pretty neat when it is not the norm.

I see it as the logical next step. EQ, AC, even SWG you had mobs and they'd ping pong back/forth between the highest threat generators. Games like WoW put some order on the process with the trinity, but honestly that gets boring as hell. I prefer a 'cheating' boss than one that after enough tries you can start a count and keep track of a fight with your eyes closed which is essentially what we have now. So not only does it require the players to play smart (zerg or not) it makes each fight potentially different.

I'm just interested in playing the ninja mage they described above. Throw some fireballs, maybe a blast of lightning or two and then backflip out of the way and disappear in the shadows.

ranalin wrote:

I see it as the logical next step. EQ, AC, even SWG you had mobs and they'd ping pong back/forth between the highest threat generators. Games like WoW put some order on the process with the trinity, but honestly that gets boring as hell. I prefer a 'cheating' boss than one that after enough tries you can start a count and keep track of a fight with your eyes closed which is essentially what we have now. So not only does it require the players to play smart (zerg or not) it makes each fight potentially different.

agreed.. anything that thinks even a little outside the box with regards to the Trinty/Threat model is a welcomed change. Otherwise we play the same game over and over with different graphical tweaks. What SOE proposes sounds very interesting to me in theory..

Plus, I wonder if this will still end up like zerging. Everyone will run dps until the boss turns on them and they will switch to tank/healer until the boss loses interest.

Given their experience level.. I don't think that it will be as simplistic as that.. the challenge isnt really in the player mechanics its designing the encounter AI well enough to allow for an expansion of tactics that go beyond the trinity/threat model.. Since right now with most games your role based scenarios amounts to little more than "don't stand in sh*t/dps this over that until this happens/Heal more Tank More when this happens".

race/class restriction discussion

There have been many games trying to break the Trinity model; one could argue in a fashion the dual spec in WoW or the build system in Rift is the first kind of move (the Trinity is still there, but as a player you are not always locked into a roll).

Looking a clearer examples there is GW2 and NWN. To me they are moving to models where either encounter mechanics no longer make mass tanking possible and / or where all toons have some intrinsic healing and tanking capacity (at least if one kits ones self out that way).

I think moving from conventional threat to a more nuanced threat could be interesting, but it will still be programed AI and inevitably folks will attempt to game it. This could well still lead to where certain classes are percieved as a necessity for encounters (much like Guardians in GW2).

Yea, on the gaming thing, I think it comes down to motivation. Some MMO players come expecting predictable raid encounters where the variable is what they can get as a reward, and therefore are playing for the drop more than to have a new and unique interesting encounter with a specific boss mob over and over. So they tailor their experience around amassing the right partners, roles and gears to minimize variability just to what can be rewarded. This being the most active raid player inevitability has lead to encounters tailored to that thinking.

It's been great to see over the last couple of years how this has changed. Mobs still retain predictable behaviors in some ways, but players aren't as locked into single roles as they have been in earlier MMOs. And even if they do still have a single role in a specific encounter, that role can be different in other encounters, and doesn't impact their ability to solo.

GW2 and Rift are my favorite examples of this, which you noted. Yes, there are specific occasions when certain classes (and build-outs) are requested by other players. But that's more because players developed a pattern to that encounter rather than something intrinsic to the way the game was designed. Those days seem (thankfully) behind us

Delmarqo wrote:

Yea, on the gaming thing, I think it comes down to motivation. Some MMO players come expecting predictable raid encounters where the variable is what they can get as a reward, and therefore are playing for the drop more than to have a new and unique interesting encounter with a specific boss mob over and over. So they tailor their experience around amassing the right partners, roles and gears to minimize variability just to what can be rewarded. This being the most active raid player inevitability has lead to encounters tailored to that thinking.

It's been great to see over the last couple of years how this has changed. Mobs still retain predictable behaviors in some ways, but players aren't as locked into single roles as they have been in earlier MMOs. And even if they do still have a single role in a specific encounter, that role can be different in other encounters, and doesn't impact their ability to solo.

GW2 and Rift are my favorite examples of this, which you noted. Yes, there are specific occasions when certain classes (and build-outs) are requested by other players. But that's more because players developed a pattern to that encounter rather than something intrinsic to the way the game was designed. Those days seem (thankfully) behind us :)

And because of the bolded part both of those games end game are still a snooze fest. Even if the adaptive AI is half as good as they talk about it's still leagues beyond what we have now. Most of the high profile games are a ton of fun to play right up till you hit max level and it becomes a rote job and sucks all the fun right out of it.

ranalin wrote:
Delmarqo wrote:

Yea, on the gaming thing, I think it comes down to motivation. Some MMO players come expecting predictable raid encounters where the variable is what they can get as a reward, and therefore are playing for the drop more than to have a new and unique interesting encounter with a specific boss mob over and over. So they tailor their experience around amassing the right partners, roles and gears to minimize variability just to what can be rewarded. This being the most active raid player inevitability has lead to encounters tailored to that thinking.

It's been great to see over the last couple of years how this has changed. Mobs still retain predictable behaviors in some ways, but players aren't as locked into single roles as they have been in earlier MMOs. And even if they do still have a single role in a specific encounter, that role can be different in other encounters, and doesn't impact their ability to solo.

GW2 and Rift are my favorite examples of this, which you noted. Yes, there are specific occasions when certain classes (and build-outs) are requested by other players. But that's more because players developed a pattern to that encounter rather than something intrinsic to the way the game was designed. Those days seem (thankfully) behind us :)

And because of the bolded part both of those games end game are still a snooze fest. Even if the adaptive AI is half as good as they talk about it's still leagues beyond what we have now. Most of the high profile games are a ton of fun to play right up till you hit max level and it becomes a rote job and sucks all the fun right out of it.

Hence the attraction of PvP, it always has the feature that your opponents are functionally unpredictable. While there will always be zergs and the objectives in bg's in whatever game there is at least some level of not knowing how your opposition will react. I do not include duels as I think they are more of a pointless exercise.

EDIT - listed to the gwj podcast for a few years, finally got off my butt and started posting on the forums.

Yea, endgame Raids seem to have evolved based on player preference to move from discovery (leveling up) to mastery (get better within a finite set of variables). Meanwhile, PvP/WvW has evolved in answer to that, for the players who want to stay in a game but have no interest in repeating the exact experience repeatedly. Seems a good balance from a game business perspective, but it seems also to have resulted in that company now needing to manage to completely different game mechanics and in some cases audiences that merely share branding and art assets

I like it though. Gives answer to whether a game is PvE or PvP focused. It's both!

I can't watch that at work, but I'm glad to see something for Next proper instead of the terrain thingy.

I'm still super stoked for both Landmark and Next.

Was reading an article and it described EQN's combat as:

Uses an active heads-up sort of combat (which has been compared to MOBA-style combat) with an 8-button hotkey configuration. Each class will have two weapon sets, and the weapon choice affects which combat abilities are available. NPCs will use highly intelligent "emergent AI" and will adapt to your combat tactics in order to keep you on your toes.

Couple of things... first that style of combat is becoming very popular despite all the grumblings you hear about it, and second that comparison to MOBAs is so far off that it makes me wonder if it's a joke.

This has been completely off my radar. It looks rather good. Some fantastic ideas.

I'm still very interested in EQN. A little disappointed that the link between EQN and Landmark has been thinned, but that's a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things.

With the complete lack of news or updates makes me think this game is at least 2 years away, which is saddening. It's so annoying to reveal a game that you know won't ship within a year of breaking the news.

Farscry wrote:

I'm still very interested in EQN. A little disappointed that the link between EQN and Landmark has been thinned, but that's a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things.

I dont see the link has been thinned. I fully expect everything we're seeing in Landmark be used in some fashion in Next

liquid wrote:

With the complete lack of news or updates makes me think this game is at least 2 years away, which is saddening. It's so annoying to reveal a game that you know won't ship within a year of breaking the news.

I was hoping for news at E3, but realistically, they were always going to do their next big reveal at EQ Farire which I guess has been rebranded as SOE Live.

I've sworn to never play another MMO out this might be an exception >_<

(The action in the video starts at 7.30.)

Looks great! I just hope it comes out sometime in the near future...