OK in this post all you did was take my example and flipped it around onto itself, and goes back to where I say all or nothing and that's it either all can solo or none can. And as for elite mobs no one should be able to kill those solo. The balance is their to where healing isn't so strong you can't tank mobs better than a tank, for one eq did it. I don't remember seeing any clerics soloing in velks lab, but they did in undead ones of equal level, and such now like I said on another topic I don't think dungeon mobs should be solo able like the open world ones can to prevent other bad habits from happening. But I believe if a caster can solo in general than healers and tanks should be able to solo in general, it could be in different locations and such but still able to solo is an option.
I'm not even saying it has to be efficent, I want it to be worse,much worse than grouping, I want to see a much improvement of exp rate from being in a group, to encourage grouping over soloing, but u also realize that their are times when playing an MMO you just don't have time to look for a group and all the other things that go into it.
OP this post is rather detailed to what i talked to kilsin about over a couple hrs now. It is true that while we are waiting for Pantheon, we still have that concern about 20 yrs later that when players are really good at the game, are they just having fun with it? or is it becoming a job. In a way we would really never know and Kronos have taken over the market for trade, and selling outside of the game in 100s.
I really think its the it is a different form of lootboxes. Things that Gov'ts have banned in some countries as it drives people.
Now after reading your post OP, i too feel that when you play a single character anything after a time becomes really difficult to find a group of solid players. The cleric and tank has always been an issue.
But i will say this, these topics also bring out ("NERFS") and we must be cautious of that too, because this is where the Dev team over in EQ would start to nerf every single character to balance out a group enviroment, such as the ADPS, DPS, down to the tanks. Necros, Mages, SKs, anything with an ability gets hit first... then they start to pretend to know the tank and nerf that. But it usually ends up being some Tank that starts the fight, while clerics re enforce the matter lets just keep clearing content, without nerfs please. I agree, healing can be heavy.
Many of us in this forum, and playing EQ today are no newbie players to MMOs, some of us and including myself have played them well over 20 years, and alone in EQ i have 20 years now.
Do i wish to play TLP or official again? no... reason is the kronos and the exploiting that goes along with it.
Thanks for bring up a good topic.
Chanus said:You don't think the fact that people don't want to play the healer without special incentives from their guilds might mean some people don't want to play healers because they aren't fun to play?
No I don't. It wasn't that a healer isn't fun to play, just that they are a serious investment in time. So, the incentive isn't to compensate for fun, it's compensating for time. Plus, it's not anyone is being forced to play a healer. I've heard of guilds "requiring" people to change specs or level an alt; I'm totally against that.
Chanus said:You don't think the fact that people don't want to play the healer without special incentives from their guilds might mean some people don't want to play healers because they aren't fun to play?
there's a lot of factors in the popularity of healers and tanks that have nothing to do with how "fun" the class is designed to be. A lot of players are hesitant to take on roles that are considered to have a lot of responsibility in a group and might get blame for a wipe. There's also a sentiment that healers are slower levelers, primarily stemming from games that have relatively easy mobs that DPS can kill without being in danger.
kreed99 said: I have a friend that plays EQ progression as a cleric specifically because she is a good cleric and she gets a group no matter what. EQ is a broken system with early expansions. Nobody really knew about it until a couple expansions in when they tried to fix it. This mistake is already mute point. Class balance is always number one these days
Yeah but dont take EQ TLP servers as Orginal, many things got patched over, and where a
Clone" of what people remember. I even suspect Project 99 gave some of the data to the devs. Remember Project 99 was an EMU startup, split off after they got it going. Few remember that.
Just saying not all you see today is equal to what i remember playing the game 24/7 back in the day, sure loads of bugs but they did patch them over rather quickly. We also had GMs in the game too and Devs playing along side us.
zoltar said:Chanus said:You don't think the fact that people don't want to play the healer without special incentives from their guilds might mean some people don't want to play healers because they aren't fun to play?
there's a lot of factors in the popularity of healers and tanks that have nothing to do with how "fun" the class is designed to be. A lot of players are hesitant to take on roles that are considered to have a lot of responsibility in a group and might get blame for a wipe. There's also a sentiment that healers are slower levelers, primarily stemming from games that have relatively easy mobs that DPS can kill without being in danger.
This is true when you talking responsibility of a rile in a grp and how important it is of how well you do it as being a healer, but in soloing they were a boring class, all cept for the very easy soloing mmos that we don't want pantheon to be most healers were very boring to play. Like for eq in instance a cleric pretty much at the beginning going against undead they had a root, and a undead nuke line. Druids had a snare, a root, and a 2 DoTs, and a Shaman honestly was a bit fun they could actually do quite a bit in their kit to solo in many different ways, but if the the devs make it to where all classes are fun to play in both solo and grp the servers will be quite balanced in who is playing what on the server and also make it to where finding a healer won't feel like getting hand cuffed, and this goes for finding tanks as well.
It won't take much for VR to make certain classes *a little* more versatile and *a little* more able to solo than happened in EQ.
As someone who played cleric to high level in EQ I know, like the OP describes, it could be very frustrating that your class had much much more limited opportunities for activities than other classes did. I often had many quests and things I wanted to do and just couldn't. At many times progression and 'fun' was very stunted and stifled, not just by not being able to solo, but when in group having a very limited role playing whack-a-mole with health bars and being mana efficient.
No one wants homogeneous classes and no one wants everything to be soloable, but just *a little* extra thought when it comes to designing certain classes that *traditionally* might have been very limited in their playstyles would be awesome.
To be honest, from what I've already seen of class descriptions and in in-game footage I'm confident the situation will be fine.
Trust In Pantheon.
To respond to the OP though: Enchanter was a bit of a unique case in EQ and I suppose I am a *little* worried that it may still be in Pantheon.
An enchanter in EQ had the effect of just about doubling (or more) the XP rate of a group. The effect of simply pushing the mana buff button was awesomely profound and adding in crowd control, even if the player wasn't particularly skilled, was also of massive influence on a groups general effectiveness and capability.
It's looking like the enchanter in Pantheon may be similar.
Whilst the OP is concerned certain classes could be 'less fun', and I agree to some extent, I am equally concerned that some classes could be simply too powerful in their fundamental ability.
I'm sure it's incredibly difficult to balance classes (re. 'fun' and capability in various situations) and to keep interdependancy significant.
Again, we will have to Trust In Pantheon.
No harm in expressing our concerns here in the meantime though, eh? ;^)