New Flagship Project from SOE?

[Kuro]

I find your lack of faith in the power of At-Will Booze Generation disturbing.

[Grave]

Haha, well, you still get my point, right?

It's essentially just like racials in WoW, they matter far too much and often influence the players decision of what to roll. The fact that looks are a HUGE part of the character is the only thing that makes people sacrifice the better racials - for a different look.

When it's just a diety that doesn't effect their appearance? They'll go for the better ability nearly every time.

[Pyros]

Originally Posted by Darph

You're honestly trying to defend this? I mean.. even after reading it and what other people have said about it?

I question if you've ever been a central figure in a raiding guild. I question if you've ever competed in a high end Arena or PVP team. When you're wiping or losing, these "small insignificant bonuses" come to light. Especially in PVP. You start to feel the pressure of the team you've let down due to your character choices.

Further, thinking like this detracts from credibility and adds complication for the sake of convolution.

This is probably the only time I'll give a dignified response to obvious LARP nerdery.

To be honest, it depends on how important those bonuses are. My DK is undead, and I haven't found a point where I thought being a tauren or an orc would have made a big difference while tanking, which is arguably one of the most central role in raiding there is.

PvP is different because the abilities are often huge in pvp. Will of the Forsaken, even nerfed 50times, is still pretty awesome.

Having small bonuses wouldn't affect the game much, and the easiest way to do it is have small changes making it easier in the beginning for one race over the other that wears off after some time due to increased stats on gear, so that the end difference is null. And then have maybe one big cooldown ability, that does big things, and simply restrict it to pve only, with a cooldown long enough that you can't use it reliably. Another way would simply to have non direct combat related bonus, like crafting bonuses, or vendor prices bonuses, or rep bonuses etc.

VG has 30mins-1h cooldown per race, and as far as I remember, while they were game changing in PvP, the fact that every race had its own made it mostly a non factor. You had invulnerabilities, high speed buffs, instant full heals+mana and stuff like that, and there wasn't really one that was better all the time, it depended on the situation, so it was "balanced".

[Daezuel]

Just make the damn racials or deity bonuses not work in pvp and there would be about a birrion times less bitching.

[Elerion]

Originally Posted by Lyenae

Why have different races if it doesn't fucking matter?

For looks, starting city, faction impact, class availability and other shit. Like AoC, or 90% of EQ's races.


When two otherwise equal characters of 100 days /played differ significantly in power because of a choice made within the first hour of installing the game, the designer fucked up.

In EQ it pretty much only applied to Ogre tanks and (at one point) Human monks. In WoW it applied to damn near everyone at various stages in the game's life.

[Darph]

Good lore and flavor doesn't have to come at a cost to balance.

Originally Posted by Braen

Warriors following Inny would get a small threat gain ability.
Warriors following Tunare would get a small regen
Warriors following Mith Marr woud get a small damage bonus or + to hit
warriors following Brell would get to summon a stout ale...
er effect that ability with the god's belief and your gods favor in you.

Ok, so like.. lets say I start a Warrior, which I have about 9 years of experience playing. I'm lvling up, main tanking for my clique every night and I take Innoruuk as my patron diety. Why? Because frankly, the rest of those bonuses suck donkey balls and my boy Winder is over aggroing constantly.

I roll on up to lvl 50 and we start raiding. Well, Furor is there with his warrior to tank, so I'm now a DPS warrior with +aggro. Fuuuuuuuuu.......

Anyways, your thought process is very "Mistwalkers."

Originally Posted by Braen

Saying you don't want one gods ability to favor one class is like saying i don't want any one item to be a Warrior only item cause it grants abilities that only warriors would want/need.

Braen, you're KILLING me. It's a stupid idea, give it up.

[Kuro]

I think the "cultural" deity/race armor/random quest bits in EQ was about as comfortable as I am with having deity determine benefits. It was good "bridge" armor, with benefits somewhat tailored towards the deity it was for, but it wasn't "end of the line" stuff, you were all going to eventually upgrade it with raid gear anyway.

The Priest "symbols" were benign enough, with the long-cast/short-duration on the Innoruuk Reagent Symbol being enough to mitigate the fact that it was the only snare available to the class.

As long as the benefit isn't something that you can *only* get as that deity or race, it's not so bad. Still, it's just another can of balancing worms. Just slap Faction Modifiers on your deities and be done with it

[Genjiro]

So what if racials are better suited for some roles, its retarded that classes/roles are open to all races anyways. Every time I see a fucking gnome female with pink pigtails as a death knight I want to reach through my computer, grab the hair on the collective heads of Pardo and company and bash their face into a bloody pulp on their desks.

A short sword hitting a 1000 lb 9 foot tall ogre should hurt less than it does against a halfling, end of story, fuck you if you want to be some special snowflake and be awwww cute. If you want to be some gnome tank, go for it, but we should all be able to laugh at your dumbass from a min/max standpoint as you die while the ogre is hardly breaking a sweat.

[Grave]

Haha, well I don't know about racials to that degree, Genjiro, but I am with you on race/class combos.

That bothered me a lot in EQ2, seeing Dwarf Necros running around and stuff. I mean, they aren't necessarily breaking any major RPG rules by allowing it, but it just dampens my enjoyment for some reason when I see a lot of stupid combos like Troll Paladins and such.

In WoW, it doesn't bother me because they've pretty much thrown the established lore into the garbage anyway. Anything is fair game.

[Genjiro]

WoW took the concept of high fantasy and replaced it with pop fantasy. Auctioneers called Orly and Yarly, all the celebrity dances, Haris Pilton and so forth.....yea, its pretty much nothing even remotely resembling the RTS Warcraft games. It's not like one or two things, every 10 feet you get bombarded with some pop/MTV culture icon or internet meme.

And yea, gods would play a pivotal role in any game that I would ever create from my own imagination.

[Hatorade]

Sony needs to team up with Squenix for something awesome. You know the next EQ will be pushed for the PS3(flagship might not want to) as well so may as well get them involved.

[tikkus]

Originally Posted by Grave

Haha, well, you still get my point, right?

It's essentially just like racials in WoW, they matter far too much and often influence the players decision of what to roll. The fact that looks are a HUGE part of the character is the only thing that makes people sacrifice the better racials - for a different look.

When it's just a diety that doesn't effect their appearance? They'll go for the better ability nearly every time.

I'm not sure about that honestly. Make it as difficult to obtain as the tradeskill system in WoW. Sure, some min-maxers would re-roll mining (READ: RALLOS ZEK) to get some extra hps but the majority of the playerbase just won't give a fuck.

The same thing even happened in EQ initially to some extent with the faction bonuses.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Genjiro

WoW took the concept of high fantasy and replaced it with...

Dumar? Is that you?

[Hatorade]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Dumar? Is that you?

He has a point though.

[Dumar]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Dumar? Is that you?

i was waiting to don my superhero suit and rescue this thread. should i swoop in now? genjiro is spot on.