Race/class anniversary letdown?Follow

So we get a combo in froglok monk that 100s will roll, get 4 days into and realize "Oh yeah... I hate being a froglok with all the hopping and animations" and never play again. Froglok is a race loved (as in played heavily) by a fervent few and I do respect that. In my view, this "due to popular demand on the forums" is a terrible example of giving a vocal bunch (most of whom probably have no intention of playing frog monks but think it is funny). I'd actually be fine with this (lorewise froglok make sense with any good/neutral class... and they added the evil lore [somewhat lamely] so really letting frogs be all classes wouldn't be a reach). It's the way the rest of the quote is worded that make me sad about this.

A round elimination determining the next combination... so they are going to select 8 possibles with only one getting the nod. 1 isn't enough.

Iksar berserker being one of the 8 gets the logical to lore vote... but not necessarily the "I want to play one" vote.
Dark Elf ranger isn't really EQ1 lore logical... at least not with current established lore... but is the long-term poplularly asked for combo.
If gnome monks or halfling beastlords are on the list all the "that's hilarious and I'm not rerolling anyways" votes go there.

How they construct the brackets will skew the results too...

Just add 8 logical options and forego this whole silly vote plan. WoW added 1 class to every old race in there 3rd? expac (on their cycle equating to DoDish era in EQ time). Or add 5-6 logical to current lore options and have us vote on some combos that require actual work to make sense in the current game lore.

Example: Iksar get berserker & rogue, half elf get all human classes, erudites get all human classes within their deity split (so evil wizards, etc.), rogues, bards, etc., Barbarians grow in their faith to tribunal and gain clerics and paladins, Dwarf int casters (Thurgadin... they know the magic there), Vah shir society develops a faction that worships Luclin and applies it to woodcraft so we have druids, rangers.

The vote combos would be the oddballer stuff like: dark elf ranger, high elf necro, Barbarian Sk, Ogre necro, troll enchanter (read about the pie maker troll that snuck into Felwithe... trolls respect illusion magic!), Iksar mage/chanter/wizard/druid/bard. Done right... with actual in game storyline work (a mini event even... like how they did the inny frogloks) and some of these could work.

Gnome shammy!!!

I doubt froglok monk would win a general vote so it does look like this is a bone thrown to a vocal minority.

But do be realistic about how MANY race/class combos they can develop in practical terms. Just look how few changes to race and class PC availability have occurred since the beginning of EQ. It takes a lot of work to develop the toon and lore and then there's dealing with play balance.

I would much prefer to see an entirely new class over just new choices for races to play an existing class but clearly it's a ton more development work to construct a whole new class and then make sure its existence doesn't throw game balance off badly.

At this point in EQ's history we need to take what we can get!

They could open every race/class/deity combo tomorrow with minimal effort (imagine templates with toggle switches for on/off).

Genuine bad or annoying consequences:

-disrespects the game lore (especially if you have paladin trainers in Neriak for example)
-Iksar paladin of rodcet would have to have Shar Vahl and Crescent Reach as available home cities... (and there'd be some other wonky ones).
-they aren't going to do full newb quests for whatever they add
-really cool stuff like Iksar racial class quests likely don't get added
-pre PoP gear with deity/racial/size/class restrictions will be unusable by some combos (not super important in the post-defiant world).
-possibly hang-ups with questing (can an Iksar druid do their epic as the current quests/npc are designed?)
-3/4 of such new combos won't get played by any significant number of people anyway.

Easy fixes:
-add what makes sense within current lore first
-make "racial" newbie armor quests based on that city and class guild faction (if I am a warrior loved by the warrior guild in Ogguk it won't matter that I am not an ogre... I can use their armor set as long as I have the faction to do their quests). In this way there would be way more options for each class than needed --racial size restrictions could be kept if truly necessary I suppose. Even if they only made Freeports newbie quests all race... (changing the existing items has to be less programming than adding new quest lines)
-start building the storyline to logically add future options. Why can't an erudite start with Freeport as their home city?

Edited, Nov 10th 2013 4:21pm by snailish

Those were added due to a bunch of people going "hey haflings can be druids and warriors, why not rangers?" same thing with the gnomes. Thought I think the gnomes being shadowknights and paladins seemed more believable since they got that corrupt faction and church and whatnot.



Not a lot was added lorewise other than the bits and pieces the new trainers at their cities talk about, but aside from that they made an "Iksar epic" for beastlords, even thought their epic 1.0 doesn't have any faction hurdles. They also made Kunark era clicky armor and Velius armor quests for the new classes.

Deity related stuff isn't really race/class, it's just deity. An Iksar warrior of Rodcet Nife would have the same issues as an Iksar paladin of RN or an Iksar druid of Tunare. The easiest answer is to give them a neutral option (agnostic, Veeshan, etc). We already have agnostic shamans with the Vah Shir anyway.

They stopped caring about newbie quest stuff and racial quest stuff a while ago (witness the dead stop Vah Shir berserkers get in their racial quests).

Not arguing with you, just pointing out that most of this isn't stuff SOE has worried about for some time. Can't see it stopping them now. Anyway, my main point was that SOE's been half-assing adding races/classes for years now... no reason to suspect they'd suddenly give a crap about making Froglok monks "lore friendly" tomorrow.

It's hard to predict in advance what kind of UNintended consequences will arise from making changes to a complex system recklessly. That's not a copout, I don't think, just a comment that it can be hard to show in advance what can go wrong. That's why it has to be tested and not just instituted "live" without careful advance planning. (Again, I hate to get too political but since the fiasco about Obama care is all over the news right now, it's an instructive real world example.)

There is no doubt they've already been trashing game lore for years now. It started with zones like PoK where all races and classes could gather together in blissful ignorance of any differences between them. You have to be an old-time player to REALLY understand how important FACTION once was in EQ. Nowadays it only rears its head in "contrived" hard-coded situations like having to max out Alaran to buy certain spells. In the old days a noobie player could emerge from his home city, greet his local guards and start carefully hunting trash. A player of a different race would come by and challenge him to a "friendly" duel. The two would start fighting and then the guards would step in and slaughter the NOOB. This was because a noob does NOT start out with max faction even with his OWN race. And a player of another race could have done the work of raising his own faction HIGHER with the noob's race.

I remember messing up my Kaladim faction by quad-kiting Butcherblock guards (yeah, yeah, BAD Halfling) and I couldn't do my own epic (which has a step passing through Kaladim) until I spent a ton of time fixing this faction collecting Crushbone belts.

Remnants of this faction-dependent gameplay persists but only in limited ways. In the "old days" you had to watch your butt even traveling in cities which you thought were friendly (or at least non-hostile) because certain "sections" (like where the necro or sk guilds were located) might be KOS to you, even if the rest of the city would sell to you. I remember very well when Kunark was introduced how sphincter-tightening was the experience of exploring Cabilis with a Halfling or high elf. I also remember one level of tash spell for enchanters required collecting coins hidden in a bunch of different cities and required using illusions and invisibility to accomplish successfully---BECAUSE OF FACTIONS. A quest like this today would involve running risk-free around PoK in 10 minutes gathering stuff. (In fact, I think there are quests just that UNchallenging. LOL)

I still sometimes find myself being insulted by an NPC who won't sell to me (always in the "Old World") because of faction trashing I committed so long ago I don't even remember it!

The only way to institute virtually unlimited race/class combos is to trash---or entirely ignore---all this kind of EQ-defining game lore and this is what I mean could lead to all kinds of crazy unintended or unanticipated results. Although, now that I think about it, since very few players spend any time in their "hometowns" any more and even epic quests are strictly "for the fun of it", maybe it just don't matter these days.

/ponder

/sigh

Edited, Nov 10th 2013 5:54pm by Sippin

Thanks Sippin, that's clearer to me.

See, I'm one of those oddballs that has insisted on playing within some of the old faction stuff. My Drakkin Necro killed in Warslik's woods for weeks (not afk) to be liked enough to turn in bone chips (many stacks of which were from Kurn's tower before I could flesh-to-bone vendor meat) to be liked in Cabilis. I did this for the skullcap quest... and to be a drakkin free in Cabilis. I max allied a ranger with the wall (Misty Thicket) for a ring I never needed... I maxed allied with Runnyeye and figured nothing out from it (lol)...

My original main was a chanter. I remember the tash quest well, and how annoyed I was when the broke the alliance line of spells for quest npc around Omens of War.

However, we really are talking about a piece of the game they moved away from in Velious (3 core factions you could rework as you saw fit), 98% ignored on Luclin (Katta Castellum is a bit picky, and druids/rangers get some animal love in Dawnshroud but neither is actually that signifiant in the overall expac scope) and completely left forevermore as of Planes of Power.

I think there are ways to meaningfully hearken back to some of the original design, and this can even fit in with this new race/class combo discussion (I know it's not really going to because they are likely going to add two silly options few will play, but I am optimistic that I will be wrong).

Half elves and Erudites remain as originally intended (we think) with some odd precedent and discrepancies in their implementation. It's a minor, minor stretch to work from a couple of these ideas:

Erudites of Paineel worship Cazic Thule... all other original wizard capable races have numerous deity choices including agnostic. "Evil Wizard" is a staple of rpg fantasy. Cazic/agnostic wizard, enchanter and mage out of Paineel is a minor tweak. Erudites have leather armor models but no class available (is nice for illusions though).

Iksars hunt their forsaken kin... many of which are rogues. Berserker not being flagged for Iksar was a bizarre error at the time. Iksars have all models of armor... considering we've had a couple of years of Cazic Thule heavy lore it wouldn't be a stretch for Iksar faith to be rewarded with a whole slate of new class offerings. Piggyback the new classes onto the existing guild/faction structure of Cabilis and reflag the Cabilis quest weapons to suit classes as needed (so Iksar cleric is under the umbrella of the shaman guild and does the shaman club).

Zero lore work is needed to give half elves every class humans have, this was a silly oversight all along.

Frogloks are really smart in lore, and have wizards and necromancers but not enchanters and mages... yet you get a quest from an old froglok in which he imbues a mask with illusion magic.

So I guess my wish for the new class/combos is just fixing the things they really missed all along.

I do think, by following the example of Erudites (evil city, good city) and half elves (city choice based on pureblood class trainers in place) they could add more choices to other races. Dark Elves born in Freeport could make sense having all human class options, they aren't dumber than humans. Surely someone could teach an Erudite to sing and play an instrument?

Sorta like Greenmist, but, possibly without having to hand in so many damned bonechips?

Do the new SKs even know about that puppy?

Edited, Nov 11th 2013 8:53am by nekokirei

I did Greenmist on my Erudite SK. Seemed like a "thing to do" given the Cazic Thule bond.

I have no idea why anyone would want to do it today unless they were just deeply into the personal RP aspects of it. A whole lot of work for a whole lot of completely obsolete weapon.

I recently factioned my DE SK in order to do this quest. I haven't as yet begun. I know the wep is obsolete, but "Hello, my name is KC13 and I'm a questoholic".

Greenmist will be mine! (I almost did it on my Drakkin necro as she had the faction work done... before they implemented housing where I would at least have somewhere to put the thing)... so yes, silly people still play this game with inefficient goals.

The long term bet at this point is... do I do it for Banner (my troll SK currently retired at level 27 in Antonica gear) or roll an SK on the next progression server offering?

Sk being the raid guild cheesy class in the current round of expansion somewhat dulls my enthusiasm for the 2nd option.

I was trying to find an old mac to do greenmist on Al'kabor, but I kind of missed the boat on that one.

My 2 cents is that I really do hope they stick to the lore combos that make sense (if not directly with EQ, then when general DnD lore).

While Froglok monks don't necessarily make "sense" they definitely don't NOT make sense... if that makes any sense! =P I get the whole battetoads joke which is an unfortunate reason for choosing that race/class combo, but hopefully that won't take away from the enjoyment. Personally my monk has had the Frog illusion mask from Old Man Mckenzie for a few years now and I have to say Froglok is one of the cooler looking races to play as a monk.

But generally I hope they stick to things that make sense. I think the MOST obvious combos to be added are:

Frog Beastlords

Iksar Berserkers

Halfling Bards

The next step is things that don't really make sense, but at least aren't atrociously terrible decisions:

Wood Elf Beastlords

Half Elf Monks

Dwarf Mages/Wizards

The final step is things that are just really awful terrible ideas that would stomp on any rational logic purely for the sake of getting people to pay for race changes:

Dark Elf Rangers, Paladins, Druids... really dark elf anything else.

High Elf Necros, Shadowknights