Healers Are Always in Demand

In EverQuest II, healers are always in demand. That's great for my healer, but bad for my main, a fighter. Stacking multiple healers can often make encounters easier, because you can heal through high damage faster. Stacking multiple DPSers can make you damage an enemy faster. Stacking multiple tanks just means you are wasting a slot.

This means having more than one fighter in a group isn't ideal, so people avoid it. The solution the game employed when it came out was to allow fighters to have an offensive stance so they do more DPS. The problem with this: it impinges on the class role for mages and scouts. If the fighters do more damage, then no one will want the true DPS classes. If the fighters have the same or less amount of DPS output, then no one will them anyway, because the mages and scouts will be at least as good and have more utility.

This needs to change. It should be possible to have multiple tanks share the task of absorbing damage. EverQuest II has a few abilities like Intercede and avoidance buffs, but they aren't powerful enough to viably allow, say, a Paladin and a Berserker to stand side by side and share damage through an entire battle. It's an important skill, but it's not attractive enough to make a group think of picking up an additional tank instead of a backup healer.

I'd like to see Intercede modified (or a new ability created) such that it would allow two or more tanks standing within a short range of one another to take less damage overall - since they are presumably helping each other deflect blows. Instead of always transferring 100% of the damage from one tank to another, have a chance to transfer reduced amounts of the damage, subject to an additional avoidance check and mitigation on the secondary tank. It should be an ongoing buff (or reset about as often as the average heal spell) and the total amount of damage taken by the group should end up being a lot lower than it would be with one tank.

A second tank would therefore have a similar effect as having a recurring ward up (because the additional tanks are helping deflect, parry, and block attacks) as long as the fighters are close to one another.

Also, additional abilities could be introduced that allow multiple tanks to work together.

For example, add an ability that allows a fighter to drop all aggro and send it to another fighter in the group, and at the same time, create a heal over time effect on that fighter that expires if they end up at the top of the hate list for any mob. Two tanks could then time things so that they ping pong the monster between them and the self-HOT would allow one fighter to recover while the other tank took charge.

Or introduce an ability that allows multiple tanks on a single mob might to reduce the monster's recovery time, because the tanks are presumably working together to keep the mob off balance.

If implemented correctly, a group choosing to tackle a particularly challenging encounter should be able to grab a second tank instead of a second healer and do just as well. In TSO zones, many people always insist on taking two healers, which means healers take up 1/3 of the average group. A few simple changes that allow tanks to "stack" would be a great way to increase fighter desirability while still allowing them to fulfill their class role (taking damage) without impinging on the class role (dealing damage) for the scouts and mages.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Over a year ago, I wrote a post detailing my thoughts about EQ2's combat system. I suggested that it would be better (while waxing reminiscent about Final Fantasy XI's combat) if it weren't as spammy and action packed. I prefer combat systems where fewer actions can be triggered at any one moment, so each one has a greater impact.

Yesterday, this happened:



That might be going a little overboard, guys...

(It was just a cosmetic bug, but I found it amusing.)

Combat on the Open Sea

One of the main differences between combat in Pirates of the Burning Sea and combat in MMOs like EverQuest II or World of Warcraft is that combat is much slower and much more strategic. I think that's why I find it a lot more fun. Even though some of the combat instances are pretty much the same (hey, how many ways can you really instance a bunch of boats on water anyway?), each fight feels different. In EQ2 or WoW, aside from raid encounters, which do require some degree of strategy, most fights feel the same and involve spamming the same combat arts/skills over and over again. That is boring as hell.

Maybe calling combat in POTBS "slower" isn't quite right; combat does have "edge of your seat" moments, and quite frequently. But you aren't spending that time spamming buttons on six hotbars, like my monk in EQ2 does. I actually have relatively few skills in combat (especially as a freetrader!), which is every single one of them, and every decision I make matters, down to which way I turn relative to the wind, which enemy I go after first, and so on.

Another thing that I like about combat in Pirates of the Burning Sea is that level means very little in combat. It does mean you get a handful of skills, but you can't spam them all at once, and winning in battle is more about how you handle your ship, your consumables, who you target, and positioning. The battles have tradeoffs. Do you risk boarding an enemy, knowing that you will just be floating there defenseless (and can be defeated) while fighting the enemy captain? On the other hand, it might be a good move if you are surrounded, since boarding an enemy means you can't be hit on that side and if you win, you'll have one less opponent.

I'm only level 12 or so right now, so it remains to be seen whether I'll still have this glowing opinion by level 50. But right now its providing with an enjoyable respite from the interminable faction grind that is EverQuest II - Rise of Kunark.

Sometimes Less Is More

I'm getting back into playing EverQuest II now that things in my life are settling down and I'm finding a little bit more free time (for now...). While I like EQ2 better than the other MMORPGs out on the market right now, I do think it has a serious problem in its game design regarding combat.

Combat in EQ2, at least for my main character, a monk, involves spamming combat arts as their reset timers expire. There are very few incidents when I need to hold back and think about what I'm actually hitting. Occasionally, I might have to avoid using AOEs (to avoid breaking mezzes, or for general hate control.) But other than that, well, I just spam click away. And its rather boring.

A good (MMO)RPG should incorporate tactics and decision making into the combat system by limiting what you can do at once. Unfortunately, there's very little of that in the game right now. Sure, there are a few limitations that you need to keep track of: your power bar, concentration slots, stance selection, etc. But for many of the classes in the game, none of that matters. You will always have enough power to win the fight (except in the hardest of raids). I can't fill my concentration slots (at least as a monk). And reset timers don't matter when you have dozens of combat arts to pick from, there's always one available to randomly move on to.

Final Fantasy XI was so much better because you had fewer skills to pick from, and they had relatively long reset times. Some of your abilities could be linked with other player's abilities to do combo attacks (called skillchains in the game), which could be used to exploit an enemy's weakness. This was nothing like EQ2 combat wheel... FFXI's system forced players to communicate with each other to strategize what skillchain they wanted to use, in what order the players would use their skills, and things had to be TIMED perfectly. That alone made combat much more interesting. But, you also had to watch for special attacks. Monsters would change their animation sometimes. A goblin reaching into his bag indicated to me that, as a Paladin, I should use Shield Bash to interrupt him; otherwise, he would light a bomb that did major damage. Since Shield Bash expired every thirty seconds, again, players needed to communicate, so someone else could make sure they had their stun ready. Combat often took four or five minutes (as opposed to a few seconds in many EQ2 battles...), but it was far more engaging since you had to pay attention, communicate, coordinate your actions, and manage your very limited resources carefully.

THAT was fun...

EQ2, on the other hand, is much more "faster paced". I haven't noticed any animations that indicate you should use a stun or stifle. Heck, half of the animations don't even finish properly, as the monster jump and jolt from one animation into the next. The chat bar scrolls so fast because its spamming so much crap that its basically useless. There are hundreds of numbers floating over the monsters head each second (I know, I know, I can turn them off). I've got five hotbars with dozens of skills that may do different kinds of damage, but for all intents and purposes are interchangeable because it doesn't make sense to pick and choose among them when the game lets me set them all off randomly one at a time as their timers reset and win. Granted, this rant applies more to DPS; when I've played a healer it was a little more interesting as I had more details I needed to pay attention to.

But it would be really nice to see the game slowed down a little. Make it so I have to pay attention and react to certain in-game events (such as a monster's animation) and give me skills that can be used to counter those events if we act quickly enough. Make it so theres a global reset on skill usage so at every point we have to think: whats the best skill I can use at this point in time, knowing that the wrong choice has potentially severe consequences (you won't be able to do anything else for a short period of time.) Make it so I have a reason to pick one specific combat art over the other forty; make it so I can't set them all off at once.

Make us strategize and use tactics and give us the time to THINK and REACT instead of mindlessly mashing buttons.