...and then everything changes. Oh yes, another post today since so much is going on here.
Levels and the holy trinity are gone. EQNext is moving towards a more Minecraft or Terraria system of character power. Your crafted gear determines your stats and character power, levels are gone. Also, you collect and possibly tier-up your classes to increase and accumulate powers. It looks like character level in EQNext is gone. Spec-ing a character to be a tank or healer is gone. Everyone is DPS. What determines victory is likely gear power, the tier of your class powers, and a majority of it is player skill.
You will be able to re-spec your classes, and change yourself up. It is a dynamic system, and yes, while radically different, I suppose their answer to people that miss the old class-level combo is go play the infinite number of games that use that system. It is a radical, incredible departure from the norm, and they even brought the old AD&D Player's Handbook up on the screen to illustrate 'these are the old ways.'
Your character power is determined by what you collect, what you craft, and the time you put into yourself. They mentioned that a new player could tag along on a high-level raid on day 1 and still contribute. It is a flatter system for participation, but I suspect an incredibly deep one for the amount of time you can put into it and what you get out of it. I do suspect, like in Terraria, that an un-geared character will absolutely get one-shotted in the high-level areas. But like in Terraria, a twinked character with good gear, low ability power, and no player skill will suck just as hard.
Wow. Again, this is a team trying for a moon-shot of gaming. Minecraft and Terraria and their linear systems are the clear model here, along with the unique lore and faction systems that Everquest brings to the table. The emphasis on crafting for power is very cool, starting everyone off similar and keeping them there is also very cool - it is a radial departure from over 35+ years of level-based fantasy gaming.
How it works is you will have 4 primary abilities from your primary class, and then any 4 from your collected classes. There was some mention of tier-ing a class up, so I guess that is how the power of an ability works. How hit points are gained wasn't also revealed, but I suppose it could be almost entirely gear-based, since there are no character levels. I wouldn't mind playing a game like this, since it puts starting people on the sam ground, and makes crafting and collecting good gear a premium goal.
There clearly is a heavy emphasis of pen-and-paper games in the room. They want to create a MMO equivalent of the essential D&D experience, without the limitations of the D&D rules. Artificial numeric character qualities, such as level, seem to be purposefully being gotten rid of; in favor of the real, experience and collection based qualities. How this all works out remains to be seen, but it is an incredible goal if they can pull it off.
More coverage? Coming up:
http://www.destructoid.com/soe-live-everquest-next-shocker-two-eq-games-cometh-259254.phtml
Another fun note from today, the topic of roleplaying came up, and a player asked if their character could follow a deity. The designers said, 'that is up to you.' In essence, you, as a player make choices in the world, to steal or be honest; be trusting or untrustworthy, or any other number of hidden virtues the game tracks for your character. If your character's values align with the deity's values, or any other number of NPC groups - that group will be act favorable to you. In essence, you have to play the game according to the values your character holds dear. You can't brazenly steal from the villagers in game for loot and giggles, and then go 'roleplay' a kind and gentle follower of the love goddess. The love goddess' NPC will hate you, and you won't be welcome in the village. It's put up or shut up time for roleplayers, and that is a very cool thing.
This is getting closer and closer to the goal of having an invisible dungeon master working behind the scenes of the game to make it different, interactive, and a unique experience for every player - given the individual player's actions. They keep talking about some sort of AI story engine working behind the scenes that alters play depending on what is going on in the world, based on the actions of the population. Also, your individual reputation is tracked, and your actions have consequences - you can become the enemy to groups in the world, and your character can become kill-on-sight to any of the factions in the game. This is really, really close to a DM - and I suspect the designers are programming the game with this invisible DM in mind and working behind the scenes.
If the players do not help a village, and let it fall to the Orcs - a bunch of cool stuff happens. Villagers stop tending fields, and stop going out onto the streets. The level of fear increases, and shops could close. The village could become an abandoned ruins. All this can happen anywhere in the world, and the outcome is unique to every server. A truely dynamic game world run by an electronic DM? I think this team is very, very close. This game just may well be the first serious AI DM the world sees.
We had some great technical sessions today about the voxel engine, being able to flood caves by tunneling under a lake, the destructibility and physics of the world, how the voxels smooth out, particle effects, constructing walls and buildings realistically (dirt inside of a stone wall), and a heck of a lot of other stuff. The world is more real than any other MMO world I have seen, it's not just a shell of textured static polygons.
Again, so much comes to mind when you think about pen-and-paper games, it's going to take me a few days to sort my thoughts out. Level-less fantasy gaming? Gear-based power? Freely-respec-able characters? Collect-a-classes? Powering-up-classes? Just wow, this SOELive is a game designer's tour-De-force, just so many ideas coming out of this team it is just insane. For the EQNext team to put all of them in one game is remarkable, and I hope they are able to deliver.
If they can, it is not only a game-changer, but a world-changer for fantasy gamers.
No comments:
Post a Comment