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- Jan 31, 2005
- RedCents
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Moorgard is putting in some hard work today it seems. He has stopped by the official forums to clarify that the combat changes currently on test are ONLY FOR TEST PURPOSES and will not be in the next live update. His comments:
I posted this several times already, but let me do so again to be clear: The combat changes currently on Test will not be part of Live Update #7. Combat will remain the way it currently is on the live servers until we can also introduce additional spell changes, including adjusting the healing and damage numbers.
Look, I want healing to be balanced too, and I want the other mages to get attention (and yes, scouts too). I talk about it every single day to Cao, to Scott, to the mechanics guys, and various random people I corner in the hallways. I would love to be able to snap my fingers and have everything be done, but it isn't that simple.
MMOs are complex things. Every change you make touches something else, and when you peel back the layers of a significant change you find other things that are affected.
The changes to defense are necessary to keep the game from becoming trivial. We want to preserve the challenging aspects of gameplay, because an easy game ultimately becomes boring. We want soloing to be fun, grouping to be fun, and raiding to be fun. None of those things are fun if they don't present a challenge.
There are invariably complaints when we change something about the game to make it easier to understand or more accessible in some way. "Stop dumbing it down, SOE!" But when we make changes to increase the things we feel should be challenging--like combat and raiding--we hear "You're making the game too hard!" The truth is that people don't like change, at least when they don't see a direct and quantifiable benefit from it.
The changes to combat are necessary for the long-term health of the game. They may not be immediately popular, because in general you don't see a lot of posts saying "Woohoo, I get hit more!!!" But that doesn't mean they don't need to be made.
As part of this, we are also looking at the damage that NPCs do. After all, if NPCs can hit more often, we need to take a close look at what they're hitting for. And if NPC damage changes, it is a natural conclusion that we need to look at the efficiency of healing. Since that may need adjusting too, it wouldn't do a lot of good to spend time introducing balance changes now only to find we should redo them in a month.
We're also looking at ways to streamline the spell system itself. It has a lot of complexity because spells have several ways they can increase in potency, and it causes odd situations in how upgrades happen. We'd catch bugs and inequalities across tiers a lot sooner if we make some programmatic changes rather than adjusting data time and time again.
These aren't easy changes, and they can't be done quickly if they're going to be done right. They will go live when we're satisfied that they achieve our goal of making the game stronger and more fun.
http://eq2.warcry.com/scripts/news/view_news.phtml?site=68&id=44672
I posted this several times already, but let me do so again to be clear: The combat changes currently on Test will not be part of Live Update #7. Combat will remain the way it currently is on the live servers until we can also introduce additional spell changes, including adjusting the healing and damage numbers.
Look, I want healing to be balanced too, and I want the other mages to get attention (and yes, scouts too). I talk about it every single day to Cao, to Scott, to the mechanics guys, and various random people I corner in the hallways. I would love to be able to snap my fingers and have everything be done, but it isn't that simple.
MMOs are complex things. Every change you make touches something else, and when you peel back the layers of a significant change you find other things that are affected.
The changes to defense are necessary to keep the game from becoming trivial. We want to preserve the challenging aspects of gameplay, because an easy game ultimately becomes boring. We want soloing to be fun, grouping to be fun, and raiding to be fun. None of those things are fun if they don't present a challenge.
There are invariably complaints when we change something about the game to make it easier to understand or more accessible in some way. "Stop dumbing it down, SOE!" But when we make changes to increase the things we feel should be challenging--like combat and raiding--we hear "You're making the game too hard!" The truth is that people don't like change, at least when they don't see a direct and quantifiable benefit from it.
The changes to combat are necessary for the long-term health of the game. They may not be immediately popular, because in general you don't see a lot of posts saying "Woohoo, I get hit more!!!" But that doesn't mean they don't need to be made.
As part of this, we are also looking at the damage that NPCs do. After all, if NPCs can hit more often, we need to take a close look at what they're hitting for. And if NPC damage changes, it is a natural conclusion that we need to look at the efficiency of healing. Since that may need adjusting too, it wouldn't do a lot of good to spend time introducing balance changes now only to find we should redo them in a month.
We're also looking at ways to streamline the spell system itself. It has a lot of complexity because spells have several ways they can increase in potency, and it causes odd situations in how upgrades happen. We'd catch bugs and inequalities across tiers a lot sooner if we make some programmatic changes rather than adjusting data time and time again.
These aren't easy changes, and they can't be done quickly if they're going to be done right. They will go live when we're satisfied that they achieve our goal of making the game stronger and more fun.
http://eq2.warcry.com/scripts/news/view_news.phtml?site=68&id=44672