Originally posted by Isometrix

Originally posted by Vorthanion

As long as the pet is treated as an optional helper and not integral to the balance of the Ranger, the I'll probably like it, but any situation where the pet can be easily removed which eliminates too much of the Ranger's abilities, then I have issues.  It creates a huge weakness to the class that no other suffers from.

I'm getting tired of games always turning Ranger type classes into pet classes and on top of that, making pets so valuable to the class that if they die, the Ranger becomes gimped and unable to function properly without it.

 

But isn't that the whole point of having a pet? If your pet dies, you should still be able to perform, but you should be weaker than other classes. That's not to say you can't win a fight if you're good enough, but if you were as strong as other classes without your pet, than having a pet is a huge advantage. If they divide the DPS over the ranger and the pet (70%/30% or so) and the pet can't be instagibbed or morphed into uselessness, it seems fine to me. Tricky class to balance either way because of this.

Seems like a fun class, not for me though. Ranger seems a little bland and uninspired. Will give it a shot but not excited to see it in the lineup, and because of the pet, it seems like an inherently weaker class in WvWvW where your pet likely gets killed instantly by the AOE going on.

 

1 solution to this is to have the balance 70% 30%  dps for ranger / pet. But when the pet dies before the ranger the ranger gets a buff thats gives 30% extra dps for a fixed duration or until the pet is revived. You see this mechanic with pve bosses alot in various games.

Originally posted by UsualSuspect

Might I also add that Value was given a 10/10. The reason: it offers more than the usual 10 hours of gameplay that other games do for the same price. Um. Isn't that the whole point of MMO's? They're supposed to last for months, sometimes even years, we're on an MMO site reviewing an MMO, not a general gaming site. If this is the case, I want every MMO reviewed to have a 10/10 for value - unless of course you can reach end game in a week and have nothing else to do.

 

No by comparison to other mmo's at launch there is huge value. Rifts was good but got old quickly.

This game has 2 routes to the end, empire and republic which are pretty much 100% unique. I have not seen that in an MMO for a long time. The ammount of stuff to do on each world gets bigger with each world ( couple of exceptions like the small world Quesh).  The voice acting is great and gives a good feeling for the game.

I am in a big guild moved over from WoW. I notice alot of people in my guild rushed to 50 and said it was getting a bit boring. After chating to them they adimitted that they mostly just space bar to skip all the voice sections so they can rush to 50.  You really loose something doing that this game you need to put in a bit more effort and take it slower that you usually would to get the most out of it, you wont regret it.

Everquest did really have something.  I started playing before kunark came out and  yes i lost a few corpse and had some bad days but it was overall a really fun experience.

It was really hard but at the time there wasn't an expectation to reach end game content asap and begin raiding etc. It was quite normal to still be lvl 20-25 after a few months of playing. Therefore you relaxed and enjoyed the journey.   

People were less rude to one another because you never knew when you would need the help of your peers and people had long memories. I remember having 98 days played on a lvl 59 character,who would risk that ammount of time invested by being an A hole to people?

I went back to Everquest last year, level from 1-90 and 2000 aa very quickly, different game but still has some of the old feel, well worth a look. I also played on progression server a little. Very cool had the old feel but the player base had changed gone were the roleplayers and slow paced fun seekers of yesteryear replaced by the hardcore mix-max speed levelers of today.

Its not just about busier lives people really have changed i dunno what you would do as a developer!

When the put out Cata I was hugely pissed off by the dumbing down and simplifiaction of the the game. The removal of weapon skills the huge reductions of talents and the straight jacketing you within one spec.   Huge choice / variety is what i love.

I never bought the line about only 1-2 , meaningful specs. To me it was a simple case of the game designers trying to give themselves an easier time with balance as the expense of the games colourful variety.

However I did try Cata for 1-2 months. But couldnt continue.

This new system is a joke. I hope it flops so bad that the people who said ok to this have to leave the industry FFXIV style.

Originally posted by VirusDancer

 

"and this your honer is why i had no choice but to swing it by the tail for 5 mins then cut it its head off..... It the only way to stop them!"

These events have always left me feeling really uncomfortable and edgey.   I am a reasonably outgoing and confident person in normal life but surround me with a bunch of people in costumes acting crazy and i feel on edge, even more so if i have to dress up too.

So I salute you journey into that crazy enviroment especially as by your own adimission you a fairly shy person anyway.

After not having done anything like this for 15 years I attended a live roleplay day for a friends stag do recently. After i managed to get over myself ( partly aided by my hipflask) I actually had a really good time and the people although a little whacky were geniunily nice and friendly folk.

The OP has a very different ideal of what balance means than i do.

Balance for me in a PVE enviroment is purely that that everyone has the opportunity to contrubute something approximatly equal.

Balance in PVP is pretty similiar, everyone should have the opportunity over the course of a variety of PVP encounters to contribute equally.

For me, ammount of play time, player skill, prefered play style, when you started playing etc should not be factors that are considered in balance.

I having being playing mmorpgs since EQ1 release and i have started to dispair at how some players are so obessed with "balance" and "fair" and yet loose sight of whats right (personally I blame our politicians and media for their culture of spin).

On the plus side it their system truely works it will be amazing. By that i mean modable gear can be made 100% as good as the best gear out their for a similiar / equal ammount of effort to acquire said gear.

However if at any stage its not as good even by 1%, then its a waste of time and I would rather have a simple vanity tab.

I agree the holy trinity has its issues, No 1 for me being the difficulty find people to fill all the roles.

Recently i went back to my first mmo for a stint: Everquest 1. Something struck me I liked the fact people had less hybridised more defined roles and the abilities they had were significiant. After having a good think about it i realised that was something that had been lost from mmo's over the years.  Now its seems every class must be able to do most things and abilities are more and more marginal so as to make balance easier to achieve for developers.

What i would really like to see is mmo with a fresh approach:

Well defined roles and minimal hybridizations.

NPCs hirelings, mercs etc able to fill a role on most occasions to cover a shortage

A radical new agro system. multiple agro mechanics and groups of mobs randomly choosing which mechanic they are going to follow.  for example, 1 agro mechanic could be CC the tank and burst down the healer, focus fire anyone wearing a robe, over extend the tank by fleeing then other mobs in the pack ambush the healer as he runs to catch up. Many many methods to make this work.

Positioning being a factor, don't expose your back

Powerful significant abilities and talents, none of this 0.1 sec  casting speed increase on a 3sec spell, or 0.5% damage reduction. If a game is hard (which alot of people want) their is no reason to keep everything so minimal.

Now lets just take a moment to look back at the last major MMO release by this publisher(Funcom).

Age of Conan. To be frank although AoC was ground breaking in many ways and had it good points. The amount of lies, spins and failure to deliver at launch was unmatched in the industry.

Even the features  printed on the retail box weren't included at launch and although advertised on the box i am not sure the game ever became direct X 10 compatable.

Looking back at the pre release interviews and videos post launch was a real eye opener, how corrupt  & deliberatly misleading these guys were. Stuff which i hadn't seen from game developers before and more closely associated it with scumbag politicians.

Now they may have learned from that farce, BUT SO SHOULD WE!, I would strongly advise against buying this until its been out 2-3 months and we know what it really is rather than what Funcom says it is.

Don't get burned again!

its funny to hear people complain about lack on consquences because there are safe zones for newibies / traders to hide in and no full loot.

Fact is opposite is true, with those features it would just  be a ganker / newbie killer paradise with no signifiant consquences. People would make ganker alts, with a few levels and crap gear (therefore nothing to loose) and butalise newbies and rob traders/ craftsmen.

The worse thing than could possible happen is these gankers is they would loose the crap gear and have to make a different gank toon.

Step back and have a think for a moment. If you have harsh dog eat dog world with no safeguards or safe zones who will you attract to your sandbox. Look at EVE, fantastic world but everyone is on the look out to rob, exploit or do over everyone else, its fun for a little while but kinda limited in its overall picture.  Then look at the original SWG, they had so much wrong but the crafting /  community was a true great. There must be a sweet spot somewhere in between these game.

I logged on today and got myself a tribal trouble 2, beta key from mmorpg

When i went to set up the account  it told me by beta key was invalid, its not possible to even make a forums account for the game without the beta key so support from the developers is impossible, all seems pretty ridiculous to me.

Any ideas anyone?

If I had never played an online game before and I listened to your arguement I would definatly say i was a journey person.

However after playing for a while i realise I am most definatly a destination person and this is beause I play MMOs to play with people and the people i cherish playing with most are my real life mates. The problem here is we all level at different speeds. We of course try having characters we only play with each other but these never end up being our favourite characters.

No game has yet come up with a satisfactory system to be able to play characters of all levels together. Even CoH with its mentoring system and every mentoring system since has just not quit worked. With City of Heroes (i have not checked in with CoH in past few years) you either mentor low level characters up which ment low lvl / weak characters would run high level missions with their high level friends but these missions would take 3 or 4 times as long as a mission your own level and only worth the same XP as once your own lvl missions. So yes you can play with your friends but with a big penalty.

The other way arround a high level mentors down to low lvl but again, he get a big penalty of little or no XP.

Considering all this it suits us have a game where 40-60% of the content is at level cap. becuase we can all expierience it togther without the problem of all being different levels.

EQ 1 was a cruel master but super addictive.

we had just got the internet at home and my wife bought me EQ1 after reading about it (what a sweetie). I was sceptical at 1st but tried it and got totally hooked. Boy did she regret that lol.

First character was a erudite wizard......i would skill stuff in sight of the guards so i could always run back. the tall tree and dense wood scarey stuff.

Then the troll warrior , i was so proud i have made myself a full suit of patchwork leather. Not really understanding the lore i went to visit the orges, i opened a door to the wrong room and cheif or chef killed me. My corpse with my love new armour on was lying at this ubber KOS  NPCs feet......dam it

Then the Barb shaman, going into black burrow.  Hmm not lightvision and at that time if you didnt have nightvision or a torch the tunnels were totally black.

All great moving stuff.

The best momory , joining a "defenders of the realm" guild and on the first raid my necro skeleton got the last blow on the raid mob. I want to raid "Go Boner!" in chat channel but instead typed "got boner!".  All went very silent and 3 years later i still hadn't lvied that down

I actually do know somebody who works for Blizzard after moving out to France from the UK.

They have a wide variety of tools for catching various cheaters and no they dont normally explain exactly what you did or what evidence they have against you. This is not a court of law and the burden of proof is certainly much lower.

Some things i know they ban for are the obvious, gold selling / buying, botting etc but also they have a problem with various money cheats/exploits that get introduced into the game with patches. He wouldnt give me exact details but there was a vendor item where the sell to npc price was higher than the buy from NPC price which lead to some people getting banned for making 10k in a day (Pre WOTLK).

But taking you at your word that you really haven't done anything wrong I would say its entirely possible a mistake has been made. The operation they have is huge and in that enviroment mistakes are always possible however good your systems.

When you mail your appeal I suggest you tell them you have no idea what it is about but you would be happy to answer any questions they have about your play time, activities or gold etc.  Be very forthcoming and polite and ask them to double check there facts because you can only think the ban is human error. What you want to achieve is to get somebody to take the time to double check all the facts about your ban very carefully. That is easier said than done because working there can be a very pressurised environment and your dealing with idoits and scum 99% of the day (you know that 0.8% of any society that rules /law mean nothing to). Its very easy to become jaded working with that everyday.

Anyway good luck with getting justice.

"To give a comparison, let's say you walk past an ATM machine and it appears to be broke and money is flying out of it. Now you can do 2 things, either report the issue at the bank, or take the money and be silent about it. Now if the police catch you, it won't be enough to say "hey they should have the machine fixed". You took money that wasn't yours so your guilty. "

Fairly recently here in UK a cash machine had a problem in that it was giving twice the money you asked for. The publics response was to phone their friends and with 2 hours the machine was empty.  The police did sweet FA.

In life and wow  many times things don't work as they should sometimes thats good for you and sometimes it isn't. If you have ever contacted a GM about something that is broke in game and has negatively effected you then they probably won't have fixed it to your satisfaction or re-imbursed you. So to mass suspend like this seems a bit heavy.

The basic truth is they did this because they can and they wanted to make an example of the guild so others think careful about clever tactics to speed through content. Its a delaying measure nothing more.