What's going to be the purpose or Role of Bards now? It seems like they're going to be different than they were in
EQ Live. Can you tell us a little bit about where they'll be expected to fit in a party? What will they be able to
bring to a party?
Well for starters most of the stacking rules we have for spells and effects and such are based on Archetypes. So since
the Troubadour and the Bard and those types of characters are Scouts and anything they have will stack with anything a
Priest Archetype casts. The main purpose of the Bard type class is to provide group buffs, both combat related and
non-combat related. Also they can provide some crowd control; they're basically the jack of all trades. And they
still use instruments.
How much melee-style combat do you expect all the Archetypes to be able to be effective up to? What sort of a level
range? For example if you start a Mage type character in just about any mmorpg on the market you'll start off with a
dagger or a big stick and will spend the first couple levels poking or beating things to death.
It's evident pretty early on in our game, as soon as you get on the Island and say you want to be a Mage, you get your
first spell and right away you start using it. Also you notice right away that you're not quite as good at fighting in
melee as a Fighter or Scout Archetype. So I'd have to say we draw that distinction pretty much right off the bat.
Could you talk a little bit about Opportunistic Damage for the Scouts? The ins and outs of it, from what I've heard a
Scout can essentially catch the party flat-footed as in Dungeons & Dragons; also escaping with the opportunity of doing
some damage as well.
Basically a lot of their combat arts rely on position and/or stealth. Really that's the big distinction between a Rogue
and a Predator, a Predator relies on Stealth while a Rogue relies on attacking from behind. Typically most of their
opportunistic damage comes from backstabs, ambushes and things like that. Predators do have the ability to stealth
during combat and do some really massive damage.
The Heroic Opportunities now, is there a revamp of it planned so every class can make use of them?
Yes, actually right now we are in the process of implementing the changes and revamping the entire system so that every
profession will have heroic opportunities.
Could you outline the details of the Heroic Opportunities, or combat wheel as some have taken to calling it, for anyone
who might not be familiar with it?
Basically the idea behind Heroic Opportunities is to give the players a more reactive sort of system to liven up the
combat system some. Currently the main change is we're going to make it visible how you start or initiate a Heroic
Opportunity. What happens is basically you chain abilities together, and when you do them in the proper order a Heroic
Opportunity will appear. Which Heroic Opportunity appears is chosen randomly from a weighted list which is associated
with the ability chain you preformed. Scouts will have the ability for example, if they got a Heroic opportunity and
wanted a different one which they know is on the list, they could try to shift the opportunity by using a Scout
ability.
What would that Heroic Opportunity give you?
It can basically do or be anything. It's basically an aid to the party; so for example, there was one that I don't think
anyone has pulled off in beta yet because it's pretty hard to do, but it was a full power and health group heal. If you
manage to get it off.
When you're in a group will the Heroic opportunity shown be the same for every group member or will it depend on your
profession?
It's a shared thing for the group. Basically a group will work together and plan out which ones they want to do. Or
they can chose to have the Fighter doing his own solo Heroic Opportunity while the rest of the group works together on
a group one. Or there are also Heroic Opportunities which require abilities from all the Archetypes be used to create,
and those of course are some of the hardest to pull off.
In actual play it'll work such that you have a party, maybe Tom and Joe and I are grouped. Joe being a Scout would
start it off. Scouts are very heavily integrated into this as the Tacticians and Leaders. So he'd start off with a
move and I'd follow with one of mine, which I know combines with that and then Tom could finish it off. If we did
that correctly then it would pop up with a couple more moves for all of us to see. We'd then try to fill those in. It'd
also show us the magical effect we'd receive if we pulled it off, whether it is a group heal or innate damage etc. But
the first part is a skill based thing. We could initiate when we want to if we are paying attention and know what we're
trying to do. After that it gives a sort of "match these moves" wheel which lists the abilities which need to be
preformed and the order they need to be preformed in. If we can get off a Backstab, a Wild Swing and Taunt etc, we'll
get this magical effect. Also a Scout can look at that then and say "Hey, I know there's a better one available so I'm
going to shift it for the party." So then hopefully we'd get a better one than what we originally had. The starter
chain should be a big determiner of what kind of effect you're going to get, it's going to be a beneficial thing for
the party to do, and it's going to help the party as opposed to hurt the enemy. You're not always positive exactly
what opportunity will pop up, but you'll know the style of the thing you're going to get if you paid attention to the
starter chain you used.
It should be interesting to see if you can pull these things off at the right time. Sometimes the situation will
change and you'll wish you had started a different one. It's definitely going to bring a very strategic aspect to
the combat. It should also bring an extra level of interest and power to the people who are there and participating
during the combat as opposed to going and fixing a sandwich. It takes it off the individual level of "I'm going to
sit here and backstab cause that's all my class can bring to the group" to paying attention to what Joe or Tom is doing,
so we can work together and get a greater advantage over our enemies.
How obvious is it to the players what's next in the chain? How much hand holding are you guys going to be implementing
there? How much are you going to say "Do this next" etc?
With the starter chains it's not going to be immediately obvious, but just through repetition and inference you'll be
able to figure it out. But once you've done a starter chain the wheel for the Heroic Opportunity that was randomly
selected based off of said starter chain will pop up on the screen. It'll list what moves need to be done and what
order they need to be done in. Also it will list what magical effect you will receive for pulling it off. Each move
will be associated with one of six symbols for your class, so maybe a Fighter would have a helmet, a shield, a mace,
that sort of thing. When Joe does something that is associated with the Mace symbol, the mace will pop up on all of
our screens, and if I know, or someone has told me, I can follow that up with a Helmet move, so I can do that, and if
it completes the starter chain then the wheel will pop up. All the moves needed will be on the wheel, and as they're
preformed in the right order they will fill in on the wheel until the whole wheel is complete.
Basically the starter chains will spread via word of mouth and knowledge of the character will be rewarded. You know
that you can follow the mace with this or that. Maybe you can follow it with a couple of things. You being the clever
player who knows his character well and knows what different starter chains you have access to can say "Oh I want this
style of effect instead of that style of effect" so you'll do the move which progresses the starter chain towards the
effect you want. The first part of the system will basically come down to your knowledge of your character and what
you can do, the second is more of a test of whether or not you can get these moves off in the right order in the given
timeframe.
The other thing that's important to note is that can you get these moves off in the situation that you're in? It's not
always going to be easy, and there may be certain penalties for attempting to do that. For example the Healer might be
trying too hard to get off his moves and neglecting the tank, who since he's not being healed drops dead. This is
tapping into the whole risk vs. reward payoff. Longer chains will payoff MUCH bigger, we're expecting you to invest
some serious time and risk into doing these things so you'll get a giant giant reward out of it if you manage to pull
it off. These are things you would want to use on a Boss encounter, but not necessarily on every Goblin that runs
by.
With the Racial Abilities, have you guys put a whole lot of thought into that? As in Dark Elves' vision, Troll's
regeneration, etc.
I think a good amount of thought has been put into them and we're finishing up implementation on them now. We're
still trying to be as open minded as possible during beta, looking at things, seeing how they play out, etc. If it
comes up that Dark Elves are somehow better than Halflings then we'll definitely fix that. Most of the Racial
Abilities that we've implemented as of now are various attribute differences, resistance differences, and vision
types. We're still toying around with the idea of something further, something kinda akin to the Troll's regeneration
in EQ Live. But we don't want it to really impact gameplay that much, because we feel that there's a lot of decision
that goes into choosing your race based on how it looks. You want it to look a certain way. To have that impact
gameplay in such a large way would really be counter-productive. This will also prevent there being an "ultimate
race/class" combination. Which is also why we made the different vision types, ultravision, infravision, etc ability
based instead of being always on. We wanted to make them so they'd be really useful in certain situations. And we
also tried to make them look really cool. For example Ultravision gives everything a purplish hue. In infravision
you see the heat signatures of things. And this is actually incorporated into the game more than just graphically.
Infravision might be great in a Gnoll camp at night, but in an Undead tunnel you won't see squat. Every creature in
the game has been flagged as Warm-Blooded, Cold-Blooded or No-Blooded. So everything will show up in varying degrees
of blues, reds and oranges, or just not show up at all. Walking down that aforementioned tunnel in Infravision you'd
think it was completely safe and clear of enemies until that first blow landed on your unprepared skull.
One of the things we do want to preserve from a top level is to try to grow from where we started. People who have
played Everquest should feel familiar in terms of the roles and what's expected. But we also want to add to that.
Heroic Opportunities is one of the big areas where we're adding some additional gameplay. One of the other things we
wanted to do as well with the Combat Arts is to provide a little more attention, include more tactical decisions that
come up, as opposed to the infamous "hit auto attack and go fix a sandwich" method. That still has a place in some
cases, but in EQ2 combat will be much more interactive. You can still hit auto attack and walk away, but you're
going to be far less happy with the outcome than if you stayed there and paid attention.
We also made a big focus on adding Combat Arts that end up being the equivalent of spells. They'll be more damage
orientated than not. We didn't want the typical feeling of playing a melee class means you'll be playing a more
boring character. So now they do have an equal number in most cases of Combat Arts choices to match say the caster's
spell choices. And visuals as well to go along those lines. The Combat Arts will have visuals for the special
abilities to match those of the caster's spells, so the melee character isn't as visually boring any longer
either.
What about the Artisans? If I remember correctly it's built off the same engine as the Combat system, can you talk a
little about that?
We have a whole session scheduled with Ben, the head Tradeskill developer in a little while, but to answer your
question quickly, generally speaking yes, it's intended to be MUCH more interactive. Different events will occur
during the crafting process that you'll have to react to and overcome. Those won't be predictable at all, or reliable
in any sense, so macroing the crafting will be virtually impossible. Both the Crafting and Combat systems use our
Universal Success Mechanic, which basically takes two skills, then factors in certain attributes, compares them and comes
up with an outcome of success or failure, or critical success or critical failure. They basically use the same guts
when you break the two systems down to their base levels.
What about interdependency between the adventurers and artisans?
There are dependencies between the two in that the tradeskill classes need the materials that the adventuring classes
find to make their goods. The adventurers obviously need those goods that the tradeskill classes make in order to
perform in the field in order to get to the places where they'll mine and gather these resources for the crafters.
Also you'll find some of the objects you can find, a Dragon scale for example, which is dropped by a mob while
adventuring, will figure into the recipes for some of the more powerful items in the game. Assuming the same rarity
of items, the tradeskill version of an item will be more powerful than a straight dropped version.
What kind of failure rate is there on creating those types of rare items?
The most limiting factor on bringing those types of items into the world is mainly based on the drop rate of the
components. They will be more difficult to make but there will be a fairly high success rate on them.
Looking two years down the road or so, what do you guys see as far as items now being lower end items? How trivial
are they going to become in a couple years? These days on EQ Live you can go to the bazaar and grab an item that you
normally just wouldn't be able to have until level forty or higher.
One of the systems we have in place now is called a tiered system. Within the same level range, items and NPCs, have
different tiers. Basically the higher the tier the more rare it is. Basically you can have a level 25 high-tier
weapon that's just as powerful as a level 45 high-tier weapon. The only difference is that to get that you're
consuming level 25 content instead of level 45 content. Even well into the life of the game the higher-tiered rare
weapons are going to be more sought after and retain their value. Also we have associated skills for a lot of the
items. Similar to the recommended and required levels in EQ Live, you will have to have a certain skill to use
certain items. This will help prevent the trickle down and twinking which plays a big part in decreasing the value
of a lot of high end items.
What about Garbage Control? As in a couple years down the road you just have so many people playing the game that
the rare items just aren't as rare anymore?
One of the main things that we're doing to address that is a system called Item Attunement. Basically when an item
comes into the world, you can trade it as much as you want, even put it on and see how it looks on your character, but
if you want to actually use it and receive the benefits of it you have to attune it to yourself. Once attuned to you
it becomes no-drop, no-trade etc. This solves the problem of rare loot rotting on a corpse because it's no trade,
someone else in your group can grab it and bring it back to you. We wanted you to be able to put it on, see how it
looks on your character, and then either choose to keep it or still have the ability to sell it. This way we control
the rare items population in the game while still giving the player options and not limiting the economy. If a Mage
is out soloing and comes across a really nice Ranger item he doesn't have to let it rot on the mobs corpse because if
he picks it up it'll be no-drop, no-trade. He has the ability to take it and either give it to a friend/guildies or
trade/sell it for something he can use.
Well, that concludes the first part in our 5 part series on this event. Give your eyes a break and check back
tomorrow for our look at magic and spells inside EverQuest II!
;)
;)
