Tak

The 'logical argument' is that it's a rediculously costly for low to no return (it's not going to magically draw millions of customers) for a three going on four year old game. The logical decision is to save such a drastic change for an entirely new project (EQIII or what have you).

The only way I could see them even considering this is in a last-ditch effort to save the game if it's seriously tanking, and even then it's more likely the servers would just go dark.

hcre

If there was no brigand class it would have been kinda hard for them to have become powerful with AR, now wouldn’t it?

Weapon desing isn’t really that much harder with 24 classes than it would be with 12. Already all but a really small percentage of gear usable by one subclass is also usable by the other. Of that handful that is different, they are almost always extremely similar in every way but art to something their partner class gets nearby.

And strategies would not become more important with fewer classes, if anything they would be less important. For example instead of needing a coercer to split some mobs, you just need any enchanter. I know everyone who has done any raiding can think back to a time in KOS where they had to really come up with a good strategy to split vyem and the Alzid because no coercer was available. I know I have done that many different ways with many different guilds when the raid was lacking a coercer that was worth a shit. Make fewer classes and you will need fewer strategies because getting the right classes will be much easier.

There is no logical reason too combine the classes, especially this late in the game. Making the current classes more different would be nice though. And I think they could even add a class or two, sure you may have to ditch a class for raids, but I don’t think I have ever been on a raid where all 24 classes were present. There would be too many tanks and not enough DPS. So just don’t make the new classes tanks.

Sheya

Assassin and ranger are pretty much identical: take a CA of one of the two and you'll find a similar CA on the other. One has ranged and one has melee of course, but CA by CA you could just pick one and make it work in 2 ways: if ranged then do this, if melee then do that.
Agro transfer and agro reducer are necessary to make the classes viable, but by no means different when watching at the end result, scrap the reducer, give the transfer and you changed nothing.

Guardian and zerker are different because of buffs and a handful of CAs. As I said before, make for example guardian CA such as reinforcments or ToS work in defensive stance and zerker CA work in offensive, tah dah, you have the warrior class.
SK and Pally can stay separated, they have a huge difference in flavour at least, it makes sense leaving them separated.


Definitely agree, as I said above it's "probably" too late to do something for EQ2.
An eventual big merge should be presented in a careful manner, something SoE rarely does.
As I said, if they'd make a poll, class by class and see the result, they should go a great lenght to explain in details how every single spell and CA would change, I don't think many would quit given such premises.



A bunch of things killed EQ2 population at the beginning, these are the things I remember from LU1 to LU13:

- removed crafting interdipendecies, I don't know where you play but on my server I remember an exodus of players after that announcement.

- equip made attunable: while you may argue this was or wasn't a necessary move, it pissed off a bunch of players.

- classes SoE had no fucking clue of how to fix, here's what I remember:
*brawlers getting shields at one point, before deflection was introduced.
*Enchanters with 3 minutes clarity and useless CC were quitting in droves.
*Druids going from useless to best healers to useless again.
*Scouts facing mobs with immunities to piercing and slashing, memorable quote of an assassin "I'm the guild photographer on raids, I take screenshots".
*Fighters doing more damage than all other classes, taking little to no damage unless mobs were deep red and holding agro casting buffs.

- Station exchange, this speaks by itself.

- Class nerfs: warranted or not, nerfing classes when your game is bleeding subs and bugs are widespread everywhere wasn't a smart thing. Out of the blue the nerf to Inquisitors' invocation line wasn't well received (happened just after the launch of tomb of nights iirc).

- It wasn't that long ago they changed again the combat system and nothing happened, but EoF was good, new players came and subbed, many returned.


I think I could go on, but the point is presented I guess.
People in EQ2 are used to get it up their ass so often by now that a class merge would be probably received with a /shrug and everyone would go on playing, possibly having even more fun.
Aye, merging classes would give MORE options to each players, more variety, not less (unless you mean character creation variety) that's the point.

Flaming Homo

You obviously have never played the warrior or predator classes.

Miroh

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hcre

Ranger was my first main, assassin is my current main, and you now shit for what you are talking. Assassins and rangers are more than how they reduce hate in difference.

First off, Assassins get all the reducers rangers do, plus the transfer. So removing the reducers and adding the transfer would not make them the same, removing the assassins transfer would, and god help the raiding situation if that happens.

Second, the assassin is much more about stealth, while the ranger has a few CAs that require being in stealth to attack, almost all of the assassins main damage CAs require starting from stealth. Further the assassin is much more positional than the ranger, if I remember correctly, and it has been a while since I played my ranger, the ranger has one ranged CA where you must be behind, one ranged CA where you must be behind or flanking, and one CA where you must be facing the side of the mob. The assassin on the other hand has maybe four damage CAs that don’t require you to be behind with a few of those allowing flanking.

Third, the mindset of playing each is completely different. When raiding on ranger just find a safe place at max melee, if behind great if not no big deal, and let loose some arrows. When raiding on assassin find a spot directly behind the mob in min ranged range if possible and methodically plan out how you are going to do your stealth CAs on this mob. The ranger is far easier to raid with than the assassin. The solo mindsets are completely different as well. The ranger wonders if he can do enough damage to the mob without pulling adds before the mob gets to the ranger. The assassin wonders if he can do enough damage to the mob with the first strike that he can finish him of with his limited frontal attacks, especially important if the mob is heroic because it is almost impossible to stun, get behind, stealth, and pull off a backstab on heroic mobs. Rangers have to worry about that far less.

Fourth, rangers and assassins gear themselves up completely differently. While both can where chain and seek strength then int then agi, rangers are far more willing to go leather or cloth in a few spots to achieve that than assassins are. Further, rangers care more about a bow where assassins are far more concerned with their weapons. Rangers will even use a good shield if they can find one, no assassin who is worth a shit would even consider the ideal of using a shield vice a second weapon. Many assassins will not even use a bow, choosing instead to go with bag of cogs or something. You might think they are morons, and I would tend to agree since the assassin does get 3 decent ranged bow CAs even if they do have casting times that are too long.

Fifth, rangers and assassins are far more different than just one is ranged one is melee. Rangers are more centered around elemental attack enhancements, some of their spells have added heat damage, another has added lightning damage. Assassins on the other hand are exclusively poison based, with a few CAs that add poison damage and a few poison debuffers. Also, rangers are far better versus grouped encounters. A good assassin will have a hard time out DPSing a ranger against a grouped encounter. And the opposite is true as well, Assassins are far better against single target encounters. A ranger will have a hard time out DPSing an assassin against a single named raid target.

Finally, the classes attract different sort of players. When I started my ranger, I was into sniping, or stealthily killing things from afar. In FPS games I played at the time I was always one of those snipers everyone hates. Somewhere down the line that got boring and I decided I liked being up close and personal, plus the fact that assassins are one of the more complicated classes to play correctly appealed to me, so I rolled an assassin who is now the only toon I play.

Basically, the only things rangers and assassins have in common is they both can dish out tons of damage, they both have agro reducers because of this, and they both come from the predator line.

Can they be made into the same? Sure. But you could merge all 24 classes into one single class, so that’s not saying much. I have no desire to have my assassin made any more similar to my ranger, when I play my assassin I want to be playing an assassin as the name itself is part of the personal appeal. If you make my assassin some stupid ranger/assissin combo and call it predator or anything but assassin; SOE can kiss my station access 30 bucks a month goodbye. Even if you make it so I can choose a bunch of AAs to still be an assassin, that’s just stupid because all you are doing is making it easy to betray. Rangers who want to be assassins have options already, they can create a new assassin and level him up, or they can betray.


There is no probably about it. If they did this in the start, the first few months, or maybe even the LU where they made it so you start as your class, that would have been different. But it is way to late to be doing this now.

Every single person EQ2 gained from when SOE did this to SWG would quit at first mention of it, and that is not a small number. And for good reason! This experiment has been tried before, SWG has never and will never recover, this is why WoW fanboi’s like kobalt and the morons on FoH want EQ2 to try this, because chances are it will do to EQ2 what it did to SWG.



Not that I think it really matters, but I am one of the more known crafters on my server and always have been, I thought it sucked that they got rid of interdependencies because I was leveling a bunch of different crafters at once and it gave me a huge advantage, but I didn’t complain because it sure made it easier, and I didn’t hear many others complaining and know of no one who left over that. Getting rid of the sub combines is another story, that made it too easy and so a few people quit crafting and others quit the game. But that speaks more against merging the classes as the only really decent argument for it sofar is making it easier to betray, which has the added side of making it easier for raids to staff classes. Easier is not always better. Would you play this game if Mayong died just because 24 people came withen touching range of him? At first glance that seems great, but the challenge is really all that makes this game fun.

Further, SE is and was a joke, tons of people declared they were leaving, few actually did. Why? Because it really had no effect on the non SE servers.

Many would leave on the extremely remote chance SOE got it right this time, chances are they would screw it up like they did SWG and just like with SWG EQ2 would see an exodus like it has never seen before.

And I fail too see how merging classes gives more options. At best it makes it so you can betray easier, but betrayal and/or rolling a new alt is already an option.