kyros

I believe that the spell level system has become obsolete in EQ2, and that it should be done away with. In this post, I intend to outline why I feel this is the case, offer solutions to problems with making the change, and offer commentary on what I believe would be a progressive change in the evolution of EQ2.

Let’s begin with some discussion about what is wrong with the spell level system. Spell levels were intended to create a difference in potential among different play styles, wherein a hardcore raiding style player would have some access to Master level spells and at least all Adept IIIs, while casual players would have a mix of spells between the Adept I and Master level, with a lean toward the Adept Is. Ideally, this allows developers to create content of varied difficulties to suit all players. Heroic content designed for characters at an Adept I level, and raid content designed for characters at an Adept III or Master level. It has become the norm, however, for all players to be Adept III or Mastered out. Master Is have become more common than they were originally, especially among solo and heroic content – enough so to make them an uncommon, but not truly rare, find. By making Master level spells more readily available, the baseline for design has been set to an unintentionally high level. Raid content, in order to be challenging, must be designed with full Master Is as the norm, and heroic content at least Adept IIIs.

Furthermore, it is often the case that new spells meant to replace old ones are not a viable immediate replacement. A “replacement” to an old Master I level spell, for instance, must be at least Adept III to actually serve as an upgrade. This eliminates the desirability of Adept Is for any spells that were previously Master I, and makes Adept Is less appealing even to those with old Adept IIIs, since it is such a slight upgrade. Most would rather save up for the rare harvests to get an Adept III crafted. I know a few people that simply aren’t going to bother upgrading until they acquire Masters in t8, having been Mastered out from the previous tier. Because new spells are less powerful immediately, the excitement of having a new version of the spell is gone. It creates and un-fun spell progression.

Also, I would like to suggest that spell levels, while good for player markets, may actually be facilitating the plat farming and sales industries. From my experience, plat is usually saved up with the primary goal of Master spell acquisition. I would speculate that most players save money primarily for Master level spells. Because these items are so sought after and still overall uncommon, players set unreasonably high prices for them. When a player cannot afford an item on his own, he is more likely to turn to third party sources to obtain funds. There are plenty of other ways to motivate player markets that do not cause the overwhelming zeal that Master spells do.

On a broad level, Master spells decrease the fun of the game. Spell levels catalyze player greed and cause increased player-player hostility. Consider stories of groups where someone rolls on a Master that someone else in the group could use and then will not surrender it. It is not uncommon to hear about such an event in level chat. Because masters are so valuable, players are more likely to “steal” them for selfish purposes. More so, there is nothing fun about harvesting for days, hoarding plat, or farming named monsters simply for the direct acquisition of – or earning of funds for – Adept III or Master level abilities. It has become to adventuring what subcomponents were to crafting: an unnecessary and unpleasant step in the process.

In order to remove spell levels from the game, one must address several issues. First, how might spells be acquired? You would still get new spells periodically as you level However, each spell would only have one “level” and it would be acquired via “training” from a class trainer or other source as opposed to being scribed at a particular spell level or inherently known at Apprentice I. There is, of course, still the option of new marquee spells and abilities being learned through quests, but that digresses from the topic at hand.

Well, then how might one increase in power as he progresses? Though I do advocate an abolition of spell levels, I do think that one of the key parts of the EQ2 spell system is the ability to influence the effectiveness of spells. This can still be accomplished in my proposed system. Instead of a combination of spell level and stat influence, more weight would be placed on stat influence to determine damage. Healing spells would also have to draw a bonus from stats, which is not a current feature. To accomplish this successfully, the amount of influence that stats have on spells would need to be increased, and stat caps may need to be increased to allow for greater player growth and variation. Spells may have a base damage that is increased by added stats. Conversely, the spell may have a “medium” damage at a particular amount of a certain stat, where less of the stat will decrease the damage and more of the stat will increase the damage (with a diminishing returns curve in both directions – think S curve). This method puts the decisions even more in the hands of the players. They must find a way to balance survivability with damage or healing output. Stats would become essential in the consideration of gear again. (I think EQ2 needs a bit of a return to basics where resists and HP matter, so this would be the other side of the coin to focus the importance of stats in DPS.)

Finally the crafter situation must be addressed. This is perhaps the most difficult area of the proposal to address, but there are a couple simple solutions. The first, and least desirable, is to simply eliminate the sage class. But rather than put hard-working sages out of business, why not put them to work on something else? Sages could craft “do-it-yourself” training books. These would be equivalent to going to your class trainer and purchasing training for a skill, but Sages would be able to produce them for a significantly cheaper price and these could be carried around for use in any location. I would propose giving the recipes for every class’s abilities to the sages, which would unlock room for new potions and poisons for Alchemists and more expansive jewel crafting options for jewelers. I feel that there is a lot of creative potential not being expended on new crafted potions and jewelry out of fear for creating an imbalance between crafters. The fact that the Sage’s skills are not necessary, but are convenient and money-saving should keep them in balance, even with such a large list of recipes.

In conclusion, I would like to thank anyone who took the time to read all this. Feel free to add your comments or post any questions. It is late, I have been typing a lot of this as it has been coming to me, and I probably forgot something.

Exeugi

I feel bad for anybody bored enough to read that.

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Uh, hi?

Cloverfield still owns, fyi.

Orochan

dude, srsly, stfu with your smart ass comments, they're not funny, your not funny, no one likes you, now be depressed and /wrist.

He stresses a lot of good points, and a lot of key problems.

Madcap I hope someone w/ power to change things reads this and realizes our whole spell system atm is fucked up.

Just look at how it progresses too, from 1-50 we get app1s, but 50+ we dont. From 1-70 spells are on a 14 lvl tier, but 70-80 its 10 lvls ( wtf O.o ) Also some spells upgrade every 20 lvls, while others never upgrade at all. Some upgrade every 20 lvls then upgrade again 10 lvls after that ( example is Assasinate ( 50 ) Decapitate ( 70 ) and Execute ( 80 ) ) All are the SAME spell, but yet it has such a fucked up way of leveling it's just retarded.

It's all become so retarded tbh. /shrug

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Exeugi

lol that was pretty gay

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Uh, hi?

Cloverfield still owns, fyi.

Paikis

Thread derailing FTMFL.

@OP: Was a good read, and you have some very good points. I don't believe that this will ever be implimented, but would thoroughly support it if it ever was.

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tomthumb

let's remove everything from game, that will stop platfarming! success!

Dimglow

Masters provide incentive for players who otherwise would have NO business in a dungeon/instance to return to it with friends/pick-up-groups. They do this in two very important ways. First, directly: They make trips worthwhile under the idea that your master could in fact drop, in which case you are quite happy. Second, indirectly: Your master doesn't drop, but you come out with some economically valuable loot of some kind, which makes steady progress in your coin, which can then be traded for your master or other character progression.

Remove masters from the game, and spell progression in general and you will see people get bored a lot quicker, groups become harder to find, and the economy inflate drastically.

Masters provide incentives to heroic content, even for raiders, and are the only thing that keeps the EQ2 market moving besides adornments. Adornments and M1s are the only truly expensive consumables that ever drain money out of the EQ2 market.

kyros

good gear and items can't be enough incentive? i do agree that it would cause a decline in the market, but that could be countered by the addition of great pieces of gear that are rare drops, but can also be traded. people would farm for them to use or sell. master spells don't take any money out of the market. only npc merchants can do that. instead, they tend to support a massive flow of money in to the market so that players can afford to buy them.

really, i think there are other worthwhile objects on the player market: collections, tradeable loot, crafted items. the market might be a bit less fierce, but it would certainly not die away.

tomthumb

This should be the end of this thread.

Pinski

With the smart-loot system, the problem is you'll end up done with loot pretty fast. Did you know that most people will play until they have nothing left to do. In EQ2, there isn't that much to do once you hit the cap, and get your limited gear slots filled. Unlike in WoW, once you hit the cap, you do the instances maybe 3 times, then you're basically done with it and the rest of your time you don't spend ever doing any heroic instances, because well youv'e got all your gear already, and you have nothing left to get. Thus, you quit because you're done. Of course if you played WoW, you also have the Arena, Battlegrounds, and Raiding to get gear, whereas in EQ2(unless you play on a PvP server), you only have Raiding to get ugprades. This is why Master spells are a need in EQ2, because otherwise there is only 1 way to get upgrades, thus adding more reasons to play the game after the cap.

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