Steelbadger

I have to say I agree with the sceptics in this thread.

The aim of this suggestion appears to be to increase choice by decreasing the number of (and thus widening the scope of) the classes.

Fine and dandy, I suppose. But my problems come with the real reasons to suggest this, people have become sick of poor itemization, poor class balance and poor characterization of their classes. By that I mean that any one Wizard is pretty much geared and specced like any other Wizard, dependant on access to gear obviously.

Now let me explain my problem with these reasons. The first reason is, well a non-issue. You would gain no more scope of character by reducing the number of classes, all it means is that each individual class has more scope. Now if you actually had a clue and chose the class you wanted to play at the beginning this would not be a problem. All it does it let people cherrypick the best abilities from two subclasses. Yay, lets make life even easier!

The second reason, itemization. As stated by shackleton at the beginning of the thread there are a certain number of play styles in game. There are items to support most of those play styles, but some are under provided for and so people complain and think up ideas like this. How is class consolidation going to fix this? SOE would still need to provide gear for every class play style. And a few in-between. You still need healer items with WIS and INT on them, and healer items with WIS and STR on them, and healer items with WIS INT and STR on them. It doesn't matter if there is one healer class that is infinitely changeable or one hundred healer classes, those play styles must be provided for.

With the man-hours that would be required to completely rebuild this game at the fundamental level they could achieve far more by simple itemizing a thousand new items. How is the armour weight issue going to be fixed by merging classes. A druid will still use the same armour as the Furies and Wardens before them did.

Unless you can prove to me that this would actually make balancing and itemization easier rather than harder (as the idea seems to do) I fail to see the point.

Balance would be harder to achieve if AA progression where using rather than subclass progression, simply because of all the middle grounds you could use, there are more permutations of AA's for 12 classes with 4 trees than for 24 with 2.

I just don't understand why anyone thinks this would actually achieve anything, why not just use that colossal amount of time involved to fix itemization for the current classes?

To consolidate classes would drive massive numbers of players away. Primarily their current casual subscriber base, as casuals are far more attached to the character than to some disparate idea of how they stack up against everyone else.

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[2348] Shizaku:Shizaku tells Level_70, "ALL IVE DONE IS ASK FOR HELP SO EVERYONE WHO SES SOMETHING BAD TO ME WAS MALESTED WHERN THAY WER KIDS"

Crono

Imo it would be fun to have duo classes. At level one chose one class you'd like to be and half way through choose a secondary class. They could have two class tree's. I believe there is something like that set up in FFXI and even though it isn't the most stellar of MMO's I enjoyed the idea of the duo class.

Another Idea is to get rid of all classes and make the game purely AA's. That would be fun. But I agree SOE need's to do some revamping in the area of charecter progression.
If you want to be good you have to have the same AA's and Same gear as the "best" player. Pretty much we are all making ourselves clones of the games best charecters.

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Crono: Level 13 Swashbuckeler

Illuminator

Blah blah blah.

Nobody mentions class recruitment strains either. Because they're too busy saying "if you change i quit omg" and not busy enough actually thinking in depth on the issue.

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Illusionist turnover rate, ain't it a bitch. Don't vote for Obama.

Edwin Ahe

And you are too busy trying to develop something, and not busy enough finding another game. Because it`s what you want, not class rebalance.

Kookynotes

Im hearin ya Lummy, but the simple fact is that most players are still jaded from SWG. I don't think it will ever be forgotten, so something like this just seems to scare a hole boatload of us. Class consolidation for my bard I could really care less since I play like a dirge anyway..lol.
I think it's best to leave classes as they are because swaying the majority and wiping SOE's record clean just is not gonna happen.

The truth as I see it is, they changed EQ2 to get rid of EQ1 and now we want EQ3 because of it...that sound about right?

Fundamentals I would like to see in game,

PvP teff toggle for PvE servers

Guild Halls (I know they are coming)

Those pesky Master 4's you can craft that never made it into the game. (chk your EQ2 guide from back in 04') lol

Itemization assessor replaced. SOE really needs to get players of their games to do itemization, quit hiring people who don't know anything about the game.

Factions that actually mean something other than opening up a questline or getting a loot table opened up to you. I know it's too late to do Geynos vs. Freeport but maybe just maybe a new expansion can give 2-3 new factions we have to choose as guilds and maybe incorporate them into PvP teffing.

Same last names for all chars on an account.. (Tabula Rasa has this, helps keep track of guildies and friends no matter what toon they are playing)

Solo harvest areas, no one likes it when someone is harvesting during a fight anyways and we all know Ghjgdnfj and Jmklhws wont be at your spot when ya go there..lol

Slotted items

Another look at risk vs reward...someone was sleeping on the job when it came to this for ROK.

The pizza Hut order option re-installed -im kidding

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Illuminator

How about you find the other game and let me try to un-develop the nonsense dragging this one down. Splitting these classes wasn't the easy way out, it was an arm-bending contorted scheme.

Just be careful, if ever even once you see the grass being greener on the other side, this becomes a burden and not a feature.

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Illusionist turnover rate, ain't it a bitch. Don't vote for Obama.

Edwin Ahe

Try it somewhere else. Or apply for job at $OE and create eq3 where your system will rock.
All I`m trying to say to you: such change will simply kill this game. All those people who heard at least something about SWG, will quit after single word about massive change, whole lot of people who play classes that you want to merge will quit. In the end there will be you and 10 crafters, but crafters will quit because there will be no reason to craft.

And one more thing: what makes you think it`s easier to merge classes then to fix current system? You think developers can`t fix it now, why do you think they`ll be able to revamp?

Kookynotes

what do ya mean by that Lummy... you mean balancing the factions? Well I haven't put too much thought into it, but I suppose you can base it off other models. Lets say for instance they give us a "battleground" the battleground has factioned areas for each guilds guild hall or Base of Operations, and those spots are limited. In order to keep that base of operations you will have to defend it. Vunerability of the base can be a huge range of options but a model like this one (loosly based off AOC) can keep the factions balanced for the most part.

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Deson

The reason you can't just "fix" itemization and class specialization is because with the current 24 classes it's a massive undertaking that has to occur every time they add to the game. There is only so much you can give to characters before they start stepping all over each other. At that point, they start thinning themselves out and give you what you can support by an unguided, less than ideal process. While it's true that it would be a massive undertaking to reduce and rebalance classes like they did with LU-13, it would only be( and should have been) a one time cost. Not addressing the issue merely let's you either run into the development debt that gave us RoK itemization or huge payrolls it seems SOE can't or won't front to get around a design flaw.

You may like your jalopy, but you really can't expect the company to support you forever when the choice is obviously bankrupting them. By continuing to demand what they obviously can't support, you're just holding them down and setting yourself up to lose out anyway.

Of course, none of that touches on the company track record which makes any prospect of change either way less than hopeful.

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Illuminator

True, they can't even fix a fucking toolbar, I really shouldn't conceive faith in the harder shit.

When you are heavily invested in a faction only to find that an opposing faction is offering (or gains over time) items or content that you are more interested in, you have to switch gears again. Or pick and choose instead of having the best of all worlds.

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Illusionist turnover rate, ain't it a bitch. Don't vote for Obama.