It's been a couple of months since we've done one of these and there's more going on in EverQuest II than there ever has been before.  While we've added all kinds of new places to play in and quests to do, this time we're more focused on the overall feel of combat and encounters.

For those of you who keep up with the forums, some of this is going to be things that you've heard before.  For those who haven't, some of this may come as a surprise. 

Many people will be relearning parts of their characters, getting used to new spell lines and working with altered buffs.  That's a lot for us to ask, and we realize that.  As a way of thanking you for sticking through the effect this will have on your first few sessions, we'll be running a week of Bonus Adventure Experience for characters under level 50 beginning the day that Desert of Flames launches.

I'd like to take a few minutes to talk about what it is exactly that's going on with the game, what you can expect to see on Tuesday 9/13, and our reasons for bringing you these combat changes.

The Goals of the Changes to Combat

Our goals in pursuing these changes to combat were originally aimed at addressing Character Diversity, Game Rewardability, and the overall challenge present in EverQuest II. 

Along the way, we realized that we had a unique opportunity to enhance other parts of combat and to improve on other parts of the game as well. Most notably, these changes affect the Encounter and Death systems and are aimed at providing more chances for positive interactions between people.

When You Log In…

What's going to happen on (and after) the first day of Desert of Flames going live (currently scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 13) is that you're going to log in and will be asked to "Respec" your character, which means you'll need to choose new Trainings, Traits, Traditions, and Mastery Strikes.

You're going to see that you have gained some abilities, and that others have changed around entirely.  Some spell lines that weren't primary or secondary abilities (e.g. even better see invis!) no longer exist.  Their lines have been shortened to reduce spellbook clutter.

Class Diversity

First and foremost, we want to ensure that each class has a fun and fulfilling role to play.

In addressing Class Diversity, we wanted to place a greater emphasis on people's final Subclass selection, focusing less on Archetypal roles than previously.  As one example, very few people start a new game and think to themselves, "I want to be a Generic Mage!"   That's a fun stage to grow through, but not a destination in itself.

If a person wants to be a Necromancer, they want to be a Necromancer.  There are certain images that conjures up.  The same thing applies when you say the word "Enchanter" to someone who is familiar with EverQuest.  It's our responsibility to ensure that the expectation is met, and the absence of certain abilities is not jarring. 

In some cases, we've added entirely new spell lines to classes, and in others we've made them the game-wide experts in existing lines, where previously everyone in their archetype may have had an approximately equal ability.  For other classes, we may have just bumped an emphasis slightly in one direction or another.

Abilities and Items as Rewards

In many cases in the current system, spell and combat art upgrades do not always feel like satisfying upgrades.  We've changed the system and all of the spells and arts in it with the goal of making sure that this is the case.   Getting a new or upgraded primary ability should be one of the most proud moments of a character's career.  Those are the moments people look forward to.  They need to have meaning.

The same thing can be applied to items.  The fact that items changed their stats as people leveled up made the game more confusing than it needed to be.  It was a very interesting dynamic to those who prefer to crunch numbers, but once a person needs a calculator to determine if an item is an upgrade, it loses some of the appeal.

General Combat Challenge

We had two issues with the general feel of combat that we wanted to address. 

As a result of the existing combat system, we've essentially had to make every creature red to be a challenge to a group.  In addition to being too limiting in terms of what is available for any group to do in the game, it also leaves the /consider ("color con") system less than entirely meaningful.   For a sufficiently advanced group, there's really just "red…and everything else."

Most of the combat system changes themselves target "you vs. a yellow or harder."   You should be hearing a good many classes saying that they're noticing little difference when soloing the things they've soloed in the past, since the majority of people weren't soloing things far past their level.

The idea is that there should be different targets for different strengths and formations of groups. Fighting orange and red creatures needs to be a Very Hard Thing, not the standard, and that system needs to make sense all the way through all of the /con's.

Additionally, at the high levels, certain professions could make themselves nearly invulnerable due to there being too many, too generous skill modifying buffs. This evidenced itself primarily in stacking certain buff lines to make tanks invulnerable to all but the most difficult raid targets. This caused us to have to make some truly insane high end content in order to provide people with any amount of satisfying challenge.

Naturally, as a part of these changes, since there are no longer classes in a state of invulnerability, the NPCs' abilities which only existed to counter it have been put to rest, and combat should feel like a much more natural, consistent, and fun challenge.

Content will be more challenging to the average person, and we will be permanently increasing the experience gains where this is the case. 

In some cases, creatures intended for solo players were previously less than challenging, and frequently unrewarding.  We're aiming to make them a challenge that rewards appropriately.

Greater challenge and risk merits greater rewards.  There will be "solo" creatures that are now a greater challenge, and the rewards earned from them will rise to match.

NPC Abilities in Combat

One other thing that exists on the live servers today is that NPCs often unload all of their power in a barrage at the beginning of a fight. This made all of the excitement and challenge of any given fight happen right at the beginning.  That unevenness will no longer exist.  NPC abilities are there to be an interesting challenge that occurs during the entirety of combat, and not something that if the average person gets in the way of, they instantly fall down and die.

More Things to Fight

The new combat rules let us provide a wider level range of NPCs that present the possibility for reward to you, at all levels.  NPCs no longer "grey out" (providing neither challenge nor reward) as quickly.

Improved Buff Usability

In many cases, we had different kinds of abilities that characters would have to choose between.  We used Concentration as the means by which a person would be told, "Sorry - You can't have this buff up while you have that buff up."  In cases such as that, Concentration is frequently no longer the limiter -- Instead, buffs such as Combat Stances, Forms, and Pet Stances can now be toggled at will, and toggled back and forth much more easily.

Concentration still has a role, but when it comes to these particular kinds of buffs, we're going for what we hope is a more intuitive method of communicating this exclusivity.

Character Choices

When we first set out to add Training abilities every ten levels, the idea was to give people a choice that would let them make their character more distinctive from others of the same class.

More often than not, what happened in practice was that there was only one long-term option that was far and above superior for each profession – Priests required their cures, Pet casters required their Pets, and anyone who chose anything but "the good one" was left out in the cold. That's not much of a choice. A character who chose the less than optimal one would only be able to get so far into the high end of the game and had their effectiveness severely penalized on their way up.

As a part of this revamp, we've removed the old Training abilities and expanded the definitions of each profession to include the parts of their Training tree that the game depended on, and others gain abilities they didn't have before.  Priests and their cures, Bards and their run speed, and so on.  In essence, the critical parts now become a part of the class, and there's still plenty of room for differentiation.

New Ways to Affect Your Character

The Training abilities themselves take on a slightly different form, in that every ten levels you're now able to choose one spell to upgrade to a new rank -- Master II.  These abilities are very powerful and useful, and there's a significant differentiating choice to be made.

In addition to the new Training abilities, the choices you make for your character will have more impact.  Resistances and stats both play a larger role in your character's existing capacity.

As one example, where Intelligence currently increases a Mage's power pool, it will soon also increase the damage they're able to do with their spells.  Raise your Wisdom to increase your ability to avoid spells outright.   Raise your Strength to increase your melee damage.

Beyond that, items and spells now exist that will grant skill raises for skills that could not be raised before.  Raise your Focus skill to be less likely to be interrupted.  Raise your attack skills to gain greater effectiveness with your abilities.

Grouping, Death, and Community

In looking at a few of these gameplay mechanics and the long-term effect they had on the way friendships were made and the way groups formed (or broke up), we decided that it would make a better gameplay experience for everyone if we made a few changes to the system. 

As a part of the next update, single-group encounters will no longer "hard lock," and in a way that doesn't open up the system to free-for-all kill stealing or infinite powerleveling. 

We are approaching this change with caution to ensure the game does not turn into something that's far too easy. This would be the case, for example, if encounters were to let dozens of people attack raid targets, which is why we're keeping the encounter locks as-is for raid targets. 

However, for single group encounters the loss of positive social opportunities far outweighs the protection that hard encounter locks were providing.

Also in the update, group experience debt has been removed.  If you die, you take the death penalty, exactly as if you were solo.  The system that we have in place currently is absolutely the most fair - Of that, there's no argument.  However, it has ended up having the practical effect of causing more groups to break up faster, which has to be our overriding concern.

To sum up these changes:  In any MMO, people come for the game, and they stay for their friends and the long-term challenges and rewards present in the world.  We're not just in the business of providing an interesting, fun, and challenging world to adventure in.  We're equally responsible to ensure that we provide a setting in which our game draws people together as best as it can.

If you'd like to read an even more in-depth discussion regarding these changes, you can find one on our boards right here:  http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=pround&message.id=2945

Other Changes

Before I go, I'll mention a few other changes of note. 

  • Since we've made so many changes to spells, you'll notice that the Knowledge book will have a new Sort button to let you sort your abilities a number of different ways.
  • The area in which rear attacks such as Backstabs can take place will be widened.
  • Power costs will no longer increase as you gain version upgrades (Apprentice through Master) of the same spell or combat art.
  • Casting times will be significantly reduced on many combat arts.
  • Race specific vision effects will no longer consume power when they're used.
  • New tooltips have been added for all spells and combat arts, containing details of what the effects do.  These tooltips can be completely customized under the Options menu, letting you include as much or as little information as you like.

In Closing

We understand that changes of this magnitude, even when many of them are positive, can be disconcerting.

If you'd like to take an early look at the changes, you're welcome to check out the Test Server, where anyone can come take a look at what the future has in store.

We will also be creating new pages on the EQII web site that delve into our changes in greater detail.

As always, if you want to keep up with all of the things going on in EverQuest II from week to week, we urge you to keep an eye out for our posts on the forums, where we keep people up to date as frequently as we can.

Good hunting,

- Scott