Hate for heroic characters?Follow

Why do so many people automatically assume your a terrible player if your character was boosted to 85? Been playing my SK. He was lvl 60ish when I took the boost. Since then I am now a ways into 87. I have epic 1.5 and an extra 200 AA. Managed to upgrade 5 pieces of my armor and all of it has augmentations in it.

I see alot of it in chat and last night tried to get into a House of Thule group and they asked if I was heroic and immediately stopped replying when I told them I was.

I think several factors come into play. The first is that HC were given so much as far as level, AAs and gear is concerned. I would say that most of the established player base feel that they are superior because they earned their levels, AA and gear.

I think the second reason is comfort level and being content. So many players have found there core play team either being a box army, or a regular friend or two to play with. Over the years a lot of players have been burned by inviting strangers who go afk for a long time, who don't know their role in group so they wipe the group messing up the xp grind etc, or tired of carrying a player who doesn't pull their weight. So I would say a lot of players have given up on trying new people.

The third reason is the ugly "newbie green" armor tint HC are given. You can spot a HC a mile away.

I hope I'm not sounding like a hater of HC. I wish the HC the best. I hope your able to move forward and enjoy the game. I was just answering the question as I see it.

Mostly this. Whether it's warranted or not is another discussion, but that's the biggie, I think.

Before HC hit I allready had a nice red and black dye going. I hate to say it but I guess there are alot of dumb HC. I noticed this doing the J5 quest and the quest "Panting Lizard" Go to any of the lizard camps and there are about a dozen corpses and plenty of others in the quest areas for J5. I can understand the lizard camps having corpses its easy to pull a mess but I can't figure out the corpses near the npcs for the J5 as they seem pretty trival. I suppose I only did this quest on my SK maybe other classes have it a lot harder.

Just wish people would think abit before deciding your a complete newb. I mean lvl 87 epic 1.5 j5 merc should kinda seperate me from the nubs abit? Haven't died yet since the ding to 85.

lol they had that special server where everybody started at level 51. its the same thing except they raised the level to 85 and its on blue servers.

The whole point of HC is for players to try something new.... Most people do not want to have to level and AA a new character. Its a way to relieve the burden of creating new character so that people stuck with nothing to do in End game can try something new. Its also designed to give returning/new players a chance to catch up. Yes you will have players that have NO clue how to play their new class... some may know how to play at lower levels but be clueless at higher levels.... well that can still happen regardless of rather or not they started at level 85 or level 1. Just because a person starts at level 1 doesnt make them a good player. Its easy to get to level 85 without knowing how to play your class. Through Power leveling and using easy mode to let merc do all your fighting and others etc.. you can easily end up with people being unable to play their class.

This idea that somehow all HC players will be bad is a cop out. People are angry because they like being angry. These are the same people that argued when Kunark release had Monks.. they argued when heck levels were removed.. they argued when disciplines were added.. they argue every single time something changes. Thats all they do.. and what they enjoy doing. There are going to be people who do not know how to play a class. HELP them.. if you see someone doing something that may be bad.. tell them... Where is the sense of community that used to exist that helped new players etc? Why cant we teach people how to play..instead of going Dr00dz on them and calling them Noob's and that they suxxor. We need to stop acting so elitist, yeah your going to have some players that will never learn their class or figure out what to do. But they wouldnt learn regardless of what level they start. We should just support them.. because you never know when you will find that new person that will shine in the class and become your greatest ally.

Sure. There are some players who will just PL their characters all the way up and thus could end out at level 85 (or higher) with no clue how to play their class. But you'll note the qualifiers there. Some. Could. With heroic characters, barring the rare exception of someone who chooses to create an HC of a class they've already played to 80+ level in the game, everyone is going to be that clueless. So what is the exception with non heroic characters becomes the norm.

And I don't think it's that the players are "bad", but that they aren't experienced with the class they're playing. There are sufficient differences between the class abilities (especially in the post 80 game) that no amount of skill playing one class is going to allow anyone to be more than "adequate" at playing another. Point being that people normally expect a certain degree of player skill in the post 80 game. The leveling rate has slowed sufficiently at that point that you can't just sit back and let the merc handle everything. Most players have learned to play their characters "well" by that point. So you toss in someone who hasn't, and they'll stick out.

Again though, it's not about the players being "bad", or something. But being a pro golfer doesn't mean you can play basketball at a pro level. Same deal here. You're asking people to start out playing a class for the first time (in most cases) at what amounts to the "pro" level. And that's going to result in a lot of people falling flat on their faces.

Sure. So pick golf and bowling if that's an easier analogy to wrap you head around. It's not about the physical restrictions, but that to become "good" at anything requires time and practice doing that precise thing. The time and practice you spent learning to consistently bowl strikes isn't going to translate into consistently hitting a golf ball onto the green (or vice versa). Similarly, the time and practice you've spent learning how to use the skills/spells/abilities of one class isn't going to translate at all to knowing how to use those on another.




Absolutely. But in the first week? Not so much. I suspect that's where a lot of the "hate" folks are seeing is coming from. And to be perfectly fair, if I were invited to a group and saw green armored folks, I'd probably steer clear too. At least for now. Certainly, this last weekend, which is when most people decided to create their HCs (judging purely by the mass of people and corpses I saw anyway). Give it a couple weeks, and a dye job, and no one will know or care if that character is HC or not. They'll judge based on how well you play and nothing else.

I think it will take more than two weeks. Yeah, maybe once upon a time playing a toon for two weeks intensively in a wide variety of situations---solo, groups, raids---could get you that level of experience but I doubt that can be accomplished anymore. Really skilled play requires experience which takes a lot of time in game: knowing how spells are resisted, knowing when to cast heals or nukes, knowing how mobs react (although the agro meter helps with that NOW), knowing how to coordinate with other players (especially in raids), etc.

I will agree that within two weeks you'll see a significant decline in HCs being played as players get bored or tired of their new creations. As time passes remaining players who still log in should start getting better with their HCs and at after that point the key easy measure of competence will be whether a HC has attained 90,95 or even 100.

Sure. I kinda see that as being "adequate" though. My main is a paladin. So mostly melee. I chose berserker as my HC. While I obviously had no issues with just doing the basic melee thing, and wasn't even terrible at it (taking on blues with out much sweat), I know for a fact that the depth of skill just isn't there. With my Paladin, I can run into an "oh crap!" moment and know a host of different things I can do to get through it. I know exactly which defensive skills to activate depending on the severity of the situation. I've literally got 4 different clickable defensive abilities with varying degrees of effectiveness. I've got 4 or so heals I can choose from at any given time. Do I use the one that damages the mob and heals his target, or the one that heals his target and places a damage mitigation buff on him as well, or the one that creates a twinheal, or do I just direct heal, fast cast, slow, AE, group? And that's on top of several agro control abilities, a fade, stuns, interrupts, etc. All of which I can rapidly activate, fingers flying about, in well practiced movements. Cause I've been playing this character for a long time.

On the beserker? I can turn on autoattack. And click the bonus damage thingies when they come up. Seriously. That's all I've learned about that class so far. I know that every single one of those bonus damage thingies comes with some additional effects. Effects that I want to learn how and when to use properly. I also assume that some abilities will work in conjunction with others. But I don't know which ones, and how to do that yet. Point being, that anyone can just do the basic stuff. Start a mage on day one, and it doesn't take long to send in pet and join with nukes. But the difference between just playing "ok", and playing "well" can be massive. The instinct just isn't there. I got in over my head on the berserker one time and I remember thinking "I don't know what the hell to do here". Ultimately, I ended out just running for the zone (and even made it). Point being that there were probably 8 different things I could have done that could have handled the situation without me just having to run. But I not only didn't know what they were, but even if I did, likely couldn't think of them or find the right buttons for them when in a panic situation.

Oh. Birdbaths are no longer needed btw. They're still there, but just give you a message saying you don't need to use them. You can just move an aug into an aug slot on an item to put it in. Right clicking the aug slot on the item will remove the aug if you have the correct distiller (it'll prompt you asking if you want to remove it, so no danger accidentally removing stuff).

Hah! Yeah, I remember the days of handing things in, 4 at a time, unstacked. Good times!

Oh Jesus. A wizard? While not the hardest character to start out from scratch with (I'd hand chanter that honor from an HC perspective), it's pretty much a death sentence in that starting zone. You *can* do the burst dps with a healer thing (cause I do it), but probably not against dark blues at that level, and if you don't know which spells to cast up ahead of time (*cough* XXXX Guard *cough*) you'll likely die before your healer gets a spell off. And hell, if you don't know which 5 or 6 nukes out of the couple dozen you get in every 5 level spread you actually want to have loaded (as opposed to all the incredibly situational ones), you're humped anyway.

And for a complete EQ newbie? Wow. Bad choice.