Herioc Hate ( not sure I get it )Follow

I'll admit to only briefly playing my HC toon (mainly just to create him before the deadline), but I haven't seen any of the hate that some folks are talking about. Maybe a comment here or there but nothing I'd label as "hate". Maybe you're just being overly sensitive? That, or you're on a really nasty server.

The primary complaining I saw with regards to heroic characters wasn't from other folks deriding them or saying they didn't "earn it", but from the folks playing the HCs complaining about how hard it was and how they were dying too much, which usually spawned some sort of conversation about how the devs could have maybe created a bit more of a "kiddie pool" environment for new HCs to start in rather than tossing them into Feerott2 (hardly a newbie friendly zone) to basically sink or swim.

On my main account, I upped my 76 Paladin to 85, so it wasn't much of a jump. He's a guild leader, so was a known entity on the server to a lot of folks. I have many friends in the server raiding guilds so this has cushioned things for me. Still, I haven't seen much of the "venom" many have mentioned. This is likely because I am almost never looking for groups. Friends invite me when they see I'm on.

Edited, Apr 2nd 2014 12:27pm by KC13

plus one for the smiley face cjguy

Now, THIS is hate, for those who need a good example.

Hate isn't a good thing in either direction. But to smear every player who isn't entirely supportive of heroic characters as having inferiority complexes and implying other personal defects ("psychological issues"!?) is hateful speech in my book. Now I'm of a libertarian bent so everyone has the right to post their opinions but please, I hardly think it comes close to accurate to claim that "hardcore" MMOPG players suffer from low self-worth therefore they overvalue their achievements in gaming. Everyone places a certain value on their leisure time activities, whether on-line gaming, bowling, tennis, Magic:TG, chess, etc. "Sports", used in the broad sense of the term here, add spice to life for many people and, for example, while personally I can't imagine playing golf every weekend (I can't even standing watching the game on TV) but I wouldn't malign those who take it very seriously as having psychological issues. I'd accord the same respect for gamers.

It's accurate to say there is wrongness of both sides here. Some HC players expect too much "respect" and some "hardcore" gamers don't accord them enough respect. Which is unfortunate since Everquest needs both to succeed to survive, methinks.

So...you know, since I didn't know jackall about the HC I made, I used the portal stone conveniently located there in the Ferrott2 where I spawned, to PoK and then to Plane of Fire where completely undisturbed I could learn about my toon in nice safe kiddie pool.

I'm guessing I was only one of few who thought that was a good idea...

I just suggest to people to do the HC j5 merc quest then get the heck out of dodge untill you level couple times and know character.

No. But not everyone multi-boxes and powerlevels their own characters. So lots of people run characters in that range "naturally" and thus are affected when a whole hell of a lot of characters are dumped into the environment who's players don't know how to play them well.



I don't know if "hate" is the correct word, but again, the inconvenience experienced by other players is going to be greater when they're actively playing with other people versus just playing primarily with themselves.



Sure. But consideration for other players style of play goes both ways, right? It's interesting that you make a point of how others don't understand your style of play and sometimes unfairly criticize you for it, whilst simultaneously displaying that you don't understand their style of play and are criticizing them for it. Perhaps a bit of tolerance and understanding in all directions would help? For players who like to level through the game and interact with other players rather than just racing to the top level, anything which affects them along the way affects them. It's certainly legitimate to gripe about this. Just because it doesn't affect you because of your style of play doesn't mean that their complaints are groundless. Just as you want them to be considerate of your style of play, you need to be considerate of theirs.

Edited, May 2nd 2014 3:37pm by gbaji

"An idea"? Not sure that's the issue. I have "an idea" how nuclear power plants work, but you'd probably not want to put me in charge of operating one. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm quite familiar with how to play a melee based character, but have no problem admitting that I'd be a complete disaster trying to perform any where near acceptable with my shiny new Berserker character. Character abilities and tactics change dramatically in the post 70 game IMO, so unless you've played that specific class at least that high before, you're not going to play it well.



Sure. But it's all relative, isn't it? A percentage of crappy players will always exist in the game world at any given time. The introduction of HCs suddenly increased that number dramatically for a period of time. And, predictably, as people have gotten more accustomed to running the new characters, the complaints have died down. Nothing that surprising about it really.




Again, I'll freely offer myself up as proof that it's not a false assumption at all. I think that you're underestimating how many players (even long time players) don't play a menagerie of different classes. I've been playing (with a couple breaks along the way) since 1999, but only have two characters in the post 80 range. I'm not an altoholic. And people like me (or even people somewhat like me) are going to tend to use their HC opportunity to create a character that they're not familiar with at all. Why play a class I've already played, or am super familiar with. I literally picked berserker because all I know about the class is that it's a damage focused melee class and I'm sure they have some special abilities which make that work, but other than that, I have no clue. Oh. And they throw axes (although I'd forgotten that until I created it and looked a the abilities that came in the hotbars).

I doubt I'm remotely alone in that decision methodology.



I don't think there's a remote comparison though. There's been a vast increase in combat/AA abilities since Velious content was remotely current. A level 57 cleric didn't play much different back then than a level 15 cleric. Cast heals during combat. Cast buffs when needed. During a raid, get into a CH rotation (ok, that was something the level 15 cleric didn't do). And I'm not saying this to knock clerics, because every class was that simple to play mechanics wise back then. On a raid back then, my paladin assisted the MT when called, and clicked autoattack. I'd drop a group heal as needed. And I'd usually keep an eye on the raid's main chanter if there were adds being mezzed during the fight to quick drop LoH if needed (and sometimes be offtanking, but that was something that got more prevalent in latter expansions really). That was it. And I could make an argument that a class like paladin was more "busy" than others (during the fight at least, prep and initial engagement belonged to the shamans, chanters, and clerics).

Raid skill back then was more about groups learning to work together to manage mob push/positioning and prep. You usually knew if you succeeded in the first 10 seconds of the attempt. If you got good agro on your MT, and got a successful heal rotation going, and you physically had the resources, you'd likely win. And once that initial flurry was done, there wasn't a whole lot else to do except *not* do something stupid that lost the fight. Anyone experienced in raiding could probably step up and play most other classes in most raids and do "ok". Even the most complex classes only used about 5 spells during the actual fight itself (as opposed to prep), and that was usually pretty formulaic. Timing was an issue, but as long as you'd even just been in the correct groups to see the timing of various actions you'd have a pretty good idea of what to do. It certainly wouldn't take that long to get up to speed.

In a group? Holy hell were classes easy back then compared to today. I use ten times more abilities in an average solo fight with my paladin than I used for anything back then. Trying to jump into playing a level 85 character with no highish level experience is like that scene in Star Trek 2 where Kirk causes the Reliant's shields to go down and Khan is trying to raise them, and he's looking at these panels of controls with a zillion buttons and switches and no way in hell is he going to figure out which one's to use how in time to avoid getting blasted. Yeah. Kinda exactly like that.




And people complained about it then. Honestly, I'm not seeing it as a big deal. It's a short term thing where the effect of a ton of new HCs on the game world will cause a bump in the number of "clueless" characters running around. It's legitimate to complain about that IMO, but it is self correcting, so it's not that big of a deal in the long run.

That reminds me, where can I get one of those bobbing head birds?