Thread: Patch 2.2, Accessibility, Difficulty Levels, and Throwing Away Content

Originally Posted by Worm

Would you list some? I'm kind of interested in what you define as a crash and burn.

Also don't you think a game with really good content which is gated and has power creep would be reasonably successful? I feel like you're making too much of an equivalency between the lack of two things you don't like and a game being good. You still need really good content and game management, which more often than not is the problem with these games.

There is a substantial difference between the amount of power scaling between "tiers" in a game like Everquest and in a game that follows the formal WoW tier structure like this game. In EQ, there was a blend. The expansions were very broad and deep, with gear quality overlapping well up into the expansion, with the high end raid gear pulling ahead. In many cases this was with additional effects, clickable effects, or later with new types of stats that were relevant to the raids in that expansion.

Why does this matter? Because core power could remain steadily increasing, without a huge leap... but effects could change in relevancy from expansion to expansion, without characters becoming massively overpowered on the whole.

Example: Luclin brought gear with Flowing Thought (that was originally VERY rare)... but it introduced negative stats to pay for it, except for the most exclusive Vex Thal gear. PoP brought armor sets with spell enhancement, while GoD introduced DoT shielding. PoP gear was still useful in GoD. DoT shielding was just a nice stat relevant to those raids. Luclin gear became obsolete for most people in late PoP, but that was because the level was raised.

That is how gear should work. It should stay relevant in the level range, and become obsolete when levels are raised, not because new content makes the prior content in-tier pointless. You can have a whole array of effects, clickables, divergent stats, whatever for a level range of gear- offering a huge variety of options for a max level character.

Why would you not have thematic gear for your raid releases? They could all be comparable but follow different themes... all sets could be viable, but if you have three high end raids, you could have one set that is optimal (the effect provided) for tanks, one for healers, one for dps... it's not difficult to think beyond the Ilevel rush oversimplified system we have in place.

I still remember getting my (ethereal mist?) armor on my EQ cleric. Multiple planes had similar gear, but I wanted EM for the look- it was purple. Loved it.