Judging EverQuest Next

Hello everyone! How about those weekly updates? As you can see, my ambitious blog went from three updates a week, to one update a week, to... none. It turns out having a job, being married, and also generally being all over the place creatively (how about making a game in my spare time... or wait, a book, or wait, a 2d platformer!) makes it hard to get blogging done. However, I'm hoping that will change now. Speaking of things that are highly ambitious, let's talk about EverQuest Next.

EverQuest Next (EQN), which MMORPG.com named "Best in Show" at E3 without it ever being publicly shown, had its debut this weekend. The website with all the details can be found here. I've been very curious about EQN after MMORPG's decision to name it best in show over, you know, all the other games at E3 that were publicly shown. I've been thinking about the information they've revealed about some of the core assets of the game, trying not to make a knee-jerk reaction (publicly at least) regarding it. It has been tough, however, not to just give it glowing praise, given that almost all the news sites seem to be gushing all over it; Kotaku's EQN could fix everything wrong with MMORPG's, and MMORPG.com's The Future of MMORPG's lies in Norrath, for example. You'd be forgiven for thinking that EQN was the messiah of MMO's.

Don't think I'm bitter - I'm excited about EverQuest Next.  However, the announcement left me with more questions and concerns rather than excitement. So, let's dive right in to the core features that were announced. The following summaries are taken from giantbomb's summary page and also from EQN's press release:

EverQuest Next utilizes a multiclass system that allows players to pick and choose aspects of many familiar and not-so-familiar classes to create their own unique characters. The game does not have levels in the traditional sense. Instead, players through the class system similar to job systems. Eight classes are available to choose from during character creation and around thirty-two more (at launch) can be found within the game through quest rewards, loot, raids, etc.

Every class has two weapon types available to them, each with their own unique skills/abilities. Players can have a maximum of four weapon skills active in their hotbar at any given time. Every class also has their own innate abilities such the warriors' "leap" or the wizards' "flash" (short distance teleport). These skills can eventually be learned by other classes as well. Players can switch between their available classes at any time except while in combat.

This is the "level-less" system that people were very excited about. No more levels, no more grind, right? I'm taking the "wait and see" approach. Secret World also made the promise of "no levels, no grind", and instead gave a more obfuscated version by having equipment levels - players had to earn enough experience to increase the level of equipment they could wear. This ended up putting players into categories of equipment, (Quality 5 equipment, Quality 8 equipment), and, at the endgame, created the all too familiar "equipment gear score requirement", where a player's equipment needed to have a certain total gear score in order for others to let them into content.

EverQuest Next's class system sounds like it is modeled off of Secret World's and maybe a little bit of Final Fantasy XI's, as Kotaku's Mikey Fahey pointed out. I'm curious to see how exactly this is pulled off and how it is balanced to be fun. Will the game end up excluding players given that a whopping thirty two classes can be found in the game after you make your character? If I want to join a team, will I be rejected because I wasn't there for the event to unlock a geomancer (random class name I just made up) and "everyone knows you need at least two geomancers here"? Will there be no player levels, but my one handed sword skill must be high enough to use this new weapon, thus putting me at Skill 10 for swords? And, if that's not the case, what is to stop players from twinking (giving a level 1 character very powerful equipment) like in the old EverQuest days? I would love it if the game let you use any equipment you desired but scaled its usefulness to your skill level, so that your epic sword could be used on a character with no training, but the damage and speed wouldn't be as good as if someone with master training used it.

Moving forward, the next core feature of EQN is Rallying Calls:

[There are] server-wide Public Quests that can take months of real time to complete and have a permanent impact on that server's version of Norrath. These Rallying Calls have various story beat checkpoints, but it is not always clear what exactly will trigger the next piece. For example, a city is being built somewhere in the wilderness. Players can help or impede the progress of the city's construction by building walls, clearing nearby forests of goblins, or protecting miners from the dangers found below the city. Through the progression of the story, new quests will be introduced based on what players have done on that server's version of the Rallying Call. Once complete, a permanent change will have been made in that server's world, which may be completely different from what another server's community did. These Rallying Calls could include events such as constructions of city, multistage wars between factions, invasions of new races, and much more.

I'll have to admit, this sounds really cool, mainly because the description was the most detailed  out of all the core features. In my mind, I see rallying calls having various stages to which players contribute either items or quest completions, and each rally call could have two sides. Do you kill the orcs in the area and help with side A, or do you defeat the guards and contribute to side B? This feature interests me the most - it feels similar to Guild War 2's current Cutthroat Politics Event, only on a bigger scale with more branching paths.

However, the question is, how many branching paths are actually in the rally calls? A designer would have to make these events, and there are only so many paths that a person can make. If, in this example, players impede the progress of the city construction, do they just ruin it (which is boring; it's like stomping on someone's sandcastle), or do they create a goblin stronghold? In that case, we have less of a branching path and more of a back and forth pull. It evokes the great stories of, "you had to be there, man!" from the old EverQuest days. It also could solve the issue of developers taking months to make something that players consume in hours.

One point that concerns me is this: will the rally calls feel like a grind? In this example, it says that they could take "months to complete", and that players can help by doing things like, "building walls, protecting miners" etc. To me, these sound like daily quests that are available for players to do every day to contribute progress to an event. And these are supposed to take months to complete - does that then translate into doing dailies for a month before they change? Again, I'm trying to concretely envision how these bold statements could actually be implemented. Let's move on to the next point (because this blog post is getting long): emergent AI.

In EQN, NPCs will have specific motivations and preferences that direct behavior in nuanced and unpredictable ways. Players will find themselves in a world where NPC decisions are based on core values, not dictated by static spawn points. For example, Orcs may attack opportunistically because they want an adventurer's gold, not simply because a careless hero wanders into an attack radius.

This part is something I'm dubious about - how will a player notice this? In the example above, how will a player know that an orc is attacking them because they want their money? Even if the orc yells, "GIVE ME YOUR MONEY!", it can be assumed that's just what the orc's base combat text is. To a player, it will still seem that they wandered into a generic attack radius. Will players understand what the orc's core values are? Other sites have mentioned things like this:

 If provoked enough, those orcs may uproot their camp and move to a new location they believe will be easier to pick off wandering adventurers

... again, won't it seem like they're spawning in random locations? Or, like in City of Heroes, will they not spawn if a player is standing there? How is this not griefable? I can already see a griefing guild deciding to impede players' progression by just spreading out members to stand in all the orc camps in to prevent them from spawning.

Don't get me wrong, the idea is fantastic. I hate it when I see a group of NPC's standing motionless (I have been guilty of this occasionally). It's either the sign of a lazy developer or someone who had no time to go back and polish (I try to assume the latter). However, all of this work will mean nothing if the player doesn't understand why they're being attacked. As I said, I do like the idea quite a lot - imagine that, if you didn't want to be attacked by orcs, you had to leave all your gold and expensive equipment in a bank to pass through the area in order to avoid "looking like a target." Or, on the flip side, if you're in the slums of a city and wore something akin to a guard's uniform, the thieves wouldn't (or maybe specifically would!) go after you.

Next, we have the big feature that has been touted: destructible environments.

No modern MMO has successfully implemented destructible environments that stretch across an entire seamless game world – this changes forever with EQN. Every piece of the world is fully destructible and players will have the ability to manipulate almost all of it. They will interact with and explore the world in amazing ways; venturing down into the deep bedrock beneath the surface and using powerful combat abilities to blow gaping holes into the ground. The EQN world will extend far into the heavens and deep into the procedurally-generated earth through 10,000 years of known lore and history.

The press release reminded me of this moment in Arrested Development:

This sounds terrifying in a MMO environment, to be quite honest. The makers have admitted that a lot of environments will respawn after some time to prevent the game from becoming a crater-ridden moonscape. I have to wonder just how interesting the destructible environments will be... and how annoying it will get when you're running around and a wizard blows the ground out from your feet, and now you're in a cave and far away from your loot. To be frank, I'm highly skeptical of the entire concept; a lot of programming and art time would have to go into making this feature work. I would have to see it in action for myself to be convinced that it's a good idea.

And finally, the last point:

Finally, each character in EQN will have a unique story; they will not follow a predetermined path. Instead, they will seek out adventure, fame and fortune in a constantly changing sandbox world. The game will remember every choice and action that players make and will organically deliver increasing opportunities to do more of the things players like to do ... from crafting armor and exploring the wilderness to purging goblins from the forests.

This seems simply like the reputation system from the original EverQuest. Craft an armor, increase reputation with armorers, kill the goblins, decrease reputation with goblins, increase it with the local guard. To be honest, this part excited me the least, specifically the last line. Does any of that sound exciting to you? The choices presented are crafting, walking around, or killing goblins. What would make it exciting is a dramatic story that gives a reason to do these things. Personally, I would love it if I was a great armorer who was given a task to go across the world to deliver armors to a developing city. Then, in that new city, I could make armors with new ingredients. I would make my own story along the way, but I would have some guidance. I wonder if this is what it will be, or if it will just end up being, "Craft 2x armor, kill 10x goblin."

Maybe it will be like Guild Wars 2, where a large portion of your experience is participating in public events. I didn't like this very much, as it didn't seem personal to my character.... especially when there were twenty other people running around doing the same thing. I'm curious to see how EQN will deliver a unique story without predetermined paths.

There is just ONE last thing I want to touch upon. It isn't a feature, but rather a quote that came from MMORPG.com:

When I asked if they were worried about balance and how it’ll be obtained with all of these combinations and the many different weapon skills, the team just smiled and said, “We’re not worried about balance. We’re worried about fun.”

This quote made me very concerned. Sure, from a marketing/PR relation, this sounds terrific. We want the game to be fun, not dull with everything balanced and the same. However, balance can help ensure fun. If all the classes are fun to play but are not balanced, then people won't play the weak classes; choosing those would be seen as a mistake. A warrior could be the most fun class in the world to play, but if you see that you can barely kill one enemy while a wizard is blowing chunks out of the world and killing mobs with a flick of his hand... well, then you're going to feel angry that you chose a warrior. Or, in this case, you'll say, "screw it" and just play as a wizard.

There has to be a good middle ground between balance and fun - if all abilities are the same but with swapped out graphics, that's balanced, but not fun. If all the abilities are wildly different and the focus is on fun, but now my fun warrior gets trashed consistently by my fun wizard, then that's not terribly fun for the warrior. I go to Team Fortress 2 as an example of something that can be balanced (sometimes at least) and still have each class fun to play. Playing a scout is different from playing a soldier, which is different from a heavy, which is different from a sniper, etc. They're all fun to play with their unique mechanics. Except pyros. Pyros can go to hell.

I may or may not play a spy.

I hope, dear readers (all two of you, now that I've stopped blogging consistently), that I don't seem like a cynic or a troll. I would love nothing more than to have EQN come out and blow me away so that my next blog post on the subject matter is, "Boy was I wrong!"  However, I think people are a bit too eager to board the hype train and are not asking themselves and the developers of the game serious questions. It's a disservice to you and also to the developers, because now is the time to be asking these questions precisely to help them see things that perhaps haven't been obvious before. You would be surprised how things can change in development after people's reactions to an announcement.

If you're wondering what piece of news would have made me the most excited for EQN, it would have been if they announced it's easier than ever for their designers to make interesting and dynamic content. It's not the sexiest piece of news, but knowing that a designer can easily make rallying calls and emergent AI without dirty hacks (or editing files by hand instead of with a tool kit) would mean their quality and quantity would both be very high. The easier it is for a developer to make a core feature, the better it is for players.

Unless your developer is a spy. Then you need to watch your back.