by Moorgard on 2001-08-03
Ask Brad is pretty long, so we'll skip posting the whole thing. If you want to read it all, just click here.These are some highlights.
On why trivial loot code is to be implemented in Shadows of Luclin:
You're still welcome to go there, but if you're too high level for a given area, you won't be able to loot most treasure from the NPCs there. I'm sorry you feel this makes the space 'wasted' for you, but often lower and mid level players feel zones that were designed for them are somewhat wasted when higher level players are there monopolizing the area at no risk to themselves.
On why the mage epic will be allowed to move in character transfers between servers, but other epics will not:
Because the Mage Epic Item is tied to a spell, they'll still have access to it after a character transfer. We debated this for a bit and decided that, overall, it would be best not to go into characters' spellbooks and change the data there. We're sorry it's not totally fair but the alternative could have been very messy and we decided in the best interests of everyone to keep the transfers simple: spells transfer, but items don't.
On Brad's taste in novels (Brad has the same favorite series of books that I do!):
I don't think I can choose just one, but my favorite series of novels is definitely the Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny.
Roger Zelazny was one of the great writers of any genre, and he is deeply missed.
On why pets disappear when you zone:
Both technical and balance issues, really. It is more difficult to pass an NPC (which pets are) from one zone to another, but it is possible (for example, boats are really NPCs, and they move zone to zone). But we also wanted character classes with pets to have to summon pets every once in a while instead of them being persistent - it allows for different types of pets to be summoned and with some variation of their attributes, etc. So in that it was difficult to have them zone in the first place, it sort of made sense to use that as one of the mechanisms by which the player would need to summon another pet.
On having too much dependence upon the cleric/warrior/enchanter raid model:
We thought that there would be a place for both 'generalists' and 'specialists'. But it turns out that some groups and guilds are so concerned with being as efficient as possible that they sometimes exclude the 'generalists' in the high end of the game. This is indeed unfortunate, and were we starting over we'd probably make more core roles and then have the classes share those roles more equally. That said, I also don't think it's a problem of apocalyptic proportions. Hybrids and other non-specialist classes still get groups at high levels, are very productive guild members, and have a blast playing EQ from 1-60. It's just that sometimes in some situations they can be more frustrated than the core classes when dealing with extreme min/max'ers.
On Luclin screenshots and character models:
Absolutely. You should see them pop up on news sites as well as in magazines over the next few months, and we certainly have some surprises up our sleeves. And we definitely listen to the feedback we get (for example, we've made some changes to the new Gnome based on feedback we've received).
On the Sleeper, sorta:
And, as I said earlier, it is more difficult to have NPCs zone, although they can (for example, I heard recently that after a very powerful dragon was unleashed it traveled to several zones, slaying its enemies all over the face of Norrath).
Well, that's the first mention of it happening, at least.
Ask Brad continues to be a useful column, and we hope Aradune keeps it up.