Continuing on with my somewhat presumptuous 'Nifty!' series, of Things I Saw In An MMO Once And Quite Liked. I've actually got quite a lot of these to get out, mostly because I am easily impressed with shiny objects! This week:
Nifty! #2: Everquest 2's Heroic Opportunities
Launching about the same time as World of Warcraft, Everquest 2 tried a lot of new things. SOE had had a long time running an MMO of the type (Everquest 1) and a lot of...er...opportunities to take on-board feedback, tweak and refine. Not everything new was an improvement mind you, and despite the new things, EQ2 launched very much in the then-accepted tradition of being a very group-dependent MMO. At the same time, WoW decided on a slightly different approach, and well, here we all are today!
I'm quite a soloist at heart, but one of the clever-er new ideas EQ2 launched with, which impressed even antisocial loner me, was the Heroic Opportunity. Like most games of the type, you got new skills and abilities as you went up the levels; Hit Monster, Improved Hit Monster, Hit Monster Really Jolly Hard!, Hit Monster Like The Fist Of An Angry God!!!, etc, etc. This is all very well, and allowed you to get on with your job, either alone, or in a group; damage, taunts, healing, mesmerising, and so on.
However, at a very early level, you got an extra skill that didn't work quite like the others, but instead, started a Heroic Opportunity. Pressing it would pop up a curious new UI element:
A flashing set of symbols. On each of the other 'normal' hotkey buttons, the tool-tip description, in addition to the usual stats, would have one of these matching symbols. They divided into coloured groups based on class archetype; green for Scout classes, blue for Fighters, etc. If you had an available skill that had a matching symbol, you mashed it and the HUD would change. Eventually, by use of these glyphs, and a bit of behind the scenes dice-rolling, a particular Heroic Opportunity would be chosen, and the HUD would change to something like this:
For this bit, all involved parties would then need to use appropriate hotkeys, (with the required glyph on), in the required sequence. Once all that malarkey was complete, the Heroic Opportunity itself would fire, typically taking the form of a party-wide buff, or a large damage attack on the enemy(s).
It was a novel thing, once I'd figured out what was actually going on. By clever manipulation of the first stage, (Here's a List), any given make-up of classes within a party could work these things, and in a very hands-on fashion become more than the sum of it's parts, literally pulling together to get the job done. Of course, all parties work together in these games, but typically it's a much less structured thing, a lot more rule-of-thumb stuff.
Being a Scout at the time, I launched into it with some gusto, and would even go so far as to say that wanting to play with these, to make them work and see the potent magics, actually encouraged me to group more than I might otherwise have done.
Of course, like most of the things I think are neat, it was not without it's problems. The original incarnation of the system was very easily broken - one incorrectly mashed hotkey by any member of the party during the HO run would cause the whole thing to collapse, which was indeed sometimes the fault of a simple over-excitable button-mashing muppet, but sometimes also the fault of a beleaguered Cleric who really had to heal the tank NOW!, or have them die.
The early testings of it all that my little group of the time tried, had particular troubles with the Healer's contribution to this merry dance. Sometimes, in a hectic fight, the Healer just can't 'keep hands off!' while we muck about with collaborative pattern-matching minigames, and one yellow symbol in particular often came up, and our healer only had one matching button, and that had a 30min cooldown, or something.
I think the modern version of the HO system has been improved to not have it fall apart so easily on mis-mashes of buttons, but the underlying difficulty remains, in that often, a party is already playing this sort of complementary skill-use game, but in the more subtle, but traditional, manner of Tank-Healer-CrowdControl, and while ancillary DPS types might have the luxury of participation, the Big Three are often busy, and need their buttons in a very specific order already.
There always seemed to be some debate, on forums, etc, whether the HO system was worth the not insignificant effort of learning the chains and orchestrating the wheels, with various measurements in the attempt to work out if DPS classes should just ignore the HOs and go hell-for-leather as usual, for better output. The healers, and others with existing timing-critical functions, would point out their troubles too. (Apparently, some of the HO AoE blasts would also break crowd control effects, making them a big no-no in complex group/raid encounters)
On the other hand, it was often cited that these bonus attacks and buffs, while a bit random in their selection, were a lot more efficient than normal hotkeys, giving more bang per buck of power spent.
I never got to the bottom of it myself, and in all my time in and out of the game, have never been in a group that has pulled off a successful Four-Class HO, which is a shame, although I love the idea of it.
Mind you, as a largely soloing Swashbuckler, I always found the Solo-HOs to be very useful and helpful for solo viability. You didn't always need a group to make them function. Consisting of three types of button that I was always spamming out in combat anyway, it was no extra hassle to do them in a particular order for a significant boost in stats and DPS. I suspect that most people ended up using them like this; as a way to up the power of the lone adventurer, which is a shame, and missing the point somewhat.
Despite all this, I do think they're a clever idea, (which perhaps needed a bit of tweaking), and a novel and interesting way to go about the basic business of hitting monsters in the face, so...EQ2's Heroic Opportunities: Nifty!
(Although their choice of acronym leaves a lot to be desired!)