Today I spent some time actually thinking about the MP profession. Don't get me wrong, I think about the MP profession all the time, but it's usually in regards to me. Now this is, at its core, a video game, so I'll myself that bit of selfishness.
But in many ways it's more than "just a game" to many of us, because it's a source of entertainment and also a social output for us as well. Like it or not, it's become a part of our lives. And despite what the newspapers and funny pages say, that's not an entirely bad thing. How we spend our free time is our own business and in the final assessment, spending your lounging time playing a game is probably more healthy than the 9 years of life the average american spends in front of the television set.
But when our free time, our entertainment time, is plagued with frustration and hardship, we have a problem.
In particular, I'm talking about the difficulties of playing our class, the Meta-physicist, in its 'intended' form.
Intended form. That's what struck me today.
Granted, I do consider myself knowledgeable of our profession and knowledgeable about the game mechanics as a whole, but I will confess that I can be rather short-sighted when it comes to seeing the world with eyes other than my own.
Over and over I've talked ad naseum about how much I enjoy my character and my profession and over and over I've said that any MP can accomplish what I've accomplished. That's what I mean by being short-sighted.
The truth of the matter is that very few can accomplish what I've accomplished, nor should they even try. That's not me bragging or me saying that I'm an outstanding player or anything different than another regular Joe with too much time on his hands sitting in front of a computer.
I've accomplished what I've accomplished because I play the game wrong. Now this is an mmorpg with endless customizations and one could say that there is no right or wrong way to play the game.....and they'd be true.....to an extent.
But what I've basically done is I've thrown out nearly everything about the Meta-Physicist class and attempted to transform him into a solitus soldier with pets. I took the parts of the profession I liked and kept them and then completely threw away the parts I didn't like or were horribly broken. My focus for my Meta-Physicist has been backwards from the developer's intentions from the very start. I essentially bent and warped the game mechanics to my own will, ripping away from the designer's original intent.. (click that link and read it over again before you continue).
So why in the world would anyone want to do that? Why would I, as a Meta-Physicist, want to deviate so far from the designer's original intent for our profession? If I wanted to be a soldier, why didn’t I roll a soldier?
Well there’s a couple of answers for that question. First of all, when I rolled this char, I had no idea what the endgame was like. I wasn’t a new player, but I had no clue about things such as game balance or what other classes were like. Anarchy online is, by it’s own definition a “hack n slash” game. There is little to the game other than deal damage, heal and mezz. There’s precious little strategical play in Anarchy Online. Coming from a background of playing ‘hack n slash’, this doesn’t immediately bother me. But what DOES bother me is that it throws all 12 (soon to be 14) classes into three classifications: Damage dealer, healer and crowd control. Debuffing does not work in most PVM situations and this is something that was blatantly put into the game and ignored for two years.
Where do the MPs lie in this? Well we’re a poorly implemented mismash of all three. We have tools for all three, but as we know, our tools for all three are poorly implemented or downright broken, requiring us to break our character profiles in order to be effective.
What do I mean by “break”?
Enforcers are damage dealers/tanks. They play their class effectively the way it was intended to be played, using the tools provided to them.
Simplified, soldiers are ranged tanks/damage dealers and are effective using the tools provided to them.
Adventurers use pistols/swords, as their profiles suggest they should and are effective using the tools provided to them
Fixers mainly use SMG and grid armor and remain effective.
Agents use sneaking skills to their advantage and fight mainly with rifles and remain effective.
ETC.
So how are we different? The difference is they are able to remain effective using their tools and their tools alone, we are not.
Overview of the Meta-Physicist profession
MPs profile suggests that our weapons should be our debuffs and pets (we’ll throw in nukes just for argument’s sake).The Meta Physicist is one of the most specialised professions on all of Rubi-Ka, preferring to concentrate all of his anger into a tangible form. Without his pets he is harmless and defenseless, which makes the Meta Physicist a tricky solo profession indeed. The Meta Physicist has much to offer his team in the way of specialist nano buffs, and also instills fear in enemies through the use of his powerful debuffs. Meta Physicists attuned with Notum are known to possess the ability to fly, making the Meta Physicist an interesting profession
However, anyone that’s played the MP profession past level 150 will realize quickly that our intended tools are simply not effective. You CANNOT provide a real benefit to either your solo or your team play using your nukes and your pet alone. Your debuffs are useless. Your stun is easily resistable. Your mezz pet has never worked. Your attack pet is weak and feeble. It will not hold agro, even if you do nothing but sit there and watch. Your creation weapons require huge amount of IP to wield for a paltry gain. Your dominate debuffs are nearly worthless on anyone with org benefits and towers. Your nanoshutdown has been rendered worthless by nano resistance boosting items. Your level 179 pet is in most ways better than your level 200 ‘tanking’ (laughs) pet and the powers that be feel that is just fine and dandy.
Meta-Physicist, your only viable option to not be entirely worthless to yourself an those around you is to turn yourself into a half-assed soldier with crappy AR, crappy nukes, crappy debuffs and crappy pets and hope that the sum of three crappy parts will meet or exceed that of one ‘good’ part. And it does. You can dish out insane damage for a “non combat” class. At the cost of everything that WOULD have made you unique.
With Notum Wars, a well equipped individual now has as much as 60 more nanoskills than they did before Notum Wars. This effects you in the sense that you’re
A) needed less for your buffs
B) your debuffs are less effective because your opponent has 60 more nanoskills than they used to (e.g. there are doctors that can CH while dominate+MQ is running)
C) or your opponent used the extra nanoskills to implant a shining Nano Resist head imp, making debuff landing MUCH hard than it used to be.
Nanoshutdown *should* be a terrifying prospect and it is, but not on our intended target, but on us. 160% nanoresist with 3 nanoskills required to cast. 9.3 second cast time, 6 second recharge. Whether or not it lands boils down mostly to luck. I don’t wish to play a crapshoot, I want to win using my skill, not the lottery of NR checks.
“Wait for shadowlands” is what I’ve been saying, but I’m not sure I want whatever surprises are in store for us just sprung upon us without some interaction. Look at the urn pet and how we can’t even get the EAT flag removed? Look at the nasty, ugly, CRAPPY pilgrim armor. I have the utmost respect for the devs, but that armor is pure junk. It’s worthless in the face of the other armor out there, with poor hp mods, poor AC and sickly ugly textures. Take it back and think a bit harder about what MPs *need* and *want* and you’ll see that the armor addresses neither.
Only thing that matters in terms of armor mods are AC, NCU and HP. This is a hack n slash game. HP is what keeps you alive, so there is no better mod. We’re a class strapped for hp and ncu. Emphasize on filling our weak spots (AC, NCU, HP) instead of adding more onto what we already have too much of (nanoskills and nanopool/init)
They almost had it right with the luxurious rubber armor, except for the part where they made it grossly inferior to the other armor that drops from the same set of mobs. Azure. If you’re going to make MP armor drop from Ian Warr’s lackeys, make it at least as good as the azure, or it feels like a slap in the face.
All of this is brought up time and time again, yet nothing is addressed for the 90% of the population that doesn’t have access to the resources that I do (read: phat lewt).
We’re neutered. Our voice, our pleads have fallen on deaf ears for so long, I’m worried that our weaknesses will only become more apparent in the upcoming expansion pack.
Now let me re-iterate that if nothing was done with the MP profession from here to eternity, I'd still keep playing with the same enjoyment that I am now. But I didn't always feel that way, so what's changed?
that changed, along with the addition of four of the highest QL towers you can possibly place plus the best org contracts plus ql200-225 implants geared toward things like SMG attack rating and ranged init, all the things NOT metaphysical.
Wannabe soldier. I can stand toe to toe with a level 200 real soldier and kick his ass back to reclaim WITH tms and behemoth running on him. So why am I not happy about that anymore? Because I didn’t fight him like a Metaphysicist, I fought him like a soldier, using equipment, weapons and armor better suited on a different breed and profession.
I’m an anomaly, not a Meta-Physicist. I’m not someone to look up to for my skills, I’m someone to look down upon for selling myself and my class out.
My pet, nanoskills and debuffs, the 'Key skills' (see above) listed on our own profession description page, took a backseat to having the best armor, the most hp, high weapon AR and the best evades possible, thus creating (taken from funcom's own game dictionary) A 'Tank mage'Key skills
Nano Energy Pool
Nano Execution Initiative
All nano formula skills
Computer Literacy
Nano Programming
Nanos
Combat pet
Combat skill debuff
Nano skill debuff
Direct damage
Healing pet
Nano execution buff
Nano skill buff
Pet buff
Root
Let's look at the description:
We're a pet class, yet I'd also consider us to be a 'mage' of sorts. So by their own words, a tank mage upsets game balance. And oh how true that is....Tank Mages - a term originated in Ultima Online, where mages could become so powerful it upset game balance, because they had both good armor, and good offensive weapons.
We’re not a support class. Why? Because the mechanics of pvm and pvp are so overly simplified that we are reduced to the level of damage dealers. There is no strategy, just hit, hit, hit, heal, mezz, hit. Since our mezzing tool is broken, all we can do is deal damage and in order to even accomplish that much, we are required to use tools foreign to us, the same way MAs had to do with the River 6s and shotguns. They got their fix pre-shadowlands, while we’re still hoping and praying that the suprises in store for us will amount to more than the usual crap we’re getting now. For all we know, our ‘fix’ will be larger nanoskills buffs and another pet with a 500 attack rating and 6000 hp.Support Class - Used to refer to a profession that may halp a team in a variety of ways, and is not focused on one specific task such as healing or doing damage. Examples of a support class are Bureaucrat, Enginner and Meta-Physicist.
I no longer want to be ‘surprised’ by what’s in store for us. We’re owed explanations, interactions and feedbacks, not +8 to mat met and a pat on the head.
Since we’re viewed as a ‘powerful’ class using the tools that Funcom gave us and since they feel we are fine and working as intended (without pulling a deacon and ripping apart your char’s profile and rewriting a new one) and not in desperate need of help, I want to stage a quiet protest in the form of a walk from one end of the map to the other.
Why a walk? Because I want to show the friends we meet along the way the REAL state of our profession. This means I want us all to lay down our conventional weapons and only use the tools that we’ve been given as Meta-Physicists. Since the devs obviously want us to be melee users for some god-awful unknown reason, we will use melee weapons, creation weapons, our mezz pets, our nano interrupt buffs.
If at all possible, when we do this, I would like all of you to imagine how your implant layout would look like if our debuffs worked in pvm and our pets were in the great shape that the devs think they are. That means 1h blunt for the creation weapons, max nanoskills, etc.