Customization Quest

[Zaela_S]

Hello! Yet another new server. This one is pretty different though.

First and foremost: there are no classes.

Instead, everything comes down to one thing: gear. The gear you wear defines what you can do, and how good you are at doing it.

While the familiar roles will exist -- tank, melee, healer, nuker, cc, hybrids -- no one will ever be consigned to any particular role. What defines a tank is that they wear tank gear. If they join a group that already has a tank -- or they just don't feel like being a tank anymore -- all they have to do is swap their gear to become a melee DPS or a healer or a nuker or a CCer. Or anywhere in between: hybridization is also a matter of gear. If you want to be a healer/nuker hybrid, the extent to which you are a nuker versus a healer is a simple matter of how much nuker gear you wear versus how much healer gear you wear.

On CQ, combat mechanics are greatly simplified in order to facilitate the customization process. Auto-attacks always hit, and the damage is minimally randomized. Dual wield always succeeds. Spells are never fully resisted.

The core stats are all important, determining which roles you will be effective in. Their effects are highly standardized:

STR: increases auto-attack damage by 2.5% per point.
AGI: increases combat ability damage by 2.5% per point.

INT: increases spell damage by 2.5% per point.
WIS: increases spell healing by 2.5% per point.

STA: increases guaranteed melee mitigation by 0.2% per point. Also increases the effectiveness of some tanking-related (i.e. +aggro) abilities by 2.5% per point.
AC: increases potential melee mitigation by 0.1% per point.

COR: increases guaranteed non-melee mitigation by 0.2% per point.
Resists: increases potential non-melee mitigation by 0.1% per aggregated point. Resists are aggregated so that the matching resist -- Magic if you're hit with a Magic nuke, for example -- counts for 40% of the total resist value while the other resists are averaged to provide the remaining 60% (15% each). So SvDisease is always useful rather than in just a handful of zones, basically.

CHA: increases crowd control/debuff duration and/or effectiveness by 2.5% per point (application varies by spell). Also mitigates crowd control/debuff duration/effectiveness against you by 0.35% per point.

DEX: replaces AGI/INT/WIS/STA/CHA when using a proc or clicky.


Finding the best balance of stats is a large part of the fun of the game. Most items will provide both bonuses to some stats and reductions to others -- an item may provide +3 INT, but at the cost of -2 AGI and -1 STR, for example. A casual player should be able to progress quickly by only picking up the loot that suits their preferred role (maxing WIS for a pure healer, for example), but a more hardcore player will be free to pick up multiple gear sets to switch to whatever their current group might need, or to min/max with no regard for roles, instead looking for the absolute best available combinations of stats and abilities they can find.

Gear will have enough variety to enable some interesting combinations in the long run. You needn't automatically have low AGI if you build heavy INT, but you'll need to make careful item choices to maintain a healthy amount of both.

Another thing: there are no permanently learned spells or combat abilities. Instead, they come from gear. If you equip an item listing "Ability: Minor Heal", you'll learn Minor Heal (and instantly memorize it if you have a space). If you take off that item, and no other items are providing Minor Heal, then you will forget it, and it won't be available to cast. This adds another dimension to gear choices and character customization.


It's also worth mentioning that there is no required grinding. Everyone begins at level 20 with 430 HP, 300 Mana and 300 Endurance, and that's it. Everything else is items. There is no leveling. There is no skill or faction grinding. This also means there is no early game/late game distinction, so raiding zones can start right away. Go get some items!

Not to say that killing things that don't drop items is a complete waste. There is exp. It is designed to be quite slow and not worth deliberately grinding out. When you exp bar fills, you receive a token (flag) which can be spent towards upgrade augs for the Charm you receive upon completing the newb quest. These augs are separated into upgrade paths -- a tanky path, a melee dps path, a nuker path, a healer path, and a CC/proc path. These represent the only "permanent," hard-choice-to-make type increases. You will eventually be able to complete every path, though, so don't worry. It'll just take a long time.


The rest of it:
*no long-term buffs (and therefore no laborious rebuffing)
*everyone has +80% movespeed by default
*respawn times are faster when there are more people in a public zone
*no food and drink
*no economy and no item trading
*no bank-cluttering quest items, but still some quests to do
*no need to bring the server down for mere content changes/additions



That's the main spiel, I guess! There isn't a lot of content yet, but once some more people start playing and giving feedback I should be motivated to churn out some more.

There is a website but it is still very much under construction. You'll want to grab the patch before you start playing though, as the server uses a custom spell list and plenty of custom text.

Oh, and a note about character creation: obviously, on a server with no classes, class choice isn't important. You still have to pick one though. Just pick whatever name, race, and appearance you want. The rest will be discarded when you finish.