Everquest II: What the Shit edition

[Kreugen]

I did everything in KOS. The lag at the three prince fight was so bad I literally did not know if I was even pointing at the right mob or not. To do my backstabs I would strafe around the pile until they went off. Again, if I stood a little ways away and watched the same fight, I'd get 40 fps.

I was quite dismayed after having a generally enjoyable experience going through the group stuff on the way to 70.

[Grumpy Old Fart]

Originally Posted by Pinski

I find it fun playing an Illusionist the way they are. But people saying Illusionists are staring at 60-hotkey are full of shit. I stare at maybe 8 buttons a fight, nowhere near this "60" bullshit people are coming up with. Sure I have 10 full hotbars, but you know what 6 of those are for quick access potions or gear switching. While 1 is for buffs that are always up, and the other 3 are for in-combat abilities, most of which I barely ever cast during a fight because why do I need to mez in current EQ2 raids?

As a 70 Coercer (recently betrayed from 70 Illusionist, but it's generally similar), I have six 12-key hotbars on my screen. If you check around on many EQ2 "screenshot" threads, you'll see that pretty much every single raid-level class in the game has the same (or more).

Of those 72 keys, 12-20 or so are for crafting and "fluff" like run/walk, /follow, etc. Twelve or so are buffs. These twelve buffs (group mana regen, short-term group mana regen, self-shield, healer buff, group -hate buff, tank +hate buff, single-target +DPS buff, single-target -hate buff, group +INT/AGI buff, summon deity pet, blah blah) not only have to be re-cast every time the raid wipes, they have to be re-cast every single time *I* die and many of them have to be re-cast when any of the target(s) die.

Of the rest, I have a few nukes, a few DOTs, 4-6 reactives, temp power regen to single-target and group, a few stuns, a few mezzes, a few temp -hate or +hate buffs, mem wipes, etc. While this doesn't add up to "60", it's certainly a heluva lot more than your bullshit "8", and all of these are used in almost every single fight. And yes, there *IS* mezzing in raids sometimes. Not much, of course, and this is part of my bitching above.

In any event, it's clear that "60" is a touch bull-shittish and "8" is very much bull-shittish as regards the number of skills/hotkeys used at high-end EQ2. What's a fact is that THERE ARE WAY TOO DAMN MANY OF THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE. This is supposedly being fixed in RoK, so we'll have to wait and see.


- Gretlein Sweetcookie, 70 Halfling Coercer, Mistwalkers, AB, EQ2

[Pinski]

Originally Posted by Grumpy Old Fart

As a 70 Coercer (recently betrayed from 70 Illusionist, but it's generally similar), I have six 12-key hotbars on my screen. If you check around on many EQ2 "screenshot" threads, you'll see that pretty much every single raid-level class in the game has the same (or more).

Of those 72 keys, 12-20 or so are for crafting and "fluff" like run/walk, /follow, etc. Twelve or so are buffs. These twelve buffs (group mana regen, short-term group mana regen, self-shield, healer buff, group -hate buff, tank +hate buff, single-target +DPS buff, single-target -hate buff, group +INT/AGI buff, summon deity pet, blah blah) not only have to be re-cast every time the raid wipes, they have to be re-cast every single time *I* die and many of them have to be re-cast when any of the target(s) die.

Of the rest, I have a few nukes, a few DOTs, 4-6 reactives, temp power regen to single-target and group, a few stuns, a few mezzes, a few temp -hate or +hate buffs, mem wipes, etc. While this doesn't add up to "60", it's certainly a heluva lot more than your bullshit "8", and all of these are used in almost every single fight. And yes, there *IS* mezzing in raids sometimes. Not much, of course, and this is part of my bitching above.

In any event, it's clear that "60" is a touch bull-shittish and "8" is very much bull-shittish as regards the number of skills/hotkeys used at high-end EQ2. What's a fact is that THERE ARE WAY TOO DAMN MANY OF THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE. This is supposedly being fixed in RoK, so we'll have to wait and see.


- Gretlein Sweetcookie, 70 Halfling Coercer, Mistwalkers, AB, EQ2

Sorry you're right 8 is bullshit, I mean 9 at all. I only stare at 9 that matter a lot to me. The rest are pretty much meh longer recasts that I barely ever use as while they're nice, they just aren't important to any fight in the game. 2 Dots, 2 nukes, 2 aes, 2 debuffs, 1 proc. Those are my 0 spells in any fight I stare at and spam the living crap out of. 9, not 120+, but 9. I'm talking about abilities that I spam everytime they're up, or nearly everytime. Yah, and as I said, I have 3 hotbars full of in-combat abilities, but half of those are very situational that I don't consider them in any form ready for consolidation.

Also, get this, it's not going to be changing with Kunark, it's going to be changed when they feel they've finished it. But I do only cast 9 spells on my Illusionist that are part of the "spammy" feel of combat that everybody complains about. The rest of my abilities, not so much spammy, but hey I'm sorry you can't realize that you think you should spam everything!

Oh, and a Coercer has 1 single-target nuke, 1 AE Nuke/Daze(not exactly something that you should spam on harder fights due to immunity timers), 2 single-target dots, 1 ae dot, 1 true-ae nuke/stun, 2 reactives(1 for spells, 1 for melee attacks), and 1 magic debuff. Spell Consolidation is about making it so your abilities feel useful, and well I see Coercers have abilities that already are useful when they are casted(like their stuns, stifles, and mezes). I mean sure you could consolidate them, but do you really want to weaken yourself? Oh, and wow you think spell consolidation is going to change your buffing? I'm sure Paladins in WoW bitch about having to put their buffs up all the time everytime somebody dies, or they die. But, I guess that never got changed either did it?

[Menion]

Originally Posted by Grumpy Old Fart

As a 70 Coercer (recently betrayed from 70 Illusionist, but it's generally similar), I have six 12-key hotbars on my screen. If you check around on many EQ2 "screenshot" threads, you'll see that pretty much every single raid-level class in the game has the same (or more).

Of those 72 keys, 12-20 or so are for crafting and "fluff" like run/walk, /follow, etc. Twelve or so are buffs. These twelve buffs (group mana regen, short-term group mana regen, self-shield, healer buff, group -hate buff, tank +hate buff, single-target +DPS buff, single-target -hate buff, group +INT/AGI buff, summon deity pet, blah blah) not only have to be re-cast every time the raid wipes, they have to be re-cast every single time *I* die and many of them have to be re-cast when any of the target(s) die.

Of the rest, I have a few nukes, a few DOTs, 4-6 reactives, temp power regen to single-target and group, a few stuns, a few mezzes, a few temp -hate or +hate buffs, mem wipes, etc. While this doesn't add up to "60", it's certainly a heluva lot more than your bullshit "8", and all of these are used in almost every single fight. And yes, there *IS* mezzing in raids sometimes. Not much, of course, and this is part of my bitching above.

In any event, it's clear that "60" is a touch bull-shittish and "8" is very much bull-shittish as regards the number of skills/hotkeys used at high-end EQ2. What's a fact is that THERE ARE WAY TOO DAMN MANY OF THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE. This is supposedly being fixed in RoK, so we'll have to wait and see.


- Gretlein Sweetcookie, 70 Halfling Coercer, Mistwalkers, AB, EQ2

When we said 8 spells we are talking about DPS spells.(It's actually 9 I just logged in and looked at my hot key bar) As an Illusionist I am constantly casting the same 9 spells over and over and over again when I DPS. There are a couple long cool down spells that get thrown into the mix and my mana regen spells but for the most part there are 9 spells that I am casting.

At the moment I have 1 hot key bar off on the right side of my screen that I use to DPS these are my 9 DPS spells (2 DDs, 2 AEs, 2 DOTs, 2 Debuffs, 1 Melee proc) that keep Perpetuality rolling and 3 general use spells. I use this bar exclusively as I am still tweaking my casting order.

If you think spell consolidation is going to cut down the amount of spamming buttons you are doing as an Enchanter you are probably kidding yourself. SOE would have to completely rework the way Enchanters DPS or completely nerf our DPS in order to consolidate any of our spells due to the way Perpetuality works.

And I really can't see them consolidating our buffs as they are all single target single concentration buffs. The only real complaint I have about our buffs is the idiotic 10 second cool down on Synergism / haste, it's just annoying as hell when you are trying to rebuff after a death / wipe.

[Tarrant220]

I dunno, I enjoy EQ2 a lot actually. I played WoW hardcore for 3 years, was in hardcore raids, had BT on farm.....just wasn't fun anymore really.

For me anyways.

I've been in almost every major MMO in the last 5 years, and EQ2 in its current state I enjoy far more then I did EQ1. Yeah it was a steaming pile when it first came out, but over the years I feel they really turned things around.

As far as button mashing, I play a 70 Necro, I have 4 hotbars on my screen, my 5th is for crafting which I turn on and off for when I do crafting.

On my WoW toon (mage) I had far more buttons on my screen then that. So personally I don't have a problem with it.

Raids, I've enjoyed them, the patch really helped performance, I used to have to turn down partial effects but now all my settings stay the same when I go in and out of raid settings. So I honestly don't see the problem there either.

As far as classes go, honestly it's one of the things I enjoy most about the game, the class selection. I've never seen a problem with this in raids either like some have mentioned so I cant really comment on that, but all the raids I've been apart of have all been laid back and enjoyable.

I enjoy just about every aspect of the game honestly, theres just always something for me to do and I've never been bored in the year or two that I've played it both "casual" and "hardcore" (I hate those terms, they're retarded)

As far as MMO's go, I consider it to be one of the better ones to play at the moment. This may change for me as new games come out. I'm really looking forward to Pirates of the Burning Sea and Conan, but for now, I have been enjoying my time in EQ2 and will continue to do so.

All just my opinion of course.

[Grumpy Old Fart]

I did the WoW "raid thing" with a mage (and priest, etc.). I had 48 hotkeys on the screen. Raiding consisted of (after a few buffs):

Frostbolt
Frostbolt
Frostbolt
Frostbolt
Frostbolt
Frostbolt
Frostbolt
Frostbolt

-- OH NOES, ONYXIA IS BREATHING! --

Ice Block
Frostbolt
Frostbolt
Frostbolt
Frostbolt
...

Now, I'll grant that WoW has a lot of raids with more going on than that, but that's the general flow of things (some raids, I actually got to - gasp! - do some crowd control!*).

In general, I think WoW raids (post-Onyxia/MC/AQ) were a lot more fun than any EQ2 raid. But, WoW raiding guilds have more turnover than you can believe (the lack of loyalty really gets to you after a while), and the massive infestation of "u"-speaking morons/kiddies (even on RP servers) really starts to grate on the nerves after a while.




- Gretlein Sweetcookie, 70 Halfling Coercer, Mistwalkers, AB, EQ2






* And WoW doesn't have this steaming-pile-of-bullshit design decision to make "Epic" targets who are mostly immune to every single damn CC/fun spell I have. Yeah, I said it, "Fuck YOU, SoE designer that made that decision!". God, I feel better.

[Tarrant220]

You played a mage in WoW and your going to tell me that Raid bosses were effected by your CC?

um no.

[Kuriin]

Uhm, I think what he's trying to say is that epic monsters in EQ2 make you unable to even cast some spells on them.

Granted, there are some spells that are specifically for epic bosses (the epic stun for instance), but that's it. I think.

[Moontayle]

My wife and I both got reactivated and once her promotion kicks in at the end of October, we're looking at EQ2 as our MMO until WAR comes out. It's been about a year and a half since I last played, about 2 years for her and except for the massive amount of skills you get, it's like playing an entirely new game. I'm eager to see what Kunark brings to the table.

[The Hiram Key]

Originally Posted by Braen

We have been raiding for the last couple of months and never have a "slideshow". Were you experiencing this in certain raid spots? All the zones in KoS (Labs/HoS/LoA/DT) have been fine. Even the EoF stuff we started working on has not had any lag issues from any of our raiders. I don't even have to turn down my normal graphics to play, like some people report.

Not that I want to start trouble, and I am well aware of how you think, how you speak, and how you operate (read: spin) but Mistwalkers first raid was on or about August 17th 2007. When I read your "last couple of months" I get the impression that you are trying to say you have been solidly raiding for those couple of months, when that clearly is not the case. And that was one raid that week. IIRC you guys didn't flesh out a full raid schedule until the beginning of September.

Edit: There is nothing wrong with Mistwalkers raiding, that is not what I am trying to say here. I think you are misrepresenting your raiding experience in an attempt to show you have alot of experience with raids and the graphics issues (or as you state, lack of). Just wanted to clarify that as it's easy to misread.

Additionally, and not to interupt your endless blowjob of EQ2, every raider has graphics issues and graphics lag on raids. Perhaps a very, very, very small percentage of the playerbase with super uber machines runs full bore in raids, but even they turn off the shadows and "tweak" their settings to improve performance. If noone is complaining, they are either just fixing their own graphics and not saying anything (which is what most people do) or you flat out aren't listening, or are busy with something else and missed it.

Alot of the stuff you post here is spot on, but this last one is chock full of bullshit and spin. Performance has increased, and lag has decreased, and people have learned to adapt and play with their settings to squeeze out the best they can get.

It's not the utopia graphics wise on raids that you are trying to portray.

[MrGraham]

I have a pretty sweet computer and it still takes a solid 60 seconds for Alindar to show up in Qeynos Harbors. EQ2's graphical settings are so tweakable though that I can experience lag like that on nearly the highest settings, or I can turn it down significantly and run two instances of it with very little lag.

[The Hiram Key]

Originally Posted by MrGraham

I have a pretty sweet computer and it still takes a solid 60 seconds for Alindar to show up in Qeynos Harbors. EQ2's graphical settings are so tweakable though that I can experience lag like that on nearly the highest settings, or I can turn it down significantly and run two instances of it with very little lag.

Yes theres so many options (and of course, the tooltips for the options make perfect sense, if you are an engineer familiar with the graphics engine) it takes time. Shadows, spell effects, and "shown" detailed characters seem to be the most obvious performance killers. Number of player torches and ocean setting as well.

[Grumpy Old Fart]

OK, it's getting fairly pointless to argue about EQ2's graphics. Obviously, some are more open-minded and critical, and some are kissing dev ass to get their guild RoK beta slots (*cough* no names, but get me in beta, Braene! *cough*).

I think my PC setup is about "average" for today*, and the "G" for "Good" graphics setting on the Fetish Nightfall UI works just fine for any 24-man raiding situation, as long as the nVidia CP isn't forcing any AA/AF type stuff. With that setting, everything looks decent enough to not distract from the experience.

Having the option to hit up "Extreme Quality" mode for some graphical sweetness when not raiding is just icing on the cake, although shadows still just "poof" after a while. The - naive - part of me wants to think that SoE would be capable of hiring a single programmer who could track down this bug.

This doesn't argue against my - and many others' - point above that the EQ2 graphics engine needs to be 100% scrapped and re-written. Let's just leave it at that, m'kay?




*C2Duo e6600 (water-cooled, over-clocked), 8800GTX (over-clocked), 2mb Mushkin RAM goodness, Raptor drives, SB x-Fi sound, etc.

[Twobit Whore]

I'm sorry but that system is well above average. In fact, it is just about top of the line.

[Grumpy Old Fart]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

I'm sorry but that system is well above average. In fact, it is just about top of the line.

Oh. Sorry then. It seems like it's been a year since I started ordering that system. I haven't really been keeping up on PC hardware much since then, so assumed there was much nicer/faster stuff out these days.