Everquest II: What the Shit edition

[Araxen]

I quit EQ II due to too many fucking skills and billion viersion of the same spell. like lvl 2x Root rank 1,2,3,4,5,6,67,78,700,700123,71234564, fuck it. I hate have to hunt around for spells. Just give me one version.

[mek]

OK, well, I've played EQ2 and never really gotten into it, its less bad than it was before though. Two things that NEED to be changed:

1) Combat. (Looks like they're working on this, good. Whack-a-mole is an apt description of the current system)
2) Textures. The entire game looks like a 19th century woodcut.

[xeg_IS]

Voting to combine classes as well. There are just way too many.

[Digits]

Textures in EQ2 are fine. Some suck, but most are pretty good when max'd out. At worse their a mild eye sore, and that is usually only in the distance when no other detail is masking their shittiness (CT). What they should really do over is the games water engine. Just make a good texture that can be tinted various colors, because right now it looks like liquid metal is pouring through most zones. CT, as mentioned before, is especially vulnerable to this flaw.

I'm waiting till after we see their plan in RoK before I say do or die with combat abilities. I've made two primary macros and I'm fine with hitting them a few times per fight, but I posted earlier that Necros are one of the best designed classes for spamming abilities. The class would be perfect if they actually replaced our gimmick swarm pets with a disease dot, a poison dot and a splurt. Hopefully scouts all wind up with just very powerful positionals and short term crowd control effects, and even if they don't there will always be macros. Personally, when it comes to combat I am much more concerned with the mob side of things. EQ2 named work because (good) ones drop tradeable loot and masters, not because they're fun to fight. They really need to press on obvious mob abilities instead of having them all spam 'MORE DAMAGE' abilities. Put a few lifetaps and complete heals in there. I dare you. CT just isn't the shame when justicars just do a group HoT and melee the rest of the fight.

[Rikkum]

Im gettin my wizard to 70 and give the game a try when RoK comes out.If everything else fails,hello VG.

[Mahes]

Originally Posted by Rikkum

Im gettin my wizard to 70 and give the game a try when RoK comes out.If everything else fails,hello VG.

There is a joke in there somewhere.

[Grave]

Originally Posted by Mahes

There is a joke in there somewhere.

I think it's metaphorical for "if this doesn't work out, I'm just going to kill myself."

[MrGraham]

I love grouping in EQ2, but I'll repeat what others have said - constantly using 4 hotbars of hotkeys as a tank is annoying as fuck.

Also - LEARN TO USE UNIQUE MODELS. A raid mob does not mean a bigger version of the same trash mob we've killed 300 times. I realize WoW does this some (Curator and Netherspite are both based on common trash mobs, Gruul is a big version of a common named model, etc), but not near to the extent EQ2 is. I haven't done the bleeding edge content, but I've done about everything up to Lyceum (meaning mostly DoR and classic stuff) and I can't think of a unique model boss off the top of my head (except maybe dragons, but I'm pretty sure they're just different colors). Hell, Unrest is the only dungeon I can think of with a boss that has a unique model - the one at the end and the epic x2.

I love the classes. I love the grouping. I think leveling is a good pace because it put some accomplishment into getting 70/100 aa's. I like the disparity between group loot and raid loot. DoR and classic questing sucks bad, but after Kunark you can probably avoid that.

Hang on, let me sum up Obelisk of Lost Souls:

Geometric shape trash, shadowed man trash, nightbane trash, nightbane boss, geometric shape trash, shadowed man trash, nightbane trash, shadowed man boss, faerie trash, nightbane boss, nightbane trash, shadowed man boss, THE END.

OK now compare this to the excitingness that's Labs of Lord Vyemm:

Dragorn trash, dragorn trash, dragorn trash, dragorn boss, dragorn trash, dragorn boss, humanoid trash, evil eye boss, dragorn trash, dragorn trash, dragorn boss, dragorn trash, evil eye boss, dragorn trash, evil eye boss, dragon boss.

Oh wait.

I like bosses that make me say "Holy fuck that looks cool". Not "Hey that's a bigger version of what I've been killing!"

[Braen]

Unfortunately EQ2 does indeed that this problem. The cause is the 6 month expansion dev cycles the orignial dev team setup. Also, the dev team had to be split on Expansions and Adventure packs. Anyone that has raided in KoS knows that most of the raid zones look exactly alike. The problem even exists in EoF to some extent and some of the raid zones are too short.

With the new dev cycle they are moving away from adventure packs and putting expansions on at least 1 year development time. This allows for more art assets to be created (I know people are impressed with the Sarnak model and especially the armor on the new skeletal system), more scripting to be done (I heard in an interview that there is a dev that has worked over 2 months mostly on scripting just for Veeshan's Peak, which has 11 raid encounters and is a persistant raid zone), more models to be made and more encounter design. RoK is a 65-80 expansion with a 1-20 starter zone for the Sarnak. EoF is considered their best expansion yet and it is a 1-70 expansion that they built in 6 months. They had 6 months to basically build a new game, new starter areas and areas for people 1-70 to level up in.

I can't wait to see what they do with the end game of EQ2/RoK with over 12 months of dev time to build basically all end game stuff.

[Kreugen]

We're totally spoiled by WoW as far as the number of cool/different looking bosses are concerned. Even many instances have unique stuff. What hurts WoW is the fact that the enemy is largely the same in every expansion. Ahn'Quiraj was 'new' if you don't call them Zerg.

[MrGraham]

WoW's not even that good about it. Out of all the 5 mans in TBC, there's only a handful of unique boss models (Robot in Mechanar, Kargath in Shattered Halls, Murmur, the first boss in Ramparts...). However they are leagues above EQ2. Before Maulgar, there were 2 minor named with same model. Before Gruul, there were like 6 (2 before the Ogri'la patch). Magtheridon there's 2ish. However with EQ2, not only are the dungeon AND raid bosses the EXACT SAME MODEL as a trash mob you've killed 4000000 times already, but they share the exact same model with 3 other bosses in the zone.

Graphics are usually the absolute last thing that I harp about in an mmorpg, but come on, EQ2 is arguably the second most graphically intensive game on the market and they decide to learn from the Gates of Discord playbook on models? (An entire expansion built from 8 models, awesome. I'm being 100% serious, count them - Noc, Aneuk, Ukun, Ikaav, Taelosian, Kyv, two headed guy with sword arms, and new stone golems. Only the boss of the expansion and a couple of animal bosses did NOT use those models - and this was a whole raiding expansion too.) In a lot of the raid zones they also took to using retarded boss names for most of the fights too, again in GoD style.

In summary - combine abilities and work on making raid encounters not boring and repetitive as shit and it will go a long way for me.

[Arrr]

work on making raid encounters not boring and repetitive as shit

amen. They have a long way to go before they can even hold wow's endgame jockstrap.

[Dahlrek]

Originally Posted by MrGraham

Hell, Unrest is the only dungeon I can think of with a boss that has a unique model - the one at the end and the epic x2.

The x2 isn't a unique model, it's also used in Loping Plains in the valley outside of FTH. I don't recall seeing it anywhere else though, so it's pretty uncommon.

[Digits]

I don't mind standard boss models, the best I hope for is a unique texture. Sort of like Venril sathir being a variant of the standard iksar ghost. The game needs the shittiest models replaced before it starts adding in unique boss models. Sorry for raiders, but it doesn't make sense to put in unique models, aside from expansion bosses, while things seen from 1-whatever are still epic fail. Actually, EQ2 does a pretty bad job so far (50) of retexturing old models. They only really started having impressive amounts of variety for odd models in EoF, such as bugbears and clockworks. Lizard men just have darker complexion for Thulians, and the bone kings in DoF and that's the only one I can think of with real variety aside from the tinted globes we see everywhere.

[Froofy-D]

Originally Posted by Rikkum

Im gettin my wizard to 70 and give the game a try when RoK comes out.If everything else fails,hello VG.

Vocabulary word of the day: Morton's Fork