Everquest II: What the Shit edition

[Digits]

I hope no one minds a break from threads about how imbalanced AV is and how Vanguard finally turning it around.

EQ2 is good, but it's not perfect and it has tremendous flaws. Despite this fact, the game mostly gets unending phrase for how well it has managed to turn around from the train wreck it was three years ago. Maybe it's because the game doesn't have a heavy following here, or maybe it's because we're all so proud of our little retard game pulling out a 3.4 GPA we can't bear to talk about its bad points. I don't know and I don't really care. I have shit to complain about.

All classic overland zones are bad. Maybe there's a great quest, or a good spot, but 90 percent of the time classic zones are good old fashioned terrible. This could be because of a hasty redesign to turn them from overland dungeons into something people can solo in, but the result is sub par and the more likely culprit is that these zones weren't much to speak of to begin with. The goon guild on Unrest sees many new people come and go, and the universal truth is that those who level in EoF/darklight love the game, and those who do not hate it. I make it my mission to guide newcomers to the game to the proper zone. There's even a good chance of someone quiting if they don't know that Darklight leads naturally into Butcherblock. The main problem is that quest hubs are terrible, and no matter how many times you try to 'fix' it by putting random quest npcs together you cannot get over the hurdle that the entire mob layout of the classic zones is awkward and schizophrenic and if you do not design the mobs around the quests the zone ultimately fails. The best you can hope with these revamps is that the zones become passable, instead of actively bad, but they are still going to be vastly inferior to EoF counterparts. You can design a quest hub like Darklight to blitz people through levels, or you can design a quest hubs like Steamfont with very long and drawn out quests that span 15 levels. These two zones are nearly dead center perfect, and should serve as an example for the rest of your leveling zones to follow. My point? Stop putting 10 quests at the zone line and calling it a revamp. The zone has to flow, not start and stop constantly. Look at the quest lines in Nektulos and Zek and tell me it doesn't remind you of someone with Parkinsons.

Lavastorm. This is an oddity because it's actually a good zone mixed in with the terrible release zones. If you take it for what it is, an outdoor gauntlet designed to keep a full group on its toes for about an hour, it performs it's job admirable (presuming you don't have group invis). If you realize what it actually is, an outdoor dungeon, it's a terrible piece of shit. Why does it succeed at one and not the other? Simple. The zone has no fucking loot. I saw 5 named in my 4 hours there today. One was a spawned named from a Heritage Quest, two were goblins who dropped no loot and the final ones were a 2 group and 4 group epic encounters. Because those are really useful in a leveling zone. Lavastorms only purpose is to look cool and be a giant fuck you to people who want to enjoy Solusesk's eye. Why not fix it? Why not throw in a few named per area who drop exquisites? Oh, right, because even if they were added they would just drop wooden chests because itemization outside of EoF is terrible.

Oh, right, that brings me to itemization. Good news, it's a cluster fuck. Named shit out wood chests constantly and for too many zones don't even give AA experience, meaning you get a wallet with 6 hitpoints and 30 disease resist on it instead of a Master scroll (always a good drop) and something that you might want to equip. If treasured items are going to be dropping regularly from chests there need to be fantastic legendary items in the loot table to offset the potential bullshit factor and masters need to be much more common. Varsoons is a good example of this, and may in fact be too good because the bulk of 30-36 masters come from this zone. Social dungeons aren't instances like DFC where it's fine to have only two or three masters drop per run, for group dungeons like Perma/CT/SE there is a serious issue of better loot and experience coming from solo zones in EoF. Just delete the zones if this is how you want it to be, because aside from heritages and the odd farmer no one will touch them. This issue keeps warping around itself over and over again until you reach the point where there are hardly any master scrolls for some level ranges. Even adepts are running short in supply as I get past 50.

Speaking of not bothering, how about those ghost and golem models? I enjoy fighting poorly textured human models and have since 99 but these are so abundant, so terrible and so poorly conceived that I have to bitch about it. Plus, the fact these still exist flies in the face of the current art directors declaration that he wants EQ2 to be filled with the most fantastic creatures possible.

Golems: Golems are not humans with a completely brown texture because they're supposed to be made of mud, or something. For how prevalent these are in all the dungeons it is idiocy that they are a poorly textured ogre model with stock animations. These look terrible, animate completely wrong and a just an eye sore. Agro run and root it and watch while it starts doing monk poses for absolutely no reason. Yup, that's a sluggish creature made of granite alright! Retexture clockwork gnomes if you want to be lazy about it, at least the pile of shit would die cool.

Ghosts: In the bible there is a NO sign under two men fucking each other in the ass and on the other side of the page there is a NO sign under EQ2 ghosts. Visionaries, those disciples were. They are a random race model, with stock animations and a completely white texture. Does this make them look like ghosts? No, it makes them look like graphics glitch. Beware the true terror of the 3d card driver error. Furthermore, they're hyper detailed which means they kill performance. Oh, and they're in almost every zone. These are complete trash, and I cannot believe they are so extensive and have not seen any improvements in the past few years. Make them transparent and float around, or are EQ2 artists too busy trying to perfect modeling Sarnak heads after Barry Bonds? Oh, and copy/paste the sound files for ghosts from EQ1 while you're at it.

One last thing, and hopefully this isn't accurate past 50 but I doubt it. Stop making us body pull every dungeon. If someone doesn't know about it dungeons are ridiculous with a full group, and a necro who knows how to inch towards a mob slowly can solo almost anything. It's garbage, and it needs to be changed.

Models, itemization, body pulls and zones. I've covered most of the issues that drive me insane whenever they crop up, and from the reviews I've read of DoF there is no indication that they are going away.

PS. Get rid of lamia vaginas.

[Draegan]

The last time I played EQ2 I loved my Dark Elf Assassin and the starting newb zone that got me to level 17-18 or whatever and as soon as I finished the zone and all the quests I got stuck so I quit because the commonlands and the other forest area were awful like you said.

The texturing is downright awful and that goes double for the animations. The Fae animations are great, and so is the world texturing. Anything else was an eyesore.

There are really two different games here. A shitty one and a decent one. Only bad part is the Shitty one is much bigger. They should really take out the classic? old? world and get rid of it.

Though I do have to say Freeport was pretty cool, minus all the little newbie zones laced into it. That was over done.

If the whole game was like some of the newer zones, and some of the texturing you mentioned got fixed, I might be able to look passed the silly combat abilities and play the game on the side.

[Genjiro]

Aside from all those which are valid points, and most importantly to me, the game is still way too fucking easy and just boring overall. There is not one class that takes any modicum of skill outside of being able to spam spells/abilities. Graphics suck, armor is still atrocious, and the game just feels like a giant patchwork quilt with random shit stuck all over it.

The game has made a lot of strides since launch, but its still just above average and nothing special. You know that bland protein oatmeal shit they eat in the Matrix movies? Thats the taste I get from playing eq2.

[boy-]

I wholehardly endorse the "get rid of fucking body pulling" idea. The way social aggro works makes no fucking sense, either mechanically or logically/realistically.

[Broham]

Redundancy in combat skills.

[Digits]

Originally Posted by Broham

Redundancy in combat skills.

That is self evident, and surprisingly not as much of an issue as you may think. I don't want this thread to be about things that they can do nothing to fix without irking half their player base. SOE has shown a half assed dedication to revamping the zones, and they have to realize that it isn't working.

It was mandatory to add Gfay, Darklight and soon to be timorous deep to show new players that EQ2 can be a good game but most people trying the game out have no idea that half the zones are good and half are bad. The truth is they have to completely redo the 10-30 zones, as in new maps and new everything, if they want to avoid the stigma of shitty zones. They are giant wastes of space, and have barely enough content for one quarter of their actual size. Butcherblock is one of the smallest over world zones in the game, but it is also among the best and lasts from 20-30 with a bit of grinding. Anyone who doesn't know about the quality different in zones is going to quit the game if faced with Commonlands leading into Nektulos. I've tried the game 4 times, 3 of which ended at level 18 as I just got bored and camped by the strangely stitched zombie.

Also, I'm glad I'm not the only person sick of body pulls. That alone is the cause for dungeons to be a simple cake walk for a group of 4 and more.

Edit: For fucks sake stop talking about WoW. There are 20 other threads on the front page for that.

Furthermore, I just ran to Cazic Thule. I ran into more named (2!) in the Feerot who dropped loot and gave AA than I did in a 2 hour run in CT earlier. I know CT is the quest dungeon as opposed to the loot dungeon, but come on.

[Dyscord]

WoW is finally taking the proper route for its 'old world painful content' and lowering the level curve to speed people through it. I can't wait to see the actual change in about 10 years when they finally finish patch 2.2 and start work on 2.3.

I never could get past level 18 or so in EQ2. It would start out okay, but eventually I would start just getting pounded by mobs. It would eventually turn into good old EQ1 where you'd kill something and wait 5 minutes to regen. Maybe I was doing something wrong, but the game just became a serious serious pain to solo (especially since to solo well you have to mash like 10 buttons on various cooldowns in different orders). It wasn't so much grinding as one pain in the DDR buttonmash combofest after another.

[Maique]

Originally Posted by Digits

Ghosts: In the bible there is a NO sign under two men fucking each other in the ass and on the other side of the page there is a NO sign under EQ2 ghosts. Visionaries, those disciples were. They are a random race model, with stock animations and a completely white texture. Does this make them look like ghosts? No, it makes them look like graphics glitch. Beware the true terror of the 3d card driver error. Furthermore, they're hyper detailed which means they kill performance. Oh, and they're in almost every zone. These are complete trash, and I cannot believe they are so extensive and have not seen any improvements in the past few years. Make them transparent and float around, or are EQ2 artists too busy trying to perfect modeling Sarnak heads after Barry Bonds? Oh, and copy/paste the sound files for ghosts from EQ1 while you're at it.

I only played the game till level 17 or something like that, and to this day i thought the ghosts where my piece of shit graphic card fault. good stuff.

[Arbitrary]

Originally Posted by Dyscord

WoW is finally taking the proper route for its 'old world painful content' and lowering the level curve to speed people through it. I can't wait to see the actual change in about 10 years when they finally finish patch 2.2 and start work on 2.3.

I truely am stunned that 2.2 isn't out yet. It's been four months and the patch doesn't really even contain anything special.

[Dyscord]

This is OT, but they're screwing around with the entire back end of the game. They're completely reworking the sound engine, and they've royally screwed it up, and they don't have any reversion control. So now they're stuck with their good changes mixed with their busted sound system, and no way out. So we're likely to not see 2.2 for a loooooong time.

Edit: yes this is about their retarded quest to get Voip into the game, but the underlying cause is their SFX engine is awful, doesn't work well with vista, and significantly lowers FPS for a lot of users. It honestly needed to be changed. Problem is... they've screwed themselves by biting off more than they could chew by trying to fix it like this instead of in a stand alone patch.

ANYWAYS this is about EQ2 problems, not about WoW's problems.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Dyscord

This is OT, but they're screwing around with the entire back end of the game. They're completely reworking the sound engine, and they've royally screwed it up, and they don't have any reversion control. So now they're stuck with their good changes mixed with their busted sound system, and no way out. So we're likely to not see 2.2 for a loooooong time.

Are you talking about WoW? And if so, is that thanks to the wonderful and much-needed VC integration?

[Genjiro]

How can you say redundancy in abilities in this game is not really a problem? Sometimes you need to irk half of your playerbase if it turns into the game being much better as a whole. You have any idea how much time I spent on my warden just exclusively doing buffs after a wipe? It was like 20~ clicks of random shit, group buffs, feathers, sow for everyone, plus the redundant power and resist buffs...its fucking retarded. Those should have been combined into a handful of abilities eons ago, and they are definitely something that could be fixed.

My brigand has 2 bars full of damage combat abilities I can use in combat, this is fucking stupid. Thats not even counting stealths, deagros, and random self buffs. Many of these abilities I could do without, or have them just combined into fewer faster reuse abilities. EQ2 combat outside of healing isn't reactive at all, you just push shit as fast as possible like a conditioned rat in a Skinner box going after a food pellet. There is hardly any thought about combat, its boring, unimaginative, and just....easy. This has not changed in 3 years, and its the major failure of this game.

Zones, animations, graphics, while those things you bitch about are are definitely important, they are simply symptoms of a much more serious disease....that being overall combat/gameplay stinks.

[Digits]

Originally Posted by Genjiro

How can you say redundancy in abilities in this game is not really a problem? Sometimes you need to irk half of your playerbase if it turns into the game being much better as a whole. You have any idea how much time I spent on my warden just exclusively doing buffs after a wipe? It was like 20~ clicks of random shit, group buffs, feathers, sow for everyone, plus the redundant power and resist buffs...its fucking retarded. Those should have been combined into a handful of abilities eons ago, and they are definitely something that could be fixed.

My brigand has 2 bars full of combat abilities I can use in combat, this is fucking stupid. Thats not even counting stealths, deagros, and random self buffs. Many of these abilities I could do without, or have them just combined into fewer faster reuse abilities. EQ2 combat outside of healing isn't reactive at all, you just push shit as fast as possible like a conditioned rat in a Skinner box going after a food pellet. There is hardly any thought about combat, its boring, unimaginative, and just....easy. This has not changed in 3 years, and its the major failure of this game.

Zones, animations, graphics, while those things you bitch about are are definitely important, they are simply symptoms of a much more serious disease....that being overall combat/gameplay stinks.

I knew I should have added the caveat: depending on your class. I know scouts are terrible, and buffs harken back to EQ1 more than anything else. The latter, at least, is being 'fixed' in the expansion but we'll see about that. I play a necromancer, one of the well designed classes in EQ2. They're broken powerful, certainly, but I only have 5 damage abilities I'll cast constantly in a fight and 3 of them are fire and forget dots. It's just a wonderful class to play, and it is the main reason I'm enjoying EQ2 as much as I am. I don't have to hit two dozen keys each fight, and if I did I'm playing my class wrong. Hopefully the expansion merges many scout abilities, and I wouldn't mind seeing my dots merged too. The only genuinely terrible necro design decision is the fact that our main DOT is 4 seconds long, and can be cast every 5 seconds. Heh, it's been a while since I got pissed over that so you can add that to the list. Just make all necro DOTS last 30-60 seconds and give us a lifetap, we'll be ecstatic.

Combat is the major failure of the game, no argument here. If it's not the class design it's the fact that most enemies don't have notable abilities. It would be fantastic for the game if they redid it, but look back at SOE's past attempts to 'fix' combat for their other games. Chipping away at the problem is the only way they can do it if they don't want to gamble their entire player base. What would happen if they fucked up the revamp for one class? Two classes? All of them?

[Zuuljin]

They are already reducing and combining the abilities in the new expansion. No use harping on this point until after that.

[Grizzlebeard]

While you can solo in EQ2 I have to admit looking back over the last 55 levels it's been one long, painful slog. The only reason I keep going is the perceived notion raiding may be as enjoyable as some of my level 70 mates are claiming. I just hope it's challenging because the one issue I've found so far is group instances can't be completed solo yet with three people you can tear them apart. A full group and it's just a challenge to remain awake to the end.

There are many little niggling issues I have with the game but these aren't subscription-cancelling level yet so I won't list them. One thing I would dearly like to see is the ability to choose to ignore items on the AH you have or have a higher version of such as doing a search on spell scrolls and having to go through 30 pages of spells you already have.

Oh, and a decent bloody map. Even with the pin-cushion nightmare that is the EQ2map I'd really love to see some full screen WoW clone map. Something that can be minimised to quarter screen or just a co-ordinate tab as you can do with the add-on.