Rant: How Everquest is killing itself for me

[Archeiron]

I have given this "flavour" of concern alot of thought of late as I ponder why so many of us have been playing this game for so many years now when it is painfully easy to play and even killing this most difficult encounter mobs requires rudimentary skills at best.

I haven't put any thought into how to fix eq but for "future titles" I would say

DO:

Make weapon type immune mobs.

Wanna make that warrior with all melee skills maxed usefull? Set mob 1 to take 1.5 x dmg from blunt and .5 x dmg from peircing, then mob 2 to take 1.5 x slashing .5 x blunt... etc

This would put some thought+action requirements on melees from one fight.

Make full melee immume mobs.

Make mobs that take zero melee dmg but can be taunted that then need to be nuked to death


Make mobs run MUCH slower when "auto attack" is on

Wizard overnukes? Reduce melee frustration by making the mobs move from melee spot to offending caster MUCH slower. Once this is in place you can make mobs that intentionally change aggro but since they move around slowly you can follow them around or

Give some melee classes the ability to physically grapple a mob in place

Can't taunt enough to hold the mob off the wizards? No problem, use your handy-dandy mob immobilizer disc to stop the sob from running around. This disc might be something that could be added now and given to warriors *shrug*

Construct a melee system so that hitting autoattack and occasionally tapping one other key is not enough

Introduce more interactivity during melee, make people attack, then make decisions about which "attack supplement" key to press at any given moment to maximize their dmg output. Still working on what such a system would look like btw


Construct a spell system so that chain nuking/healing is either impossible, or inefficient when compared to a more finesse approach

Same as melee but to remove the monotony for casters

[Seij]

EQ is how it is... and it will remain pretty much the same forever. This is also the reason why I play a monk; while it's still a purely melee class, I can still get a little enjoyment out of the game by being a big help to the raid by pulling and corpse retrieval. Call me crazy but I think it's fun =)

I hope they take this shit into consideration for EQ2.

[kasey]

A big problem is there is no skill required any more.

aye, still i am having fun.I suggest you box another char or something kreugen.Had tons fun today playing two at once.

[Fogel]

Back in the day, having more then 40 people would be serious lag. Looking at a /who list at a trakanon raid showing 36 people, everyone would bitch about how laggy it was. Fast forward to luclin, you'd look at a /who list at an emp raid showing 50 people and everyone would bitch about how we need 10 more.

[teauvian]

Originally posted by Archeiron
Make full melee immume mobs.

Make mobs that take zero melee dmg but can be taunted that then need to be nuked to death


Make mobs run MUCH slower when "auto attack" is on

Wizard overnukes? Reduce melee frustration by making the mobs move from melee spot to offending caster MUCH slower. Once this is in place you can make mobs that intentionally change aggro but since they move around slowly you can follow them around or

Give some melee classes the ability to physically grapple a mob in place

Can't taunt enough to hold the mob off the wizards? No problem, use your handy-dandy mob immobilizer disc to stop the sob from running around. This disc might be something that could be added now and given to warriors *shrug*

a) Grats, half the guild is useless. What would be the point of having rangers, monks, paladins, shadowknights, or rogues for this fight may I ask? OK, maybe rangers and paladins for buffs and a monk to pull, but still you are making them essentially useless.

b) Yeah, good one, lets give every class a 0 cost Snare with no resist check and no risk whatsoever. I could target a mob while invis then run to a safe spot and click on auto attack and voila, instant risk free snare.

c) What sense does it make that a mere human or elf or dwarf could totally restrain a god the size of a three story building for any period of time?

[Archeiron]

a) Grats, half the guild is useless. What would be the point of having rangers, monks, paladins, shadowknights, or rogues for this fight may I ask? OK, maybe rangers and paladins for buffs and a monk to pull, but still you are making them essentially useless.

a) this is a muppet comment. Rangers, paladins, sks etc have multiple weapon skills and in "new_game_00" there is no reason for them not to have enough skill variety to make them usefull in the right encounters.

Equal, but not Identical. The Melee classes don't need to be equally usefull in every encounter, they just need to be more than useless in all and especially good in some at all levels. There is no reason why encounter A can't favour rangers and warriors, while encounter B favours paladins and sks provided it all works out in the wash so that at a given level range across a good set of mobs all classes can be usefull when used correctly.

b) Yeah, good one, lets give every class a 0 cost Snare with no resist check and no risk whatsoever. I could target a mob while invis then run to a safe spot and click on auto attack and voila, instant risk free snare.

b) normal mobs need to be able to run so that they be pulled and so they can chase players. TOO MANY high level encounter mobs are perma rooted for any number of reasons. This is a no risk root, so downgrading this to snare and limiting the range to a certain circle would't change things much.

c) What sense does it make that a mere human or elf or dwarf could totally restrain a god the size of a three story building for any period of time?

This is a fucktard comment on so many levels...

what sense does it make to have a mere dwarf or elf or human being able to harm or slay a god the size of a three story building?

who cares whether or not it makes "sense" as long as it is consistent with other game mechanics and is implemented in a balanced way?

Think of this as a warrior disc for unresistable root spell effect. This can be explained as part of the immense melee'ing power of the warrior to be able to taunt/grapple/distract the mob from running.

[Samus Aran]

Just to add to Kreugen's comments...

There was a roughly 200 man raid on Grummus on a server today, heard it circulating in three of the serverwide channels I'm on.

Insanity.

[Annastacia]

I'm too lazy to read everyone's response -- but isn't it clear what to do?

Make a slow spawn (6 day?) KEY group of mobs. IE: Plane of Sky. PoS was built for 24 people. Only 24 keys, the rest of the people were always gimped to the next island (be it corpse calling or whatnot). Why not have a pre-encounter of somewhat difficult mobs that produce only a certain number of keys? They work once, evaporate after your equipped body leaves the zone, etc.

[Templor]

Originally posted by [X]
Wouldn't it be great if you could /follow mobs? Then you could just go AFK :P

Until that mob died a minute after you /followed it?

[teauvian]

There is no reason why encounter A can't favour rangers and warriors, while encounter B favours paladins and sks provided it all works out in the wash so that at a given level range across a good set of mobs all classes can be usefull when used correctly.

b) normal mobs need to be able to run so that they be pulled and so they can chase players. TOO MANY high level encounter mobs are perma rooted for any number of reasons. This is a no risk root, so downgrading this to snare and limiting the range to a certain circle would't change things much.

Not too bright are we?

An encounter where melee damage does not affect the mob doesn't just not favor melee classes, it makes them useless. Tell me, what use is a rogue, monk, or warrior in such a fight?

Yeah there is something like what you are talking about. It is called Snare and Wizards, Rangers, Druids, Necromancers, and Shadowknights all have a form of it, as well as there being several weapons with a form of it as the effect. So why do we need to change the game completely to do something that a third of the games classes can already do? Thus, your whole argument is saying that they should try to recode the whole game so that someone can create the same results as a spell I have had in my spellbook since level 9.

[agoz_rz]

I didn't read through too much of the previous few pages; I have just have a thought.

Why not make mobs get more powerful as they kill people (raid-type mobs mostly). It would make dying actually have some impact and would more or less end zerging. Just a thought.

[teauvian]

If more fights were like Shei Vinitras that would also do but I like your idea.

Also, how about once a mob has X # of people on its aggro list it depops because it knows it is so vastly outnumbered.

[Archeiron]

Also, how about once a mob has X # of people on its aggro list it depops because it knows it is so vastly outnumbered.

this is a promising idea, but would be easy to abuse (e.g. raidforce 1 engages and raidforce 2 jumps in to depop the mob)

[InnySol]

Maybe what we need is more "Old School" type encounters? Take trak for example(there was a bunch.. you freaks know which ones I mean.. Im nodding off here, cant think right now). I havent done him for a while, but i remember that even if you had 36 people or 18, there was always that risk of getting your asses handed to you. The only difference was that if you had the skill you could kill it easily with the 18, or as many as you wanted to take him with and you would not wipe(assuming you would not screw up during the fight or whatever). Now there was the gimps that would just swarm him and of course always failed with the 36+. They could have had 50 people and would have still gotten a raping. The 1200dd and the freakin dot was horrible but awesome.

I guess what Kreugen and what many others would want, is just harder encounters. I personally would like to see crap that is really actually, 'difficult'. Stuff where it doesnt matter how many peeps you have, as long as you have a certain number of dps going around and the right 'skills' and strategies you will win if you have 40 or whatever. And well if you dont have the skills, you die with 110 or however many you have : P. I dont know about you but I like those kind of encounters where your at the edge of your seat saying 'Oh crap, were screwed' and your at 20 health, bunch of adds, then all of a sudden the 'skills' of your guild come into play. Healers know who to heal and what heals to use , melee know where to push/what to tank whatever, nukers/mezers/debuffers get on what they are supposed to do, and all just come out and make everything come together... With PoP there came a sudden influx of gimps to lvls 60+ who dont know shit on how to play their classes and well i think thats part of the problem too : /..

: )(feel free to flame or agree)

[Lorrac]

If you really wanna limit raidforces, stop cracking your head with code fixes and add some heavy AoE lifetaps on the mobs. It's not the perfect solution, but it's easy to implement and has a definitive impact: when everyone in the raid is healing the mob, big numbers suddently stop being any attractive (of course if the lifetap is tuned apropiately).