Rant: How Everquest is killing itself for me

[larseny316]

Something I've been hoping for would be for there to be a serious AA Exp bonus on boss mobs. Enough so that you can notch the entire raid half to a full aa after a night of raiding.

Maybe use an equation similiar to this, where every player in the raid receives X amount of AA exp on the kill.

1.3x(target number) - Raidforce(how many people on the hate list) = X

This means if an encounter is designed for 60 people, and you bring 60, every player gets 20% of an AA. Now if you decide to zerg it and you bring 90. You would LOSE 10% of an aa (if you go negative you just have to work it off before you can bank another point) That would put an end to massive zerging.

[Northerner]

Excellent commentary indeed.

I left when I did because my role did no longer exist. I was one of the "frustrated" power-gamers. I know (erm, knew) the game well, worked well in groups and could lead a group, squad, whatever but I simply did not work 9-5 CST.

Erm, how the fuck does that paragraph make any sense? Well, for most of the tail end of Kunark and for Velious in general I could play and level on my own time. Then I could raid (not getting dkp in general or only taking rots) with friends and with dilligent work on my part be fine. I could hit 120+ resists for those NToV raids, because droppables were nearly good enough. I (as a Rogue) was always an addition worth having, from epic raids to the end of Velious. Hell, I remember raids that did turn on the damage I put out. Literally.

In Luclin I was a little less capable. I played tons still but not raiding tons. Old buddies let me in on the fun encounters still and were happy to have me. Hell, Burrower was easier with another smart melee along. Cranking out AAs really meant shit.

Then the Luclin end-game hit and I was out again. I would never ask for a rift, never mind the time of enough people to get me to VT. Shit, I lived in Ssra basement for ages and I never took an ore... what ass would when the guild needs them for a first attempt. Hell, I retired without even the bloody ring.

PoP made it far worse of course. Now I simply could not raid with them. Not that I might be a liability (Cursed?) but that I could not even be there. Hi. I am not going to leetch flags. I would not.

Eh, that's what sent me out the door after however many years it has been. I started on The Nameless and loved the time I spent there. Still, the shit that made the place run is long gone. I've been out a few months now and I gotta say, it seems like I am not missing too much. I would have loved to see the upper planes (save PoW, fuck that... I did my Phinny kills) and I'd be delerious over seeing PoT but whatever. In the end, masses kill the challenge.

The best ever was organizing a Vox raid pre-Kunark. (My Crys Spear is rotting somewhere =/) Hey, continue to kill shit, I'll continue to read. In the end though, the respect comes from shit the guild did so long ago I wonder who is still there. When the game became about who could bring 'enough' and that was combined with frankly trivial levelling/AAing... ah well.

[Borzak]

When you no longer enjoy an activity on several levels but you still do it everyday your addicted.

You may not wanna call it that, but think about it. If you dind't play EQ all night what would you do? You've played EQ so long you don't know what else to do at that time.

[Castigator]

The Solution lies sooo close...

But be warned! Played offline, the world of Norrath becomes an even more dangerous place. No longer will there be hundreds of heroes all striking out against evil by battling the ice dragon Lady Vox or delving deep in the bowels of Lower Guk to confront the undead frogloks. Now it is only you and your comrades who stand before such evil might.

Go grab your friends and have a try at this.

[Xitix]

My biggest annoyance with large numbers of melee is the mob push coding is still the same as when we fought orc pawns in front of west freeport. Currently push is wpn DMG thats it, you connect and the mob moves the weapons rated damage. The push should be scaled by the mobs HP - the emp is Shiss and the Emp in crushbone should not be moved the same amount when hit with the same wpn. Toss in even worse coding on non-wpn melee attacks like BASH with the worst of all monk special attacks and it's chase the mob around constantly if you can't pin it in a coner or along a wall which pisses off the rogues or rangers anyway.

[Sindaael]

More number = more dps, I've seen joint guild events that killed Bertox with 150 players. You can't lose with that many no matter how much you fuck up, dps is too high.

[Dustin2583]

Typical night on Everquest:

Play monk on main computer.

Sometimes play beastlord, wizard, or cleric on second computer.

Ninja AFK for random intervals.

or

Play monk on main computer.

Play NES RPG's on emulator on second comp.

Play Shining Force/X-Com/Final Fantasy on WSC, while raiding and not paying much attention.

Kreugen is right. It's hard being a pure melee and staying focused. I simply cannot do it anymore. If I didn't have a second comp, or EQW, I would fall asleep at every raid. Thank god for emulators. If it wasn't for them, my computer room would be a fucking mess of 8/16 bit console systems.

[sadre spinegnawer]

The steps and measures needed to rectify these problems are too drastic, and verant will never ever try to tackle them.

Why? Because it was design decisions that created them in the first place.

Listed in no particular order of insidiousness:

One. In-raid rezzing. This is the devil. In general, I always thought it was a mistake to make cleric and paladin rezzing so easy in this game. Death needs to be penalized. I always thought that, instead of being rezzed to where you died, a rez should summon you and your corpse to some "shrine" or temple, away from the action.

This would mean: you just left the raid. Death should hurt. All "raid level" zones (dungeons, etc, any zone that has a series of boss mobs) should have rezzes that put you out of whatever action area you were in. Preferably in another zone. Like zap you and your corpse back to plane of tranquility or your starting city. I'm serious.

But But!! Then I won't be able to get back in the raid, and the raid might be hopeless crippled because of too many deaths!!

Ec-fucking-zactly. Either play precisely or suffer the consequences. Either strategize who to sacrifice and how many you can suffer to lose or turn into a trade-skill oriented guild.

Point: in-raid rezzing contributes to the epidemic of sloppy game play, swelling raid numbers, and overall lack of urgency. As it is, EQ allows not only zerg tactics, but even worse, zergs that rez themselves ad infinitum over the course of a typical evening.

TWO: in-raid call of the hero and corpse summonings. It is the devil. Someone shows up late? np, coth them down. Add another ant to the swarm.

But but! If there is no coth or corpse summoning, then latecomers will be shut out of important raids! Tough. Learn to schedule better, and maybe not join guilds that raid on Hawaiian Standard Time.

If these two "features" (read: gimp facilitators) were eliminated from EQ, raiding would be harder and require serious attention in order to succeed. As it is, an army of characters, a third of whom are on auto-follow, another third of whom are F8'ing their way to early deaths every other 10 minutes, and the final third actually paying attention while they still watch the Anna Nicole Show on the Jumbotron they got on the wall across from their computer desk, this group of half-asleep lemmings can slog their way through almost anything, especially after their first run through an encounter.

Raiding should not be like that.


Nerf in-raid rezzing, coth, and necro summons.



sadre
wraith guild
quellious

[teauvian]

Ninja AFK for random intervals.

One reason that I quit was that I could put myself to /follow someone and then go out to dinner and the raid woulnd't notice that i was gone.

[Tilien]

Originally posted by sadre spinegnawer
TWO: in-raid call of the hero and corpse summonings. It is the devil. Someone shows up late? np, coth them down. Add another ant to the swarm.

But but! If there is no coth or corpse summoning, then latecomers will be shut out of important raids! Tough. Learn to schedule better, and maybe not join guilds that raid on Hawaiian Standard Time.

Some one obviously lives on the east coast...

[teauvian]

I always thought it was a mistake to make cleric and paladin rezzing so easy in this game. Death needs to be penalized

Whenever I would try to explain to people how Everquest worked, they would never understand what the penalty for dying was. With the level 56 rez, there really is no penalty, except for a couple kills to regain the experience.

[Scorpvenom]

My old guild beat luclin, finally killing Aten Ha Ra in VT. I have to say again, Luclin was shit and began the downward spiral of EQ. I have lots of real life friends who quit either when luclin came out, during luclin, or at the beginning of PoP. Before that my friends were even more hardcore than me.

Luclin Sucked.

Pop Sucked about the same.

Ykesha sucks the world's largest ebony cock.

Kunark + Velious = awesome expansions, ideas, and work

The first attempts at Tormax, Ntov, Yelinak, the 4th Warder, Trakanon, hell even Venril Sathir, were scary as shit.

[Jareck Thundershot]

There is a hoarde of people on Drinal that have begun getting flags... 150 for Aerin Dar... 250 for grummus recently... it's really getting rediculous. Both raids have ended in ninjalooting and lots of pissed people. I just hope I don't see tactics swollen with 200 people anytime soon.

[Hurk]

Originally posted by Furor Planedefiler

One thing they can do, however, is make AE's a lot more unforgiving. At lvl 64 and below on an encounter tuned for 65's only, some mobs should simply AE DT everyone below the targetted level range. That right there would cut down a lot of zerg and still retain the pay-to-play paradigm these monkeys at SOE have going.

With that said, get in game assmaster, I need BSS!

Oh yea, thats what we need MORE cheese dick tactics to fuck everyone that isnt exactly perfect!

God damn Furor, slap yourself for even suggesting the use of Death Touch. Either that or go play in plane of shit some more so you remember why its utter bullshit.

If you want to limit raids, you do it by numbers, not artifical caps like levels. If you had a level 63 cleric that was as good a player as a 65, you would use them. (specially if their gear was similer)

You want to limit shit? fine, do the stupid trial crap... make the gatemaster only let 1,5,10 groups in, then stop. But also make sure that the quest/event/etc respawns often enough that one guild isnt intentioanally busting it from others, and that a guild with 90 people doesnt have to spend 4 weeks running all their people through one event.

I still think its stupid to limit a group of friends from grouping together... the idea of the mob spawning a bit tougher based on the number present isnt a bad one... Except that i hate artifical difficulty more than anything else. The only warhammer computer game did that to you in campaghen(sp) mode... the better you did, the tougher the next set of forces you had to fight would be. I finally figured out that if you barely scraped by, and played badly, the game was EASIER than if you worked your ass off to do good.

I just dont think punishing people for playing together in a multiplayer game is a bright idea...

[Esmo]

Originally posted by Kether
Make mobs that favor HIGH numbers and high skill (how about a reverse of the ST nightmare. Some mob that truly requires people to band together, perhaps 150 in zone (though not all in the same place) to defeat). Having to band together multiple guilds and even non-guilded persons to accomplish a task that makes the entire server better sounds a LOT more 'epic' to me than min/maxing a 50 man force to kill Uber Mob X with one guild.


Kether
E'ci

...foreshadowing at its best...


The collective cursing of PoT realization will be heard for miles.