Pussification of EQFollow

Just wondering if anyone else has noticed what i have about EQ2. The game is quite pretty, and there are quite a few great gameplay design improvements. Encounters, vice just pulling random stuff, the commerce system is well designed, the story is actualy somewhat interesting, and the character sbuclass/class advancement design is good. No such thing as an underconn anymore, you always know exactly what you need to have a shot at the mob. Mobs no longer follow all the way to the zone line, they give up after a while, and not realy any trains... at least nothing Karanors ( sp? been a while ) style.

All good improvements, seemingly removeing most of the greatest problems of EQ1. But also, these changes seem to facilitate another function, they take the skill out of the game, and they take the challenge out of it. 4 grps max for a raid? the new buffing system? As well it seems like many of the staples of EQ1 , Haste, Crack, Mez, snares, pbae's, FD pulls ( totaly not needed now ) Rez, taunt, lich, and all buffs have either been reduced in effectiveness to the point of mild usefulness at best, or spread across the board of classes such that they are no longer special at all. For instance, the painfully short durration and single target nature of Breeze makes it almost totaly not worth casting at all, and a grp version does not appear until level 48.

In EQ1, no matter what class you had in your group, they all had the tools to be stars, it was the player behind them that mattered, ive seen necro's play cleric, chanter, mage, and damage dealer in a group with 4 warriors and a monk, and do very well. Ive seen an entire group wipe but the chanter and the cleric, and the entire group rez, rebuff, and start killing again while the chanter keeps 5 or 6 mobs mezzed. Ive seen a wizard drag around 12 mobs in 3 separate quads at the same time, and kill every single one of them, ive seen bards kill an entire zone of mobs at once, and ive seen a necro solo mobs 10 levels higher than them. ive seen a group on its last leg when all of a sudden 2 more mobs respawn, the cleric gets off one last CH before 00m, and the tank AE taunts, pops defensive and waits it out, and miraculously they make it thru.

Ive seen 6 people clear out NToV, and watched half the loot rot, and ive seen 60 people wipe on Aary, ive seen 16 people take out TT with ease, and ive seen full raids get smoked. Ive watched 30 people spend an entire weekend in VT. And ive seens the zone with 2 full raids in it on one mob.

Im sure most everyone has seen similar, or the same things i just mentioned, many times. But that was the beautiful thing about EQ, the large scale of it, and the versatility, and the skill. The difference between a highly skilled player, and a person who was only so so at their class was invaluble. One ***** up could get you all killed, and one player rising to the occasion could save the entire group.

My problem with EQ2 is that none of the things i mentioned can happen in EQ2, the scale has been reduces to a staggeringly low level. in EQ2, Cazel wouldn't be some 51 SG wandering around butchering inattentive newbies, He would be a relatively stationary level 51 with 4 up arrows, a group 2x tag below his name, and a con measage that warns, this creature is far more difficult than he appears. He would be nearly impossible to single group, because once you were high enough to just grab a couple buddies and smoke him, hed be grey, non agro, and would drop absolutely nothing. No longer are there races to mobs, they are almost always up, you just have a timer saying you cant kill it more than every 14 days, or 7 days, or whatever. On a server reset.... you dont care, your timer is still intact, no point in having lookouts for mobs your guild needs, and people waiting for the raids to start... in fact, why even have a guild bigger than 30 people? only 24 can raid, and the mob is always up, and he drops loot every time. It just feels like an overdressed Monolpoly Jr. version of EQ with some nifty new additives. I hope they change some things as the game progresses, i want to raid, real raids, i want the excitement that EQ had... and this game just seems devoid of that thus far.

You all whined, SOE listened. The result? The "dumbing down" of the game. Keep up the good work.

People be honest, how much skill is there in EQ1 lvl 1-30?

Not much, most classes haven't even got class defining spells or abilities by then, the game is pretty Vanilla untill you get to the late 40's and 50's.

Give EQ2 the chance EQ1 had to evolve <evolve being the pertinient word here>

I also laugh at the idea that skill is not in EQ2, i can see the skill by lvl 20.

I can see the difference from my first charicter going through IoR to my 7th.

I can also see group tactic evolving and raid tactics evolving and people will become more skillful at applying the tactics, but it will take time and patience to find and refine the tactics that work.

When you cut down to it the evolution of Chain healing made a huge difference to Raids post Velious but these where not evident on release and had to be developed. I see that happening with EQ2 in the future.

In purely the solo world i see diferent tactics and methods between the 4 classes i am leveling, so i can also see different tactics evolving when different classes are in the groups and raids, the hope i have is that certain classes are not nerf batted to the point of uselessness like SK's and Paladins where in EQ1.

In the case of those 2 classes they where pushed into roles that any one of 6 other classes could have done in a raid evironment without the fall back of a specialist nitche to fall back on.

That lead to people not getting invites into the cutting edge guilds if they choose a Pally or Sk because a ranger could do all they could do and more besides.

You saw all that when EQ1 was 2 months old??!?

Wow, amazing...

stop comparing a 5 year old game to a 2 months old game.

Eg if i felt the way you do about a game <And i did about Halo2> I wouldn't play it. <and i didn't>

There's your solution buddy.

I totally disagree with your points on tactics, spells, and to a certain extent about quests.

But no ammount of fat chewing here or respect either way is going to change the game. At all.

Go play WoW, come back and say hi once in a while and tell us how you're doing because you will not get any responce from SoE, 3 years of EQ1 have taught me that.

No.
Bards were awsome before the nerf. Most were sensible enough to do large-scale kiting away from normal exp areas. These were bards killing typically 10-20 level appropriate mobs in Planar zones.

It is a classic example of how a player or players found out how to use the skills the game gave them in ways that the designers never envisaged.

EQ2 is designed to close down those avenues and ensure that everyone plays the way the designers intended. I'm sure they hated to keep changing the code to cope with the latest way someone had found of doing things. The EQ2 team have attempted to close everything down from the get-go. They will not succeed but it does give the gave a much more restrictive feel to someone used to tactical diversity. You are obliged to play the game their way.

Where these tactical departures trivialised the game I totally agree with the changes made to EQ1. EQ2 has not had a chance yet to become non-trivial.

It tends to all end up in a neverending cycle of nerfs with class by class being restricted because something it can do is seen as "unfair" by a vociferous lobby of other classes. I doubt that EQ2 will be any different.

Ok, i have seen at least 3 replies to this post saying, if you dont like it, go away. How closed minded and simple can you possibly be to think mmy only agenda in this post was to ***** about shortcommings of a game i have every option to play or not play? Everquest is a constantly evolving universe, im sure EQ2 will be no different, Brackishboy, yes EQ2 IS going to change, it will change imensely. The difference between Everquest, and Everquest : The Planes of Power is immeasurable, and how did those changes come about? Through dialogue about the things that needed to be changed. Im not complaining that i hate this game it sucks, only big dummy heads play it and now im gonna go in the corner and pout. You'll notice my first sentance was i wanted to know if anyone else saw some of the traits i do. And my question has been answred quite obviously yes.

No where in my post doe it say that EQ2 is not fun, and not worth playing, its says its devoid of the large scale and and adrenaline charged excitement that EQ had on ocasion, because of the stagnate design of the classes themselves. Im not going to quit, and ide assume, neither will the majority of the others who agreed with some of the issues i brought to light in this post. Why? because this is how you make a game change, you talk about it, and you take an intelligent look at what is around you. Instead of the closed minded, hear no evil, see no evil, leave the game if you dont like it attitude, try actualy fully reading the post. Im not bad mouthing EQ2, im saying these are the aspects i think need to be improved to make it more fun. I realize the compairison of EQ2 now to EQ1 now is unfair, but how unfair is it to compaire EQ1 now to where EQ2 is going? Increadibly fair imo. If you dont see Kerafyrm, Sebilis, Temple of Veeshan, Vulak, Tormax, Thurgadin in the future of EQ2 i think you are blind, i would prefer to begin the discussions now, to better shape the mannor in which these things are brought into the game. Believe it or not SoE does read this stuff, and they do take it into account.