EQ Never

eq2 was gross, let us never speak of it

Edit in. This became tl;dr.

Everyhing below - Stuff from old irrelevant days. Skip post, nothing that will ever come to be again.

Convo_sl said:

People just wont understand that. Again, there are people posting here who didn't play EQ or picked it up and didn't like it. I can understand why they wouldn't want certain features.. they never knew them...

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True. Several things that made EQ what it was, that no longer exsist today.

- No maps. Had to learn zones.
- Fizzle. Failed cast spells. You fizzled based on your skill level.
- Exp loss and ability to level down if you had not "safed" the level.
- Items left on corpse. This forced you to run back to the corpse naked and gimped in terms of stats. Since there was no icon on a map, you could have difficulty finding it. For that you could use summon rods that had a necro spell on them that gave you the location of it in text. Then spam /loc to find the correct way. Or, you could ask help from a necro to summon the body. Or if someone saw you in the dungeon, since they were not instanced, they could rez you if they could, or if a mage was nearby they could summon you there. Or ask for help to fight to the body.
- Trains. Mobs did not stop chasing you until you died or left the zone.
- No automated auction house (before bazaar). Actual vendor communities with actual people selling stuff. Some got good reps, some got bad ones.
- Long lasting beneficial buffs.
- Actual darkness at night.

Lots more too. Are all those "good" features? No they are not. But the impact they had on the world and community is undeniable. Forced a level of interaction mmos these days seem to stear clear off. EQ was more of a MMOrpg, while the games today seem to stear more towards mmoRPG. That is a good thing, innovations and more fun gameplay. The problem I have is with this seeming impossibility of having both. It should be possible to create a MMORPG. Where playing with others means more than just having new icons in the group UI and seeing them fight around you.

MMOs have become better games since EQ, but I dare to say they have not become better MMOs. Games today seem to focus towards being fast paced to avoid boredom. In EQ, boredom was avoided by chatting. And in EQ, you would chat, because there was always downtime to be had, so even by level 15, you probably would have grouped with a few people you had talked enough with to strike up a conversation while medding while soloing. Combine that with asking for help to navigate zones, selling stuff, help with being chased by mobs, help with buffs. Then all the interaction that came with the death mechanic....

Everquest was a game that became a world because the players made it so. The only way that happened was due to features and lack of features that nearly all are gone today, but I have not seen anything to replace them. Now it seems interaction is left to crafting by forcing you to get items from other classes and only being able to level a few of those by yourself. Thankfully the AH avoids any actual interaction.

I am hoping EQ next will follow in line with how Sony did the whole PS4 vs Xbox One thing. Not list features they do have, but rather, we will NOT have .... Imagine if they just took a step back and looked at what worked. Instead of just thinking that since games do this now, progress is only possible one way. To base it on those things we do now or do new things.
I dissagree quite dearly with nothing forgotten is worth remembering.

there are 2 owls outside my window!!!!!!!

Banal_sl said:

So you want combat paced to the point where you can be terrible and still succeed.

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Did you play EQ? I'm not talking about raids. I'm talking about if you had a solid group with a puller all of whom knew what they were doing. Barring the odd pull where too many mobs showed up, you had time to chat and socialize as you gained xp. If it was a good group, you might all just find a safe room and camp for 15 minutes while you all get something to eat IRL then get right back to playing. The difference between that and modern MMOs is you can hold that camp for hours without getting carpal tunnel syndrome or bored out of your mind because of the social interaction fostered by that style of gameplay.

That's gameplay that doesn't really exist anymore except in modern games (there are of course places like EQMac). On the other hand, as I've stated a couple of times, if you've got ADHD and you need to be pushing buttons all the time there are a ton of games out there and many more on the way.

Given the plethora of games available to the ADHD player I have to wonder why are you fucking around in the EQN thread? Well it is true we may not get pure EQ style combat back, given that Butler is the designer we're more likely to get something closer to EQ than to DDR.

I wish EQN would be alot like EQ1 with the downtime, good puller, and the actual need for an enchanter at times to mess on pull to avoid wipes. Fuck i remember old seb doing crypt and respawns killing the group if you werent keeping up. Those good times are long gone and replace by X mechanic in X game or just a general shift from that type of game play. Alot of current gamers only know of WoW as the standard and have no clue of the days you sat and actually had to look at your spell book to regen mana.

Unfortunately i wouldnt be surprised if EQN turned out to be a mesh between EQ and WoW - that being wow style gameplay on top of EQ art.

you could even do dungeon crawls as well. I didnt do it all that often but I remember I got in this group once, sometime during kunark era, the group just happened to be totally pimpy. The tank could handle stuff easy, the healer kept everyone alive easy, and we had a chanter who was really good. I was the dps so it was easy for me, We went to seb, first we went down to the room that had the froglok bonecaster robe (disco?) and I already had the robe but went there just to try to get it as loot. We stayed there only about 20 minutes or something, then headed back up, through all the golems and shitt, and then went down the path that leads to the rooom that had the uber cloak which I still never actually got Hierophant cloak? We got to the room and kill it for a while and then people ended up having to go. But we had been playing a few hours and we went all over the place.

And even with good people it was still hard.

mkopec_sl said:

Youre correlating combat pace to skill. Which is wrong, IMO. You dont need a button mashing marathon while dancing around red blobs of goo on the ground to have meaningful strategic and skillful combat.

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You are correct, but your reply is a non sequitur. In a mud type combat system, being lazy and being bad are essentially the same thing. Thus, if I am too clumsy to correctly execute my button mashes, I can do the work to make some macros. If I am too stupid to figure out which talent set up and rotation achieves the highest DPS, I can read a forum or wiki. I can do the work to ameliorate my short comings. That's the current paradigm, and I agree that button mashing, multiple redundant skills, etc has gotten stale.

However, I wasn't advocating the necessity of button mashing for skillful combat. I was disparaging the talents of someone who wants to watch autoattack while he licks nacho cheese off his fingers. In that world, if you are too lazy to be good, you wait for the game that makes laziness a virtue, or at least, you post about how awesome it would be.

you use big words

I am totally jealy of you mud people though. Those things sounded awesome. I think future mmos need to look at those and how they worked.

tad10_sl said:

Well it is true we may not get pure EQ style combat back, given that Butler is the designer we're more likely to get something closer to EQ than to DDR.

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Jeff Butler was hired by Verant in 99 as customer service manager, and wasn't promoted to producer until March 2000. Kunark was released in April 2000. I'm guessing he had very little to do with EQs initial design at all. If you are hoping for a similar experience to EQ based on Butler's presence, you may be very disappointed come August 2nd.

he is descended from a butler, customer service is in his blood

Tad:

I don't have ADHD and you can literally do everything you just said in modern games. Most games aren't a spam fest of abilities, but during active combat with boss mobs or raid targets, you tend to have mobile fights. Much like dodging AEs in EQ or hitting your dps abilities as fast as they pop to burn through a high DPS mob. Better question: Did you play EQ as anything but a melee class you could hit autoattack and nothing else and still be ok? Because you can still be the bad DPS in modern games by doing exactly that. You were a bad DPS in EQ if you did that and a bad DPS in modern games if you try it now. It still makes you bad. Because I have never ran into a situation where I can't take a minute out to grab a beer and my group exploded or was chomping at the bit to rush the next pack of mobs in modern games. Maybe it's because I play classes that typically contribute more to a group by actually being at the keyboard, but the random situation of not being able to take a minute or two break during a dungeon or a camp or something is a borderline non-issue.

Unless you are that guy who gets booted from every dungeon group because he afks for 15 minutes right at the start of the dungeon. Fuck that guy.

Expect EQ:N to have instanced dungeons, faster and more action oriented combat than EQ by a large margin (for all classes, not just some of them) and progressive MMO features that typically turn most of the mmo hipsters into frothing retards. Because they want to make money, and aiming for a 14 year old audience isn't really the way to go about doing that. Not saying some ideas from the past are 100% bad, as I actually like the slightly slower pace of EQ compared to WoW for SK action and I like longer leveling times in general but not absurd shit that forces you to grind the same 8 mobs in a hallway for a week. But clamoring for progressquest with a chat bar is just going to leave you guys wanting when the game comes out. No company is going to do that if they intend to make real money.

Banal_sl said:

However, I wasn't advocating the necessity of button mashing for skillful combat.

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Yes you are. You are advocating for DDR as you state flat out that anyone advocating for an effective auto-attack is "too lazy to be good". You want to push buttons and see flashy lights.

althuna_sl said:

you use big words

I am totally jealy of you mud people though. Those things sounded awesome. I think future mmos need to look at those and how they worked.

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This the kind of chat that keeps the group entertained for the endless hours in the same room?

tad10_sl said:

Yes you are. You are advocating for DDR as you state flat out that anyone advocating for an effective auto-attack is "too lazy to be good". You want to push buttons and see flashy lights.

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You see? If you don't like it, it's "DDR." You don't have to be so partisan.

In any case, my preferred game will require engagement in combat beyond hitting autoattack and tabbing back to porn. Your senile dementia or parkinsonian tremor may mean that autoattack is all that you're reasonably capable of, I don't know. In any case, you're probably bad at video games.

Rezz_sl said:

Expect EQ:N to have instanced dungeons, faster and more action oriented combat than EQ by a large margin (for all classes, not just some of them) and progressive MMO features that typically turn most of the mmo hipsters into frothing retards.

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We will see buddy and modern MMOs have nothing new or interesting to offer.

mkopec_sl said:

Youre correlating combat pace to skill. Which is wrong, IMO. You dont need a button mashing marathon while dancing around red blobs of goo on the ground to have meaningful strategic and skillful combat.

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It makes it harder but imo not more fun.

Pls no intense button mashing. I'm done with that shit.

Rezz_sl said:

Tad:

I don't have ADHD and you can literally do everything you just said in modern games. Most games aren't a spam fest of abilities, but during active combat with boss mobs or raid targets, you tend to have mobile fights. Much like dodging AEs in EQ or hitting your dps abilities as fast as they pop to burn through a high DPS mob. Better question: Did you play EQ as anything but a melee class you could hit autoattack and nothing else and still be ok? Because you can still be the bad DPS in modern games by doing exactly that. You were a bad DPS in EQ if you did that and a bad DPS in modern games if you try it now. It still makes you bad. Because I have never ran into a situation where I can't take a minute out to grab a beer and my group exploded or was chomping at the bit to rush the next pack of mobs in modern games. Maybe it's because I play classes that typically contribute more to a group by actually being at the keyboard, but the random situation of not being able to take a minute or two break during a dungeon or a camp or something is a borderline non-issue.

Unless you are that guy who gets booted from every dungeon group because he afks for 15 minutes right at the start of the dungeon. Fuck that guy.

Expect EQ:N to have instanced dungeons, faster and more action oriented combat than EQ by a large margin (for all classes, not just some of them) and progressive MMO features that typically turn most of the mmo hipsters into frothing retards. Because they want to make money, and aiming for a 14 year old audience isn't really the way to go about doing that. Not saying some ideas from the past are 100% bad, as I actually like the slightly slower pace of EQ compared to WoW for SK action and I like longer leveling times in general but not absurd shit that forces you to grind the same 8 mobs in a hallway for a week. But clamoring for progressquest with a chat bar is just going to leave you guys wanting when the game comes out. No company is going to do that if they intend to make real money.

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Vanilla WoW leveling pace was fine to me, and people tend to forget that most mmo's dont have anything until "end game", which is something i frankly detest. While i like end game raiding, dungeons etc, i feel mmo's need to focus on a nice spread of events across all levels. EQ2 be it the failure it was atleast had early raiding(optional ofcourse) and a decent amount of dungeons. Likewise WoW did good when they put in ragefire chasm for players around level 10+ to do shit other than quest/grind on mobs.

Just being real, every mmo from here to eternity will have some form of questing and grinding until they decide to Matrix us and jack us into the game directly, at which point we will likely end up killing each other. Until then i'd personally like more options or something new created along the leveling path. In every mmo i end up racing through content to max level because their is nothing to do along the way that can entice me like max level due to raiding and gearing up. GW2 did well with its events, and good pvp to keep you occupied, but its dungeons were aids and the end game non existent(which was expected from the get go).

I am pretty curious what EQN will do to break the mold of racing to max level b/c everything inbetween means fuckin nothing.

mkopec_sl said:

Tad, I wish it were true, but Im sadly not holding out hope. I think this game will be exactly what Rezz explained.

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I feel like the dungeons could very well remain uninstanced, but combat wise? There is no way auto attack will be acceptable.

mkopec_sl said:

Tad, I wish it were true, but Im sadly not holding out hope. I think this game will be exactly what Rezz explained.

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I don't see heavy instancing on the group-dungeon side not in the lego-Norrath world they're promising doesn't make any sense - imagine Minecraft with instancing. However, there is likely some instancing in the raid game (mix of instanced and contested raid targets) and possibly public instances for newbie areas (for initial start overcrowding).

We'll see about the combat. As convo stated, I expect something somewhere between EQ and VG.

Carl_sl said:

I feel like the dungeons could very well remain uninstanced, but combat wise? There is no way auto attack will be acceptable.

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I am looking forward to how this thread turns after its reveal next month. Then the total frothing at the mouth that will spew on the keyboards for 2 years till release. A good portion of the team on EQN is just relocated from EQ2, i'd be surprised if AA was gone completely, and i seriously doubt it will be. I dont think they will have as many abilities as they did in EQ2 but i also doubt it will be dumbed down to that of WoW either.

I honestly wouldnt put it past them to keep EQ2 combat at all, or just use VGs.