Some Observations......

[Maelsturm]

EQ2 started with a bang. Graphics were insane, new content and a new idea. However, over the last 6 months things seem to have gone south slowly. Lets review the changes that have occured that in my humble opinion have "lessened" the game.

1) Tradeskillers were suddenly given the ability to make virtually everything. Hell in the beginning my sage needed to buy paper and quills from a woodworker and Ink from an Alchemist. (Hence I started 1 of each). Now he can make all of that, albeit at a slightly higher cost. What did this accomplish? I think it removed the dependency on the other tradeskillers and detreacted from the intent of the market.

2) Mobs get a serious downgrade. I remember the days of a Mighty Griffin being a double up arrow mob. No you tell me it is just a mob, just like that lion is just a mob. Level may be different, but the difference in the exp value is minimal, tenths of 1%. Solo content is nice, dont make the entire game solo content with minimal grooup required mobs.

3) Attuneable, Attuneable, Attuneable....need I go on. What lame ass dev came up with the idea of attuning every piece of equipment. Oh I get it..we screwed up the Tradeskill market by allowing everyone to make everything except "End" products, so lets fix it my making everything Attuneable so that we can clear up the mass quantities of products for sale. Not to mention make armorours very rich.

4) The big Froglok lie x2. First we are told they are in game just have to look. 5 months later..hey we didnt put them in but they will be kicked of with live update 8. Uhm yeah right.

5) Furniture removal from the Merchants. Again see #3 but apply to Carpenters, remove the get rich statement for them however. Seeing how a Maple bed and an Oak or Teak bed look virtually identical, what is the purpose? Not to mention a ton of Racial items were removed that crafters can not make because of no recipies.

6) Promised fixes for broken quests, DPS fixes for casters and skill fixes. Yes I understand that there is an absolute infinite number of quests and Fixing them all is a very time consuming problem, but fix the ONES that everyone seems to be doing first.

7) Station Exchange....another grand idea from the SoE accountants office i bet. I can see the memo...."Virtual Goods make Real cash."

Now take all these changes and others that I prolly cant remember or just plain dont want to remember and add in the stuff that Kosmos mentioned in his "Cashing in the Chips" post and it is really starting to get old and stinky fast. I will hang in long enought to see if the Frogloks make a difference in how I feel, if not then I think it will be back to EQ 1 for me. Eq 1 had its problems to and still does, but it just seems to keep me wanting to play everynight even for an hour. I dont get that feeling with EQ2 anymore.


Any comments, explanations or other opinions are surely welcomed. Maybe I am looking at the changes wrong. Like I saod it is just my humble opinion


M
~Wars are not won by dying for your country. Wars are won by making the other son of a bitch die for his country.~
George S. Patton

[Zonx]

Have to disagree with most of your comments.

Tradeskill, gear and merchant changes were steps in the right direction towards a player driven economy while removing the total dependency on other tradesmen that existing in the begining. They might need to adjust the out of profession crafting a tad, but I for one was extreamly annoyed when my Sage reach mid T3 and found my only options for crafting XP were scrolls and patterns, both of which required expensive subs I couldn't make.

I have no issue with the mob changes since they came with instanced group zones that are plenty challenging. If anything, I think the evil side still needs work, particularly the south west quadrant of Nektulos.

I'll be happy when they open Station Exchange servers and all the plat for cash farmers leave my server

Furniture models do need work and obviously they need to do something about lost racial items.

The Frog sitch is rather annoying.

[Maelsturm]

Definately have to agree with the Plat farming comment. Yes I do like having other ways of leveling my Sage other than making just scrolls. But the interdependency on others seemed more realisitic. We as people do not make, ourselves, every sub component needed for everything we build individually. Houses require multiple professions to build. Just a basic newspaper requires multiple professions to get to the end product. Then again it is a fantasy game and thus I need to break from reality a bit more I guess, lol.
I think making Virtually EVERY Piece of gear attunable was a bit of overkill.

Mob changes wouldnt be much of an issue I guess if the exp for them was scaled a bit better. Differences of tenths of a percent are pretty bad. I am exaggerating slightly but when you get .5% for a level 35 mob and you are level 35 and .4% for a level 32 mob whats the point of challengine yourself on a mob 3 levels higher? Whats the point of taking 4 minutes to kill the 35 when you can kill the 32 in 2 minutes? Again I am just a casual, no hard core gamer so I may see things different.

M
~Wars are not won by dying for your country. Wars are won by making the other son of a bitch die for his country.~
George S. Patton

[Killarny]

1) Tradeskilling: I haven't really decided whether I liked that change or not - but I agree that interdependancy is needed in a game like this.

2) Can't really comment about the mobs - I haven't experienced any loss of group content.

3) Attuning items was SOE's way of adding durability to the game, which was sorely NEEDED. I applaud the attuning, although I think I would have prefered having true durability instead.

Instead of allowing an item to be 100% repaired by a mender, they should have done some sort of system where an NPC mender can only repair the item a certain percentage. Every time a repair is done, remove 5% durability from the max durability value for that item.

The appropriate crafter character classes could repair the items with only say a 1 or 2% durability loss. (ie, armorers could repair armor)

If an item reaches 0% durability, it is worthless and can only be salvaged by a crafter for raw materials.

A system such as this could have introduced much more interactive and dynamic gameplay than simply making everything attuned and you either sell it to an NPC or destroy it.

4) Frogloks: Agreed. Even the manual that comes with the game makes it sound like you can unlock Frogloks, if you only find the right NPCs to talk to. My first character in EQ2, I spent so much time wandering around Castleview talking to all the Frogloks, because I thought that MUST be where the quest is, there are tons of frogs!

5) Furniture appearance does need some variety, along with most of the other items in the game. Everyone looks pretty much the same, everyone has pretty much the same stuff in their house.

6) Quests, they seem to be doing a satisfactory job fixing quests. At least, the newbie (sub level 20) and middle of the road (level 20-30) quests that I've done seem to be pretty well fixed.

7) Station Exchange: Have to agree with you on this one .. the whole idea just makes SOE look like a bunch of greedy capitalists who are grabbing at any idea to make money.

On the other hand, people sell ingame money to each other anyway through other means, so why shouldn't SOE try to control some of that behavior?

I can see why they want to have Station Exchange, but I don't like the idea at all. It doesn't make SOE look good.

I haven't played much since the mentoring patch, and every time I log in to try to get back into the game, I just get sooo bored. This game is fast losing it's draw for me, as well. I like helping people out, so I've stuck around on this site and I've been admining the EQ2MAP site, but I don't know anymore...

[Maelsturm]

Wow Kill, I absolutely LOVE the idea you have on the armor. That is a superb idea. You should send it to the Devs. Variety does need to increase. Maybe add dyes into the game to change armor color. Dyeable "Bedspreads" and more choices of wood in the room, (Then again I am a cheap bastage, and still live in a newbie room, LoL).
After reading yours and Zonx post I can see the attunable issue a little more clearer.
In the over all scheme of things though, SoE needs to do something fast or loose a ton of people between now and Septembers first Expansion. Hell by September everyone who started from day one should have at least 1 if not 2 level 50 Toons adventure wise. Thus the boredom continues.


M

Wars are not won by dying for your country. Wars are won by making the other son of a bitch die for his country.~
George S. Patton

[Killarny]

Thanks for the support on that idea Maybe one of the trolling devs will see this thread and suggest it to someone who matters in SOE.

Apologies for the long winded post, I know most people won't read this at all, but I hope some of you see what I'm getting at ..

Another idea I have regards the money. It bothers me that people just get more and more money as time goes on.

Problem: When EQ2 matures further, in about a year or so, it will be almost impossible to start a new character and take part in the player economy.

As an illustration, let me talk about Star Wars: Galaxies.

A year ago when I played SWG, you could buy a decent set of armor for around 2k credits, for all the pieces. About two weeks ago, prior to the combat upgrade, the same type of armor would have cost my new character 15k credits, which is pretty much impossible for a new character to get.

The reason this happens is because, in most MMO's, you kill something and pick up an item or get a quest item reward, and then you go sell it to make some money. If you were to sell it to a player, then you'd be exchanging your item for money that is already in the game, obviously. However, if you sell it to an NPC, the money that you get is generated by the game, and comes out of nothingness. Enough people doing this, over enough time, and the money being passed around through the world between players comes to a massive total.

For example, after a server is open for two months, let's say that the total amount of money in the game and being circulated between players is 100,000 gold. That 100k gold is being divided up in various amounts between all the players on the server, and thus dictates the prices on the market.

Now, there are 5,000 players on the server. Each one of them sells an item to the NPCs and makes 1 gold each. Now the total circulated gold is 105k. More selling, and the total is 110k. Eventually there is 200k gold being circulated, and many things on the market are potentially twice the price they were before, because everyone on the server has more money to spend.

Guy goes to the store and buys the game, starts a brand new character. Enters our server, and has 0 gold. He makes his way through the world trying to earn enough money to buy a sword, but has to earn twice the amount of money that the original players had to earn to buy the same item.

Solution: Set a limit for the server, related to how many players are active. Something along the lines of 1,000 gold for every 1 player. Once 50% of that server limit is reached, NPC vendors don't want your stuff as much, and they buy it at a reduced price. At 75% of the server gold limit, NPC vendors will buy at a much more reduced price. Eventually, if the server reached 90% economic saturation, NPCs would start closing shop and offering mere copper for items, while charging higher prices.

Of course, newbie area NPCs would still charge normal prices and pay normal amounts for items, so that new players aren't penalized.

This would help stimulate players to buy from each other, and encourage a player driven trade system, without completely locking new players out of the player trade system because they simply don't have the money to compete in an overinflated economy.

[Maelsturm]

Interested and well Backed up argument there Kill. Only thing I would add is that for the newbie areas, you would have to set a level cap for a merchant to interact with. Otherwise everyone would sell to the newbie merchant.

M

[MsUnderstood]

Back when the patch came through that made everything attunable, I made a long winded post about all of the changes in that post--the response overwhelmingly from other players was "Shut up and play or quit."

One of my complaints was on the fact that they changed so spells fizzled less (good) but were resisted more (very bad). That meant I spent 6 seconds casting to complete my HO but the mob resists so I cast again. . .resist and the HO ends. New players don't know how things used to be so don't remember how the game changed against us.

Lately, my frustration has been from WAITING for a fix for my character. Go to the Illusionist board and you see complaint after complaint that we don't have DPS. While the Warlock can be argued to have to much, I have a really hard time soloing whites. I debuff, root, dot, root breaks, stun, dot, root, dot, dot, then try some HOs while the guy beats me down because my root spell is broken--this is for a blue con. Then I cast invis and stand around waiting to heel up for the next blue cause I can't take a hit.

The Warlock, on the other hand, says BAM, Fear, BAM, BAM, loot. The imbalance is very noticeable, specially when we have the same armor. Illusionists have been given the proverbial carrot for 2 patches now and it is tiring. Combine that with the fact that mobs don't need mezz as often as back in EQ I days and I'm almost useless, except for my breeze.

Combine that with the fact that on my server at my level (early 40s) I'm too young for Perma, too old for RV, and cant find a group to save my life.