I just Grabbed EQ2

[Nebu]

I wouldn't, really. I see it as more players calibrating themselves by the class they choose. I can solo amazingly with a couple classes, decently with others, and poorly to nil on the rest. Since I don't like to group, it never occurs to me to play a Guardian or Templar.

I agree with your fundamental, but my defiler really messed with my head.  I like to solo and I like to group.  It was fun to play a class that could solo if I needed and was also useful and fun in a group setting.  Were an instance set for a SK or Necro to solo, there's no way in hell my Defiler would stand a chance.  If they made it easier so that some classes could solo it as well, then the strong solo classes would find the dungeon trivial. 

I guess the conclusion I'm coming to is that game designers really need to give more thought to classes and class balance.  If they made every class able to solo AND attractive to groups, then it would open the door to tons of playstyle options (including this suggestion). 

Just an aside.  I don't mean to come off as argumentative.

[Numtini]

Defilers are for 80s, you need to level as a melee mystic and respec at 80 for raiding.

Sadly, no green.

[Lantyssa]

I guess the conclusion I'm coming to is that game designers really need to give more thought to classes and class balance.  If they made every class able to solo AND attractive to groups, then it would open the door to tons of playstyle options (including this suggestion). 

There is a reason I suggest more work is done on making mobs' abilities and statistics dynamic to be able to adjust to the players.  I know it won't be easy, but it would be nice if one area could scale itself to the players involved.  Which is incidentally why I'd like to see more work done with Left 4 Dead's AI Director.

An adaptive AI combined with scaling creatures ala CoX's giant monsters could provide challenges for a wide range of players.

/daydream

[Sky]

So I'm bumming around trying to think of what to do next. I think, "Hey, what about that ^^^ wizard in DoF I need to kill for the carpet?" Not that I need the carpet (40%), I've got a warg (45%) and the SoW potions I craft myself (which bring me to 48% without dicking around with a mount).

So I go down and die pretty quick the first time, but I'm just gauging tactics, really. Head out for try #2 with a plan, start the chain off and some guildtard tosses me an invite, throwing off my chain, I get ice cometed because I missed an interrupt due to the popup obscuring my view, die. Fucker. Disable group invites and head back down, run through my chain again and still almost died, had to use a Sol Ro blessing (BLAM) for the quest update. To a grey mob in his 50s, I'm almost 70.

Then I run to the next part of the quest, a green ^^^ djinn and two adds. Blam, blam, evac. Fuck this noise, logout. Guess I'll ty to solo it when I'm 80.

The part that gets me is that it's trivial for any decent guild to twink out its newer members with carpets, you see them all over. But even a competent soloer gets smacked around trying to do the quest when it's greyed out and is obsolete due to having better travel options anyway.

Just had to vent about that one. Did some work around the house instead.

[WindupAtheist]

You know Sky, given the sort of rambling anti-powergaming solo-happy way you tend to play (the same way I play UO, and WoW when I'm being smart about it) I've always sort of boggled at EQ2 being your poison of choice. The way you talk about it, it seems to actively hate your playstyle and you just kind of play in spite of it.

[Nebu]

EQ2 has a lot going for it despite being a diku mmo.

1) Character customization is wonderful with the addition of the appearance window.  You have armor for stats and a suit for looks.

2) Lots of content and quests

3) Large amount of solo play

4) Collection quests when you get bored of killing.

5) Interesting harvesting tied to crafting for when you tire of quests

6) Feels like a world

7) Player housing that you can fill with collected and player-made stuff.  Fun minigame.

Yes it's a grind.  There's enough other stuff to do that if you play casually, there's always something to dabble with.

[WindupAtheist]

Customizable clothing, and housing. Yum. Okay, that's a good enough explanation for me.

[Strazos]

I like my Illusionist. I really hate that Heroics in the upper 60s now smack me for above 2k. And my Armor is all MCed.

[Sky]

I like the game alright. Some good classes, decent world, decent amount of content. The reason it's my mmo of choice is because all of the genre pretty much sucks, so I go with the one that I have invested time in already. LotRO seems nice, but has the same kind of group-oriented stuff in it, ditto WoW. Actually, I found WoW to be worse, I can do better soloing some group content in EQ2. But you can pretty much copy my rants to any game and it'd be valid.

Most of the time I enjoy the game but occasionally I run into the barriers and get ranty about it, but it's more of a problem with the genre than EQ2 in particular. Until someone pulls their head out of their ass and makes a game without cockblocks for solo players (elite/heroic mobs, raids), I'll stick with EQ2 instead of learning a whole new system and set of classes and grinding just to hit the same cockblocks.

Straz: you're a cloth class, I don't really see that as a valid gripe. MC doesn't mean shit for caster mitigation, you're better off rounding out with AGI jewelry for avoidance. The point is not to get hit. I gripe about a lot, dying isn't really one of them. Wizard = dying a lot. Only as good as your last root.

[Strazos]

Not so much a gripe as general lamenting.

[Sky]

I played a wiz and necro in EQ1, so I guess I'm kind of used to it. Probably more odd for me to play my SK and not be beholden to how I can keep a mob off me. Srsly look into avoidance, though. A while ago I started focusing on STA and AGI to good effect, had more health than mana for a while and my avoidance was like 66%, but I've outlevelled all my MC gear and haven't put together an alternative from quested gear yet.

Dinged 70 last night, go go Kunark exp rate. Scored a master 1 ice nova for 15p on the vendor, pretty good timing. With the ridiculous +spell dam gear from Kunark quests, I should be maxing over 10k per opener now.

And no EQ2 post would be right without a gripe, so I'll throw one in for mounts (again). Tying the good mounts to ridiculous guild levels is teh sux. Bat Country is 23, iirc, the good mounts start at guild level 50, which simply isn't going to happen. Typical mmo mindset of rewarding the people who already get the most rewards. Ah, well.

[Nebu]

Here's my gripe: Reading this thread is making me want to resub. 

I think I'm going to try LotRO for a month or two.  If that doesn't scratch the itch, I'll try EQ2 again.

[Sky]

Bought some new music, so last night I went out harvesting and then crafted for a bit. Scored five rares for wizard t7 spells! I vaguely remembered not to use a crafting xp potion, and now I remember why. My Sage/Wizard levels too fast for them to be worth much. Two levels from pristine combines and he's out of rest xp bonus. Noticed there's NO level 61 roots on the broker, so I made a second and see if it'll sell for a few bucks. Maybe I can make back what my master 1 nuke cost me, bought the rare for just under 2p and selling the adept3 for 5p, though I probably could charge the moon.

So I was going to go into crafter mode for a while to chill out soaking in my (great!) new albums, but I guess it's back to finger waggling.

[shiznitz]

Weapon appearance slot is coming - but you have to match weapon types to what you actually use. If the actual weapon is a sword, you cannot appear to have a club/dagger/spear/staff/axe.

[Sky]

Stupid pvp servers. Close em down already! 

[Lantyssa]

YES!

That is great news for when I pick this up again.

[Numtini]

I'm with Nebu, I hate you all. I really thought after my last stint I was done with this game. That I had come to accept that the mainstream game was no longer interesting and the raiding game no matter how much fun was just too intensive for my lifestyle. Now, you're making me want to play it again.

[Sky]

Re: Shiz's gripes about the tank revamp...looks like they are leaving it in the oven and bumping GU52 up to GU51, so the next update is a Lavastorm revamp with new group and solo quests, 2 new instances (raid, eww), new drops. High and mid level content, the mid level is 45-55, which is pretty cool for my 45 SK. Hope the high level stuff isn't all raid. New crafting zone?

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=0&topic_id=442673#4934703

[Lantyssa]

I'm with Nebu, I hate you all. I really thought after my last stint I was done with this game. That I had come to accept that the mainstream game was no longer interesting and the raiding game no matter how much fun was just too intensive for my lifestyle. Now, you're making me want to play it again.

The raiding groups you encounter will just make you hate it.  They're idiots who take it too seriously but don't know what they're doing and will not appreciate your skill.  Your class leader will be a moron who things he's the best the server has ever seen but in reality can't even tie his own shoelaces.

Does that help?

[Numtini]

Your class leader will be a moron who things he's the best the server has ever seen but in reality can't even tie his own shoelaces.

Does that help?

That describes the shaman leader who took over after I left when they moved raids to later in the evening. They moved them back, I came back, and I lasted all of a week of his moronic nitpicking during raids--some of which I had done 20 times before he ever joined the guild. And yeah, he knew his class well too--I told him what my masters were on debuffs and suggested we split duty so he could concentrate on healing but we'd still have all masters and he "educated" me that they all stacked so I should cast them all.

[Nebu]

Thank you for reminding me why I hate the endgame in every PvE MMO.  Maybe I need to go back to CoH.

[Lantyssa]

I know, Numtini.  That's why I was reminding you.

[Sky]

Ah, fuck raiding and the douchebags who dominate it. It's just too bad the game is set up to reward that kind of gameplay. I'll never understand it. If half the time spent setting up raid encounters went into making cool and interesting solo dungeons, do you have any idea how many more people would experience that content? I guess getting the best bang for the buck hasn't made it into mmo yet.

[Numtini]

Ah, fuck raiding and the douchebags who dominate it. It's just too bad the game is set up to reward that kind of gameplay. I'll never understand it. If half the time spent setting up raid encounters went into making cool and interesting solo dungeons, do you have any idea how many more people would experience that content? I guess getting the best bang for the buck hasn't made it into mmo yet.

The thing is that they have gone to all that trouble for group instances. The raiding game is just on top of that and generally speaking, the raiding game isn't about uber poopsocks, it's very accessible.

[Sky]

Not for Bat Country, it isn't.

Anyway, I think you underestimate the time investment needed to get a raid guild up and running.

[shiznitz]

On Permafrost, there are PUG raids quite often - several times a week. The rub is that a PUG raid is going to be pickier about classes. When my guild raids, we might have 4 or 5 tanks.  That would never happen in a PUG raid.  If you want to PUG raid, roll a dirge.

[Numtini]

I have always seen lots of PUG raids, at least on AB. There were two posted ahead of time in the last couple of weeks, and there are usually people recruiting in the 70/80 channels. That's more of what i was thinking of.

If you do put together a raiding guild, it's possible to fill in a quarter or half the raid with PUGs, screw around, have no requirements, and still touch all but the top end content. We managed to blunder into MMIS and VP in their day and we were arguably the worst raiding guild in the history of EQ2.

(BTW I resubbed, you all suck.)

[Sky]

I've been on a couple pick up raids. Really a total waste of time, never got anything out of it and it takes forever because there's no organization, people drop out after the first wipe, etc. The most fun I had in one raid was joking with someone else in BC (forget who) about how lame the gameplay was. When I'm soloing, I'm always out doing something, when I've tried raiding it's a whole lot of sitting around doing nothing. Not exactly winning me over on that playstyle.

Also, pick ups might be nice if they dovetailed with my playtime, but that's happened a grand total of three or four times in four years. I don't think there's going to be many situations where a pickup is needed that is going to wrap up in an hour from login to logout.

[Lantyssa]

Sorry, Num.  I tried to tell you how horrible it will be.

[Numtini]

So far it's not at all horrible, actually quite pleasant. I need to go back and do a few hundred million quests though. Only 125AA as my main started before the AA system and has chronically been behind. I think you can do grey quests now?

[Sky]

Yep. No named aaxp, but all those old quests will give you some. My wiz started before the aa system, I've only got 98aa at level 70.

I think my best character in terms of AA for his level is going to be my monk, who is a named killin mofo, though he's still level 23.

[Murgos]

The best way to do pick up raids was to do it yourself.  If you have a decent group it's simple to just spam for warm bodies for the rest of the slots.

Do a slightly easy raid first to warm you up and get everyone in the groove and then try something harder.

One of the best things about EQ2 raiding was that there were raids you could do that would only take 30-40 minutes if you were familiar with it and it was slightly under leveled for your group.  Yeah, you won't get the top end stuff that way but the stuff you do get's not bad.  Everyone loves getting masters.

[Sky]

I apologize for continuing to sound whiny about this issue, as it's not really the big deal it seems :) But assumptions continue to be made which are not true: I do not have a decent group, I am not familiar with raid content to lead the raid. That's why I brought up the underestimation of the time involved. At the least I'd have to have time to put together a group, at best I'd have to invest the time to learn enough raid content to lead raids (without getting into the personnel issues of cat-herding).

You guys have a different playstyle, and that's cool. But it does lead to a misunderstanding on what goes into raiding or even dungeon crawling for a true solo player. Even when I have the inclination to group, like the past couple nights, I generally don't have enough time to make it worthwhile, and I don't think it's fair to a group to show up and leave after a half-hour.

Not to mention the old point about not being a slave to the game. If I'm playing a game and ~anything~ calls me away irl, whether it be my cat wanting to play, a cool idea to try on guitar, or something actually important, the game always waits for rl. Which doesn't go at all with mmo raiding or most groups.

[shiznitz]

Message boards are atwitter with talk that Aeralick, the guy behind the tank changes, has been sidelined/demoted and the changes are on hold.

[Sky]

I don't read eq2flames often because the signal:noise sucks, but they must be dancing right now. They have a serious hate-on for that dude.