*sigh* More shallow design thinking

[StGabe]

Yours is colored fanboi.

lol.

A fanboi is someone who refuses to admit that their opinion about a game could be wrong, right?  Who believes so truly in their perception of what that game is, that they are offended and vociferously attack any other opinion?  Sounds about right?

What's this then?

And no, I wasn't stating from opinion. That was fact. If it was an opinion, I would have prefaced it with - "I think."

You want to know what game has really sucked away the most of my life in recent time?  Star Wars Galaxies.  And in many ways I think it was a better game than EQ2 -- even though it was in many ways completely broken and didn't have appeal to a lot of player types (I'll defend what worked about SWG but I certainly won't pretend it didn't have significant problems).  And maybe someday I'll bother posting about that.  For now, there is just so much righteous indignation at EQ1&2 though that I already have ample material to work with.

I'm just trying to counter what I think borders on anti-fanboi'ism -- not an inability to consider any criticism of a game, but an inability to consider any praise for a game.

Labeling me a fanatic and flaming me may let you ignore ideas which don't mesh with your own, and may even get me to leave these boards, but it won't make you right.  Or am I mocking you by disagreeing with you?  That would be another convenient way to silence me I suppose.

Gabe.

[StGabe]

If I think there is ever a somewhat balanced discussion here about EQ2 I'd love to go into all the things that I think are actually wrong with it (*coughtheeconomysuckscough*).  Right now, what purpose would that serve accept to conform a bit and join the lynch mob?

Gabe.

[Strazos]

Funny, I think the economy was one of the least-broken things in the game.

You swear that most people here who played the game went in wanting it to fail, but I believe you are wrong. Besides Haemish buying certain adult videos of a certain female wrestler in a certain asian country, just to punish himself, I don't think anyone bought and played the game Just to say it sucked. I'm sure we would have all been open to Liking the game....but alas, it didn't work out.

You are still limiting your world to one where EQ2 must be about grinds and is boring by default and anyone who likes it is just some "catass" who likes to be rewarded for banging my head against the keyboard 8229 times.

Hmm...Everyone I personally know who played the game thought it was a grind, most of the people here who played thought it was a grind, and a great number of people I talked to while I was playing also thought it was a grind....I see a theme here. This is not just off-the-cuff namecalling, it is a fair assessment.

And just saying that any and all progression are treadmill (i.e. is unfun) as though that were somehow always true, is missing the point.

Don't be, to quote schild, a cockknocker. No one here is saying what you claim we are, and it is you who is missing the point.
"Hey, wassup Kettle? Meet my boy here, his name is Pot."
Claiming that we are saying that any kind of plot, story, or character advancement is a grind is nothing short of douchebaggery. It is only a grind when it is unneccessarily long and UNFUN, which is, while subjective, pretty much the assessment of a Great many people.

We already dealt with this -- it's a matter of semantics.

Here, I'll make it real easy for you to understand:

When you talk about MMO's at F13.net, the term treadmill comes with a certain connotation.

If you don't want to work within that framework, and give a different meaning to words as you see fit, then you can expect to be continually napalmed as you have thus far.

[jpark]

Throughout this entire thread people seem to want to pigeonhole me and tell me what I MUST be if I dare enjoy EQ2.  Well I think you guys are trying too hard to fit me (and the other hundreds of thousands who are playing EQ2) into a box.

Gabe.

Really? Oh:

Designating the game a grind, just gives a reason to badmouth all those people who did achieve more than you and to blame the game for not providing a platform where you can be oen of the highest achieving players around.

You're not the only one who likes EQ2 in these forums.  However, you are the only one to lose credibility for doing so.

[Strazos]

Just for reference, to my knowledge, None of the more-active people here have ever been one of the "super ubah 1337 catasses" on any of the past major releases. That would mean that none of us have never even been concerned with being "one of the highest achieving players around."

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

[Toast]

I don't even know what the arguments are any more, but I do know that StGabe is pretty nutty. He's captured the essence of the grinding catass with the style of his 3 part/3 separate posting reply technique.

This is just the beginning. Guess who has 4,400+ posts at the SW:G official forums alone?  (thanks, googlefu)

[Merusk]

I don't even know what the arguments are any more, but I do know that StGabe is pretty nutty. He's captured the essence of the grinding catass with the style of his 3 part/3 separate posting reply technique.

This is just the beginning. Guess who has 4,400+ posts at the SW:G official forums alone?  (thanks, googlefu)

Padding postcount 4tw. I was wondering why some mod hadden't bitchslapped him like we've done to Bruce in the past.   Thanks for giving me something to google over lunch tho.

[Sky]

Bruce's act is played out, we all know it. This new cat is still entertaining.

[Murgos]

Just for reference, to my knowledge, None of the more-active people here have ever been one of the "super ubah 1337 catasses" on any of the past major releases. That would mean that none of us have never even been concerned with being "one of the highest achieving players around."

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Eh, I don't think thats true.  I had the 3rd or 4th level 50 warrior on my server in EQ (first to 51) and also main tank for my guild on raids and I know Haemish was guild leader of some ubah raiding guild, I'm sure many of the rest of us have similar tales of woe.

What happened though was we woke up and realized that the grind WAS NOT FUN.

It has the illusion of fun, but it actually isn't.  It's just slightly more inventive tedium than watching 3 hours of sit-coms every night.

[Sky]

What happened though was we woke up and realized that the grind WAS NOT FUN

Therein lies the true irony. Many of us have indeed been to the 'promised land' of mmogs...and run screaming, blood dripping from every orifice.

I happily 'maxed out' in UO and played for years after...but when I got into the EQ endgame...never again. Ever. It totally changed the way I view gaming...for the worse. Both the game itself and the players who dug that kind of gameplay. note Haemish's sig is still there, I think he began using it when he left EQ, maybe even a bit before. A long damn time, either way, and it's as true today (regarding endgame guilds, and I'd add a lot more to the list than just politics, heh) as it was back then.

As far as 'bragging' goes, I was the first wizard on my EQ server to 10,20 and maybe the second or third to 30. When I hit 32, I sold the account and didn't play for another year because of the rampant assholery revolving around Rubicite Armor, brother screwing over brother just to get a goddamned piece of armor in a video game.

If only I had know what a harbinger that day was...

[Shockeye]

Bruce's act is played out, we all know it. This new cat is still entertaining.

I stopped paying attention to the EQ2 forum awhile ago.

If anyone really cares enough about this new cat drag him into the general forum where he can post something to get banned. As it is right now, EQ2 is dead to me.

[Murgos]

Much like Goat Boy is to the rest of us.

Edit:  that is Jim Breuer, isn't it?

[StGabe]

Well no worries.  You won't get a multipart post here.  Nothing but personal insults to reply to makes that pretty easy.  Congratulations on misquoting me and flaming me so that you don't have to listen to a contrary opinion.  Most of you are taking umbrage at something that was really just a digression ot the main point or picking at me because I dared use a word differently than you wanted me to.  Wow, powerful arguments there.

I multipart post because -- duh -- as soon as I post here I get flamed by half a dozen people and I try to encapsulate my replies.  If you want to kill my post count I could care less. :)  As for my post count on the SWG boards -- I've been an active poster and player correspondent there for 2 years.  So, no shit, I have a few posts.

But hey, that's a good reason not to listen to me. :P  It might be better if you just openly admit that you aren't interested in other opinions and banned me for having them. *smirk*

Gabe.

[StGabe]

jpark said:
When you get a chance - read the WoW forums here. 

I have.  And I've even posted there a number of times.

Gabe.

[Strazos]

Stuff.

"SAA-Wing, and a miss!"

Way to miss not The point, but Multiple points...again.

[Shockeye]

Well no worries.  You won't get a multipart post here.  Nothing but personal insults to reply to makes that pretty easy.  Congratulations on misquoting me and flaming me so that you don't have to listen to a contrary opinion.  Most of you are taking umbrage at something that was really just a digression ot the main point or picking at me because I dared use a word differently than you wanted me to.  Wow, powerful arguments there.

I multipart post because -- duh -- as soon as I post here I get flamed by half a dozen people and I try to encapsulate my replies.  If you want to kill my post count I could care less. :)  As for my post count on the SWG boards -- I've been an active poster and player correspondent there for 2 years.  So, no shit, I have a few posts.

But hey, that's a good reason not to listen to me. :P  It might be better if you just openly admit that you aren't interested in other opinions and banned me for having them. *smirk*

Yep, this cat is more entertaining than Bruce. We'll keep him.

[HaemishM]

First, please learn to use the quote feature. Just copying stuff and italicizing it hurts my eyes. I glaze. There's a button by everyone's post that says "Quote." It can be your friend, or it can be your enemy, or it can be your trademark.

I actually wasn't part of an ubah raiding guild, but I've done the guild leader thing. The guild was great, until we started raiding. Then, what was already a tough job (administering a guild with the shittiest guild tools imaginable, well, except for UO), became a fucking cluster fuck of a time-sucking waste. And it all revolved around the treadmill of leveling to do raids, so we could get gear to level so we could do harder raids, so we could get even better gear so we could do even harder raids, etc. By the time I left EQ (and later the guild), I was so goddamn fed up with that vicious circle and the rampant assholery it spawned that a game which involves rigid classes, item dependence and gated content had really better be a damn fun game for it to get the least bit of attention from me.

Games are often progressions, but they are not always treadmills. They only become treadmills when the progression is the only reason to keep playing, when the act of playing is no longer that much fun. Which means, when you are sucking on the crack pipe like it was oxygen in space, but you aren't getting any buzz anymore; you are doing it out of need, not fun.

Why was EQ2 boring to me? As someone who likes melee characters, the worst thing you can do is make "auto-attack" style of combat. The next worst thing you can do is give me abilities that don't make sense in the game's magic circle. The third worst thing is to make me a complete fucking gimp unless I'm taking hits for a group. The fourth worst thing you can do is make me wait a long time to become something.

Auto-attack style of combat? For EQ2, they almost broke out of this. Sure, I still get auto-attack, but there were a number of abilities to use, so that I was pushing buttons. However, none of the abilities really lit my pants on fire. None of them made me go "DAMN!" or "WOW!" They weren't impressive, not just graphically, but in the game. None of them made me feel like a sword-wielding badass. As for the game's magic circle, the original heroic opportunity special effect was a thunderbolt from the sky. WTF? I know this has now been changed. When I played, my character apparently threw magic bolts of lightning out of his ass. This should never, EVER have made it into the game in this form. It was just stupid. I wasn't a magic-user, why was I throwing lightning around? It broke the magic circle, the rules of the world that create immersion. Also, the entire heroic opportunities mechanic just felt forced. Perhaps the current implementation is better, but it left me cold. I like the idea of reactive abilities. I just feel both DAoC and WoW have handled reactive abilities better (though DAoC's 3-style chains are a bit much). They feel reactive. EQ2's HO's just felt like going through a series of macros.

Taking until level 20 to make me a berserker, to really give my character some differentiation from other warrior archetypes? Too long, especially with the pace of levelling. Once I saw the list of abilities a berserker gets, well, I was underwhelmed.

EQ2 also made the same mistake about warriors that EQ1 did. The warrior wasn't the badass on wheels that a warrior type should be. He was a meatshield. Warriors couldn't take groups of mobs unless the mobs were totally worthless. They constantly had to fight 1-on-1 battles, maybe 1-on-2 if lucky. Yes, I was solo, but if a game doesn't really allow soloability, I tend to turn it off. I hate people. Sure, you could solo in EQ2. It was about as fun as breaking rocks on the chain gang, only without the joys of non-consensual sodomy. Due to the lack of interest in the mechanics, all of the quests were boring too, because they just meant I had to do more uninteresting gameplay.

CoH and WoW both played better, with more involving combat, and more varied abilities. I can solo in both, and solo groups of mobs on a regular basis.

EDIT: For spelling and teh clarity.

[Strazos]

Haemish, For Teh Win....YES!

[kaid]

As for warriors only being a meat shield I would have to wonder how high you got in levels. Post 30 or 35 warriors types are behind only wizards and sorc for highest damage. Scouts lag behind warriors in all but very abrupt fights and priests are priests.

After playing both wow and eq2 warriors I have to say I enjoy eq2 warriors a good bit better. The wow warriors are interesting mind you but I just feel they are lacking in the tools they need to do their job which is tank. Tanking involves both the giving and taking of damage and warriors in eq2 from what I have seen do a very good job of it.

Hell if you look at eq1 where it was like pulling teeth to get somebody to make a warrior in eq2 you can't throw a stone without hitting a bunch of them.

Yes the lightning shooting out of your ass effects were silly but it never really bothered me to much.

Wow warriors are pretty interesting but the rage system just frustrates me at least at the low to mid levels in small groups. The fights are so damn fast that although I have all these funky moves its sometimes a royal pita to actually use many of them. If I hear my damn elf says you need more rage I will damn well show that biatch what rage really is.


kaid

[Toast]

Kaid-
There is a sound option you can use to turn off the "I need more rage" sound.

I was about to kill someone when I was playing a gnome rogue, and every two seconds I would hear "I don't have enough energy" in that awful falsetto.

[Rasix]

I got really good with my Sinister Strike and Eviscerate timing just to avoid the undead voice spam.   It's funny, I never noticed that option(to turn off the voices) when I leveled up my shaman, even though "I need more mana" in a crappy Jamaican voice was just as bad.

[Sky]

I don't know if I'd still be playing WoW if I hadn't found that option the first day.

Ok, so I mash spell hotkeys, so what?

[Alkiera]

First, please learn to use the quote feature. Just copying stuff and italicizing it hurts my eyes. I glaze. There's a button by everyone's post that says "Quote." It can be your friend, or it can be your enemy, or it can be your trademark.

Well, not his trademark.  I believe SirBruce has already been granted trademark on over-use of the quote button.  (I admit to possible placement as a runner up)

Why was EQ2 boring to me? As someone who likes melee characters, the worst thing you can do is make "auto-attack" style of combat. The next worst thing you can do is give me abilities that don't make sense in the game's magic circle. The third worst thing is to make me a complete fucking gimp unless I'm taking hits for a group. The fourth worst thing you can do is make me wait a long time to become something.

While I agree with your points, StGabe and I would both argue, I'm sure, that we don't get the 'WoW is SOOO OMG more wonderful than EQ2' argument because points 1 and 3 are both true of WoW warriors, and 4 is true of some other classes in WoW(Druid is a shapeshifting specialist... but cannot shapeshift at all until 14 or so.  Then he gets 1 form.  And additional forms require even more levels).  WoW is better on your second point, as HO's make very little sense within the game world.

Taking until level 20 to make me a berserker, to really give my character some differentiation from other warrior archetypes? Too long, especially with the pace of levelling. Once I saw the list of abilities a berserker gets, well, I was underwhelmed.

EQ2 also made the same mistake about warriors that EQ1 did. The warrior wasn't the badass on wheels that a warrior type should be. He was a meatshield. Warriors couldn't take groups of mobs unless the mobs were totally worthless. They constantly had to fight 1-on-1 battles, maybe 1-on-2 if lucky. Yes, I was solo, but if a game doesn't really allow soloability, I tend to turn it off. I hate people. Sure, you could solo in EQ2. It was about as fun as breaking rocks on the chain gang, only without the joys of non-consensual sodomy. Due to the lack of interest in the mechanics, all of the quests were boring too, because they just meant I had to do more uninteresting gameplay.

CoH and WoW both played better, with more involving combat, and more varied abilities. I can solo in both, and solo groups of mobs on a regular basis.

I simply have to disagree that WoW has 'more varied abilities'. While you do get truly new abilities as you level in WoW, they are dwarfed by the sheer number of 'Sinister Strike N+1' type upgrades, especially for rogues and warriors.  While EQ2 has 'spell lines', the space between upgrades is longer than WoW(14 levels generally, as a new power gets better as you level into it, then stabilizes as it get toward the end of its life), and the 'upgrade' to that spell/combat art will nearly always be somewhat different.  As your class changes early on, your new powers change damage type(all physical as fighter, some divine as crusader, and finally to disease as a shadowknight, or lightning as mage, fire/ice as sorcerer, poison/disease as Warlock).  Later on, upgrades have additional effects besides just 'more damage'.  it'll be effectively the same type of spell, fill the same slot tactically, but have a new side effect to go along with 'more damage'.

An example.  As a new sorcerer, your level 10 spell is Blaze, a big-damage, slow recast nuke, that does fire damage to a single target.  At lvl 23 as a warlock, you get an upgrade to that spell, called Dark Distortion, which yes, does more damage, but also does poison damage instead of fire damage, and gives you back some power if the spell hits.  If you go the wizard route instead, your level 23 spell is a fire spell that is cheaper than Dark Distortion(instead of giving back power on a hit), but still does fire damage like the spell it replaces.  At least it's not called Blaze 2.  Nor is the lvl 37 upgrade called Blaze 3.

Seriously, after all the crap we gave Horizons over it's non-creative spell names, I'm on a very short list of people who seems to think it no better in WoW.

Alkiera

[HaemishM]

I got to 13 in EQ2, and 25(?) in WoW. I forget which. The time between actual new abilities in EQ2 seemed interminable, because the gameplay was just boring. As I've said before, EQ2 at no time felt like it was anything other than EQ1 with extra-added shiney. And I was already way too burned out on EQ1. I wanted something different from EQ2, and the differences I did get weren't interesting (HO's, shiney, voices).

Maybe it's better as a rogue or sorcerer type, but those aren't the type of characters I like playing. I consider warrior/melee types as the baseline gameplay for all fantasy type games. If that's not interesting, the other won't help it.

I thought the WoW Rage system worked well, but I didn't group much. I felt like WoW had a lot more abilities, and more variance too. I could be a meatshield, or a 2handed berserker type, or a board and blade type, depending on what skills and talents I took. I felt that in EQ2, I'd just be another flavor of damage-soaker.

[Strazos]

Post 30 or 35 warriors types are behind only wizards and sorc for highest damage. Scouts lag behind warriors in all but very abrupt fights and priests are priests.

From what I could see, Brigands would always be about the highest DPS class. I know when I was playing I was always the most damaging person in the party over time. So much so, that true tank (Zerkers and Guardians) Could Not keep agro from me when I went full out; I would have to intentionally slow myself, and my damage, down so the little gimp warriors could hold agro.

Ruse puts everything else anyone has to shame.

[Alkiera]

Ruse has been nerfed, IIRC.  At least, I know brigands were 'toned down' awhile back, and I believe Ruse was one of the major things that got hit.  There was a big uproar.

I'm not sure on kaid's statements as of right now.  They reduced how strength bonuses effect melee, and apparently most people were incorrectly building scouts to have high agility, which made them hard to hit, but did nothing for their damage output.  Scout damage output is still strength-based.  Once people bother to switch to a strength-based equipment layout, the relative dps of fighters and scouts will have to be re-worked.  Some threads with ogre and troll scouts seemed to indicate they had fewer problems with damage output than the various low-str races people tend to pick for scouts, like elves and gnomes.

I do not know, my highest character is a 28 shadowknight, who is not exactly a damage machine.  My 23 warlock, on the other hand, most certainly IS a glass howitzer.  I can nuke high blues for 350-450 every 9 seconds, and fill the gaps with a 170-220 point nuke.  However, he has all the damage mitigation capability of a piece of wet toilet paper.

Alkiera

Alkiera

[dEOS]

(In WoW...) I would group to do quests whenever possible, but those were shortlived and while I was a good grouper I never really had a feeling that what I did was that much better than any other warrior.  The player skill basically amounted to: are you a stupid player or a basically competent one.

My feeling as well. I have CoH as a comparison point though.

[Strazos]

If they nerfed my Adept3 Ruse, the game is worthless.