I have had a chance to sit down and observe EQII being played for many hours on a few occasions. I was able to ask tons of questions have have things tried out in front of me. For those interested in the state of EQII currently:
I'll start with the start. After you create your character, you go through a voice narrarated tutorial. It's a bit hokey, but it's definately better for total newbies. Instead of being ploped in the middle of a city trying to figure out what you're supposed to do, you're directed through everything. And since you start on a ship, you can't really go wrong. Once you're done with the tutorial, you end up at a dock on an island where all players start their life.
The island is small, and interestingly they packed it with many quests. You can easily level to 6 (which is the limit for that area) without completing all the quests. The quests are nice because they give fairly good rewards compaired to EQ. The rewards consist of money, exp, and/or items. The items have stats! Yes, thats right, at level 5 you will actually have items with stats. In EQ I don't think I saw a magic item drop off a mob until I was in the 20's, but that was four years ago, it's fuzzy now.
Speaking of quests, there are a few different ways you get them. Some NPC might yell at you as you pass by and you get the quest by talking to him. These are sort of a forced quest. I say forced, because if you ignore the NPC you might not be able to get certain things done. Then there are the typical talk to the npc or explore areas at random or by chance and get a quest. And finally there are quests by looting. The quests by looting come from looting an item (usually some kind of document). When you examine the item, you might get a quest. There are a lot of quests in the starting island. Enough so that you can probably fully outfit yourself, or close to it. The quests appear to be similar in design to EQ. By that I mean that they are canned quests, there don't appear to be random elements to them. So if you get a quest that says to kill 10 ogres, everyone else would get the same task. EQII is shaping up to be very quest oriented, and this time the quests are not rediculously difficult, for little reward. Also, you will gain quite a bit of experience through completing quests vs just grinding exp in combat.
Combat is a whole new animal in EQII. First, the action is faster. Only casters seem to pause at all during combat, all melee type classes are constantly in action. Solo combat in a one on one encounter is quick, the fights do not drag on. Group encounters are also pretty fast if you're fighting the group encounter in a group. A solo encounter is an encounter meant for a solo player, and a group encounter is meant for a group. These are designated when you target the mob, you will see a "solo" or "group" tag. You will learn to notice the difference quickly, or you will die often until you do. Although a solo player can kill a group encounter, it can be very risky. A blue mob rated a group with a couple triangles in the tag will probably kill you or send you running for help. A pair of green mobs rated as group, might be a little troublesome if you can't split them up or kill one very quickly.
Once you're in combat, the encounter is 'locked'. You can't get help from the outside unless you unlock it by yelling for help. If you do, you're not going to get any exp or reward if the mob is then killed. The locking mechanism holds true for group and/or raids as well. There isn't any feasible way a character can be power-leveled in EQII, you can't provide any help from outside of the encounter or group during a fight. If someone starts a train (yes, trains still occur) and the mobs start walking back to their original location, they will ignore you, even if they are KOS. In some situations I saw a named mob not only ignoring players on the way back, but even if attacked it wouldn't attack back. It did however, keep itself healed. I think the reason for this is to prevent one player from being the puller in a tough spot and pulling the mobs to a safe area, then yelling and outrunning so that another group can ambush the encounter.
A character can't really be twinked in EQII, there seem to be limitations on most items in all slots. The only time I didn't see limits is when the item had hardly any stats. The long an the short of it is that nobody will be leveing an alt character at rediculous speeds. Even two-boxing will be a real challenge due to the mechanics of the interface and the speeds at which combat occurs.
Recovery from combat is fast for all classes, much faster than in EQ. Recovery time is also consistant across levels, meaning that you recover health and mana in percentage increments, not point increments (per tick). Recovery appears to be 5% per tick in resting mode, probably about 1% per tick in any other mode. It also doesn't appear that you can rest while in combat mode.
The amount of experience per kill has been tweaked. I think they are still trying to balence it out some, but at this point it's still quite a grind from level 8 to 9. An average blue mob will get you about a half of one percent, so that 200 of those you have to kill to level. Grouping allows you to take down more difficult encounter which gives an experience bonus, but when you dice up the exp in a group, it doesn't seem to be much better than soloing. Hopefully this will be change some. While Mages can solo quite easily (they get the root and nuke combo early on), scouts and fighters have a bit more difficulty. But with the resting regen the way it is, recovery is a snap. Priests are few and far between, not a popular class in the beta.
Abilities, skills, spells, etc., are handled differently in EQII vs. EQ. When you level you get something new automatically. The new ability or spell appears on your shorcut bar and can at some point be upgraded. The upgrades are basically "training books" you can buy at a vendor, to a point. Beyond some level you will upgrade by getting a drop or buying the book from someone else that got it on a drop.
One of the new complexities being introduced is the "combat wheel". The combat wheel pops up at times when you have successfully landed a hit with a particular ability or spell. You are then supposed to execute the next ability on the wheel, and so on. Eventually if you complete the combination, you get some temporary buff or ability or maybe the mobs takes huge damage (I saw that happen once, a tough mob went from 90% to dead in one big attack). There is a group version of this wheel, and in order to complete some of the complex combinations you probably have to have a well balanced group. In the early levels, the combo's are simple as you would expect. I noticed that groups seems to ignore the wheel entirely. I can imaginge that the wheel will become very powerful in later levels and might require a well balanced group to peform certain type of combinations. Maybe this will become crucial for certain raid type encounters, like you can't really kill the mob with out performing some special combination(s).
The look and feel of the game is a mixed bag. The graphics are very nice, but there are some quirks that come along with that. Movement is not very smooth at this point in time, there is a lot of studder. The studdering effect seems totally random, and sometimes it is very annoying. By studdering I mean the game freezes for split seconds on a frequent basis. It's like the frame rate jumps up and down, but it's not the frame rate.
I believe they are in the process of calibrating how many people can occupy a zone and tweaking things based on that. Many of the zones are instanced automatically. The starting island on the opening day of play might have 15 or 20 instances of the zone going, because the population is limited to about 25 players or so in that zone.
The zone design and landscape are less haphazardly designed, and much smoother than you see in EQ. Accessibility from zone to zone in the cities is nicely done, in Freeport, you can get from one zone to almost any other city zone and some outside zones from a dock. The dock is like a common entrance/exit point to several zones. There are also the usual city gates, etc if you want to take the long way to get someplace.
You will get an apartment when you start, you have to pay a specified amount per real time week for it. At first glance there isn't much benefit to having an apartment, but apparently housing will be the place where you can setup shop for selling items in trader mode. You can restrict access or not, furnish the place, or abandon it at will.
Tradeskills appear to be a world in themselves. Like EQ there are a huge number of items that can be crafted. Unlike EQ, you will not get carpal tunnel syndrome. If you have the knowledge and raw materials, go to a crafting station that is appropriate and you are presented with all of your options. The only thing I didin't like was having to wait around in real time for the item to complete. It's corny to sit around for five minutes watching your character build something and if you need 100 of someting, it could be a serious time-sink. But at least your wrist will be saved from going numb.
The interface is similar in many ways to EQ, using the same XML type windowing. There doesn't appear to be all of the features that EQ currently has. The looking for group and find is not as good as what EQ has, but this may change. There is no spell bar for casters, everyone has the same shortcut bars and as many as they want. Access to spells is no longer limited in the manner that EQ limited them. The slash commands are pretty much all carried over from EQ. The game utilizes a "letterbox" appearance putting a black band at the top and bottom of the screen. I'd like to be able to put the black space just at the bottom, but right now all you can do is adjust the letterboxing effect. You can't adjust the top and bottom independently.
All in all, EQII looks pretty good and close to being finished. The content isn't all there, but there is a lot and it seems like they won't have much trouble adding enough in by the release date to make most people happy. There is some buggy behavior and the studdering is annoying, hopefully that will all be worked out in the next several weeks. I can believe a launch before Christmas is possible from what I've seen.
EQII Observations (just an opinion here)
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Flunkie
- Knight of the Rose Croix (zomg French)
- Posts: 742
- Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2003 7:05 pm
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Flunkie
- Knight of the Rose Croix (zomg French)
- Posts: 742
- Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2003 7:05 pm
Beta Update
There are a huge number of players active on the Beta server now. This past weekend, the lag caused by so many people playing made the game, at times, unplayable. I don't know what the server population is, but the limits have been reached. The lag manifests itself is a couple different ways. The first is that while you are running through a zone, you might suddenly find yourself in the midst of several mobs. If they are KOS, you're going to be running for the zone line. Second, combat is difficult to execute. When you cast or use an ability, the actions would sometimes take 2-5 seconds or longer before they actually showed up in play. In a close fight, it's impossible to know whether you should run or continue fighting.
The biggest zone I've seen is The Commonlands, it's huge. It seems like it's built to hold a large number of players. There were well over 100 (the game won't tell you how many more) in the zone for much of the weekend, lag really starts to be noticable at between 80-90 players in that zone. In the starting areas, SOE instanced the combat zones to keep the populations managable. Those zones seem to be limited to around 60 players or so. Lag occurs there but not as much in combat as the suddenly finding yourself in the midst of a group of KOS mobs. It appears that SOE decided to create partitions within zones. When you walk from one partition into another, the mobs for the other partition suddenly show up, while they disappear from the partition you just left. This means that while standing at the threshold of a new partition, it would appear to be an empty area. But once you step in, suddenly a bunch of mobs appear. When you step back out, they all disappear in front of you.
This leads to some strange situations, because it affects players as well. Say you're in a group and your group is fighting in one of these partitions. Someone runs out with a mob on thier tail and several group memebers run out to help. Whoever is still in the partition might still be fighting, the group members that left might look back and not see anything going on. So there is a fight going on, but most of the goup doesn't see it happening until they step back into the partition. Then the mobs show up and the missing party memebers show up in battle. It's alarming, hopefully SOE will change the mechanics of this soon.
The instancing of zones leads to some problems as well. In EQ, zones were instanced by a group or raid. In EQII, they are instanced on the fly for everyone. If you're in a group and leave the zone or go link dead, you might not be able to get back to the same instance of the zone where your group is. That means the whole group has to exit that instance of the zone if that happens, or they just drop you from the group. If you go LD it's particularly bad, because you might log back on to find your self in the middle of a bad area and in the wrong instance (so nothing to do but run for it). I would assume that SOE will try to fix these issues, there ought to be away to get you back with your group. I think the side effects of zone instancing was something they hadn't worried about so much as getting them to work at all.
The biggest zone I've seen is The Commonlands, it's huge. It seems like it's built to hold a large number of players. There were well over 100 (the game won't tell you how many more) in the zone for much of the weekend, lag really starts to be noticable at between 80-90 players in that zone. In the starting areas, SOE instanced the combat zones to keep the populations managable. Those zones seem to be limited to around 60 players or so. Lag occurs there but not as much in combat as the suddenly finding yourself in the midst of a group of KOS mobs. It appears that SOE decided to create partitions within zones. When you walk from one partition into another, the mobs for the other partition suddenly show up, while they disappear from the partition you just left. This means that while standing at the threshold of a new partition, it would appear to be an empty area. But once you step in, suddenly a bunch of mobs appear. When you step back out, they all disappear in front of you.
This leads to some strange situations, because it affects players as well. Say you're in a group and your group is fighting in one of these partitions. Someone runs out with a mob on thier tail and several group memebers run out to help. Whoever is still in the partition might still be fighting, the group members that left might look back and not see anything going on. So there is a fight going on, but most of the goup doesn't see it happening until they step back into the partition. Then the mobs show up and the missing party memebers show up in battle. It's alarming, hopefully SOE will change the mechanics of this soon.
The instancing of zones leads to some problems as well. In EQ, zones were instanced by a group or raid. In EQII, they are instanced on the fly for everyone. If you're in a group and leave the zone or go link dead, you might not be able to get back to the same instance of the zone where your group is. That means the whole group has to exit that instance of the zone if that happens, or they just drop you from the group. If you go LD it's particularly bad, because you might log back on to find your self in the middle of a bad area and in the wrong instance (so nothing to do but run for it). I would assume that SOE will try to fix these issues, there ought to be away to get you back with your group. I think the side effects of zone instancing was something they hadn't worried about so much as getting them to work at all.
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Flunkie
- Knight of the Rose Croix (zomg French)
- Posts: 742
- Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2003 7:05 pm
There was a new update late last week. A few of the noticable changes where the maps you can call up and the manner in which your skills increase. The lag is still heavy in the larger non-instanced zone when they are crowded, which of course makes combat difficult. But of course, they will fix the lag by launch day, which should be just about 2 months from now.
There is a map you can call up that is helpful in the cities, it is all but useless anywhere else. In the cities, they will show you where you are, the locations of different shops, and gates leading to different sections of the city. The indicators for the gates were incorrect, they show the current zone name instead of the destination (where the gate goes). But it's obvious what they intend to do, and it's a nice addition, the old maps were not nearly as useful.
Skills used to increase rapidly as you used them. When you leveled, as soon as you went swimming or got into a fight, your skills would go up to the maximum for that level. They have changed this to every 20% of experience, your skills go up in every category by 1 point. This seemed like a bug the first time it happened, it is strange to see all the skills going up after a round of combat. This has nothing to do with trade skills, those type of skills are handled differently than EQ.
The trade skill system or Artisan class is something they merged into all classes. I can understand why they did that. The system, although complex, is rather tedious and boring. If the left the Artisan as a separate class, those players would have been bored to death with it. It is a total departure from the EQ system. There are still various types of "stations" and you still produce items from raw materials. But that is about all that is similar.
You can actually die from crafting. Yes, that is correct, you can be killed in the process of sewing a pair of pants or cutting a gem. What happens is that while making an item (not the instantaineous function it was in EQ) several "problems" will occur. You counter act these problems with an appropriate remedy (a sort of castable reaction). So for instance you are crafting a simple chemical, everything is moving along, suddenly there is a "Noisey Distraction". OMG, what do I do!?! You cast "Ignore Distraction" and the problem is counter-acted. It's a bit tediuos in that crafting one item takes 3-4 minutes and you have to babysit the process watching like a hawk for the problems to pop up. There are also crafting "buffs" you need to keep recasting because the last 6-30 seconds or so and they help with quality or speeding thing up. Crafting one item, you can expect 3-8 problem in the lower levels and if you ignore them, two things will happen.
1. You might take heavy damage, and repeatedly ignoring the problems that pop up will probably get you killed. You have about 4-6 seconds to respond to a problem. [This pretty much wipes out macro-botting, as the problem is not logged. Instead, it pops up as a symbol and a message in the crafting station window.]
2. Even if you make it through crafting that one item, it will probably be of little value, malformed, etc.
For hard core crafters the system might be a lot of fun for them. For one thing, it's so complicated and tedious that it will probably keep many players from bothering with the high-end crafting game. The flip side is that a crafter has some serious impact on the quality of an item they produce. The same ingredients can produce very different results depending on the skills that are possessed by the more experienced crafter. All in all, crafting is a mixed bag. The way to go is to probably level up in crafting at about the same rate that you level in your chosen profession. Otherwise you'll find yourself far behind when you finally reach the point where you start getting some rare materials for crafting nice items.
That brings up foraging and such. I've learned that selling foraged items to the vendor=not good. Everything you forage is useful in crafting and some of the rare foraged items will be very valuable to other players. All foraged items are worth more to players than you can sell to a vendor.
That's all for now!
There is a map you can call up that is helpful in the cities, it is all but useless anywhere else. In the cities, they will show you where you are, the locations of different shops, and gates leading to different sections of the city. The indicators for the gates were incorrect, they show the current zone name instead of the destination (where the gate goes). But it's obvious what they intend to do, and it's a nice addition, the old maps were not nearly as useful.
Skills used to increase rapidly as you used them. When you leveled, as soon as you went swimming or got into a fight, your skills would go up to the maximum for that level. They have changed this to every 20% of experience, your skills go up in every category by 1 point. This seemed like a bug the first time it happened, it is strange to see all the skills going up after a round of combat. This has nothing to do with trade skills, those type of skills are handled differently than EQ.
The trade skill system or Artisan class is something they merged into all classes. I can understand why they did that. The system, although complex, is rather tedious and boring. If the left the Artisan as a separate class, those players would have been bored to death with it. It is a total departure from the EQ system. There are still various types of "stations" and you still produce items from raw materials. But that is about all that is similar.
You can actually die from crafting. Yes, that is correct, you can be killed in the process of sewing a pair of pants or cutting a gem. What happens is that while making an item (not the instantaineous function it was in EQ) several "problems" will occur. You counter act these problems with an appropriate remedy (a sort of castable reaction). So for instance you are crafting a simple chemical, everything is moving along, suddenly there is a "Noisey Distraction". OMG, what do I do!?! You cast "Ignore Distraction" and the problem is counter-acted. It's a bit tediuos in that crafting one item takes 3-4 minutes and you have to babysit the process watching like a hawk for the problems to pop up. There are also crafting "buffs" you need to keep recasting because the last 6-30 seconds or so and they help with quality or speeding thing up. Crafting one item, you can expect 3-8 problem in the lower levels and if you ignore them, two things will happen.
1. You might take heavy damage, and repeatedly ignoring the problems that pop up will probably get you killed. You have about 4-6 seconds to respond to a problem. [This pretty much wipes out macro-botting, as the problem is not logged. Instead, it pops up as a symbol and a message in the crafting station window.]
2. Even if you make it through crafting that one item, it will probably be of little value, malformed, etc.
For hard core crafters the system might be a lot of fun for them. For one thing, it's so complicated and tedious that it will probably keep many players from bothering with the high-end crafting game. The flip side is that a crafter has some serious impact on the quality of an item they produce. The same ingredients can produce very different results depending on the skills that are possessed by the more experienced crafter. All in all, crafting is a mixed bag. The way to go is to probably level up in crafting at about the same rate that you level in your chosen profession. Otherwise you'll find yourself far behind when you finally reach the point where you start getting some rare materials for crafting nice items.
That brings up foraging and such. I've learned that selling foraged items to the vendor=not good. Everything you forage is useful in crafting and some of the rare foraged items will be very valuable to other players. All foraged items are worth more to players than you can sell to a vendor.
That's all for now!
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LayraLilliane
- Grand Master Architecht
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rodric
- Commander of the Temple
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Flunkie
- Knight of the Rose Croix (zomg French)
- Posts: 742
- Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2003 7:05 pm
Performance and Pain
The size of the beta appears to be ramping up to a maximum level. The effort is probably geared toward finding the performance issues and eliminating them. The developers are being inundated with information by now, hopefully they will fix the lag issues quickly. A second beta server has been mentioned as being available at some point for the flood of new beta invitees.
Here comes the pain... Previously, I mentioned the trade skill system as being complex and tedious (and even dangerous). It is all those things, it's also really boring for the average player. As it turns out, when an item goes from being good experience to trivial, the time requirement to produce the item does not. So if it took 1 hour to produce a stack of items that previously gave very good exp, it will still take 1 hour to produce that stack even when it gives little or no exp. This is not such a problem for the starting crafter, but for a crafter beyond level 6 or so, this becomes a huge time sink.
The reason is simple; you much somehow acquire the low level components in order to create items that give better experience at the higher levels. You might think you can just buy them, but think again. The lower level components are not for sale on vendors. No doubt players will sell them, but they will be very expensive, mainly because the player would have had to spend an entire hour or more creating a single stack of 20 low level items. And these are the lowest level of basic components or what is essentially "level 1". Imagine level 20 where you need level 19 components, made from level 18 components, made from level 17 components and so on. Actually, it probably doesn't go quite that far, but it would not be unreasonable to say that the production of one level 20 item could take several man-hours of subcomponent production at little or no experience gain. All of that just to get one combine on an item that will give 1-2% of a level toward 21. Eventually this issue will come to a head. There are a hard core few that will love the system no matter how tedious or difficult, but I suspect the majority will not.
The EQ1 trade skill system was indeed tedious, mainly because you had to pray for luck and do huge amounts of combines in the hopes of going up one skill point. EQ2 eliminates that element of chance in favor of creating things over a specific period of time, literally one piece at a time. They have made it easier to handle recipes and you don't have to manually move things around, but the process is far, far from automatic. If it is left as complex as it is currently, I suspect efforts to cheat the system will be made in this area first.
Originally Artisans were to be a separate class from adventurers. It's not a bad idea to combine Artisans with the adventurer classes. They seemed to have intended for adventuring leveling and artisan leveling to occur at approximately the same rate with a similar level of interaction. What they ended up with is a system that levels you over an exponentially increasing rate of time, level to level, rather than a more linear pace. There also isn't near the level of discovery, indeed everything is written down in recipe books or texts that you buy or acquire during your adventures. There is some influence in the quality of an item, but very little control, as a result no matter how much you concentrate on performing the correct actions at the right time, you will seldom create an item that is better than average. More luck is involved than player skill.
There don't seem to be any crafting type quests built in right now, but supposedly there will be. If they add crafting quests and speed up the process for creation of trivial items, they would go a long ways toward making the crafting system more palatable.
On the adventuring front, it appears that kiting mobs will probably not be possible, or at least not very worth while, not even in the higher end game. The ability to use buffs that increase your running speed during combat has been eliminated again. The buff now stays up in combat, but your running speed goes down to the default until you "yell" to get out of combat mode or win the encounter. Up to level 20, at least, kiting wasn't possible anyway because the casting classes don't get anything that slow the mobs running speed down.
There is the possibility that higher end spells will allow you to slow the mobs down to a very slow speed, in that case you could potentially kite a mob at normal running speed. Perhaps this is what the developers have in mind, then again maybe it's simply not in the design plans. It's been said that SOE hates quad-kiting. It's not hard to believe that after playing EQ2. You are much more likely to have to play in a group than you would in EQ1. Soloing for INT casters is a root and nuke game or nuke/melee and heal game for WIS casters. Fortunately there is now a good facility for creating a group or finding players via filtering that are looking for a group.
A little annoyance has cropped up that will probably become the next faux pas. This is players that die and then promptly quit a group. When you die in a group in EQ2, everyone gets a piece of the experience debt. It's annoying for someone to just quit when they just died, because the whole group has to work their debt off. It especially annoying when there is a full group wipe or close to it and then half of the group decides to log off for the night. Some of your debt is wiped out over time when you don't play, so it is enticing to just bail out. But the rest of the group gets stuck working it off if they want to stay. I predict that this will lead to some rants in the future. Maybe the developers will change this a bit so that if you bail out right after death, you take some or all of your experience debt with you. I guess it wouldn't be easy to program something like that.
Another little annoyance is the lack of a "/random 1 6" type of command that can be picked by the group leader instead of the "lotto" system. The lotto system allow players in the group to select what they would like to "roll" on out of items that are available to loot. However, each item is rolled as a seperate roll. So with lotto in effect, if 3 items drop, all 3 items could got to a single person. In practice, this has been seen more than once.
There is a Leader Loot Only option which allow the leader to loot the items, but there needs to be some ability for the leader to select who can roll on items and one at a time. In a high end encounter you certainly would not want one player to roll on item after the said player had already won something. For trash loot, the lotto works perfectly fine, but switching between systems for boss mobs isn't a natural thing to think about or do and Leader Only Looting without some special rolling or lotto options won't likely be very popular. The lotto system could potentially be modified to simply have some check box options like "Win only once per looted encounter", etc.
Performance and pain aside, the game is still going to be great. It is expected that tweaking at this point will be required, I only hope they get it righted soon. Until EQ2 goes live, nobody can say for sure whether these issues will exist. I predict a large DVD installation, and a massive patch download on the opening day of go-live though.
Here comes the pain... Previously, I mentioned the trade skill system as being complex and tedious (and even dangerous). It is all those things, it's also really boring for the average player. As it turns out, when an item goes from being good experience to trivial, the time requirement to produce the item does not. So if it took 1 hour to produce a stack of items that previously gave very good exp, it will still take 1 hour to produce that stack even when it gives little or no exp. This is not such a problem for the starting crafter, but for a crafter beyond level 6 or so, this becomes a huge time sink.
The reason is simple; you much somehow acquire the low level components in order to create items that give better experience at the higher levels. You might think you can just buy them, but think again. The lower level components are not for sale on vendors. No doubt players will sell them, but they will be very expensive, mainly because the player would have had to spend an entire hour or more creating a single stack of 20 low level items. And these are the lowest level of basic components or what is essentially "level 1". Imagine level 20 where you need level 19 components, made from level 18 components, made from level 17 components and so on. Actually, it probably doesn't go quite that far, but it would not be unreasonable to say that the production of one level 20 item could take several man-hours of subcomponent production at little or no experience gain. All of that just to get one combine on an item that will give 1-2% of a level toward 21. Eventually this issue will come to a head. There are a hard core few that will love the system no matter how tedious or difficult, but I suspect the majority will not.
The EQ1 trade skill system was indeed tedious, mainly because you had to pray for luck and do huge amounts of combines in the hopes of going up one skill point. EQ2 eliminates that element of chance in favor of creating things over a specific period of time, literally one piece at a time. They have made it easier to handle recipes and you don't have to manually move things around, but the process is far, far from automatic. If it is left as complex as it is currently, I suspect efforts to cheat the system will be made in this area first.
Originally Artisans were to be a separate class from adventurers. It's not a bad idea to combine Artisans with the adventurer classes. They seemed to have intended for adventuring leveling and artisan leveling to occur at approximately the same rate with a similar level of interaction. What they ended up with is a system that levels you over an exponentially increasing rate of time, level to level, rather than a more linear pace. There also isn't near the level of discovery, indeed everything is written down in recipe books or texts that you buy or acquire during your adventures. There is some influence in the quality of an item, but very little control, as a result no matter how much you concentrate on performing the correct actions at the right time, you will seldom create an item that is better than average. More luck is involved than player skill.
There don't seem to be any crafting type quests built in right now, but supposedly there will be. If they add crafting quests and speed up the process for creation of trivial items, they would go a long ways toward making the crafting system more palatable.
On the adventuring front, it appears that kiting mobs will probably not be possible, or at least not very worth while, not even in the higher end game. The ability to use buffs that increase your running speed during combat has been eliminated again. The buff now stays up in combat, but your running speed goes down to the default until you "yell" to get out of combat mode or win the encounter. Up to level 20, at least, kiting wasn't possible anyway because the casting classes don't get anything that slow the mobs running speed down.
There is the possibility that higher end spells will allow you to slow the mobs down to a very slow speed, in that case you could potentially kite a mob at normal running speed. Perhaps this is what the developers have in mind, then again maybe it's simply not in the design plans. It's been said that SOE hates quad-kiting. It's not hard to believe that after playing EQ2. You are much more likely to have to play in a group than you would in EQ1. Soloing for INT casters is a root and nuke game or nuke/melee and heal game for WIS casters. Fortunately there is now a good facility for creating a group or finding players via filtering that are looking for a group.
A little annoyance has cropped up that will probably become the next faux pas. This is players that die and then promptly quit a group. When you die in a group in EQ2, everyone gets a piece of the experience debt. It's annoying for someone to just quit when they just died, because the whole group has to work their debt off. It especially annoying when there is a full group wipe or close to it and then half of the group decides to log off for the night. Some of your debt is wiped out over time when you don't play, so it is enticing to just bail out. But the rest of the group gets stuck working it off if they want to stay. I predict that this will lead to some rants in the future. Maybe the developers will change this a bit so that if you bail out right after death, you take some or all of your experience debt with you. I guess it wouldn't be easy to program something like that.
Another little annoyance is the lack of a "/random 1 6" type of command that can be picked by the group leader instead of the "lotto" system. The lotto system allow players in the group to select what they would like to "roll" on out of items that are available to loot. However, each item is rolled as a seperate roll. So with lotto in effect, if 3 items drop, all 3 items could got to a single person. In practice, this has been seen more than once.
There is a Leader Loot Only option which allow the leader to loot the items, but there needs to be some ability for the leader to select who can roll on items and one at a time. In a high end encounter you certainly would not want one player to roll on item after the said player had already won something. For trash loot, the lotto works perfectly fine, but switching between systems for boss mobs isn't a natural thing to think about or do and Leader Only Looting without some special rolling or lotto options won't likely be very popular. The lotto system could potentially be modified to simply have some check box options like "Win only once per looted encounter", etc.
Performance and pain aside, the game is still going to be great. It is expected that tweaking at this point will be required, I only hope they get it righted soon. Until EQ2 goes live, nobody can say for sure whether these issues will exist. I predict a large DVD installation, and a massive patch download on the opening day of go-live though.
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Eq4life
- Apprentice n00b
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Wed Oct 06, 2004 5:21 pm
Thanks so much! keep it coming!
Thanks dude, I'm one of those guys that check the top 4-5 eq2 fansites daily in search for new infomation about the game (i know, i'm addicted). These posts have been more helpful than half of the eq2 "previews" or "journals" that i've read in the past few weeks. I really appreciate the straight opinion of the game and it's status in beta from a gamer's perspective (both pros and cons), i really liked the artisan and tradeskills part. If it would be not be too much of a hassle, i'd appreciate your continuing in-depth observations of the game, especially in terms of the effectiveness of the combat system (higher lvls), new patches dealing with new lag?, and anything especially unique or addicting. Thanks again for taking time out to help keep us non-beta testers informed. Keep up the good work ^_^.
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Flunkie
- Knight of the Rose Croix (zomg French)
- Posts: 742
- Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2003 7:05 pm
Open beta may be a possibility, twenty (that's right, 20) additional beta servers were spotted on the "not up" list. These were numbered beta3-beta22, one would have to assume they were planning on at least some period of open beta and that those servers will be the production servers after go-live. There hasn't been any word about those systems and they mysteriously disappeared from the "not up" list a day or so later.
There have been plenty of tweaks to the system and it looks like the serious lag problems in combat may be licked. There is still a bit of studdering as you change your point of view while moving; new models coming into your view radius causes it I believe. However, the really bad lag in combat seems to be gone.
The underground areas, particularly the sewers, still have the weird partition effects. It seems like these effects have become more pronounced. Partitioning is an effect like stepping across a threshold and suddenly a bunch of mobs appear. I believe partitioning is used to replace a view radius in certain zones. The reason would be that your radius would cause models to unnecessarily load that were behind one or more walls. It's a performance thing, not a bad idea, but the thresholds must be designed with partitioning in mind and they are not. When the mobs are non-KOS, this is no big deal. In areas where the mobs are KOS, you're sure to start a train and be running for your life. Sometime stepping into a partition, you don't see any mobs for a few seconds, by that time you may actually be in the midst of many without knowing it. I'm not sure if they can easily fix this before launch, but I'm positive many newbies will complain about the deaths caused by all the mobs springing up from nowhere.
The "Heroic Opportunity" disk or Combat Wheel as I like to call it, was disabled recently, it apparently was responsible for some of the lag. It may have been the major lag producer in the big combat zones for some reason. Whatever happens, they will hopefully bring it back soon. It's an extra bit of damage you can count on, and it especially helps for tought solo encounter. Groups tend to ignore the wheel, or at least not much is said about trying to complete it. Actions and spell casting occur so fast that all you can do is hope your next action will happen to complete it. You get used to certain combinations over time and in a group the other classes get used to their combinations. When you start seeing weird combinations pop up, nobody knows what they do. The wheel isn't up long enough in combat to study it in detail. It's a bunch of symbols, if you hover your mouse over it, you can see the name of the spell/effect that will be applied if it is completed. Many times in group combat, the wheel will be completed, but you really don't know what the effect was or if it helped you in any way. I think this is the main reason that most groups don't pay too much attention to it.
The major starting cities appear to have approximately 100 quests available. There are about 5-10 quests in each city zone. The quest givers are everything from merchants and bankers to NPC's standing in an empty room somewhere. Some quests you get through looting an odd item and examining it. There are three basic quests types; Fedex, Kill/Loot, Search/Find. There are also a few bad quests where you get no reward, this appears to be like Trick or Treat on Halloween, you just get the 'Trick'. There are very few 'no reward' quests. The rewards for most of the level 6-12 quests are a shoddy item, 11-67 copper and exp. There are a few quests that give pretty good items that you will be gald to have received, the experience is also good in many cases.
Quests have levels, and just like mobs that you 'consider' the color of the title text of the quest will tell you about the level of the quest. A quest with a title that is green will get you about 1-2% experience when completed as a reward. A quest with orange title text will give 10%+ as a reward. When you first acquire a quest it may be orange, by the time you complete it, it could be green, depending on how many levels you advanced in the mean time. You can load yourself up with dozens of quests and end up not really wanting to bother with some of them because they are not worth the time any longer. On the other hand, by loading yourself up, it is possible to go kill orcs and have one kill could towards 4 or 5 quests at the same time. This makes for great efficiency. There are also a few 'Taskmaster' NPC types, these may be associated with more than simple quest giving. Some of these taskmasters are undoubtedly associated with "faction" for particular factions within a city. I believe completing quests with these taskmasters will lead to city rewards like the special housing rewards, etc.
It has become plainly obvious where and what some of the fabled non-instanced guild halls are and look like. The biggest is huge, if the floor plan is as big on the inside as it appears from the outside, it would be quite prestigeous to be in the guild that has it. These places are also centrally located in a city zone that is accessible from all of the other major sections of the central city. Some of the most expensive instanced housing is also found in these zones. The buying price on some of these places is 1 or more platinum and sever gold, with an upkeep of several gold per week. That is a large amount of money; remember 1,000 copper in EQ is 1 platinum, in EQ2 1,000,000 copper is 1 platinum. It is safe to say that these dwellings will not be occupied, ever, in beta and not for months after the game releases.
I heard someone refer to EQ2 as a land of dolls, I didn't understand it at first, I do now. The NPC's are as stiff and wooden as John Kerry. They don't shuck and jive like the NPC's do in Star Wars Galaxies when you talk to them. On the other hand, they do speak for the most part which is an interesting change. It reminds me of watching a claymation show or Southpark, only the lips move. However, I thought seeing an Imperial Officer shucking and jiving when I hailed him was ludicrous, so although it would be nice to see something a little more realistic, I don't mind the wooden appearance. You will find yourself skipping over much of the stories these speaking NPC's have to say when getting a quest. Some of the dialog is funny, most of it is simple window dressing. None of it really gets you into the story.
Many mobs will shout orders during battle as window dressing, but some of it is silly. The last orc falling might yell for one of the others to go get a shaman, the problem is he says it when he's on his way to the ground and there aren't any other orcs left.
That's it for now, I'm hoping for housing updates and the consignment/pseudo Bazaar system to be available soon. I'm very interested to know how the mechanics of buying and selling will be worked out. As of yet, nothing exists, everyone uses /AUC.
There have been plenty of tweaks to the system and it looks like the serious lag problems in combat may be licked. There is still a bit of studdering as you change your point of view while moving; new models coming into your view radius causes it I believe. However, the really bad lag in combat seems to be gone.
The underground areas, particularly the sewers, still have the weird partition effects. It seems like these effects have become more pronounced. Partitioning is an effect like stepping across a threshold and suddenly a bunch of mobs appear. I believe partitioning is used to replace a view radius in certain zones. The reason would be that your radius would cause models to unnecessarily load that were behind one or more walls. It's a performance thing, not a bad idea, but the thresholds must be designed with partitioning in mind and they are not. When the mobs are non-KOS, this is no big deal. In areas where the mobs are KOS, you're sure to start a train and be running for your life. Sometime stepping into a partition, you don't see any mobs for a few seconds, by that time you may actually be in the midst of many without knowing it. I'm not sure if they can easily fix this before launch, but I'm positive many newbies will complain about the deaths caused by all the mobs springing up from nowhere.
The "Heroic Opportunity" disk or Combat Wheel as I like to call it, was disabled recently, it apparently was responsible for some of the lag. It may have been the major lag producer in the big combat zones for some reason. Whatever happens, they will hopefully bring it back soon. It's an extra bit of damage you can count on, and it especially helps for tought solo encounter. Groups tend to ignore the wheel, or at least not much is said about trying to complete it. Actions and spell casting occur so fast that all you can do is hope your next action will happen to complete it. You get used to certain combinations over time and in a group the other classes get used to their combinations. When you start seeing weird combinations pop up, nobody knows what they do. The wheel isn't up long enough in combat to study it in detail. It's a bunch of symbols, if you hover your mouse over it, you can see the name of the spell/effect that will be applied if it is completed. Many times in group combat, the wheel will be completed, but you really don't know what the effect was or if it helped you in any way. I think this is the main reason that most groups don't pay too much attention to it.
The major starting cities appear to have approximately 100 quests available. There are about 5-10 quests in each city zone. The quest givers are everything from merchants and bankers to NPC's standing in an empty room somewhere. Some quests you get through looting an odd item and examining it. There are three basic quests types; Fedex, Kill/Loot, Search/Find. There are also a few bad quests where you get no reward, this appears to be like Trick or Treat on Halloween, you just get the 'Trick'. There are very few 'no reward' quests. The rewards for most of the level 6-12 quests are a shoddy item, 11-67 copper and exp. There are a few quests that give pretty good items that you will be gald to have received, the experience is also good in many cases.
Quests have levels, and just like mobs that you 'consider' the color of the title text of the quest will tell you about the level of the quest. A quest with a title that is green will get you about 1-2% experience when completed as a reward. A quest with orange title text will give 10%+ as a reward. When you first acquire a quest it may be orange, by the time you complete it, it could be green, depending on how many levels you advanced in the mean time. You can load yourself up with dozens of quests and end up not really wanting to bother with some of them because they are not worth the time any longer. On the other hand, by loading yourself up, it is possible to go kill orcs and have one kill could towards 4 or 5 quests at the same time. This makes for great efficiency. There are also a few 'Taskmaster' NPC types, these may be associated with more than simple quest giving. Some of these taskmasters are undoubtedly associated with "faction" for particular factions within a city. I believe completing quests with these taskmasters will lead to city rewards like the special housing rewards, etc.
It has become plainly obvious where and what some of the fabled non-instanced guild halls are and look like. The biggest is huge, if the floor plan is as big on the inside as it appears from the outside, it would be quite prestigeous to be in the guild that has it. These places are also centrally located in a city zone that is accessible from all of the other major sections of the central city. Some of the most expensive instanced housing is also found in these zones. The buying price on some of these places is 1 or more platinum and sever gold, with an upkeep of several gold per week. That is a large amount of money; remember 1,000 copper in EQ is 1 platinum, in EQ2 1,000,000 copper is 1 platinum. It is safe to say that these dwellings will not be occupied, ever, in beta and not for months after the game releases.
I heard someone refer to EQ2 as a land of dolls, I didn't understand it at first, I do now. The NPC's are as stiff and wooden as John Kerry. They don't shuck and jive like the NPC's do in Star Wars Galaxies when you talk to them. On the other hand, they do speak for the most part which is an interesting change. It reminds me of watching a claymation show or Southpark, only the lips move. However, I thought seeing an Imperial Officer shucking and jiving when I hailed him was ludicrous, so although it would be nice to see something a little more realistic, I don't mind the wooden appearance. You will find yourself skipping over much of the stories these speaking NPC's have to say when getting a quest. Some of the dialog is funny, most of it is simple window dressing. None of it really gets you into the story.
Many mobs will shout orders during battle as window dressing, but some of it is silly. The last orc falling might yell for one of the others to go get a shaman, the problem is he says it when he's on his way to the ground and there aren't any other orcs left.
That's it for now, I'm hoping for housing updates and the consignment/pseudo Bazaar system to be available soon. I'm very interested to know how the mechanics of buying and selling will be worked out. As of yet, nothing exists, everyone uses /AUC.
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Eq4life
- Apprentice n00b
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Wed Oct 06, 2004 5:21 pm
thanks for the update again!
hm...sounds like parititioning is something they'll have to work on throughout beta, hopefully they'll fix it as it sounds quite annoying not to mention dangerous.
aww...sad to hear that the combat wheel was disabled, hopefully they'll fix it up and make it more user friendly. i think the combat wheel could be a real tool to keep people involved and make group teamwork a bigger factor. i'm all for making combat more exciting
. glad to hear most of the bad lag is going away, but i hope they don't have to nerf the wheel to keep the lag down.
The quest level thing makes sense, but i can see how it can be irritating if u level past the quest before u finish it.
guild housing looks quite exiciting, i would love to walk around and check out all the decorations a guild may have put in it.
hm.. a few questions.. how are class balancing issues? any class overly powerful (in the group or solo encounters)? from your experience, what is the most common group makeup? people have speculated that the perfect group may not be the 4 main archetypes plus 2 dps but 4 main archetypes and perhaps support classes. what do u think is more effective? how is the higher level content developing? do you feel like you are working toward something worthwhile and more exciting (raids, etc)?
Thanks again for your continued updates. Once again your post has been infinitely more valuable to me than most of the beta journals posted within the past week. keep up the good work.
aww...sad to hear that the combat wheel was disabled, hopefully they'll fix it up and make it more user friendly. i think the combat wheel could be a real tool to keep people involved and make group teamwork a bigger factor. i'm all for making combat more exciting
. glad to hear most of the bad lag is going away, but i hope they don't have to nerf the wheel to keep the lag down. The quest level thing makes sense, but i can see how it can be irritating if u level past the quest before u finish it.
guild housing looks quite exiciting, i would love to walk around and check out all the decorations a guild may have put in it.
hm.. a few questions.. how are class balancing issues? any class overly powerful (in the group or solo encounters)? from your experience, what is the most common group makeup? people have speculated that the perfect group may not be the 4 main archetypes plus 2 dps but 4 main archetypes and perhaps support classes. what do u think is more effective? how is the higher level content developing? do you feel like you are working toward something worthwhile and more exciting (raids, etc)?
Thanks again for your continued updates. Once again your post has been infinitely more valuable to me than most of the beta journals posted within the past week. keep up the good work.
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LayraLilliane
- Grand Master Architecht
- Posts: 402
- Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2003 2:37 pm
John Smedley said on http://www.EQII.com that there are 22 servers online but hasn't been put up yet. Looks like Open Beta is coming near you!
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Flunkie
- Knight of the Rose Croix (zomg French)
- Posts: 742
- Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2003 7:05 pm
The Lag Monster is back. This past week was difficult to play do to zones and servers being taken down. There was probably a lot of poking and prodding going on to solve the serious lag issues that have cropped up. The worst lag seems to be isolated into certain zones and only happens during combat. Wailing Caves is an underground zone off the Commonlands, it was virtually empty yesterday and yet there was horrendous lag during fights. This almost always occurs in groups, basically everything halts for 5-10 seconds, then suddenly continues again. The zones or the servers were taken down many times last week, so playtime was somewhat limited.
Tradeskills Update.
The devs have apparently heard enough complaints about the speed of progression and decided to speed up progress somewhat. You can now progress from level 3-4 very quickly and from 4-5 in less than an hour. 5-6 takes a bit longer and 6-7 takes about 2 hours depending on the level of items you decide to work on. If you optimize the way you work on materials, you can probably progress in a faster rate than stated here.
For instance, at level 6 or 7 there is a recipie for a malichite earring. In order to create this earring, you must:
1. create the malachite gem, tin stud, and a lead setting
To create a malachite gem you must:
a. create oil
To create oil you must:
1. Find raw plant, buy components, combine
b. create refined malachite
To create refined malachite you must
1. Find raw malachite, buy components, combine
c. buy components, combine
To create a tin stud you must:
a. create fossil temper
To create fossil temper you must:
1. Find raw root, buy components, combine
b. create tin bar
To creat a tin bar you must:
1. Find raw tin, buy component, combine
c. buy components, combine
ETC. ETC. for Lead Setting.
This example is actually more complicated than I wrote, it's from memory and I probably left steps out. The point is that several combines are necessary to produce higher end products. The lower end combines give less and less experience, so it is not wise to grind out a full stack of some lower end component, unless you really need it or want to sell it. I have a feeling that eventually people will pay quite a bit to buy the lower end components, just because it is a time sink to create them.
So, the devs have increased the experience rate for creating objects, thus speeding up advancement from the crawl it was before. However, it still requires the same amount to time to produce objects in the first place. So the relative value of items have not been changed all that much because even if there are dozens more high level crafters, the time it takes to produce items is still quite high. This is a trade off; the process of creation is still tedious and boring, but you don't have to grind as much as before.
Player buying and selling.
A new feature has been implemented allowing players to sell from their homes (at last!). It works quite well. You purchase a price list (sort of a bulletin board) from a vendor and hang it on your wall. From the vendor mode in your home, you can browse and search the market. To buy something you go to Broker Vendors located in specific zones, You can pick up anything from the broker that is available in either city, however, you pay an extra cut. Alternatively, you go to the sellers dwelling and buy it directly. I bought a couple spell upgrades this way and it works very nicely. You have to leave your character logged in to sell. I'm not sure of the side effects of leaving your main character logged in. By the way, you can have a maximum of four characters in total (all servers included).
When you compare the consignment system to the bazaar in EQ, it is safe to say that they are roughly the same in terms of searching. Finding people is made a little more complex, but there aren't 500 people trying to huddle on a corner either, plus you can short cut purchasing buy buying through the broker at an extra fee.
Character development issues.
Not a whole lot of players have made into the 30's and 40's, but the word is out from those that have: Character development is seriously flawed in EQ2. It appears that combat abilities and spell upgrades at the upper levels are little more than rehashes of previously gained abilities. The first evidence of this hit me at level 14 on my mage, I got a new lightning spell that was simply a more powerful version of the same spell. In EQ this would happen too, you would eventually drop one version of Root, and pickup another as the levels go by. The difference here is that there seems to be fewer spells and less complexity regarding usage of one spell or the other. The main difference in damage spells seems to be how you use them in relation to the Heric Opportunity wheel.
In EQ they came out with AA abilities to further allow character development in a more horizontal aspect rather than the experience grind upwards. This allowed people to choose certain powers that fit their playstyle or desires. This is absent from EQ2, there is little choice in anything in terms of powers and abilities. Your choice is which profession do you want to play, after that everyone plays the profession the same way and has exactly the same abilities. Some will be more effective due to their mastery quests against certain mobs, or perhaps they have greater damage ability with a spell because they have Adept III and you are on Adept I. But in the end, you'll both have the same overall ability, and the Adept I versus Adept III difference will not be obviously apparent.
Class balencing is still a heated topic on the beta forums. Essentially the fighting classes do about the same DPS. Everyone does about the same DPS except for healers. Mages can certainly out DPS melees and gain aggro if, but they have to stop unless they want the aggro. Mages can not sustain that output for long though. Scout/Rogue/Assassin types do speedy attacks at low DPS, they do not out DPS other classes.
The developers went a long way towards locking down what is possible to do, no quadding, no kiting at all really, no twinking, no power-leveling. The problem is that they didn't quite come up with a really great hook to keep you wanting for more. It's been said that many burn out in the 20's which is sad, because that's where the game should really be getting interesting. Instead, it seems to be "been there, done that" in the 20's. For my part, I have a level 17 mage and a level 16 mage, I'm going to try both Wizard and Warlock to see which I like better after 20.
Freeport and parts unknown.
I've only explored Freeport and surrounding areas. I know them like the back of my hand now. I've completed ~150 different quests. Freeport is of course, the evil city. It is nicely put together, the slums look like slums and the city proper looks impressive.
The Commonlands is a huge area and has links to several zones including Freeport, The Graveyard, The Sprawl, Lost Gate, Wailing Caves, and Neriak Forest, plus there is a dock which allows further access into Freeport and the slum areas. There are three Griffon towers to catch a ride to the far corners of The Commonlands, it's sort of an intra-zone transport system. The Commonland's has several landmark areas and a wide variety of mobs, many or all of which are quest related. There is a rare spawn "Gustfeather", a massive wandering Griffon in the high 20's or low 30's. There is a rock creature called "Terrathud" that is about 25, he sits on top of a giant rock pillar you can climb up. Most of the mobs are level 10-18, a few other type on the fringes of those levels.
Wailing Caves is a underground area meant for level 10-17 or so. Many quests are related to these caves. The mobs are mainly orcs or undead orcs, there are quite a few spiders here as well. There is a named orc "Advisor XXXXX" that drops keys and a caster staff. The keys allow access to a locked door in the back of his chamber, and there are a few named mobs beyond. This zone is very much the Crushbone of EQ2. An interesting feature at the very ends of this zone are some locked doors which appear to have no key. It has been speculated that these are entrances to Raid-Only encounters, started by some special quest. Haven't seen one take place though.
Fallen Gate is another underground zone and there are several quests that take place in here. This zone is keyed, you complete a simple multi-stage quest that gets you an access key. As of yesterday this quest was broken, it had been changed from several weeks ago for some reason. The group I was in continued to fail it, so we did it repeatedly to farm exp and a decent caster necklace that drops. Anyway the Fallen Gate zone has a variety of mobs from 18 to 25(?) or so. It's heavy on undead.
Five low-level zones that connect to Freeport and it's slums are Thieves Way (also called The Sewers), Sunken City, The Ruins, The Sprawl , and The Graveyard. The mobs in these zones are level 5 to 14 or so, everything from Rats to Ghouls and Humans to Orcs. The Sprawl also has an area called Serpent Sewers, the mobs in that zone are 16+, it's rarely occupied. The entrance is surrounded by KOS group encounter mobs about level 13. All of these zones are the subject of many quests. Most of these zones are instanced and allow no more than 60 or so players in each instance.
I took some movies of various aspects of the game, but I had some trouble with sound, so I'm going to reshoot some more. If I can edit them up and find a place to post them, I'll get it done as soon as possible. Mainly I'd like to post crafting and combat footage along with views of the city and detail turned on and off.
Tradeskills Update.
The devs have apparently heard enough complaints about the speed of progression and decided to speed up progress somewhat. You can now progress from level 3-4 very quickly and from 4-5 in less than an hour. 5-6 takes a bit longer and 6-7 takes about 2 hours depending on the level of items you decide to work on. If you optimize the way you work on materials, you can probably progress in a faster rate than stated here.
For instance, at level 6 or 7 there is a recipie for a malichite earring. In order to create this earring, you must:
1. create the malachite gem, tin stud, and a lead setting
To create a malachite gem you must:
a. create oil
To create oil you must:
1. Find raw plant, buy components, combine
b. create refined malachite
To create refined malachite you must
1. Find raw malachite, buy components, combine
c. buy components, combine
To create a tin stud you must:
a. create fossil temper
To create fossil temper you must:
1. Find raw root, buy components, combine
b. create tin bar
To creat a tin bar you must:
1. Find raw tin, buy component, combine
c. buy components, combine
ETC. ETC. for Lead Setting.
This example is actually more complicated than I wrote, it's from memory and I probably left steps out. The point is that several combines are necessary to produce higher end products. The lower end combines give less and less experience, so it is not wise to grind out a full stack of some lower end component, unless you really need it or want to sell it. I have a feeling that eventually people will pay quite a bit to buy the lower end components, just because it is a time sink to create them.
So, the devs have increased the experience rate for creating objects, thus speeding up advancement from the crawl it was before. However, it still requires the same amount to time to produce objects in the first place. So the relative value of items have not been changed all that much because even if there are dozens more high level crafters, the time it takes to produce items is still quite high. This is a trade off; the process of creation is still tedious and boring, but you don't have to grind as much as before.
Player buying and selling.
A new feature has been implemented allowing players to sell from their homes (at last!). It works quite well. You purchase a price list (sort of a bulletin board) from a vendor and hang it on your wall. From the vendor mode in your home, you can browse and search the market. To buy something you go to Broker Vendors located in specific zones, You can pick up anything from the broker that is available in either city, however, you pay an extra cut. Alternatively, you go to the sellers dwelling and buy it directly. I bought a couple spell upgrades this way and it works very nicely. You have to leave your character logged in to sell. I'm not sure of the side effects of leaving your main character logged in. By the way, you can have a maximum of four characters in total (all servers included).
When you compare the consignment system to the bazaar in EQ, it is safe to say that they are roughly the same in terms of searching. Finding people is made a little more complex, but there aren't 500 people trying to huddle on a corner either, plus you can short cut purchasing buy buying through the broker at an extra fee.
Character development issues.
Not a whole lot of players have made into the 30's and 40's, but the word is out from those that have: Character development is seriously flawed in EQ2. It appears that combat abilities and spell upgrades at the upper levels are little more than rehashes of previously gained abilities. The first evidence of this hit me at level 14 on my mage, I got a new lightning spell that was simply a more powerful version of the same spell. In EQ this would happen too, you would eventually drop one version of Root, and pickup another as the levels go by. The difference here is that there seems to be fewer spells and less complexity regarding usage of one spell or the other. The main difference in damage spells seems to be how you use them in relation to the Heric Opportunity wheel.
In EQ they came out with AA abilities to further allow character development in a more horizontal aspect rather than the experience grind upwards. This allowed people to choose certain powers that fit their playstyle or desires. This is absent from EQ2, there is little choice in anything in terms of powers and abilities. Your choice is which profession do you want to play, after that everyone plays the profession the same way and has exactly the same abilities. Some will be more effective due to their mastery quests against certain mobs, or perhaps they have greater damage ability with a spell because they have Adept III and you are on Adept I. But in the end, you'll both have the same overall ability, and the Adept I versus Adept III difference will not be obviously apparent.
Class balencing is still a heated topic on the beta forums. Essentially the fighting classes do about the same DPS. Everyone does about the same DPS except for healers. Mages can certainly out DPS melees and gain aggro if, but they have to stop unless they want the aggro. Mages can not sustain that output for long though. Scout/Rogue/Assassin types do speedy attacks at low DPS, they do not out DPS other classes.
The developers went a long way towards locking down what is possible to do, no quadding, no kiting at all really, no twinking, no power-leveling. The problem is that they didn't quite come up with a really great hook to keep you wanting for more. It's been said that many burn out in the 20's which is sad, because that's where the game should really be getting interesting. Instead, it seems to be "been there, done that" in the 20's. For my part, I have a level 17 mage and a level 16 mage, I'm going to try both Wizard and Warlock to see which I like better after 20.
Freeport and parts unknown.
I've only explored Freeport and surrounding areas. I know them like the back of my hand now. I've completed ~150 different quests. Freeport is of course, the evil city. It is nicely put together, the slums look like slums and the city proper looks impressive.
The Commonlands is a huge area and has links to several zones including Freeport, The Graveyard, The Sprawl, Lost Gate, Wailing Caves, and Neriak Forest, plus there is a dock which allows further access into Freeport and the slum areas. There are three Griffon towers to catch a ride to the far corners of The Commonlands, it's sort of an intra-zone transport system. The Commonland's has several landmark areas and a wide variety of mobs, many or all of which are quest related. There is a rare spawn "Gustfeather", a massive wandering Griffon in the high 20's or low 30's. There is a rock creature called "Terrathud" that is about 25, he sits on top of a giant rock pillar you can climb up. Most of the mobs are level 10-18, a few other type on the fringes of those levels.
Wailing Caves is a underground area meant for level 10-17 or so. Many quests are related to these caves. The mobs are mainly orcs or undead orcs, there are quite a few spiders here as well. There is a named orc "Advisor XXXXX" that drops keys and a caster staff. The keys allow access to a locked door in the back of his chamber, and there are a few named mobs beyond. This zone is very much the Crushbone of EQ2. An interesting feature at the very ends of this zone are some locked doors which appear to have no key. It has been speculated that these are entrances to Raid-Only encounters, started by some special quest. Haven't seen one take place though.
Fallen Gate is another underground zone and there are several quests that take place in here. This zone is keyed, you complete a simple multi-stage quest that gets you an access key. As of yesterday this quest was broken, it had been changed from several weeks ago for some reason. The group I was in continued to fail it, so we did it repeatedly to farm exp and a decent caster necklace that drops. Anyway the Fallen Gate zone has a variety of mobs from 18 to 25(?) or so. It's heavy on undead.
Five low-level zones that connect to Freeport and it's slums are Thieves Way (also called The Sewers), Sunken City, The Ruins, The Sprawl , and The Graveyard. The mobs in these zones are level 5 to 14 or so, everything from Rats to Ghouls and Humans to Orcs. The Sprawl also has an area called Serpent Sewers, the mobs in that zone are 16+, it's rarely occupied. The entrance is surrounded by KOS group encounter mobs about level 13. All of these zones are the subject of many quests. Most of these zones are instanced and allow no more than 60 or so players in each instance.
I took some movies of various aspects of the game, but I had some trouble with sound, so I'm going to reshoot some more. If I can edit them up and find a place to post them, I'll get it done as soon as possible. Mainly I'd like to post crafting and combat footage along with views of the city and detail turned on and off.
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Flunkie
- Knight of the Rose Croix (zomg French)
- Posts: 742
- Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2003 7:05 pm
EQ II's abrupt changes
With one week to go until release, SOE has decided to make an incredible amount of changes.
Food and water prices shot up to absurd prices, then were cut down to overpriced. First, let me explain that food and drink are directly related to how fast you regen health and power. Food and drink buffs last 30 minutes, they are critical to the game because you will regen at very low speed without them. Earlier in beta you could buy a stack (20) of iron rations and a stack of water for about 8 sp. Last week buying one stack of each went from 8 sp to 72 sp. At level 15, it takes hours of play to accumulate 72 sp. One stack of food and water lasts a maximum of 10 hours, that is assuming you don't lose your buffs crashes or death. It would take about 10 hours of play to get 72 sp at level 15, so you would just barely be able to keep yourself fed. The prices were cut down to about 36 sp for a stack of food and a stack of water, this is more managable, although still over priced. Consider that your apartment is only 5 sp/week, yet one week of keeping yourself fed could cost 200+ sp (depending on how much you play). This is a pretty big disparity, and a huge time and money sink. It's a time sink, because you have to worry about money or tradeskill production in order to finance adventuring. Many people will now bother with food production just to avoid the expense of food and drink purchases from vendors. So in the end they have raised prices to a high level, but at least that cut it back from the extreme.
Swimming speed has been cut down to a crawl. Your swimming speed is so slow now that it is much faster to run the long way around a river or stream, than it is to swim across. This affects gameplay in a minor way by making any travel through water tedious. It affect gameplay in a big way when it comes to fighting in water, you probably don't want to do that now unless you have to. Mobility in water was already slow, now it's just ridiculously slow.
All sorts of spell changes have been made to the various classes. Supposedly this has always been the plan, but it seems more like an act of desperation to make all the spell changes less than two weeks before release. Some spells have been changed multiple times, with name and effects modifications, this doesn't seem like a planned operation.
There have been numerous problems with the instancing of zones in the past week. All combat zones are now instanced, this has led to some problem of getting to the correct instance and crashing to the desktop. I experienced multiple crashes to the desktop in the last week. So many that I finally gave up playing on a couple of occasions.
You expect changes to be made during beta, even radical changes. But one week before release they are changing food and water effects and costs when there a all kinds of other issues to worry about. The game will not be finished when it is released, it's virtually impossible to finish it now, even if they all worked 24/7. The best that we can hope for is a fairly stable game, no account setup problems (ala SWG Launch), and rapid fixes for the huge number of bugs that will be reported as people start to get into the teens and twenties. Also I expect the difficulty will be toned down a bit; the beta player are experienced, but new players will be stunned by the difficulty. I think SOE has come to the conclusion that the game was a little too easy, but they are wrong, the beta players are just getting better. When a ton of newbies start playing, it will seem easy at first, but once the experience debt begins to pile on, they'll be screaming in the forums for changes.
One week to launch, here's to hoping for the best. Beta was fun to watch and eventually play for me, good luck all, see you in the game next week!
Food and water prices shot up to absurd prices, then were cut down to overpriced. First, let me explain that food and drink are directly related to how fast you regen health and power. Food and drink buffs last 30 minutes, they are critical to the game because you will regen at very low speed without them. Earlier in beta you could buy a stack (20) of iron rations and a stack of water for about 8 sp. Last week buying one stack of each went from 8 sp to 72 sp. At level 15, it takes hours of play to accumulate 72 sp. One stack of food and water lasts a maximum of 10 hours, that is assuming you don't lose your buffs crashes or death. It would take about 10 hours of play to get 72 sp at level 15, so you would just barely be able to keep yourself fed. The prices were cut down to about 36 sp for a stack of food and a stack of water, this is more managable, although still over priced. Consider that your apartment is only 5 sp/week, yet one week of keeping yourself fed could cost 200+ sp (depending on how much you play). This is a pretty big disparity, and a huge time and money sink. It's a time sink, because you have to worry about money or tradeskill production in order to finance adventuring. Many people will now bother with food production just to avoid the expense of food and drink purchases from vendors. So in the end they have raised prices to a high level, but at least that cut it back from the extreme.
Swimming speed has been cut down to a crawl. Your swimming speed is so slow now that it is much faster to run the long way around a river or stream, than it is to swim across. This affects gameplay in a minor way by making any travel through water tedious. It affect gameplay in a big way when it comes to fighting in water, you probably don't want to do that now unless you have to. Mobility in water was already slow, now it's just ridiculously slow.
All sorts of spell changes have been made to the various classes. Supposedly this has always been the plan, but it seems more like an act of desperation to make all the spell changes less than two weeks before release. Some spells have been changed multiple times, with name and effects modifications, this doesn't seem like a planned operation.
There have been numerous problems with the instancing of zones in the past week. All combat zones are now instanced, this has led to some problem of getting to the correct instance and crashing to the desktop. I experienced multiple crashes to the desktop in the last week. So many that I finally gave up playing on a couple of occasions.
You expect changes to be made during beta, even radical changes. But one week before release they are changing food and water effects and costs when there a all kinds of other issues to worry about. The game will not be finished when it is released, it's virtually impossible to finish it now, even if they all worked 24/7. The best that we can hope for is a fairly stable game, no account setup problems (ala SWG Launch), and rapid fixes for the huge number of bugs that will be reported as people start to get into the teens and twenties. Also I expect the difficulty will be toned down a bit; the beta player are experienced, but new players will be stunned by the difficulty. I think SOE has come to the conclusion that the game was a little too easy, but they are wrong, the beta players are just getting better. When a ton of newbies start playing, it will seem easy at first, but once the experience debt begins to pile on, they'll be screaming in the forums for changes.
One week to launch, here's to hoping for the best. Beta was fun to watch and eventually play for me, good luck all, see you in the game next week!
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Gormadoc Uberscale
- Intimate Sexretary
- Posts: 130
- Joined: Mon Dec 30, 2002 8:14 am
- Location: Everquest 2, Blackburrow Server
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Cyndel
- Apprentice n00b
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Sun Apr 18, 2004 1:26 pm
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Reiper
- Vise Grips Please
- Posts: 968
- Joined: Fri Dec 20, 2002 11:41 am
- Location: Stealing shit out of your livingroom
- Contact:
I've been playing it live for a few weeks now (On the Lavastorm server) and I actually enjoy it a lot.
The crafting system is pretty nice, just a pain in the butt to harvest some of the rare stuff, but then again if it were easy to harvest then there would be a lot more nice spells and armor floating around flooding the market.
This game seems a lot like World of Warcraft so far with the levels, and everything, but I do like EQ2 better because there seems to be so much more content, and the characters look better and are more easily customizable, which was the main complaint I had for WoW. I havn't given up on EQ1 yet, I want to see what the mid and high levels in EQ2 are like before I make any final decision.
If any of you decide to try it out, and are on the Lavastorm server toss me a tell, Reiper or Deamian are my mains.
The crafting system is pretty nice, just a pain in the butt to harvest some of the rare stuff, but then again if it were easy to harvest then there would be a lot more nice spells and armor floating around flooding the market.
This game seems a lot like World of Warcraft so far with the levels, and everything, but I do like EQ2 better because there seems to be so much more content, and the characters look better and are more easily customizable, which was the main complaint I had for WoW. I havn't given up on EQ1 yet, I want to see what the mid and high levels in EQ2 are like before I make any final decision.
If any of you decide to try it out, and are on the Lavastorm server toss me a tell, Reiper or Deamian are my mains.
