Omens of War Release pushed back!

[ShadowCross]

It looks like the general outcry of the Everquest Community did achieve something after all. Lead by prominent people (e.g. Woody from /gu-comics), the community demanded a later release of OoW in favor of more time to fix the existing content in Everquest.

Today, John Smedley released a letter in which he announced the delay of the new expansion "Omens of War" until August.

In his "Letter from John Smedley (http://eqlive.station.sony.com/news_section/newsview.jsp?story=62268)" he wrote:

Hello Norrath!

I wanted to announce that we've decided to push Omens of War back to Late August in order to give the EQ team time to respond to important issues that the EverQuest community is raising (specifically including the issues with Gates of Discord). We've heard some concerns from within the community that we feel are important enough to push back our next expansion and spend time fixing the problems you have brought to our attention. At the end of the day, we work for you and it's important for us to demonstrate that we both understand and appreciate that. We're also inviting many members of the community to join us here at SOE for a day to have a direct dialog with the development team about issues that are important to the EverQuest community as a whole. We've already sent out the invitations and are making all the arrangements. In addition, our EQ community managers will be coming up with a list of issues raised on the message boards so that we can come back to you with a specific list of things we're going to address.

I'm sorry if you feel we haven't been listening and reacting appropriately. We do our best to balance all of the needs and concerns you raise along with expanding Norrath and giving you new and wonderful things to do in EverQuest, but we do make mistakes. We've heard you loud and clear.

We have many things planned for EverQuest over the upcoming years, and our goal is to keep you happily playing EverQuest for a long time to come. The best way for us to do that is by first and foremost is by listening to you.

John Smedley
President, Sony Online Entertainment

[Cernunnoss]

We're also inviting many members of the community to join us here at SOE for a day to have a direct dialog with the development team about issues that are important to the EverQuest community as a whole. We've already sent out the invitations and are making all the arrangements.

You know what this means...they are gonna drag em off and kill em and dump em in the ocean to shut em up :lol

[Arafain]

A fast and appropriate response. If appropriate follow-through is forthcoming, as well, I will be very impressed.

[Drummond Entreri]

I think the major hemorrhage of accounts lately has them worried. People aren't selling their accounts anymore, they are actually cancelling the billing... as people have said time and again THAT gets their attention.

Amen! Someone at SoE FINALLY has a pair! :applaud

[Fricka]

I'll be attending the mentioned meeting, so feel free to chime in with what you would like me to bring to the discussion, particularly in regards to the rogue class.

[DarkOmen42]

Suggest to them giving each class a dev, or someone to keep an eye on them.

A single person focusing on 1 class has a better chance of seeing what we mean... Getting them to play that class would help as well.

[nekoken]

As a non-uber rogue who barely bothers to even play in PoP, let alone GoD I'd like them to fix collision detection such that I don't get stuck on rocks, trees, or other bits of terrain all the time like I have since the DX9 patch. Making geometry collision detection worse than it has been for 5 years was a pretty crappy thing to do.

I'd like to see them get rid of the falling code that kills you if you fall for more than X time. If it takes 800hp to fall from one spot but kills you from a foot higher then that is a problem.

[Derrict]

I didn't get an invitation, those bastards!

[Korkin]

I'll be attending the mentioned meeting, so feel free to chime in with what you would like me to bring to the discussion

I'd like to see more things for the casual gamers who really can't commit to group xp gain due to having to be AFK a lot, and without much notice, because they have other things that need done around the house or with the family. ;)

And for another class ... Berserkers need to become a viable class before any other expansions are released ...

[Naathan]

Things they need to hash out:

1) Al Kabor Server, time to stop screwing those people over. Either close the server and stop selling the Mac version or fix their issues. They are getting royally screwed by staff telling them outright that there is absolutely no developer/programmer working on the Mac server issues and they better just deal with it because they are not going to put any resources on it. Even if they are Mac users, they deserve some Sony attention since they are paying customers.

SAVE AL!!! :crazy

2) Bring back regular server GM's. I dont care if GM Alibaba <Mystical Order of Zebuxoruk> helps me from Calcutta, but for the amount of money we are giving them, we deserve some Customer Service staff that will at least know individual server issues.

3) Why are rogue weapons always the biggest pain in the asses to get when it comes to upper tiered items. Example: Rogue pet weapon from Earth, is frigging behind a big Red Con alligator that you need a raid to kill, behind a locked door in a cave with relatively fast spawning mobs, then you have crap like the Paly/war/beastlord/ranger weapons that drop in a 1 group accessable place. Hell the ranger trap mob is like 2 feet from zone in entrance. JTB- Phase 5 on the toughest mob in the zone, the weap didnt even drop for the longest ammount of time and is friggin rare drop to boot. Up the rate on the Ritual Spinsplicer please, we already got Ranger elf shoe weapons rotting but only 2 splicers so far.

4) GoD disc/spell drops. WTF is the deal here. So god damn rare. No drop to boot, only dropping in a few areas. Over half the guild doesnt even have theirs. Put them on some KT trash mobs at least as well as the named.

5) Game is becoming too castercentric. The mobs nowdays are hitting like mac trucks. Having low hps only helps the casters who dont make contact with the mobs to begin with and they go on collecting xp/aa like no ones business, but when melees try to do these mobs, they can nolonger do it with jut a cleric bot or a druid friend. You have to have a slower to mitigate off some of those attrocious hits you take from mobs. So now you have to have 3 people just to kill some mobs where you have casters who can kite crap all day long. They need to base regular XP mobs like Linage 2 does. A single melee can kill a white con with downtime afterwards and they can gain at least some form of xp solo. Casters can still do their business but there needs to be a melee alternative that will not be able to be exploited by the mana users.

Will add more later when i dont have people at work looking over my back when im supposed to be "working".

[Xodduzz]

I'd appreciate a Stackable root poison (don't think I saw any in LoY)...

Make more quests like Vah shir tradeskill quests.. They are one of the few that are well written.

Pet weapon has been mentioned but mentioning it again cuz it suck so much that we have to go through hell to get it while BST and rangers can kill named from zone.

Increase droprate of Rogue daggers. I've killed LMM 7 times without seeing 1 DoD, killed Sol ro 4 times seeing 1 Grmk(not that bad ratio on sol ro, but still).

Try to fix Corpse pulling bugs.. Sucks having to walk when pulling corpse through hills cuz they keep geting lost..

[Vendrengha Noble]

To Frickas SoE meeting:

1. Ask them to increase the corpse dragging range by about 20%, that should take care of all dragging issues.

2. Ask them to make poisons not be a depletable resource. (Or alternatively to add durability to all other gear and require spells to use components for all spells. ;) )

[Kheltan]

In regards to the rogue class we can address the upcoming aas no?
I would realy love to see a damage shield mitigation. Maybe add an aa which reduces it in 3 steps 10% 25% 50% or whatever.

I would also love to see an aa that gives us some illusion + atk bonus or something. Rogues get many illusion masks in game so it is about time we get one as an aa which is even usefull and not just for the look.

Also I d like to see a backstab min damage increase. Those 20 from time bp and qvic gloves do not make a huge difference and a lot of people wont see it either. So yet again I d like an aa which increase it to like 350

Kheltan

[Solesk]

first and foremost. i shall continue in my crusade. so i'll ask for perma illusion.

second. if they want to stop hemoriging custmers they must seriously fix these new engine problems. completely. after a year of development (so they say) and 3 months of open beta this many issues should not still be present.

they need to put a wayferer magus in pok. and allow all the magus's to port to natimbi. and the natimbi one to port to all the other magus's.

drop rate on rogue daggers should definelty change. that damn endurance aug in transcendance needs to be deleted entirely. we have ranger weapons rotting and only one spineslicer. and only one jtb. hell even dods have stopped dropping for us. in our last two backflagging sessions we've had 0 rogue daggers drop (hoping to upgrade the apps).

they should also re-think aa cost for god (i think they said they are). it seemed like a good idea. and i wasnt against it at first. but now. after getting the basics. i have 0 motivation to grind out inflated aa's for stuff that barely helps.

oddly enough though i dont think the comming expansion really needed to be pushed back. i think the level cap would have helped alot of guilds who currently progress slow, or are stuck, to finally start moving / moving faster. maybe as a show of good faith they should add the increased level cap to the god expansion. then the non god raiders would get something from it.

if i think of more i'll post them.

[KwicSteele]

Would be nice if they could include a target ring for traps, once you've successfully found them.

It's very challenging for some of the spots where there are 4+ traps with varying on / off times.

edit:
one possible reason they had to push back the expansion, is that they haven't put enough testing in on it, and need to spend the time to fix the issues still broken in GoD. Uqua just having been made doable instead of impassable being one of them.

[Patofnaud]

Things to think about when maintaining players IMHO:
1. Playability.
2. Content.
3. Looks.

Playability. Why they heck would anyone want to play a game for more than a few day where you have to stare at the ground to move from point A to point B? That lock up bug that was mostly seen in PoK is a prime example of how to drive customers away with a stick. From level 1 to 65 no one was exempt from the obvious crap piece of code. Lets not even talk about high end encounters were after clearing trash for 3 hours the named warps when it touches any object and then summons and killes the raid.

Content. It is fun to do a ring event and get the golden fleece, it is NOT fun doing ring events where you cant tell if the golden fleece dropping named will even pop becuase it hasnt been x number of hours since last time it was triggered. It is not fun when you progress through PoP spent all your waking hours getting 25 flags that gets you into Plane of xyz and find all new content is not tied to the progression you have been working on for the last year plus.

Looks. New rat models are pretty, but they don't KEEP people playing. They may attract new people with the flash, but if points #1 and #2 are ignored, it is not enough to keep them. I play with ALL models OFF (except for myself so I can use a horse).

Rogue specific thoughts:

Soloing is next to impossible for us. But so is getting groups sometimes during prime times if the zones are empty because folks finally got tired of the bugs. So give us group dependant people something to do to pass the time.

Tradeskills? Umm no. My wisdom/int is around 80. I tried, I got one tradeskill over 200 and it was beyond painfull.

Quests? I would do small quests/missions to pass the time. However today there are no quests for anyone over the level of 10 worth doing for a level 65 rogue with over 100 AA. There is no reward that would entice me. Any quest for me would entail 7 different stages and many guild raids to do.

How about giving out some quests/missions tuned to the solo person of approriate class/level? Use some of the LDoN instanced zones?

Make me SOLO sneak/hide/disarm my way to the back of the dungeon and open a locked chest to recover the amulet of mass destruction and reward me with a type all/all augment I can actually use? I'm a rogue dammit give me rogue things to do.

Make me sneak my way into a locked door that only someone with SoS can get to, and kill a single blue con that wont quad me for 355/per to save the princess.

Stop making hack and slash content.
Stop using the excuse that development teams for said content are not the bug fixers and your not pull resources to make new content.
Stick with the dam story line! (We have rings/portals, oh look we found spires! oh wait now we found books! oh wait now we found Magus's at wayfayer camps!!!))) Gah if EQ were a movie it would get an award for WORSE continutity in a motion picture. Expand on what we have/had and stop jumping to a new story. Talosians? Weren't they the guys who drank trania in Star Trek? They look like some refugee from an anime convention and not descendants of Combine/Feri'Dal/Tier'Dal empires.

I like my rogue, I like his character and abilities as I've grown him over the years.

What I do not like is how every ranger/paladin/beastlord can walk into PoF/PoE and find their pet weapon rotting, while mine is locked behind a door, behind a monter of an alligator, triggered by anyone passing through to check on Arbitor and despawns if not aggro for another 3 freeking days.

What I do not like is every other raid the loot is a SK/PAL weapon that either no one can use and it rots or its granted to the token PAL/SK for coming along.

What I do not like is we get AA's that take a doctorate in math to figure out if they are actually adding anything to our DPS once we pay a ton of AA for them.

Triple Backstab SOUNDS nice until you figure out that to get a TB you need to have landed a single BS, then got lucky enought to make the double BS check and then uber super lucky and won the lottery with the TBS roll! As soon as we got TBS our main backstab should no longer have to check for a hit, only for amount PERIOD. Then TBS would have the same chance to land as DBS did.

Chaotic Stabs SOUNDS nice till you buy it and realize that it lands for min BS frontal, and you could have landed a normal pierce for that same amount and saved the AA points spend for something else.

Give us clean crisp choices in AA! Let me SoS EVERYWHERE! Let me Assasinnate mobs that give exp again!

[Siins]

This meeting obviously is only happening because so many accounts have been canceled in the past couple of months. And if Sony would just pay a little bit of attention to the players, they would already know quite well what the problems within the game are.

Pushing major changes, like the DX9 update, to live servers months before the code was anywhere even near being fully tested and debugged has been a big part of the frustration that players face every day. And these problems continue at this time.

Pushing expansions out the door that have artificial cockblocks in them (Uqua in GoD, Rathe in PoP, VT key in Luclin) is aggravating to no end. When you play at or near the top end of EQ, you should be able to advance as you figure out how to beat the encounters, not as the devs finally retune a single event that was ubeatable for months to let you proceed.

Pushing expansions out the door that have not been tuned, that have not even been tested, and in which bugs that were reported by beta testers still exist is yet another source of frustration. I know SOE has been doing this for years and getting away with it, but the time has come where all of these frustrations are adding up and breaking the camels back.

SOE has slowly but surely removed virtually all in-game customer service. And they have done this as they have also increased the cost to play the game. Now I know they need to make a profit. But they were making huge, huge profits years ago when they had a GM dedicated to each server. Nothing changed over time except that management decisions were made to reduce the number of available GMs and at the same time to increase the subscription costs. As a result, you can easily go weeks, or even months, without getting your petitions answered, or even responded to. Anything over an hour or two is extremely frustrating when there is a problem, and you cannot get it dealt with. We need to get back to where there is an active GM per server again, and back to where you can get a problem dealt with quickly. CoH GMs seem to be able to respond to most in-game problems in 5 minutes or so. Why cant EQ be the same way?

Over time, more and more ways to block alts from advancing have been introduced into the game. The first of these were pretty simple. They showed up in the Velious expansion. You had to collect a tooth for each character at the 3 dragon rings before you could be ported to that point, and you needed to kill one mob in SS to get a key if you wanted to use the portal in SS to go to CS. A group could easily get all 4 of these in a couple of hours, so that was reasonable. Then along came Luclin. While you could move around through Luclin reasonably easily, farming both the parts for the Emp Key and for the VT key were mind numbing experiences. Doing it once for your main was painful enough. Doing it again for each high level character you had was enough to drive a sane person absolutely nuts. And then came PoP. PoP introduced the hell known as flags. Not only were flags required to be able to get to nearly all of the zones, but the flagging process was so convoluted, that SOE had to introduce a "Seer" in an effort to provide some clue as to what flags you had and didnt have, and later attempted to allow this "Seer" to attempt to fix problems that occured when you got flags in a order the devs never thought you would be able to get them in. Getting these flags takes most people many, many months. And now we have GoD. Single group trials on steriods galore. Frustrating. Annoying. Irratating. Fortunately, they backed off of the requirement that each and every person needs to beat each of the three Ikkinz trials. But just the fact that they origionally expected everyone to do something that pretty much requires two clerics, a warrior and an enchanter, all with at a very minimum elemental gear, should show that Sony has no clue what the players enjoy or want.

The GoD expansion was tuned so poorly that it drove most knights from the game. No, not the lower end knights that have low AA''s and poor gear. No, they drove away the knights that have been playing for years, that had the best gear in the game, and the ones that had hundreds and hundreds of AA's. These knights found that they were unable to offtank even trash mobs in Kodtaz, and any named mobs would drop them faster that a hot potato. Changes have finally been made, and to varying degrees, have slightly improved things. But the damage has been done. Many, many knights are gone, and many of those are gone for good.

EQ is unique in that many people have kept playing because of the friends that have made within the game. When you loose some players, that takes away the friends of other players. And without those friends, many people have little reason to even log into the game. Sony management has repeatedly failed to see what pushing broken code, untested and unfinished expansions onto the live servers would do to the players. They also failed to see the negative reactions the players constantly confront when they need a GM to resolve a problem, and there are not GMs anywhere to be seen. Suddenly, Sony sees huge numbers of cancelations. Players were up in arms over the problems within the game and the total lack of any customer service to deal with it. Sony was painfully slow to react. So the problems became worse, and more and more players started giving up and canceling their accounts.

And then Sony announces the Omens of War expansion right in the middle of all of the ongoing problems.

Now, after even more outrage from the players, Smedley scrambles to find out why. Where has Smedley been since GoD was released? Where was he when the knights started screaming that they had become useless within the game? Where was Smedley when the DX9 fiasco was pushed to live servers? What in gods name has Smedley been doing? Oh yeah, he was back there trying to figure out how to further reduce the number of GM's he has to pay to support the players. Welcome to Triad. The new ticket based /petition system. Has anyone else noticed that you cannot even file a petition now without FIRST searching through their knowledge base? Smedley, hire some GM's again. Put one per server again. Customer Service must be CUSTOMER SERVICE.

EQ has deteriorated. Expansions now look like cookie cutter expansions. There are very, very few unique mob models per expansion. Zones generally have buildings within them that exist in varying shapes, but that look the same from zone to zone. Zones are also much smaller than they were in the past. I am sure this was all done to save money. But the fact is that when you have 400,000+ players paying you $13 a month or more to play your game per month, you CAN and SHOULD be providing lots and lots of new mob models, unique looking zones, and large open zones to experience within the game.

The initial pictures of Omens of War leaves you thinking "Wow, Its GoD 2". Yes, you see the same mobs, the same temples. GoD 2. And we have to pay for the rest of GoD? Shouldnt completing the content for an expansion we have already paid for be free? Come on now!

I seriously doubt that anything much will change after this so called "meeting" occurs. Smedley will continue to reduce customer service. OoW (GOD 2) will still be spammed every single day as we log into the game. Talk about annoying! Expansions will probably continue to provide less and less new models and mobs. And they will come more and more frequently. And they will be less and less complete when we get them. And in the end, all this cost cutting and lack of new things to see and do will kill EQ.

But Smedley will be sitting there as they padlock the doors for the final time saying, "I saved us $20,000 per server per year by eliminating the GM's."

A bankrupt division makes no money SMedley.

[Aelronsr]

My main issue currently is the NPC's and the PC's in the game spawning 1/2 sunk into the floor and consistantly bouncing up and down. It makes NPC very difficult to target and causes all kinds of issue casting ("you cannot see your target" when it's right in front of you but it's sunk into the ground). This needs to be fixed ASAP

Another issue is in some zones the mobs are spawning under the world and getting stuck there. This has been happening since the DX 9 patch.

I'm really happy to hear that they have postponed the new expansion. I'll be even happier when we see some resolutions for these bugs. I have played EQ for 5 years or so and I have never seen the game as buggy as it is currently.

Later,

http://members.cox.net/miked1161/aelronsig2.jpg (www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=258389)

[Vaela]

Immediate Considerations
1. DX9 bugs, mobs stuck half way under world, warping mobs, getting stuck in walls
2. PoK and other zone lock ups
3. Scripting bugs
4. Fix broken quests, i'm tired of hearing about boots when i'm asking about a tunic. AND lets make sure rewards is in line with difficulty.


Future development consideration
NO MORE TIME SINKS. I'm sorry people have time to play 24/7. My career is not based on how much EQ time i get. Once Ub0r guilds are done wasting time with content and climbing up the ladder, door should be open for those of us who should get what we pay for as well. Right now with 2 level 65 characters, 1/5 of the zones, of which i paid for too in many different expansions, are locked. By the beginning of next expansion those doors should easier access for more casual players. Bread and butter is the long term player not those who get bored in 15 minutes and need to be given the bigger and better constantly.

Consider streamlining memory usage so that graphics work better i.e. EQW or EQ play nice. Its reprehensible for there to be a need for a 3rd party tool to help keep the resources of the game to be so out of hand. Granted, while playing you should need no other software running but truth of the matter is even on a 2 gig machine with 1 gig of memory, i'm lagging like a dog without it. Learn, Love, USE memory more effectively

Consider streamlining the interface to make things easier to use. Granted, compared to back in the day before the xml, the interface is terrific but it still needs a lot of work.

Consider making low end encounters the training grounds for those leveling up to high end encounters. Countless skills and spells cant be used because they get resisted by low level mobs. There is a complete lack of balance between skills used in low level grouping and high level grouping/raiding.

Consider leveling/raiding/questing in a little more integrated format. They are not exclusive of each other. It stifles a continuity of goals from the game to be focused on one element or another.

Something fun would be to make some more robes rogue wearable since we can illusion in forms which which are dress wearers.

[Fricka]

Great feedback all! Keep it coming! I leave Friday morning (June 4th) so I'll read everything up till Thursday night.

In regards to sunken NPC's Grumbuk, an EQ Dev posted in this thread about it:

http://www.thesafehouse.org/viewtopic.php?t=10286

I can follow up with the status of it in person though but at least we know someone is on it.

[Slyy Daugg]

Translation: "Omens of War will not be ready as soon as we thought it would be. Here's the spin to make us look better in general..."


SD

[Kevdogg]

my main issues, keep in mind i in a time/kt guild hehe

GoD issues
-knights still cant tank tipt+ unless redictuously geared.
-spliting of raid force to much, it's not uncommon to log in and see the raid is full's. what this id doing is splitting guilds up and stuff.


pop
-PoP Flags need to be toned down some so were not stuck doing old content to reflag people so bad. make it so you just need like sayran, anger, mm Rz and bertox, sol ro for the ep's, or maybe drop a few mobs from the needed list for ep like KoS, tz,vz,grummus,tt.
this would just leave the the hard mobs for ep and wouldnt make guidls do old content to reflag people.


Ldon
this expansion right now is pretty useless.
-raids need either a 72 raid force that you can add people to or made lot easier for the 2-3 group range with good rewards
-exp needs to be raised(maybe put ina medium diffcultiy in with like bot exp, up hard to close to ep exp too)
-better rewards from vendor need tobe added, put in clickies maybe that a time player may want
-prices need to be droped on some stuff or points need to be incressed some. ldon basicly for new players to teh game to catch up with 5 years of expansions and itt's not helping when you have to farm old content for some basic gear. if prices on armor were lowered to the 750-800 range it would really help that issue some.
-put in a way to sell points to other players
-put in way to get points back on old ldon armor and maybe even augs.. like if you disolve a 40 hp aug you get like Powder back that you can give to the gnome in sra for like 600 points

Rogues
-main gripe is posions, pop ones need like a endless quiver aa and componets really need to droped in price some

[Xodduzz]

One more thing..

Why must we pay AAs for increased proc rate on both Procs AND poisons..
having your 1 proc poison proc more, shouldn't be as expensive as having my 4 regular procs proc more..

[Towner]

Rogue:

~If they leave traps alone (aka leave them in Luclin) then I don't care; but, if they plan on using traps in new content they need disarm to put the traps out of business for a long time. I'm not in Ssra anymore, but it is aggrivating as hell to disarm one only to turn and set off another you just disarmed 15 seconds before.

~I can live with the drop rate on daggers, but only because my guild defaults them to rogues so it's about as easy for us to get them as it is for other classes to fight over multi-class weapons (Edge of Eternity, Cudgel of Wrecking, Stone Etched Mallet, Ivory Hilted Cleaver, etc.).

~PoP poisons were a joke and a pain. Simplify that system or remove it, I don't care.
Related issue - Poison AA's are stupid. If you are going to charge us a ton of AA for a class skill MAKE IT USEFUL. Monk's got good GoD class abilities. We got Triple Backstab (you have better chances at the casino), Shortened Escape time (I don't use Escape except in a few situations - If you need to use it twice an hour then you should /delete imo), and Increase in Poison Proc rate (what.the.hell.).

--Nice touches to class -
1. Illusions last like shrink. I'm sick of refreshing illusions every time I zone or Illusion fading and having to re-shrink.
2. Rogues in most literature can take on disguises innately - without the need for magic. We should have some innate illusion abilities and/or be able to take on the illusion of NPC's.
3. Some form of tracking would be nice. We ARE assassins. Tracking targets makes sense.
4. Setting traps would be fun.
5. An Area Effect /corpse command would help out.


Overall:
--Re-tune LDoN experience so that they are worth doing - aside from collecting points. The encounters are fun, and I enjoy doing them; but the experience is crap. I'd much rather sit thru mind numbing Fire/Earth groups than do 3 hours of LDoN for 2AA.

--Make TimeB fully instanced. The capability is there.

--Increase GoD raids from 54cap to 72. Forcing a guild to swell numbers to complete PoP progression, then turning around and telling them that 18 of those players must sit out and do nothing while the others raid is utterly RETARDED. This above most issues is what is causing guilds to crumble and people to leave Everquest.

--Shadowknights need some tanking disc. They are the only hybrid without some form of avoidance disc.

--The collision engine is fubar. Last night in Time we had to kill Phase 4 gods without using walls. This was feasible with Terris and Saryn; but we were extremely lucky to be able to kill Tallon/Vallon without cornering/walling. Having mobs sink into walls where you can't hit them is stupid. Touching walls and getting ported to zone entrance is stupid. "Fixing" the collision issue, but not testing it out to make sure your "fix" did its job is stupid.

[Draksoon]

Please, if you are able, bring up the uselessness of poisons. For a skill that should be a class defining ability, more so than simply being able to backstab, it is useless. There must be a way to bring this ability back to life.

EDIT: No personal attacks. Poison Mastery is 18 aas? i believe. Virulent Venom is another whole line of AAs needed in GoD. Poison Mstery AAs are in the CLASS section of the AA menu, thus i will assume they are a class defining ability, much like AE taunt for warriors, and Archery Mastery for rangers. They need to make poison a valuable asset to any rogue at any level. A low level rogue who can use poisons more will have more fun, and a high level rogue who can spend AAs on a skill thats useful to make his poisons better/more effective/whatever...will be a happier rogue. All of those AAs are at this time, useless. POISON MASTERY should be something every rogue looks forward to, not something you bypass because it is useless. This is not a tradeskill, if it was then why dont we have 30 or more AAs to spend on POTTERY. They need to deal with this before anymore moneysucking expansions come out.

DX9 issues, same as everyone elses.

Illusions. Illusion AAs AND have Illusions stay for as long as you so desire. IE, until you change it or until you are dispelled, having to recast illusion everytime you zone, as a rogue is just dumb.

Traps. An AA that inately senses traps. And once a trap is disarmed, it needs to stay disarmed for a long period of time. Yet another rogue skill/idea that just wasnt followed through on.

Basically, my main concern is the poisons, because of the AAs they have offered us in the skill are useless. Why cant it be as usefull as Archery Mastery / Endless Quiver? High lvl rogues bring good dps, survivability from wipes, maybe some scouting abilities to a group. Low level rogues basically bring weak dps, bad invis to a group. The poison system needs to be upgraded to bring a new dynamic into playing a rogue, it needs to be more fun than simply backstabbing mob after mob after mob after mob.

I do not agree with an AE drag system, this is totally silly. An AE rez maybe after all of the drags are done, but one rogue physically dragging more than he should be able to drag is dumb. Its quite easy to drag 2 corpses at once right now.

Chaotic stab needs to be better. Simply better. Siezed Opertunity is alot of AAs to upgrade a shitty AA (chaotic stab), and even with SO maxed, it is still goddam near one in a million to get a good backstab from anywhere but the back. This needs fixing badly.

Tripple Backstab. Not great. I have it maxed, and its pretty damn rare to get a tripple. This needs dealing with also.

In closing, before we are sold another expansion with badly thought out content and half assed ideas thrown together to form more useless AAs, I want to see them FIX THE CONTENT THEY HAVE AND FIX THE USELESS AAS THEY HAVE.

Sorry for the caps but enough is enough. Whoever is going to that conference, please try to remember some of these points. This **** is enough to make rogues retire.

Thanks alot.

[Fricka]

I'll definitely bring up poisons and the other points you made. Just a note: I edited out a personal attack you made against a fellow rogue.

Let's keep the feedback civil, everyone is entitled to their opinion, as our rules state, "Debate opinions, not the people behind them." We all know it's easy to get carried away sometime but let's keep our energy into feedback to get SOE to hear us. :)

[Draksoon]

Thank you very much and thanks for editing that rant. Have a great trip!!

[JavaJiver]

I refer you to this post from live that someone posted...
http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/board/message?board.id=roguebalance&message.id=780

I thought it was a pretty good series of ideas. Toward the end damage is good and it would make assassinate useful again.

Honestly that would be enough to temporarily shut me up(that and increased drops on rogue gear in general) I mean hitting a freeport guard for 54k is only fun so many times before you realize you'd like xp.

[Eleena Transient]

Thoughts, predictions, and stuff...

Currently in the EQ world there are a few "phases" in which guilds fall (assuming a lvl 65 player base):

"casual" - don't raid, mostly ldon, some epics, nothing major
"pre-ssra" - raid very rarely, mostly luclin (grieg), high velious (ntov), low pop (mujaki, xanamech, hedge). If they choose to raid regularly, they quickly pass this point
"ssra" - weekly raid, popping ssra named, working emp keys, THO, Parasite ring, BoT tower, AoW, velious royalty. Tier 1 Gods (grummus, terris, carprin). Stay at this lvl as long as it takes to get enough emp keys.
"ssra/vt" - got plenty of keys, take down emp, seru, and start clearing vt. As they gear in vt, they work through AD, HoH trials, Bert, Saryn, MB, TZ, VZ. Once they can clear vt in one sitting and put AHR on pharm status, they move on.
"elemental" - Full vt gear, they take out Marr, Agnarr, RZ, Sol Ro. Start clearing elemental mini's and getting mold. guilds stay here for a while, gearing up, key'ing for PoEb. This phase ends with the death of Fennin and Xeg
"time" - Keep hammering at elementals until you get all 4 down, and begin the time farming. Also start doing GoD trials (rondo, tipt, vexd) to enter KodTaz.
"time+" - Quarm down, clearing time in 1 sitting, doing KodTaz single group and raids. Once trial 4 down start working on Uqua
"uqua+" - current "top end" guilds, I';l lump the rest together here.

When OoW comes out, assuming that lvl gain is not tied to progression (you don't need a flag to hit 66, and the next flag for 67, etc), then the above list shifts rather dramatically.

Any guild that truly desires to raid will be VT enabled as soon as they complete the key, and will quickly plow through the candy store, meaning the pre-ssra, ssra, and vt "phases" get condensed. With VT gear a guild will quickly plow through all pre-elemental content, and be able to bury at least 2 elem gods in no time. With a short stop to learn strats and key up, a guild will brute force to time (likely with half the guild still in barely vt gear). So elem and time phases get combined.

Now enters the big problem. With every guild desiring to raid able to reach Time without too much fuss (thanks to enhanced hp/resist/spells from 5 levels), you'll see a Major contention for the zone.

First Request - Fully instance PoTb to allow multiple guilds access or you will see major griefing with guildA locking it out via timer to keep guildB down.

Story wise, the reason JimBob can't access PoEarth is b/c he doesn't know he needs to (learned from notes found on Rallos, and the history gained from agnarr). Well, if you've gone with your guild to kill 4 elemental gods, chances are Someone told you why...

Second Request - Any kill should resolve the flags needed to reach that kill. If I kill Aerin'Dar, why do I need to prove I understand Justice (poj trials). If I slew saryn, wouldn't that give me the insight to enter her realm? If sol ro fell before me, surely the people I'm with told me we had to kill him b/c of notes found on TZ, VZ, and translated by Saryn and Marrs cypher. If I have a completed key to the Plane of Time itself, why should I be barred from any simple plane? This reduces the need for backflagging and leaves the mobs to those that are progressing.

With so much of GoD instanced, instancing Time, and easing the frustration of reaching it, wouldn't just shift the bottleneck up, but nearly remove it. GoD content is Hard, not just from a stats side, but from a skill side, reacting fast enough to changing situations. Let THAT be what decides how far a guild can progress, not how fast they can get x people online to get mob y before the opposing guild.

Sorry if I've been longwinded, but to summarize:
Level raise to 70 will trivialize all but the time sinks in Luclin, reduce PoP tier 1-3 to simple contention among guilds for the shot at flag mobs, and create a huge bottleneck in an uninstanced Time. Instancing time, and easing backflagss, will reduce frustrations and allow guilds to progress in line with their skill of play and not their good fortune of timing raids.

If, contrary to my assumption, lvl 66-70 are tied into achieving certain 'victory conditions' in OoW, then be prepared for a LOT of ticked off people that will feel they get nothing out of the latest expansion if they are pre-time now.

[KovaaK]

That was an excellent post, Eleena! I hope some, if not all, of these issues are brought up at the discussion to occur.

[Siins]

Flagging is the bane of EQ. It used to be that if someone left the game for a few months, they could return and immediately join their friends and guildmates.

No more.

Now if you miss a few months, there are painful and frustrating trials and flags that MUST be gotten before they can rejoin their friends and guilds.

Imagine someone that left the game to go serve our country in Iraq. Gone for 12 to 15 months. They come back, they are umpteen flags behind in PoP, and completely behind in GoD. How long will that person have to struggle to rejoin their friends? Months? Most leave the game before they get there.

What purpose does this serve for EQ? If anything, it hurts EQ. If people know they cannot come back and be with the people they want to be with, then they wont come back. I've seen this more than a few times already. And it seems that each new expansion is making it worse and worse.

Long gone are the days when an expansion comes out, and you can roam around in nearly every zone, even if you were ill prepared for what existed there. Velious was a perfect example of this. Once the ways to get to ToV were discovered, anyone level 46 and up could zone in. Sure there was no exit at the zone-in (stupid design issue), but you COULD go there and see what little you could. If you died there, that was your problem. You had to find someone that could come get you, or you had to make your way back and eat the death.

Most people learn quickly what they can and cannot handle, and will avoid zones that contain content beyond what they can handle. Guilds are particularly good at this. Let people go where ever they want to go. Eliminate this idiotic flagging and trial BS. Open the game up again, and let things be fun. Flags for VT, Time, and other end zones are fine. Yes, they are massive timesinks that make your head hurt, but something has to be a challenge. But there is little to no valid reason to add 20-some new zones, and only allow people into 4 of them. Thats just flat out S.T.U.P.I.D.!

Another thing that has hurt EQ are the changes in the maximum people allowed on raids. In PoP, 72 people were allowed (and sometimes almost required to beat certain encounters initially), and then GoD comes and had lowered that to 42, but some tiny amount of sanity hit the devs somewhere along the line, and the GoD limits were raised to 54. What are those other 18 people that were recruited to get through PoP supposed to do when the guild raids in GoD? Sit around enjoying hearing how their guildmates are having a blast raiding? Gimme a break!

Why even have limits at all? Where did this grand idea come from? Didnt EQ do quite well for years without limiting how many people could do something? Oh, yes it did. So why have limitations like this?

Plane of Time needs to be made 100% instanced. This clunky, half thought out system they currently have in place is a joke. And its only going to get worse as more and more guilds flood into the zone when players can reach level 70. What is the point of leaving a guilds instance active for a full 13 hours after they have left the zone? Does it serve any real purpose other than to be an artificial c*ckblock?

LDoN forced rest periods should be 100% eliminated. This is a game. We want to KILL stuff. We do NOT want to be sitting around waiting for some artifically imposed timer to decide that we have now rested enough to be able to go back and slay more mobs. There is nothing more aggravating than to select a hard adventure, blow it away in 30 minutes, and find out you get to sit there doing NOTHING for 15 minutes because you successfully managed to complete your adventure in less time than the devs thought you should.

EQ should be fun. It should be a place where friends can be with friends. It should be a place where if 100 people want to get together and slay something, all 100 of them should be able to get there to do it. Even if they are not ready to actually be there. Open up the game again. Eliminate all the flagging and trials that we all hate so much. Let us try things we want to try, and not things we have been "tested" for. This is a game SOE. This is not Chemistry 101.

Let us play this game when, where and who we want to play it with. Period.

[Koru]

I want to experience the expansions you so lovingly craft. Not in 2-3 years when the high end players are done with them and willing to let casuals have their leftovers (even then chances are they'll farm some of them rigorously for profits *cough*kunark dragons*cough). Or when me and casual friends are finally able to gain entry after average player power has more than tripled and the content's become trivial. Not after insane locking mechanisms that require me to play a very specific way and submit a near-work-professional application to a guild in a frigging game. I don't care for raids, I don't want to raid, I find it a thoroughly stressful and unfun way to spend an evening. I'm not playing the game to be 37 of 43 to use Borg terms. I want my presence to make an actual noticable difference with the people I am playing with. That's sort of the point to me playing a heroic online fantasy game. A lot of your expansion content isn't pure raid content, but you need to do the raid content before you get access to the single group content. Unfun.

I want more instanced zones. I want to be able to add people after we spawn it and I don't really care for time limits to add stress. Because a lot of the times me and my friends just want to spend a few hours together killing stuff, maybe getting a couple of items or some cash, bit of xp and most importantly of all - we want to be able to do this together and not have to even think about some jackhole training us or other groups already beeing at the camp or whatever. Meaning, we want to be able to say "Sure Joe, we're hanging out in an instanced Kedge 2. Hang on, let us invite you in" instead of "Damn bro, we just got an adventure 10 mins ago. Tough luck".

I want more quests for armors. Not quests of "flag everyone, go kill these 70th lvl monsters and pray you win a roll, then combine your armor in this container." Real armor quests, not 1shot combine-killing.

Finally I want to find out who the heck is raising all those skeletons in QH and BB during every single major GM event and why a population that can kill the gods themselves seems unable to stop this. Someone must really really hate the newbies of Norrath, and yet feel no reason to make it known who he or she is. Ever notice how it's always undeads too? It's never "oh the fields are overrun with 30th lvl rats as a result of the plague" or "Bristlebane has played a cruel joke on QH, expect hordes of mimes to attack within the next 5 minutes". Ok, it's a game for all ages, maybe that last one would be too graphic.

[Fricka]

Great feedback, I'm actually going to be taking notes on these posts to bring with me ;)

And Koru... please tell me you've posted this part before: ""Bristlebane has played a cruel joke on QH, expect hordes of mimes to attack within the next 5 minutes"."

Because either you have or I'm experiencing extreme deja vu and/or been reading the Safehouse too long :P

[Koru]

Lol, no actually the first time I've written or read it (or thought of such a thing). It struck me as being far more unique than current GM events, and a great deal more scary than the current Halloween celebrations. ;)

[Fricka]

Oh great then either my clarivoyance has been turned up a notch or maybe my fever has returned lol.

[pumbaa dbane]

I havent read what was posted yet so if anything here has already been mentioned I appologize in advance, just cut and pasted it from another location I posted it on for the same summit meeting . . . .


Quote from Sony's own website . . . .

Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rogues are the stealthy thieves and vicious assassins that stalk the shadows of Norrath. Rogues are primarily a melee class, able to wear chain armor and use piercing, slashing and some blunt weapons.

Rogues are sneaky fighters who always seek to take advantage of enemies by attacking from behind. Rogues can backstab enemies for extra damage, using poisoned weapons for added effect. Rogues can detect traps, pick locks and pockets, and fall safely from great heights.

Rogues are known for their ability to sneak and hide. This allows them to move almost anywhere, exploring the dangers that lie ahead. Combined with rogue items that use illusions, rogues make excellent scouts.

Rogues are a specialist class that works best with a group of friends. Rogues can add greatly to the killing power of a group. The rogue is a good choice for players who like to do heavy damage while walking the dangerous edge of dungeon exploration.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



1. The poison system has been severely neglected. Old world poisons are unusable due to the excessive farming for a 1 use poison that will more then likely be resisted. Increase drop rates for old world poison regent and/or make them vendor buy able at a reasonable price from current poison merchants

2. Old world poisons need to be updated to work like current PoP type poisons. Old world poisons need to be able to be made in single, 5, and 10 dose versions and be applied in the same manner as PoP era poisons. The length of duration of possible procs should be based off the users/makers make poison skill OR apply poison skill

3. Rogue made poisons being resisted should be based off the level of the rogue using the poison, the level of his make and apply poison skill, and the resists of the NPC/PC being poisoned. With the current resist rate using poisons is a total waste of time and plat

4. Escape should be an endurance based skill similar to Assassin strike for reuse and cost. Take the Hasty exit ine of AA and turn them into a reduced endurance cost AA for the ability

5. Shroud of Stealth (rogue version) should allow a person to zone, log off, and log on without being broken. Ideally it should also make you invis to all NPC's AS WELL AS PC's . Allow see invis NPC's and PC's a SMALL chance to see and SoS rogue at about the current chance level. This would allow rogues to be able to scout ahead for raids, drag corpses reliably, and would help balance rogues in the PvP environment while not being overpowering.

6. Assassinate - when a rogue gets the ability to assassinate, the level of mobs he is able to assassinate should go up in levels as he does. A 61 rogue should be able to assassinate a mob 1 level higher then he could at 60 and so on.

7. Pick Pockets - Allow rogues to pick pockets mobs 5 levels below his level all the way to the highest level obtainable by the rogue (currently 65). Currently that would allow a rogue to pick pocket a level 60 mob if the rogue was level 65.

8. Pick Locks - a skill that is basically useless sine there are very few locked doors to be opened, and when there is a locked door rogues become nothing more then a doorman. Incorporate more locked doors in the game however once a door is opened, the raid or group should be able to pass through it, at will, until they have zoned.

9. Sense/Disarm Traps - Much like Pick Locks it is basically useless due to the few traps in game. Once a trap is detected it should be marked as an NPC would be and once disarmed it should stay disarmed for the raid or group until they zone. If I stick my finger in a mouse trap it doesnt magicly reset it's self waiting to bite me in the ass later.

10. More Rogue/Bard ONLY illusion masks and quit with the GD all/all masks. For cripes sake you say it's one of the rogues class defining abilities yet Sony insists on allowing anyone and their sisters become any race they wasn with all/all illusions from masks and potions.

11. Most Important - DPS . . . .Rogues need more DPS. We offer very little utility to a group except for DPS. We have the highest risk vs. reward when it comes to inflicting DPS since we are not only within melee range of the mob we are also not good at mitigation dmg and have a low AC. We do our dmg up close and personal, when a mob decides he has had enuff of us we are VERY easily dispatched with 1 nice quad. If ya want me to crawl up behindup a mob and jam a stick up it's butt then get whacked I'll be more then happy to do it, just make sure I'm doing more then irritating it's hemeroids. Consider giving rogues triple attack, increase the hit rate for backstab, double backstab, and triple backstab and make the the true masters of sustained/melee DPS. DO NOT give rogues the ability to track, mez, lull, etc (UNLESS poison baased) abilities that have allready been assinged to other classes.

[Grabbit the Assassin]

Fricka will have my help in representing the rogue community at the Summit, along with another rogue or two who post here. I'll let them reveal themselves.

I'm personally very excited about the potential this kind of event has for the future of EQ.

[Northerner]

Good thoughts everyone. I thought I'd add a few observations as well but first I'd like to note that fixing the collision/graphics client interaction is fundamental. None of us enjoy wiping due to bugs and frankly it *is* gamebreaking. If a new game exhibited this kind of behavior, I would not subscribe.

As a non-solo class that primarily brings damage to a group, Rogues need to be able to complete for that role at all levels of the game. I really can't speak to the pre-65 game anymore as it's been since PoP opened for me but there are huge stratas now in the 65s, even those well-AAed.

One major concern I see coming up is that of buff-progression. Although slows and haste are already completely cemented into the design, few classes are dependant on outside buffs as much as Rogues are to function in their class roles. That's all fine in raids where I get SoT/SoP/FA/Fero and a Bard in my group but for grouping I am at a severe disadvantage with a random composition. Extending these current buff-lines only makes this worse, and worse yet for the Rogue attempting to solo anything whatsoever. At level 70 I cannot imagine I will be even able to solo light-blues solo without some changes. It will also make the Ranger, Mage, Necro, Chanter, Beast etc even more competitive for that 'dps' slot given what else they can add to the group.

That brings up the primary point I'd make. What exactly should the Rogue be bringing to a 6-person group? In LDoN it's just dps frankly and others are better suited to it for the most part, especially charmers. In GoD trials there is the safety-net of Escape and drag but frankly that's not compelling (especially if no tracker is available, Eyes or tracking are vastly superior to even SoS + Escape for scouting). Worse yet, that's a crutch in most of the GoD trials anyhow, with only a couple where a Rogue is desired to cut the time down by frankly circumventing content. In EP groups we do ok but nobody is thinking that we are a better choice than a Necro, Wizard or Mage for kite groups and although we can be decent in straight AA grinds with a tank group, that's frankly kinda dull when you get your AAs hey?

Brainstorm some and come up with a Role for Rogues, both in raids and groups. Would Indoor tracking help? Sure it would, and more than you might think. Would situational dps be a good thing? Of course it would, think about mini-assassinations on humanoids akin to Slay Undead. Think about an Assassin's Strike companion line that does 5 times the present damage but requires a full 30 seconds of stealth first. How about posions that really do debuff dex, AC, aggro-range, AE-Ramp range, increase present-target hate, pull a mob backwards (reverse knockback) or frankly whatever... and can be used *on a regular basis* without farming PoH/F for a quest or mining vendors for componants. (Personally I'm a fan of the Dex reducers, although a "drawback" would be nice with the present DX9 issues.)

You've already seen a million and one things we'd like, from AE /corpse to /autoconsent or /raidconsent (dear Bristlebane PLEASE!) to damage to utility... I don't think there is a need to go much further with it. One last point though perhaps, although completely minor. Please take a peek at Twisted Chance and fix it. Crits are fun but nobody uses it over Duelist.

[Cleeves]

Only thing that bothers me to no end all the time is the non existent droprate on rogue daggers, and the difficulty to actually get a good one that is still inline with the current content.

It was once needed when rogues were quite strong so that only the minority were able to upgrade their weapons, but I have no clue why they still think its appropriate. We have done numerous times LMM and now Solro and not even one dagger for one single rogue in the guild. And they don't even have the quality to bring the damage up to where it should be in my opinion.

I know it has been asked here before, but maybe you can consider bringing it up, why they still think that daggers need to be the biggest pain in the butt to get.

Actually i saw that they said, issues that are important to the EverQuest community as a whole, but who sticks to the rules, especially once you are there )

[InvisiBill]

From a lower level rogue...

I've seen illusions mentioned several times. I don't mind having to touch up my disguise every half hour or whatever. But zonelines are an artificial boundary added to Norrath for technical reasons. Just make all illusions stick when crossing a zoneline. It would help everyone, but it would be most beneficial for rogues and other classes that have a lot of illusion items.

I don't have any specific requests on how to do it, but we need to be more useful to groups. There are many definitions of "rogue", but as others pointed out, in-game rogues don't really seem to match up with SOE's description even. I don't mind not being able to solo, as long as people want me in their groups. Like others suggested, make more obstacles that only a rogue can get around. At the same time, make the rogue's effects more sticky, like leaving the door unlocked or the trap disarmed while you stay in the zone or whatever. It seems like high-end rogues are there just for damage, and there are some token rogue-skill obstacles thrown in occasionally.

Perhaps have an alchemy-like portion of poisons. Allow rogues to make self-buff "potions" using their knowledge of ingredients. Maybe even have them similar to some disciplines, where increasing one stat decreases another. For example, a potion that makes you go mad - your ATK increases, but AGI or DEX drops, or you're snared, or whatever. That just popped into my head as a way to make the poison skills more useful and alleviate the buff problem as well. I realize that it tends to make a copy of a hybrid using different terms, but it may be easier to keep things balanced if you can improve rogues in ways besides just adding HPs and DPS.

As for the bugs in the collision system (and elsewhere), they're just that - bugs. They're programming errors that need to be fixed, regardless of what else happens. I'm pretty sure everyone deals with software bugs at least a little, but when things get too buggy, I find other software. Myself and others have stuck around EQ for a long time simply because of the time we have invested already. I bet many people would move to another game if they could import their EQ toon in some way, and not completely lose everything they've done in-game for the past five years. It's not about anything other than EQ being a defective product at the moment. I think we all realize that bugs happen, and it may take some time to figure out, but some of these huge bugs shouldn't even make it to the live server. If they have any sort of in-house testing, some of them shouldn't even make it to Test. If they expect the players on Test to find all the bugs, they also need to realize what they've been telling us - you can't get something for nothing.

[thiefmac]

I maybe new to EQ only 7 months but is it too much to ask that I can walk from one side of POK/BAZAAR without being completely frozen? if they could fix that, that would be great. I don't me to be a pest and I know that POK and the BAZAAR aren't that important to the game as an overall but it would be nice.





Oh and I'm still working on the irony thing. :liar

[Alachandra Bakstalker]

Make them sell celestial essence at a vendor!

Fix wall bug atm you can not AoW any mob.

Increase the distance of /corpse is a must!

Emote from a see SoS mob instead of clicking on every single mob.




Marauder Alachandra Bakstalker
65 Rogue
Vazaelle

[Grahamulus]

What i would like to see goes along with the ilusions issue. i call it Diety vision. Why if i am using the DE mask or any mask or ilusion item for that matter, Why am i immediatly identified as xyz god fearing follower and pounded to pulp. Why if i am in disguise, am i recognized as the bandit who has be killing our kin as a barbarian when i walk into Cabilis as an Iksar. We are Rogues or Bards or Enchanters that is what we do and we are supposed to be good at it so why does this apply? It shouldnt matter that my face as a Barbarian/Haffy/DE etc.. is on wanted posters all over Norrath, if i am in disguise i am invisible to all and can go unnoticed thru out as long a i am good at it.

So saying that make Disguise a skill for Rogues/Bards/Enchanters or an purchasable Class AA so that the disguise itself can offset Faction and diety and get the "I love Tunare so please hurt me' sign off my backside. While in disguise we should be factionless neutral at all times. It needs to go both ways, if i am normally a halfling rogue and the whole town loves me and i change to barb ilusion and walk into haffy town, they should treat me like and other Barb who comes to visit. Diety vision and faction vision has always drove me crazy from the start.

[Talzar]

My list is simple.

1. Fix the bugs before you charge us for new stuff.
2. Fix broken quests beore you charge us for new stuff.
3. Revamp old zones that are rarely used before you charge us for new stuff. We have more than enough zones. We need content in them.

[KirinIchiban]

What I would like to see, since everyone is looking for more solo content, things to do instead of sitting LFG, and everyone seems to like instanced content, is something like 1 class, 1 person, ONLY, instanced material.

This could be part of the epic 2.0, or could be something stand alone.

Now, of course I know nothing about what kind of stress it would put on a server to have single player instanced areas, but I can imagine it can be done.

What I'm talking about is something that uses the vast majority of tradeskills, combat skills, abiltiies, perhaps some AA's, etc of a class.

I will give an example of what this may be like for rogues:

First off, in order to get in to the instanced dungeon you must have some sort of flag. Whether it be something mundane like building faction and hailing something, or it be something tougher like killing a god-type-mob. Or it could be both, maybe a lesser instanced dungeon and a greater instanced dungeon, both REQUIRED for epic 2.0. I know many people are against flags, etc, BUT this would be a neccessary evil so every rogue on the server doesnt bumrush this at the release of the new expansion.

Now, it would go something like this.

Rogue zones in. It's a tavern, with scoundrels around. There's a table with a book on it, giving you clues about your mini-quest and telling you that you need to enter the cellar.

You talk to the bartender, he tells you he has a key to the cellar but he isn't giving it to anyone for less than 2k.

Rogue uses pickpocket and steals the key.

You enter the cellar. You walk around and a mob with see-sos engages you for trespassing. You notice you cannot kill the mob. Although he is relatively weak, every time you hit, you get the message "His wounds heal back up before your eyes!"

So, you apply poison and attack. You get a message like "Inflicted with poison, the mobs regeneration rate is slowed!" Aha, now he is vulnerable. You attack as normal and kill him.

Next room, another mob attacks you, wielding a GIANT sword. In a few rounds, he will surely kill you. Aha, use disarm to remove the sword from his hand. Now his dps is down to almost nothing, you can kill him with ease.

The next room has walls that are closing in on you with sharp spikes on both sides. They could be given lava-type touch status that would deal massive damage, killing you almost instantly if you cannot stop them. At the end of the hall you see a device that seems to be triggering the walls to close in on you. Suddenly, you are rooted to the floor. Your only chance is to throw daggers at the device to disable it. Upon dealing 100 or so damage to the device, the walls stop closing in on you. (something like ldon barrels, etc)

The end mob is something you have to assassinate, etc.

You get the general idea. The point is to use as many tricks as your class has. These wouldn't be too hard to come up with, hell, I'll write them all for every single class for 50 bucks and some beer.

Think of the possibilities:

Ranger walks up to 6 doors , each containing a mob...if he opens the wrong door, he will be attacked and killed almost instantly. One of the doors is safe to open, and removes the mobs from the other doors, and also opens the right path. Tracking is the key.

Ranger has to lull animal to get past a pack of rabid wolves, who could kill the ranger in one round.

Druid has to cast the "stop rain" spell in order to kill a monster made of water who regens from the rain.

Druid has to kill a mob with very very very low HP but hits very fast. No spells will land on the mob. Damage shield is the only thing that will work.

Mage has to kill mobs with the appropriate pets. Make use of ALL the different types of pets they have, etc.

Wizard has to use appropriate spells, bind site to target the correct mobs. Unlock chests to continue, etc. Succor to zone, etc. Wizard can only defeat a chain casting mob by spell shielding themselves untill the mob runs out of mana, exhausted from the fight, they have to melee with staffs. (LOTR STYLESZZ)

Cleric has to use "Word Of PAin" type line of spells to quickly kill a swarm of rats that could kill the cleric in a couple rounds, but have low hp.

The list could go on and on, but I'll shut up untill they hire me!


Anyway, not only in the end will these be good for epics, but you could make a specific spell/disc drop every time for these classes. Make it the only way to get THAT spell. So even if you dont care about the epic, these would still be worthwhile. You could even have a chance for rare augs, decent equipment drop. Like perhaps a rogue only bracer drops on their instance, but rarely. Other times it may be a rogue only ring. Not too many pieces of loot, so people dont redo them over and over to get every piece, but a couple so the replay value is there.

You could also have a hard version for early epic 2.0 parts, and then a difficult version for later epic 2.0 parts. Each version would be different, and require different skill checks etc.

Something to think about. I think almost everyone in EQ would enjoy something like this.


P.S. (yeah I know we're talking about EXISTING content, but could you bring this up anyway??? =P

[Mendosa]

My background: I started playing about 2 months before kunark came out and have never once quit. I have been in the same mid-tier guild for over 4 years and I have 2 active accounts with 3 level 65 characters between them.

I would like to see:

A. NUMBER 1, more quests that actually have GOOD rewards. Epic 2.0 sounds like it will be slightly filling this void in the game. But it is EverQUEST, and there are less than a dozen quests that any level 65 player would even want to do, and maybe less than 5 that have a needed reward, illusion masks are just for fun and i do not concider them useful. There could be quests that give augments, new armor, USEFUL weapons. And there have never really been any true armor quests in my opinion. if you get the mold or what-have-you, you practically have the item. just farm 3 gems, or take a trip to the bazaar, and it doesnt feel like a quest at all. We play EverQUEST, not EverEXPSOYOUHAVEASHITLOADOFAA, or any variance.

B. Do something to make non-popular zones more attractive. rare random drops from particular exp zones may do the trick. or decaying exp the more you kill in the same zone (but allow it to refresh after you spend X amount of time in X amount of other zones. Exp grinding in BoT, Solro, PoEarth/Fire is just lame, make people mix it up at least every week somehow.

C. Stop putting faulty expansions live, or stop having us pay for them. The players of EQ allow you suffiecent funds to test each expansion AND put it through a few beta stages to make it NEAR flawless before release. A perfect example of this would be the new collision system, test it first maybe? I mean my god how much more faulty could it have been? And its still messed up.

D. Harder content does not mean mobs hit harder, and/or have more hps. Make it challenging to the tactics of a guild, not so much their gear.

E. Easier to Flag for EP's, or make it so that each flagged character can 'tie' themself to another character of the same level. I am angered that i have lower-playtime friends that I cannot group with because they cant go anywhere.

F. Up exp in Ldon, its been said, and it needs to happen.

G. More rogue weapons, better drop rate on old rogue weapons. Also more warrior weapons. I can name all of the tier 3+ warrior weapons right now- Blade of carnage, Bloodfrienzy, Great blade of the storms, xanamech hammer, bloodied berserkers blade, blade of war, stone etched war sword, darkblade, edge of eternity, jagged onxy staff. thats 10 weapons, 3 of which are 2 handed. now cross that with 'dps' weapons and the numbers are staggering. this applies to rogue weapons as well.

[Qualan]

Don't make it too easy

Content gimped to current gear/aaxp levels will get too easy too fast. Content needs to be tuned for appropriate levels of gear/aaxp- Don't give in to whiners that say it is too hard.

To keep a game like EQ interesting you need goals and diferentiation in characters. We don't need a game where in 4 months time 80% of the lvl 65's or lvl 70's have the same abilities and access to the same zones.

You need uberness and very hard zones to keep it interesting for the levels below.

Also i agree that more old zones need to be revamped.


Last but not least i think we may need more vox coding. There is way more content that is interesting and doable for farmers at lvl 70 than now at lvl 65. On our server the RoK dragons/Wuoshi/CS dragon/AoW/King Tormax/Zlandikar etc are all farmers targets. Guilds gearing up have hardly a shot at these mobs and the gear ends up in the bazaar or PA

Also finish content. GoD tradeskills are the suck. Half of em are unfinished and the other half is so inadequate in stats that tradeskills are hardly worth doing except in relation to some quests. I expect that some of the quest won't be fully finished although there is little that holds my interest besides BiC-quest

[Biggwin]

Can you please bring up the head bob while fighting.

I think it was this last FF but someone mentioned it and they said no, but they way they responded was more about animations it seemed.

I dont want any of the animations changed, 2hb rear ream excluded, but just the head bob while in first person view.

Sometimes the bouncing gives me headaches and I have heard other people say it makes them sick. It would be a nice ability to be able to turn off or on and stress that this has nothing to do with animations just the camera view movement while fighting!

[Tikker]

short races don't head bob while fighting


gnome 4 lyfe

[Loral]

Fricka, I look forward to meeting you at the event. I too will be bringing along my notes on the changes I'd like to see. They can be read here:

http://mobhunter.com/article.jsp?articleid=-1950615164

Sorry for the shameless plug.

Loral

[Zyan]

I don't think there is any one thing I could change about the rogue class that would make me want to play more. Class balance has ALWAYS been an issue, honestly this has nothing to do with my lacking desire to play EQ.

I think what has killed it for me is the lack of challenge. I had fun when faction meant something more than what armor I could wear. I had fun when an adventure to me was running through 8 zones naked to get my corpse, not my own private zone. I had fun when it took me months to get through level 59, the feeling of beating that challenge was great. I had fun when playing a caster I actually had to buy my spells for each level, now I can pick and choose because I'll probably be 5 levels higher next week.

There are many more examples to the loss of challenge for me. I dont want to ramble on, just wanted to share my 2 cents.

Thanks for listening, I hope something good comes out of this meeting.

Zyan (http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=964158)

[Stabeth]

I have 2 concerns about the rog class. well basicly 1 the other is just an annoyence.

1. ever since DX9 came out in late march the dragging radius has been half the size it used to be, any the last few weeks it seems to have gotten worse. if they would fix that I'd be a happy rogue.


2. Increase the drop rate on that Halfling mask in chardok. ugh... been here so long I've lost track of kills. and I'm inbetween spawns right at this very moment too. No other mask in the game is this rare of a drop IMO. please try to get them to incease the drop rate.

[Treli]

1. Something that I have always thought would be good is progressive armor quests that follow you from character creation to the end game. You know they now have the newbie armor quests for most starting characters - well lets expand on this - you can upgrade that armor at set levels, like at 20, then at 35 then at 46 then at 60 and continually at 65 in increments - with quest peices that you get in the course of regular grouping and raiding. You may have to go to some esoteric zones - like somethings in LoY (lets make it useful) and somethings in, say, Wakening Lands or Plane of Nightmares etc - making it deffinitely level range applicable. When you reach 65, you can continue to upgrade that armor to something eventually equivalent to the highest gear in the game - though you need to hunt in Eplanes to do it and have high risk - even in small groups - to accomplish it. Make it so you HAVE to do a series of instanced adventures linked off the Eplane zones in order to upgrade where the difficulty is based off total group HP/AC/STATS and class composition.

2. Make a true alternative flag path available doable by small groups - instead of, or along side of (meaning you can do some of both) killing the tier gods for e=plane access, you have to do specific small group tasks (make them tough, certainly. Make them involved so it takes time and effort and commitment certainly). For example, you and your group have to work your way in to the war council room of Rallos Zek and get into his safe - make SKILLS a highlight of instanced dungeons that take you through this - for example, the rogue's pick locks, the necro's specialties with the dead, every class has some skills that are a forte. Don't just make it all a hack and slash - put some thinking and problem solving into it. Like you have to figgure out where the safe is and find the key but there are five dummy safes and you need to use deductive reasoning to figgure out which is the right one. Have there be consequences for choosing the wrong one. I can see having to do two or three different tasks in order to earn each flag this way - have the tasks designed to take up to three hours per and have the specifics be chosen randomly from a LONG list of variables in a database, so that each time you do these they are different and the next group is highly unlikely to get the very same path you did.

To keep guilds wanting to continue killing the gods for flags (a faster progression if you have lots who need it) keep the good gear rewards in. For the instanced one group path, let them get spell and augment drops and some chance of ok gear upgrades - perhaps it can work in for the progressive armor quest.

I would suggest NOT doing the alternate path for Time access because, well, the gods and killing them are integral to the story line. But certainly make a one group alternative to getting PoEB flags.

3. I would love to see some of the more popular pre-pop content instanced. Emp, a 7 day spawn, would be a lovely mob to instance. Really = with easy access LDoN, is it neccessary to limit entrance to VT? And do people who are in non raiding guilds really WANT access to VT? make Emp Ssra an instanced encounter that you can access any time. Maybe do limit it like the Cursed Cycle (which should have it's spawn cycle shortened to 3 days or less) and you have to kill so many of the named commanders in a certain time frame to get the instance trigger mob to spawn. Heck, retool the entire zone such that you talk to a trigger outside in The Grey to start the instanced event - you go in and you have so much time to kill all the raid level mobs - all 3 rhags, Cursed, Arch Liche, Creator - in order to make the emp spawn. Give it a time limit of 3 hours from start to finish. It beats the HECK out of racing for emp then having 150 people in zone waiting for the golem to spawn and listning to all that crappy OOC.

AoW, Yelinak, ALL of ToV and some other Velious content would go well this way. In fact, make all the dungeons - like Dalnir's, Kaesora, Crystal Caverns and such dual purpose. Available for just exp, Tskill farm, or picking up quest parts (in the case of Kaesora and some other dungeons), but if you want the uber-gear spawns you have to trigger the quest mob outside and go in and work through the event. It would base the difficulty of the event on your group's abilities (and numbers).

4. make the old world and kunark content = dragons (Vox, sev, trak and Naggy), Phinny, some of the other stuff - trigger events so that guilds from level 46 to 65/time geared can have a challenge. It would require coding that would read what average HP/AC/stats and procs the raid has. You would have to have your raid formed before you could trigger the mob and you would not be able to add people afterward. Put a marker on raid participants that no one from that raid would be able to trigger, or be in a raid that triggerd the event again for 3 days in order to nix spawn camping.

5. Put in solo adventures where there is less emphasis on killing something and more on figguring something out - like a rogue is sent to assasinate one mob, but has to figgure out how to get to that mob w/o triggering any defenses that target has. I don't know how, really, to gear it for classes that are dependant on groups, but having short shot things you do for faction, exp and some unusual items would be fun. In general I would like to see alot more that required you to THINK about how the story line fits into what you are doing and UTILIZE it.

6. Poisons - give other classes the ability to use them in accordance to thier general class with an eye to role playing - a paladin would never use poisons. But a warrior would, and SK deffinitely would. Maybe some rangers would. And make poisons more effective against high end mobs. I mean, really - the most powerful poison I can make has 0 effect on plane of tactics trash mobs?

7. Fix assasinate. How worthless is that skill? I can assasinate something I can just toe to toe kill anyway. Raise the level cap to 63. If you are concerned with it being over powerd, make some mobs just immune to it. Giants and Boss mobs aren't affected anyway. Neither are non humaniods. No, it's not realistic to expect that Rallos Zek and his boys would fall to assasinate, or even be hurt seriously by it - but the ogres that guard them would be.

8. Put in MANY new maps for LDoN and create an intermediate difficulty for the raids - something a non elemental group can do so you have raiding content for non-ubers. Also for LDoN, put in more wayfarer camps with different rewards - Kunark and Velious would be great to see more instanced dungeons.

9. Make more potions for self buffs available to find in dungeons - random ground spawns. Something that can be used for very short duration buffs - yes, I like how City of Heros does that :p

10. Everythign else - the collision issues, the DX9 issues and such = has been addressed.

Overall, I would like to see more work on existing content to make it multipurpose while reducing the competition for the content that is already there by making it instanced. EQ is a huge game with a TON of untapped potential in terms of utility for a great many players. There is also a lot of room to multi-layer for differing playstyles and abilities. If SoE can successfully tap into this, they will be able to extend the play life of the game by years. I want to see fewer gimiks (levels, aa's, gear) and more meat and potatoes content that challenges my ability to play with an eye to thinking and skill (not increase how many buttons I have to push or thier frequency)

God Bless,
Treli

[Fricka]

Thanks everyone! I'm actually printing this thread up to this point and will be taking notes on it, the Root Cellar thread and the pm's I've gotten.

After this point you can still post as I will be pointing devs this way, but it's highly likely I won't see it until I'm back from the trip. I'll do what I can, and with the help of the other Safehouse rogues going, we'll see what can happen.

[RumbleRZ]

Actual invis to players.

Should be like shadowed men or somesuch, just a name running around. Honestly, if the highest ranking snakes in Luclin, gods in PoP, etc can't see me, why can random level one twinks with bazaar items? especially SoS rogues.

[Biggwin]

because they were stupid and forgot to shop in the baz for see invis items??? I dunno, lol

[Syntero]

I know you said you were going to take messages posted up to the 6th...
So hopefully this will make it.

I have been playing eq for 3 yrs.. my main is a Rogue and As of yet I am not in an Elemental Guild. The Guild I just left was not even at the VT/Ssra stage yet.

I feel Rogues get cheated mostly on a few issues -

Why can't a Rogue (non-time equipped) Solo a LB Mob? A Bard/druid/necro/pally/SK.. etc can solo DB.. yellow and in some cases Red mobs...I understand we're a group dependant class, but give me a break.

How is It that a Chanter/Druid/Ranger/etc can cast invis on themself.. zone through 5 zones and still stay invised? Yet a Rogue sneaks between zones and hide/sneak breaks.

I know it sounds silly but when a Rogue hits a backstab, it should be spammed like a ranger or warriors Crit hits... Why? So people who dont have a clue see teh damage a Rogue does.
Ex : I watch in a fight as my rogue gets normal crits for 112 200 115... and my backstabs are hitting from 500-600.. and 1100 on a double... yet thh ranger hits his bow and everyone sees all the 1k and 2k bow hits... make it look like the rogue isnt doing any damage.

... Why do we get Dumb aa's like Triple Backstab?
Maybe Triple Backstab should mean you will ALWAYS get a double, and then have a chance of landing a triple..I mean once a Rogue is 'good enough' to land triples I would assume he would never miss a double.

... Why do Rogues the Masters of hide/sneak and disguise... Get Escape which is good every 1:12 .... Yet Bards get fading memories which is almost unlimited... Hell Rogues Escape should be as usable as FD is for monks.

How about some nice Rogue Specific Quests like those necro warr quests which involve a solo rogue using his skills to get decent loot and exp.. like a new mask or a bracer or something... making us lock pick.. and sneak... and pickpocket...

It's hard sometimes to find a grp for a rogue.. given the choice for dps between a ranger and a Rogue grps will take the ranger for his extra abilities of snare/range.... and ability to offtank with weaponshield..... so what then is the place of the rogue? second class dps... 4th class tank.... Hell Evenseen groups prefer to pay for coffins and have a necro summon corpses as its quicker then sendning a rogue to drag 6-12 corpses on a raid (going back to that ae /corpse comment someone made)....

Anyway sorry this ran longer then I intended.. But i noticed a lot of the posts were coming from higher up players, in EP and Time.. and its even worse for those of us wh oarent yet at the uberness level.

Syntero Shadowwolf
The Rathe Server

[Moonshayde]

I've read through roughly 90% of this entire thread now and I'm aware that this meeting has likely already occured but here's my thoughts on it all. I think "Siins" posted most everything that Should've been brought up. (It's the 17th Reply Down from the top of this thread) So, I'll re-itterate(sp) on some of it.

Though I feel for all you rogues out there and have had sympathy for your class now for about 2 years or so: I feel the changes not only need be towards certain classes and their abilities, but mostly Game Content or lack-there-of.

There was a time when EQ had a very nice cozy feel about the Worlds which we play out our fantasy lives. The feel we had when Velious was an amazing, breathtakingly beautiful continent with so many perils and so many adventures. the Quests were great and weren't too amazingly difficult. the one's that were amazingly difficult (Garzicor's Vengeance comes to mind) we're so entwining. You were so involved and felt the story line being played out in your head as you read the Quest NPC's dialogue. Luclin was wonderful for all its involved and not so difficult questing. it made for many things to do. (Loyalist's Shield of Honor anyone? it wasnt complete but the Quest itself was amazing and fun to play out). We all know EQ lost that feel sometime during the Luclin era or when PoP came out.

I'd like more than anything to have that feel back. I'm sick and tired of hack n' slash, I'm sick and tired of the need to Key (flag) Everyone and their sister's dog just to play with friends (or lack of playing with your close EQ buddies cause they dont have flags to EQ_Zone03.


I finally got into the raid-life during the time when Luclin was in it's prime. I'm almost time Enabled (2 more gods to go). I've earned all of this via time sinks galore... And just now I think back and it comes down to just that. Annoying Time Sinks. Did I really want to do all that just for some time gear and to see the zones / bosses? Guess I was left no choice and I think all my desires have been killed just from doing the whole time sink. Loot is all I have to show for it. but I doubt I'll find any of the Bosses I've already killed --Now in Time-- Any fun or exciting.
The VP key was the only time sink I felt very happy about. When I got into Veeshan's Peek it was amazing, beautiful, and the mobs were so neat!


I'd like it to have that "Raiding or progressing is completely optional" feel again like it did when I was a lowbie in the Kunark era. Plenty of content for all to enjoy and you didn't have to be in Raiding_Guild02 to see most of it. Never been to hate? bug a wizzy to port you up and check it out.. get a port out when done looking (okay more dangerous than it sounds at that point in time but you could still just do it).

You just dinged level 65 and wanna see time? Good luck buddy :(

Sick of Time sinks. Need more solable quests, content, mayhem and fun !!
(and yes in my opinion rogues DEFINATELY need some balancing, they need to have solo time too!)

[KirinIchiban]

Tell SOE to hire me and I'll write all the class specific solo instanced stuff.

Thanks.