jun
11-23-2005, 02:26 AM
<DIV>I play an Illusionist on the Faydark server. My wife originally rolled the character (explains a guy playing a female toon). She quickly went back to her chanter in EQ 1 where she could actually charm something and left the toon to rot. I grew bored after 6 years as a raid monk in a high-end guild on Prexus and decided to come over and see what all the excitement was about in EQ 2.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Well, I picked up Kailen (the wife's toon) at around level 10 less than a year ago. To date, she is level 58, guilded with Evil Empire and thriving. By nature, I am not a person to complain a great deal, so I doubt you will catch me jumping on too many band-wagons screaming about nerfs. Its plainly obvious to me that this game is extremely dynamic, personalized to a great extent, and fairly NEW (for heaven's sake, they just celebrated the 1yr anniversary of its launch).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>It may seem like a 'life-time' to some of you folks that are new to the EQ world, but I can assure you, if nothing else is ever going to happen.... CHANGES most certainly will. I have been extremely pleased with this game since I began to play it. Is my class able to effectively do everything I would like it to? Probably not, but we are capable of doing a great many things that make us an asset in and out of groups, and solo.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I will not get into the 'raid' tasks/responsibilities quite as heavily because this game was not originally engineered towards that respect. So I expect things to be a bit out-of-synch in that area. Raids are old school in EQ 1 and are pretty well refined down in tactics/roles/timing/and mob specific resists/gear. Here, in EQ 2, they are relatively a new entity and will undergo quite a few phases of tweaking.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I think that is to be expected, especially when we are still in a sensitive phase of 'class-based' adjustments. I would love to see this forum turn into a power-house of information, and a wealth of suggestions for improvement to our class. I realize that achieving that goal will not happen without someone occassionally bursting a blood vessel and ranting about a 'fix/nerf' and going off the deep end. But I also believe the devs that will eventually come here will find a good deal of fact-based information to evaluate and reassess towards our 'fixes' we seem to be screaming for.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Believe me, insulting/cursing the devs, threatening to quit the class/game isn't going to draw the kind of attention that we really need to our issues. Most likely, quite the opposite. A few of you have posted good threads, great suggestions for change, and should be taken seriously with regards to upcoming revamps. Keep those posts coming!</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I am not an EQ 2 developer, but I am a programmer by profession, and have been for 10+ years. I am extremely familiar with the program development life-cycle and know how difficult it is to gather update/change request information from my users. It is a daunting, often thankless process to gather this information from people who are already 'outraged' that it wasn't thought of before hand. Most of the times, I am extremely pleased to stumble across a client that 'knows' what they are looking for, and how changes fit into their business process/application. Nine times out of ten, these people will see faster changes to their problems because their request forms provide me with the guidance/information (specifications) I need in order to facilitate the change they require.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I mean really, the more numbers, scenarios you can provide here on the forum simply helps eliminate the investigation time the actual devs have to do in order to 'present' this change in a meeting. I would only assume they develop these class-based abilities on a modular scale, and eventually some form of integrated testing to see what affects on a larger scale the changes will have. So, referencing encounters you guys have will only help them to pick up on target areas of concern, and possible exploit behaviors that would negate a change going in.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Cool thing is, if we can manage to produce that information here (in our forum), we will have an inside look/understanding of why/how things will change for our abilities in the future. It can be done! It can be here!</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Well, that's me and my thoughts in a nutshell.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>VR</DIV> <DIV>Kailen - 58 Illusionist (Faydark)</DIV>