EvilIguana9
02-23-2005, 09:27 PM
This might not be the best place to put this but I can't think of anywhere else.I have decided to consolidate a lot of my recent concerns and potential solutions into a single thread in the hopes that someone may take notice and consider these. The following suggestions are broken down into two main categories: those concerning policy and those concerning actual game issues: So without further ado I present:Kylahn’s Big Idea ThreadPart A: Policy-Currently the dev team and the moderators do a very nice job of actively participating in the forum discussion, but I have a few critiques that may enable them to better serve the players as well as make their jobs a bit easier.1. We need a known bugs/issues list so we as players know what has been acknowledged and what we still need to /bug or post about. As issues are addressed the list can be updated to note which issues are being worked on, which have been fixed for the next patch, and which are being discussed internally. This could potentially cut down greatly on the amount of duplicate bug reports2. There should be regularly consulted issue lists for every crafting and adventuring archetype, class, and subclass. If necessary a player representative could keep them updated with pertinent bugs and issues.3. A lot of changes that are being made to the game are heading in the right direction, but it would help greatly if things were better explained to the players. We would like to know why a change is being made and what effect the change is supposed to have rather than needing to guess and argue over the coming of the apocalypse with each major patch.4. Concerning botting and the exchange of in game currency for real world currency. It’s nice that the designers are trying to make the game harder to exploit, but you need to approach the issue from more than one angle. The first step should be to shut down the websites that are trading currency and accounts. What they are doing is a gross violation of the EULA that we all have to abide by. I am sure that Sony has the resources to see that these people stop using their intellectual property to make money. The second step should be to try to detect botting programs on the client side. Anti cheat software is far from perfect but you can cut down on illicit activity a great deal just by making it a bit harder on the cheaters. Take these steps and the EQ2 economy will be much more stable, which will result in much happier players and ultimately a healthier longer lasting game.Part B: Gameplay-This section deals specifically with game balance and gameplay related issues. A lot of the ideas here pertain specifically to The Big Patch III and some issues players have had with it.1. Adventuring and Crafting careers should be different but ultimately equal. I think this is the goal of the design team but I could be wrong. Basically both adventuring and crafting need to be viable means of advancing your character. Some questions need to be asked for both paths though: -How much coin should be made from selling things to other players and how much coin should be made from selling things to npcs and doing quests?-How fast should a person be advancing?-Should a person need a crafting career to be able to adventure and vice versa?-What is the ultimate goal for each? Level? Prestige? The ability to make mountains of plat?-Before TBP3, crafting, specifically alchemy, was overpowered for making money. The downside was that it was dreadfully boring to make all those sub-combines. With the patch the ability to make money was drastically reduced but the boredom and repetition was kept. Unfortunately alchemists still have few final products worth selling. Fighter scrolls are in high demand but the cost to produce makes their selling price generally above what the average adventurer can afford. Items 2 through 5 address these issues.2. Fix Broken Spells/Skills. This makes both the users of the skills happy and adds new demand for crafted scrolls.3. Make the spell statistics show up on the scrolls upon inspection. This will increase demand for alchemy4. Interim products for all classes should be created in larger stacks than they are currently. Cross class combines should not yield as many per combine. This should make selling interim products more feasible from a profit versus time standpoint.5. Ensure that all crafting classes have valuable final products to sell. Alchemist poisons and potions need to be reasonably valuable but not overly expensive to produce. Products need to have descriptions on them explaining what they do and their level limitations.-Player made food/drink is too expensive for the average casual player to invest in. There are some limitations on the long duration items that are disadvantageous for adventuring professions.6. Change ALL provisioning recipes to create stacks of the final product of at least 4 or 5, perhaps as much as 7 or 8 on a pristine combine. This makes the time investment much less for provisioners to produce a full stack of food/drink and makes the price reasonable for the average player.7. Make the food/drink buffs last through death. If your gear revives with you I don’t see why the food or drink in your belly cannot. This eliminates one means of wasting consumables. Long lasting food/drinks are still wasted if you don’t grind during their full duration but this is a start.8. Fix auto-eat/drink. It shouldn’t consume an item when you choose the option and it shouldn’t consume items before the last food buff has expired. 9. Consider allowing long lasting food/drinks to be split into shorter duration portions. A no-skill required no fail combine for players could let them do this. The downside is of course that 3 stacks of hour long drink take up more inventory room than 1 stack of 3 hour long drinks.10. Add the ability to sell on the market while offline. There are disadvantages to this system but the benefits far outweigh them. It is simply not feasible for many people to dedicate their computer to selling all night and whenever they are not online.-Moving on to combat related issues11. Add more solo/small group content. There needs to be solo content for every level. Currently as a 29 Paladin the only content available to me is group content. My choices are as follows: A) Get Zek access, a real pain in the [FAAR-NERFED!]. B) Kill green group conned mobs which tend to be less interesting longer lasting fights. C) Kill green solo con mobs. There are not really many solo conned mobs that are blue or higher. -Zone content seems to be 90% group ++ content. The only option for a solo player trying to go across the zones is to run or to have the zone entirely greyed out. As a paladin I can kill mobs (my level -4) group ++ with enough time, some -3 ++ if the circumstances are right. Paladins are considered to be above average soloers. This means that trekking across zones full of *easy* and *very easy* mobs is a real pain in the butt so to speak. 12. Zones need to be more passable to people who are in line with the intended level of the zone. This means that they shouldn’t have to be out of XP range to be able to move semi safely. I don’t mean with impunity. I just mean that with a little effort a level 25 player should be able to move across TS without needing to run from EVERY encounter. 13. There need to be more readily available movement speed buffs to counter the inaccessibility of most zones to solo adventurers or small groups.14. Wards need to take mitigation into account when absorbing damage. As it is a ward can be detrimental in some circumstances.15. There needs to be an easy way to stop an action/spell/ability before it finishes casting. If I hit the wrong button in combat I’d like to be able to quickly cancel that.