Evadne
02-24-2005, 02:45 AM
Everquest 2 has provided me with countless hours and weeks, and well you get the idea, of enjoyment. Nothing compares to the depth of detail. The subtle details that enrich the world. The perfection of the character models. Stop Motion Animation? I don’t know for sure. The story of the world is richly detailed. A bit black and white for my tastes, but enjoyable none the less. The pace of progression seems tailor made for a player like myself and I am content with it. I see and value the tremendous effort that is being put into the game to ensure it is balanced and secure the future for my character. I really believe that getting the systems to work, integrated with the world, and the player base is critical. Working out the bugs and imbalanced systems as soon as possible is clearly the most important step to making sure the game will be enjoyable for years to come. So many new concepts were introduced to players with this game. Closed combat, concentration, debt…and so much more. Discovering what works and doesn’t work so well is certainly the heart of someones job there at Sony. I do not envy that person. I do not pretend to know how to fix any of the things I do not personally think work so well. But I want to tell you I am patient, and see the value of what you are working on. But, here is what I do hope for. You have nothing short of a miraculous foundation of artwork in this game. The player models are stunning. However, doing these models justice with armor, lighting, and combat movement has fallen short. As a female player, even I want to see more skin. More style. Less flappy ugly things that stretch out of shape in combat. Caster pants ruin the models. They take a detailed form and movement and cover it with blocky substandard graphics. The combat stance is another example of taking something great and producing substandard graphics with it. Don’t do it. Many other animations and alterations of the player models should have been scrapped or worked on until they did justice to this artwork. The shaman wraith form. This is so bad. It looks awful and not in a fantasy awful way. I see the art, I see the graphics, I should see the wraith. Do not accept substandard work this way. Please, no insult intended to the artists. I know you work hard. I trust your abilities. Pants. Brawler pants, chain armor, cloth armor. Many of these articles of clothing remind me of old EQ1 early armor. Really old. Take a look at the tradesmans tunic on a wood elf brawler, the way it alters the pants graphic is spectacular. If we want rag tag armor early on, make it good art. At least as good as the great uber golden shazbot armor later on. But it can still look thread bare. Textures. Over used. Get back to using design, and less texture art for armor. Eva has these weird swirlies on her breasts, and different texture on her leggings and arms and boots. So varied that they look like paisley paired with tie die and checkers with stripes. Accent color in Freeport. Red. Red is a desert color and we should see more of it in design work. And teal blue. Tell me the world is going to change visually over the years. New buildings, old ones run down. That would be great.Wishful thinking: Linked encounters. Honestly, I do not understand why the mob AI has to work this way and not just have social behavior and agro radius. Of all the features I imagine were put in to control combat, this has to be the one that ranks up there on my totally ruins immersion. I really don’t like it at all. The other thing that ranks up pretty high is concentration. I do not have that many buffs that are usable to begin with. Concentration is just an annoyance. Really. Get rid of it. How aweful would it be to be able to buff the whole group with Forboding instead of just one? Not like I can buff anyone out of group. The short duration buffs are a nightmare to cast all the time.So, ultimately, I want you to know I love this game. I love it. But I have hopes for its future. I want it to be better. ~Eva