Statements revisited

[Striikor]

Just wanted to put a reminder out.

It had been intimated that developers were/are aware of some the Ranger problems. In fact they have indicated they had some ideas to fix us. For instance;

On 02/06/2010 ... ~ 6 Months ago!

Rothgar wrote:

Noob1974 wrote:

Rothgar wrote:

I talked with Xelgad about these mechanics for Rangers and he agreed that something would need to be done.  He already had some ideas for them as well.  The biggest challenge we're facing is not enough time to do everything we'd like to do before the expansion.  For changes such as these, to allow flurry and/or ae auto-attack to work with ranged attacks, it's going to require some code changes and testing.  So we won't be able to make it before the expansion, but its definitely something we want to do.

          Rothgar with all the respect...... as much as im happy about this statement im concerned.... main reason is you asking us for time ,meaning buying and xpansion and monthly subs in hope something will be done.

Let me make something clear we had to wait between T7 to T8 5months into expansion till the " arrow" issue was fixed.

Now you come again ask for time ? How often do we as a ranger community have to wait till things are being done on time time.?

For me this is not acceptable......

I'm not asking you for anything.  Xelgad and I discussed this today so I'm merely trying to communicate with you guys about it.  Take it for what it's worth and in the end you decide where you want to put your dollars.

Now they have had time to make myriad changes for other classes. Substantial changes for some tank classes. Developers have time for UI changes (sheesh!), F2P, Battlegrounds, Several updates, GU57 and .... NOTHING!

That was followed in June by the 'infamous interview by Feldon (EQ2Wire) that pretty blatantly and dismissively told us the real problem was our general inability to play the Ranger class.

• Q: I have to ask this because I’ve played a ranger in EQ2 since day one, and I’ve seen a lot of rangers comparing themselves to assassins lately and feeling that they’re coming up short. We heard some great ideas from you and Rothgar during the Sentinel’s Fate beta that would probably help out here. Are these tweaks still on the horizon?

• A: The reason that rangers have not seen tweaks to their class is because according to our investigation and data from other sources (including parses) there are rangers that are able to parse even with assassins. When their abilities are timed correctly, and standing in the correct range, rangers are a mighty force. Obviously gear and buffs play a factor as well. That isn’t to say that there will be no adjustments to rangers or mechanics that work differently for bows in the future.

We have been loud and at times unreasonable. Yet we have supplied an AMAZING amount of hard data, parses and finite descriptions of why there are problems with the ranger class. Noob1974 pointed out the lag in response that the Ranger community has become accustom too over the years and was  basically shut down with a trust me or not response. Hey guess where that is at?

I made mention of what I thought of the UI changes (as requested) and its negative effect and I got a bit of a terse reply from the moderator;

Striikor@Nektulos wrote:

Amnerys wrote:

Striikor@Nektulos wrote:

Does anyone really care about UI changes? I think the majority of your customers would appreciate some priority changes. How long and how loud can we be? Yet you insist on wasting resources regarding UI?

How about making  "And last, (but certainly not least), we intend to release a design overview for what the classes should be, how they should work together…and then execute on that plan." a priority instead?

We would all prefer to know what it is we are supposed to be playing rather have SOE spending all this time developing UI changes we can get better and get elsewhere.

Rothgar has no say over design inititives, so posting anything about it in this thread is not the proper place to post it.

He has specifically asked for "UI Feedback" here, meaning tell us about any bugs you find, any changes that seriously negatively affect your playstyle, things that you think will be less intuitive for new players and for veterans alike, and hey, maybe you could even throw in a comment or two about things you like. 

This IS my opinion on the UI changes, it is my feedback on UI changes as , I thought you requested.

I understand that it is taking limited resources to develop these changes. My feedback is they they are much less desirable to prospective and current customers (errr users) than other things those limited resources could be working on. I would think that Rothgar's feedback to those who do make the decisions on resources regarding customers opinion on the UI effort is appropriate content.

If you are just looking for feedback as to the use rather than the value. Then yes I admit my response is not helpful.

The highlighted is a quote from http://stationblog.wordpress.com/20...date-july-2010/ blog by – Dave (Smokejumper) Georgeson (humorous side note there is ad dregarding EQ2 plat for sale at the bottom of his blog )

It is interesting to me that Rothgar/Xelgad now have no say over design initiatives. Was he talking out of turn on 02/06/2010.

Who should we be trying to talk to? Who are we waiting for a response from?

We are again suffering from the /ignore_ranger switch.

I dug up the above reference. I know there are several others. Some of them in the BETA boards but others in the general posting areas. I would like to see all of them in one place. So I started this, help me finish it.

[Venez]

Face the facts, Rangers have been on the short end of the stick for years. You have a  Dev that came out and stated they are not fixing rangers since they have info other than what we have supplied them with that says we are equal with other T1 classes.So Yes this is a blatent lie and every Raid Ranger that is left knows this is not true.  They have decided to ignore the 1000+ posts that were in beta and all the info since beta.

They have moved on to there F2P strong arm tactics and do not have the time, resources and plain just do not care for the minority % of Rangers that raid. Even if every raiding ranger where to cancel they wouldnt even notice the loss since F2P casuel players will think Rangers are awsome and cool with all the new "play items" that F2P is going to offer them.

You have 3 choices

1.Betray

2.Quit

3. Play as is, knowing you getting the shaft.

My suggestion is if you dont want to cancel,and you want to raid. Roll a new toon and keep your Ranger as a alt so you can have fun on him when you are bored, because thats all he is good for.

[Ballzz]

Sad to say but I think Venez is right. You are making a valiant effort but I think it's a lost cause at this point. Whether it was intentional or not Xelgad has revealed SoE's hand with regard to Rangers and it's clear they have no intent to pursue any Ranger fixes. Even if they had the intent to make changes/fixes we could expect a slow, painful, drawn out process with questionable results but with Xelgad's clear statement it's a forgone conclusion the fight is all but lost IMO. Only thing left to do is quit, betray, switch classes entirely or live with a broken Ranger that is "working as intended".

Personally, I'll prolly live with it a while longer since I'm in a more casual type raid guild so I can be *somewhat* more competitive on the parse but quitting is looking more and more attractive as time goes on..especially with this new F2P developement which is annoying and irritating at best.

[Boise]

The best and easy way to figured this out is to ask them point blank at Fan Fare. Most of the Devs will be there and you can ask them directly.

Otherwise, betray and enjoy the fruits of your labor by parsing big numbers. Once fixes are in (if possible), then betray back. Rangers are going neutral and you won't have to swap cities.

[TheSpin]

This might sound like a bad answer, but it's an honest one.

I assume they plan on eventually selling individual classes on the extended servers. Therefore (if the massive amount of work they've done to prepare for the launch of the extended servers is any indication) they will adjust the balance of the class to have a distinct appeal to a certain playerbase.

Whether that means dps increase or recieving attention in some other aspect of the class is speculation.

[Striikor]

Well I figured it was worth one last shot When GU57 comes out and there are no Ranger issues addressed I am working hard to get a Mystic raid ready.

I have a T8 Assassin he hit level 80 last August. I could see the writing on the wall and wanted to give assassin a shot. I have run higher level instances and gone on raids with him. He is T3 equippend and what is not mastered is Adept III. He parses better than my Ranger did for the same level and equippage.

I did not/do not like the way and assassin plays. Assassin is a totally different, much more different than I expected. The play style required for an Assassin is just not nearly as engaging or as fun as a Ranger for me. I find the Ranger play and timing to be much more involved, even long fights can be entertaining. The Assassin is MUCH more CA Oriented and to me plays more like an FPS than an RPG.  

The Mystic actually has more similarity in play style in the respect of timing and feel for me. So, when they fail at GU57 I hope to have my Mystic ready. And Striikor a Ranger and my main since 01/2005 will RIP.

TBH I do not know how much longer I will retain interest in EQ2. It seems to me that class differentiation is degrading and roles are being lost. A big drawn for me was what used to be a distinct 'flavor' in each and every sub-class.  Not only were they all played slightly different and had different roles, you could even look at a toon in-game and pretty well guess their class. Not any more. Now you have to inspect a toon to find out what they are. Even good versus evil is being degraded or at least minimized.

It seems that there will be very little difference. You will be able to make calls for classes and in some cases Arche-types for groups and raids and get the same benefits and performance. EQ2 is losing its unique flavor. I think it is also losing its most loyal fans. With the current trend EQ2 may become more FPS than RPG and I have no interest in that what so ever.

[Ballzz]

Striikor@Nektulos wrote:

TBH I do not know how much longer I will retain interest in EQ2. It seems to me that class differentiation is degrading and roles are being lost. A big drawn for me was what used to be a distinct 'flavor' in each and every sub-class.  Not only were they all played slightly different and had different roles, you could even look at a toon in-game and pretty well guess their class. Not any more. Now you have to inspect a toon to find out what they are. Even good versus evil is being degraded or at least minimized.

That's not entirely true. There is definitely a "distinct" flavor between Assassin and Ranger. Assassin plays like a T1 DPS and Ranger doesn't. I'm sure that was all by design in case people wanted to roleplay a class that was undesirable by raid guilds. :p

In all seriousness I really don't get why they are being so stubborn on this issue. They know there are a lot of unhappy Rangers that have been complaining for a long time and provided countless data to support the complaints. They wouldn't even have to make Rangers exactly equal but just throw us a [Removed for Content] bone or two to close the gap somewhat and I bet most of the Ranger community would be pretty happy. IMO, if they would do a few SIMPLE things it would go a long way to make Rangers viable once again.

-add a more useful buff to our Focus Aim like Ability Reuse. This is a very hard stat to find and for some odd reason ability reuse works for spells but spell reuse doesn't work for CAs. Why wasn't this properly combined in the stat conversion? In any event, since Ranger CA reuse time is too long and it's doubtful many (if any) Rangers are on any Jcap rotations this would not only be a desirable group buff but badly needed for Rangers specifically.

-give Rangers access to flurry. I don't think Ranger AA dmg in comparison to Assassins AA dmg is a valid arguement anymore so there is no reason not to add this. I don't think AA AE ability is needed but flurry would be appropriate and good.

-reduce reuse time of CAs a bit (maybe not if first point was implemented but definitely if it wasn't)

-increase casting speed a bit

-give us a [Removed for Content] ranged/melee AA toggle for christ's sake. This is just dumb that melee CAs cause you to switch to melee AA which contributes to mistimed ranged AA and CA rotations

-allow ranged AA to proc melee weapon effects

-increase Sniper Shot dmg somewhat. There is no valid reason why Assassinate should do almost double the dmg of Sniper Shot.

None of those things is game breaking in the least and I doubt very seriously any of that would push Rangers past ANY other T1 DPS but it would likely close the gap somewhat and fix some of the annoying aspects of playing a Ranger which would go a long way to show that SoE is at least doing *something*.

I know nothing like this will happen though..oh well. Maybe FFXIV won't suck.

[Neiloch]

Archers in FF14 already dominate EQ2 in terms of mechanics. Bows aren't subjected to different combat buffs and stats except for needing ammo. They have the most range but can shoot point blank as well, and I think at like rank 8 they have a AE shot, a column shot, damage buff, regular shot and 2 roots (both bow shots). Friend of mine got in for having XP rig still when he applied for beta apparently, only big difference in our apps.

On top of which after release they will release ANOTHER ranged class that isn't a mage, a musketeer who uses guns. Gonna be fun switching between a musket that works like a sawed off combat shot gun and a composite bow when not fighting in the field and being able to mix the skills of both of them.

I really hope news of something good for rangers comes out of fan faire. It's really discouraging when raiders who have never even played a ranger and only observed know full well they are lacking as a class yet a key developer thinks they're fine and 'a mighty force'

[Ballzz]

My biggest issue with FFXIV at this point is that Hello Kitty race the lolzafail. [Removed for Content] is that?

At least Gnomes are creepy in an intended way but I dunno what to think about those weird pseudo baby anime models.

[Neiloch]

Not a fan of the cats and taru's either, so I just roll the big galka dudes or a human. At least they're not fairies heh. The taru's offer a way to quickly determine the personality someone has though. More often than not they are cutsie screwing around/RP casual or sick in the head and hilarious lol.

[Ademelo]

Have been wishing to get into, but haven't been accepted into the beta for FFXIV. I've already cancelled my account here as I just don't see SoE ever doing the right thing for the community, ranger or otherwise.