XELGAD: Simple YES/NO Questions for you.

[Nocks]

Hello Xelgad. I have a list of simple yes and no questions for you. I tried to keep them short and to the point so as to minimize the amount of time you have to spend reading them. In an interview you recently had you stated that you read these forums daily. I sincerely hope you take 5 minutes of your time to answer these YES/NO questions. I'm only asking for a YES or a NO answer to each of these... but if you wish give more that would be greatly appreciated. I thank you in advance for your response.

1) Will rangers ever be given ranged Flurry autoattack?

2) Will rangers ever be given ranged AE autoattack?

3) Will the reuse time of our CA's be reduced?

4) Will our casting time be reduced?

5) Will we ever see a change to the way our autoattacks switch between ranged and melee?

 5a) Would you entertain the idea of giving us the option to select ranged AA and have it remain on all the time even if we are meleeing?  5b) Would you entertain the idea of giving us some sort of automatic toggle based on our distance from the mob?

6) My first post on these forums listed the top 10 Highest Melee Hits from the EQ Leaderboards for both rangers and assassins. I asked you why there was roughly a 30% difference in damage output between the top ten of both classes. You never responded. So now my question is "do you feel that this disparity between rangers and assassins is an issue that needs to be looked into"?

7) In another forum you asked for high end raid guilds to post parses with group makeups for Rathgar (sp?). Did you see anything in that data that would lead you to believe that rangers need their damage output increased?

 7a) Do you feel that the number of rangers in relationship to other T1 dps classes represented in that data is balanced?

Do you feel that rangers bring the least utility to a raid?

 8a) Do you feel that our current utility is adequate?

9) If you are planning to make adjustments to our class and they relate to any of the questions here can we expect to see them in the next 6 months?  9a) If you are planning to make ANY adjustments to our class can we expect to see them in the next 6 months?

[Neiloch]

This is actually a pretty sweet post heh. Would be awesome to see some yes/no answers to less than half of them. Would be ideal to have answers to all of them obviously.

Thing is if they do get an influx of new players from EQ2X and a fair amount play rangers, roughly same amont of other 'premium' classes, only going to see an increase to a lot of these basic complaints. Especially with the auto attack toggle.

[Chanson]

nocks wrote:

6) My first post on these forums listed the top 10 Highest Melee Hits from the EQ Leaderboards for both rangers and assassins. I asked you why there was roughly a 30% difference in damage output between the top ten of both classes. You never responded. So now my question is "do you feel that this disparity between rangers and assassins is an issue that needs to be looked into"?

I read your post and I think you are missing the big picture. The problem isn't that they hit harder than we do, it's that they hit harder than we do AND they do it more often. You are only showing the 30% disparity on the single hit, and completely neglecting the fact that they will likely get another one of those hits in well before our reuse timer is up for our big hit to be used again. If they can do those big hits twice for every one time we can use ours, the disparity is much larger than just 30%.

[Neiloch]

Big hits isn't the problem, its DPS. I would gladly keep our smaller hits as long as we got to do them more often and our overall DPS is upped. highest hit charts is just a 'neat' thing and such a small, incomplete idea of the problem I honestly don't think its worth mentioning really. Monks and Bruisers can hit crazy high melee hits yet their DPS isn't one of the best around, for example.

[Striikor]

Thanks for the effort Nocks, but we all know what the answers are. Here ya go to save the eventual indeterminate wait on any substantive response from Xelgad .... or anyone at SOE I will provide them for you.

 nocks wrote:

Hello Xelgad. I have a list of simple yes and no questions for you. I tried to keep them short and to the point so as to minimize the amount of time you have to spend reading them. In an interview you recently had you stated that you read these forums daily. I sincerely hope you take 5 minutes of your time to answer these YES/NO questions. I'm only asking for a YES or a NO answer to each of these... but if you wish give more that would be greatly appreciated. I thank you in advance for your response.

1) Will rangers ever be given ranged Flurry autoattack? No, we don't want to overpower Rangers. Just learn to play your Ranger with correct distances and timing

2) Will rangers ever be given ranged AE autoattack? Please refer to the answer above.

3) Will the reuse time of our CA's be reduced? Please refer to the answer above.

4) Will our casting time be reduced? Please refer to the answer above.

5) Will we ever see a change to the way our autoattacks switch between ranged and melee? Whoops... Sorry I thought we did that. We will add it in the next Ranger update ... please see below.

 5a) Would you entertain the idea of giving us the option to select ranged AA and have it remain on all the time even if we are meleeing? Please refer to the answer above the one above.  5b) Would you entertain the idea of giving us some sort of automatic toggle based on our distance from the mob?  Please refer to the answer above.

6) My first post on these forums listed the top 10 Highest Melee Hits from the EQ Leaderboards for both rangers and assassins. I asked you why there was roughly a 30% difference in damage output between the top ten of both classes. You never responded. So now my question is "do you feel that this disparity between rangers and assassins is an issue that needs to be looked into"? No, our testing and data research show that Rangers are a mighty force!

7) In another forum you asked for high end raid guilds to post parses with group makeups for Rathgar (sp?). Did you see anything in that data that would lead you to believe that rangers need their damage output increased? No in fact one posting had a Ranger topping the parse which proves that "Rangers are a Mighty Force!"

 7a) Do you feel that the number of rangers in relationship to other T1 dps classes represented in that data is balanced? ABSOLUTELY, in fact the level 90 predators are about even. (AhhhHmmm I will not answer if the play times regarding grouping and raiding are commensurate)

Do you feel that rangers bring the least utility to a raid? CERTAINLY, they provide the Maximum Ranged DPS ... TADAAA!

 8a) Do you feel that our current utility is adequate? Please see above answer

9) If you are planning to make adjustments to our class and they relate to any of the questions here can we expect to see them in the next 6 months? le="color: #ff0000;">Asked and answered, we at SOE are happy to been of service and greatly appreciate your patronage!  9a) If you are planning to make ANY adjustments to our class can we expect to see them in the next 6 months? Of course, in fact you can review all the changes by logging in today! Now how is that for service!

edit: forgot to format one answer correctly /sheepish grin

[Nocks]

Striikor

That was pretty funny... I understand your frustration. I've only been dealing with this issue for about a year or so now. Many of you have dealt with it for what... 4-5 years or more??? My hat's off to you guys for sticking it out.

Neiloch/Chanson

I understand what you're saying and I know it's not the greatest data to reference. I have a couple of reasons for citing that data. It's readily available to all of us and, as far as I know, is accurate. We have a dev who thinks we can "parse even with assassins if we do xyz just right". That data in a very small way says that this may not be the case. I look at that data and see it as a "symptom" of the larger problem with our class. I'm hoping that Xelgad will take the initiative to look into this and in doing so find out what we've known all along. That was my only reason for posting it. Who knows maybe he wasn't aware of it.

Thanks for the comments and the laugh. Now we will wait and see if Xelgad answers the mail. Personally I think he will. I haven't become quite as jaded as some of you... yet  

[Gaige]

Oynx posted a couple Rathgar parses which had a ranger topping them.

[Striikor]

Certainly possible without an equal sorcerer or Assassin in the Raid, if the ranger gets a good group. But usually it is going to be the Swashy in the MT group is those three are missing. 

[Neiloch]

Also have raid parses posted with rangers doing more than that and getting beat. Anyway if he used the rare occurrence of a ranger winning a parse out of several from the same encounter to justify saying rangers are doing fine, there is no talking to him with logic to begin with.

See rangers can win 1 out of 10 parses when just looking at this single fight, rangers are OP'd I tell ya!

Hey, if you want me to throw a crap raid together and win the parse, I will. I got spare time. But for now, for your customer's sake, for your companies sake, ya might wanna think about implementing some quality ideas from the players.

(Tommy Boy is awesome heh)

[Ademelo]

The problem is, and this isn't just rangers, is that SoE only answers questions when asked by other websites.

I would have liked to see a "Open Discussion" about once or twice a month on a Voice Chat channel by invite. That way the Devs could invite select, and different users, each time to get their thoughts on stuff in an open forum that is actually open to discussion.

These forums, though great to pass on information, completely fail to have a discussion since we get NO FEEDBACK from the devs. Feedback only works when it's a TWO WAY COMMUNICATION!

[Neiloch]

We already have an open forum here they could easily be answering questions in. We shouldn't need to set up some elaborate system to get them to answer some quick questions. I don't post here just to banter with other users, that's what the 'other' forum is for. I post here so, hopefully, people at SoE will see it and acknowledge it. But like you said they only seem to answer fan site questions directly these days.

I've done it for other games in beta/development, if you find fan sites that usually get to ask questions frequently. You have a good chance of getting at least one of your concerns addressed one way or another by making a stink on their forums/comments. They will ask user questions then once people notice things on forums and comments are being asked they will draw more hits and users, which is why they like using member questions.

Another tip is to get other classes in on it. So instead of just asking about ranger problems throw in some other classes with similar problems like brawlers and guardians. Such as raid desirability and main role/utility imbalances. that way people who play those other classes will dog pile on it too. Then again the questions rangers currently want answered are really specific.

So basically fan sites will ask questions about things their users talk about a lot. I've just never really tried it with EQ2 because official forums and the 'other' forums are the ones that see most traffic. Fan site questions aren't asked regularly once the game is out for a while opposed to development, beta, and close to release.

[Nocks]

Well a friend in guild just linked a Q&A about us getting ranged flurry and the answer was YES... woot... one down more to go.

[Venez]

nocks wrote:

Well a friend in guild just linked a Q&A about us getting ranged flurry and the answer was YES... woot... one down more to go.

Sure, on F2P for $16.99 in 2012 or as soon as they can hire another Dev to look into it, since it was already posted its impossible to code.