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My only negative thoughts so far
Theo
Member Posts: 242
The AI is disappointing, and hasn't really changed since the original EQ. I'd like it if there appeared to be some semblance of appropriate behavior from mobs, like skittish deer who hide in the trees and run when approached instead of sitting around in the open waiting to be slaughtered for example.
Mobs still carry inappropriate loot. No wonder that moat rat was so hard to kill, he was wearing iron brigandine leggings! Why can I loot a femur from a defeated humanoid, but I can't loot the armor he was wearing or the sword he was slicing me up with?
Things like that take away from the immersiveness of the game world, and beyond that I just would have expected them to have evolved by this point. Otherwise I'm having a blast with the game, and I really love the quests. They provide more direction than I had in the old EQ. I feel more like I'm playing a single player RPG that happens to be populated with a lot of other players. I think I'll enjoy playing this for awhile.
Comments
Hehe, I wish we could loot the armor and weapons from the humanoids! some of that stuff looks cool. As, for the rat having armor on it................/shrugs. I am also having fun in this game..............well besides getting absolutely slaughtered in Blackborough (sp?) last night. Hehe I had spirit shards all over the place
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Fuego
Level 21 Gnomish Mage
Casador
Level 19 Night Elf Hunter
Silvermoon server
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The only things I've run into were pretty small (but annoying):
FindNPC with the wisps were a great feature - but too many guards are ignorant of the NPCs I need. The head Mage trainer is a good example: every mage in the game will be asking where he is - and none of the guards know.
Similarly - clicking on map icons gives me the text "a glowing wisp shows you the path" or some such - but it's not there.
But, overall they are minor.
A much bigger problem, IMO, is pitifully limited inventory and bank space. Add that to the 4 char account limit - and you have to wonder if they are trying to host this on a 50gig HD from Frys.
Shame - because I am impressed with the rest so far.
I haven't really encountered any significant bugs so far. As a scout I've noticed my tracking window wouldn't appear when I'd use the ability for awhile, but it corrected when I zoned. I've noticed the lack of a glowing trail when selecting waypoints on the map as well, but that's only a minor annoyance since I keep the map transparent when I'm trying to find my way somewhere. I haven't run across any broken content so far.
For me, it's that AI that's the biggest disappointment. Bugs can and, in most cases, will be fixed. AI design isn't likely to change dramatically. Mobs will still mill about aimlessly or stand in purposeless groups waiting for your party to attack them. Mobs don't see you from a distance and attempt to stalk you unseen, they don't avoid you if they're weaker than you are, birds simply hover in midair...they just don't feel "alive" at all. With all the other improvements to the gameplay and graphics over the aging EQ, I would have expected some significant changes in the behavior of the mobs.
And rats dropping trapped chests full of iron pants is just ridiculous.
Wow you really want some major AI work done? So then instead of the 1Gig of Ram you need to play you need like what 2 Gigs of ram? AI takes alot more memory space up than anyone things, the reason why the lower end mobs like deer, bugs, and even gnolls are so stupid in games is for a simple reason, the bigger mobs are NOT so stupid. HOw do I know this? Well My friends and I decided to play in the Shattered Vale and well the MOB we triggered by kiling off the oracles was....Lets just say the big beefy creature came thundering down over a cliff at us, the Cleric and Druid we had, didn't even get a spell off they were just going OMFG, It specifically chose them and ignored everyone till they were dead. It then took out the rest of us and chased the few that lived away. The mobs get more intelligence the higher lvl you get.
Inappropriate loot, um..well..alot of creatures in alot of games have inappropriate loot. I'd rather have the inappropriate loot on the rats so i can make some cash than be broke the whole game. Plus its still pretty rare to get those loots off them anyway or atleast so I found since I rarely bother with rats.
Have fun on the quests hehehe some of them are mega doozies and ask you do crazy things, its green highlighted but a group mob LOL
I love the quests too awsome aye?
Please Refer to Doom Cat with all conspiracies & evil corporation complaints. He'll give you the simple explination of..WE"RE ALL DOOMED!
If Everquest II used the AI that Saga of Ryzom has for it's mobs and it's loot system, it would be a definite improvement. However, I am not complaining at all. I think the system in EQ2 works just fine and I am not taken out of the immersiveness of the game because of inappropriate loot and stupid monsters.
I would like to see certain "more intelligent" mobs use better AI. But the wild life such as deer should remain the same. It would be more realistic and believalbe if they avoided you and hid in the forest, but then the fun gameplay might turn into a tedious game of hide and seek just to kill an easy mob.
Some simple adjustments would be good like having curious creatures come up to you and "sniff you out" or scared creatures initially run away but then stay still long enough so that it's not a pain in the ass to kill them.
Appropriate loot would be great, but to be honest, it would also be a limiting factor on the amount of fun you would have. Imagine being a noob and wishing you could find some armor or a decent weapon. You would have to wait a while before you could start hunting Gnolls or Orcs that may drop this stuff, where in the game as it is, newbies can earn nice equipment right away by killing the newbie creatures, no matter what they are.
I think it is true that the more you go up in level, the more intelligent the creatures and monsters become, but not to an extent that will have players saying OMFG, this thing is really clever! I don't think we'll ever really see a clever mob in Everquest II, but that is just fine, it will still be a load of fun anyway, because it will still offer a nice challenge to defeat the monster encounters.
Sometimes game mechanics must take priority over realism and immersiveness. I say this and I am a hardcore roleplayer who would like to see every aspect of the game more believable and immersive. I would also rather have fun playing a game that works instead of having something less fun be more immersive. I think EQ2 is somewhere right in the middle.
About the bugs, I get the tracking bug once in a while and the waypoint bug. Otherwise, I can't seem to find anything that is really noticable.
My biggest wish for the game is that they add more emotes, moods, and animations. SWG had tons of moods and emotes so I know it could be done with EQ2. Also, there were a lot of character animations in SWG, such as characters sitting in chairs and stuff like that. This kind of thing is a little harder for the devs to implement, especially with the large difference in size of the character models, but it could be done.
If it's a question of priorities, I'd choose mob intelligence over graphics, though ideally the devs would balance each. Once the novelty of the graphics wears off and you've started seeing the same areas repeatedly, the visual appeal will begin to lose its luster, or at least cease to amaze. By the same token, I know AI can only go so far and it won't take long to recognize patterns in the mobs' behaviors.
I think I've just decided all MMOs are just repackaged versions of one another. EQ2's got a lot going for it, but I'm still waiting for something truly amazing. I love the graphics, I'm mildly impressed with the combat system, not crazy about the skill advancement but I like the character advancement overall, and I do love the quests so far. I'm not really sure WHAT I want mobs to do differently, but I want them to appear to have a purpose. Maybe they can hunt or fight each other, or come together for raids on NPCs if too many spawn in an area without being killed or...I dunno...SOMEthing. I know there are problems with each of the suggestions I've made, but I'm just brainstorming, not necessarily proposing workable solutions. I just want a sense of unpredictability. Maybe more mobs that you can talk your way out of combat with. Dunno.
As far as the loot, taking away the inappropriate loot would just require a rebalancing of the economy. If the rats only give you meat for example, you just make that economically viable. Rat meat can be worth coin for use in recipes or quests to kill rats can reward well with coin or equipment...that sort of thing. I mean, you can still give the party a pair of iron pants for killing rats without dressing the rat IN the iron pants, right? I know, not a big deal to some. Or to most I suppose. Just one of those pet peeves of mine.
Anyway, some people like the system, and that's cool. No offense to you guys. It's not that it's bad...I mean it's carried EQ for 5+ years after all, and I can't say I'm not enjoying the game immensely. I was just hoping for more this time around, and I'm a little disappointed to find that for all the bells and whistles, the stuff I've really been waiting for a game to do right still isn't there.
the bugs/broken content i saw in the week i played before deleting it were
warriors not having access to level 3 skills
Sometimes when buying stacks of items it'll charge you the full price but only give you 1 item
Armor skills not increasing
Crafters getting missions they can't do at their level (a problm sice you can only have 1 at a time)
For that matter just crafting would take forever to list all the bugs
Bugs where certain windows won't close
got stuck inside a rock
Certain NPC's that for some reason just don't show up on track.
It was the the complete botch of the crafting, however that caused me to turn off my comp. cancel my account, uninstall it and place an add on ebay to sell the game. It's at that point that I realized that EQ2 was just going to be another bug infested, nerph beaten pile of crap that SOE was going to ignore as they took my money.
I miss DAoC
the bugs I listed? and, those were the bugs I saw in a week with outout even looking, so I would imaginine it was a very small percentage. I had beta tested WOW for a little over a week and I thought it was a very clean game. Although, I didn't like it for completly different reasons. EQ2 had the potential to of been a btter game, but the game is very broaken and I don't really have any faith in SOE to fix it given their track record with everyothe game except for EQ (which they didn't make).
I miss DAoC