Mills Lifestream's Suggestions on General changes
that should be made to EverQuest, Part Two.
I’d like to first thank everyone who read and complimented my first draft of this editorial. It meant a lot to me. I’d also like to thank AllaKhazam for being the only site that actually posted my editorial. I hope I’m not totally off base with these suggestions, but from player response, I seem to have my supporters. However, these are still just my ideas. I’m only human.
( Or High Elf, however you choose to look at it ) ( Chicks DIG the pointy ears )
Lets get started, shall we? *Deep Breath*
Many hard aches have arisen from people looting NO DROP items they can’t even use on accident. If the item is NO DROP, and the person looting can’t use the item, please don’t let them loot it. If coding this in affects too many aspects of the game, perhaps at least highlighting NO DROP items in RED.
Party buff toggle - I don’t know about shamans, the king of buffs, but even as a cleric sometimes it does get a little annoying ( that is putting it lightly ) casting the same buff, on every party member repetitively. Would it be THAT hard to make a toggle where the buff takes MANAREQUIRED x PARTYMEMBERS and buffs the entire party?
On the note of buffs, the Endure / Resist spells do not last long enough. They all fade so quickly it gets annoying having to put them back up.
Enemy Poison - This gets me kind of annoyed as a cleric. It seems that most high level poisons are dealt in DOT form, not poison form. What does this do? Well, it makes all of those poison healing spells you gave us useless. Is there really a reason to deal poison in a DOT form instead of making it actual poison that we can cure?
City guards are currently the target for easy money and easy EXP. They still drop steel weapons, which sell for a significant amount more than fine steel weapons. They also seem easy for their level. You might want to stop by Rathe sometime and check this out. Seems the way to a fast 50 is also coated with platinum now.
Ingame message boards are only in Qeynos and Highpass Hold. Please place them in other cities.
Many people lose items to bugs in the game, and aren’t given them back by the GM, usually due to lack of proof. Exactly how are we supposed to get proof? Just so some of you other web sites know, Evil Eye sacks are NOT safe, and anything in your 1st melee slot that does not attack isn’t safe either. We have had many item loses due to Evil Eye Sacks going poof for no good reason.
TRADE SKILL CHANGES
Blacksmithing
- Put banded glove molds on the vendors
- Studs and steel boning should be stackable
- Place weapon molds on vendors
- Mass production of metal bits with higher skill check
- Low Quality pelt + pattern SHOULD equal raw hide. Currently, Low Quality pelts are useless.
- Put Quiver, Whip, and Reinforced belt instructions in tailoring book.
- Fix Studded Tunics and Reinforced Mask.
- Give the skill some sort of purpose
- Chocolate recipes broken. Troll Pies broken. Cakes are not makable, but cake molds exist.
- Put snake eggs on vendors
- Fire beetle eyes stackable
- Give this skill more of a purpose
- Fix Clay Deity. Fix Small Bowl. Fix Sealed Vial.
- Fix typos in pottery book
- small clay blocks SHOULD be stackable
- regular vials should not require a skin
- I feel STRONGLY that the following potions should be makable via Alchemy (FYI – since last patch added the "gate" potion (for a small fortune), I have decided to clue Verant in and add a maximum price for each )
*Cure Disease(5g) *Counteract Disease(5p) *Cure Poison(5g) *Counteract Poison(5p) *SoC(5p) *See invis(1p) *Water breathing(5p)
- Make more information available. Exactly where is a tinkerer suppose to figure out how to tinker?
- Perhaps a tinkered game of Tetris to play while meditating =P
- Make Poison and Apply Poison should be one skill ( Exactly how do you miss applying poison on a dagger anyway? Make applying the poison a low skill check )
- Since ALL poisons have 1 charge anyway, make them stackable.
- For all the work rogues go through, give them 5 - 10 shots of poison for each successful completion. Not 1.
- Make higher level poisoning reagents more available
- Fix the poison / spell interrupt bug.
- Make poison reagents more common
- Make poison reagents STACK ( snake, spider, giant wasp venom sacs )
Magicians - Without a form of evac, magicians are just lower level
wizards at high levels. Pets are usually too unpredictable to be allowed
in higher level dungeons, and usually end up chasing something and
getting the party killed. Even WITH pets, Magicians still need a form of
evac so they have a chance at getting in parties over druids and
wizards.
Oh, not to mention that with a recent dragon patch, pets are suicide against a dragon.
- Summonable Gate Ring - Level 40+ spell. 1 charge gate
- Summonable Earring of Water Breathing - Level 30ish summon.
suit of no drop equipment on the target char in their party.( Bah, this is just extra. I admit it. But it would be nice for corpse recoveries to
have a suit of chain armor and a summoned weapon. Nothing crappier thena naked tank. )
entire dungeon, thus training the party and getting the bard kicked from
the group.
Fix the level 22 song. Put the 39th,
45th, 47th, and 49th song in game.
Give the following spells a ZONE effect, not a radius effect
*Speed song *Water breathing song *Levitate song
Speed song - hell for a bard because of the area effect, Making SoW or Jboots a better option.
Water breathing song - Exactly HOW many people would group up with a bard for water breathing purposes? That’s right, none. Losing your bard means you die, and that makes this song a total waste in water zones since most people want endure breath or a fishbone earring.
Levitate song - Don’t look down. In fact, keep your eye on your bard, because if he walks out of range, you are so ****ed.
Ok, and one last song that needs work. Invis song. Question, HOW are you suppose to keep near your bard with invis song on without see invis? Give see invis to this song please.
Zone specific problems
Paw, Kerra Isle, Kithicor Forrest, and Toxilla Forrest – These zones need something more to attract more of a crowd. Zones are usually near empty if NOT empty. ( Of course you always got people passing THROUGH Kithicor, but hey, don’t get me on technicalities )
Kedge Keep - Perfectly good zone going to waste. Now, I understand you have to upgrade the AI, but placing a few rare spawns, and a few named creatures with items never hurt a zone. I found my trip to Kedge enjoyable, as I believe many others would.
Permafrost - Behind the Ice Giant Diplomat, NOTHING is itemized. It would be nice to see one or two items behind here, or perhaps a rare spawn.
Plane of Fear - Toning up the enemy difficulty - Good. Making it so enemies can see you from out of nowhere, thus you get attacked by too many at once, making the zone near impossible - Bad. Is it THAT hard to let people zone in safely? I mean, this was even an idea Verant was talking about for awhile, but then for some reason decided not to follow up, and instead just raised the monster difficulty. I don't think Verant realizes some of the almost low tactics people have resorted to just to do the Fear plane. ( Not that Verant is any better, making the zone point unsafe for all ). I could be wrong, but there are two current ways people have of "doing" Fear plane. The first way involves waiting on servers to go down, and when they come back up, wait on the spawn. Fear plane starts out empty because of a zone crash bug in the zone. Secondly, a known way of doing Fear plane is to move everyone in your party to a "safe hill" so to speak. Its not a safe zone, its just a hill where the fewest spawns walk by. Both methods are also known to fail at times. To my point - Verant, make it safe to zone in Fear. I seriously doubt you battle tested the zone after you upped it in difficulty. Otherwise, you'd see how much fun it is to zone in.
Now lets talk about dragons. First off, FIX DRAGON FEAR. I have never, in my ENTIRE time in EQ, seen a buggier spell. You CANNOT resist this spell, even when it says you do. Also, it likes to lockup your client so you have to relog (JUST the thing you need to do in a dragon fight). Dragons seem to damage the party plenty without their fear spell. It seems just to ruin the event and make it so strategy isn’t a factor anymore.
Secondly, please BACK OFF the dragons Verant! Level 50s seriously don’t have that much to do. Please remember to make them doable, and playtest them! With a FAIR number of chars. I mean, your servers can’t support THAT many people inside one particular zone at once anyway! Verant always seem to forget to up the amount of loot dropped by the dragons when they up them in difficulty. The dragon still drops 4 items, and splitting them among the slayers is not a pleasant experience.
Dynamic Quests - Near non-existent. I don’t want to HEAR this as a solution, because I rarely ever see a dynamic quest, and the loot from the ones I have seen have been horrible for the level of the mob. To fix this, perhaps you might want to consider a Quest-specific guide class such as the ones found on Ultima Online. And PLEASE make the loot for the quest decent. We enjoy a good role-playing experience and we thank you for that, but don’t blow it at the end by dishing out items that are useless.
Universally needed items
Every player in the game needs some items, and the rare nature of them has caused problems ingame.
Fishbone earring - On approximately a 6 hour spawn ( yes we know the spawn time, and yes, every time it is nearing spawn time, Qeynos Hills fills with people ready to end poor little Hadden’s life ).
Journeyman Boots - Everyone wants a pair, but if you want a pair, you better get in line. Najena is packed with Jboot campers all the time. Period.
Glowing Black Stone – Poor Qeynos Hills newbies. Not only do they have the Fishbone Earring spawn to deal with, but they have to fight with high levels at the decaying ruins because of one item that drops there. Such a shame.
Solutions - Place the items ELSEWHERE. You did it with the Najenas book, why not do it for these items? OR, how about a Quest for these items since they are needed as much as they are? Make the fishbone earring no drop, as it is used as a trade item it seems.
( WOOHOO! You did an alternative Jboot quest! THANKS VERANT )
Make Ghoulsbane NO DROP. There is
a serious camping problem on this item by people using it for twinking
and selling purposes. Make others move out of the way for the REAL paladins.
Faction
Old dueling faction hit still effects many. Some faction we lost is near impossible, if not impossible to regain. Not only that, but many high level quests involve royally ****ing over your faction. Is this our reward for wanting to do something new in the game? Just how many paladins do you actually think won’t want a Soulfire. PLEASE make town factions a little more feasible to gain. Merchant faction especially.
Aviaks and Centaurs need a faction hit to them. Many people kill these creatures for EXP, while the nearby enemies just sit there and watch their own race get slaughtered.
There is a faction bug in the game where once you have taken so many faction hits by a particular faction, you can no longer increase faction in that faction. The place where this is most evident is with the Frogloks in Lower Guk. Dying seems to be a temporary fix for this bug.
Miscellaneous issues
Wrist pouches and Belt packs need to be wearable
If there isn’t a flag to declare FRIENDLY guild wars, with no item loss, make one. Many guilds WANT to have a friendly war with another guilds but don’t want to risk item loss.
Casino games! Card games especially =) Put them in so players can gamble with each other at the fine gambling establishments we have in the game. =P
Shaman slow spells currently are canceled by Enchanters slow spells that are inferior.
Fix the NPC multiple harm touch bug
Place Enchant Metal spells in Erudin so good races have somewhere to get the spells. Place Large sewing kits in Neriak.
Why can’t players write in blank books and scrolls? The items to do so already exist on vendors.
Go LD while trading, and items in the trade window disappear
People who leave the group / go LD while the leader is zoning bug the group
Quivers are currently pointless. Bags are much cheap and hold your arrows. Give them a use - perhaps make them fit on the ammo slot and let the bows use all the ammo inside the quiver.
Let people fish on the boat again
When you drop your money or item onto the bankers name ( The one above your inventory slots ) the item or cash will disappear.
If you go linkdead while holding an item, it may be destroyed when you reconnect.
Why aren’t pit traps detected as traps? I mean, they ARE traps, and Verant uses them much more than any other type of trap in the game. Why can’t rogues DETECT them?
Please put chat in one window and battle stuff in the other.
Wrap the guild names under the names (and/or allow me to turn OFF just the guild names if I want).
When you revive / resuscitate / resurrect a corpse, and the person misses the message or says no, you still miss the EXP from the spell. Please fix this.
Fix the friends and ignore list so you can add more than 20 people. Make the lists player specific, not account specific. Make /ftell work.
Make Inns more of a "Safe" place to be. Put guards around them or something. They shouldn't be totally safe, but it is kind of ridiculous how dangerous they are currently. Also, you might want to make it so people could buy a bind from an Innkeeper for 5p after you made them safe.
To solve the bind problem - perhaps a yes / no box to pop up when binding someone, instead of making bind zones where people can be bound.
Oh, I got a KICK out of this one guys =) This bug is just WRONG. It seems when a female's name is rejected during character creation, their breasts get bigger. ( This is no joke – I was thinking it was when I saw it myself the first time )
Lastly, this isn’t real important as a whole, but my cleric put more than 50 training points into 2 fields of specialization before you guys fixed it. Now neither of those fields will train. Would be nice if I could specialize in Alteration, being a cleric and all.
Mills Lifestream