12 spell gems do not allow me to have all I really need or would like to have mem'd as a Magician. I have to choose to give something up for another area, be it pet survivability or mana regen. I cannot have both 100% of the time without giving up DPS spells. Having every spell available at a whim would remove the difference between prepared and unprepared players and trivialize encounters. I like that EQ makes players actually think ahead or adjust on the fly, and believe that removing that would only make the poor player epidemic even worse.
I played EQ2 for the past 4 years. It didn't feel any less strategic, especially when you got to raids, which are generally scripted events with lots of different things going on. Even group dungeons involve some sort of strategy for getting things dead. You think it might be easy to just mash everything and be done with it, but that's not the case. The mechanics are different over there. You can't just get buffed up from sitting in a lobby and go kill stuff. You need to be in the presence of other classes to receive your buffs and they will drop once you get out of range. You don't even get to sit around in spots and wait for things to come to you. You're just active all the time. One big difference there is you can't even macro in the same way you can here, so forget trying to bot and do all this stuff where you tab over and hit one button to do 5 things for you. That's probably the most amusing part of all this. There's all this talk of strategy in this game, but one person can run a whole group to get things dead. If someone hasn't even seen what it's like over there, they have no business trying to say it's easy mode or whatever.
Well, I really don't think it's going to happen but if they ever put something like this on the test server I would copy my enchanter over to see how it played. It would be a pretty big step and once they implemented on live servers and players got used to them they probably could not take it back without leaving many people dissatisfied. The poor players that I have run across mostly suffer from a lack of patience. Old school players are more apt to play a patient game because the game used to be much slower. They take time to buff. They are careful about pulls and where they need to be not to agro unwanted mobs. They have more understanding of what each class can and can not do. When i played this game back in 99-2004 I almost never soloed so I had lots of teamwork experience. Most people did. There would be less poor players in the group game if grouping was normal for them. Anyways, most people are not going to devote themselves to the game like a religious fanatic so they probably don't spend hours a day consuming information about eq. I'm not nearly at the mercy of poor players as an enchanter, that say, a warrior is. I can cope with some poor play because that's just part of my job. One thing I've noticed is that I have not seen anyone who uses hotkeyed messages to let the group know what they are doing. Tanks used to usually announce in /gsay what they were attacking and to assist them. People knew about /assist. Chanters used to announce what was mezzed etc. The extended target window helps a lot with that but many people don't seem to know how to set group roles (puller, main assist, main tank) and how to use they extended target window very well. The game is really poorly documented. If i were a new player and didn't even know what a "main assist" was, I would be very lost. The game has a pretty steep learning curve and the tutorial helps only a smidgen. There are plenty of players out there who are past the mid levels and don't know yet that you can right click an empty spell gem for a sorted spell menu or that spell sets can be saved by right clicking the tiny spell book. Info like that isn't listed anywhere. I would associate poor play with these sorts of things rather than having too many spells to understand.
The learning curve can be a problem, but it's just one of the problems. Another big one is the interface. I've been playing since 2001. I tried a number of other games and they all generally had better controls. This game still has the same old awkward and clumsy interface. The last time I gave up on this game was when I was big into EQ2. I tried playing both, but I couldn't change back and forth. It was like driving a modern car and switching over to this old clunker with a stick shift and wonky wheels. New folks that come here, whether they're brand new to MMOs or come from whatever game, will likely have trouble adjusting to the controls. They need fixing.
many prefer manual transmissions and old cars were more sturdy, like eq heh. i personally hate the ui on other games, eq's is far far more customizable other than what button goes in what button..cmon. so so so many games ive found you're stuck with this window here that window there cant enlarge or change colors cant move blah blah and only some thigns can be keybound as you like not all. how is that bette, bc its more cartoony? bleh
If I can still multibind (NOT macro) multiple spells to 1 key, and they cast in the order of precedence I set them, then I'm all for it. Not having to swap spells to mem aura, buffs, pet heals, summon pet weapons, mask, armor, jewelry, nuke clickies, modrod, etc would be a nice convenience. Especially because of the LONG recast/cooldown spells. Twincast, Gather Magnitude, and Thaumatize pet have ridiculously long recasts, and require holding a spell gem slot, preventing a lot of utility/summon spells from being mem'd. If it would do away with multibinding though... I vote a strong NO THANKS.
There is a reason why there is a spell bar. It's because your character has to memorize a complex bit of arcane magic. So rationally, and reasonably there is a limit to our mental powers since our characters are mere mortals. Spells consume mana, and managing your mana is a discipline. It's the rule set for this world. If you want to be able to cast from the spell book, what should be the rule set for that and what would be the consequence? Being able to repeatedly cast spells from the book has to have some drawbacks. Maybe it completely consumes the spell entry and wipes all knowledge of it from your book and your mind such that you have to rescribe it. Or maybe the spell fades temporarily and is useless until you have time, out of combat of course, to rest and allow your book to restore the spell. This is not just a mechanical game, live in the world and come up with logic which fits, and not what is based about your side of the screen.
How do you explain spells that have moved over to AA and all the new abilities that have come up over the years? You can come up with all the reasons you want and refer back to "The Vision". The fact remains the game is showing its age.
Yes, because there is so much logic behind the ability to carry 10 backpacks while in combat and switch out all your armor for different items..... You can't really use those types of examples for reasons for limitations in this game.
If you can't accomplish all that needs to be done in any encounter with 12 spell slots, even if that means having to switch out spells on the run, then the best that can be said for you is that you suck at this game. Instead of changing the rules please for your own sake, as well as mine, get better at the game. Quit asking for a rule change. I can do everything this menial game asks with 12 spell slots. Just because you can't doesn't mean the game is too hard, it means you suck. Chess is not checkers for a reason! Think about that.
Voodoman you ignored the chess checkers analogy. You can change the rules of chess and make it checkers but then it wouldn't be chess anymore. Why not 10,000 spell slots? Why not 1 spell slot? 8 is actually good enough for any encounter. If you cannot handle an encounter with 12 spell slots the game is not the problem, the player is.
what game is "that" game? lol cause i doubt any of hte games i was referring to are the one you're talkign about, bc i dont play that and only ever did for 20minutes once dont even remember the ui
I am all for this, but if, and ONLY IF.... Every single casting mob is balanced against this, expanding each and every casting mob's spell pool with spells for that specific level or a bit higher. The increase must be in proportion to the increased spell casting pool we receive (ie, if we are allowed an increase from 8 to 80 which is an increase of 1000%, each and every casting mob's spell casting pool is also increased by 1000%. Thus if a mob has 4 spells it can cast, it will now have 40, all combat of course). Non-casting mobs should have other innate abilities increased in order to balance against the unlimited increase as well. We oft clammer for a more balanced game, and part of that balance is us against the mobs, is it not? If this requirement doesn't fit into your idea of how beneficial your request is, then perhaps you aren't asking for something that is well overdue. Perhaps you're asking for yet another faceroll instead...hmmmm?
You think mobs have spell bars??? Mobs cast anything they want, a lot of spells we can never have, and multi-class. The game is a whole series of balancing acts. The only balance which matters is the last expansion, though. That's why there is defiant gear and the tank merc is such a powerful monster up to level 65.
When we asked for more than 8 spell gems, some people got all huffy about it, too. Oh well. Change happens. When I asked for them to stop decaying old corpses, some people got upset. The devs put in ShadowRest, which is a way better scheme than what I thought they would ever do. I like ShadowRest. I like things to change up, and sometimes I even like the changes. I still am not comfortable with this darn fast regen thing, though.
