Since reading threads and people consistently say, "should think about boxing". Well if that is the case then the developers should, "think about boxers". The dev's and the actual game itself does not seem in sync, if they do nothing for boxers and the community is saying "EQ is pretty much a box game on Live". They don't have a grasp of how people play EQ. Some improvements would be, /follow, fix the coding for it so when boxers use /follow its nearly bulletproof rather than, getting stuck from a hard turn in a zone where you go through tunnels and there is a lot of twists and turns with places to get stuck. Even when your CPU limit is 60. /follow, have an option to adjust follow distant, closer to person followed. Farther away from the person followed. Have a SLIDER to adjust the distance for following someone. So, ex. ranger box would be far enough away distance so they can do /autofire. If the future of returners coming back to live is, "should think about boxing". Then maybe the developers should think about improving boxing experience. There's more ideas I have but going to start with a small ask first. Another idea is, cargo mounts. Carries 12 players. Basically 11 people are riding on the person whose has the cargo mount. Have a /ridecargomount on, so when a group or raid member does the cargo mount action, get on it without having to press a button. So no more. Alt tab, follow macro, alt tab follow macro, alt tab follow macro. Instead, cargo mount button. Now everyone is together. Now easily get to where I want. This game needs to think more about boxer friendly content/additions, if continuing forward with EQ its going to be about "should think about boxing" is the way to play on Live. The developers can do all they want to not make it boxer friendly but the past 10 years, failure. It's a boxers game. Just go with the flow, that's how people want to play EQ on Live. This is pretty much one of the few games people box too, so just because its a "boxers game" doesn't mean its a bad thing too.
Extend /melody functionality to the rest of the classes. Reduces RSIs, 3rd party program usage, and let’s people focus on a single character while maintaining box account revenues.
Expand the hotkey functionality, make more lines possible. Add something like /group hotkey 1 that fires everyone in your group's hotkey 1.
I completely concur. They really are out of touch. The solo players are punished by every level is a hell level, items that are extreme rare drops, tradeskill items that aren't always easy to accumulate. It's hard to find a group as a solo player unless you have 4-5 buddies that play every day at the same scheduled time. Even going to find a social guild doesn't always guarantee grouping opportunities. This game should be more like a DND adventure where nameds are always up and/or always drop their full loot table. No more 40-hour camps to get 1 augmentation. On the flip side, this game is easier by a little to the boxers who can create groups on their own and head out to adventure without sitting around for 3+ hours, demoralized. The game really caters to the botters who, as Benito keeps copy/pasting, just play while they're sleeping, doing BBQs, spending time with their family, etc. Who cares if grinding levels takes 60 hours of killing mobs when not at the keyboard putting in the work. No batting an eyelash if there is a need of 8 silks to make a bracer container, and silks drop once every 20 mobs, because botters are killing about 800 of them while downstairs watching cartoons. The folks running this game right now, devs and marketing team included, need to make up their mind on what sort of game they want to have out there. It would be easy to get rid of all automation tools if this game was fun, and possible, to play with a solo character. I'd love to get rid of GINA if the in-game Audio Triggers didn't suck. I'd enjoy getting rid of 3rd party log parsers if the game actually had something built-in. They made combat dummies but then nothing else? It seems like such a terrible effort to follow-through with plans. Jen Chan - Figure it out. Put it on the Road Map. Get back to us.
Ironically, people used to do this exactly this during the Ruins of Kunark era from the hellish levels of 50 to 60 (no software). We already have Achievement XP and Overseer XP to speed up the process. Literally no one complains about Overseer after the first 3 months of the expansion drop because they are leveling their 4th or 5th alts with the current mechanisms.
One of the biggest differences was the lack of gear level limits. Get a shiny new thing, you can wear it right away. Since they are now locking the majority of the gear you get for doing the progression behind having max level there is more of a rush to just get it done. Also, there was software assisting tools available back in kunark. They might not have been as well known and in use by the general population, but they were there. Back to the original thread though ... The ability to make to use /melody on any class would be huge.
It's actually not that difficult to reach max level now. Most players are working on their 4th or 5th alts by now (by Overseer XP alone). Should T2 gear have required 118? Sure. It's probable that the devs are artificially trying to avoid mudflation by setting a max required level. It seems counterintuitive (relying on last expansion gear) but I can see where they are coming from (we've now fully transitioned to a different mudflation pattern).
If they would take the time to develop their own in-house boxing software (or just outright buy the code from some 3rd party developer), they'd save themselves (and customer service) a lot of future headaches.
I like the cargo mount idea, but I think it should be more limited to 6 players since that’s the size of a group. Multiboxing more than a group is unnessary. A cargo mount would help me when I’m dragging around players that I meet in zones like FM to new zones where they can experience more of the game. It would be nice if some of the features of the mayonnaise program were integrated into the in game macros or even an add on system like WOW so that boxing was easier without the programs that people use. I see people in game that claim oh boxing is easy and they don’t use any programs to help them meanwhile their 2 melee characters are circle strafing around a mob in different directions. I’m a proactive player I get groups, but I’m also a knight. I feel the game must be rough some days for people who play low utility classes like a rogue who happen to also not box. As a paladin me plus any player and our two mercs is a good group and I can find plenty to do solo or molo. I do think the better option would be better design choices like a hub zone every expansion with easy solo tasks that are repeatable and group instances that are low hanging fruit where the “less good” groups can do and are repeatable like 2 or more instances with an hour lockout so you have to rotate them at least that can be done with any 2 players and 2 mercs. Maybe just a “easy” mode of the missions as a selector kinda kill a hard mode choice but a easy mode instead. Aim for these easy instances to take “bad” players with 2 mercs and 2 players 30 to 45 minutes and give a small amount of currency for them. The lockouts need to be low to stop the stuff that happens to me, I go do a mission then I see randoms in general later looking for help with that mission and I can’t help them because of a dumb lockout, i don’t need the extra currency or a chance at the chest I just want to make more fiends in game and want to help people. Give players who don’t understand how to form their own groups a place to organically meet up, on top of this add a daily task in this place as well that gives currency and a chunk of of exp so low play time people have something to do that they feel accomplished with their short play time. Oh and new heroics would help but I think that’s on the roadmap. Lastly I don’t see any need for required levels on gear, the path from 85 to 120 can’t be lol do overseer at least let these people find gear in the bazaar more easily, recommended level can nerf the gear enough. Maybe double the penalty if you’re more than 5 levels off the recommended but make gear easier, i dont see who gets hurt by a level 85 wearing 120 gear with reduced stats on a live server. It only helps us have players get closer to our level.
Most people don't level 4-5 alts on overseer. There are some serious issues with this game's current grouping situation and the go to response being use overseer or LFG better is a sign of that. We will not keep people that return to the game or casual players without improvements to the grouping systems and a better path for those that cannot catch up. Most of us were there during the slow grind in the past(it's not like this game gets new players), but groups were far more common back then. Currently ToL zones are nearly empty, if you're playing outside prime time finding a group is incredibly difficult. We need better LFG systems. One possibility is to try what other games have, cross server group finders. Another really simple improvement is make tank mercs equal or better than a pet tank.
Overseer doesn't help AA's though. Sure you get autogrant but that only gets you about halfway. Thousands of AA's are a daunting grind to catch up, especially for people that have trouble finding groups. And I hate that you have to buy up all the focus AA's to catch up to the actual spells you cast to get any benefit from it.
That would be a great feature, but I would propose that it be implemented in a slightly different way. I would suggest that a character could mark specific hot buttons as "group shared", and then those buttons would appear in the group window like this: The hot buttons "Mez", "DD1", and "SendPet" were Kelay's hot buttons which she marked as group shared. Other group members would see them in the group window and could activate them directly from the group window. One way this could be implemented is to have a special hot bar just for group shared buttons. Any buttons placed in there would automatically show up in the group window of other members. To allow an easy way to toggle this functionality, the buttons would only be shared if the group hotbar was opened. This way the person could close the group hot bar when they were grouping with other people and didn't want them to activate the hot buttons. But when they are boxing, they could enable the group hot bar and their boxed characters would see it. For finer sharing granularity, the person could have a list of who could see the group hot bar buttons. This way they could still use their box hot buttons when boxed with real people along with their boxed characters.
I totally agree. If they have to do lockouts, maybe let me do the mission but make it so I can't loot if I have the lockout. Kind of like they do for raid trash stuff.
I think it's only natural that EQ devs don't waste much thought on making the group boxer friendly. As is painfully obvious from multiple threads here, the botters give the boxers a bad name. So as a Dev why would you go out of your way to "help" any of those low-lifes? Not to mention the fact that if you make things more boxer friendly you are signaling a move away from your original design philosophy and likely to make all the purists unhappy. They need to hire a good MBA to do some polling and number crunching. I have a suspicion that if they catered to more gameplay styles, they would increase revenue by a substantial amount. Math is hard though and purists don't care about P&L statements.
For all of you on the "make boxing easier" bandwagon, whether driving the bus or jumping on, and turning EQ into your own personal solo game... Has it ever occurred to you that maybe, just maybe, EQ is not the game for you? It is OK that EQ is a MMORPG that wants players to team up together and coordinate and work together to accomplish its goals. And if that makes it a niche game with 50k subscribers, so be it. If you want to box, cool. I do! I use alt-tab and understand I am not maximizing all that my box can do. And that is OK with me. If six of you solo players are so mad and angry and want boxing to be easier for you cause you cannot do stuff in game, maybe you six should join forces and group up? You might be surprised how much more fun EQ is with others...
What I asked for works both if your boxing and not boxing. /follow command is not very good Cargo mount is basically an alternative to /follow, and it provides some fun. Who doesn't like getting a free ride around the zone. One of things people really liked in another game, is they have a Raptor taxi. Very well received. All it does is basically give you a free ride around the zone and you just sit, watch, sightsee. You can enjoy looking around rather than, staring at your map while navigating. Someone else is doing the navigation so you can enjoy the sights instead of looking at your map. Lets be real if your going somewhere in a zone your most likely using your map. Boxing is how EQ is played on Live if you have a lot of time. If you look at this thread, How do I EQ on Live. #1 Box. https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/how-do-i-eq-on-live.282572/ EQ has been anti box forever. Yet, 10 years later the way EQ is played efficiently is by boxing. If people want to play this game boxing, if there is a lot of interest in boxing. There is. They should make some boxing friendly improvements. They can start with /follow. btw. /follow is not something to be worried about botters doing cargo mounts is not something to be worried about botters doing no point in worrying about good fixes to game all because botters will be better. They here now, they'll still be here even after good fixes happen. Need active guides/GM's again to combat them.
For years and years and years, whenever new expansions came out, guild members helped each other out by working through progression and helping each other level up. And it's still that way. Saying that, it would still be a godsend to have an improved /follow command that either handled or eliminated the follower from becoming stuck on the geometry. Our mercs already warp to their leader whenever they get stuck. Why can't something similar be done for following player characters?
I am not a boxer but I sometimes quest in older expansions, and I dislike that I sometimes have to find others to join me, just so I can request non-solo quests. Even when I can trivially solo all the quests-steps myself. Lets not have too many quests that requires multiple characters...
