Young people are always screaming they want EQ to be harder, more dangerous. Yet we have a large population of older and disabled people who can hardly do anything newer than House of Thule. Most of the stuff I was able to do and get pleasure from was made harder. Meanwhile I had a mild stroke and am now over 60. If you're making specialty servers, how about making one that's EZ mode? I'm not talking Monty Haul. I'm talking about one where things that were nerfed still work. It takes a lot of work to get a ranger or SK or monk to get to a place where they can kill at a reasonable speed. Or at least one where invis, root, mez and charm always work? It's like education. After you get enough, things should be easier. Making mobs with more HPs isn't fun or challenging.
maybe try something like this game has variable difficulty levels to suit a wide range of users. vid starts at about 34 seconds in
they made an entire game that caters to you, you can literally solo from level 1 to level cap in a week and have max gear within 2 weeks, its called world of warcraft, you should check it out...
This is probably a good idea for a game with an aging player base! I remember when I started EQ2 back in '99 I was 15 but a ton of our guildies were in their 40's and 50's already (including my dad). Those guys are all almost 20 years older now! Totally a legit idea.
So basically you want full out game-genie/god mode? Maybe a kill command where mobs will just fall over? That way you wouldn't have to put any work into your characters at least, you know for all those lazy people over age 50. I've seen some great ideas on this board, but this one takes the cake I think. Nicely done.
I wrote a pretty long post about putting yourself in the shoes of those that are disabled but as I sit here typing at 110 words per minute I realized that I myself am probably unable to put myself in those shoes. I mean I don't condone it but there's a thread in the veteran's lounge about how botters don't get punished and they're able to do content without displaying any sort of dexterity or skill so that seems to be one answer. But as far as finding fun in a game where you aren't able to exercise the neural pathways as they once were. If the game was lowered in difficulty, then people would just flock there regardless of whether or not they were disabled. Honestly at that point there's other cool games to play that don't rely on reaction speed/precision in order to be successful. Chess - i don't recommend playing the blitz mode of it but you're still doing battle - but with your mind.
If you can't do anything newer than House of Thule, maybe it's time to find an occupation that fits your age / disability. Kinda lazy to want things to adapt to your very specific needs instead of finding what you need.
Are there some usability issues getting in the way? Visual contrast problems, etc. I bet the devs would consider improvements in that direction.
If we take a look at how the game has evolved for most classes over the years, just the button mashing alone has gotten out of hand. I'm not saying that we should go back to doing two or three spells or combat abilities per minute, but old school players typically prefer to play manually and not automate everything, yet it's near impossible to play in today's game efficiently that way with the sheer amount of button mashing. As a paladin, I'm clicking close to sixty buttons per minute. That's not a lot compared to some games or some classes, but I know that I was missing *a lot* of clicks before I ended up automating everything. I think that old school players just prefer being able to play at an efficient level where they're able to do things manually. That's just not possible in today's game.
i have to agree with an earlier post .. if you want easy mode, play wow. log on and be max lvl in the same day
I agree with this guy completely. Warning this may become a long post. How is anyone supposed to come back after an extended break or pick up the game fresh anymore? Take rogues for example as probably the most straight forward class. It used to be that you got behind the mob and hit backstab when it refreshed, maybe evading if needed. Cool but boring. Fast forward to level 70. You had an opener disc, 3 or so offensive discs on separate timers and a couple options for defensive discs. Variety, lots of aas to grind but not overwhelming. Ffw to level 90. You have several thousand aas required as well as knowing which 2-3 dps aas stack with which discs in order to actually throw off some decent dps. Now at 105 i came back with that strategy of of reading discs and aas and using what worked at 90 plus their upgrades when available. With 12000aas (thank you auto grant, one problem largely solved) I grouped with another rogue and we competed burning through a mission in tbm. I did roughly 20% of his dps because I didn't know the 4 different sets of combinations of 3aas and one or two discs to use for burns or have hotkeys. He worked with me and literally took screenshots of his hotkeys and I copied them out line by line. We did another round the next night and I was up to about 60% of his dps. The gap should persist because he has eok and max aas and slightly better gear but still, I tripled my dps from simply knowing which combinations to use. That is the problem. And fortunately it has an easy fix. Devs have been working wonders lately consolidating aas but there's more to be done. With the 20,000 aas available how are we supposed to know which are optimal combinations without stumbling into a magnanimous yoda- figure like I did? Easy fix, devs can further consolidate the burn aa groups and go ahead and link them (maybe into the 1,2,3,...4&5? spires which, let's be honest, only really one gets used for most classes). The new burn chain of aas would be probably 60 levels deep and cost you 2000 aas to max out but you would see continuous improvement along the way with one button push - which is how those who know already use it - and would have that great sense of accomplishment from finally finishing the line. Let's be honest, we're not talking about easy mode here, we're not even talking about a skill gap. I'm talking about closing the knowledge gap and reducing the learning curve barriers to being able to play a class well. I've wanted to try some new ones, amazingly there are still a couple classes I haven't played through to max after all these years with the game but I don't have years to spend on each one with trial and error so unless I know a yoda going in, I'll never play them seriously.
It fairly elitist to go full hyperbolic on people simply because you enjoy playing at the top tier of difficulty and challenge. I think the OP has a point and both Agrippa and Khlorene have made very well thought out posts that I agree with. The goal should always be about retaining or gaining as many players into EQ as possible. Always promoting an elitist version of this game will be counter to whats necessary for the survival of this game.
While I do agree that the gameplay can be overly "spammy" at times, I kinda like the complexity. Figuring out a new "trick" that improves your performance is sometimes a reward in itself, I just wish they would improve the spell/skill and AA-decriptions so that you had a chance to gain that knowledge without resorting to third party sides. They have already made stacking slightly less confusing with the "stacking lines" and crit stacking changes, and I think they should improve there. Consolidating many AAs into one big "burn-button" sounds a bit boring though.
You wanted more challenge you got it. Some of us want less. Sure people might flock there at first but if they're typing 100wpm and can mas 60 buttons a second, they'll soon get bored.
A colorblind guildy was accomodated by one expansion at least. There were higher contrast mobs as opposed to things being camouflaged. With me, it's slow eye tracking, "Which way did it go, which way did it go?" And slow reaction time. Esp.since the tiny stroke.
