Would it be to much trouble to ask you guys to finally make /follow work better? I am not sure why it has to be so annoying.
IMO live players cautiously following another player should do better than boxed toons following like mercs or pets. Caverns of Endless Song is tough to negotiate leading a boxed army? Good. Further, while it might be possible to develop merc-like AI for boxed toons and to select that behavior by clicking a button I'm inclined to think doing that is undesirable too. Traveling, looting, combat, buffing, flagging, etc. should not be simplified to the benefit of boxers. There things should be awkward enough that playing with live players giving their full attention to the one toon they are playing should always be tremendously preferred. Besides - EQ's continued survival is far more likely to depend on the quantity and quality of its content than on enhancement of its features. Better to cross train tool/engine/internals people and music composers to work on producing game content when enough is enough has been reached in their specialty than to spend money polishing the sneaker.
Yes, it would be a nice tool for boxers. Its more fluff like a mount ring and advloot feature. . The advloot feature benefits boxers the most imo. I think most box teams have a porter/mage for managing movement either way.
Yes and No. Yes - Most of the revenue comes from long time every day players (the hardcore segment), who will become inactive when content becomes stagnant. This is where the money's at. However... No - 15+ expansions' worth of this quality content was made irrelevant due to recent design decisions (increased experience gain, autogrant, defiant gear). New and returning players who don't last long enough to catch up to the end game are more likely to quit because of struggles against the user interface and antiquated mechanics than over any lack of available quality content. We still need fresh and renewed blood.
Might be dated info, but for me /follow improved by miles once i increased background fps to 60 in display options. If you did already, nm me.
/follow works fine as it is. I suspect its the players FPS or other settings that are the issue. This would be another waste of dev time. I mean come on. At a time when EQ is going to struggle to put out a decent expansion each year why all these posts for minor adjustments/additons that will just take up dev time. Its like the new loot system. Whether its an improvement or not no one had any complaints about the old loot system.
This should not take much time... This is not just a tool for boxers. Heck if i go afk and need to follow my group while they move i should not have to worry about it out of the blue breaking leaving me behind. Lets just say there are tools out there that perform this feature 100x better and only take 2 min to create and work on nearly any FPS setting.. Tools out there like [Unmentioned 3rd Party Software] make boxing like playing solo.. so tell me how fixing this once and for all is a problem?
If it only takes a few minutes thats one thing. If it takes several dev days that's a problem. Everyone always thinks these changes are 2 minute jobs and they rarely ever are. We are dealing with an old old game with old old code.
To put this in perspective, there is not a single zone in TDS that I cannot move a 4 box group across one by one in less than 2 minutes (without coth). Autofollow has been quirky since day one (and yes, I boxed in 1999). I'd much rather they spend time fixing/creating things for everyone than improving something for the sake of boxers (of which I am one) convenience. It's not broken. If you box, expect to have to do a little extra work here and there. It's part of the price of not playing with others.
if this takes more than a coffee break than I would be shocked.. Please tell me folks. How is it that some 3rd party software tools are able to be created and do things that are far better than what is within the game? Tell me how people outside of the EQstaff are creating things easier and faster than the EQ staff? Look all these tools people have created over the years. (some allowed some not) Look at [Unmentioned 3rd Party Software], Gameparse, Magelo, Customer UIs, Audio Trigger, Raid and other legal tools. Much less none authorized tools everyone knows about but thou shale not speak about. You would have to be ignorant or simply turn your back to what is out there. I just dont see how things can be done by the community easier and faster than what the internal dev team can create.
/follow has been broken for years. I've been playing in Valley of Luna for the last week, constantly my other comp with a toon on auto follow is just running in circles. Some zones are worse for it that others, but Valley is particularly bad, Direwind is another bad one.
I am convinced the way autofollow was created originally is the reason why it doesn't work worth a crap. I have a feeling it was overly complected and designed to be flawed when it only needs to keep looking at the person you are following (including X, Y, Z plane) and hold the up key when you needed to get within range and not hold the up key when you are in range. Not hard, Not complex.
You are a better player than I am. I would have difficulties moving around Endless Caverns even if there were no mobs.
It's all client side. If there is lag in getting position from the server for the player you're following (or the server getting position from the followee's position), it gets confused. If you background the follower's client and it's not processing all the positions, it gets confused. It's only as good as the updates it gets from the server and the polling time set in the client. There is also the issue with different classes having different levels of run speed. If you're following a class that has an extra AA level of run speed or who has done all the compass achievements, you're also going to slowly fall behind. There's also polling times. It does not follow the precise path of the leader. If that person zig zags around trees and other terrain, it's possible that the polling interval will chose a straight line from last updated position to current that takes it straight through a tree. That is something you can learn to deal with when controlling the leader by choosing paths carefully or jumpy moving when you notice certain zone features.
The most difficult issues I've dealt with regarding /follow were it falling back to running in circles mode where it seems to not notice or continue making effort to determine where I am other than choosing to run in a circle around me.
Annoying, but if you need to use /fol in tight spaces, tab to the other client while holding up arrow. Ultimately the best solution would be a 'teleport to group member' function that works across zones.
I 3 box all the time, follow works fine. Set your background frames per second to 60, problem solved. Once you learn "how to drive" follow works pretty well. There are certainly ways that you can screw it up, cutting corners etc, but with a little care it works just fine. /shrug. I wouldn't mind any improvements to the game, but the background frames thing fixed 99% of the problems I ever had with /follow.
