Longterm flaws in everquest

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Jumbur, Jun 11, 2021.

  1. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    This is a partial rant about what I perceive to be flaws in everquest, where the devs have only made partial workarounds for us players. Some of the flaws have been around so long that we have learned to accept them, however they still lower the overall quality of the game. The fact that they have been around for so long, means that some of them might have been forgotten and needs a reminder.
    You are welcome to add your own grievances too. Some of the "flaws" will just be opinions, but thats ok. :)
    In the long term I hope the devs will take the time to fix some of them. It is basically a wishlist of things I think should be addressed/improved, if the devs magically receive unlimited funds.

    Sound-design:
    The game is lousy about communicating through sound-effects, what is important to the player. It has gotten so bad that many players just disable sound, and have to supply their "own sound design" through in-game audio-triggers or Gina.
    In most other games, things that are important to gameplay will have an easily identifiable sound-effect to warn the player. That shouldn't be the player's responsibility, imho.
    The music is top-notch though. :)

    Text-spam:
    The game has insufficient chat-filter options, forcing players to use offscreen chat-windows just to hide the spam. I would greatly appreciate it, if we had much better control over what goes into our chat windows. it might even improve performance. Consolidation of messages would also be a great improvement to the game, I get 15+ lines of text when I cast a spell, and I need a third-paty program just to get an idea of my damage output. That is not optimal.

    Mouse-control:
    Turning with the mouse is difficult if the framerate is too variable! Being forced to limit the framerate to 30 fps, just to avoid bumping into walls when we encounter uncached "lagpiles", is not a satisfactory solution.
  2. Fanra https://everquest.fanra.info

    Agree except for Mouse-control, which I have no opinion on as I don't use it.
  3. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer


    Sound-design:
    MANY players have been playing without sound since EverQuest launched. Favoring, instead, to play completely silent to best simulate the text-emphasized feel of the MUDs of yore. In my guild, I estimate at least 30% play with game sound turned off. EverQuest launched in an era where sound for this style of game just wasn't important. For my part - I LOVE EverQuest's sound design for the original trilogy. Focusing on ambience and feel. I can still hear the forest sounds and clack-clacking elevators of Greater Faydark's Kelethin. Mmmm, soo good. Not to say I wouldn't enjoy a more tightly-integrated sound design. But that's just not EverQuest's bag. Loosey-goosey sound is more EQ's speed.

    Text-spam:
    Again, MUD. This has inflated over the years and I tend to agree with you. Chat filters could be more robust. But they work pretty good.

    Mouse-control:
    Likely addressed with a new game engine. Many players deal with this by using arrow keys to move.
    Aenvar, Froglok and MasterMagnus like this.
  4. Dythan Ban Lev in Plane of Fire guy

    Levitating over the Wall in plane of Fire.
    Laronk and Tucoh like this.
  5. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    Off-topic rant:
    I have always felt that the "MUD-heritage" was a poor excuse for being lazy.
    For example, the kael1 raid in ToV, where we get an emote about ice-blocks falling from the ceiling, and some generic-shards spawns on the floor.
    Why not animate actual chunks of ice falling from the ceiling(and add a fitting sound effect) instead of that emote. The engine supports sailing/flying boats, doors, elevators and giant walking robots(DSH). They even have destructible rubble in deadhills.
    Surely falling geometry shouldn't be hard...:oops:

    Show, don't tell!
    Fenthen, Stymie, Brontus and 3 others like this.
  6. PathToEternity pathtoeternity.pro


    One big problem is that the chat filters in the Options menus are 100% disconnected from the chat filters in the chat windows. I have a technical job, so I get that it's probably a huge undertaking to reconcile those into a unified system but... it still boggles my mind a bit that letting them be two separate systems ever made it out of QA. Fixing this would solve a lot of problems in my mind -- a lot of spam I have no idea what its categorized as (between both systems!) so I can't filter it to a different window (if I still want it for logging purposes) or filter it out altogether (if I don't want it at all).
  7. Tucoh Augur

    Class crowding. Too many classes that overlap, especially with 20+ years of mudflation and ability bloat.

    Beastlords and berserkers should have never been made.
    Raptorjesus5 and Metanis like this.
  8. Froglok Augur

    SOUND: The only issue I have with the "sound design" is that it is buggy as to if it plays music or not. Example, two toons on same account, same settings, one will hear zone music, one will not. Additionally, while I don't understand it myself, most Players seem to play with no music and / or no sounds at all, and have done so from Day 1. I like to hear the zone music (at low volume), because EQ's zone music is top notch and worth hearing. EQ is not a PS/X-Box/Nintendo game. Instead, what we have are emotes. There are way too many things / variables that come into play and providing some additional sound effect for all of them would create so many sounds that it would sound like you were in a noisy traffic jam, imo. Not to mention the additional glut on memory / lag, et cetera. The key here is to create Audio Triggers for the emotes, which you only have to do once. Set, and forget. You can even create your own WAV files that literally tell you what is happening or what to do (spoken voice). My everyday triggers for Invis dropping, Levi Dropping, needing cures and so forth, have proven invaluable.

    TEXT: As for Text Spam... there is a level of agreement there. However, with the addition of being able to put chat windows into tabs, it is a simple matter to put that Spam Tab behind your other Chat Tabs, rather than "hide them off screen." Another "Set and forget" type feature. The only thing I I would like to see is the ability to "hide" certain Spam, all together (from any Chat Tab).

    MOUSE: I have no issue with mouse control, except that my on-screen arrow sometimes seems a bit off as to where I intended to click (brief lag issues?). I use my arrow keys to move. It works much better.
    Fenthen likes this.
  9. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    Don't forget spoken-word triggers for Tracking. OMG what a game-changer. :)
  10. Kaenneth [You require Gold access to view this title]

    Not being able to hotkey sending tells to chat channels by NAME instead of the arbitrary number that can change when you zone.
  11. Kaenneth [You require Gold access to view this title]


    Raccoo and I_Love_My_Bandwidth like this.
  12. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    I disagree, while certain aspects of some classes have been made into more widely available abilities (some Enchanter illusions) I think the team do a pretty good job of making each class feel unique.
    The glaring irony about this worthless complaint is that EverQuest from the very beginning had purposely overlapped some spells - because that was what Hybirds relied upon.

    Rangers had Druid spells
    Shadowknights had Necromancer spells
    Paladins had Cleric Spells
    Beastlords had Shaman spells.

    /smh

    They were, deal with it. :cool:
  13. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.


    But you CAN do this already, using the following syntax:

    EDIT: - /chat #channelname messagetext

    #chat <channel name> <message>

    hotkey macro (Cleric) example:

    /corpse
    /tt Rezz incoming
    #chat healerchat Rezzing %t
    /chat #healerchat Rezzing %t
    /alt act 3800
  14. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    Could you describe what you mean? I can't figure it out, but it sounds useful.
  15. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    I dunno.. sound is fine for me. Text is fine. You put what you don't want in your main windows in other windows. Not sure that is a problem. Maybe I am just easy to please I dunno.
    Coagagin likes this.
  16. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    Imho, emotes is a symptom of the limitations of the dev-team and their resources.

    Emotes shouldn't be that fundamental to the game, there is not much you can do with emotes, that you can't do alot better with actual sound-effects and animations.
  17. Accipiter Old Timer


    Hmmm... I'm totally going to implement this for my bard box.
    1. Monitor log files.
    2. Start tracking.
    3. Parse tracking messages.
    4. Send tracking messages to my main PC running a REST server.
    5. Text-to-speech on my main PC.
    /nod
    I'll give you a cut. Unfortunately any percentage of $0 is still $0.
  18. Atomos Augur

    And here I was hoping for new classes. :)
  19. Tucoh Augur

    Oh I'm dealing with it. My box crew has three berserkers in it. Meanwhile wizards aren't a real class in 2021.
    Raptorjesus5 and Skuz like this.
  20. KrakenReality Augur

    Boxing is more rewarding and efficient than playing with others. If, the foundation of your game is built on “socialization” then that should have been fixed ages ago.
    Raptorjesus5 likes this.