Suggestions you think would make the game BETTER

Ok to begin this is not a thread about how one class may be better than another.

It is also not about asking for other classes to be nerfed because you think something may be unfair for your primary played class.

If I see anything like that going on, I will report the comments as being off topic and have them removed, the warning has been made. Everyone can blame a certain "Test" player for giving me the idea.

So a suggestion I have in regards to making the game better:

With how fast some characters level up in today's EQ environment important skills sometimes fall to the wayside and trying to catch them up is a real nightmare. So I suggested over on the issue tracker a "Guild Neighborhood Colosseum". This would work exactly like an arena or PVP area with the exception that ONLY guild members would be able to take part.

I had not suggested at the time, but now that I have thought it through a bit, that the "training dummies" that can be bought for the housing area, could then be made to actually allow you to gain and build skill off of them while being in a "safe" environment. If you think this is a good idea head over to the issue tracker at the link provided above and vote for it, hopefully it can then be brought into the game.

One thing I always wanted to see was a solo event in the Arena which provides certain challenges based on class. For example, a cleric would be presented with 5 challenges:

Single Tank - Keep a single tank NPC mob alive as long as possible. The enemy he is facing will steadily increase in power until it eventually kills your NPC Ally.
Multi-Tank - Keep alive 3-5 Tanks simultaneously against multiple adds, more adds will come until you're overwhelmed.
Self-Tank - You must tank a mob as long as possible as a cleric, do your best to stay alive.
Burn-Out - All out DPS a mob to kill it before some time limit.
Puller - Get a single mob to the center of the area from a pack using all your tools (maybe mobs are vulnerable to roots, pacifies, stuns, fears, memblur, etc.)

Each could provide achievements for staying alive say for times X, Y and Z. With X aimed at your regular player, Y at your top end group player/casual raider, and Z at your top end raider.

Getting an achievement in all 5 at each tier would provide some reward like a class only weapon with clicky or some augment.

Everyone is used to relying on others in a group setting or a raid setting. Seeing just how well you actually hold your own would be awesome if well tuned.

It could also serve as a vacuum to teach someone to play a new class with some of the core roles/scenarios you may find yourself in.

Dzarn hit me up, this could be fun!

Totally agree. I know people hate ideas from other games, but WoW added solo proving grounds which are basically what you are talking about for tanking, healing and DPSing. In addition to doing them to open up random heroics, i would go back periodically to improve my play. Great idea.

sounds like a class specific tutorial, which could teach someone what the baseline performance for a class "should be".

Could be a fun test, to see if you can truly master your class or if you suck without being aware of it.

I wouldn't rule out the posibillity that there are some aspects of my class where i don't live up to the standard, the devs tune content for...

The problem i see, is that it should be scaled not only to level but also class(and maybe even tuned to gear and AA), if it should be usefull as a measuring stick... that sounds like alot of fine-tuning...

A quest that can teach a veteran something new about his own class, would be pretty epic imo.

Most likely it would be the dev team learning things about classes they didn't realize people were doing. Followed by nerfs.

I think there should be more than one Hero's Journey, which don't start in Crescent Reach. Get some more mileage out of the old zones on standard rules servers.

Whether or not they do the above, the quest pointer boxes for the existing Hero's Journey make me long for the same kind of thing in other zones, especially the various starting zones and the various Planes.

The pathing for alts using /follow could be much improved from 1999 standards. If the mercs can do it, the toons should too.

A fun expansion, which doesn't revisit old zones, there are still places in Norrath we are yet to visit, ie Drinal.

I'd love lots of new zones to die in!
Lots of new quests, EQ has been lacking on the quest front in recent expansion with very few good rewards. There are lots of clickies from the past that could do with being updated or reintroduced.

I loved the new artisan quest!

A /puke emote. So I can barf on people. With particle effects and everything.

That's it. That is the thing that will make Everquest immaculate.

Server stability, DDoS protection.

So just got back from taking care of some family business, and logged in and BAM got waylaid with an idea after casting a "combination" spell.

So I don't know if it is just a ME thing or if anyone else feels the same, but the thing I HATE the most on my screen is a disorganized Buff bar. By this, I mean I prefer to have my buffs in a specific order and line up.

So my idea is a "Drag and Drop" feature to the Buff window, this way a player could click and hold the buff icon and drag it to a new location in the buff window. Sort of like exchanging spells in the spellbook, except being able to do it in real time with buffs that are on you.

OK this is an idea I definitely can agree to, and no it's not just a you thing, thanks for suggesting something like this.

Also Z, it's good to see you socializing a bit more..................I mean with your whole "I avoid posting in the forums because" thing.

One word: dual classing. You advance as high level as you want in your first class, then you can switch over to a second class, advancing from level 1 (though retaining all skills, abilities, etc.) in the new class abilities. I'm talking Wizard/Druid, Fighter/Bard, Monk/Wizard, etc. along the lines of AD&D dual classing. Is it a pipe dream? Sure. But it's a great one.

I second this

I would like the buf icons to be the exact same place every time, and I would like an empty spot with a customizable label to be in the place, when the buf is not present. The empty spot should be drag and drop, as suggested.

Also agree the drag-and-drop buff window is a great idea. I'm a bit OC when it comes to the icons myself. I've sometimes spent time removing my merc's buffs and casting my own before she can recast them just to have them in the order in which I want them. Always want my levity and JBoot icons at the end of the list. But I do prefer them in a certain order in between as well. Don't know entirely why on most, but some of them it's somewhat important. Some times I'll forget to recast my wizard shield spell because I usually have it first in the buff list so when I glance and see it empty I recast. But sometimes my merc will beat me to it without me noticing and when I glance, there's not an empty spot and I just absent-mindedly move on without recasting the shield buff. Obviously it's my own fault for being so flippant about going into combat without a certainty of being shielded- but moveable buffs would be great.

Wow, as a cleric, I would love to do something like this. Love being the only healer in knight group during raid events.

Oh another great idea I had. Add a new zone called Developer's Island. On this island is a building called Developer's Hall and inside you have all the developers and everyone involved in game creation. They all have their real name above their heads, and they all sit at tables working or whatnot.

Now, outside there stands an armored man called The Whipmaster and next to him a guy named The Snitch. You go to the Snitch and can ask a question like 'Who is responsible for me getting ganked by three dark blue cons in the Stone Cold Summer event?' and the Snitch gives you the names of the developers who created the event. You then click the Whipmaster and he gives you a Flaming Whip with which you go into the building and whip the developers responsible. The characters jump from their workplace and run around waving their arms "Ah!" and run "Ah!" WHIP! "Ah!" for about 5 minutes then the whip disappears and they return to their workstation.

You could even maybe have different devices like Hammer of Fury, Scourge of Satisfaction, etc.

1) Fix the crash-while-zoning that's been plaguing the game for the last year
2) Break NEW ground with an expansion. No more corrupted zone-youve-seen-before, tainted god-you've-killed-before or annoyingRaidZoneFromThePastRevisited!
3) Get away from spreadsheet gear. Right now based on TBM gear there is literally no functional difference between ANY of the gear bits at a given level. They differ in stats only slightly and not in any amount that will actually affect game play. This makes the game less interesting and the player has less choices to make. Literally any neck is fine, any earring is fine, etc.

This idea was presented on the issue tracker, if anyone wants to vote for it, here's the link:
https://dgcissuetracker.com/browse/EQ-985

Wow, thanks for that find, did not see that there.....definitely gonna give it another up vote.

So may not have been the first to suggest it, but at least its definitely something many people would like to see happen.

Despite my foot stomping when I show up to post here I actually have a more positive than negative opinion of the game. Because of this most of my opinion stands in the "don't break things" camp and I have mixed feelings on some of my own suggestions that could be improvements but some may find way too convenient.

Pie-in-the-sky ideas that likely wouldn't happen:
1.) A larger extended target window that only populates with a certain number of mobs as it currently does, but has player only slots that healers or even other players can use to keep an eye on people in their raid.

2.) A revamped raid roster that keeps offline players and no longer needs the lock button (performing checks as actions are performed to ensure they work) and shows the health/mana/endurance of each player. This already had a boost I didn't know about until recently that lets you target people across zone when you click them, and I appreciate that. EQ2 also lists if players have debuffs, however I wouldn't go as far as asking for that. I am fully aware the entire idea is likely a pie-in-the-sky wish.

3.) An option similar to /tgb that causes you to cast beneficial or detrimental spells on your target's target if it's toggled on. This exists by default in EQ2. Despite this likely being the most realistic to implement I put it in the "not realistic" category because it would be a huge game changer and make healing and assisting much easier and I think a lot of players would be uncomfortable with that. Of course when people bounce aggro everywhere it would actually disrupt healing on the proper target. It would allow healers to more comfortably use some of their utility they may shy away from due to fear of killing a tank in the process. Honestly, I have mixed feelings on this subject myself but it's there in EQ2 already. EQ2, however, is a very different game and I acknowledge that.

Realistic things:
1.) Corpse locations frequently go out of sync with the clients. Please fix this so /tar, /corpse, and clicking a dead player on the raid roster always works if a corpse is in range by verifying the corpse location on the server or something.

2.) Please don't nerf old raids and content in the expansion launch window or slightly after by adding more restrictions to the fights or otherwise making them more difficult, which has happened very often and is something like a bitter joke to players as new expansions approach, which doesn't affect the top/high end at all and feels like a direct attack on the mid/low end. (Lucia became pretty much not worth it due to the ramp up in difficulty as just one example. Argin-Hiz had a pointless change adding summoning which pretty much would only affect a low end force, etc.)

Please don't remove or cripple long-held class abilities as this entire last year has been dedicated to doing. I'd say don't nerf abilities by omission to upgrades but honestly that's a better way of going about it than what has happened the last year. I would love to see Lure of the Siren's song work up to 113 (so it can be used to help control mezzed mobs which is the entire point of the AA) and Dissonant Chord work up to 115 (bringing it in line with where it was when it was introduced in CotF) for example, assuming the level cap is going to 110.

Basically, stop stomping on the hands of the players as they try to climb the figurative wall of content. Don't try to make your new content appealing by trying to patch out the desirability of the older content. If it's well-received people will come to the new stuff regardless. As a bonus, this will keep player feedback focused on the expansion rather than distractions caused by outrage over the nerfs.

This has been going on since at least House of Thule, if not Underfoot, and it's likely a problem that existed in the game since launch (but was much harder to hit until the game started using more RAM). It's just more noticeable lately because the game has more stuff in it to increase the amount of RAM it's using. It's ~1.2GB of RAM that it will crash. I don't remember the specific number anymore. I'm almost used to it now. Almost. Certain zones seem to contribute to it more than others. Argin-Hiz, the Dead Hills, Sul Vius: Demiplane of Life/Decay, Sanctum Somnium (which may be caused in part by the Castle too), and The Valley of Lunanyn off hand have been some of the biggest offenders. Note that it is not those zones in particular that cause the crash though; it's just that they are large enough to very commonly be the tipping point. I'm not sure if custom UIs play a role either. The fact they have known about this for years and still have not fixed it suggests to me it must be an extremely difficult problem for them to tackle. I'm not going to get whiny over it if they don't have the realistic resources to fix it any time soon, but I'd be delighted if they did.

I've noticed the game very frequently crashes when logging out especially when going to server select, but at least that isn't as inconvenient as the zoning crashes.