I Hate and Despise Arcade Games

Because we don't like these kinds of games.

I hate it and can't do it so i wasted my time going through the sigline and music boxes just to be stopped trying to upgrade my epic. Now my paly will collect dust

Or you could run Eye of Night instead.

Perhaps, but we're probably talking about different things. I haven't yet done Grave Grange, so I was taking a guess as to what it features. The maneuvers you described about mid-jump direction changes and single target left-clicking sound fairly routine.

That's why I offered the example of the Ruins of Guk jump puzzle. When I play an FPS, the jump action is a quick spring. When I play EQ2, there is a noticeable "drag" to the jump. That's not an issue when fighting mobs, but it makes a big difference with jump puzzles, especially those with small, moving platforms that require running jumps. As far as the mob targeting, that was a guess, but rapid targeting in FPS games is made easier by the fact that you don't usually have to "select" the target, you just point and shoot. It's just not the same working the controls.

The Guk platforming is much more difficult due to the size of the platforms. Grave Grange just has you click on a plot of soil, select between 2, then 3, then 4 plants to defend against the slowly moving orc skeletons in each row, and then fight them off until the bosses come. You have about 30 seconds to plant 12 plots at the start of the script before the skeletons actually *start* to become a worry.

One, Jump feels pretty responsive to me. I use a mechanical keyboard, though. "Sponginess" is a feeling i get when using traditional keyboards.

Two, point and shoot is literally the same thing as point and target. Unless youre some sort of strange that changes your fire or click button from left click?

Jump only has a 'drag' to it if you're holding down the jump key and it's the same key you use for negating float. If you use a straight jump key (EG, bind mouse 4, for instance) jump is just as 'springy' as it is in any other MMO or FPS I've ever played.

I'm using the same keyboard I use for everything else. The jump motion is slower, it achieves less vertical height, and it gets less height out of running jumps than any FPS or 3PS I've played. As far as targeting, I said point to "select" the target, not point to target. In EQ2, you have to select the target before you can perform an action on it. This is different from just pointing and shooting in an FPS. The click is the attack, it doesn't precede it. You also don't have to switch your right hand between mouse and keyboard. Typically, you only have to do that to change weapons.

Less vertical height? Than what? Master Chief? Im an 8 foot tall ogre and I jump my own body height. Also, why would horizontal movement increase vertical distance traveled? Not a physicist, but that seems fishy.

As far as targeting before anything else. You're an alleged FPS player. You're telling me youre incapable of clicking multiple different buttons at the same time? Seems fabricated, but I'll bite. You can macro your autoattack or any hotbar key to fire off with a left click in conjunction with its default setting of selecting an object/target. Pretty simple stuff.

Me? Im crazy. I have select nearest NPC and autoattack macroed to the F key. I have a single target DPS macro tied to the 1 button on my mouse, macroed to auto click while held. I turn off combat camera autoface so my view doesnt do wild crap in combat.

I can move, jump, dodge, target, AND attack at the same time. All with the creative use of 2 buttons on my mouse and whatever combination of WASD and spacebar combinations I want to use.

As far as the switching my right hand to the keyboard, I have literally no idea why I would do that. It negates the point of a mouse and keyboard in either genre.

True, but I was trying to get this back to the original post. Arcade games vs MMO's. I stand by my statement that these lovely things should not be in the sig line without a way to bypass them for those of us who do not want to play arcade games unless we're in an arcade (I know they don't exist anymore) or running our PS5 from our couches using our joysticks.

Arcades totally exist. Dave & Busters, anyone?

But yeah. I didn't mind the cowboys, because they were an OPTIONAL thing. Same with the NotD plants vs. zombies quest. Just not in a questline and repeating weekly we're kinda forced to do, please.

<Adds a raid version of Grave Grange>

So glad I don't raid anymore

I know a Raidforce for testing
What a fun

Also, you are not at all required to use the plants in this zone. I use them because I love the damage from them, but I know people who very earlier on decided to just kill the adds without the plants. So that is always an option if you do not want to plant all the plants.

/cries

I have NEVER had the manual dexterity to do some of the fast jumping types of things required for certain questlines. An example is the signature questline in Obol Plains; there's one part where you have to jump from platform to platform to get past one room, and if you go too far or not far enough on any platform, you fall to your death. I am TERRIBLE at that sort of platform jumping, which is the reason that whenever I see "platformer" listed as a description for a game I'm buying on Steam, I instantly click away.

I do NOT want to have that sort of thing in EQ2; I play it to relax, and as soon as I get to that room in that part of the sig line, I feel stressed out. You obviously have NO IDEA how stressful that can be to someone who has difficulty with that sort of thing. Always, as soon as I'm done with that dungeon, I have to take at least a half hour break to calm down from it. I absolutely HATE it. And it's the sole reason why, although I love the storyline to that area, I never want to have to do that sig line with any of my alts ever again.

So yeah, I totally agree with Sig that arcade style MECHANICS should be kept out of main questlines. Having a nod towards pop culture is fine; I find myself smiling most of the time when I see them. (Although apparently I miss most of the references; about 90% of the ones that have been mentioned in this thread have gone right past me, as the mainstream game/movie/other that those things they're referencing are things that I'm unfamiliar with.) It's the MECHANICS I have issues with. And as she and several others have pointed out, the player base for this game is aging (we are really NOT gaining new players, and certainly not with the younger crowd, who prefer flashier graphics), and as we grow older, we only get worse at those types of mechanics.

Im gonna say this as sensitively as i know how. Not my problem. You have an issue. Its not up to the rest of the world to bend over backwards making sure you dont feel "anxious" about a video game with absolutely zero negative consequences.

If this is how 4% of the community reacts to 1 zone in an entire expansion, no wonder they are afraid to do something actual good and adding unique features to the game or something that is needed for the games long term health such as a stat squish.

It may not be your problem but it is DBG's. If they persist in using content mechanics that players cannot either complete or bypass it will simply drive them away. Not a great result for the DBG bottom line.