I just wanted to write this for the devs and other casual players some feedback. Especially since I heard another EQ may be underway. So me and my wife used to play EQ2 years ago or so... I am not sure, and to be honest I don't know why we quit. I asked her and she said Skyrim came out, and then we played GW2/ESO. Regardless, here we are. I am not sure what the hardcore community is doing in this game right now, or how good/bad that it is for them. The fact that I have read some negative feedback on here is a really good thing.[There was/is a ton of ESO negative feedback censorship that occurs on its own forums and subreddits.] I am going to compare this game to ESO, because they are very similar from a casual perspective IMO. Here are some bullet points: The animation and art in this game was years ahead of its time and is still good today. I cant stress this enough. The animations in ESO are weird and puppetlike. EQ2 also has better lip synching when the characters have recorded audio, which also seems like it was years ahead of its time. The art is also very good, I am not an artsy person so I can't describe why using words, other than I really want those scaled order of flame robes. This game hits 60fps. ESO is built on a garbage engine, its really bad, and playing this game again on good PCs is eye opening. Its really difficult for me to complain about graphical performance here because its so bad in other games. All I can say is fix the shadows, if you turn them on a bunch of glitches start occurring. [Water textures disappearing, seeing shadows through walls, etc]. Shadows may never get fixed, but its such a minor complaint, I can easily forget about them when I turn them off. The interaction with NPCs in a conversation was also years ahead of its time and still good today. I had one bug where the NPCs would freeze after emoting, but progressing the conversation would unfreeze them. The amount of horizontal content is massive in this game. Starting from character creation, so many races/classes with different starting areas. Its simply amazing. Even between mirror classes illusionist/coercer, there is still a lot of diversity between them. Combat is complicated in a good way... Bear with me as I attempt to describe why its so good, at least for a mage. I dont know what the other archetypes do or how their combat is, but the soloing mage combat is really good. I like being an illusionist. The buttons on my hotbar are not kill now, kill slow and kill faster. Most abilities do something different, and even having two abilities (mez formal and phantasmal gaze) are essential. I feel more in control of my character, in a deep way, than any other game I have played recently. This is so hard to describe. My character feels like a mage. The combat is based off my class strengths and what you would imagine a mage would do. I am doing content slightly above my level, in a heroic instance where all mobs are at least at one ^ upcarrot, pulling groups of 3-6 , and having to think about each encounter. This is so good. A single powerful enemy is fought differently than a large group, this seems like it would be obvious, but so many games get it wrong and soulless. I am rooting, mezzing, nuking, stunning and interrupting, mezzing again when I need to stop and think about what I am doing next. I really hope the melee classes are as much fun as the mage classes. I tried making a healer once, I was not playing with friends enough to be able to play them by myself. However, I can replenish their mana when I group with them. I dont have a ton of buffs, but the ones I do all seem useful, and having to choose them based on limited concentration makes sense [again how you would think a mage would be limited]. Hotbars. Having more than 6 skills per bar is amazing.I hate that limitation. I should be able to use everything my character knows whenever, unless it doesnt make sense. ESO has dedicated addons to swap skills in and out of bars, its very funny, and silly if you think about it. I guess it was made to make balancing, and gameplay less complex. It fits on a controller and is more accessible. Accessibility sells, but limits depth. Stats. Stats were simplified? It seems like a bunch of stats "have no use for my class". This probably needs work, but idk, dont go overly simplistic here. Agility could contribute to casting speed, very mildly if anything, IDK. I am not sure if just having HEALTH, MAGICKA and STAMINA is the best way to go. Complexity may increase depth and customization, maybe it was too complex when it came out. Story and quests. Theres a lot of back and forth. I like the faction system. I like that you have to progress in the story, but having the menial tasks separate and scattered, going back and forth, backtracking in the same area can get repetitive, especially if the goal is just to "cull the population of X". It has its uses and everything is optional. If I was doing new quests, I would have story arcs, and just have an NPC that rewards you for bringing them pelts/bones and whatever else you find scaled to that area. Leveled areas. These are essential! Every enemy in ESO feels exactly the same. I love that there are areas too dangerous for me to explore alone at my level. This, the current system allows me to approach a new high level area in two ways. I can either first do it with friends, or I can come back 1-5 levels higher and complete it then. Its a gate that can be overcome by two methods, each with its own rewards. I always mentor whenever I can. I still feel overpowered for the lower levels, so maybe the stat curbing should be a little stronger. I love that there is a mentoring system / chronomage system in this game. UI. I hide the majority of it including my buff bars. I got rid of the minimap, and just have a compass, which I wish was translucent. I dont know, I am biased here, but its a pretty game with very interesting zones. A lot of the UI is in the way. I also got rid of damage numbers after a while. That shouldn't be on by default? There are so many spell effects, adding UI damage numbers on top, that sometimes scale to the millions is silly. I also wish there was some sort of grid for moving UI windows. There is an align window button but I havent figured it out yet. The dungeon finder... Come on now. The bosses need to work! Why is this in the game like this? Lol. The agnostic dungeons statue thing is also out of place in Qeynos. What the heck is this thing? lol. You know what I mean. IDK, I wouldnt put a power leveling mechanic in the game, where you dont lose health or anything. I know it makes things easier for old gamers, its just... completely broken? If youre going to do it this way, why not turn it into arenas or something, since youre not really there for the dungeon story or anything, just fighting mobs. Either way, why doesnt health decrease either? It aint right! This has gone long enough.
In Options, make sure you are in Advanced (there's a Basic/Advanced button toggle) and then try enabling GPU shadows, they seem to work better. Right-click the compass and select Window Settings, then change the translucency. You'll want to experiment with it a bit to get a setting that works for you.
Thanks just saw this. IDK I turn on GPU shadows and thats when I actually get the glitches, seeing shadows through walls, water textures disappearing and shadow flickering. Removing off screen shadows [I think?] removes some of the flickering but doesnt fix the see through stuff. Maybe there is something wrong with my GPU? I have been playing around with the opacity of windows, its great! I love the UI customization, and am having a great time playing the game.
Thanks for the reality check... I have left EQ2 a few times and always find myself back here. I have played lots of games, RPG, RTS, Shooters etc. etc... Many of those things you mentioned are the reason those of us left are probably still playing the game. I could not agree more about the graphics, I would only add that they feel timeless. And everyone has different taste. I have friends that like the original flavor of models and then others like myself who prefer the SOGA models. I complain about lots of things lately wrong with the game i.e. mechanics, class balance, lack of real content, so on and so on. But actually really love the game for what it is at the core. I think the most frustrating part is coming back here in hopes of giving feedback that will spark some type of response only to feel ignored when patches, updates and new content drop. And then having another player make a blind statement about /in a special voice..."You should consider quitting or moving on if it bothers you that much" I didn't wander into the forums to quit, I did it because I want the game to be better. We just need the development team to want it too, heh or at least for them to Stop Sucking!! But EQ2 is still the MMO of choice and the only game for now worth really investing real time to imo... Thanks Geartooth.
If you speak XML, you can customize the whole UI. Used to be that EQ2 shipped with a tool called UIBuilder.exe -- you can still get it from EQ2Interface.com as well as anything from fully modded interfaces (DarqUI is very good) to individually modded single components.
I Just came back after a 5 year absence because ….welll….its EVERcrack. I love this game. I got all hissy fit when the format changed when Daybreak took over. I have played since release , paying my way faithfully and buying every new expansion that came out and then all of a sudden I felt it didn't matter...maybe I had some wrong thinking I don't know. But Im back and I still have a couple of gripes that are probably minor to many but they aren't to me. #1 Why is this STILL the only RPG out there where you can't sit at the table or any furniture at all? What if we want a nice big council meeting with all in attendance sitting around our nice big table? Can't do it. So much for RP. #2 OMG., please update the character creation. EQ2 is years ahead in EVERYTHING and Years and years behind in character creation. We all look alike and have forever. other than this. Im good. Im a loner most of the time and love my tradeskilling which, btw, evolved from a nightmare into a fascinating alternative way to play and provide for my community. Thank You from the bottom of my cherry pie heart.
Played ESO at launch (complete train wreck). I didn't like the movement and combat style. Couple that with the ugliest character design in any video game ever. ESO did well on spooky dungeons and landscape. But left pretty quickly and came back here. Nowadays I play 95% EQ2 and 5% GW2 when I need a mindless WvW Zerg fix.
I couldn't get past the controls in ESO. I'm so used to the style of EQ2 that changing to one that was that different was annoying. I never got past the lower levels in that but I did like it ok. However, my go to games are EQ2, LOTR, WoW, and GW2. EQ2 being by far the most played. Thanks for your description of what you like better about EQ2. It is a very special game for sure. I love the things that you pointed out plus the crafting system, harvesting, housing, and my carpenter's furniture making skills. I also love that it lives up to it's name... I have been questing for a long time and still have undone quests to finish.
I have the exact same issue he has. When I turn on GPU shadows, they flicker, let me see shadows of models through walls, water textures disappear. So, I have to turn it off.
All mmos have positive and negative factors. All have bugs that go unfixed for years. I play four games regularly. EQ1 EQ2 ESO and Lotro. I love them all and there are things about each that i hate. In defense to ESO in comparison to EQ2, they destroy this game in the fact that they have finally solved the riddle of mudflation. Ok so not so much this game as we can mentor (but mentoring is a joke in the fact that you look at mobs and they implode), but eq1 for sure. They have an incredible system that every mob is on level with every single character at the same time. All can group together, raid together, etc. Where eq1 and eq2 give options to play in different areas, eso makes it possible to play in every area at all times. What does eq2 do the best in comparison to the rest? Housing. Even eso's gorgeous housing is shallow in comparison to eq2's. Also eq2 doesn't charge upwards of 100 dollars for a fancy house. The everquest lore is still king in comparison to all but perhaps lotro. Eso is good but eq1 and 2 is better. Eq2 does a great job with class diversity. 26 classes vs eso's 6. Even if you combined the overly similar ones, eq2 still has at least 12-14. Back to the negative. ESO offers a user driven simple ability system. It is simple enough that you can operate your character in a fight and concentrate on the screen instead of clicking spell icons over and over. The far end of mudflation leads to truly insipid stats. eq2 millions of hp and power and all the other really inane stats? Dumb. Pure dumb. The requirement to spend thousands of plat to raise abilities? Dumb. Stupid. Eq2 started out the mmo for the comman person. Who could play and enjoy without getting bogged down in min maxxing and all the rest. Not so much. The system is so stupid that the devs have to put in a buff so that common people can play certain modes? Come on. Destroy your game play engine and rebuild the damn thing. Like i said at the start, all games have good and bad. The bad in eq2 seems to be ramping up faster than the good as time goes by. It is my wish that a company takes the everquest lore and builds a new everquest game where they actually learn the lessons from the franchise. I moan and grown because i care. I love the game, but i love it enough to get mad about it.
@Jovie I agree with you on most things. There is definitely a stat problem. I dont think having a daily buff is necessarily a bad thing, because it shows you the content you can work towards being able to complete without training wheels. I have not gotten to this level of content yet, as I am just questing around doing my thing with friends. COMPLETELY agree with your housing comments. Love the EQ2 classes. I havent played a NECRO in EQ2, but just from what I have seen, the ESO necro is decerebrate. Not like what you would expect a necro to be at all. Maybe Ill make a necro alt in EQ2. Sometimes I feel like the lore between both EQ2 and the elder scrolls games is shared. There are many similarities. Its weird. The AD quest line is inferior to the Qeynos city quest involving Antonia Bayle, but they are similar. This is opinions though, you could argue that quests in ESO are all fully voiced... but just because something is voiced, doesnt mean its actually better. Sometimes I feel like the player characters responses in EQ2 have more personality and better than the responses in the ESO quests. I dislike the ESO ability system for several reasons. They got rid of the single player schools of magic for starters. The limited number of skills works to make balancing easier, and less buttons on the screen, but overall its a detriment, since some skills for some classes are basically essential. [Many templar builds require jabs, im so sick of jabs]. There are mods just to skill swap [to have a 6th skill just to buff speed https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1554-AssistRapidRiding.html ]. But anyone being able to do anything allows there to be a lot of fake tanks, fake healers, and just bad builds that only work in the overland zones because.... The overland zone enemies are incredibly low AI, low power, extremely easy, you look at them and die. I really do think mentoring is better, but maybe the stat decrease in EQ2 should decrease more sharply as you level up. Chronomancing should be able to be done from the UI or from a skill. I know what you mean though. I know mentoring still allows you to keep ridiculous stats and wave heroic mobs away. But like I said, this is the same in ESO. There are bosses in ESOs solo quests that die within seconds, they all have the same AI, and are very bland in general. The actual game engine in ESO is complete and utter garbage. It may look cute on stills, with its completely flat and rigid water, but on all other aspects it is inferior to the EQ2 game engine. Load times are very long, even when zoning within the same zone. When loading in and out of housing. The FPS cuts in half if you enter a town, even though the textures and animations are not much better than EQ2s. Actually, I don't know who OK'ed the animations in ESO, they are so rigid and weird looking. Combat. I hate animation cancelling, its a glitch that became a "feature". They are slowly moving away from it, but whatever. I dislike the limited number of skills, as Ive stated. The characters dont feel very unique at all, its not button clicking but its not very deep either. To mitigate the button clicking in EQ2, and the overly complicated UI, I just hide most things, and the buff bars, unless I mouse over them. At level 86, I don't have that many combat skills that I need to be looking at all times, but I get what you mean. Relearning my character had me looking at my skills all the time, but as I got better, I knew where all my skills were. I agree with the stats thing, EQ2 devs seem to be looking at this though. Raising skills through plat? i havent done this... but maybe you mean buying the books to raise them from apprentice to master? Idk, I haven't found this to be necessary, yet, my skills are already OP every time I mentor my friends though, and we're just clearing Heroic content. Youre probably right though wrt raiding and other end game content. It is a pleasant surprise every time we find a skillup book. Oh yeah, items in ESO. You HAVE to sub to that game to be able to keep items. I am currently subbed to EQ2, but I didnt think it was necessary, I just felt like selling on the broker and supporting the devs. Quest rewards in ESO are also just vendor trash. I actually use the quest rewards in EQ2 as I clear the zones. Also find better items from named and heroic mobs. I know itemization is a mess right now in EQ2, but as far as leveling goes, it is way better than ESOs IMO. How is healing? Is it just whack a mole? Thats something ESO I think does better. I haven't been able to level a healer yet. Every game has stuff to improve on for sure. I am rooting for EQ2 and the next EQ though. I also wish we could play EQOA! Man I miss that huge continent with no zoning breaks / loadtimes. Hear that devs? Zoning sucks. [unless its for instanced content or dungeons, thats fine].
I can't understand where people come out and say that eso is ugly. I suppose this is coming from people with bad video cards or something? I have everything full tilt and it is gorgeous. Yes, eso gets frame rate hiccups in some areas, so does eq1 and eq2. ESO is flat out millions of miles prettier than eq2 on its best day in its best zone. Sound is trillions of miles better too. ESO is the only game outside of resident evil back in the day where sound makes me poop myself a little. Walking along on a rainy day and then BOOM thunder! I feel bad for anyone playing the game on headphones. We will be in constant disagreement about skills and combat. Combat is a chore and a bore in eq1 and eq2. I do think it would be nice to have more options to flesh out abilities, but overall it works just fine. Healing is fun in eso. Not the standard sitting on your butt waiting for your turn in the healing chain. You are active and trying your best to keep those around you alive. OH one more thing that eso does better than eq1 and eq2 and is on par with lotro is the use of open tapping. No more locked combat, waiting your turn. Anyone fighting the same mob gets exp and loot. That system prompts people to be helpful all the time. Ok so while i am on one mores, there is another area that eq2 destroys eso at. Brokering. Eq2 is far better than all other games in existence when it comes to selling your junk. Eso's system is pure trash in that you have to belong to a guild that owns a broker at some random spot in a massive world. Because of that, i just don't buy and sell on their system. That does one other tie in to eso's tradeskilling system, which decimates eq1 and eq2. It is easy and it is all useful things that can be made. No whack a mole to be had. One more area that eq2 is better at is quest journal. Eso for some stupid reason limits you to 25 quests in your journal at any time. This makes no sense. I am still rooting for the people that make eq1 and eq2 to get their acts together and save the franchise. As someone that has been with them since march of 99, i feel i am highly invested in what they do. I may post angry, but i do it because i care about it.
