One evening a friend was on a low level character and I was on my Paladin. She was complaining about her NPC merc going off and attaching stuff for no apparent reason. We have seen quirks in the NPC mercs like this and although one guild member suggests we report it, we both agree that it is more like a personality than a quirk. I have one that if I send him after something and there is a lot of stuff in the room he will run around the room and round everything up. Another tends to run off and attack stuff on his one, one pair (The Berserker - Denva Loogei from Gorowyn and the Tempest - Krivix Honorclaw ) will assist each other if in a group, even if we have assist and protect off. We refer to them as bosom buddies. So, I offered to be her merc. I went to where she was and she put her merc up. All I was to do was to ride on follow and kill what ever she said to kill. I even ran off on occasion and killed something and when she would ask "Why did you do that" I would reply with something like "He looked at you funny", "He needed killing", or "You were going to send me after him, right?" We had a blast and laughed as I did things that the NPC merc's would do and then came up with a response/reason for doing it. This got me to thinking, Why can't I be a merc for hire? Why is there no way to visually tag my character that I am willing to be some one's merc? I spent some time thinking about it as a feature to the game and jotting down idea's, arranging them and have come up with the following, including achievements for doing it. I feel this could encourage a lot of player interaction. So what do you think? Like it, hate it, dont care? Devs, is this even possible?
Or even bettter....make some eq2 friends and ask them to group with you. If you want to pay them for it, great!.
Really? Your suggestion is to make friends in eq2 and ask them. Tell me, how do you do that? The in game friends I have, I knew in person before I started playing the game. In just over 3 months I have gotten a total of 2 people to even talk to me in game. Try talking to people in game, 99 times out of 100 they will not even respond or notice you are talking to them and that includes doing a /tell to them. Being nice and tossing a heal on a stranger getting beat up by a mod will get you chewed out 7 out of 10 times and the other three times they will just say "ty" then run away. At least my suggestion provides a vehicle for players to interact. A way to break the ice so to speak and to meet new people and get to know them. It would also work to facilitate low level grouping and reduce soloers dependence on NPC's.
Yep, I'm fiarly certain those behaviors are intentional. Mercs are designed to emulate all of the stupid things players do. The cheaper the merc, the dumber the AI. I think the main difference between common mercs and the elite and collector's edition mercs is that the latter two are designed to do that stuff less. I know the common mercs will even ninja afk on you.
I'm not sure how much of that is "ninja afk" and how much is there being a stray pixel or two blocking its line of sight. One of the problems is that the line-of-sight measurement (for players and NPCs alike) doesn't seem to come from eye level (sometimes it seems around ankle level, probably because it is easier to do a calculation based upon a single standard height than on a height that varies depending upon the player* - this doesn't make it any less of a pain, but it may have been a trade off between that or increased lag). * What I mean by that is that it could measure from pointA to pointB and if terrainHeight > lineOfSight(y), then display viewBlockedText, which would be simpler than if terrainHeight > (((entityAHeight - (entityAHeight * 0.15)) + (entityBHeight - (entityBHeight * 0.15)))/2), then display viewBlockedText. (Using arbitrary variable names and procedures, since I don't know the actual variable names and there are literally dozens of ways to do a line-of-sight check.)
I would like to hire my own alts as mercs, But I can't imagine the mess of trying to figure out the A.I. of each individual person and all of their spells and AA's they have spent and priority/situational casting.. Not to mention people could get a max level character from someone else "hiring" them without having to even touch the game. That's probably what your idea would be used for the most tbh.. powerleveling not legitimately using someones character to help you when they are not on line. Which in itself might not be a bad idea on occasion but it's open to way too much abuse and AFK playing. I agree that most people are not openly friendly out in the open, but that's where a good guild can fill your needs. If you feel lonely in the world look for a busy guild with active players and if the guild is quiet or dead then maybe just move on..
I am sorry you're having so much trouble making friends, and I can't speak for your server's culture, but I've been playing for around 9 years on Mistmoore/Permafrost, and my experience does not at all match yours. If you find that absolutely everybody is ignoring or actively avoiding you, you may want to analyze your own behavior. On the subject of hiring oneself as a merc, there are a number of problems I can see. First of all, the feature would be entirely redundant, as you can already offer your services as a mercenary to others via the LFG tool or global chat channels. The second is that asking somebody to pay for your company is pretty audacious, almost to the point of being rude. Yes, it can be hard to find groups in EQ2 unless you have an established social circle. But there is also a social contract that cooperation should be mutually beneficial, and that joining a person's group to undertake a task from which you derive no benefit is a charitable act. For various psychological reasons that I won't detail here, it's a really bad idea to introduce money to a situation that is primarily regulated by social custom. It's kind of like how you would bring a $20 bottle of wine to a dinner party, but you'd never just hand the hostess a $20 bill. There is also the fact that you're assuming your performance is worth charging for, which may make people see you as arrogant, and will definitely attract critical scrutiny from others. Unless you really are significantly superior to the majority of the EQ2 playerbase, this extra attention probably won't be in your favor. In short, I don't think this idea would work as intended.
The_Cheeseman, Let me see if I understand you. You are saying that if LFG in the 1-9, trying to create groups with no success, and Trying to talk to people gets nothing then, it is me. I know it is not me as I have actually stopped and talked to people who said HI as I passwd, and had many new players say that I was the first to stop and talk to them. On unrest it is rare to get people in game to stop and talk. I always assumed it was due to the fact that they are concentrating on soloing, the quest they are working on, or they are lost in their own world. You also seem to be saying that it is ok to pay for a NPC merc that is at best ok but any player wanting to be a merc is somehow a social faux pas. I dont agree, even a mediocre player is better than the NPC merc and I am willing to bet that if it was set up many of the soloers would choose a player over the NPC. I know that when I was first starting out I would have been willing to pay for a player to be a merc for me. Especially when I was stuck on a section of a quest that I could not solo. So, it may be different on your server but in 90 levels and over 3 months of play I have had exactly 2 groupings that were not with a friend in the guild. Top it off, one was a person on the board who was looking for help and needed some one to go in to a zone with them, she happened to be on the same server and I was more than happy to go help her out.
Even though I'm low level. I'm for hire if there are any people starting a new toon, i will protect you as best to my ability
I think it's interesting idea for players who wants to make few coins by being a merc for hire as well and it would help them to establish the reputation and to get to know people. Grouping can be easy or hard depends on a server population or personal issues. Some people are shy to get in a group or other reasons. Over years mostly in a course of two years i 've got a long list of friends. Some stopped playing, few moved to other servers and only precious few i truly love to group and talk with. Talking about grouping. Cross servers grouping would get back an opportunity to play with friends who moved.
You really can't compare the cost/performance ratio of NPC mercenaries to a player. NPC mercenaries are worth the price primarily because they don't necessitate interacting with other players. They're not generally considered highly proficient, but they are consistent, available on demand, never judge or complain, and have no conflicting motivations. The moment you ask somebody to pay for your help, they immediately start considering the relationship from a cost/benefit perspective, instead of one of social interaction. Have you researched rates people charge for power-levelling? You have to be able to provide some pretty extreme return on investment for people to consider paying for your effort. I enjoy mentoring my newer guild mates for a few hours in lowbie dungeons and earning them some levels every so often, because I find it enjoyable. But I wouldn't consider 100p/hour for such a service to be worth my time. Consider it from the other angle, would you consider paying a stranger to group with you?
I don't understand how you have had such a bad experience on Unrest server. Myself and a few others on the server help low level characters when they ask in chat. I make groups, when making them, looking at the popularity of the zone, gauge as to how many people want to do it. Generally speaking people want to do current content and will help you out if it isn't too time consuming if you are in a low zone needing a little help on 1 or 2 mobs. Being a merc per se is already existent with people paying for powerlevelling. Set your price to your skill level. My main is a Coercer, my secondary is a SK. I do current content on my coercer and generally help people out with my SK.
Oh well, yeah some grps didn´t talk much, i don´t even find friends 2 per hour, but i do find enough groups and i don´t need to talk to everyone i use to see once in a while ^^ (Since i play when beta came up, there already a hug amount of peeps that knows me and i talk to). Set a price to say what i had to do? Way to high to obtain, or no price at all
is coin that hard to come by now? back when the game started, coin was absurdly difficult to come by, has the ratio changed?
There are places where you can get decent coin once you hit 90. Some can do it with a bit of a struggle at 80. 90+ you can get a reasonable amount of coin then.
80 to 90??? wtf, what about low levels, like starting the game, can you even purchase anything in game worth while to help with your progression or is a lost cause?
