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Fix the combat speed
Solase
Member Posts: 24
When I first played EQ2 upon release, I remember how massive the world seemed. It took a long time to run from place to place and I actually enjoyed it because it made the world seem much bigger. Sometime a year or so after release, they dialed up the run speed which literally shrunk the world as we know it. But that wasn't the worse of it. What was really bad was when they increased the speed at which combat occurs. Fights are over in a matter of seconds and you don't get to see dots burn down or feel the affect as you did in EQ1 when you stacked one too many dots. Though I love EQ2, the combat speed is one thing that drives me to keep looking for something to satiate my MMO crack needs. It's simply has become a button mashing fest and you don't get to enjoy battles like you did in EQ1. Really hope they look at this, but I'm not holding my breath.
Comments
I, for one, actually agree with you. However, you knew it was coming, they have to balance the twitchers, from games like WoW, and the strategy. So while, for people like me and you, the combat is too fast, others think it is too slow. It's pretty hard to find that balance, and I actually wish they would just say screw it and make it strategic on all fights, but then most of those twitch players wouldn't even try it.
BTW: Depending on your class and the fight itself, some classes take longer to kill the same mobs. So a conjuror or necro can burn through a mob in milliseconds, a templar or mystic might take a full minute. If you slowed combat down across the board, we wouldn't have many templars or mystics.
"Granted thinking for yourself could be considered a timesink of shorter or longer duration depending on how smart..or how dumb you are."
Great to here your comments regarding the combat speed. I don't know if you played EQ1 much, but I remember fighting in Karnor's castle as a beastlord and laughing when I'd see the Necro turn the mob into bone form and his hate would go out the roof and turn and chase him while the tank would fight to get aggro back. I love the speed at which EQ1 did the fights. It really made casters watch their aggro. In EQ2, I have a lvl 70 wizard (I'm deployed and haven't been able to get back on EQ2 till recently) and it's a joke! I can't pull aggro off a decently geared tank! And even when I do, the mobs dead in 3 seconds. I recently ordered EQ1 for nostalgia and hope I can find a niche to re-live this gameplay, but I don't see any game on the horizon bringing back the same combat art EQ1 had (or maybe still has).
Absolutely agree with you guys. At first EQ2's combat is refreshing and exciting considering the amount of skills you get to use...but i didn't think about how horrendous it was going to become. after most of the fights my wrist would get soar just mashing all the buttons on the keyboard. i was one who also loved the slow paced combat of eq1. it was rewarding to get a good group and take on numerous amounts of enemies and take your time dissecting the battles. but, this is something about eq2 that really turned me off and ultimately caused me not to play at all.
I played back in beta 0 in 2004 and quit on release and actually playing the game on a trial right now and i don't notice a difference between then and now apart from everything seems alot better. I must say though the "WOW" feeling EQ2 gave me back in 2004 is gone cause the graphics do look very dated and bland like Antonica and TS need to be totally redone cause they ruin the experience for lowbies. The world of EQ2 ahs always been very very small though because of all the zoning of small areas and each area seems to become smaller as you get higher up, havn't tried out the expansion zones though because all that Fairy crap don't interest me.
My fave zone has to be CL though because it's just sooo open and beautiful and mostly nostalgia for it back in 2004 though because that's when i was having fun with EQ2. In beta i could always get groups there and just remember the place being crowded and having a amazing experience there.
I think one of eq2's weak points is their combat system. I'm playing a swashbuckler so maybe it is different with other classes. I find myself feeling like I'm playing wackamole :P. I will run through my combat abilities in a certain pattern, hitting debufs, then my damagers to max my damage in the initial salvo. After that it's mostly watching for the ability to ungray and hitting it. If I'm running low on power I'm a little more selective avoiding attacks that do less damage and debuf things I don't care about as much.
For a little variety I'll play with the combat wheel or my crowd control abilities. And sometimes I get to do my AE. But basically it is a button mash without a lot of thought after I initially laid out my attack sequence. I'm not sure speed is really the issue. They should look at Vanguards combat system and add some of those features to make combat more dynamic and something you need to think a bit more about.
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Ethion
At first I was going to disagree, but after thinking about it, you are totally right. The combat speed in EQ2 is way faster, not just movement. Then again EQ2 is way more structured than EQ1. I loved EQ1, best game I've ever played, but I don't think after playing EQ2 for these past couple years that I could revert back to that open style of game play. I feel in EQ2 raiding all I do is spam spam spam, unless you are a true role player like a tank or healer.
I think another thing is that people HATE waiting. By people I mean the masses. These days now people want to get into a game thats fast paced but grabs their attention. I don't know if anybody remember but Vanguard was supposed to have a unique combat system that was slow and required classes to execute certain combos to find certain weaknesses of mobs. This was going to be a slow combat system until they decided to change it. They made basically a washed up version of this where now all you do is look for your targets debuff then click the skill that will enhance it, ending combat faster.
Yeah, old EQ1 fans and players know what I'm talking about. EQ1 was more involved in combat than EQ2. Sure, on raids you had certain sequences to cast things for maximum dps, but you really had to watch your aggro. Aggro was much more of a factor in taming dps classes from just being button mashers. It required a lot more skill. I relish the good 'ol days of wizards opening with their low yield nukes and dots, waiting for about 75% health on the mob before unleashing and backing off, casting de-aggro spells when they laid on too much. Necros who loaded up dots would find themselves in a world of hurt so they too had to watch when and where to release their deadly blows. Rangers and rogues had similar issues and it was cool to see a rogue tap a mob a little too hard and suddenly become the tank. Gawd, just wish they'd make a new version of EQ1 gameplay. So many of us know this and this is part of what WoW built on in the beginning to steal the air out of EQ2's sails. I think if SOE would have just stuck with what made EQ1 great in the beginning and not make the graphics engine take something short of a cray computer upon release, SOE would still be a top contender throwing blows with WoW.