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 And another one.
First off let me start by saying:
The game world is *Gorgeous*, the spell effects are *Amazing* and the audio is *Kick - Arse*
That being said, I've been fairly disappointed with the gameplay. There is no guesswork or strategy-making any more. If you have the right classes and the right raw numbers, you win the encounter. If you don't, you don't.
EQ2 removes the option for:
Splitting an encounter, Breaking a room, Root rotting, Pet Tanking, Feign death splitting, Lulling, or anything else that isn't the single approach that the encounter was designed to handle.
If you want to do anything besides kill the rare 1 out of 10 solo bug, armadillo, lion or rat sneak then you must have a group.
Once you have that group, the encounters are completely straightforward. Pull group of mobs, hit hotkey #1 six times, switch target, rinse, repeat. If you had the correct balance of Enchanter, Cleric and Tank, then you win the encounter (and unless someone goes linkdead or spontaneously stupid; You always win that encounter) If you didn't have that balance, it's back to the entrance to wait and try to find someone LFG.
There is no room for exceptionally skilled players any longer, which makes the entire process very boring. Some of you may say, "Wait! an Enchanter must be skilled in order to correctly Mez the incoming mobs and a Cleric must be skilled in order to choose the right time to heal, while a Tank must be skilled to errr.. pull correctly"
Individual class actions seem to have been balanced fairly well, with the exception of pet classes who are still broken.
It's the encounters themselves and the progression throughout the dungeon that is way too linear. If you weren't raiding in EQ then one of the most fun things about the game was trying to push the limits.
I really had fun trying to kill Venril Sathir with just me and my druid friend.
I had a great time sneaking my way solo into Sol A so I could try to seperate the Goblin Bartender from his friends in the hope of getting myself some Drake hide leggings.
I spent a full week trying to get a circlet of shadows from a goblin bodyguard in Droga (pre-patch) with just my real life low-level friend helping me out.
In EQ2, if an encounter was designed for a Tank, an Enchanter, a Healer and a couple of Random classes, then you will need a Tank, an Enchanter, a Healer and a couple of random classes to win (unless you possibly trade out that enchanter for another tank and another healer)
You will hit hotkey #1 six times and you will rinse and repeat.
You simply do not have the option of approaching combat from any other angle. You can't send in a pet and let it die while your group fights off the remaing four mobs. You can't have a monk bring half the room and then feign death, allowing your 2 or 3 person group to have a chance at breaking the room. You can't have your pally paci a group of 3 mobs so you can kill the remaing 3 mobs. Nope, all 6 mobs come or none do. You can keep some mobs mezzed for a bit, but you must have all six mobs killed within a short period of time or you lose the encounter and you're dead.
My problem isn't with the idea that it's so much *harder* to do these things in this game, My problem is with the fact that you simply *Can't* do these things in this game. You are not given the option. You are only given the option of defeating the encounter in exactly the way that Sony wants you to. Some of you may write back and say "But I've done this room in this dungeon with only one other group member at this time during the day" Well, great, now you've got nearly every other two man group heading for that room at that point of the day, but it's still the HUGE exception to the rule.
The game feels much less like an Social RPG at this point and much more like a console game like Devil May Cry:
To defeat the giant spider, you must dodge left, hit the up button, back up, hit left, left, trigger, Up, down - repeat till dead.
The dungeons I have been in so far are so linear that you are basically just screwed if there's already a group ahead of you.
Enough complaining, do I have any suggestions? Sure do!
1. First and Foremost, make huge linked encounters much more rare and located mostly near named or the bottom of the dungeon. There's no reason you can't make a room or situation very difficult without making it impossible for small groups. Use more social aggro so single mobs or small groups of mobs can aggro when any pulled, but can also be avoided using the right strategy.
2. Make more small instanced zones for people who simply don't have the time or patience to try and form full, balanced groups. These zones shouldn't have nearly as good experience or loot as the non instanced, social dungeons but should still be worthwhile. **(Anarchy online did this really well, was both immersive and balanced)** I sat for an hour and half outside of Fallen Gate the other day, finally received an invite for a group: wiped on our first 4 pull, gained huge shared debt and then the group split up... I was stuck back out at entrance. There should be an alternative and please don't say quests... the quests really don't do much at all past level 10 if you can do them solo.
3. Lower the frequency of 3+ grouped mobs in outdoor "trash" areas. There's no reason you should have to get a group of 4+ together to beat up on cows in the commonlands. Solo mobs exist now, but at the 10-19 level they are much, much more rare than the grouped encounters. The solo mobs also give very little experience with makes the process frustrating and worthless.
4. Add more versatility to the classes. Right now all the classes seem to be graded *completely* on Damage capabilities or Healing capabilites. 'cept possibly the enchanter - Woot!
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