Widem

Just some random things that need clarified.

Making encounters easy for begining content, like t1-4, does not promote poor playing. It promotes learning the game. As to learn how to use their abilities better so they will come into it once they start fighting stuff that takes a little more attention.

retard can actually be used as a noun.

PUGs will have adept 3 spells by the 2nd month of the expansion. Rares have been made a joke to ensure that. As far as a group in full mastercrafted including the tank SOE has made the return curve sharp enough that no, its really not that difficult.

Heroic content should not have some elaborate ability set up. This shit is made for a group of one and for people that in general arent necessarily the best suited in experience or play ability to take on complicated scenerios.

So they are only combining spells that are redundant and pointless... if you cast them, on anyone, ever they are not pointless and you wanna talk about redundancy. casting the same 20 spells or casting the same 10? which one do you think is more redundant. Also last i checked most people have more than three spells/CAs.

Why do u need more time to look at whats going on? If people are doing it fine now why should it be change? you already get a half a second of recovery time...you need more? do you need 3 or 4 seconds to decide what to do next? what should it be?

"Giving people a second to think isn't necessarily bad... also, again, it was just a theory as I said. Having a half-second inbetween abilities because they removed two instead of casting literally every second really doesn't change effort at all, I can hit stuff right as it comes up without even watching my hotbars (even longer recasts like Lifeburn on 5min I can guess within about 15-20sec of when it'll come up). You'd still have to multitask, but iff (two Fs intentional, look it up) SoE made it so there was something you had to watch other than your hotbars, which, GOING BY THE CURRENT EOF CONTENT such as Unrest, DFC, and the current contested which you've listed that also SUPPORT what I was using my examples for, seems like they MIGHT do, as a THEORY that I was giving."

there is no way you can possibly convince one person that casting less does not constitute less effort.

these two statements in the same paragraph pretty much make no sense:
"I can hit stuff right as it comes up without even watching my hotbars"

"but iff (two Fs intentional, look it up) SoE made it so there was something you had to watch other than your hotbars"

you are basing your estimate of difficulty on only what you have experienced. Unrest, DFC(which to be honest i had no idea was EoF content) were not desinged to just beat the shit outa people. They were designed for a moderately geared, skilled and comprised group to have less than stressful but not overly easy run through a zone. Thats exactly what it is. As far as contested or raid mobs im assuming you have very little experience with multifaceted encounters and this is what you are seeking. The only way you are going to see these encounters is by doing upper tier content.

Slippery

What kind of time table was being looked at for this? I honest cannot see it happening before RoK. Not only is there the work of actually trying to figure out what should be combined and what shouldn't, there is the work of actually trying to balance out those abilities. There is all the recipes that have to be changed, recipes that have to be taken out, spells that have to be taken out of loot tables. On top of all that you have to figure out what the fuck you are going to do with AA's when you start taking away spells and abilities that the AA lines where balanced around. When every single spell I can cast has an aa choice and you go to merge those spells what am I supposed to do? What is the purpose of having any choice at all if I lose 1/3 of my spells, the 50 aa's aren't going to have much choice of where they actually go. Then comes the fact that you have to rebalance every fucking mob in the game because suddenly they get debuffed a hell of a lot faster for a lot more and become a lot easier. The fact that death doesn't hurt because when you get revived you can buff that much faster.

The more and more I think about it the more and more I find wrong with this, and the more I have to wonder if anyone has actually sat down and tried to grasp how much work this actually is. By merging spells you might as well scrap this game and start from scratch, because that is basically what is happening. The game has to be completely rebalanced after and we are going to spend the next year suffering through those rebalancings. If any of my spells as a Wizard get merged it completely changes the balance of the class unless you start nerfing the spell damage, but when you start nerfing the spells damage you just fuck the top end Wizards who have all the items to increase casting speed because then I have less spells to cast but they do the same damage as the ones I was casting before, until I run out of spells to cast and sit there with dead time and nothing to do. But if you don't nerf the damage on the spells than suddenly you increased every wizards dps. I'm looking forward to spending a year getting all the classes rebalanced again and again... Not...

Malachani

Merging illusionist damage spells will be difficult, as every one has some special added benefit, plus it will make perpetuality almost impossible to keep up unless refreshes are short. I don't want my buffs merged, there are times I use each one and times I don't. I usually forfeit my int and power/resist buffs for more single-target buffage, sometimes I opt for more int, sometimes I choose the resists, sometimes both, etc. I especially fear tagging all 3 of my group buffs into one group buff, and making it cost concentration. It will make it a mandatory buff (cuz who doesn't want that regen?!) and will remove one more single target buff I can cast.

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Stinkfinger

no i did not play vanguard,,,long travel times, corpse runs and no instant zones, lost my interest.

someone that plays vanguard was complaining about button smashing in eq2....so I guess not all vanguard players share your point of view, maybe it depends on the class there?

anyway, that does not change the basic facts "button spamming does not equal a more complex game

Ladred

Don't forget that EQ2 has something no other game has, at least none that I can think of at the moment. The ability to cue up your next ability. How many here have actually turned this feature off?

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Sakua

If "button mashing" is what you do now, you suck.

LFG

Then I suck.

But my guild doesn't, and we kill shit.

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Ladred

I think the 'button mashing' comes down to this, at least for curing...

As previously stated, if you pay attention to what is going on, you don't need to button mash. Just learn the encounters and cure the things needed.

Now, with that said, without actually learning the encounters you can still get the same results from spamming the cures.

So really its about laziness I think. If you see negative effects pop up on the MT do you

1) Mouse over the ability to see what the affect is so you can better understand the need to counter the affliction.

or

2) Go ahead and punch that cure button as fast as possible and look at ACT later on so you have a better outlook on what to do next time.

I think most people are going to go ahead and do 2, except that they won't look it up to learn the encounter, they'll just keep hitting the cure buttons, because they cure, not even considering that they might not actually need to be cured asap.

The players that look up and research what is going on, and the players that just go ahead and cure crap, button mashing all the way, aren't that different. They still get from point a to point b. Its just that the knowledgeable one doesn't see it as button spamming, and the lazy one does.

I'd like to see some afflictions that actually have a small positive affect and a large negative affect. So to say, if you blindly cure it, then you're actually doing a 'bad' thing. Instead of removing the ability to be lazy by blindly button mashing, force people to use their noggins to gain the upper hand. As it is, there is no reason to 'not' button smash cures, at least that I can personally see.

(disclaimer: not a metric fukload of raid experience behind my statements so take it with a grain of salt on an open wound)

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Odinn

So, now instead of hitting three (or however many) spells and waiting for it to refresh, you will hit one and wait for it to refresh. /watch tv

It gives you less choices for abilities to use, so yes...it does equal a simpler game. Do I cure Trauma or Noxious first? Do I debuff Str or DPS first? Should I use a small attack first, or go in with one big one?

Instead of spamming, you will now be waiting...

Sakua

Guess so!

I don't know about you, but what I cast and when actually has an impact on my performance and the mindlessness implied by "button mashing" does not apply. I only play a couple classes so I guess I can't speak for everyone, but I honestly do not see how "button mashing" could equal effective game play. It may be easy, but its not mindless and its BS to imply that it is.