The Magician's Tower

I have read all the AA suggestions for Underfoot and that got me thinking. I battle game mechanics/flaws more then anything that new AA could fix. If you have played EQ a long time you might just be "used to it" but I can't tell you how many times I see the mob right in from of me (like 10 feet away) and my pet is hitting it and I can't hit the mob with any DD spells because: "You can't see your target" . There might be a chair in the way or I'm standing on uneven ground or the mob is backed up into a wall and partially in the wall or it's standing in some water.

My pet still gets lost on the way to a fight (yes /pet follow is on). I really hate to pull a mob only to find my pet is wandering somewhere else stuck on some terrain somewhere and now that I have aggro. I can't summon my pet to me since I got this hitting me now. It's just dumb. I have to use Servant a full mana cost just so I can back up and summon pet. This happened as recently as an outdoor zone Old Commonlands. You can't even see where pet is stuck since they don't show up on the map they just are not where you are. I usually don't even ride my fast horse anymore since pet can't keep up and I hate having to mem. velocity all the time so that pet keeps up, so I just Run5 everywhere so that pet is available to protect me. Our pets are very important and no other class has this problem where a main ability just isn't available from time to time. So maybe a need an AA that tells me my pet is out of range of me and spams me with pet tells? <shrug>

I have to fix my pet assist button all the time and it's much worse if pet dies in a fight. /assist jebober works until the pet dies then I have to remember to fix the pet assist button or I won't be on the right target. I ended up making a next target hotkey but that's still slow when you have 4 mobs hitting your pet and room full of other targets that next target will target. You have to quickly use F8 to get nearest target (might be the one your pet is hitting) and then use next target, next target to get the one your pet is hitting (if you can tell by the mobs health bar). Why can't the assist key be /assist pet and that's it? Why do I have to keep changing the name <groan>

Why do slot 3 and 13 Augs have be destroyed? I shouldn't add any of the slot 3 or 13 Augs to my current Tier 3 armor because I just got Void E and I am one step away from an upgrade already. Those Slot 13 purity Augs would come in handy to help my powersources to be more effective and yet I can't justify to equip them until I at least put armor on I will have for a bit. I broke down and equipped 2 slot 3 augs to increase Bolt and Fickle damage but geez at 12k a shot that's going to hurt to re-equip them on the upgrade armor. Why the restriction on that? Should I even mention the slot 15 chest Emblem Aug with the same problem or is that just too much to ask? <sigh>

How long does a Fellowship camp last? Is it a set duration, or longer if people are standing near it. Firstly: I love the fellowship camp but I hate when it goes poof and then a member of the fellowship clicks to join and you get the message "You don't have a Fellowship camp" and now you have to wait 15mins before you can retry. Those Fellowhship camps just poof when they want to and sometimes I don't notice it. Can anything be done about that?

EQ is still the most compelling game I have ever played and I don't play anything else but I sure would like to see some Vet rewards that truly reward a Vet that has been playing and paying for the game for 10 years+. There just has to be a vet reward idea that takes some of the drudgery out of playing. Take travel for instance. It's still a pain to remember how to get to all the places in EQ still to this day. I am still bound in PoK because that is the hub of going places and yet you still need to know when to use the Magus or a stone in PoK or even the Guild Hall to go places and how they are all connected. I have a great memory but I have to use Alla all the time to see zone connections. Why not a vet AA to at least get me to PoK anytime? The closest vet AA is a gate to the Great Hall once every hour and half. I leveled up a DRU just for travel but it's still a hassle since surprisingly the DRU can't port to anything in SoD where I have been hunting.

I guess your glass is 1/2 empty.

I agree with the "can't see target" gripe, particularly when it's just due to uneven ground, but the traveling complaint? Really? If you've played for 10 years, surely you remember when you just had to memorize every zone (no maps) and could only get somewhere quickly via wizard or druid port. I've spent my fair share of time waiting on boats, running all the way across antonica (oh karanas, I hate you so), and waiting 15 minutes on luclin spires which were a great time saver. I remember having my sense heading and pet kill buttons set to the same thing so I could train that skill up. Never mind the lack of compass.

When it comes to travel (and, for that matter, death) we have it SOOO much easier now than we used to, I find it hard to believe anyone can complain about it now. Yes, it was a time sink, but in its own way it was also fun. You had to learn your way around instead of playing the "move the arrow through the maze" mini game. Now you have to travel through a max of 5 zones to get anywhere. Oh noes.

And then there's that cursed med book. I would sit there and switch my spells around just to give me something to do while I medded. I was thrilled when I hit 35 and it went away, though I must say I think I had made an art of controlling my pet while reading using nothing but text and hotkeys.

Unlimited invis, 10 spell slots, configurable UI, saved spell sets, out of combat regen, travel via PoK, Nexus, and Guild Hall, saved tradeskill recipes.... There are lots of small issues with the mechanics of the game still, but really, things have gotten so much better of the past 10 years, I think you should try to keep things in perspective.

Kshipper wrote:My pet still gets lost on the way to a fight (yes /pet follow is on). I really hate to pull a mob only to find my pet is wandering somewhere else stuck on some terrain somewhere and now that I have aggro. I can't summon my pet to me since I got this hitting me now. It's just dumb. I have to use Servant a full mana cost just so I can back up and summon pet. This happened as recently as an outdoor zone Old Commonlands. You can't even see where pet is stuck since they don't show up on the map they just are not where you are. I usually don't even ride my fast horse anymore since pet can't keep up and I hate having to mem. velocity all the time so that pet keeps up, so I just Run5 everywhere so that pet is available to protect me. Our pets are very important and no other class has this problem where a main ability just isn't available from time to time. So maybe a need an AA that tells me my pet is out of range of me and spams me with pet tells? <shrug>

Easiest fix for this is to buy the summon companion aa and use it before each and every pull. If you have agro you can still get the pet to you with this aa as long as the pet doesnt have agro on something else.

Kshipper wrote:I have to fix my pet assist button all the time and it's much worse if pet dies in a fight. /assist jebober works until the pet dies then I have to remember to fix the pet assist button or I won't be on the right target. I ended up making a next target hotkey but that's still slow when you have 4 mobs hitting your pet and room full of other targets that next target will target. You have to quickly use F8 to get nearest target (might be the one your pet is hitting) and then use next target, next target to get the one your pet is hitting (if you can tell by the mobs health bar). Why can't the assist key be /assist pet and that's it? Why do I have to keep changing the name <groan>

Over the years you may have gotten quite used to having a pet assist button, however recently the new pet window was updated so that you can click on the target shown on the pet window to target it.

Kshipper wrote:I have read all the AA suggestions for Underfoot and that got me thinking. I battle game mechanics/flaws more then anything that new AA could fix. If you have played EQ a long time you might just be "used to it" but I can't tell you how many times I see the mob right in from of me (like 10 feet away) and my pet is hitting it and I can't hit the mob with any DD spells because: "You can't see your target" . There might be a chair in the way or I'm standing on uneven ground or the mob is backed up into a wall and partially in the wall or it's standing in some water.

The aa Companion's relocation can assist in this use it to move the mob to a location where you have a working line of sight, or just have your pet move closer to you. For that matter it is usually only a step or two in the right direction to fix this issue.
All this being said please take this as creative critism, i'm not tring to irritate you, only offering suggestions you might try.

I don't think of your comments as criticism, but more as opinion. That's what I was hoping for: some lively discussion on the issues that I think could use some fixing ( I thought Danille's comment was certainly lacking and I was surprised by it's brevity. The assist key is way quicker for me then grabbing my mouse and trying to click on a button in the pet window when my screen is filled with particles and graphics. I have a devil of a time seeing my cursor in a heavy fight. I still think my suggestion of allowing /pet assist would be certainly within game balance. No way I want to summon companion before each pull. That's a hassle. When I walk into a new area sometimes the pulls are auto pull (you know...see invis) my pet should be near me. I shouldn't have to use Servant, then Summon Companion. I'm fighting bad pathing problems that are coming from within the game and there has to be a way to fix it eh? As for the "Can't see my target" maybe I will give the relocate companion a try. I never bought the ability but maybe that is what it was intended for (ouch - my 4 hotkey bars are really getting crowded). I have trouble "seeing" mob laying in the barracks in Kurns Tower but they certainly have no trouble seeing me! It's really annoying.

you can assist your pet without having to use pet name, make a hotkey like this:

/pet target
/pause 2
/assist

And presto now you have your pet's target.

I can understand some of your issues and most of us have dealt with it.

The game mechanics are so much better today then they were when I started my paladin in March 2000.

My pet still gets lost on the way to a fight (yes /pet follow is on). I really hate to pull a mob only to find my pet is wandering somewhere else stuck on some terrain somewhere and now that I have aggro.

Have to get in the habit of making sure your pet is with you. Suspend your pet when you travel and then un-suspend when you get to your destination. If you are worried about not having your pet out and ready when you travel, get your Companion of Necessity AA. Get the gate AA. Use a merc to deter the damage while you get away. I have just gotten used to making sure I have fluffy right behind me.

I have to fix my pet assist button all the time and it's much worse if pet dies in a fight.

Use F1 to select your pet. You may have to hit it twice to get the pet targeted. The hit a standard /assist hotkey. Use the mob health bar in pet status window?

Campfires last just over an hour in my experience. If the fellowship poofed then it was up over an hour and you should not have any issue setting another one. I use campfires daily and never have an issue. They have to fade after a bit or you would have global warming in EQ! jk

takes some of the drudgery out of playing

If any game seems like drudgery, then maybe time to move on.

Travel around EQ is easy. I can be in any zone in typically less then 10 minutes. You don't need maps. Use the interactive map in the game. Use the atlas portion to select the zone you want, once you click into the local area map you can see what the connecting zones are.

Msha wrote:you can assist your pet without having to use pet name, make a hotkey like this:

/pet target
/pause 2
/assist

And presto now you have your pet's target.

Dadani already mentioned it but I didn't want to quote and then have to cut a lot of stuff out.

Yeah, just F1 F1 and then use a generic /assist key. I've been doing that so long it is second nature.

Don't need a "pet assist" with that - it's just a generic assist key. Sometimes I'll NPC cycle and /assist to watch who Rancorous is beating on and /pet attack and reposition pet to that guy's backside. Then the MOB has to decide which guy he wants pounding on his back. I do that quite a bit actually - a revenge kind of thing. This question has come up a few times in the last 6 months, and I had never seen it before. Wonder why.

On the "can't see target" I agree that is pretty annoying. I get it rarely enough that I can usually reposition the MOB or myself for proper nuking so there isn't a pebble in front of my feet but I would prefer a from-centroid LOS. Or at least knees. I can understand eyes so you don't go peeking over hills and nuking stuff.

On the rant side I miss my Bolt's Seeking behavior. It's just a delayed DD now. They either entirely removed a bunch of nifty ballistics equations or set a bunch of coefficients to zero. If they did the latter we could get it back easily enough. If they removed them they probably couldn't figure out how to do it. Why did they change it. Exploits? Or Power VS LOS argument (which is moot now anyway). A throw-our-hands-in-the-air-to-resolve-buggy-behavior-after-tuning-badly-four-times Argument? I don't know. But I want my Seeking Bolt. And my graphic. For Flare of course. It had a Purpose. I'm Erudite and cannot see .... ... .. .

Bara

Allthough I can understand much of your anger, for me, it's really fun to bend the rules, to make the game mechanics work for me. Using line of sight and social behaviour to pull some mobs or to back myself somewhere against a wall and let the beam roll, thereby ignoring much of the LOS-issues. Nuking a mob on a ledge on the opposite wall just to get summoned to a nice stairway I normally would habe spent half an hour to reach. Using the pathing of some mobs to their own demise. Sure, there is a lot of freaky nonsense in EQ-code, but sometimes you'll just have to sit down and laugh about it. Keeps the spirit up
Everquest means Neverrest

"You can't see your target" .

Learn to strafe. Easily done these days since you can set it to 1 key now.

My pet still gets lost on the way to a fight (yes /pet follow is on).

Train CoN and use that if you don't want to use RmS. Or, use your hulking bodyguard. I haven't found any normal mobs it hasn't been able to root yet. I keep mine up most of the time.

I have to fix my pet assist button all the time and it's much worse if pet dies in a fight.

Like others have said, just click your pet's target in the pet window. Typically, I just have a general /assist and simply hit F1 twice, then assist

Why do slot 3 and 13 Augs have be destroyed?
This I can partially agree with. These were put in as part of the pp sink. 12K isn't much these days though. I can make 12K in a couple of hours solo. Alts and converting cores is what is kicking my bank account.

How long does a Fellowship camp last?

Dunno, don't use the thing. Never have.

Traveling is way too easy in EQ these days. No one should ever complain about traveling. In literally 5 mins you can be anywhere in the land of Norrath.