EQ Next: #1 Next gen MMO

zero_name · Mar 31, 2017

What this all boils down to is people leading EQN were shit and the game was destined to be shit even if it managed to get a shitty release date. It would have been a disastrous failure with a forced launch because it would have never actually been ready.

Flipmode · Mar 31, 2017

Jarek said:
I'm glad other people saw this too. EQN was a clusterfuck from the very first EQLive reveal.

Only 4 skills, and 4 "weapon based skills" available at any given time? Like the 4 buttons on a controller?

Can't eaily target or direct heal other players, and the combat is action based and jumping around? Like made for a controller instead of kb/mouse?

No support classes, everyone is on their own in terms of survival? With auto-climb objects and auto-parkour movement, easy to use with a joystick, not too much clicking needed to navigate?

This was a fucking console game. It was a fucking console game and they tried to pawn that shit off as the next EQ. What a complete and utter mess.

Slow your roll their console hater. EQOA worked just fine with a controller. Sure you don't have all the flexibility of a PC keyboard/mouse combo, but really any game designed for 5 hot bars full of skills has failed already.

Jarek · Mar 31, 2017

Flipmode said:
Slow your roll their console hater. EQOA worked just fine with a controller. Sure you don't have all the flexibility of a PC keyboard/mouse combo, but really any game designed for 5 hot bars full of skills has failed already.

Ok, so maybe I went hyperbolic there I admit.

I don't hate consoles per se, but taking the original Classic MMO and turning into a console friendly action RPG for the PC is a bit much. EQOA was fine for what it was, but if they'd called that EQ2 and launched it on PC there'd have been problems.

Anyway I'm still salty about that reveal fiasco I guess. I started feeling skeptical about 20 minutes into the finger painting so yeah, shoulda known.

Mughal · Apr 2, 2017

Jarek said:
This was a fucking console game. It was a fucking console game and they tried to pawn that shit off as the next EQ. What a complete and utter mess.

SOE was fighting for its survival as was bleeding cash looking for a buyer. Pleasing Sony Japan was a key issue for the management. The mandate was to design a PC game and consoles were not even mentioned (this was pre PS4 reveal, even tho it was obvious from the action buttons) and the lead designers added some constraints so it would be compatible for all platforms. But let me stress that from the design standpoint we never had a specific request to make it a console game (which again showed the broken process going on inside SOE where different people had competing design goals) and very much it was a team focused on PC gaming.

As a side note when the PS4 was released the console version of DCUO became the main source of profits of that company.

Jarek · Apr 4, 2017

Mughal said:
SOE was fighting for its survival as was bleeding cash looking for a buyer. Pleasing Sony Japan was a key issue for the management. The mandate was to design a PC game and consoles were not even mentioned (this was pre PS4 reveal, even tho it was obvious from the action buttons) and the lead designers added some constraints so it would be compatible for all platforms. But let me stress that from the design standpoint we never had a specific request to make it a console game (which again showed the broken process going on inside SOE where different people had competing design goals) and very much it was a team focused on PC gaming.

As a side note when the PS4 was released the console version of DCUO became the main source of profits of that company.

I don't hold anything against the actual guys doing the day to day work at SOE. I know most of the problems were in management, and communication was a serious issue from other stuff I've heard post-DGB buyout exodus.

Debuting an obviously console friendly action RPG to a crowd of life long, die hard Everquest players was really cringe worthy though. With Trost up there about having a tantrum decrying the evils of his own game with the fans of that very game in the room.

Of course there was never much more shown at all after that so the public considers it vaporware at this point. I personally have no idea if there ever was an actual game at all or if what was shown was merely a demo mock up.

All I know is I never wanted an action-RPG, moba-inspired, console-design-limited Everquest game.

Muligan · Apr 4, 2017

Well... we all know that we wanted this...

Regime · Apr 5, 2017

Cocksuckers

I hate the new FP. Garbage zone cost me the lead in the gnome race. I got a t-shirt tho.

Elidroth · Jun 22, 2017

forehead said:
I wonder which focus group said they wanted parkour in their MMOs.

Oh right, there wasn't one.

The same idiots who thought SOEmote was cool..

Fight · Jun 29, 2017

E Elidroth do you know the backstory behind how the Luclin soundtrack was never put into the game? I don't understand how the team could have gone to such effort to produce 20+ really good tracks that set the entire mood for an expansion and then "forget" to put them in the game? Surely the lead producer/designer on the expansion would say, "Umm guys, where is the soundtrack that I paid for?" I just cannot comprehend any of it.

Jysin · Jun 29, 2017

Not to mention, it could have been patched in at any time.

pharmakos · Jun 29, 2017

Jysin said:
Not to mention, it could have been patched in at any time.

but that would have meant admitting making a mistake, which SOE refused to do at the time.

Melvin · Jul 1, 2017

Fight said:
Surely the lead producer/designer on the expansion would say, "Umm guys, where is the soundtrack that I paid for?"

I think it's worth considering the possibility that virtually nobody at SOE who was in a position to notice the missing soundtrack actually played EQ on the live servers. That could explain a lot of things. Also what pharmakos said.

Elidroth · Jul 3, 2017

Fight said:
E Elidroth do you know the backstory behind how the Luclin soundtrack was never put into the game? I don't understand how the team could have gone to such effort to produce 20+ really good tracks that set the entire mood for an expansion and then "forget" to put them in the game? Surely the lead producer/designer on the expansion would say, "Umm guys, where is the soundtrack that I paid for?" I just cannot comprehend any of it.

Heh.. I don't, but considering a certain Sr Producer once lost all of the art assets for Luclin, it's entirely possible the soundtrack was copied to someone's hard drive and deleted.. We actually found the art stuff a few years ago on a thumb drive. Those days were LONG before EQ or anything at SOE for that matter was running any kind of version control system.

Daidraco · Jul 10, 2017

Although not surprised by what happened, I never played with the sound on anyways. The close combat noises were annoying af after a while.

Fight · Jul 10, 2017

If you played EQ without the music, you really missed out. It was extremely atmospheric and set the tone for so many zones. The original EQ midi-songs and the Planes of Power soundtrack had some of the most immersive music I have ever experienced in a video game.

Kind of like how Harrison Ford openly hated Star Wars, it is pretty sad when you realize the people involved in making something you loved don't give two shits about it. I will never understand that.

This is just one gem out of the 25+ tracks from Luclin they didn't put into the game till 15 years later.

Daidraco · Jul 10, 2017

Fight said:
If you played EQ without the music, you really missed out. It was extremely atmospheric and set the tone for so many zones. The original EQ midi-songs and the Planes of Power soundtrack had some of the most immersive music I have ever experienced in a video game.

Kind of like how Harrison Ford openly hated Star Wars, it is pretty sad when you realize the people involved in making something you loved don't give two shits about it. I will never understand that.

This is just one gem out of the 25+ tracks from Luclin they didn't put into the game till 15 years later.

The music was fine. Well done, quality work. But having the load screen come on at full blast regardless of what volume I put music volume to (which wasnt fixed until after I quit in Luclin), the goblin death noise, the kobold attack noise, the grolvarg attack noise, the sound of me getting hit, all these repetitive ass noises with no flavor.. just wore on me after a while. I just dont see where a melee class would disagree with me. But yes, I agree the music was great. I remember having to reinstall EQ and we went to raid ToV that night and it blew my mind that ToV had music.

Soygen · Jul 10, 2017

Fight said:
If you played EQ without the music, you really missed out. It was extremely atmospheric and set the tone for so many zones. The original EQ midi-songs and the Planes of Power soundtrack had some of the most immersive music I have ever experienced in a video game.

Kind of like how Harrison Ford openly hated Star Wars, it is pretty sad when you realize the people involved in making something you loved don't give two shits about it. I will never understand that.

This is just one gem out of the 25+ tracks from Luclin they didn't put into the game till 15 years later.

I once had the sound on while my brother and I did some pottery exploit in Rivervale. We must've been in there for like 10 hours straight with this track on loop. Felt like fist-fucking Nillipuss by the time we were done!

Kharzette · Jul 11, 2017

There are a lot of problems with the EQ sound. It was actually pretty good at launch, someone had at least properly adjusted distance falloff etc. Then at some point around kunark they totally ruined it. I think they shifted from miles to directsound and just sloppily converted.

I'd love to spend a day with the code and just fix everything.

Even without access to the code though there's stuff you can do. Dig around in the pfs files and find the sounds that you hate and change them. I put in nice thunder and rain sounds I got from soundrangers, and filtered out the clipping on the snow sound and made it a bit quieter. And the coin loot sound I filtered and quieted. That was a real eardrum smasher.

I need to do more. There are some door opening / closing sounds that are just deafening.

That Akheva music is really nice.

Daidraco · Jul 13, 2017

That only makes me curious how much development in games actually comes down to not only skill, but just the free labor from devs games get just because the actual creators have a deep love for the project theyre working on?

Looking at Mods for games like Skyrim and Fallout - how many copies of those games were sold simply based on how fantastic the mods were? How much coverage those mods would get? Everything is connected. I always hear about MMO devs wanting to capture that free labor, but never see anything out of it. Second Life and games like that not included. The community helping to choose how racial cities look and using their ideas was next level imo. Designing swords and weapons is something else thats intriguing. Its easy to look at all the bad that EQ:next was doing, but some of the stuff they had going for them was phenomenal.

pharmakos · Jul 13, 2017

Daidraco said:
That only makes me curious how much development in games actually comes down to not only skill, but just the free labor from devs games get just because the actual creators have a deep love for the project theyre working on?

Looking at Mods for games like Skyrim and Fallout - how many copies of those games were sold simply based on how fantastic the mods were? How much coverage those mods would get? Everything is connected. I always hear about MMO devs wanting to capture that free labor, but never see anything out of it. Second Life and games like that not included. The community helping to choose how racial cities look and using their ideas was next level imo. Designing swords and weapons is something else thats intriguing. Its easy to look at all the bad that EQ:next was doing, but some of the stuff they had going for them was phenomenal.

if you judge every MMO by how sweet things were in the idea stage, then they're all A+ games.

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