Rangers

First I'll just acknowledge I was wrong about my EQ2 expansion prediction. Anyone who plays knows that the 'ice' stuff was a prelude to Halas becoming a new starting city.

So on to my topic. Rangers. I give very little qurter in debates about rangers because I have been playing ranger archetypes in MMO's since shortly after EverQuest 1's release. Almost exclusively, definitely over 90% of the time.

So with my knowledge I can tell you, rangers in EverQuest 2 are some of the worst treated in the MMOVerse. They get little to no utility, no tanking ability, and aren't capable of putting out numbers as high as the other top DPS'ing classes. With Aeralik gone, and thus a severe bias to Assassins, I think this problem will start to go away. He had clear intentions of making assassins THE best DPS class in the entire game by quite a far margin. So not only did other classes in general have a chance, their good counterpart, rangers, were almost bastardized as a result. Apparently since they could wear 'chain' and DPS at range like a cloth wearer their DPS was to suffer. Problem is wearing chain over cloth means very little in groups and almost nothing in raids, and they couldn't reach anywhere near their full DPS potential staying at range. As a matter of fact their signature weapon as of late requires them to be in MELEE range to get the most DPS out of them. So the whole 'DPS at range with chain' argument is shot down from several pieces of evidence.

Here's hoping the next expansion pack, Aeralik free, will mean promise for rangers. What is going to be really messed up to see is assassin's go down a bit but probably stay a bit overpowered, and assassin players will still whine.

Everquest 2 2009 Expansion

I am fairly confident the expansion for EverQuest 2 will be based in, around or about Velious from EverQuest 1. What has led me to this conclusion? Two key elements that are exclusive to the concept of Velious in the EverQuest universe.

Recent EverQuest 2 Lore

Elements put in this lore leading up to a game update for some new content in the middle of the year (and historically major clues to the next expansion) are exclusive to Velious. Elements mentioned are:

• Giants with skin of blue tint (ice giants)
• White almost clear weapons (weapons made of velium, found in velious)
• Ice based monsters used to attack
• A large two story boat either made of or covered in ice

And what I consider a major give away but not in the lore, is the newly available Kromise ice giant illusion available though the legends of norrath trading card game.

Guitar Hero Drums < Rock Band Drums

So I got GH: Metallica and played it for a bit and liked it. All kinds of cool Metallica songs to rock out too. Couldn't help feel 'robbed' of a better experience using RB drums since it uses 1 less button for drums than GH. So I decided to pick up some official GH drums. Oh neat! They kind of look like real drums..if it was a small kit. Little cymbals on the top with adjustable heights, awesome! Yay extra button maybe get some more replay value since I never used them before. Get to learn how to better use them and stuff.

Yes, all this would be great if the GOD DAMN DRUMS PICKED UP ON EVERY HIT! Holy shit! I could beat the fucking shit out of a drum and it STILL wouldn't pick up on every hit. Support site says if hitting hard, hit softer, if hitting soft hit harder. Tried both, both equally useless. Could be hitting one drum once every 3 seconds and it would still randomly just not pick up on it, this goes for all the drums. It's especially with the 'oh so awesome' cymbals. I think Yahtzee put it best when he described them as 'dopey inbred twins who's names you need to shout three times before they even realize your talking to them' he is not exaggerating. I could swing the stick so hard that it makes an audible 'swoosh' sound and it would refuse to count it as a hit. Also like to add the foot pedal for guitar hero feels like shit compared to the rock band one. When I tap my foot to a beat in a waiting room my foot makes a bigger arc than this thing allows.

But Dionysus187 you idiot, they know its a problem and provide a cord to tune to the drums to be more sensitive! Why don't you know what the fuck your talking about before you shit on something?!

NO! WRONG! WRONG! ALREADY TRIED THAT! WRONG! SHUDDUP!

First I try and get this cord only to find I need 3 forms of ID and a urine sample before they send it to me for free so I said 'fuck it' and paid $10 for one on amazon. So get this cord (btw the person who sold it to me also sent me a free LED light keychain which I have gotten more amusement out of than these fucking GH drums.) and go into the process of 'tuning' the drums. Apparently the drums default level is 10 and can go to 20. So I crank stuff up to 20. This leads to drums I am NOT hitting randomly going off. So I have to individually tweak every drum 1 level at a time, one drum at a time. So this takes about 20-30 minutes of me beating the shit out of every drum one by one making sure hitting it doesn't cause others to go off. The levels I settled on ranged wildly from 20 to 12. Notice how none of them worked properly at the default 10 for me, adding to the list of dumb shit Neversoft did with these drums.

Finally! The drums work properly. NOPE! Even the drum I had at 20 would randomly NOT pick up on hits. Fucking wonderful. So I decided to finally do a little control test. I play 'Nothing else matters' on Expert which is one of the easier songs on the game. First with GH drums and got 92%, then with RB drums and got 99%. I got 92% with the GH drums because it randomly fucked up and screwed up the multiplier several times. I got 99% with RB drums because I honestly just fucked up and missed 3 notes. I am going to pack these drums up and try to sell them if I can and decide if I should get the new RB2 drums that have expansion slots for additional drums.

In conclusion this whole thing just solidifies the fact for me that the people who worked on Rock Band 1 and 2 are musicians in actual bands (some songs of which are in the rock band games) and the people who worked on guiter hero world tour and onward are the same guys who made 9 renditions of 'tony hawk pro skater'

Making Sense

This is pretty far removed from being just video games. Its more like language comprehension.

If someone says something does not make sense, it doesn't. Not because they know everything or they are lord over all creation but simply because it does not make sense TO THEM. Something is only as clear and concise in direct proportion to how many people understand it. Nothing is absolutely clear even if just one person out of millions doesn't understand. One person, just one is the difference between something being clear or making sense to being unclear or not making sense, ONE.

When someone says something is unclear or doesn't make sense and the only counter argument provided by the other person is 'yes it is clear' or 'yes it does make sense' this other person is a fucking idiot. I could see normal people doing this but anyone in a position where part of what they do is to provide information be it a manager at a shitty fast food restaurant or a professor at a college simply saying 'your wrong yes it does' is un-fucking-acceptable. It is lazy and only makes me think you lack the comprehension of what your actually saying to explain it further or in more detail.

If someone says something you have pointed out doesn't make sense, you have failed miserably at explaining something to your target audience, and should reconsider your position in a field where you would have to explain shit.

Critigation

SO while talking about the new EQ2 expansion me and my friends accidently created a new term by slip of the tongue. Critigation Critigation is a term for 'critical mitigation' which is a new mechanic they are putting into EQ2. I have made it my new goal to make this term popular but first 'squatting' on various popular spots to make sure its origination is clear. One: by making lots of links out of the word pointing to my EQ2 guild who came up with it. Two: by making an entry into urbandictionary.com. Third is a little less specific, I've just started registering names called 'critigation' on various community sites like myspace.

Facetious - the new cop out

fa·ce·tious
1. not meant to be taken seriously or literally: a facetious remark.
2. amusing; humorous.
3. lacking serious intent; concerned with something nonessential, amusing, or frivolous: a facetious person.


I've been seeing this word used way too much lately. Bascially a new form of 'joking around' but removes the requirement that it had to be funny in the first place. So anytime you say something stupid/wrong/not funny and someone responds to it, the guy can act like your the asshole. "uhh duh I was being facetious." So I've started telling people off who use this word, then I throw it back in their face. "Hey fuck you and I really wish you died in 9/11" "hey man thats not cool" "haha dumbass I was being facetious, lol what a moron."

The problem is the concept has no 'tell' ,like being sarcastic or telling a joke. Being facetious and being serious literally have no difference in the way their being told. Two people could tell you they own a red car the exact same way, and one could be 'facetious' while the other is serious. I guess it could also be a form of getting away with lying too. "hey you said you would pay me back that money today, thats why I paid for dinner." "duh I was being facetious."

So I am going to kill everyone that is facetious, and if your gonna call the cops because I said that, I was being facetious.

The Fan, Shit is Hitting It

I try to be general in what MMO's I talk about, but I gotta talk about this. Its EQ2 related so if you don't care about EQ2 just skip this I guess.

Rangers on EQ2 have been getting screwed for quite a while. It came to a peak though with Rise of Kunark. This is because Rise of Kunark was an expansion with new levels. Meaning everyone got new armor and weapons as they leveled up. Sadly rangers did not. Some equipment was better, but most lacked benefits to ranged weapons. The biggest thing was, we didn't get any better ranged weapons. We are essentially still using level 70 bows, and doing level 70 damage BTW, at level 80.

So rangers rallied, complained, and quite a few gathered up tons of useful data for the devs to use. It is literally quantifiable by the players to show how unbalanced and lacking we are. The devs seem to like ignoring this, or flat out saying its quite the opposite, that we are just fine, despite the hundreds of angry rangers who all agree rangers don't do enough DPS for a class that can do ONLY DPS. Rangers are good only classes, our evil counterpart CRUSH rangers on most parse's especially on raids.

And Raid DPS is what this is about mostly. Rangers do fine solo and Group, quite balanced actually, but rangers get slaughtered on raids. Classes that can tank, heal, WHILE doing DPS have the capacity to out damage rangers with rangers using some of the best equipment available. Even rangers say a raid leader would be foolish to take along a ranger rather than ANY OTHER CLASS.

So it was finally too much, the devs couldn't keep a lid on it. So they announced that in game update 44 they will be fixing arrow mechanics. In a nutshell broken arrow mechanics is why a level 70 bow is better than level 80 bows. So for a time rangers cheered! Rangers will use appropriate arrows and bows and do as much damage as they should! This only lasted until the patch hit the test server.

On the test server is was found:
A. The bow we have been using has been severely nerfed
B. ALL bow damage was REDUCED

The patch basically did the EXACT OPPOSITE of what the rangers wanted. It lowered Ranger DPS instead of raising it.

This really lit up the forums. The scout Dev was barely getting posts in, getting trampled in what seems like a post ratio of 100:1 with the dev on the losing side. He CONTINUES to say rangers are fine, that the ranger DPS is fine while every ranger who bothers to write about it DISAGREES COMPLETELY. Both this dev and the moderator just couldn't keep up, the ranger anger even spilled into other class forums. So today one of the associate producers even stepped in and started replying, not directly about it of course, but hopefully this means the piece of shit scout dev is getting reamed/fired or at the very least someone else is looking at this travesty.

So spread the word, EQ2 rangers are fucking broken. Rangers need to do more DPS to keep up with their counterparts and fill their role as a raider. I've seen several rangers who have already canceled their accounts and dozens more promising to do so if this crap is pushed and rangers aren't properly fixed. So how many does that translate to in a game of thousands?