Game Mechanics: Interface Features

[Ruhtar]

Originally Posted by Daldaen [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Bumping this post back up as it seems there some hunger for these changes among the developers.

I think a logical next step would be removing the ability to display Mana value in your UI which wasn’t doable until LoY era. You still have your mana bar of course you just can’t see your actual mana value, which most people currently exploit looking at to more easily canni dance or med kite.

Another big one would be the removal of the cycle target hotkey. This makes certain CC roles much easier as a single button allows you to seemlessly cycle through any number of mobs and apply whatever Debuff you are trying to. It also makes powerleveling too easy as you can guarantee you get one hit in on a train of mobs with this button. It would be great if this button could be disabled to emulate a classic experience which was often a struggle trying to target the correct mob quickly.

Why?

[Haynar]

Originally Posted by Daldaen [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Another big one would be the removal of the cycle target hotkey.

Are you spying on me?

I am trying to figure this one out.

H

[shoestring]

What a great list of fixes to relive the truly classic experience. Thank you for all your efforts, amazing work devs!

[Daldaen]

EverQuest is a game of information and a game of actions based on that information.

Classic UIs limited the information you had access to in a single frame.

Only one chat window so if you wanted to see group chat, zonewide chat, and still fight in combat you had to filter out certain pieces of text so that you wouldn’t be spammed out. This reduced incoming information you may have access to for example you may not see someone else getting hit from a mob behind you.

Inability to display a true max and current mana value, or display percentages of bars in your interface window meant you weren’t able to be precise with spell casting when near low on mana. You’d have to eyeball your mana bar and guess when you had meditated enough to cast another spell. Remember when everyone would talk about bubbles of EXP or bubbles of mana. It’s because they couldn’t see the percentages or the raw values and those 20% bubbles were the clearest descriptive device they could use to articulate their current EXP or Mana.

Having no buff timers means you need to be more cautious when entering into big fights or beginning to kite. Nothing is worse than losing an HP buff or a run speed buff mid fight or kite. This leads to rebuffing more frequently, leading to requiring more frequent med breaks, slowing down your gaming experience in general.

Having no pet window limits your access to your pet and your targets HP levels simultaneously. This makes specific high EXP rate solo strategy’s like reverse charming or swarm kiting to be more challenging to pull off, which is a good thing. Some of the highest EXP methods outside of AE groups shouldn’t be easymode.

Inability to scroll from 1st to 3rd person limits your access to visual information. Is something coming up behind me? Are people in the back of my group being attacked? Is there a train coming? Yes you can use various F9 views but many of these are cumbersome and not intended for regular gameplay. For the most part, players used the first person view for almost all of their gameplay from Classic-PoP, switching the F9 rarely mostly in open zones when kiting, or in dungeons when trying to pause and look around corners or into new rooms etc. By being limited in your access to easily expanded views of the game you have less visual information to make the correct choices. If you try to use F9, you spend valuable time cycling between views and panning just right to look at the spot you want to look.

All of this leads us to the second portion of this. With less information available we still have to make actions. Sending pets, moving our characters, targeting mobs, and using hotkeys/spells/attacking mobs.

By being limited to a single hotbar you are forced to choose a total of 10 (6 if classic) hotkeys you want available immediately. Being forced to choose limits the number of clickies, abilities, and macros you have on hand. You can use the Shift # hotkey to cycle between pages of your hotbar to gain access to another 10 hotkeys. But this is another key stroke that slows you down and it adds potential for human error to catch up with you. Perhaps 1 is your CH macro on your Cleric on page 1 but on page 2 that same 1 hotbutton has you open your spellbook. You are forced to be accurate with your keystrokes to perform the correct action at the correct time to respond effectively to the situation in front of you. Having a single hotbutton page will increase player error which results in a more difficult game.

No Combat Ability window is a similar argument. You’re forced to make /discipline defensive macros and put them in your hotbar somewhere. Again you need to put it somewhere you have easy access to but not somewhere you will accidentally click too early. Furthermore it won’t display the progress of the discipline and give you a visual cue when the discipline is at half duration or almost over. Again lack of information and limited action potential makes the game harder.

No Makeleader command makes the formation of CotH chains more difficult in many scenarios where you cannot pop an eyeball to an entrance of a zone.

No Pet Window forces pet classes to dedicate several hotkeys to controlling their pet which limits the additional macros and clickies they have immediate access to. See above hotbutton discussion about why this makes the game harder.

No Cycle Target Hotkey is a huge change that will impact the power of the most overpowered class, Enchanters. One of the reasons they are overpowered on P99 is due to the easy of mezzing multiple mobs in a pile and trivializing areas. Targeting was actually a tedious process in classic, limited to only your mouse, F8 or manually typing out /target XYZ (which doesn’t work well with multiple mobs of similar/same names). This means that locking down packs of multiple mobs with mez or pacifying multiple mobs before breaking s room is a process that takes longer, limits the time you are able to meditate or may prevent you from being able to actually lock things down at all before they go out of control.

In summary, these “QoL changes” as many refer to them, are actually huge gameplay changes that make P99 far too easy compared to the classic experience.

[Sunderfury]

Deleting a bunch of replies that are just complaints. Limit to evidence based discussion in bug forums please, RnF is for complaints.

[Damarous]

Is the intended behavior of disciplines for melees to have to recreate the hotkeys every time you log in, zone, or reload your UI? I feel like this is not classic, as I never recall on live during classic hearing people having to recreate discipline buttons multiple times per raid/encounter.

[nilbog]

Originally Posted by Damarous [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Is the intended behavior of disciplines for melees to have to recreate the hotkeys every time you log in, zone, or reload your UI? I feel like this is not classic, as I never recall on live during classic hearing people having to recreate discipline buttons multiple times per raid/encounter.

What kind of button are you using? Have you tried using /disc disciplinename?

[Damarous]

Originally Posted by nilbog [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

What kind of button are you using? Have you tried using /disc disciplinename?

I have not. I was using ctrl + c and creating a button. I never played a melee on live prior to the luclin era UI, so I have no idea how disciplines work in classic.

I will test and verify if the issue is i'm just dumb. Thank you for the suggestion.

(E-Marr forever!)

[Daldaen]

So there were no disciplines in classic. It wasn’t until Kunark when disciplines came in.

When they came in every Melee could type the command:

/Discipline

Doing so will give you back a list of the disciplines your class has access to and it will say either you are ready to use your discipline or you need to wait XYZ time until you are ready to use your discipline.

To activate a discipline, you simply make a hotkey that has one line:

/discipline Defensive

Or

/discipline Duelist

Those will activate those disciplines.

The Ctrl + C command for the Combat Ability window was a Gates of Discord addition to the game.

[Damarous]

Originally Posted by Daldaen [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

So there were no disciplines in classic. It wasn’t until Kunark when disciplines came in.

When they came in every Melee could type the command:

/Discipline

Doing so will give you back a list of the disciplines your class has access to and it will say either you are ready to use your discipline or you need to wait XYZ time until you are ready to use your discipline.

To activate a discipline, you simply make a hotkey that has one line:

/discipline Defensive

Or

/discipline Duelist

Those will activate those disciplines.

The Ctrl + C command for the Combat Ability window was a Gates of Discord addition to the game.

Since this is in the bug forum, on my 60 warrior typing /discipline gives no result. I have made a hotkey for /discipline defensive. Just letting you know that the /disc doesn't result in a list of disciplines.