Leaping, Gliding Mounts Live Soon, No Player Testing?
Leaper and Glider mounts for levels 30 and 60 respectively are nearly here, but Testers are concerned that they are being left out. After the jump, SmokeJumper‘s announcement on the EQ2 Forums and some player reaction:
We’re putting the final touches on leapers and gliders now. They’ll be Live very soon.
Here’s a few tidbits about balance between the various mounts now so you know what to expect:
- Ground mounts have had their speed increased…a lot. Most mounts were at 65% or so before this update. They’ll now be at 130-135%, and can get up in the 150%s with AAs and buffs.
- Leapers, Gliders, and Fliers don’t move nearly as fast…on the ground…as ground mounts. But then, they also leap, glide, and fly at much faster speeds.
- Leapers have a very tall leap, and can bound across terrain at amazing rates.
- Gliders don’t leap up as far, but once they catch air, they can cruise a long way before stopping. Launching from a high point can let you sail all the way across a zone before you hit the ground.
- Fliers, of course, have the most maneuverability, can hover, can climb straight up and stay out of harm’s way.
In a straight race across the Commonlands, the Leapers and Gliders often win. However, those movement methods are very active. (You can’t point in a direction and hit autorun.) So allowing them to be faster is good balance.
We think all of the mounts are fun now, for different reasons, and all of them have places where they are a better choice than the others.
Just as a reminder, the level restrictions on Mounts are as follows:
- Ground : Level 1+
- Leapers : Level 30+
- Gliders : Level 60+
- Fliers : Level 85+
Soon!
Testers Left Out?
This announcement was accompanied by some strong words from the Test Server community who not only feel left out, are concerned that these new mounts will go live with assorted problems that may be difficult to fix due to the proximity of Fan Faire, and simply the fact that with the exception of “spoiler” type content like Lore-related quests, Test has always had first crack at this type of content, as a reward for their hard work in Testing and reporting bugs.
It’s our understanding that there will be 1 free/quested mount at level 30 and 60, with other Leaper and Glider mounts available for StationCash.
Tags: flying mounts
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Comments (15)
Chris
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Haha looks like SOE is in the starting stages of throwing out the test servers and just using live servers as the new test servers.
Can’t wait to see all the new bugs that are going to be introduced in the next coming months, Yay.
/leavegame.
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Zharxian
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Hmmm, I’ve been reluctant to spend aa on the measely 5% speed boost. Does this mean they are increasing the boost you get from spending aa?
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Karsten
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@Zharxian – Likely not. Take a high elf, for example, with the racial +5% mount speed boost, tack on 10% from the Shadows AA and 5% from the stablemaster guildhall amenity. Total +20%. Ground speed will max at +150%, apparently.
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James
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“It’s our understanding that there will be 1 free/quested mount at level 30 and 60, with other Leaper and Glider mounts available for StationCash.”
^ There is the sad state of this game that we as players allowed to happen^
We as players didn’t stand together as one and say ‘NO, we pay our subs we will not have a microtransition store too!”
and now here we are down the road where as subscribers and loyal customers we get one lamo in-game choice and if you want other than that it will cost you.
worst part is that by purchasing and using the station cash in the first place this is our fault that we only get one in-game choice.
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Antonia Bayle's bit on the side
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“Haha looks like SOE is in the starting stages of throwing out the test servers and just using live servers as the new test servers.
Can’t wait to see all the new bugs that are going to be introduced in the next coming months, Yay.
/leavegame.”
Good the game could use one less whiney person, go to Rift or something and dont bother coming back. Really, I’ve never known so much unnecessary whining over sweet f.a. as the sort that proliferates the comments on this site and in the official forums, usually the same bunch of people too. If the mounts weren’t going straight to the live servers there would be someone else moaning about them not going straight to live servers already. Poor devs can’t win. Get a life and get some real problems to go with it and whine away about those real issues until your heart is content instead of trivial crap like this.
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CrisuKomie
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@ James
It wouldn’t have mattered if you did stand and so “NO” to micro transations.
I don’t know if you understand why games use micro translations or not, but it’s a last ditch effort to keep an MMO afloat and make money.
This game is old and filled with bugs, tons and tons of people have left and/or are leaving and because of that the game was gonna shut down. So they made it free to play (b/c they know not enough people would pay monthly to play to make it keeping it alive justifiable).
If you guys said “NO” to micro transactions, I’m pretty sure SOE would of announced they’re taking down all Everquest 2 servers by now. So actually, making SOE NOT do micro transactions would of been a bad decision by the player base.
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Zharxian
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If I may further add, the 15 bucks a month you pay for service is supposed to be for maintenance. What we should be up in arms about is the number of bugs in the game (what exactly are they maintaining, after all?), not the EXTRA content that you could pay for if you really want to.
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Grugg
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James, do you buy the expansions?
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Kruzzen
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They are pushing them out for only 1 reason. Fan Faire. They want to show them off and pat themselves on the back and fan faire and say see, we listened to you.
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Murfalad
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Looking forward to seeing them, mixed feelings though on increasing the speed of mounts since I like to know that there are ever more faster ones available.
But this could at least solve that big problem right now – once we have a flying mount all other mounts become useless, I guess its an improvement then.
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Murfalad
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And what is it with all the emo comments? Some people are trying a little too hard to find doom and gloom.
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Lexxie
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Lol, did Test “test” the Pegasus before it hit live? That was buggy to begin with as the toon has too far down inside its body. If they “tested” it they didn’t do a very good job 😉
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Striinger
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The problem with user testing (not just EQ2 testing) is that the VAST majority of users don’t test your code and report bugs in a way that you can find and fix problems quickly. You get a LOT of bugs that are simply a difference of opinion about what or how something should be implemented.
That means you have 2 choices if you want to roll out content faster: cut the end user out (except for load testing,maybe) and on a better way to make internal testing more effective, or spend a LOT of money having people sift through bug feedback for your devs. As it is, devs spend as much time sifting through poor quality feedback (or repeated feedback) than they do bug hunting/fixing.
Also, load testing on test doesn’t work well either. PQ’s are a prime example of that; they worked fine for me until multiple instances fired up on live.
So, from a dev perspective, public testing does little more than provide weeks of reading material and generate buzz about upcoming content…which isn’t ALWAYS bad.
So, end user testing doesn’t significantly improve the quality of content whose design is pretty fixed (I.e you’re wanting to fix stuff rather than garner feedback).
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Feldon
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I just have to say I am really shocked at the at the vitriol being slung towards people who spend hours each week testing content and providing detailed bug reports with exact steps to reproduce the problem. These folks didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. Many of them have been doing this for years and have established methods to find bugs.
Many things go to Test, bugs get reported, and they still go live buggy. Bugs reported during Velious beta (last week of December through February 14) are still being fixed. I don’t see how people can possibly blame Testers for reported bugs going live.
Second, Group and Raid content used to get tested out on Test by established Raid Guilds but they got tired of putting in all that effort for no reward and lost time on their Live characters. So as a result, group and raid content are no longer getting tested on Test/Test Copy. Why bother — all you do is lose time on your Live characters, and any exploits you find can be used for a few days on Live to get ahead before devs pull the mob. There is absolutely no motivation to play on Test.
Lexxie, Pegasus did not go to test first.
Striinger, I’m really shocked at your comments. Did you participate in the last few Betas and report bugs? Have you ever tested Group or Raid content on Test and provided your feedback or bug reports? It sounds to me like you should walk a mile in testers shoes before popping off how testers are somehow preventing you from getting content sooner.
If you have some legitimate complaint for Test, say it. All I see is Trolling.
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Zharxian
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@ karsten: I would have to agree with your logic. I’m still not sure I want to spend the aa on it, though. We shall see.
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