Do any Devs actually play this game anymore?

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Mannhec, Oct 27, 2019.

  1. Xyphen Maximum Augur

    I apologize, I genuinely read your post as if you meant to say "listen you idiots, this is how you should do it". I work in product management for a tech company and the complexities are extremely hard to properly estimate, let alone if you're not on the actual dev team.

    What makes players so hostile on the forums isn't so much the bugs, it's the lack of communication about what's actually being worked on. I don't mind an issue that's been in place for 3 years, I mind not knowing if it'll ever be fixed. The honestly of a dev coming out and just saying "no" would be such a breath of fresh air.

    This is probably my inner-developer coming out, but I'd love to see a read-only version of your team's actual JIRA board (minus any tickets to resolve exploits). The sinking suspicion I get is that many people wouldn't be happy with a lot of the tickets.
  2. Tarvas Redwall of Coirnav, now Drinal


    Yeah. I remember Absor I believe gave the names of specific tools used for design content and how spells were done. The ForumQuest warriors were quick to point out that the changes they wanted were still trivial. They have said multiple times over the years what a mess EQ's code is. Given the amount of scorn they take even after revealing that EQ isn't a nice tidy world I am surprised any of them are wasting their time trying to explain yet again that stuff just ain't that easy.
    Warpeace and enclee like this.
  3. Dahaman Augur


    I was just trying to establish how close they actually were to a new heroic character (for fun purposes only). I have never seen beta buff in action and you responded back in a positive way to my initial inquiry (thank you for that). You had good insight on the gearing part and I was curious if the gear potential for heroic characters was already done.

    Cheers!
  4. Metanis Bad Company

    The whole thing about "tabs" is a good example of why the community should look at DBG Developers with a gimlet eye. It was one of the more execrable changes forced upon players in recent memory. And it readily disproves the "lack of resources" excuse we are so often given.

    I still manually edit equi_chatcontainerwindow.xml after every patch to get rid of the wasted title bar and recover that chat space.
  5. Mintalie Augur

    This is really not even the least bit helpful and really antagonistic.
    Duder, Corwyhn Lionheart and Yinla like this.
  6. Tucoh Augur

    Everybody knew how easy it was the night it came out when we ran it. I remember posting something along the lines of, "Wait, I just spent months farming a whole set of Secret Dawn gear, why is this trivial mission dumping out bags of similar gear for 20 minutes of work?". The response was that it was an anniversary event, so it was like a gift from the devs to the community.
    kizant likes this.
  7. Duder Augur

    I think a subscription survey would be worth while. I think the tricky part would be the implementation. But a good example is such: I am at wit's end trying to keep up with scripted auto-updating traders on my trader account. Have thought of cancellation. I would very much like the ability to be able to submit that as the reason if I did decide to cancel it.

    Beyond my plight though -- How can you have any strategy at all for customer retention if there is no knowledge from the subscribers as to why a subscription has been cancelled? In the past, I'm sure the quantity, as well as wide variation of gained and lost subscriptions made it a non-issue. But it seems now, with a shrinking population, that customer retention would be more important than ever.

    Is it important to know and have some sort of documentation to correlate the reasons why people have left? Is it bugs in the client, lag, player interaction, their own money concerns, boredom with content, frustration, etc? I find it very valuable to be able to look at some sort of information and be able to say, "Well out of the 40 subscriptions we lost this month, 2 said that they couldn't afford it, 23 didn't give any reason, but 15 cited poor client performance/inability to play as their reason."

    The /feedback system now sends you to make a post on these boards. Which is more of a dissuader to me, and seems its design. It seems like quite a task to have to muddle through mountains of QQ posts across the numerous forums to gain an understanding of the player base. I understand the feedback system worked similarly though, but I imagine that /feedback was limited to a certain amount of characters.

    As a player, being able to write a simple statement and submit it privately was a big thing. Many people are too bashful to air their concerns on a public forum to be scrutinized by a community that is not known for its overwhelming friendliness. I post on these forums a lot, and even I have typed /feedback, been steered to the forums, and thought, nope, not worth it.
  8. JeffHanson Augur

    This is a great idea. I seem to remember having the opportunity to submit this kind of feedback when I cancelled my DAoC subscription (many years ago). Most companies request such feedback when customers cancel services.
    Duder likes this.
  9. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    GIVE IT A REST! I can't understand all this witchin about something that is long done and over. And personally I think GMM was great as it was. I saw a lot of my super casuals enjoy the mission.

    We get game devs coming on the forums and actually sharing some insights and feelings and the best thing you can come up with is witching at them.

    Who suffered due to GMM? Who was put out and prevented from doing content? I was pretty sure GMM was as intended until a Dev said otherwise but who got hurt? The updated GMM isn't any harder for me now then it was before but I use CC so I was never tanking more then a couple mobs at once.

    I just don't get carping over this.

    Oh and btw just because a dev played GMM it doesn't mean they were playing as a casual grouper to which the difficutly level was scaled. They may have had nothing to do with this content so how were they going to know some players were going to complain about it being too easy? This wasn't broken content. It was content that was slightly easier for some play modes (primarly no CC groups). Anyone making regular use of CC would see little difference other then the color some mobs conned.

    Plus I think game devs are allowed to play the game "just for fun" and not trying to find problems if they want to. Sure it helps them in their job but if they aren't being paid to play they should be able to do whatever they want and for a game dev that raids a few times a week I can't see a lot of reason for them to do GMM and if they are raid geared GMM was going to be easy regardless of the tuning.

    I used the word witching because it is Halloween of course :)
    Dahaman likes this.
  10. Laronk Augur

    GMM was barely nerfed
  11. Vumad Cape Wearer

    The problem with canceled subscription surveys is that EQ has a very unusual subscription model and base. Is the canceled subscription the player, box 1 or box 12? Is the subscription only based on plat acquired krono for as-available accounts? I don't think survey tools are going to be super effective because of the crazy diversity in why individual accounts are subscribed, but I do still think they are worth the effort.

    I think it would be very easy however to figure out that the game at present is anti-box and anti-solo. We have seen chat tabs and fade modifications but no merc overhaul or merc auto-grant. No shroud overhaul. No 4-player merc designed missions. No 3 player trinity missions. No solo tasks with decent XP rewards. Recognizing a decreasing player base and implementing some design/quest improvements would be good for retaining these players.

    The knock back in stratos and the AEs in skyfire are some of the recent examples that feel anti box. They really have a minimal impact on a single player but can be havoc for a box. A multi-box can be played with just a few single hotkey presses until you have to start running around. Understanding that a good sum of revenue comes from boxing should make it easy to argue that improving the /follow system is worth investment.
  12. Mr. Froo Developer

    Dzarn has asked me to share but I'm a semi-active player. I tend to fall off as we get closer to the expansion release as I just have trouble playing when I get home.

    Right now, after starting a new character around the anniversary, I am almost a max level Shaman, am an active achievement hunter in game especially around the Hero's Journey. I'm also an avid mount/pet/familiar collector so if there are quests or achievements that reward those I'm constantly on the lookout.

    I spent a little over three hours last night managing my inventory, selling things, sending stuff to tribute, and setting up and managing my first trade mule.

    I hope to do my first raids in ToV so I'm not really fluid in raids. I did however try to do Ashengate once...

    I have a bad habit of showing up to work after a long weekend and ranting at Dzarn about a random quest or achievement I struggled with. There was a client crash that was fixed earlier this year for a quest because I got to the quest, and got so upset that my client was crashing I went to work and wrote up the bug reports.

    Side Note: Dzarn also tells me I'm strange for liking VoA.
    DebonAir, Leigo, Thunderkiks and 11 others like this.
  13. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    Can I ask have you played any other classes?

    VoA can be fun if you have a good solid group. :)
  14. enclee Augur

    Inventory management can be a pain, but I’ve made it more manageable for myself. I put 3 tradeskill item only bags in my bag slots 1-3, next I put collectible item only bags in slots 4 & 5, then the standard bags. This works as a kind of autosort by categories and helps me move things eventually to the bank.
    Mr. Froo likes this.
  15. Mr. Froo Developer

    My first class was a shaman on Agnarr with a group of friends. We were there for a few months and after way too many hours and climbing to about level 35 we called it and went to Live. When we got to Live I swapped to Druid just to try things out but around the anniversary I missed shaman too much and swapped back.

    I've greatly considered rolling a berserker or ranger next because I deal almost no damage and just kinda want to roll some camps some nights.
    Thunderkiks, Yinla and Duder like this.
  16. Vumad Cape Wearer


    What are the collectable only bags you speak of? I do the same thing with extra planar trade satchels as you are.

    It would be cool if we had an auto sort option that would cause bags to pull items into them when dropped into the auto inventory even if they were not in the right spot. A vendor trash item designation / bag would be amazingly awesome too. If some designation for items that carry not use other than for their plat value to vendors were added, then from that an auto-sell to vendor option on vendors could be added.
  17. Duder Augur


    [IMG]

    http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=112555

    The other one I don't have and don't remember where its from so cant give you the name or help.
  18. Vumad Cape Wearer

  19. enclee Augur

    There’s also one from an anniversary quest and the collection achievements from each expansion tend to reward a box.
  20. Xyphen Maximum Augur

    After having finally gotten Paragon of TBL on my boxes, I can say it is a bit discouraging that I never came close to anything as good as the GMM gear. On the other hand, I went into TBL with conflagrant and I'm not sure how well I would have done without the GMM boost.

    I honestly thought it was a catch-up mechanic for returning players because of how poorly tuned TBL was, and it worked well for that.