Upcoming Overseer Changes

Discussion in 'News and Announcements' started by dreamweaver, Mar 16, 2020.

  1. rawr80 New Member

    If anything we need more people complaining about it here. Be sure to let your friends and guildies know about this! A lot are gonna be stuck home during this issue with the virus. Which only can lead to more complaints on the forums. A good chunk of players leaving could affect change. Right now a lot of businesses are suffering. They don't need players to leave and stop paying.
  2. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    Just hopped on test and I found more bugs there now than I did before it went live.....if they are pushing it live tomorrow I hope they get them fixed.
    Barraind likes this.
  3. Thundersnake Elder

    Looks like any previously claimed Expansion specific dispensers have been removed from the game. Also supposedly opening a dispenser is totally RNG now as to what collection item you will receive. No more choosing even which expansion they are from?
  4. Buster_Shruggs Augur

    "Start Quest" button on Overseer is greyed out now. I figured we would be able to do the quests until the patch tomorrow.. guess not. :(
  5. Khat_Nip Meow

    I just started one less than a minute ago, so...
  6. Buster_Shruggs Augur

    Across 6 accounts, multiple agents ready, still greyed out. Good for you though. Feels dirty getting trolled. :eek:
    Ill try logging out/bk in.
  7. Buster_Shruggs Augur

    I just zoned out of PoK...its works again! /rejoice
  8. Airstah New Member

    Just f*ck right off... these changes are a massive f*ck you to your playerbase.
  9. blackninja New Member

    so how are yall handling the refunds?
  10. Riou EQResource

    It let me still choose, its just 25% (saw one at 50% as well) chance to get one now instead of guaranteed
  11. Buster_Shruggs Augur



    Its mentioned in the original post of the thread, that they will be refunding a portion of DBC used for the Finish Early button, I don't recall a mention of how they may/may not handle refunds for the Agent packs.
  12. Buster_Shruggs Augur



    Was your collection dispenser from ToV? I've been using the collection dispensers for older expansions. I just used 3 for CoF and it let me choose which collection piece I needed for all 3. Maybe, the % only applies to current or more recent expansions?
  13. Tanacious Lorekeeper

    Wow. Just Wow. I guess by now none of us should be surprised, we put up with this from SoE for a decade +, and it seems that nothing ever changes.

    SoE/DBG/DPE: Lets roll out something new and kinda cool. We've been working on this for a while.
    Players: OMG wow! This is neat! I don't have to spend my entire life raiding/grinding/trivial questing anymore, take out a 5th mortgage to pay my bills so I can get this new gear/item/achievement. This could also free me up to do the billion other things in this game I have been wanting to try
    SoE/DBG/DPE: Oh holy ****! We can't have that! Quick! Make everything 1000x harder to get and do and blame it all on exploitation!!
    Players: Ummm......
    SoE/DBG/DPE: We patched this error for you, and resolved any exploits that it caused, please pay us now by buying these new worthless cosmetic trinkets we put in the store.
    Players: Ummm.......

    I think all of you should listen to your player base. At the time of this post, you have a hundred people that bothered to reply to some extent. I completely agree with a previous post I read that whoever at this company came up with jacking up the item prices so significantly that it makes this feature garbage needs to be fired PRONTO, ON THE SPOT, without QUESTION. They obviously work for blizzard and have overplayed their hand, so now is the time to oust the mole.

    I have only moderately interacted with the overseer function, but it seems like a pretty good idea. But now with just reading the changes proposed, it is yet ANOTHER worthless time sink, with little to no reward.

    My suggestion, and I have been around since the beginning of this game, as well as many others who are posting, is to stop the cycle of madness. Let it ride. Don't change anything. See where it goes. You know what the other route will produce (I would hope by now) but letting it be continues the flow of $$$, and players get some satisfaction by moving some additional 1's and 0's around.

    This game is supposed to be all about tactical fun right? It doesn't seem like your proposed patch is very fun. Truth be told, I haven't even bothered looking at the rewards vendor yet, and now it appears I never will. So to me, you just saved me a bunch of time, rather than create more of a time sink.

    By the same token, if you don't listen to your player base, you deserve everything you get. This game isn't taking on that many more players. I re subbed for a year, and bought the premium F&F pack to give this game another shot at supposedly it's best to offer. Right now, there is nothing I have seen that makes me want to re sub, and I am already more than halfway through.

    I can't believe I am the only one that feels like that. That is probably part of the reason why you were separated from the rest of DBG proper, so that when the time comes, they can shut this game down for good without shuttering the company, or having it reflect negatively in value as much as it would if not separated.

    The writing is on the wall for your company and jobs. Wouldn't you much rather listen to what the players want, and leave something everyone loves alone, continue to make it pump money for you, and pat yourselves on the back?

    Not everything implemented is going to be perfect for everyone, across every server. But it seems like you picked the wrong fight with this one, it appears you have substantially more to lose than gain. I haven't seen a single post that says "Yay! This is the balance we need to the new overseer thing!" But instead I have seen plenty of posts that say the exact opposite.

    Leave it alone. Be the people that SoE/DBG proper were not. Need to justify it to the higher ups? Fine, show them this thread. Point out you had to refund nothing. Tell them that if they buy DBC on this feature, that may get them to start micro purchasing for other stuff. They are all valid arguments because they deal with $$$, which is what the higher ups care about. They could give two ****s less if EQ/EQ2 is balanced or not. As long as you are pumping that revenue, your jobs are safe.

    So take the win where you can, don't fix what isn't broke. Leave it as it is, see how it goes for a few months, and THEN see if it's still so off kilter you still need to change it. But I would imagine by that time you will be swimming in a pool of revenue from purchases related to this thing that it gets the golden goose award.

    Or just proceed with the changes, and have to have that uncomfortable conversation with the higher ups about why your revenue shot way up for 3 days, and then went to nothing/less than normal, and why you had to refund 150K DBC. That would be something I'd look forward to for sure. (Sarcasm in case you couldn't tell)

    The lack of logic in changing something that is super popular, entertaining, and profitable for your company simply floors me. This one is a no brainer. Of course, the other things were no brainers too and they got changed anyway. It does make one start to wonder what exactly is going on inside that company, and what sort of back-biting environment it might be if one team is trying to sabotage another teams successful development. None of that is actually fact based, just theorizing what might be the cause of all the "release and ultra-nerf" BS the players have put up with over the years.

    So there is my advice, not just from a player's point of view, but from a CEO's point of view dealing with customer satisfaction. Why ruin a good thing in the name of some "balance" thing that no one has nailed quite right since the game came out 21 years ago? It just doesn't make sense. There has to be more going on behind the scenes here that many players have suspected for a while. Whatever that may be.
  14. Cicelee Augur

    I have three collectible rewards I have not claimed. Does this mean after the patch if I redeem them, I will not be able to choose one that I still need from TOV?
  15. Riou EQResource

    No, brand new one rewards from new overseer quests


    You shouldn't be able to choose ToV, no, that reward set is removed
  16. Moege Augur

    WTF that is just wrong
  17. Tanacious Lorekeeper

    I realize my first post was a Zero hour post, but let me more point out the things specifically, so you know what to tell your boss(es) when this all blows up in your face. (and it will)

    We eagerly launched the Overseer feature last week, and the response has been incredible. It’s an ambitious project for us of a scale we haven’t done in quite some time and because we were so eager to get this feature in your hands, there have been some unexpected issues that require changes and fixes. We wanted to review the upcoming changes and explain what they mean and why we are making them.

    We also wanted to take this opportunity to offer our apologies that so many changes are needed right after launching this feature, but we feel they are necessary to protect the integrity of not just the Overseer system but EQ itself.

    No apologies are necessary. It's NEW. We all know you have a small team or team(s). Changes like you propose, and lack of new revenue, are WHY you still have small teams, and are not growing as a company, and are regurgitating zone content. It's good to be ambitious. You did a good thing there.

    You mention protecting the "integrity of EQ". Umm.... where? You mean the have to kill 1000 mobs to move my xp bar significantly? Jump through quests that have no purpose or reward worth my time? Get a box group with mercs just to play the game because the population of all servers is so low it's silly? Stare longingly at raid gear wishing I could maybe get it without selling my soul to a raiding guild, leaving my family, and becoming a societal recluse? (Even though at this point we all are being told to do that anyway haha) That's the integrity you are protecting? Really?

    But, before we launch into an explanation of why we turned off the Finish Early button and what changes you can expect in the upcoming patch, we wanted to be clear that we will be refunding a portion of the DBC spent on immediate quest completion through the system due to a bug.


    Also, as a thank you for your patience and all the reports that helped us track and tackle Overseer issues, we will be granting an Overseer pack to all accounts that have logged in within the past month on servers that can use Overseer. The pack grants and refunds will be happening after this patch as we need to work out all the logistics, but we expect all affected accounts to see them in about 3-5 weeks.

    So let me get this straight. You are drastically changing the system to the point where it has no value to players, yet you are giving away an overseer pack to something that won't be used anymore? So you are basically handing us a free ticket to a game that is already over. Hmm... seems kinda chinsy. The refund thing isn't a half bad idea, but instead you could have done this:
    Grey out the instant completion for as long as it takes to fix the success rates. In the meanwhile, create a token that can be used in lieu of DBC to go with the new overseer system. Once the tokens and success rates are done and fixed, hand out a couple dozen to everyone. No one is pissed about their DBC expenditure, players that want to test drive the system use the free tokens, and you now have a win/win situation.

    Now, let’s dive in.

    Quest Success had a bug
    It was a pretty big bug. A miscalculation in the way we determined if a quest should critically succeed resulted in a notable drop in its overall success chance. We are sorry for that, and we will be fixing it this week. The good news is that this fix will also result in the chances of critical success on all quests increasing by a significant factor.

    Temporarily removing the ability to purchase immediate quest completion
    Due to the issue with quest success, we felt it was best to temporarily remove the ability to spend Daybreak Cash to complete quests. We will enable the ability to purchase instant completion when the bug is fixed and, as mentioned above, will be refunding a portion the DBC spent on immediate quest completion

    Fix as mentioned above. What you feel is best, may not actually be best. Do any of you even play this game? I mean really? Have any of you taken a character from lvl 1 in 1999 to present day? You should probably listen more to people that have. Again, using the fix above, you can not refund anything, and everyone is happy. It might even bring you additional revenue down the road too.

    Reward Changes
    Unfortunately, we made several miscalculations with what and how much was offered. We believe it is important that this system is supplemental to gameplay and that it does not replace it. Some of the rewards offered were either too easily attained or greatly devalued items that are granted through gameplay. To repair that we will be making the following changes:

    Overseer merchant price changes
    We will be increasing the Tetradrachm cost of most items on the merchant (as a side note from Absor, “I also want to apologize for the name of those coins...” as a side note from Ngreth, “I'm not.”). The most notable change will be a significant increase in the price of McKenzie's Brews to align with their actual value. These are the new Tetradrachm prices for the items sold:

    •The unique clockwork armor pieces: 70,000
    •The unique clockwork robe: 175,000
    •Spitegems: 87,500
    •Crystallized Luck: 35,000
    •Essences: 4,375
    •McKenzie's Special Brew: 26,250
    •Token of Resurrection: 43,750
    •Urthron's Ulitimate Unattuner: 175,000

    Okay, so miscalculations happen. If supplemental was your goal, congrats! You achieved it. You also opened a new play style, that in NO WAY SHAPE OR FORM could replace the main game play. I don't want to raid. I used to, it's too much of a hassle for too little reward. That is a choice I made. Unfortunately with the way you ding dongs continued to develop the game, trying to do anything solo is near impossible, let alone group content. Whether that be from lack of population, or difficulty in content, many others struggle with this as well. Your handful of raiding players you have on each server isn't what I would call healthy. This feature allowed many who don't raid an alternate avenue, that is JUST AS TIME CONSUMING, but they don't have to give up their life for. Why in the world would you take that away?

    I have no idea what a McKenzie's Special Brew is, but apparently it is valuable and coveted. So freaking what? It's just the flavor of the moment. Once everyone has it, they can move on to other content, which isn't the whole point? Or did I miss something? You say you are worried about "devaluing items obtained through normal gameplay". Um... Can I point out every item since before House of Thule? What about the devaluing of those through release of new expansion(s)? Your statement makes no sense. Eventually everything in EQ will decay because new content replaces it, it is simply the nature of the game. Don't believe me...? See Dungeons of Norrath, Monster Missions, Shrouds, and just about everything else back in the day for more examples. My remove trap skill is utterly worthless present day. So are most of the baubles you obtain through doing any of these things. Your argument is invalid.

    Tetradrachm will no longer be tradeable
    Frankly, these were never meant to be tradeable. The intent was that rewards be earned by using the Overseer system, not by purchasing or trading for those rewards. Please take a moment to move your existing Tetradrachm to the character/account that you wish them to be on before the update this week.

    OMG. What is it with you people and the "no trade" status? We can trade other alternate currencies freely, why not this one? You might as well make Krono no trade too, and see how well that goes over.

    Lowering the number of collectible items rewarded
    We will be reducing the number of collectible items obtained on success. Because you can choose specifically what item you receive, introducing these items into the economy too rapidly will reduce the value of the rarest collectible items. So now collectible rewards will almost always only give you only one item. Also, you will usually not be guaranteed to get that item. The new rewards will offer you two options: either some number of Tetradrachm, or fewer Tetradrachm and a percentage chance to also gain a collectible of your choice. As a pretend example: succeeding on a Quest might offer you 200 Tetradrachm OR 150 Tetradrachm and a 25% chance to get a collectible item of your choice.

    So again, do any of you play this game at all? The collectibles need to be devalued, so that other players can't price gouge any longer. This actually fixes the issue. And WTF do you think you are doing offering a "MAYBE" type reward for doing something that has risk? That's like investing in a startup company. You did the time, now get the reward. You said you wanted to protect the "integrity of EQ" as a whole. I have yet to see any other quest reward MAYBE give me a reward. This is why you have rioting going on in this thread. No one wants a MAYBE reward for doing something.

    Other reward restrictions
    Because we want to maintain the value of doing current content when it is current, we will no longer be rewarding collection or tradeskill items from the current expansion as rewards. Items from older expansions will obviously still be available.

    Is this more about protecting the integrity? So because I don't have a level 115 fully raid geared box team, I won't be able to get stuff from the current expansion? That's pretty cold. (pun intended) The only integrity you are protecting here is the integrity of the players that have a valid argument in saying that you get things only after you no longer need them.

    We are restricting the ability to obtain collectible and tradeskill items as rewards to Gold members only. Free accounts will be offered a Tetradrachm reward for successful quests rather than a collectible or tradeskill item. This is to prevent abuse of the free to play system to gather these items, especially with the potential of upcoming free Heroic Characters (shh... it's a poorly kept secret!). As mentioned above, we do not want to undervalue the effort of playing the game through Overseer, we want it to be a way to enhance gameplay.

    Wow. This is poor marketing at it's finest. Let's do some marketing math here so that people can really see what this statement means. First, you are giving out heroic chars so that new players don't get bored and leave before ever subbing. Anything pre 85 is dull and uninteresting if you haven't already done it a bunch of times with alts, and is rather confusing to new players. Why in the world would you also restrict collectible rewards (with only a MAYBE chance) to gold accounts? If you give the freeloaders something they could potentially sell in the bazaar, wouldn't that be more incentive for them to sub? HELLO? Do you guys even have a functional marketing strategist? Or are you just putting the title name tag on the water cooler that everyone stands around?
    Finally, you are not ENHANCING game play with these changes, you are castrating a system before it even has an effect on game play. You can't honestly be sure after 3 FREAKING DAYS!!! That's not a long enough time to change anything in EQ!

    We will likely be making other changes and improvements to the system in the future, so please keep offering us feedback (scrollbars would be nice). Your ideas are always welcome.

    Why would anyone in their right mind suggest anything after seeing this? You have 8/9 pages at the time of this post of players telling you in various manners to not do anything to it! You say you want ideas and feedback, you have LOTS OF IT. The best part is, you have to do NOTHING in order to go with that feedback/suggestions. And no.... NO ONE CARES ABOUT SCROLLBARS!!! They care about you borking a system before anyone has really gotten into using it! Find me the one person that complained about scrolling that you actually listened to, and I bet you they aren't okay with these changes!

    Again, we would like to apologize for the need to make such dramatic changes to a system that we only just launched, but we felt they were necessary to protect the integrity of EverQuest and the Overseer system itself.

    Again, no apology needed on a 3 DAY OLD system! Sure it might have been more than 3 days, but in reality probably only 3 days that people started widely using it. You AREN'T "protecting" ANYTHING, you are making panicked changes because it MIGHT affect something in a negative manner far down the road..... You have no concept of what it will do, just a theory, but THAT'S enough for you to change it??!?!?

    Maybe this one time, just let it ride out for a month. See how it goes. You have no idea how or what the players will do with it. That's also something beautiful. You can turn EQ into a living breathing game again instead of the dull, dead, black and white slithering ooze it is at the moment. (That's now slightly frozen thanks to the new expansion.)

    Be PROUD of your actual NEW CONTENT AND FEATURE. It's the first thing produced that wasn't regurgitated from the days of old! It's kind of like Legends of Norrath, and kind of not. It's kind of like sub questing, and kind of not. IT'S NEW!!!

    So there you have it. Broken apart and torn down step by step. I know some of it's a little rough to hear, but I can't honestly believe that you guys would go forward with this with so many people telling you not to, with no one saying "oh yea these changes are awesome".

    Put your actions where you think your reputation is. Welcome the feedback, and ACTUALLY LISTEN AND EXECUTE THE CHANGES SUGGESTED! Or in this case, don't execute the changes!

    Finally, if you tout so much that you listen to the player base... fine. But I want to see it. You all developed this new thing, so it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to put in a voting system to select a representative from each server to be the "Voice of the people". That way we can all select who we want to be our rep from our server, that goes in a forum discussion with the devs, and also report back to us on things discussed. (Without letting any future cats out of bags) They have their own dedicated server forum as if they are their own community adviser for that server.

    Because right now, it seems like you are listening to no one, given the overwhelming response to this thread. I am not saying that is what is happening, and not saying you don't do a great job Dreamweaver, but I think the players need a solid and consolidated voice to the developers of this game. Put the future into the hands of the players (within reason) and we won't steer you wrong. After all, some of us have more experience playing this game than your staff members, and can bring things like coding knowledge, marketing, corporate structure, and a myriad other skills to the table. How would that not be helpful in the long run for guiding the course of EQ?

    The best part about that idea, is that all the ranting won't be directed solely at the devs and DPE anymore. We all had a say, we told our rep, we did our democratic duty. Normally I wouldn't suggest such a thing, but I am tired of hearing that "we listen to the players", because with some of the things I have seen come out over the years, I'd like to find those players (That probably no longer play) that made some of the worst suggestions in EQ history and say "WTF?".

    This way we all can vote and select a rep from our own servers, and have a more established voice, and you guys can have a much better idea of what the players ACTUALLY WANT, vs. going to make changes and we all "riot".
  18. Moege Augur

    Next time something new launches, we all need to just ignore it.
    Barraind likes this.
  19. rawr80 New Member

    "Lowering the number of collectible items rewarded

    We will be reducing the number of collectible items obtained on success. Because you can choose specifically what item you receive, introducing these items into the economy too rapidly will reduce the value of the rarest collectible items. So now collectible rewards will almost always only give you only one item. Also, you will usually not be guaranteed to get that item. The new rewards will offer you two options: either some number of Tetradrachm, or fewer Tetradrachm and a percentage chance to also gain a collectible of your choice. As a pretend example: succeeding on a Quest might offer you 200 Tetradrachm OR 150 Tetradrachm and a 25% chance to get a collectible item of your choice."


    After seeing this and the response it does seem like they want to keep prices in the bazaar high. With the introduction of the krono. It causes players to make transactions to either sell or trade the krono for items. It has me curious if the company itself places anon traders with said items in baz. Just to stimulate the players to spend more to get said items. Because otherwise why would it matter if scalpers have to drop there prices? If anything it would help the game grow more. Unless they fear that the revenue from Krono and store sales would drop. But I honestly doubt sales would drop if anything they would go up. Then again these devs probably don't actually play the game.
  20. Trynal New Member

    Whats the point of the brew nerf ? this will be the only expansion where we can come anyone close to getting even half our gear current era.while going into UF is one of the hardest jumps especially on a 1 month unlock TLP. this doesnt impact anyone but selo. could of made money and got some community favor now you get neither.