Time Management and Content

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Blademaster, Nov 13, 2014.

  1. Garshok Augur

    It's really kind of a pity that the only way that that could be found to encourage people to experience EverQuest from someplace other than "the inside of a single Heroic Adventure" seems to require . . . nerfing experience in 70% of level 100 expansion zones outside of Heroic Adventures. I think a lot of players could have come up with ideas for how to keep ROF task experience rewards from trivializing the march from level 100 to 105 - developers were able to handle the same issue in VOA while still leaving HOT as a place worth visiting.

    The team's definition of "incentive" seems to come straight from newspeak and George Orwell's 1984. Consumers of a company's products or services typically envision "incentives" as positive payoffs for desired behavior - not nerfing everything but the desired behavior into the ground. The team seems to be acting more in the role of the IRS and the tax code rather than as a company trying to entice customers to consume it's product.

    Coercion has been tried before as a tool to induce desired behavior in a given population. Generally the people on the receiving end of coercion tend to resent it to one degree or another:

    [IMG]

    While it is nice to know that "the team feels strongly about this" and undoubtedly the team has all sorts of warm fuzzies about it, it would have been real nice if the team had felt strongly about this in oh, say, June and had put out the little gem that these changes were going to be going live when TDS came out. Or even at the start of TDS Beta, rather than slipping unannounced it into Beta just before design lock. After all, if decisions like this are truly painstaking decisions that aren't taken lightly by the team, then they decided on this awhile ago, right? Rather than something that was haphazardly decided upon near the end of Beta testing? In which case, how would it have been harmful to the team's desire to have people experience content outside of HAs to tell us 'hey, that ROF stuff you haven't done yet? You might want to consider it this as you decide what you want to do in EQ over the next few months. . . .'

    Yes, it's your world - we get that. On the other hand, when the team radically changes ways of handling pretty major things that have been pretty consistent for the last 15 years or so, it would be nice if the players get sufficient notice so that they don't find that decisions that they made based on 15 years of precedent then suddenly turn out to have been extremely suboptimal.

    Some of us do like to plan out what we will do in the game, sometimes planning months ahead on a general or specific list of things to do. It isn't very encouraging to think that either a) many players have a longer planning horizon than the team,. or b) the team doesn't respect the player base enough to let the player base in on something which likely severely impacts the assumptions that player planning is based on - creating a moral hazard which players end up paying for in terms of opportunities lost or significantly lower rewards than could have been anticipated based on 15 years of precedent.

    Those of us who have (had) a lot of stuff on our lists that we want to do in ROF or other expansions - you know, part of that whole world of Norrath which is not "inside of a single Heroic Adventure" that the team wants us to experience - would have appreciated some notice so instead of mucking about in COTF for the last few months prior to TDS release, we could have, maybe, cleared out our bucket list in ROF before the EXP in ROF was nerfed to the ground. That is a bit of a bummer.

    Plus early discussion might have, at the very least, revealed some of the glaring holes in the team's brilliant plan, so at least all the nerfs could have been done at once instead of the fiasco we have now, with those who leveled during the first three weeks of the expansion (kudos to them for clearing their calendar) doing so under significantly different conditions than those who came later. Said situation which, despite all the warm fuzzies the team may feel on improving the virtue of their product by doubling down on experience nerfs, doesn't increase the warm fuzzies among many of the players, making several of us wonder and say (to quote one of my neighbors when he saw my wife do something of questionable safety): "Love, what were you thinking?!"

    Instead, we get Operation Rolling Nerf - as I am sure that the team will recognize yet more holes in their plan, which will then have to be plugged in yet another patch in a month or two, and another, and another.

    And so it goes.


    P.S. As the team pursues its 'strong feelings' about what is 'fun' for players and how players 'should' play the game, as they work on their next brilliant plan they may want to remember: Ford Motors thought the Edsel was pretty hot too.
  2. Xianzu_Monk_Tunare Augur

    Honestly Devs, take off the cruise control and actually do more actual planning. Stop nerfing the crap out of the old stuff and just make the new stuff better. If that results in you all deciding that as a result you are going to increase the amount of XP needed to gain another level in the next set of levels so be it, but for heaven's sakes all of these lockout additions and nerfs need to stop. You are just contradicting yourselves and irritating your playerbase. You are doing nothing that is good for the game.

    And actually you are disincentivizing your playerbase to explore. The majority of those who play have never played in most of the zones, of the game as it is. Now there is little more that you can do to get them to explore the zones which they can no longer gain experience in, but unnecessary nerfs like these make it so that it isn't even worth it to explore anything in the previous 4+ expansions, it instead make players instead just not explore at all. They will simply find the easiest place they can kill and kill the most mobs. If anything you are only going to cause problems with this change, you won't solve anything. One thing always happens when you crowd most everyone within a specific level range with no where near enough mobs to support the number of groups. People will KS, train, camp jump, and such usually without meaning too; but even then there will be retaliation. None of these changes are going to lead to anything good.
    Lisandra and Corwyhn Lionheart like this.
  3. Koneko Augur

    opps I meant tier 3 and 4 I typoed it also make the question if the rain of fear candy zone is ever put in will it follow rain of fear exp rules meaning why put it in ever just go and eat the gingerbread man and make the visions of candy stop my eyes they burn!
  4. Laronk Augur



    Some things need to be nerfed though, example what if at level 105 beastlords all the sudden started sustaining 100k dps instead of ~30k? You don't just go and say well ok monks you should be above beastlords here's some dps hey everyone you all need more dps to be competitive with beastlords!

    No you nerf the fricken beastlord because you don't want hyper inflation.
  5. Songsa Augur

    I didnt buy new expansion and so stopped EQ to express my plain disapprovement about ultra low raid content and the total joke of copy paste spells (once again) and 0 new ideas for AA making the characters upgrade not fun (if we can talk about upgrade with very low dps improvement and mobs having higher resists and tons more hp).
    Then they decided to nerf the lockouts and xp rewards for group content to control the way we should play. If i still had some regrets to stop this game after 15 years now you made things easier for me. Thx for that SoE.
    i would have loved avoid sarcasm and continue playing this game though.
    Lisandra and Iila like this.
  6. Vlad Diszno Augur

    Derd,
    I think 'push' is the problem. Can one who enjoys something expect to push others into enjoying it too? I doubt people appreciate being 'pushed' ( or forced/ bullied) into doing anything. Even if they wound up enjoying it to whatever extent, I think the initial resentment might be difficult to forget. Drawing people in vs. pushing them seems like would be more effective overall.

    Some examples of 'pushing' that might not be appreciated are: being pushed off a bridge to bungie jump, being pushed out of a plane to parachute, or being pushed overboard into the ocean to dive w/ sharks. The 'pusher' might love any of these activities, but forcing someone else to partake likely won't make a friend. On the extreme side, I admit, but just trying to make my point.


    Perhaps your use of the word 'push' was merely unfortunate choice of words( maybe 'get' instead of 'push' wouldn't have the same connotation), but I think the are a fair number of people that feel that they are being 'pushed' by the powers that be.

    On a side note-
    The relationship of a company and it's consumers is symbiotic, whether equally or not, both parties offer what they hope will make the other happy enough to continue the relationship. A company offers their envisioned product hoping consumers will want to keep spending money on it. Consumers offer their money to the company for said product if they want to. It does seem to me that he onus is on the company to keep the balance as it is their product. It is their call on any changes made to the product but any changes can affect the consumers desire to spend for the product. Granted, the consumers here don't have just one voice, so it can't be simple to balance it all.

    Perhaps it is a natural thing for people to give voice in a relationship they care about. And I wager there are many players that have more than a casual attachment to EQ. Would it be better to stay silent till the tipping point and then just leave, not giving any indication of what the issues are, thus not even giving a hope of any resolution or, at the very least, info to the other party for possible product improvement in the future?

    Sorry for the long post.

    Again, it can't be a walk in the park for SOE to balance all this, more of a tight-rope walk, but they are the ones that stepped out onto the tightrope in the first place. We are just the paying audience.

    Not sure why my font is all over the place and I thought my reply would quote Derd's post. I don't see it in my post so will quote it here:
    "It's funny in a way, every expansion the players say make more content, more zones more more.. then when they try to push you into actually doing just that, it becomes....but I really only want one spot that I can xp in without anyone else in the zone and I want the best xp for killing easy mobs and I really really don't want to have to complete the actual task ever."
  7. Stewgottz Augur

    I don't get when people feel bad for the dev team. No one put a gun to anyone's head and said " You are hereby forced work for SOE on the Everquest development team henceforth!" They all applied to work there. They are all free to quit at anytime or give notice , however their contracts are structured, I have no clue nor do I really care. Can you tell I had a great day at work? Lol

    So to the real point of this post.

    I think its important to not condone this development direction. By purchasing the expac one condones the direction as something acceptable. And to reiterate once again, If i bought this expac, i had ZERO intentions to enter any zone prior to Cotf. I have all my ROF augs and I dont raid so I would just chip away at partisan and merc tasks until they were all done like i usually do, be done with the expac around Easter?

    I'm not the wisest person in the world, but I do know consumers despise being told what to do. You are telling people what to do in an MMORPG. Think about that....
    Lisandra likes this.
  8. Blademaster Elder

    I remember getting my Electrified Scythe of the Whipping Wind from Stormcaller in VOA T4 on my Zerk and fist pumping for days, I can't say the same for something I've ever bought from a vendor.
  9. Agrippa Augur

    That's the rub, isn't it? My main is in raid gear, so I won't need to purchase much from the vendors, but I'm feeling for anyone that has a good chunk of their gear locked behind 3000+ currency purchases. There aren't very many named in TDS. There's just no way that they could put all of the items on so few named, unless they increased their loot tables significantly. And the missions barely give any currency and have ridiculous lockouts.

    Invisible barriers have always annoyed me and are products of weak development. If someone is able to solo an old raid encounter or group mission, more power to them. If a group or raid force wants to chain farm something, why stop them? Instead, all that we're seeing is more and more -blocking and forcing us into very linear and little content.
    Shadva Del`Shai and Lisandra like this.
  10. Blademaster Elder


    Yeah, this. I only play group content, I haven't raided in many years.

    If I could get almost all of my items(BIS) from Named in open zones I'd buy TDS.
    Garshok likes this.
  11. Piasa Journeyman

    I usually don't post and mainly read over the forums. But the response I saw given by SOE here is enough for me to not buy this expansion, I will wait on the next one (if there is a next one).

    I can just play alts, and enjoy everything up to COTF. Mostly enjoying ROF though, it was much better than COTF. I will still play, not going to quit and will continue to buy 2 year subs but I do not like the direction that has been taken.

    You really need to rethink the whole experience thing, I do remember another expansion that had this same problem and it hurt this game very badly with the playerbase.. Gates of Discord...

    I remember SOE flying many people out to your HQ, and you guys having some 1-1 with the players/guildies.. but it still failed because it was too late, WOW came out and the majority of the players left for it.

    I just hope your not making the same mistake again, because I truly love this game and always will.
    Lisandra and silku like this.
  12. Bigbear Augur

    first i want to say THANK YOU SOE for making an awesome game with EQ1. i love this game and always will. i met my wife playing this game and will always remember bastion of thunder as my favorite zone since that is where i met her.

    i can understand that the dev team wants the players to play in the newest expansions when they first come out. i really do understand that. however telling me that i have to play in that expansion if i buy the expansion because i wont be able to get xp anywhere else is just bad business. its so bad that i didnt buy the expansion for none of my 6 accounts (3 for me and 3 for my wife)

    this lockout on HAs. i can understand that the dev team doesnt want the players to only do one HA over and over and over. but if that is what the players want to do then why is that a bad thing

    as a business, soe should be trying to make money and you cant make money if you are going to upset your customers. right?

    roshen.. let the dev team know that if you want me to buy this expansion that this is my list of things that will have to happen
    1. change the HA lockout back to the way it was
    2. reverse the xp nerf on expansions from rof and older ( that was just stupid )
    3. reverse the HA xp changes back to the way it was
    4. reverse the change to mercs for levels 101+
    5. add box art for CotF to the purchase of TDS ( painting of the dragon for houses)
    6. add a big bag for the purchase of TDS ( and if they already purchased then big bags should show up in their claim window)

    now this isnt required but would be appreciated: add a mount to the purchase of TDS ( again if they purchased already then said mount should show up in their claim window )

    i am not asking for alot. just asking for the devs to NOT screw up my game to the point like it is now so that i will have INCENTIVE to want to play EQ again
  13. guado Augur


    1) They must save a lot of money or something, so they are trying to dissuade grabbing so many instances
    2) Not going to happen, people would AFK XP in RoF just like they did in Grounds
    3) Also not going to happen due to #1
    4) Whoever decided tank mercs need less AC and more avoidance doesn't understand the damage output of mobs in T3 TDS (this may seem sarcastic, but I assure you, test it for yourself and you will find it to be true.) Perhaps this is how they want tank mercs to perform - I feel bad for group geared tanks then if you take consistently high spiky damage in t3 TDS. If that is the case, then perhaps something needs to change on the Tank-PC side of things, rather than mercs or mobs.
    5) I agree. You usually get previous expansion's /claim items. No reason to discontinue that.
    6) Agreed 100%
  14. Everstorm Augur

    Incentive would be the carrot, you are using the stick.
    Lisandra and Garshok like this.