I just came across this panel on the GDC site: https://schedule.gdconf.com/session...est-presented-by-daybreak-game-company/865548 It wasn't recorded by GDC but I'm wondering if anyone here happened to record it or know where I can watch/listen to it. It seems like it could be interesting.
I checked the GDC YouTube channel with no luck but maybe I missed it https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0JB7TSe49lg56u6qH8y_MQ/videos
From the description: "Vault Recording: Not Recorded". That's unfortunate. Sounds like it would have been a wonderful insight. =\
Well, given that DBG gave the presentation...one of them should be able to provide the slides and script used for the talk. Given it was an hour and 6 people are listed, I'm not sure how in depth the conversations got. And progression servers are mentioned which either interests you or does not. How about it devs? Want to post your slides/scripts?
The best you're probably gonna get is the Polygon write up of it: https://www.polygon.com/2019/3/29/18286196/everquest-20th-anniversary-gdc-2019
I'm glad they covered the talk but a lot of those quotes are snippets taken out of a much larger context. Like for the raid slide, what we said was (paraphrasing a bit as I don't have the recording either so I'm just going by memory of our various run throughs)... "We've streamlined a lot of our content creation processes, allowing us to devote time to hand-crafting raid content. Modern raids take at least 2 weeks and sometimes over 4 weeks of design time to create, and that's not including testing or tuning time. In original EQ's open air events, the raid cap was as many characters as you could squeeze into a zone without it crashing. Over time we tried out 72 man raid caps, 36, and now our modern events are designed to challenge forces of up to 54 players. While some of the challenges within a raid are class-agnostic, many are aimed at specific roles or classes, encouraging players to bring a well-balanced raid force. In our most recent expansion, The Burning Lands, for example, we wanted to add value to bringing crowd control classes, so each raid event has mechanics in place that meant effects like charm, mez, and root were not only useful but necessary. Of course, not every raid will have a mechanic aimed at every class as this is kind of over-engineered and unnecessarily complicated... which reminds me of an event in our Gates of Discord expansion. It required kill shots from a random class on targets in the event, though it didn't check to see if any particular class was there before issuing the warning so it was very possible that your raid force didn't have the tools necessary to continue. To add insult to injury, we'd just added a new class for that expansion, so the first guilds to tackle the event realized that they would have to create and level up a berserker specifically for that event."
Well put. It also implies a bit of trial and error as well, thus entering the realm of art versus science. Meaning that the choices create consequences that can't be measured in advance. Can't speak for others, but I enjoy hearing about design choices and the challenges they bring. Quick question, has testing given an actual upper limit for possible raid sizes nowadays, given the improvements in hardware that have happened in the last 20 years?
I like how Holly also pointed out during the panel that TLP players only account for 1/3 of the revenues. So that finally puts that argument to bed. The fact that the game is growing year over year since 2014 though is amazing
Always interesting to hear how the game is created. Found beta this time around extremely interesting, especially as we were the first guild to do any testing and the events needed setting up, allowing the next guild to test to do some tuning. Fun stuff Next time one fo the staff watching needs to go live! So we can all see it.
