Do any Devs actually play this game anymore?

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

  1. Mannhec Lorekeeper

    And if so is it just a Cleric? I do not think the Dev's understand the game dynamic anymore. Every expansion it seems they take away things just to add back in during the new expansion to make us think we got something. Adjusting the numbers in the database is not real coding, though it saves dollars and can appear as if something is being done.
  2. Xianzu_Monk_Tunare Augur

    They play, their opinions on how things should be are just different and generally entrenched.
  3. Dzarn Developer

    Could you provide a rough estimate on the number of 'things ' that have been taken away then later 'added back in during the new expansion to make us think we got something'?

    I'm curious about this topic as it feels like a recurring issue but I haven't seen it followed up with details.

    I'd imagine if the scenario presented is 'DPS in expansion X was reduced only to be increased in expansion Y' there's merit to the argument, but an alternate interpretation of the scenario is that 'content in expansion X is expected to behave W but content in expansion Y is expected to behave Z'.

    I'm unfamiliar with any specific recent examples of other types of content, systems, or misc balance adjustments that have been intentionally or even ignorantly adjusted for expansion X then simply replaced as is in expansion Y, but I'm definitely curious.
    Cakekizy, Verily Tjark, Funky and 4 others like this.
  4. Coas Lorekeeper

    I would say it is very safe to say that no devs play the necro class, otherwise necro/sk being left out of the dot revamp would've been addressed/fixed long ago.
  5. Xianzu_Monk_Tunare Augur

    The regularity in which nerfs come at the end of an expansion when there was no real need to other than to make the new content more necessary to do in order to be able to do the content which previously was easily doable. Almost every expansion for the last 10 years or more has had something like this happen, some worse than others. For example, the recent unnecessary nerfs to the Fades most people see these as being solely to introduce new ways to make those better via more ranks of AAs and the like. I am quite sure that people can point to many other specific nerfs which served no actual purpose other than to make players weaker so that so that in the future (not even necessarily immediately) be improved back closer to what it was before.
    Xeladom and Gyurika Godofwar like this.
  6. Belexes ForumQuester

    I am pretty sure the devs are one of the main reasons this game has lasted so long. Quit whining.
  7. Dzarn Developer

    How many work hours, over what period of time, at what priority (as compared to more tasks I'm at liberty to articulate), by how many human beings, do you feel are appropriate to assign to the task of retuning how DoTs function for each of the classes who have DoT spells? Answer will preferably have each value listed for each class. I believe you will be able to list all of the classes without missing any cases.

    I'm curious what the public perception is for tasks like this and whether it's an assumption of resources and effort, an ignorance of constraints, or lack of empathy that encourages assumptions regarding the play classes of the human begins with the spoopy red names on the internet forums.
  8. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    How hard is it to look at the % base damage increase of dots for all the other classes on the revamp, the % base mana increase, and then do the same thing to necro/sk dots and then link the spell lines so you only cast the current ones?

    OK, the necros have some more crit multiplier things in action, ok, but that just makes up for some of the older dots they are using most likely. Look at the damage they do before, then the damage after, in test environment, under same conditions, then modify base damage up/down to accommodate.

    Really, I don't understand how this isn't something that takes a couple hours, max, of work, to be frankly honest.
    Xanathol likes this.
  9. Yimin Augur


    I am pretty sure they are 50 percent of why we still have EQ , the Customers are the other 50 percent can't have one with out the other !

    On a side note , I ran into GM's only twice in my 20 years playing EQ , one time to get an item in Qeynos hills and one other time in lower Guk to get an other items was fun both time :D

    YiMin
  10. Lovehaas the Mystic New Member

    You're simplifying AAs and removing buff ranks which is work now to make future content more streamlined for you to develop. Wouldn't giving necro DoTs the shaman treatment accomplish the same thing? With the added benefit of saving a class that is slowly dying as people get tired of working 3x as hard as other classes to produce the same DPS?
    Vexana_Lanys likes this.
  11. Angahran Augur

    One thing that gets frustrating, from a players perspective, is how it seems that every expansion the NPCs gain several million HME plus new abilities which appear specifically designed to neutralize anything that the players have 'gained' in the expansion.

    e.g.
    Knight's are immune to Fear, that's cool.
    When was the last time an NPC had a fear effect ? Last I recall was in the revampped Plane of Fear.
    Also, after Knight's gained the fear immunity, it appeared that more and more NPCs gained stun and charm abilities.

    It just seems that that is how it is every expansion.
    Players gain 'something cool' and it is immediately rendered pointless because of some new ability granted to NPCs.
    Cakekizy likes this.
  12. Dzarn Developer

    This is an interesting case of perception framing the scenario.
    The statement that 'nerfs regularly coincide with the end of an expansion cycle' indicates that a person's perception of a period of time within EverQuest can be measured in 'expansion blocks'. That's a perfectly reasonable premise and way to look at your playtime in a live-evolving environment of 20+ years.

    What the premise readily signals to me is the fact that the majority of tuning changes that I am able to make are done during the portion of the year that I am assigned to work on the AA system, which coincides almost exactly with the window of time between the 'end of an expansion' and the development of the next.

    Every member of the EverQuest team has to 'wear a lot of hats' for lack of a better term. All things being perfect I we have the time and bandwidth to make tuning adjustments as soon as the team identifies issues and comes up with a plan we are happy with. Our schedules are split between many things all year round.

    This clarifies for me why people have this perception of the timing but the implication of the statement always feels like people believe that its done intentionally or nefariously as if to drive sales of the next expansion. That notion is what I find difficult to empathize with due to the fact that, one of the top reasons that I work on this game is that I get to work with a team of people who aren't morally bankrupt. I'm wholeheartedly onboard with the argument that making game design decisions in order to abuse the psychology of your users is immoral.

    The topic can turn tangential quickly so I'll pause with saying, I understand your sentiment and my aim is to offer context for concrete examples of this behavior that people believe they have witnessed (if it concerns issues that are within my domain to speak about).

    Here is the context I can offer for the case presented here.
    I'm to understand that it is your opinion that the recent changes to escape AA abilities were 'unnecessary'. This is a reasonable opinion to have. Roughly half of the classes impacted by the changes had drawbacks added. However, there were a number of qualify of life issues made considerably better for the other half of the classes.

    You could theoretically point to the fact that the restrictions added to fade years ago and then relaxed recently are a 'take and give' but I suggest they lack an expansion-centric timeframe that implies neferious motive and that the changes were done in a way to ensure no one had to expend any additional effort to reap the benefits of the changes.

    This feels like another case of my todo list containing a note to work on a task ("look at success chance, reuse times, level differences, and BST's lack, for fade AAs") and this last month being the period of time I had to perform the review and adjustments.

    While it's an interesting theory, the context I can offer is, while I was doing my first pass review of all the AA abilities this year I finally got tired of the fact that the way I initially implemented the level scaling portion of fade still required more manual effort than I'm happy with.

    Not repeating redundant work is something I'm very passionate about. It's for this same reason that the escape SPA that the AAs use was changed to support not only a flat level cap but also level difference scaled cap. This allowed me to ensure the minimum number of spells and AA ranks would need to made and still allow fade to scale to a level based on the level of the caster.

    The redundant work that I encountered was the particular way I had to implement fade for bards in which I had to create new spells every level to enforce a mana cost that I feel is the appropriate limiter. My target value in assigning a flat mana cost was historically roughly 2% of a bard's total mana pool.

    I found I could remove this redundant work if I implemented percent based costs for spells. With that code change I have saved myself the work of ever implementing another rank of fading memories for bards.

    Empowered by the joy that never having to make another rank for bards brought me, I extended my task to adjusting all of the fade abilities for each class in a way that I was happy with so that they would not require adjustment for the foreseeable future.

    So for this particular case, I can state that, "at this time there are no plans to add additional ranks that the players must purchase to any of the currently existing fade AA abilities." Something I'm rather proud to say in fact as it means less redundant reviews in the future.
  13. Coas Lorekeeper



    It is not my job to determine that and answer those questions, it is yours. And you've failed at it. That paired with the upcoming nerfs to Necro abilities adds insult to injury. Think I'll pass on buying ToV and renewing my membership at this point. This may seem a little dramatic, but as a necro that has been playing since 2001, I really see no reason to continue.
  14. Dzarn Developer

    To clarify, it is your opinion that power increases, such as total immunity to a particular effect, should be relevant in an environment that is intended to exist indefinitely?

    The way that philosophy, economics, human behavior, and game design intersect is amazing at times.
    All I can offer here is that content designers who know an effect has no purpose typically phase its use out of their content as time goes on. Ex: It's hardly worth using a stun effect due to the proliferation and inflation of stun resist and stun immunity.

    As to the notion that power gained is pointless because it's not infinite, I find it difficult to square that with the idea that the power gained remains exactly as potent against all the content up until the point the power was gained. Fearless for example, still makes you immune to fear, does it not?

    'Optimal game balance' is a hard mark to hit but I'm comfortable asserting that if new content was not more difficult than old content, thus requiring additional effort to empower yourself to conquer it, the player's sense of accomplishment and the value of progression would deteriorate rather quickly.
  15. Dzarn Developer

    Difficult enough to where it hasn't been accomplished to date and not due to lack of desire to have our game in the state we and players are happier with.

    How many hours would you expect to take to produce a report of data that includes your testing methods, reproduction steps, and commented steps regarding the math you used to determine the appropriate new values of linked lines vs the current system with the tools currently available to you as a player on the test server?

    I'm not asking in order to dodge the question, I'm curious what your method of testing would be to generate 'before and after' results.
    Elyssanda, Jhenna_BB, Robnie and 2 others like this.
  16. enclee Augur

    It’s been 3-4 years of DoT revamp discussion, any reasonable person would expect results by that time frame. Especially, considering it’s tied to a much larger issue of a mob’s debuff cap. The debuff cap is a well known issue, but you keep adding abilities that take a debuff counter.
  17. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    1) Take a max focus/aa necro with all rank 3 spells, equip epic
    2) Hotkey all the damage focus aa type modifiers that affect aa
    3) Test in an environment where they won't wear off
    4) Point is to compare before and after damage per second only from those dots under optimal conditions
    5) Find out from actual necros (if you don't want to do the math to figure out), how many dots they can consistently load (I think its 15-18) on a mob at once
    6) Group with a bard with caster dps stuff going
    6a) Second test group with an enchanter with caster dps stuff going
    6b) Third test with no adps going
    6c) Fourth test with bard and glyph/intensity (whichever works better for necros)
    6d) Fifth test with enchanter and glyph/intensity
    6e) Sixth test with no adps but with glyph/intensity

    You should need no more than 20 minutes per test, that would give you near 200 tick points under each test to average out and min/max dps from that source.

    7) Adjust dots by increasing base damage and base mana to be in line with druid/shaman changes. Can only use one spell from each spell line, obviously, linked.
    8) Group with a bard with caster dps stuff going
    8a) Second test group with an enchanter with caster dps stuff going
    8b) Third test with no adps going
    8c) Fourth test with bard and glyph/intensity (whichever works better for necros)
    8d) Fifth test with enchanter and glyph/intensity
    8e) Sixth test with no adps but with glyph/intensity

    Again, 20 minutes (keep in mind once you have the dots on, you can go afk or do something else, so its mostly set up) each.

    Compare the dps output. Mana output is a simple math calculation to adjust that.

    Adjust the base damage up/down as needed.
    Gyurika Godofwar and Dzarn like this.
  18. Dzarn Developer

    You are correct in the fact that answering those questions is not your job. The reason I posed the questions was to try and get a better understanding of why you sound so upsetti spaghetti.

    Maybe it's the belief that the team isn't interested in finishing the rebalance, which is inaccurate.
    Maybe it's the belief that the task is easy to accomplish, it's genuinely not.
    Maybe it's the belief that there are multiple people capable and available to solve the task, there aren't.

    So, while correct that providing insight into your line of thought regarding your grievances is not your job, neither is it my job, so I must insist on a minor correction there. Unless by 'you' you meant the 'royal you' meaning the portions of the development team whose job it is to schedule tasks to ensure we remain employed. To which I'd still assert the 'royal we' have not failed because the priority of this task has not exceeded the other tasks that have been accomplished in the intervening time.

    Regarding the proposed changes to necro AA abilities that you're referring to as nerfs. The listed changes are neither finalized as definitive nor are they implemented in any fashion other than as a todo note that can currently prompt productive discussion on use cases for each ability in the beta forums.

    As a tangential note I'm excited to eventually use the name 'Insult to Injury' as the name of a bard focus effect on their nuke line.
    Either way, I'm sorry you're having a bad day. I've been having a bad day for about 5 years now, but it's slowly getting better.
  19. Oakenblade Former ForumQuest Champion

    No need to say more, sir. You've won this day.
    code-zero, Boze, Claan and 3 others like this.
  20. Zamiam Augur

    how/why do you find the time or need to load 15+ dots as a necro on mobs that typically die within 15 to 45 seconds
    and named possibly 45sec to 1min ?

    dots usually take 1-3 seconds to cast unless they are the instant cast ones

    im guessing you have to switch spell sets 2 maybe 3 times to get that many dots on mob IF the mob actually lives longer than 45 seconds .. and im sure it takes 3 to 4 seconds to switch each set..

    so cast first set of dots prolly 12 to 15 seconds there (unless instant)

    switch spell set add 4 seconds plus wait time for GSR (global spell refresh)

    cast 2nd set of dots another 12 to 15 seconds

    by this time your 2nd set of dots wont even come close to duration for mob due to mob will be dead or dying shortly after you cast your 2nd round ..

    3rd spell set of dots .. Nm time to remem 1st set ..

    I dont see the need unless your talking about RAID targets .. or soloing ..