Do any Devs actually play this game anymore?

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

  1. Nennius Curmudgeon

    Dzarn said, "'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"

    Hard to argue with that. One of the reasons I still play EQ is because it is not easy.

    "upsetti spaghetti" Sounds like you and Ngreth could pair up on this to make a food item that causes damage to a creature in some humorous way.
    Gyurika Godofwar and Skuz like this.
  2. Angahran Augur

    It is my opinion, that if us players are being sold something, e.g. power, then that power should actually mean something.

    Here's an example.

    Say you win $1 million in the lottery. Great, amazing, awesome! (This is how players feel when a new expansion is announced.)

    Now, you hear that everyone else on the planet has been given $2 million.

    This is what happens every expansion.
    Players get something and then NPCs get something that not only neutralizes the increase the players received, but actually makes the players weaker than they were before.

    If devs are going to give players something only to immediately make that something pointless, then why bother ?

    Sure, phasing out abilities 'over time' makes sense. It's when these abilities appear to be phased out at the exact same time as the immunity is granted that gets annoying.

    It's not really much of a power increase gaining 'stun immunity' if at the exact moment you gain it every mob stops using stun.
  3. Laronk Augur

    It's not pointless you can go wreck old content, in some content stuff dies if it even looks at me the wrong way. We just keep getting invaded by more powerful people!

    Do you want new content to be a walk in the park, how would you design new content?
  4. Beimeith Lord of the Game

    ...he's talking about raid bosses with 2+ billion HP.

    Also, a lot of top necros use "wink wink assistance wink wink" for quickloading of multiple spell sets.
    Duder likes this.
  5. kizant Augur

    From now on, EQ is a tower defense game. We're the gods and the NPCs are growing in power to attack us!
    Laronk and Oakenblade like this.
  6. Coas Lorekeeper



    Upsetti spaghetti, I like that! I'm not sure that explains really how I feel, though. Disappointed is more fitting. I've played this class for a very, very long time and I've loved it. I love this game but it just bums me out to see the class where it is at today.

    To try to answer your question, I would say it mostly feels like the team isn't interested in finishing the rebalance. I get you're on a skeleton crew, I get it isn't the easiest fix. But your team is the one who started the revamp. If you start something that is going to affect the game that heavily, you really need to finish it. Don't leave the people that are last in line hanging. They are the ones that needed it the most. I think you need to bump this fix up on your priority list.

    Lastly, I'm certainly not having a bad day. Things are great, honestly. I'm just very passionate about this game that I've played since my early teenage years, and I hope you can delegate the resources needed towards this very prominent issue.
  7. Angahran Augur

    Oh yipee, I can walk into the commonlands and slaughter grey con mobs! oh what fun!

    Sure, we get invaded by more powerful enemies, but why is it that those enemies get 1000x more powerful while we are lucky if we get 1.1x more powerful ?

    If this rate stays the same it will soon take an entire 54 person raid to kill a single trash mob in the first zone of an expansion.

    And no, new content should not be a walk in the park, but having at least a slim chance of living through an encounter would be nice. As it is, with TBL group named mobs, you need a pretty good group, all on their toes.
    Cakekizy likes this.
  8. Oakenblade Former ForumQuest Champion

    Oof strike two. Third time's a charm, I believe in you!
  9. enclee Augur

    Just as a general example of nerf and buying back the pre-nerf power, usually it’s cooldown timers are increased and the next expansion includes ranks of cool down reduction.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare likes this.
  10. Tucoh Augur

    First, thanks Dzarn and to all the other developers for all the hard work you've put into making EQ an amazing game that provides something special that literally no other game out there can. It's a one of a kind game with a unique history and is really an incredible, massive game.


    That all being said, if I remember correctly the previous revamps for the DoTs all came out like apocalyptic death sentences for anything the player casted it on and after a couple months were cut in half to their present state. I don't know how much time you or others spent modeling their damage before initial implementation, but I sure hope it wasn't a lot. And you know what, it was fine. Sure some people will whine about the rebalancing, but bet if you told the community you only had time to give the new DoTs a rough cut and revise after the fact they'd be totally OK with it. Nobody really expects you or other devs to nail these numbers the first time.

    Hell, sometimes a few balance swings keeps these interesting even if I miss the two months of my shaman being Moses and able to summon the plagues of Egypt.
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  11. halagren Journeyman

    Dzarn i truly respect you taking the time to respond to the hate in this thread. I would like to say though that the necro dot revamp is an issue that was radio SILENCE for over 3 years. This was after official patch notes were released saying all the classes would be done within "a few months". After they finished all classes but necro they stopped completely and went fully silent on the issue for a little over 3 years. I personally posted about it after a couple years had passed and directly quoted those patch notes which were PROMPTLY removed from the patch note thread along with my post that quoted it. No response was given and the dev teams silence was the only thing remaining.

    only now within the last i dunno 6 months-ish has it finally been addressed at all, as you've finally stated you still intend to work on it and accomplish it with no eta. we're at around the 4 year mark since it was promised in official patch notes (that have been removed from the forums) that is why people are so angry about it. I totally understand your frustration with people constantly hating on you about it, but you need to understand what we went through for about 4 years with deleted posts, patch notes, and deafening silence.

    Again thank you, truly, for taking the time to respond. I can sense your tone and feel your frustration but i hope this helps you to better understand why there is so much salt from the community on the issue of the necro dot revamp. My intention was not to further aggrevate the issue, but rather just to explain it a little better. I hope this was helpful to you.
  12. ~Mills~ Augur

    Posting here probably only angers you but most players at this stage are just as passionate about the game as the dev team. And in some cases for a longer period of time. So when its a constant onslaught of changes to the thing you love it grows tiresome and the villagers gather their pitch forks. We have a much different perspective than you, that you might not always consider or see from, just as we don't always see stuff from yours. But personally I often try to put myself in your shoes to try and understand the why behind something and if it benefits or improves the game over just impacting my personal play. Some things fit that others are just flat out painful for zero real reason.

    I don't care to speak about other classes despite playing a few but being a necromancer under your AA lead has been very rough. I am sure you have a much different take and view on all of these but a few off the top of my head.

    You nerfed necromancer fade from 100% years after it existed and now recently walked it back.

    You nerfed GoDR from proc'ing off of Flesh to Venom, which for all intents and purposes was working just like Improved Twincasts model of counters and no hoops to twin the next dot. Yes the mechanism was different but in actual play it worked out to essentially be the same. Based on your beta post it appears you are walking this back in that regard by now going back to not having to nuke in between dot casts. But hopefully not at the expense of 5 twins we have had for years as if the speed up is worth that.

    You nerfed Scent of Terris. Then walked that back.

    You added level caps to certain things like GoDR seemingly just because and now seem to be walking that back or tweaking it because you don't want to revisit AA lines every level cap. Its better when they just scale on their own like fades without your and players efforts to track and monitor them.

    There have been numerous posts on the matter from very knowledgable and honest players. Players that could have saved tons of time and effort by avoiding the pitfalls you guys just kept repeating. Posts during EoK and RoS betas, posts here on live years ago and even recently and here we are yet again. It was ignored or disregarded. Necromancers don't need a total dot revamp to end up in a cycle of broken, nerfed, broken that you guys repeated for the other classes. They need their dot lines consolidated so they do what they currently do slightly improved by doing it in less casts. So we don't have to cast 18 spells to do what a monk or berserker does with auto attack and 5 button presses.

    Our perspectives are different but there is zero way you are going to sell me or many others of the community that there wasn't time for this, that it wasnt a bigger priorty when compared to things that did get time and resources or that it was just to over whelming time and resource wise when you completed it for at least 5 or 6 other classes, with the 400 other things you guys have added, changed or removed over the past 3+ years instead. And others have pointed out this was never just a necromancer problem once the debuff cap became the problem it is. Especially when you guys acknowledged it was a problem to be addressed and then you ignored the most impacted class and the class that impacts it the most while simultaneously adding to the problem with spells, AA and item effects that just eat more and more debuffs. How many hours were spent nerfing swarming effects the past 3+ years? How many hours were spent on the faction window? How many hours were spent on chat tabs? How many hours have been spent fixing TLP problems the past 3 years, that in many cases didn't even exist or were not even a problem yet when compared to when revamps started? How many hours fixing, retuning or altering raids post beta for raids that didn't even exist yet? How many hours has Aristo spent this year with buffs now being considated from 3 ranks to 1 if they meet certain criteria? Awesome and well received changed but its still yet another thing that came to be years after the fact at the expense of finishing revamps or a consolidation.

    At this point you can't fault the players for being sour despite it not being productive and just bad human behavior in general. Years of beatings take a toll.
  13. Fire_Wiz New Member

    Shaman, Druid, and Enchanter dots?
    Boze likes this.
  14. Zalamyr Augur

    To start, I appreciate the candor here, so hopefully people will be civil.

    To be frank, the reality is this was announced nearly 4 years ago. I think we all understand it's not an easy thing to balance and not a quick undertaking. But there's a limit to what's considered an acceptable timeline and I think even you can probably agree we've gone way, way past that. If it couldn't be accomplished by now, it shouldn't have ever been started.

    One of the primary reasons stated for this undertaking was to alleviate debuff slot limits. Yet we've reached a point where we're encouraging more classes to take up debuff slots due to these changes, while not reducing, at all, the slots used by the biggest offender, the necro. The debuff slot issues have gotten *worse* as a result of these changes, not better. The only "positive" side effect is the change offered some nice buffs to certain classes, which I suppose it good for them, but wasn't really a stated reason for the change.

    What I think is more frustrating for necros in general is that if this is ever going to happen, it needs to be more of a revamp than a consolidation, and likely needs to occur during a level cap increase. A simple consolidation *doesn't* fix the debuff slot issue. Even if you prevent necros from using previous expansions DoTs, they still have like 16 current expansion DoTs, not counting swifts. That's hardly an improvement. Recruiting more than 3 necros is a terrible idea right now, and would continue to be a terrible idea even after a straight up consolidation.

    So at this point it feels hopeless. Consolidation won't help, while a full on revamp is too time intensive and probably won't happen.
  15. Derresh Augur

    Give it a few more years, you'll be screaming profanities at the sky in public before you know it!
  16. enclee Augur

    If it’s job related bad days, you should find something better. I took a pay cut to get my current job a couple years ago, but I have so much of my life back. Nothing worse than feeling trapped at a job.
    Elyssanda likes this.
  17. Nniki Augur

    Are you looking for the March 2016 Patch Preview?
    https://www.everquest.com/news/march-2016-patch-preview
    https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/march-2016-patch-preview.231275/
  18. Vumad Cape Wearer


    Well that explains why I can so quickly and easily change out my hat ornamentation. Because it affects you!!!

    I kid. Completely intended as a joke.

    Is it possible to have an EQ certified parser and have players sign up to obtain the test data?
  19. Vumad Cape Wearer

    Cool special event ornamentation hat. "The developer's hat" or "the wearer of many hats" which changes in appearance to a random ornamentation each time the player zones. Should probably use the graphic of the cloth necklace or w/e item it is that shows when a graphic isn't assigned in the inventory view.

    Maybe make the item as a heirloom beta reward every year (in addition to the actual beta reward).
  20. Lisard Silly

    Quite a few Programmers and Developers actually play this game, they (some of them) are also pretty in tune with the issues at hand. there is just boundaries and processes to fix things. they dont just snap their fingers and everything's how the community wishes instantaneously. one may even suggest that they are even just as upset and frustrated as you are because its not as simple as you may think.






    First, Thank you to all the Employees at DBG who keep the wheels spinning in EQ. But to give you an example off the top of my head in pure response to your query to the removal and re-adding of abilities.


    Moving Mountains (flings a mob into the air towards you) given in Veil of alaris no level cap could be used on any mob, nerfed sometime around TBM(2016) IIRC to only work on mobs up to 3 levels below you (Blue -> grey con, pretty useless now or rare opportunity to even use it)

    Magnanimous Force (Pushes a mob in the direction you are facing) Ring of Scale (2018) no level cap (works on everything including Raid Bosses). I use this frequently in both raiding scenarios in positioning the boss/adds and group content when pulling in place of what i used moving mountains for.

    both of these abilities were and are used to position mobs both in group content and raid content (i currently find myself utilizing the magnanimous force in raids to help position Boss mobs. i also use it to punt some adds into other adds when working on CC mechanics even tho it does do 1 point of damage and breaks the mez, this equals team work with your CC(crowd control) teams. and then in my group/pulling adventures you can use it to split troublesome mobs.

    thats 1 example i can remember that was most recent, i dont pay much attention to other classes outside of monk when it comes to the nerf/balance/buff posts.

    there are many more topics of taking away only to be given back and i think people associate it with the Pre/post expansion releases even tho they are more of a class balancing attempt. an example of this would be Thunderfoot for monks, it was pretty good in its initial release, but sometime around 2014 it was nerfed, then slightly buffed in 2015, then again in 2017 to resembling how it originally was (almost its still not as good as it was or in comparison to Headshot/Decapitate/Assassinate, but we'll take it!!!!). im sure this could be said for many of the changes and then people just taking it as a omg they trying to "sell me back my nerfs"

    this topic always arises before a expansion release after many nerfs/balancing/adjusting through out the year, for example, most recent years

    (2015) https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...fs-before-new-expansions.226841/#post-3331544

    (2016) https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/so-what-happened-to-death-peace.230153/page-2

    (2017, the infamous Hybrid nerf and /TGB with AA group buffs right before an expansion release) https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/game-update-notes-november-15-2017.245183/
    Xeladom, Vumad, kizant and 1 other person like this.