Do any Devs actually play this game anymore?

That's where communication really helps. The players obviously do so overwhelmingly, but it is often lacking from the development side. It does take extra time, but at least the community will get the opposite perspective or perhaps be able to correct a flawed perspective... or vice versa. I appreciate Ngreth's engagement in the community even if he sometimes does it to a fault. Dzarn's fade changes thread was also a great heads-up that allowed for discussion and changes before it went live.

To be fair, things like chat tabs and faction window would fall under the code team, and the design team seems to be pretty siloed, unfortunately... items, AAs, spells, lore/content, and I think they split up raid design. I have often wondered, however, what all responsibilities fall to the spell designer... I can't imagine new expansion spells should take much time being they're typically copy-paste with 5% or whatever upgrades (typically the dullest part of new expansions, unfortunately). I think their creation could pretty much be automated at this point.

Very much appreciate the fact you are posting outside of what I'd consider normal work hours sir.

Very useful since many of us cannot file bug reports except outside of hours too.

This thread was a good read. I am really curious how many here pre-ordered and are actively participating in beta game and forums. The has been an unheard of amount of transparency all around by the devs and this is the time where they can easily make changes to the expansion that will be released. Want to stop post release nerfs and broken abilities ? This is how that happens. If you can name any other game you play where the devs converse with you and with quite a bit of candor regarding their limitations and goals please let me know.

2, and 2 more that likely won't see beta here.

Nothing takes more than 30 seconds on the internet

Perception is that the team is brutally inefficient. The player base is a massive resource and yet some Dev spent the time randomly picking some weapons that have been proc'ing at Level 1 for 17+ years and nerfed them because players quickly leveling to 30 reached the top of the priority list. Setting aside the issues of how such a thing reaches top priority let alone the all important can't sell your Crescent Reach guild trainer BP nerf, when those weapons reach the top of your priority list you make a post and Riou or Rasper or Fanra or Almar or whoever makes a list of every relevant item including item number.

Staff of the Silent Star instantly killed one mob every minute or so at low levels without assembling a specialized twink kit to get your Dex into the 200s until a recent patch and yet Amulet of Xuzl remains Level 1 usable and is absurdly more powerful with the only challenge being getting aggro fast enough to prevent the sword from despawning. Oh noes, people were having fun on FV with Coral Hilted Tulwar and Level 6 PvP on Zek is out of whack, nothing was more important than spending much more time than necessary to address that issue poorly.

When Necro revamp, no point calling it a DoT revamp since you're literally revamping that entire class, reaches the top of the priority list you will need to figure out who you trust that is willing to wade through hundreds of replies many of which will offer no useful input on the actual revamp and edit a first post or simply compile things into a PM and you will get multiple options that meet all your stated goals for the revamp. Collectively the entire player base simply crushes the Dev team because of available time let alone that raidloot showing a new version of Knowledge of the Past and Soothing Breath is a reminder that the Devs often have a terrible grasp of even really basic concepts.

Some of those things do fall under others umbrella like coders but they all help and work with each other many times. Dzarn spent time helping and implementing the faction window. I am very confident guessing that at some point in the past 3 and half years Aristo to some degree helped work on something outside his normal scope as well. Just like someone else pointed out how nerf'ing old weapon procs and a zillion other things changed on a whim meaning they were top priority at the time took work from people who normally might not work on them. If it was important or something they wanted to handle debuff issues and dot consolidations would have been done by now. There is no other way to look at it but they purposely have chosen to back burner it.

Just for clarification, Dzarn is on both teams (primarily code), so the faction window isn't outside of his normal scope.

From last year:

I'm here for this, and I hope I actually see it someday.

As a tangential note of my own, perhaps you can rename whatever effect you've used to bypass divine aura on modern content NPC spells and abilities as "Insult to Injury Immunity."

It depends on the named, I found that in mearats the ancient warder of air was hard for my group because I was dumb the first two times I tried him and pulled him facing my group and he did that melee/spell silence junk then I looked him up and was like OH it's directional well I'll deflection on inc and not face him towards my shaman!

Some nameds are relatively easy though, you can get diminished muhbis from brass palace mission and smoke trials. Wending Ways and Trial of three are relatively easy so is brass palace.

What do you mean by on their toes though, mashing their buttons, or using all their abilities? As a paladin a named fight goes like this, I pull then I use my defensive discs in order (I might glyph if I think its hard or my group isn't good) then I either press my multibind that does my crushes/valiant or I press my multibind with my tot heals. I stare at the group window and if an AE hits I'm ready to dicho or gift of life or hand. I wouldn't call it "on my toes" but rather I'd call it paying attention to the stuff I'm supposed to pay attention to.

Do you think nameds should just be actual facerolling over the keyboard and you get loot?

Given that other class's revamps aligned to a minimal effort in these areas, the questions you posed don't really matter. In simpler terms, it was obvious that for many classes, the DoTs were simply linked along the resist or namesake line and given a flat x% damage bonus with a y% mana increase and that was that - the same could be done for necros and sks within the hour. If your stance is that much more work was actually put into it, then that's not a good image either, since the end results don't bare that out.

No, nameds should not be a walk in the park.
However, when a group is using all their abilities, all their disciplines, all their clickies it should not be a complete coin toss.

If a group is throwing everything including the kitchen sink at a single opponent, they should have a reasonable expectation of success. Obviously things can go badly, the cleric gets silenced, the tank gets mezzed, etc.

Think of it in real world terms.
Would a big game hunter go out hunting a lion if he knew there was, maybe, a 50/50 chance he'd get eaten ?

And in this game, we are taking 5 friends with us to go kill the lion, and still not really improving the odds that much.

The named are dangerous. That is a staple of EQ. What you are describing in wants for named to be easy is not Everquest. Sometimes Everquest wins. Some named require CC, some require just the right this, or that, learn a nameds abilities and strategize around that.

The part of the story you aren't including is that you're doing it wrong.

Thank you for pointing out, from your extensive knowledge, that someone who has been playing this game for 20 years is obviously "doing it wrong".

And no, I have never said names should be easy, they should always be challenging.
But there is a difference between a challenge being you beat the target by the skin of your teeth after researching it, studying it, getting all your friends together to finally kill it VS the challenge of throwing yourself out of a perfectly good aircraft and expecting to walk away.

With the population of EQ these days having any mob that 100% requires any one specific class, in the group game, is ridiculous. There are multiple classes that have similar abilities. Enchanters can mez, so can Bards. Clerics heal, so can Shaman and Druid. Warriors tank, so can Paladins and SKs.

Having a GROUP named where you must have a Warrior, an Enchanter and a Cleric basically means that named is not going to be engaged on any regular basis.

You are absolutely justified in feeling that, I hope you can trust that I'm also disappointed at the current state of things. My emotional energy is split among the concerns and worries of 16 classes, but it weighs heavily on me every time I review our systems that NEC have to jump through too many hoops and still aren't performing in a way that the community or the design team are thrilled with.

If an apology helps, you have it from me, the wall of work our team tackles each day is... considerable.

I understand the perception here and will continue to support the team in solving this problem to the best of my ability. Although each designer has a different level of public interaction on the forums, I can only offer insight into my experience of working with the team every day that it is not a lack of will that prevents us from finishing the task. It's not a good feeling as a designer knowing that 2 of your 16 classes aren't in the right place due to the scope of a particular task.

I'm glad things are okay for you
Your passion rings true and I hope the team and community can come together to work out solutions to mitigate the problems related to the delay in the DoT revamp as best we can until the task gets finished. My initial notes in the AA forums of the beta thread are an attempt to work with the community to solve issues. I made the mistake of presenting solutions to problems and not the base problems themselves. One of my many goals in AA consolidation is to reduce hoops and goofy things players need to do to play effectively. The NEC class, as I'm sure you know, is considerably more complicated than most classes, so it's a complex journey.

Can you cite a specific example of when this happened?

Missing the mark in the ways we did during the first few class DoT revamps gave us some valuable lessons and encouraged us to take much greater care when working on NEC spells. I can't promise, but I hope as well as you do that we get it much closer to correct when it's ready for initial testing.

The frustration is fair and I'll readily admit our team's accuracy in estimating work is an area we can certainly improve on. The people sitting in offices and cubes around me are among the hardest working people I know and our inclination to estimate tasks is often 'optimistic' and typically include hours that I would prefer my friends go home and rest rather than stay late.

Communication is difficult with a hostile audience, but the community's frustration is justified. I hope the message that there are hard working human beings sitting on the other side of the internet absorbing the community's feedback resonates.

I guess I would present the situation as such; if the solution to a problem that frustrates you relies on working with other people (a development team), it's far more effective to communicate reasonably and respectfully with those people. Trying to set aside negativity when solving problems helps all of our mental and emotional health and gets to the 'solutions' part of the 'problems' presented faster.

The community's frustration with the delay is fully justified. As best as I can, reducing buff slot bloat is a cornerstone of adjustments that I am currently making to AA abilities.

It's considerably more difficult to have a hopeful outlook than it is to fall into the trap of pessimism, it's something I struggle with personally on a daily basis. I'm currently considering the implications of replacing AA DoT duration focuses with DoT damage focuses as one potential alleviation to the current problem.

OldManYellsAtCloud.jpg

I opted to cut caffeine out of my diet due to health concerns. I've integrated the miracle substance back into my life this week and now fully regret my decision of 5 years.

As for my job, it's hard for me to imagine another career at this point. I love my coworkers, my job requires and exercises a skill-set that gives me a strong sense of purpose, and apart from Simpsons trivia, the music of 1970s to the 1980s, and every Nobuo Uematsu composition, every minute detail of EverQuest composes the majority of my memories and thoughts. My job brings me quite a bit of joy.

Normalizing the required level on combat triggered weapons was a task I did personally. The ticket as written 'Set minimum trigger level on items with procs (over 50 damage)' was done by connecting item data -> item spell data -> spell data -> (does damage > 50 without min level) - aggregating the data took maybe 10 minutes, reviewing the entries by hand and setting equivalent minimum levels based on our post Planes of Power standards took about 1-2 hours and 1 hour of the item system designer's time to review the changes.

I would say the team is about as efficient as our toolset allows us to be but the distribution of some tasks is easier than others. As is there's 1 human being who is the arbiter of spell design. The system is complicated enough and untooled to where, while I can offer feedback and suggestions, it's not within my domain to make the changes to that system. It's the same with AA abilities, the other systems designers will periodically make minor adjustments, but for the most part, any large scale changes fall into the availability of my work hours. It doesn't help that in addition to the spell system, Aristo's time as the lead systems designer pulls him in too many directions at once.

Selling a starting item falls strongly under the category of 'exploit fix' vs 'nerf' and I suspect the time it took to fix that issue was somewhere around 10-15 minutes with another 10-15 for review.

This I have known for a very long time, and why I never get my hopes up anymore about cool new stuff or the fact that Necro and SK are stagnated due to an "eventual" dot revamp that doesn't seem likely to ever happen. I do appreciate you opening up to the community at large and appreciate the work that you guys do.

As a side note. I have been watching a series on netflix recently called diagnosis, where they crowd source the diagnosis of very rare diseases. Would the EQ team be willing to look at something like that. Have a specific PM location made up so that people can present plans for problems that do take a lot of planning such as the dot revamps? that way one person could review that "accounts" PM and present the team with possible solutions to real problems, even if they don't work exactly how you guys would want them to, it might alleviate 50%+ of the intellectual work and leave just the programming part. Also it could help you guys in the design phase with ideas, cause I know its hard to come up with those at times.

I know the Necro thread has some suggestions but knowing aristo is so busy and probably never gets to look at them it makes me feel bad for the people wasting their time on it. I have thought about making a spreadsheet of all the mods for sk and the spells and doing the same, then doing real parses and presenting them, but I knew it would be a waste of time.

Dzarn, while your biting humor in previous responses may not have been appropriately received by a section of the player base experiencing significant turmoil, this response was so true to the mark that I suspect even the more hardened (not all) may acknowledge that you and the team are working on issues that matter to the players. I especially liked your gentle suggestion that players will catch more with honey than with vinegar, but then you said it better.

Now, about my characters, can you make them easier to play . . .

Well, as much as I'd like to have this conversation, this thread isn't the right place. But I wish you good luck in killing more named this next expansion.

Duder doesn't want to derail this but I'm not so shy: What named do you think is a coin toss to a TBL group-geared six man group playing correct with an OK group composition (at least one tank and priest)?

Well that’s good news Dzarn, it’s concerning to hear someone post they’ve had 5 straight years of bad days, that’s a serious red flag.

If you think the EQ audience is hostile, I’m not sure I see the same things you are. If you’re finding the team is constrained on time, you need to use your community of experts. I’m not speaking to the average community member, but the ones that beta and are the most knowledgeable of their class. Ask for a project plan by those folks, they’d love to do it and then you only have to manage and implement.