{Devs} Rain of Fear Release schedule on Phinigel

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Briano, Oct 7, 2019.

  1. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    All this shows is the lack of long-term planning & vision being done to actively support the players who are involved on TLP servers.

    Issues are constantly addressed "after the fact" with little to zero anticipation of the problems & challenges faced by TLP servers communities.

    The game is a whole, it cannot be right that you accelerate only one aspect, the unlocking of expansions at 4x the speed of the original release schedule or more & then opt to completely fail to consider the wider ramifications of that such as the gearing-up guilds require in order to tackle increasingly difficult & challenge content, levelling & the AA requirements that content was originally designed for. Which is why these gating mechanisms MUST be adapted to the specific unlock schedule for each (or removed) or they negatively impact players too much, using a Fippy schedule for a server that opens expansions at twice the speed Fippy did is just /facepalm bad practise at best.

    It's like putting a V8 Supercharged engine into a Mini Cooper without also adapting the gearbox, suspension, steering & braking, all you are gonna get is a nasty accident.
    Brumans, Froger and SunDrake like this.
  2. Machen New Member


    There is a ton they have gotten right, and quite a lot of anticipation of problems.

    That they cannot anticipate and correct every problem before it has an impact on the TLP's likely has more to do with competing priorities and the sheer number of TLP issues than anything else. I doubt the devs are the ones pushing for new TLP releases faster than once a year for the last four years now. The number of issues on their plates from the TLP's alone right now is staggering.

    Yes, they are hammering the biggest/most important nails first, which is often not the later era TLP issues when only a handful of guilds are still playing. That's not really surprising. Maybe slightly shortsighted--if they had addressed this four years ago when we asked them to on Fippy, as the only remaining guild still playing, it wouldn't even be an issue today, much less on Selo or other future TLP's. But no organization can perfectly address every future problem before it arises, and they seem to be doing a decent job of triaging overall, except for the blatant ignoring of truebox workarounds. That one will bite them in the long run far more than this issue will.
  3. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    I'm going to have to disagree with you on that point, the changes to the game directly related to TLP have thus far to my knowledge been ones pointed out/requested by players sometimes in advance of the expansion players are drawing attention to. There may well have been some other changes put in place without the attention being drawn to it by players, but I can't think of any. Some of the most obvious things relating to accelerated schedule servers are still not addressed, or are actively being disregarded.

    Perhaps the "AoC" system being created for instancing old raid content was something the devs can be said to have put in place to anticipate problems, I'm not sure, but that's all that springs to mind.

    That's a fair point, I think we can all appreciate that currently resource is almost certainly at the root of most issues with the state of the game on both Live & TLP servers, but there's room for better time-management, simply releasing more TLP without a plan to address the multitude of issues an accelerated unlock schedule predictably brings with it though is counter-productive to increasing game revenue (which is what the TLP are intended to achieve after all), it may even generate a degree of backlash and end up costing them reputational as well as financial repercussions.

    Still, they had a reminder beforehand, even acknowledged that. But here we are.
  4. Boze TLP complaint factory

    Dev: it should work this way, that would be intended.
    Dev2: it doesn't work that way, tell me why it should.
    Players: how do I tell Ngerth he's being a jerk again without getting banned?
  5. That0neguy Augur

    Fixed it for you
  6. Kontra Augur

    You guys realize how busy the limited staff there is this time of year right? It’s pretty obvious this got overlooked and no one had a definitive answer for you so Prathun gave you his best educated guess. Ngreth came back after to explain and you jump down his throat too lol...Developers are allowed to make mistakes...they’re human too! Prathun even said “I believe _____” in his reply and when you confronted him directly about follow up before launch he was honest that he wouldn’t have time to test it. Show some class and suck it up and roll with it.
  7. Kragin Augur

    I predict any patches will reset the expansion timers, strap in boys.
  8. Zanarnar Augur

    What was the original intent of the delay? Was it due to the content not being ready yet, or was it all ready but you intentionally gated it on live for [reasons]. If its the former, then why gate it at all on TLPs? Everything is ready.

    If its the latter, so be it.
    (*oh, because that's how it happened on live isn't really a good answer here. The reason behind why it happened that way on live matters)
  9. Kontra Augur

    The original intent of the delay was that in era on live, Shadows of Fear and Heart of Fear didn't open until WAY later in the expansion. It was a staggered release by choice, partially due to the time it probably took to finish the later tiers of content, and budget constraints etc if I had to take a guess? I realize Prathun had said "he believed" it may all launch day 1, but it was never intended to be this way. The idea should be that it follows the same rough script that live did, which it sounds like you are getting and still aren't happy with and want to fight every step of the way. Let it go and enjoy the content you do have.
  10. RainbowCane Elder

    Kontra, the problem is that their exists a problem whereby the expansion resets to only T1 / T2 being open AFTER T3 / T4 finally do release. It happened this way on Fippy, and if nothing has been changed it will happen again here. The problem is that we have half the time Fippy does in between releases, so that kind of game breaking bug constitutes a very major set back.

    This is further exacerbated by the fact that the Devs were told of this well in advance. So when it inevitably occurs anyway, we have no recourse other then saying "I told you so" which doesn't fix anything. We just want proactive support / solutions. I don't think that is unreasonable.
    Skuz and Froger like this.
  11. Rogue001 Lorekeeper

    I can't help but get a very rude vibe from this post.

    You are right - we get 8 weeks at trying to do the T4 events. How do you plan on gearing 54 people in 8 weeks, that's if a guild can beat all the content in week 1?

    There's tons of spells and NPC's that are missing, There are also several NPC's that are missing are for T1 nad T2 content...supposedly locked behind all this T3 and T4 content. So we can't have T1 & T2 content now either.
    Skuz likes this.
  12. Kontra Augur

    I understand the frustration and the concern Rainbow. All I'm saying is you are probably just going to have to deal with it at this point, what with the limited staff available being really tied up this time of year with ToV beta (plus some of the developers raid testing on top of their reg hours) and itemization and everything that goes along with rolling out an expansion. They just might not have the time required to figure out what caused that issue back on Fippy and fix it right now. I know it could have and should have been done already, but obviously it wasn't. So yelling about it now doesn't do anything to be a part of the solution is all I'm saying.
  13. RainbowCane Elder

    I can't speak for everyone else, but I don't think having an informed discussion, where everyone puts their thoughts and frustrations on the table is the same thing as yelling.
    Skuz likes this.
  14. Rasputyn Elder


    The Underfoot expansion was released on Live without Convorteum, which was then added 5-6 months later. On TLPs, Underfoot is released all at once(and now with a massive increase to raid loot tables).

    Call of the Forsaken was released in multiple parts on Live. On TLPs, Call of the Forsaken is released all at once.

    The outlier here is Rain of Fear. I believe on TLPs that Rain of Fear, Shadow of Fear(Tier 3), and Heart of Fear(Tier 4) should also be released all at once. I believe that Underfoot and CotF demonstrate that the Dev team also believes that all 4 tiers of Rain of Fear should also be unlocked all at once on TLPs, so much that Prathun stated he thought it would be.

    Thanks for your time!
    Banne, Gana, Aziuno and 8 others like this.
  15. Darkenr Elder

    Ngreth, there's been a lot of reasons given so far, but here's a few of my reasons.

    • 3 Months is already not a lot of time for these expansions that are literally built in a way to keep the player base with content available for a full year's time length.
    • There are several bugs with how the content releases specifically for the RoF expansion that people have been finding which in and of itself should be far more than enough reason to just release all of the content now.
      • OGC apparently found a T2 raid that just straight up doesn't work because of the way the content was locked. (perhaps one of them can go into further detail if you want it, but apparently some boss doesn't change out of a form properly or something?).
      • Shard's Landing portal item is not available in guild halls to be able to set guild halls to go to Shard's Landing.
      • Some quests aren't able to be completed that should be from what I've heard.
      • Some spells and abilities aren't available that should be.
      • I'm sure other people can maybe add to this list, but this is just a few of them that I've heard people complaining about and/or seen myself personally.
    • You say that you're keeping to the original spirit of the delay live had. If that's the case, what really needs reviewing is the reason and spirit of why it was decided to have delayed content releases in the first place on an expansion's content. The intent from interviews and discussions coming from DBG about content drops halfway through the year was to prevent burnout and to continue content delivery to maintain your playerbase over the course of a full year. Also give you devs more time to flesh out that expansion's content.
      • If that's the case, you already built your content delivery system for these TLPs in a way to keep content being delivered on a frequent enough basis to prevent this burnout so there's no reason for you to deliver less than the full expansion's content at each unlock. So if we really want to look at what's in the "spirit" of something, then TLP's content delivery timing was already built to keep content being delivered frequently enough to begin with.
      • The time to finish an expansion is so rushed now to the point actually where in the last several expansions we've had people complaining at the speed of expansion unlocks because people can't keep caught up with the ever increasing AA count, Aug, Gearing requirements to stay relevant, etc. Staggering content releases within an expansion in a short 3 month window of TLPs only exacerbates that feeling because we could have the expansion complete and have that much more time to catch up with the new level cap increase and/or gear/aug/chase loot. It doesn't help having forced content blocks within an expansion There's even less time now to feel like you can catch up and/or stay caught up because of an artificial block in gearing.
        • A good portion of the enjoyment of completing content is having the time to enjoy the fruits of learning and beating that content by farming it for a while to gear up your guild.
      • Another note directly related to this, is if we're able to be getting say Tier 4 raid content on farm sooner, the better geared we all are as a whole which directly translates into faster exping, and faster gearing/farming of the progression, augs, and/or chase loot. In general breathing room to prepare for the next big expansion unlock.
    • If you review Phinigel's and the general TLP's FAQs there is no mention at all about an expansion's content being delivered piecemeal. The only exceptions were zone revamps themselves being tied to the correct expansion they were revamped. IE: Droga, etc. We were told and it's still said in the FAQs that we will have expansion unlocks (not partial expansion) once every 3 months for level cap increase expansions, and 2 months for non level cap increasing expansions.
      • If you're going to release partial expansions, then please update your FAQs, and officially announce to your player base the change as a whole to the entire TLP's content delivery system.
    • As it's already been mentioned, there are examples of other expansions how they had content delivered at different times as well in the history of EQ. Please stay consistent along the entirety of TLP's timelines.
      • A couple examples starting with the spirit of Classic for any future TLPs:
        • If you want to stay with the spirit then the planes should not be available at launch in classic for example. Plane of Fear should be delayed by a couple weeks. Then a couple weeks later should introduce Plane of Hate. Couple weeks later should unlock PoSky and Temple of Solusek Ro.
      • Kunark:
        • Epics should be locked out for 4 weeks of the 3 months to stay in the "spirit" of Kunark's content release schedule.
      • Someone already commented on how Convorteum wasn't available at Underfoot, etc. If you want to go with the spirit of releases, please stay consistent and work hard on making sure every expansion has the proper effort put into locking down that content in future TLPs.
    I think most of our issues with this situation is the lack of staying consistent with what we've always been told from the very beginning of basically all of these TLPs, and also the contradictory manner of in this very thread where one dev states one thing, and then the other is like, "....nah, gonna be this way"that most (not an exaggerated word if you review this thread, "most") of the players in this thread are very clearly against.

    If this is going forward from here out, please make sure this information is included in all future TLP FAQs, and while you're at it, please update the FAQs on all of the previous TLPs as well that haven't hit RoF yet.

    Thanks!
    Kurrek, McJumps, Khiandri and 5 others like this.
  16. Machen New Member


    Careful... He may take your suggestions!
    Ghaleonagas likes this.
  17. Darkenr Elder

    LOL right? ;)
  18. Numiko Augur

    Don't forget Luclin, it started with no working quest to get into Vex Thal because the zone was not ready at launch, and no bazaar for that matter either.

    and Plane of power... Plane of Time should be closed... they made Rathe council unbeatable for the first while because PoTime was not finished when PoP launched as well.

    as for the current situation.. I think it depends on the reason for the original delay, was the stepped release of this expansion on live done for dramatic effect or was it done because lack of dev's at the time did not allow them to complete the expansion all at once...

    I'm sure there are a few people around daybreak that will be able to answer that.

    If it was for dramatic effect and a planned stepped launch then sure, this is fine.

    If it was just a case of lack of man power at the time . then no .. it should be all released to the current TLP's all at once.
    Skuz likes this.
  19. McJumps TLP QoL Activist

    Really, maybe we are being a bit harsh on the Devs here guys. I mean, think how embarrassing it has to be to be caught in a situation like this. One person telling us one thing a few weeks ago, and then another telling us almost the opposite after launch and acting like it was planned this way.

    I get that the company might be understaffed and that there is limited time with the Beta for Torment of Velious going on. I guess a simple "sorry guys, we messed up and will try harder in the future to make sure things of this nature don't happen again." is asking too much. If you feel the way this was handled is acceptable then I guess we have to accept that, and move on. But I imagine that someone who was actually interested in the overall satisfaction of their customer base would not be happy with the way this was handled.

    I know that a lot of the development and community relations team has played this game in the past or might still play this game. I hear a lot of lip service to the fact that the Devs love this game and it is more than just a job for them, but a passion. Actions speak louder than words. Please act in a way that could be interpreted as a "passion" for the game.

    Take ownership of the mistake that was so obviously made in this situation and at least offer a "sorry guys, we goofed!" instead of pretending that this was in any way, shape or form intended. It does not save face, it only serves to deepen the rift between players and the dev team at a time in the life of EverQuest when we need you as much as you need us.
    Skuz likes this.
  20. Rogue001 Lorekeeper

    I like this guy!