Dear Robin Flodin; Community Feedback

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Atomos, May 2, 2021.

  1. Tucoh Augur

    Dear JChan, please ignore this thread and use your own best judgement on how to allocate resources.

    ps. fix the lag.
    Gyurika Godofwar and KarmaKitty like this.
  2. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Robin Flodin is unlikely to be surfing the EQ forums or any of the forums of the dozens of games now under the EG7 ownership.
    He'll be accessing reports from Jchan as head of DarkPaw studio primarily & I expect hers will be informed by what Dreamwever puts together as community manager, at least that's how I think it works generally-speaking from comments made by Dreamweaver himself.
    Similarly He will be getting reports from other studio heads within Daybreak & the other companies under EG7.

    All that said, to address the OP comments:

    I don't want a remake, I just want the game I already play updated, here's my take in order of priority.
    • Lag reduction
    • Pathing system Improvement
    • Increased size of expansion content
    • Improving Live game class balance
    • Improvement of Prior expansion class-balance (TLP)
    • 64-bit client, Direct X 11/12
    • UI overhaul
    • Graphical improvements - more zone revamps
    With all of the above put in place (especially after the bottom half of that list is mostly done) I think EQ should then push some additional marketing.

    Live Servers already have many measures that help players catch up to live, speeded up AAXP, AA Autogrant, live XP rate, Heroic 85 Upgrade.
    The area that could use some help is now the 65-100 level range, with the game moving to level 120 with the next expansion EQ could use a level 100 upgrade in the marketplace but alongside that being added I think a reduction in XP required per level between 65-100 would help a lot (or a level xp boost in those level zones) & some re-tuning of mercs (though the 101-110 range Mercs could use more help as they are a bit too weak in these eras - 111-115 got retuned already)

    On TLP servers I think some early era class balance, down-tuning of the innate damage melee AA & a down-tuning of spells to be closer to their original tables pre Luclin would help the game feel more challenging by reducing the power-creep that has trivialised early content. This should have the effect of reducing the disparity between monk dps and the other melee & reducing how far Rogues are behind other melee early on.
    Adding to the marketplace a level 51 "Planar Upgrade" (51/50) at PoP unlocking and a Level 70 "Draconic Upgrade" (level 70 defiant) at SoD unlocking would also help TLP server players catch up or return to the game a little easier and together with the level 85 "Heroic Upgrade" & level 100 "Centurion Upgrade" create a full set of "catch up points".

    (Maybe even consider adding the Planar & Draconic to the market place for live servers too, wouldn't hurt.)

    I would like a "Mini-Map" added as part of the UI overhaul with the more detailed / cumbersome map/atlas as something you can pop open from it - fact is without some community members like Brewall & Goodurden the maps would be a lot worse.
    Lots of games show more info on their maps than EQ does on theirs so I am thinking EQ should have more data available to players through this, at least showing the locations of mobs in a localised radius (nowhere near the scale of the whole zone) - maybe "within earshot" range.

    Nope, I think this is a waste of time.

    Only ones I think need some additional help are Wizards in the live game, Necros a rebalance once the consolidation of their remaining DoT lines has been completed & Paladin non-undead dps could probably use a boost across the whole game.

    Guide program is already active - but we will not have guides if people are not coming forward to take part, this one is on the community of players itself to step up to the plate and take part and be involved in.
    What I would love to see, but will likely only come about with an increase in the game's userbase is more GM-run events, never saw many of these back in the day myself but one every say 2 months with some advance warning could be a lot of fun - this may need better tools and training for the GM's running these though - and please don't forget Antonius Bayle is EU time-zone if these come back.
    Gyurika Godofwar, Raccoo and Jumbur like this.
  3. Benito EQ player since 2001.

    I do think Daybreak/Darkpaw has their own analytics.

    They understand the strong spots and weak points of the game through data aggregation of petitions, activity/inactivity, purchases, etc. I'm sure the community team writes executive reports about player concerns from messages, forums, and Discord.
    Corwyhn Lionheart, Nennius and Jumbur like this.
  4. Cailen Augur

    1. Lag
    2. Lag
    3. Lag
    4. Make enc synergy work for enc spells
  5. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    That's when you have to pick and choose what gets cast and such. Its strats.
    Skuz and Benito like this.
  6. KrakenReality Augur

    That’s just bad game design.
  7. Febb Augur


    Hi, welcome to Everquest.
    Velisaris_MS and KrakenReality like this.
  8. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    Nope it's just folks wanting an Easy Button.
    Benito and Skuz like this.
  9. KrakenReality Augur

    How did you get from debuff cap to easy button? It’s bad game design to continually implement spells and abilities that count towards the limit. They know the limit exists but fail to compensate in their design for the limit.


    Are you talking easy button for a game developer to not pay attention to their own restrictions?
  10. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    1. Planning, Picking and Choosing as a team who gets to put what on the boss
    2. Everybody slaps everything they have on the boss with no thought, no planning, no care.

    Easy button definitely looks like choice number 2
    Benito likes this.
  11. Benito EQ player since 2001.

    No limits = Burn/Zerg by the numbers.

    Every. Single. Time.

    Forget melee DPS. Bards and Necromancers welcome only.
  12. OlavSkullcrusher Augur

    I'm not a raider, so I don't encounter whatever this debuff cap is. But this makes me wonder about how it works.
    • Do all mobs have the same debuff limit or does it vary by mob level and encounter difficulty?
    • Does this limit distinguish between debuffs and DoTs? If it does, then what about spells that have both DoT and Debuff effects?
    • How about abilities like Oppressing Shout? (WAR disc - Oppressing Shout Effect = Decrease chance to Dodge and Increase Hate for up to 1 min)
    • Is it a limit on the debuff effects individually or is it counting each spell, when spells can have multiple debuff effects?
    • How does it interact with stacking issues for debuff effects? Like if someone lands a debuff that ends up not doing much of anything because its effects are weaker than the same effect on a different spell, does it still count against the limit?
    • How does this affect the choices of devs to make AAs like Mana Burn, that present themselves to a player like it should be a giant nuke, but is actually a duration spell that goes on the mob?
    With 16 classes that all have spells and AA abilities, throw in item clicks and procs, plus whatever debuff abilities pets can have, and this all sounds like a rather enormous amount of stuff to keep track of. Then, there is the variation in which players in your guild show up on a particular day, changing the dynamics of what classes you have available in how many numbers of each. And what happens when a character dies, like a druid goes down and won't be casting Erupting Sunray like you had planned, so does that mean that it opens up a debuff slot for someone else?
    Maybe you raiders like getting into that level of minutia as you try and min/max things to beat an encounter, and it just goes to show me why I don't raid, since there is a limit to how much time and effort I want to spend thinking about how to squeeze out another 1-2% out of things.
    Maybe there was some technical reason to limit debuffs on mobs that had nothing to do with them wanting to encourage players to 'strategize' on how to optimize which debuffs to use. Thinking that it does enhance strategic thinking looks like a post hoc rationalization to me, rather than something that I would choose to do as matter of game design.
  13. OlavSkullcrusher Augur

    Some of what you asked for sounds like they would require almost completely remaking the game engine to me. Or, that they would be most easily fixed by doing that.

    From my perspective, the main problem with Everquest at this stage of its existence is a problem that goes back to the beginning. So many decisions were made for the moment and not according to any kind of long-term plan. Virtually all class balance issues, itemization issues, and probably many technical issues related to the size of character files, what data needs to be sent back and forth between the client and server, and so on, which undoubtedly affect lag, come down to not having thought things through enough when something was first put in. Put simply, the game is just really sloppy.

    Having come back to EQ after a long time away about 4 years ago, I am continually struck by things that just seem so incredibly rushed and sloppy that I can't believe that it was done that way. (One of the biggest signs of sloppy design and poor planning is the TBM gear system. The basic idea isn't inherently bad, but why aren't the stats on the different type 9 augs consistent from one level to the next? The ones that have +heal amount switch, ones that have +clairvoyance at one level will have something different the next or no bonus at all. It just makes no sense.) Or, consider Overseer. Aside from the disappearing quest bug that still isn't fixed, there were many quests where it was obvious that the agent planned to be the best option for a particular job slot wasn't checked for accuracy. (Ambassador D'Vinn being the only agent that can even be used for a required job slot in the Recuit Ambassador D'vinn quest being one of several such examples.)

    How many things like that just never get fixed, either? It's just a shrug, and players have to live with it and move on to the next expansion or the next new feature that is just as likely to be poorly thought out and haphazard.
  14. Szilent Augur

    Raids are sized very deliberately at the 54 player limit to accommodate 3 players each on the 16 classes, with room for 6 "fluff" (typically leaders choose to overload the healing & OP support roles, if they can)

    It's not "wanting an easy button" to think that 3 necromancers, 3 druids, 3 shaman, 3 enchanters, 3 beastlords, 3 bards, 3 rangers should all get to contribute to raid wins running their core abilities. That isn't remotely feasible at the moment.
    Gyurika Godofwar and Eryndhel like this.
  15. FranktheBank Augur

    Imagine thinking debuff cap is good design with how classes current function.
  16. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    While there is some validity to this there is also validity to not opening up more non-discriminating buff slots either or guilds will just load up on necromancers forgoing other classes.

    Here's my suggestion.

    We currently have XX slots on raid mobs - were the devs/coders to create a new debuff bar/box with more slots but divide that up into grouped class-based sections that only allow for spells of the assigned classes to land, then they could control how many slots each of those are allocated & control the amount of each class being able to land stuff on the boss that take up debuff slots - like

    SHM/BST get section 1
    NEC/SHD get section 2
    WIZ/MAG get section 3
    DRU/RNG get section 4
    CLR/PAL get section 5
    ROG/MNK get section 6
    WAR/BER get section 7
    ENC/BRD get section 8
    wildcard* section 9

    The amount of debuff slots in each section can be adjusted to keep things interesting for each of the groupings and for how many of each class are expected/designed for with the wildcard section offering some flexibility for extras of classes and/or differences in raid force, this allows for expansion of the overall debuff limit without opening up events to necro-armies, the downside is it dictates raid composition limitations on more than just Necromancers which the current system does.

    Add in the ability to filter the view of the debuff bar to a selection of class groupings and you also help tweak the UI to be more relevant.
  17. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    The graphics engine of EQ had several revamps (see link below), so engine revamps are nothing new.

    https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...3-news-coming-soon.269163/page-4#post-3999377

    So a lot can be tied into a change to 64-bit & a higher DX version.
  18. rkwiles New Member

    Reducing the 15 minute wait in the nexus to 5 minutes would help a lot for returning and new players that are leveling toons without jumping to 85.

    Thanks
  19. Febb Augur

    Some of these suggestions lol. Listen, Daybreak's new owners have hired on a few more people but the changes that they would make would basically just be pumping out more content, not doing any drastic changes.
  20. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    I think most of the stuff that has been listed here, is already somewhere on the dev's "todo-list", Darkpaw is well aware of EQ1's technical shortcomings.
    The question is: are they categorized as "when we have time", "about to start" or "already on it"?
    And have the EG7 deal shifted some of those categories?

    But that is something I would expect news about, in a future "community letter" from Jchan.
    EG7 is not about to micromanage already functional dev-teams.

    One thing I noted: None of the new devs, or the still open positions for the EQ1 team, is about GFX programming afaik...looks like planetside2 is hogging all the GFX coders...:oops:

    Or maybe they are considering an updated planetside2 engine, as the next engine for EQ1? Is that feasible? :confused:
    Szilent likes this.