As the expansion of EQ begin to pile up the list of small issues begins to pile up too and it feels as if the design/dev team can only barely keep up with delivering an expansion and debugging it before its time to deliver another expansion. I was wondering how the community would feel if they didn't release and expansion and instead took the time to make tweaks and changes to the game. I know there are a lot of things that the community has been asking for a while but the team just doesn't seem to have ample time to get to fixing (lag, button bloat, class balance). Would an extra year of time be worth an attempt to fix these issues?
I'm ready for the next expansion now, it is bad enough waiting 7 months, waiting a whole year on top is too much. I could go for a month or 2 extra to make sure the expansion is bug free.
They make tweaks to the game every single patch. Lag seems to be one of the major things they are working on, and class balance is looked at all the time. Skipping an expansion is a very bad idea.
I would vote Yes, if and only if client update to 64 bit in the cards. Yes I would be cautious, Yes I want to see outline. I do agree that not going happen. Would it be a great reset, update and dream to a real expansion vs 4 mission, 9 raid cookie cutter? Wishful thinking, now what were my lottery ticket numbers?
We have had small expansions before, like TBM, that didn't doom the game. I would accept an expansion of that size, IF it come with a great deal of fixes, and modernized the game enough to not feel technically neglected. That would include a 64bit-client that can take advantage of modern hardware. Did you know that a 32-bit client can at most use 2 GB memory...I think that is a severe limiting factor when they make zones...or when they are adding graphical detail...
This is simply impractical & would be incredibly bad from a business standpoint. The annual expansion is a crucial income point for the game and helps sustain development & actually is one of the major things that helps pay for the very fixes you are crying about. A large number of players were unhappy with the size of CoV already but gave the company a pass due to the WFH/Pandemic situation but having increased the team's size with 6 devs/coders this year as part of a planned re-investment into EQ & them looking for another temporary team member to catch up on improving the client & server code I think they are very aware of the "fixes" the game needs and are actually proactively looking to get them worked on. https://www.daybreakgames.com/careers?job=4868318002 Next expansion should absolutely be bigger & better than CoV at the very least and fixes will still be getting done.
I say all of this with the caveat that I have no experience in software design or development. So take my 2 cents for what it is worth. I'm sure that there are many people with jobs with Daybreak/Darkpaw that are mostly or even almost entirely about creating new content. Particularly, those that work on art, storylines, and the like. Having these people who were hired for those kinds of creative jobs relegated to a year of what would be mostly bug fixing would not be a good way to retain those people or to make productive use of their talents. And that assumes that their skills would even match that task, as the things that you and most people would want fixed might not be things that they do. I would expect that some people that work on expansions also do work to improve the functionality of the content that they built in those expansions when problems show up after release. And they may also have part of their list of responsibilities doing general work to improve all content within their part of the game. But that isn't going to be the case with everyone. Expansions are part of the company's business model. They need to continue to release expansions that players will want to pay for in order to keep the need for those people's jobs. Without the revenue that expansions bring in, the company wouldn't be able to afford to keep those people employed. It is a balancing act. Work to fix the existing problems with the game so that it doesn't leave players so frustrated that they quit and stop paying for subscriptions and buying things in the marketplace and expansions, but keep adding new content so that players that finish the last expansion don't get bored and quit paying a subscription and buying things in the marketplace, and they may not come back for the next expansion if they are away, also. What we should really be asking (and I did under the thread for the statement from Robin Flodin) is for some plans and assurances that content released in the future will have better quality controls so that we don't spend months after new content is released waiting for the next patch that fixes things that shouldn't have been broken.
I would absolutely skip an expansion cycle to allow for bug fixes, new features and all the systems revamps that they've always said they'd "like to do, but never have time for." But, I don't see it being a popular choice among the general player base and we'd likely lose a good amount of people who only see the here and now and don't look at the long term benefits. So no, I don't think it would be a good idea. They've backed themselves into a corner in that they only have resources to do the bare minimum amount of content to keep people around and nothing to spare in other areas.
Id finish this year and then turn off sub until next expansion. No way Id pay a sub if they went a year with no new content. And dont say hunter.
The community shouldn't have to sacrifice new content so the developer can get its codebase in order. That's like your insurance company telling you your coverage has been reduced because they need to funnel resources into fixing their website, but you still have to keep paying them. I get where you're coming from, but honestly that's why Darkpaw has an HR department - hiring people.
We deal with bugs every year, and new ones are found every year that old models didn't take into account. I'd rather deal with the bugs than a lack of content. I've beaten the content with the bugs. I don't need to re-beat the content without the bugs. I want new content.
I gave my reasons for not agreeing with the OP above, but I say that as someone that still has a ton of content that I haven't played through. They could skip a year and I wouldn't run out of things to do. Of course, my problem is that I am an altaholic. I typically get my main team (I 3-box) to the top level within a couple of months of a level increase, but then I start running into the harder content that is difficult for me to box and start getting my attention diverted by my other box teams when I get tired of dying. Since I do replay a lot of content, the bugs and issues with older content does affect me, and I do want to see it fixed. Two of my teams replaying through ToV use merc and/or pet tanks, and the long-standing issue with Last of the Storm Boars has bugged that out for me multiple times. That is certainly very frustrating. And then there is Overseer, with its issues that haven't been addressed more than a year after it has been released. I'm not even talking about just the disappearing quest issue, but also the sheer sloppiness of it. All of the quests where bonuses don't line up right with agents that you can use was just an example of someone that didn't check to make sure that it would work the way that they were thinking it would. And the poor risk vs. reward of how increasing in quest level just means more agents getting incapacitated more often without any additional collectibles. (And the two times that they altered how that worked after it was released showing insufficient thought put into that aspect of the rewards anyway.)
