[Devs] Would you be open to creating QoL enhancements for EQ on Patreon?

My guess is the OP has spent thousands of dollars on Pantheon MMO, Star Citizen, or Ashes of Creation. He/she has just recently come to the realization of the futility of his/her investment in said vaporware. He/she invokes the same mechanism (crowdfunding) and the same level of idealism (with a touch of continued naïveté) for EQ.

I'll explain
No
Yes


Your idea suggests that devs have nothing better to do with their lives than just work on EQ, based solely on your desire for there to be more content and QoL improvements. It is quite possible that some, most or all of the devs have no desire to spend their off time doing more work outside of the work they already do. Your suggestion also doesn't take into account how fatigue and burnout could be a factor. Right now if someone came to me and said, "Hey, we'll pay you to do more work on your off time", it would have to be a ridiculous amount of money for me to even consider it because my job is stressful enough and I already work 6 days a week for the most part.

You mention that this is "outside the box" thinking in order to get these things done, but nothing is further from the truth. Someone with money, paying to get what they want, without taking anything else into consideration is as old as money itself.

We don't need to pay devs to do work outside of their work hours, we need more devs. If you want outside the box thinking, and are such a whale, why don't you call up Darkpaw yourself and tell them you would like to pay the annual salary of a Dev to be brought in to work on nothing but QoL improvements and bug fixes? Otherwise you can put these suggestions to bed because they will never happen, and I've already wasted too much of my own personal off time in responding to you.

You are just assuming that there are legal issues. So what are they, and be specific. However, what EQ devs do in their free time is their own business as we've been told many times by many white knights on the forums.

Many much appreciated quality of life features have been developed by EQ devs during lunch breaks or after hours. No one complained when EQ devs did this. But a handful of chronic naysayers are are complaining now because someone dared to put forth a new idea that upset their apple cart. I don't care about them. This post was for the devs.

Random people would not be deciding what is best for the game, the devs would be. With my proposal, the devs involved would have to to get all QOL life issues from Patron subscribers approved internally at Darkpaw.

Just because you work 6 days a week and would not consider working overtime, doesn't mean that devs would not be open to volunteering in their spare time. That is a very uncharitable glass half empty assumption on your part. My proposal is strictly voluntary for devs. Devs that want to volunteer for this program, could so so if they so choose. Nobody is forcing them.

You are making the assumption that all EQ devs are chronically exhausted and would never want to work on EQ in their spare time. You don't know that at all. Some devs might need to earn extra money. Why would you want to deprive them of that opportunity?

You don't speak for the devs. The devs can speak for themselves.

I resent your impugnation of my motives. I'm trying to make EQ better, help the devs and help the players.

Of course we need more devs and that's been the case for many years but nothing changes. My proposal would benefit everyone.

The angry and dismissive tone of your response is unwarranted and contrary to the spirit of these forums.

A couple things.

1. It maybe a QoL, but in EQ vision, they made it that way for a reason
2. If you want to push QoL features things you think would be great QoL wise, I recommend applying/joing the EQ Resource Council
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...ty-resource-council-mission-statement.280525/

3. Your give them money and hopefully they do what you want, to me thats like your trying to be buddy buddy with a developer, say your rich donor, now you have somewhere to reach the developers, you slip em $10,000 and be like make this feature me. Seems shady, it can turn into that kind of situation.

If these developers werent getting paid right or having issues, they'd leave, but instead you have people that been around for long long long time. Low turnover. These people don't really do for money if they getting paid low. Because they aint leaving.

The game has a vision going forward, someone paying developers to work on stuff that goes against the vision, the game doesn't come out right then. Best thing to do is join the council and put your ideas out there and they'll agree or tell you why not and you can argue with the people who are creating the vision forward for EQ.

This isn't Scam Citizen. They make enough money every year to hire more people, and do more things.

I'm surprised this thread hasn't been locked yet...

OP's suggestion, which I believe is well intentioned, is truly awful and could really wreck DPG from the inside. The fact it's still going makes me wonder if there is a dev or two seriously considering it

The reason this suggestion is awful is that it would encourage devs to go rogue and take on projects outside the scope of the team vision, just to make a little extra cash. It would encourage devs to bypass quality assurance measures before pushing stuff to live (being that this stuff is off the clock and the QA people aren't getting any kickbacks) This would have obvious drawbacks. Also, what's to stop a rogue dev from taking credit for a particularly successful project to collect on a bounty? And if that happens, how do their teammates feel afterwards? Yeah... it would destroy team chemistry and that would in-turn destroy the EQ vision. Unless everyone on the team is involved and on board, this is just a recipe for disaster... And if you honestly think you are going to get everyone on board to coordinate and work overtime, you are smoking some seriously potent crack unless you have have literally millions of $$$ to throw at the team. Hint: Time is much more valuable than money to many people in this day and age.

If you are going to start paying them for more work, then either pay out enough to DPG to hire a new dev or set up a gofundme to reward the entire team with a bonus when they go above and beyond.

I am far from the only person suggesting that there are legal issues with your suggestion. There are plenty of labour laws that prevent employees from performing work for their employer without getting paid by that employer regardless of getting paid from an outside source. There are also plenty of companies that also prohibit their employees from working off the clock to avoid labour issues where they are considered to not be paid.

What some companies do to get around employees working off the clock is to make them salaried and give them a raise to the state minimum where those employees don't have to be paid after 40 hours. Then the company sets deadlines that the employee can't meet with a regular 40 hour work week and then that employee works for free off the clock to meet that deadline.

I am pretty sure that the devs are salaried but that still requires them to be working during approved hours and not working “off the clock” such as during lunch or other breaks. And I am pretty sure that it also doesn’t allow for them to be taking an income from a different source then their employer for work for that employer.

I guess you could mail certain employees whale size Amazon gift cards with a note to change "X" and a promise of more where that came from nudge/wink.

That's basically the gist of the OP right? Bribing developers to get the changes that they want.

No.

EQ devs are allowed to voluntarily work on EQ in their spare time. There are no laws against that.

Not one naysayer has been able to provide me with one single labor regulation that says otherwise.

Ah, yes, the old I'm surprised this thread hasn't been locked yet trick. I think I saw that trick at a David Copperfield magic show in Vegas in 2013 when I was there attending the EQ Next annoucement.

What you are trying to do is suggest to the moderators that this thread deserves to be locked is a backhanded way of invalidating my suggestion.

It's like saying:

I'm surprised that JohnDoe hasn't been banned yet.

That's not a good faith way to engage in constructive criticism.

Awful idea? Recipe for disaster? Obvious drawbacks?

False and unproven on every count. But you get an A+ for hyperbolic effort.

You're making quite a leap here by predicting that this Patreon proposal cause the worst possible scenario. i.e. a money hungry rogue dev does whatever he/she wants without approval from the team. This is essentially a straw man argument.

In my proposal, all suggestions would be voted on by Patreon subscribers, passed on to the devs. The devs would have to agree with the suggestion, then get approval from their supervisor at Darkpaw which would be in accordance with the team vision™. There would be complete transparency for everything.

The program would be entirely voluntary and would have zero impact on team chemistry. Since not all developers earn the exact same salary, using your logic, that too could erode team chemistry due to salary envy etc. It's a wonder team chemistry all across corporate America has not been totally destroyed by differences in salary.

I get the fact that we have a lot of old-timers here who are set in their ways. I understand that change is hard to handle for some. I suspect, that if quality of life issues actually get fixed, then most of the posts here would dry up and some players would have nothing to complain about. Forumquesting and verbal jousting is a big part of what goes on these forums. But for the rest of us, we want EverQuest to be better and one way is to address many outstanding QOL issues.

A few of us would like to see the EQ devs that wish to work on their own time to improve EQ be financially compensated for their time. Talk is cheap, money talks. I've gotten many PMs of support from players. With the approval of Darkpaw Games, setting up a Patreon account would be an innovative solution to accomplish this.

I take it you are a labor lawyer who specializes is litigating company rights vs. state laws, right?

No? Then you should probably bow out of this conversation. What says a company can't restrict their employees from working other jobs while in their employment? What is the specific case law or labor regulation that prevents companies from placing restrictions on their employees? I know from personal experience that companies do this all the time... you want to work for someone else off the clock - you get permission from corporate or risk getting fired. If you don't believe me, then read this article off of the internet: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-my-employer-fire-me-for-working-a-second-job.html

Maybe rather than spew nonsense like you are currently doing, go back to the drawing board and think of a more workable solution. This one just isn't good.

Some companies have polices against this type of activity to prevent any legal issues. While I don't know about Daybreaks policy I do know other companies would frown at the idea.