How much input did players have in charting the 2023 Roadmap?

because we signed an NDA

There are things I still can't talk about from the NDA I signed in 2008 or 2009 when I was on the council. This is not only so that the developers can be more candid to the players who are on the council but also to shield the council from some of the more unsavoury parts of the community who want to play the blame game.

Could you elaborate please?

Correct. Daybreak is not legally required to do any of those things. This is not a question of what Daybreak is legally obligated to do, it's a question of what Daybreak is ethically obligated to do to stand by their official corporate motto which starts by saying: "Darkpaw Games is dedicated to community..."

Since Darkpaw says they are dedicated to the community, I am respectfully asking them if that dedication translates to gathering input and feedback from the community.

I pay money to Darkpaw Games every month in the form of an All Access Pass and I purchase in game items, potions, perks, and Krono from DGB store. That makes me a consumer. Consumers in California and the USA have rights.

There is nothing wrong with asking the Darkpaw devs if they have consulted with the playerbase on the 2023 EQ roadmap.

We're all in this journey together. It it not unreasonable that the passengers on this journey have some semblance of occasional input on the destination for the journey.

A few players probably had a lot of input. Most had little to none.

I have absolutely no evidence to back up that sentence.
With that said, I'm also confident it's the most accurate and truthful answer you'll ever get to your question.

I've seen this line of thinking trotted out on a few occasions. I disagree 100% with throwing the baby out with the bath water. It's the job of the developers to exercise discernment as to the efficacy and suitability of feedback and input from players.

Whether it be a periodic customer satisfaction survey or being able to vote in an in-game poll, every customer has something of value that they can bring to the table. Every customer is important. Hopefully Darkpaw Game is a progressive enough and forward-thinking studio to realize this.

I asked the following question to ChatGPT and here is the answer:

This scenario is what many of us have feared. Thank you for your honesty.

rofl

Also ChatGPT

You may just be done with EQ, and there's nothing wrong with that. There are lots of other games out there, lots that former EQ devs have worked on. I'm going to drop EQ super fast if AoC or to a lesser extent Pantheon ever come out. Jeff Butler just had an announcement yesterday that whatever his company is just got some initial funding to grow their team to break ground on a new MMO that aims to shift paradigms. Fading just teased a big announcement while showing some footage from EQ next in his most recent this week in EQ video for the EQ show, maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part trying to make a connection there. If you prefer older EQ look at what Shawn Lord is doing with monsters and memories. You're about 20 years late to bring about meaningful change in EQ1, and there's nothing saying that you need to stick around if you don't like the direction that the game has taken.

I'm on the CRC and obviously have been focused on getting Wizards fixed as that's 90% of what I post on the forums. Not much has really changed for me though. I've posted the same data and sent the same sorts of info to the same devs for years now. Since beta I think it's been fairly positive but things do move slow and there's not much anyone can do about that.

Can you post the question you asked ChatGPT please?

I have a feeling it's a variant of "What are the drawbacks of asking customers for their opinions?"

Thanks for the advice. I mean it. It's much appreciated.

We've had a lot of white knights come here and do their best to run interference. That's par for the course on these forums. If you look at most topics that are posted here that don't conform with the status quo, the pile on is pretty much inevitable from people who are trying to raise their faction wtih the devs. Despite all the "get off my lawn" antics, I'm still hoping for some official response from Darkpaw on my question.

I wasn't talking about anything as drastic as meaningful change or *gasp* class balance. I have no dog in this fight. I play all classes with equal verve and vigor. I was just asking about the possibility that player input factors into their yearly roadmaps.

When Daybreak announced the formation of Darkpaw Games, I was super excited. I thought that things would change around here and the EQ franchise would start to shine. But It seems business as usual from the devs and the suits that run things. Same studio, different name. Same you know what, different day. New people with a fresh set of eyes with questions aren't really welcome here. Players are routinely told to quit if they have a problem.

Not only is EQ an old game, the development process is also glacial and stuck in the past. I feel like I'm in a Steven King book where I've taken the wrong turn and entered some rural town from the past where the townsfolk don't seem to take kindly to strangers.

Forum posters can't put aside petty differences and agree that players should have occasional input in EQ. Yet they expend effort to come to the forums to tell others that input from players is ill-advised, but their own advice is naturally exempt from that proviso. With the lack of player solidarity on the forums, it's no wonder the devs feel no compulsion to bother to care about what we think.

The most regrettable thing is that lost in all of this is that there are some people that genuinely want to make EQ better. They are the players that actually play EQ in the trenches of Norrath every day. They do their best to offer solutions but they are chided, ridiculed, and ignored for their trouble. No good deed goes unpunished around here.

The people I play EQ with are not like the people here on the forums. They are generally positive, kind, respectful, friendly, and generous. We as players have far more agency and power than we think. Just one act of kindness in EQ can change a person's life and create a lifelong friendship. No dev can nerf or take that away from us.

I support the idea of asking players for feedback directly via in-game polls, email surveys and other non-forum methodologies. Forward-thinking companies take customer satisfaction seriously and I believe Darkpaw Games can do much better.

When I was on CRC years ago it was extremely frustrating. Good luck with it, best wizzy for the job

Players have had input indirectly, many of these changes were requested years ago.

Lets look at what is on the road map.

January, February and March are the usual content update - raids staggered from expansion launch (far better than the need for keys/flags)

March also has the anniversary content - expected not requested

New content through out the year for festivals, something introduced when the expansions got smaller but upuntil recently under delivered.

New progression server in May, something else that happens every year, no doubt some of the players ideas will be used here.

Pride Familiars - not asked for but something they do every year
Extra Life game - not asked for but something they do every year
Server Merge - not asked for on TLP but asked for on Live
New expansion & beta - expected the same time every year

New UI engine has been asked for over and over and over for so many years now, along with a new UI and upgrade of DX9c. I guess they were waiting for last years 64 Bit upgrade to be able to make these changes.

I'm pretty sure these won't be the only changes we see over the course of the year, but these are the big ones they have planned for. I'm sure there will be other changes over the year hopefully to class balance and fixing some of the long standing bugs. We may even see a fix to the bugged EW ToV quests once the TLP servers hit there.

ChatGPT isn't the best sort of thing to be checking for things like that, it is known for spouting incorrect information.

Not what I meant but thank you.

I gave it your prompt, then I asked it to argue the counterpoint and pasted the result of that.

ChatGPT is not an expert in anything. It's a language prediction model. Ask the same question in a different way, "Should video game studios occasionally seek input from their customers-- be honest this time?" and you'll get a different response.

I decided to pose a question more directly related to your original post

Are video game studios obligated to report the extent to which they use customer feedback in the planning, design, or execution of their business model?

ChatGPT says

And even though this statement completely agrees with my stance, I know ChatGPT can be steered, so I'm not going to defer to it as some guru.

Q: How do I become a member of the CRC program?

A: Twice yearly we will review the current membership of the CRC program and see if there are any positions that need to be filled, or members who are not active enough in the program to contribute. During this period, we will reopen the application page to field and vet potential new members

Posted on Jan 21, 2022.

The application process has closed for 2022.

Posted on Jan 28, 2022.

Everyone must be super active contributors or we would have seen a mid year review and another one in Jan 2023...

People around the world play this game. You, I or anyone else don't have the "right" to direct how the game works. That's quite the delusional way of thinking. The only "right" you have is to stop playing. Just like with any other service or product, you can use or buy it... or not use or buy it. Customers of everything in the world don't have "rights" to determine how things work, taste, are run.

Garbage in = Garbage out

Its only as good as the source material its been trained on.

Yep. And I believe gaming forums were included in its training data.