I don't understand you..... you also thought they would never release such untested bad code to test and look what we got... Bottom line FTE was not QA'd and if it was that's even more scary.. It literally took 2 minutes to break FTE less because as soon as mobs spawned in lguk and started buffing other mobs it was broken...Does that sound like something that was EVER QA'd? Yet you think they are back there dilligently working on fixes?? lol
I should have seen this coming, lol. Let me rephrase to "I don't think they're just sitting on their hands".
We know they are 'working on it' as we have communicated with devs on discord and some have showed up on Test during a few waves of testing. It was offered in a very bad state, that is for sure. My first thoughts are that they havent had enough time or are having a very hard time implementing it. I have a feeling with all the company buyouts and lay offs over the years there is limited understanding of early Everquest code/systems. I dont sense a veteran level of understanding in regards to player behavior either. Have they ever played through a tlp until at least PoP in a mid to high end guild? Prob not...
Addressing the concerns when they likely don't know the full scope of the bugs and the work that will be needed to fix them? At that point in time considering the dev work day you are most likely only get a response that says they are investigating it.
Yes, I do think that they are working on fixes as they don't like to be embarrassed by bad work and it is a key feature of the upcoming TLP server.
They're literally trying to pull apart game code that's tangled worse than the box of Christmas lights in the attic, in order to splice in new game code that fundamentally changes a core game mechanic in a 20+ year old game that was never, ever, designed to do what they're trying to do. This is an excercise in futility that, by their own admission, only affects TLP servers in their early stages. Why they are persisting in this pursuit is beyond baffling, other than their egos (or the higher ups) won't let them admit they're wrong and move on. They need to just abandon this nonsense and figure out some other method of addressing the problems they think they're trying to fix.
Nobody wants to pay to beta test on oakwynd so the devs can fix it as they go. I think this is the major concern right now.
Back in the early days when Bards could gather huge trains and slowly kill them with a PB AE they modded Bard DoT's so that they wouldn't land if the Bard was moving. I wasn't a big fan of that but I did understand why they did it even if execution was lame. I bring that up to point out that the issue has always been the whole train mechanics. What motivation do the mobs have to run in a tightly packed cloud of arms and legs in the first place? Now going back to the Bard AE thing I'd do it but I'd need to constantly run back over mobs that somehow lost interest and wandered off. There should be some adjustments made so that mobs lose interest in just following one PC instead of packing ever tighter and tighter. I think the problem was that they thought they were going to be clever and combine a training and a kill stealing fix. Were they able to make FTE do what they say they want it'd allow characters with the right skill set to pull off stunts that only the most skillful Bards are capable of now and I don't think they would like the complaints about that either
And no one is suggesting that they should be releasing a broken version to the new TLP server but that doesn't change the fact that the day after the test patch they are unlikely to have all the answers.
You are completely neglecting the fact that this iteration of FTE made it out of internal testing to the test server. There is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for that. FTE should have hit the test server 2 months ago in a form much more polished than it is now.
How am I completely ignoring it when I have made posts about it being so bad? My comments have nothing to do with the fact the state that FTE should have been in when it hit test or at what point that it should have hit test. The only thing I was getting at is it still takes time for them to get an idea of what is going on after it reaches test and all the feedback of the issues starts coming in. Early on all they are likely going to be able to respond with is that they see the issues posted and are looking into it.
You are talking to the person who was also completely ok with and adamant that they would never put this on test to begin with. Post after post saying they will handle it internally and there isnt a relevant population to make test worthwhile and yet now its critical to making sure its fixed before release. I gotta hand it to you waring, Ive never encountered someone on a forum who can go post to post and manipulate their takes to always be so consistently contrarian.
I think we have a disconnect here. You keep saying dev time, but people don't need a dev to respond, even if it took 10 seconds to give an update. A community manager can spend that 10 seconds. If I'm wrong about that, then I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. You're fine with silence about the status of the upcoming TLP, most others aren't. As stated before, it's easy to give an ambiguous update that isn't concrete but still lets us know what we should expect. "We're working hard to address this, at this time the plan is to launch Oakwynd [with/without] FTE." That still gives them the flexibility to change if they come to new conclusions, and shuts us forumquesters up for a little while longer.
Even if the devs are not the ones providing us information they are still taking time to provide it to the person that is. Now that it has been a while since the test patch we should have seen more information on the forums (it seems they have been providing updates on discord). At the point in time that I posted that which was under 24 hours since the test patch most of that being non working hours it is understandable that they hadn't provided an update yet.
I agree. Lots of folks are speculating the DPS race vs. FTE methods, but truth be told, toxic people will be toxic so long as they can be. People who are not toxic will become toxic if they have to be. All of the classic to pop conflict is based upon spawn/named/drop scarcity and exacerbated by a gigantic starting population. Leveling up on selo was awesome because a luclin start actually made kunark/velious/luclin relevant outside of their raid and 50-60 leveling zones. People we're spread out and there were tons of places to go. Avoiding the 35+ madhouse that is solB/Lguk etc was awesome. Outside of high end raid guilds who are intentionally competing, there's not a lot of non-sense in EQ until two or more parties are after the same thing. (for the forum defense lawyer types, yes there are outliers, this is not an absolute) I don't see how there should be a different customer experience outcome in losing a race or losing a tag. I mean when that poor cleric gets Lord Berg lifted by one of the other 30 people in the camp because someone else tagged first I don't think they are going to "Ha-ha! Good show, lad! A swift tag you had, congratulations on your epic piece! What a wonderful competition we had! Perhaps he will spawn again this weekend and I'll be so fortunate as you!"
It's simple really, the fewest hops between client and server with a fast connection will win every time. Lots of junk about 3rd party this or that but a fast connection, an instant click, and spamming a targeting key will win the vast majority of the time. I know some think I was "on" DPG side because I called shenanigans on all the fabulous training strategies being proposed but I was and am more concerned about messing with mob aggro myself
I prefer the Luclin starts, more places to level and I get my beast thrown in as a bonus. As for the new server, having played around with FTE on test I'm gonna skip Oakwynd. Not a fan of the names of mobs changing colour, it breaks the imersion. I can also see it being problematic when we move further into expansions with more mechanics. Having been on both Mischief and Vaniki when things haven't been updated when the next expansion drops and game changes have been overlooked I want no part of another which could result in unplayable content. It is a shame as I wanted to see how legacy chars worked, who knows maybe I will have changed my mind when Luclin or TSS drop. As long as FTE stays as Oakwynd only I'll be happy.
Currently I think FTE is an answer in search of a question. It's actually a kludgy solution for training and it replaces the DPS race in "kill stealing" which is a term that needs to die with whoever has the lowest ping and best connection always taking the spawn.
I agree, and the only thing I see this being meant for, is stopping large PL pulls like in The Deep or PoI. Are they giving us a flag to turn this off, if we don't care and don't want this used for our group? They will, if they truly did this for the pulling group's benefit. They won't, if they really did this to prevent large PL pulls; they want to make you try to /yell at 100 mobs at once to allow the oog enchanters to color stun them. Seems obvious to me. Monetization is always the underlying reason for any changes, esp big ones like this. So the real questions: How does preventing PL help make them more money? Is having to level up toons more slowly and traditionally make them more likely to purchase bufs and things from the EQ Store? Is current PL bypassing too much of how they expect to make money off of players?
