Good use of Dev time? Personas vs. real improvements!

You may need to reevaluate the reason people run multiple characters via multiple accounts. AP won't distract from that and may even enhance it

I bought it for Personas, I'm not ashamed to admit it. I also, bought a EQ Next Founder's Pack. I'm a very smart consumer.

Though i cant be sure since there still isnt a publisbed FAQ on the persona system, it does seem like we could get 90 percent of the goodness of this idea for much less time investment if this is done:

• Make achievements account wide, per server
• Make flags and keys account wide, per server
• Make epics and epic ornaments heirloom, incase someone wants an alt of the same class
• Increase the fellowship size and reduce the player count required to drop a campfire, to allow easy swapping of alts at a camp.

This doesn't let you keep your character name or switch without camping, but it would avoid a lot of corner cases and unintended consequences around managing inventory swap, aa swaps, class/race issues, and the host of other questions folks have wondered about.

The coders are going to be doing most of the work on this and they would not be making any new content or doing class balance. They might be put to working on code that can impact lag but as for the rest that is outside of their duties.

Good use of Dev time is every thursday say 1PM PDT 1 dev rotates with the other devs being on a server they pick in GM mode for 30 minutes.
Same goes for the people who make the decisions they are on that rotation as well.

Go into X and let everyone know GM is up on a server.
They can observe others and what not, see how people playing the game.

They need to step back once a while and observe.
Not listen feedback of handful of their buddies, they need to get raw observations.

Its not for me and doubt I will ever use it but I can see the appeal to others.

Pretty sure they are also trying to create more time sinks with it so your ideas dont work for that.

Most of the folks who are willing to level more toons and do their flags have done so by now. Most folks including those have filled all their character slots. This will give them something else to sink time into and make DB some money selling character slots.

The trick is trying to see this from DBs side as well as our own. I may get the details wrong on DBs thinking but without looking at both sides of the equation and what they need to get out of things you can't get the right answer. That much I do know.

Same here. I won't fault anyone for using it to create multiple personas, assuming it ever makes it into the game. I may even try it once just to see what it is and if it's useful to me in any way. If it requires an xp slog (1 to max level), you can probably count me out. I'll stick to my max level rogue alt when I need to go pick up shinies.

What's laughable about this discussion is all the people in this thread (and other threads) singing its praises and acting like it's the greatest feature in EQ history when 1) it's not even in game yet, and 2) nobody, including devs apprently, knows how it works. It's all just speculation at this point and the devs seem to have NO interest in even giving us the basics of what it is and how it works.

Well with how much people bash thr devs over every little thing, id stay quiet too. Could be theyre needing to more testing to verify and make sure it's going to work the way they want so they don't come forward with an announcement and then have to double back on it for whatever reason and deal with that backlash

Best to hold out until theyre a little more sure would be my guess

One of the things I love most about this game of ours is that it can be played and enjoyed in a multitude of ways.

I love what I love and there are aspects of the game I’d rather gouge my eyes out then endure one minute of that I don’t have to, like, shrouding. Tlp? Well if I’m being honest it’s not my jam. Being an old lady of eq I remember those nostalgic fights quite clearly in their original form and many of them hold an extremely special place in my heart. It’s not for me but I completely get why some see it as appealing.

Big arching quests? Check marks to chase? Hunters, slayers, hero’s journey, you bet - been done for years. Trade skills ? I’m your huckleberry. Holiday quests? Collects? Bring it, buster!

Did I have High hopes for the guild tradeskill depot? Absolutely. Was I disappointed it didn’t come to be this year? Certainly. Do I also recognize that unless they can get it working without problems and challenges that create more headaches then solves? You better believe it. (These opinions are mine only)

I’m sure there were:are a multitude of folks who didn’t love a tradeskill depot. Or some of the various key rings. This happens. But we still play.
Are personas something I was wishing for? No. Will I use it? Gut says no but maybe who knows. But I still support it because I’ve seen some people have the excitement at the *potential* it has much like I was ready to dance in the streets over the tradeskill depot. Not everybody has to live the same things and that’s ok. It doesn’t mean it was a waste of time, it’s just probably not going to be an area of concentration and enjoyment for me personally. There is room for all of us. Even you guys who hang around to clutter up posts or love to stir the pot that haven’t played the game in years . I see you!

<3

It's supposed to be THE selling point of the expansion and they've said exactly jack squat about what it is supposed to be and how it's supposed to work. All they said is that it's supposed to enable fast swapping between classes. They can do better than that and should.

Nah get this logic outta here.

Since they added the ability to get the new expansion via in-game currency I've done that but not this year. This year I even threw them a little extra money for my main account and will probably also pre-order the base version for one of my alt accounts because AP looks so interesting and I felt the need to support them at least trying something different.

Would be nice if they at least told us their intention for it. I know it could change, but at least let us know what they currently have in mind for Personas.

Exactly! How can you plot your course if you don't have a destination? Or put another way, how will we know if Personas fixes a problem unless we know what problem they intended to solve!

Or if it is even intended to solve a problem. Not all things happen as a reaction. It could be (as unlikely as it may seem) a decision to create a value added sort of thing. And we still won't know until some details are released. I should have joined in sooner. Speculation is fun.

A new dynamic in this discussion is today's announcement that there will be one fewer raid (8) and TWO fewer missions (2) than the past few years. (See beta forum LS Raid List thread)

Design and code are separated, but it seems like they are spread way, way too thin everywhere this year.

Agree. DBG should really tell us what they're trying to achieve with AP. Do they want to make it easier for more people to join raids? Are they trying to discourage players from having multiple accounts? Or maybe they want to reduce the time it takes to re-flag alts?

When they introduced the Tradeskill Depot, they didn't give us this kind of explanation, but we could at least guess it was meant to deal with the problem of having too many materials. As for AP, it's hard for us to grasp what the developers are aiming for.

Without more concrete information, it's no wonder the discussion in the thread keeps going without any clarity.

Which would seem counter productive from a revenue standpoint! The more accounts the more possibilities for subscription, expansion, and marketplace sales.

And wouldn't you want to make it easier for people to have multiple accounts? So finally implementing cross-account character transfers could have been a more lucrative use of sparse Dev time.

People have been begging for that forever. (Or even duplicating characters across accounts in case I want my Main to continue playing on Luclin but I want to put a full copy of him on Xegony for example.)

Unless they're gonna put group currency on merc/partisan tasks or lower the cost of augs, having only 2 missions is seroiusly gonna suck.

FTE, new UI (unfinished), DX11 upgrade (postponed), this silly Alternate Persona system (likely won't be ready anywhere near launch)...they're spending way too much time on dev vanity projects and not enough time on the game itself.