Should game developrs be rotated out of projects.

There's an interesting trick you can use after you have drawn something. If you flip the drawing upside down or look at it through a mirror, you'll often see what is wrong with it. Alternatively, someone will point mistakes out to you.

If you get too intimately involved in a project, you're no longer able to appreciate its shortcomings.

EQ is not very healthy. Core problems involving gameplay, UI, maps, lack of grouping, and the deterioration of the social fabric of the game are all completely unaddressed problems without implemented solutions. These are not new problems, they're problems that the development team didn't see and neglected for far too long while releasing cookie-cutter expansions.

I think that there should be term limits for game developers too, especially in old games like Everquest. Of course on the condition that these people can be moved to a different project in the company.

Yes, as long as it fits for their professional aspirations. Next question.

Knowing the content and caring about the content is a big plus.
I'd really not like some random Strawberry to be designing a game I've played for 20ish years and they have no clue about.

The length of time it takes to train devs up on how EQ systems work, I think this is the worse idea you have come up with so far.

EQ has a high turnover of staff already, I don't think we need to see employees moving round jobs as well. Unless your looking for 1 or 2 raids and 0 missions and even less quests and zones.

If you want to complain why the game hasn't changed, you need to point your criticism towards the people who manage this game at the company. The people in charge, the CEO, the executives, the producers. They are the ones who are driving the developers to do what they want them to do. The developers just work on what they are told to work on. If they really wanted to address these issues, they would hand down the orders to Jchan, then more people would get hired and then developers would work on these issues.

Your criticism is pointed in the wrong direction.

Though there can be some perceived benefit in "fresh eyes" there's also a lot to be said for knowing where the skeletons are buried. Yinla and Febb make some really good points.

I am a functional designer for a piece of software and there are TONS of things I want to do, but my hands are tied primarily by top down priorities and lack of funding/available talent, as well as having more awareness than users when it comes to what we can do in terms of regulations and compliance. End users blame me for their not getting what they want. It's not for lack of ideas or creativity even though I've been working on this software for 15 years. It's that I have only a minor say in what we can do with each year's shrinking budget.

This is a bad idea. A really really bad idea.

Pretty sure he doesn't even play the game, he just shows up to create troll posts occasionally. Probably find him on other game forums too.

Its funny because of how absurd it is.

Lol, are you trying to challenge them, they probably have a list of quality ideas.

While it is good to get a new perspective on what is being worked on, or the game in general, I think that putting "term limits" on devs is not a good idea. That is what the CRC is there for, to provide that perspective. Now, as we aren't privy to what the CRC says or suggests it is hard to know what DPG is enacting based on suggestions by the CRC. But, the CRC is supposed to be the mirror.

Ramp time on new staff is awful. The longer someone is in a role, the more potentially effective they become. Rotating development staff might be a good idea for someone feeling stale in a role. SomeONE. Rotating all the staff on the regular? Yeah..../snicker

Tell me you're not a leader without telling me you're not a leader.

This idea is dumb as poo

I wouldn't say it's dumb. It's great on paper. But it's horrible in practice.

I'ma step out on a limb and say it's also dumb on paper.

With chat gbt one can do most of the spells for an entire expansion in probably a week, I’d be curious to see a timeline of man hours with respective tasks for a year

I don't think this is a good idea at all. I understand the frustration but the way to fix this with funding and resources. Its not to rotate out the people that care enough to keep the cobbled together software working. Also keep in mind that there are a lot of improvements that may pay off in the future (and they may not) but logically if the basic parts of the game can be improved, it makes it easier to improve the product. The priorities of the last two years have been long term priorities. Things that should improve the game dramatically if it can be pulled off. Imagine how bad the software is ....... well its probably a lot worse. Be careful what you ask for because you may get it.

No, the person most suited for the task should do it. Meaningless rotation only means that the most apt and the least apt both get equal billing. this also involves perpetually reinventing the wheel and changing intended course. Neither of which is an actual direction collectively. Everquest has some prime examples of that, like zonelines that were intended when Brad left. Things that were quest items for zones that never got released, etc.

Rotating Developers works when you have enough of them to do that.

*looks around at the hundreds of Developers not working on EQ right now*

On any game that uses an old engine, it takes so long to ramp a new dev up that you aren't going to send them off to a new team after you train them. That's not how it works.