And in the end you can just ignore the survey. I was at a store today where I had to give an opinion to just be able to check out. Funny how opinion shifted on that one.
After years of concentrating on the current [dwindling] player-base and doing next-to-nothing to draw in / keep new players, I'm astounding they're even asking this question. They have done absolutely nothing in the modern era to attract newer players to this game - the posts above all highlight so many things that are 'wrong' with the game in a way that just leads newer players to get confused and quit. Heck, even seasoned returned players are having a struggle to either catch-up or just know where to go because DBG generally don't care about players outside of the current levelling / expansion curve - getting chunks of exp from progression that no-one wants to do anymore is just one example of how short-sighted they've been. It's a design that inherently dwindles and becomes harder as time goes on. Whilst I get that they're trying to drive people to the newer expansions, they're doing a detriment to those who are falling behind. I didn't take the survey and would be offended to be asked such a question when it's clear they either don't know their own product, or are unable to gauge the opinion of their player-base from these forums.
This was the nature of my feedback as well. I encourage you to add your vote there, where it's less likely to be ignored than this thread.
Why should I do the survey? They ignore our feedback for years, on beta, on live, on test, on forums (only exception is TLP...).
Would I recommend the game to my friends? Is this a serious question? People have to get maps on their own, people have to get Kizant's dps or gamparse on their own, a decent UI from somewhere on their own. And there is no assistance for people to use more then 1 account. I know, I know, go find a group, it's mmorpg ... but this doesn't apply anymore and people have to box if they want to accomplish something. Players would welcome assistance with boxing more characters but no help from daybreak. Finally, the company has ...ahhh... minimalist approach when communicating with EQ players. We have betas, test server, people report issues, over and over, and things don't get fixed for a very long time, sometimes never. tl:dr I would not recommend EQ to anyone.
The forum community is much to small for being representative and usually most forum users are passive, which does mean that they do only read. A survey is a good tool for creating statistics easily. They should just host it on their own servers instead at Google, or choosing a barrier free provider.
Pretty much. The first thing that will piss off a new player is the UI. It doesn't properly scale and is not intuitive at all. A UI that requires players to find abilities, spells and disciplines themselves, all hidden behind different menus. In most games these appear on the hotbar by default, or there is a visual guide pointing players to unsassigned or newly acquired abilities. Autoskill is more hidden functionality, people are just supposed to figure out /autoskill themselves. Melody is another hidden functionality. EQ has a mess of a UI that obscures and complicates everything. The second thing that will piss of a new player is that they will be totally lost without maps. Have fun dying and getting lost because EQ developers are too stubborn to make EQ accessible after 2 decades. "bUt I doN'T WaNt MaPs." Holy ****, the whining from some veteran gatekeeping players. If you don't want maps, then don't use them. Fix those two 2 things, UI and maps, and the experience will go from horrendous, to mildly playable for a new player. Do we need a "survey" for this? No. If developers can't figure this out on their own, find new developers. And if you don't want to make your game more accessible to new players, then don't do surveys. Making surveys just to end up changing nothing, is pointless.
It's astounding to me how some on these forums take a no-holds-barred approach in sharing their opinions. But then not only refuse to respond to a survey when asked, but take to the forums to express their apparent extreme displeasure at being asked in the first place. Maybe it's time to reconsider playing EverQuest at all. Sounds to me like a group of jaded addicts who hate everything except complaining about the game they appear to hate!
Didn't fill in the survey which is a shame, but it needed a google account and only one I have is provided by a client...
As someone who definitely fits into the group you're describing...the game is fine. It is Daybreak I hate.
It is free to make a Google account and takes maybe 5 minutes but I understand some do not wish to do so. Google is not my favorite company either.
It's more the "why should I to answer the most inane question" motivation for me. Seriously - it's like my wife suddenly asking after 20 years how I like my tea.
If you changed your wife as often as EverQuest has changed owners I wouldn't be surprised if she had to. Do you see where your logic fails?
My gripe was that I was expecting a survey. Not the malarkey that's tossed up as I can't even call it a survey. My response to "Thoughts?" was "How about actually reading the forums and responding to some of the posts?". I know that probably a good two-thirds posts of the forums can be counted as trolls. That does still leave a number of good ideas, suggestions, you should listen to your players, that get posted. So why are we going to bother repeating something on a 'survey' while the same idea get no response in forum posts?
It's not so hard to understand. EQ is fun, when they aren't messing up the UI, messing up filters, ignoring outstanding bugs like the missing named in OOW, not listening to players on test and beta, etc. QA has gone down hill, many new things they add are not working correctly at release, special TLP servers don't get enough support. Some of the problems are frutstrating but doesn't stop the enjoyment of doing something else in game. All of the above is why I wouldn't introduce anyone to EQ. But 4 years ago before the recent problems I did.
What's the harm in responding to the survey in just this way? This is what I am trying, and failing, to convey.
DBG could kill two birds with one stone by actually communicating with their existing player-base on their own forums a lot more often than they do. They choose to release as little information as possible (remember how long it took for us to actually work out what persona's were after being ADVERTISED as one of the main points of the expansion?) or releasing DX11 onto Live when they knew they had issues with it on test, or half-fixing the UI with panels that sit on top of other panels etc. Let's not even mention the amount of times they miss out certain servers in the roadmaps, or leave it until the last minute to confirm EXP weekends when the forums are full of questions about whether it is going to happen or not. There is an AMA, I grant you that - but I love this particular bullet point on it: While we encourage anything to be asked, please understand that we cannot respond to all topics, nor will we explain why we cannot respond. Ask me 'anything', but be prepared to be ignored without any information whatsoever - such a typical response. As someone else mentioned, not taking the survey or pandering to DBGs whim for our opinions (a single meaningless question for a game almost 25 years old) doesn't mean we hate playing the game, it means we've either learned to live with all the rough edges over the years or have a morbid sunk loss fallacy relationship with it ( clue: neither of these would draw in a friend).
