This is one of the few things I agree with Ngreth on. Questing and missions should be the primary sources of XP. It results in a more rewarding and engaging gameplay loop (at least for me). The only problem is that Merc quests have historically been nerfed to where they don't give XP when repeated. LS is the only recent expansion that has done this, and I'm still not convinced it's by design (and therefore expect it to be nerfed soon).
EQ designers have historically been very disconnected from the players when introducing variety and flavor. They have a desire to keep things fresh (which is good) but that causes them to avoid easy wins by patterning off of popular ideas and introducing undesired variation.
You answered 3 of my questions, thank you for doing so, but could someone please elaborate as to "Why" illusions aren't an easy "Turn mob into illusion on X item" ? How big of a limitation are we talking about here? Take this with the understanding that I'm a total moron when it comes to game dev, so bare with me here. I know maybe fluff stuff isn't a priority, especially if it doesn't bring back any real profit, marketplace illusions/mounts would be pretty damn cool. Q: Can we get more illusions in the game? I main a rogue but Preferably all/all so more people can have fun with them? Would be nice to get a Fire Goblin illusion. I found a mask tonight on Mischief I've never seen before, this goblin icon inspired the idea of a fire goblin illusion, I don't think that exists in this game does it? Ngreth: These are limited simply because the options are limited. Another question that unfortunately wasn't answered: Why are crates not in the marketplace at all times? There's certain illusions/mounts that are in extreme demand, gnome/halfling crates are probably the biggest ones... It would be pretty damn nice to get the gnome robot illusion/rhino on Mischief some day Btw absolutely Massive props on the new tower weapon ornaments, those purple weapons are perfect! Purple all of the things!
Purpose of this question was to point out the barrier of entry for new/returning players. This doesn't seem to be a concern of the respondents (and maybe not even an understanding) but hopefully a producer can conceptualize the daily lost opportunity of failing to retain these folks who have already found their way to the Live game.
I think they should either allow all buffs on all level characters, or remove required levels from gear. Or both.
I'm a bit confused about this. Is the "catch-up mechanic" referring to the AA bonus scale? This is an AA xp bonus if you have under 4,000 AAs. Or at least it was back in 2012: So does it refer to this? Or to something else? Has the AA bonus scale been changed? If so, on both TLP and live servers? Is so, how was it changed? Is it constantly changing? Thank you for your time and consideration.
This was a long read, but it did answer alot of my questions. Didn't give me the answers I wanted, but it did answer them. Thanks, Dev's for the answers, and the humor with some of them. I will be honest, it did give me a ray of hope that somewhere there may be things in the pipeline that lessen my frustration that makes me not want to log in currently.
Found it (THANK YOU NIENTE!) hiding in one of the docs. It is now updated and posted in the appropriate section. The response is this: Q: Can you explain your reasoning for personas only being allowed to be changed in citys and fast camp zones? Ngreth: Changing anywhere any time is too prone to abuse. Niente: In many cases, changing personas in any location could be for benign reasons (such as wanting to play the other class now, and being inconvenienced by running back). However, there are many situations that I think would fundamentally change the game in a negative way if players could change their persona anywhere. A small example would be, I want to run somewhere, I can become a bard and use double invis. Now there is no reason for me to use any other class’ invis or runspeed. Similarly, I could change into a rogue to bypass see invis NPCs, and change back from the rogue at will, without actually having to be a rogue at any other time, or deal with any drawbacks of any class. This goes in the direction of having class abilities shared with every other class in the game, which would be a very interesting special ruleset, but introducing that to the entire game without proper vetting would be extremely risky to the game’s integrity.
Thank you all for the time and effort put into communication with the community and an honest attempt at transparency. I could tell by the answers you all care about this game and have a desire to make improvements, but time and staffing create some limitations to what is feasible. I for one feel differently then I did before this AMA about the dev team. I will think twice before I criticise the time it takes to fix some issues as they arise. I can tell you all do care but balancing time required, impact, and priority plays a role in what can and can't be done for sure.
1. If persona's are considered alts by many other aspects, why do they still share lockout timers with the main persona? 2. Bag space issues are still a thing. Having to carry around multiple armor sets for different personas is a huge hindrance. 3. Should faction progression not carry over? These are just a few, but I think the general issue is that Persona's have all of the issues of an alt, without any benefit. There's minimal benefit in sharing progression if lockouts are also shared. Right now, with persona's sharing lockouts, sharing bag space, not really sharing OMM / Faction (DON) progression, having strict requirements on swapping, there is really little to no benefit of having a persona vs. having an alt on the same account.
Some things like lockout timers MUST be shared. Because gear is shared. Otherwise you can just have an army of personas and farm the same raids over and over again to get gear for a class you are not currently playing.
Step 1: Level a Druid/Wizard to the desired level for ports. Step 2: Level a Bard to whatever level for double invis. Step 3: Level a Rogue to whatever level for Shroud of Stealth. Step 4: Level a Cleric/Mage to whatever for Res/CotH Seems to me that putting the effort of leveling the persona should provide the appropriate rewards and give players motivation to chase them (Plus six in-game purchases!!)
I suppose some people might do that, but realistically people can already do the same thing on servers like Mischief and FV with their alts. I'm not sure how many guilds out there would bother leveling / AA'ing / Gearing up level 120 personas on all their toons to add an extra raid night. I know ours wouldn't. But even with all that being said, assuming shared lockouts are a must. That still begs the question of the actual benefit of a persona over an alt vs. all the negatives.
Tell me more how to solo missions =) Or take on 15 ratman at lvl 116 solo in CoV Quest. Game is based on old system where there was players.. today there are like, 20 online.. Devs is making the game as we all use Raid gear Tier 3 from LS, and always run with 25 fully raid geared Tier 3 LS toons at level 125.. Reality is, solo.. one toon maybe one merc, basic gear Tier 1 or 2 from the ToV, CoV, ToL.
I understand that this isn't a trivial implementation due to the conversion from character flags to achievements and all of the scripts that must be involved, but whether or not Absor remembers the progression rules shouldn't be the blocker here. The progression requirements are fairly straightforward and could be documented in a couple of hours by players familiar with the content. There are probably 100+ Google Sheets guild progression checklists out there that detail this progression. Why not lean into that knowledge and work in conjunction with the community to drive QoL features like these as opposed to this requirement to keep everything completely in house? That approach would have helped with the Vex Thal shard revamp, for example, and could be applied to any number of feature requests that are too big to tackle internally but may be more feasible with a shorter analysis phase.
The problem is that you can already do that with out personas if you think about it. For example, if you need to get past a bad area with out having to fight the mobs along the way, all you need is 2 accounts and do the following: 1. Account 1 - any class you want 2. Account 2 - rogue with SoS 3. Die to any mob on account 1 4. /corpsedrag account 1 character with the rogue on account 2 to where ever you want to be in the zone 5. On account 2, pop out your cleric mercenary 6. Accept rez on account 1's character. You literally just accomplished the same thing as being able to switch to a rogue persona to get past mobs and then switch back. The only difference is that you used a second account and a healer mercenary. I'm sorry, but it just feels like the persona system has more downsides than up right now.
They literally could have just posted 3 answers at the very beginning and saved a lot of reading. A: We have thought about it A: We dont have the money or man power A: EQ is all its ever going to be, quit asking for more
This isn't a new idea, but it is a great idea. It is also one that hasn't been made use of, either by SOE or Daybreak. A developer/player partnership, even if only an ad hoc kind of thing, could really help prolong the life of this game and perhaps even reduce a portion of the workload for the devs. And even if it didn't produce a wealth of great usable ideas, it would give the players a feeling of participation. Just a thought here, but several years ago I participated in this sort of thing with a Fortune 500 company here in the U.S. and it boosted sales and produced happier customers.
Thank you for responding to all of those! While I don't like 100% of the answers, it means a lot that y'all took the time to answer them!
