I'm a bit confused by the consistent stance of the team regarding TLP. Essentially, there's minimum support/development for TLP and a lions share of their work goes to the live game. I'm not going to argue that TLP servers are more popular than live, they clearly are not... But I reckon that the first 3-4 months of new TLP servers are definitely more popular than live, and the amount of people that recycle new TLP each year seems to question their assertion that nobody plays the old game/revisits old zones. Don't they do this annually on every TLP? What this suggests is that live servers generate SIGNIFICANTLY more revenue than TLPs do, despite what people on this forum might indicate.
Waring is attempting to be realistic and y'all clowning him. Take a step back and look at things objectively and with realism. The AMA made it clear none of the outside the box crap we have requested is coming.
It would seem very strange to say it is not yet implemented if it was going to happen in the next TLP and the work was done or in progress.
Someone asked if there could be other sources of group currency and Ngreth said they would consider it. Then, a few questions later, someone asked if they could put group currency on merc/partisan tasks, and Negreth said no, because they don't want people just running the tasks over and over for currency...you know, like we all do with missions.
Their philosophy behind quests is really baffling. They're a small team but they focus on producing content that is single use, basically toilet paper content. So confusing, they won't add experience or currency to mercenary quests.
It would be more strange to say its ready to go and you will see it in May when they aren't ready to announce the rules. Again, you are most likely correct. To expect confirmation of one of the rules ahead of time is weird at best. It flat out wasn't a no compared to many of the questions which is what the OP alleged. Not sure why you even jumped in the conversation. You added nothing of value as per your usual comments. Good day sir.
If anything I would expect them to not answer the question in the first place if it was something that was in the works for the next TLP. They did pick and choose which of the questions they wanted to answer and could have easily ignored it.
I applaud their merit for doing an AMA when they know they won't be pleasing everyone. However, too many of the areas I was interested in had answers of "No", or "not in the near future", or "not on our radar." What puzzles me is that they do seem to be aware that they're developing content that they have no real clue what to do with the year after (other than let it rot away) and yet people are crying out for content... Sadly, it just proves what I feared in that the current way of earning gear and exp is here to stay and they have no plans to change it. No point in re-subscribing at this point. I'll buy up my houses for a couple of years again and hibernate my mains until the bug bites me again. My FTP chars were already SOL after the exp change - they can live out their days in EW around the campfire. /out.
Read most of the AMA and one thing I noticed is it seemed like the devs either didn't know what the question was referring to what was wrong with the system being asked about (I know a lot were just no or not in the future), but figured I'd post some of my small feedbacks so they are out there and hopefully will be at least help the devs understand the issues with them. Welcome to post your own, try to keep it civil....warring. (in no particular order): 1. Fellowships. Dear lord what a system lol. I know one thing discussed was not enough manpower on most things so at the very least I would like to see sharing be on by default. The idea that you have to turn on sharing to receive is rather silly. I would like to see a full rework of the system somehow but I feel that would take some rather large coding or tearing it down completely and rebuilding so at the least maybe some minor changes like being able to at least receive without turning it on and off. 2. DPS log. This was a question I noticed and I agree that it needs to better but not sure the game can handle the load it will put on it or not. We have player made parsers and as long as that doesn't fall under the category of 3rd party programs I think were all fine with them mostly but the actual log and it's short range is a lot of the issue with them. I always thought it'd be fun if we could fix the log to have some sort of warcraft logs type site to pool our parses into and kind of see how people do across the board on different encounters. A lot of the issue with the log comes to the Z axis as well.... 3. Z axis. Not sure if much can be done here but a lot of limiting factors such as buffs (banner/campfire/auras/etc) and along with the log sometimes just stop if youre even slightly above or below someone/something. The guild banner for example will go 1000m out...but man if you are one flight of stairs too high...gone. 4. Raid window. Boy oh boy....locking and unlocking a raid window lol. Not sure if needing revamp overall or just adjusting thing based on coding, but that lock/unlock needs to go. And I had a neat idea where, like ext target window, I could save a template of a raid setup and just load it once people joined...so say for example that I mass raid invite everyone in my guild to raid...I then load the template and it puts the people it sees in the raid into the grps they were on the preset, what a world that would be lol. 5. Personas. A good idea...job system from ff14 or what not...get the intention. Needs some loving though such as faction sharing (at the very least after a certain expansion or what not maybe) and some type of aa from the other character...different ideas for that such as just share general/archetype? maybe give a vitality type fellowship system when playing one to the others not being played? maybe a certain amount of aa gained on the main one goes to the ones not being played just straight up like 10-20%? Dunno, cool system but just seems slight short of where it should be. 6. 70's era on tlps. I know it was so no basically on this one but something has to be done with it. That 70's is the death of most tlps and a simple combination of the lesser expansions like: Oow combined with DoN, Dodh combined with PoR type setup would help a lot of it. 7. Guild window/bank. Literally just steal eq2's lol. EQ2 had some of the greatest innovation/tools for an mmo imo, you have the template right there to take from lol...which brings me to my next point... 8. Healing. Healing is, arguably, the hardest job in EQ and it is the hardest because there are no tools to help you. At first with complete heal it's a joke and then they add difficulty into it but no real ui help other than ext target window and such. I would like to see either a target through entirely for heals or a target through such as EQ2 for the entire game. Why other MMOs dont do that I dont know but it would make use of certain spells later in the game so much easier and more fluid. All I can think of atm, will probably edit as my brain decides to work and think on more.
I was expecting to see more answers about their vision of APs. If this is to work the way they've promoted it so far, they need a) a gear storage solution, and b) a way for the APs to get their XP when they can't repeat quests or achievements. Many players who aren't trying APs are clamoring for b) anyway, and because APs critically need it at higher levels, I expect them to do something. But the AMA gives no clue as to what that something will be, or when.
If the AMA did anything, it made it evident that there are way too few people working on the game, but I don't think that will ever change. The industry was ruined by the advent of phone apps where a crappy little pay2win game can rake in billions in microtransactions, so companies stopped trying to create big PC-based games that only net them in the millions. /sigh
Fun is something that requires available man and woman hours, which if I gathered anything from the AMA, it's that this is a something DPG is in short supply of.
Q: Can we increase grind XP? Ngreth: We have no plans to encourage grind. Then there is no encouragement for me to pay to play. Ever.
I hope you are right. I read it the other way but win all around if they just tell the world don't ask because we won't do anything about it, and put them both in at level 1. No skin off my back.
