Pet classes are way more important than you think, Niente and Meeko. Most players on live servers do box and most of them do use at least one pet class. About every player does have and use a pet class today. It is no longer the year 2000 where players do just play one or two characters without boxing. Today everyone does play multiple classes. Either by boxing or by swapping PCs and personas. Sometimes daily, and sometimes every few days. 38% of the classes (6/16) are pet classes: SHD NEC BST ENC MAG SHM 31% of the classes (5/16) can have temporary, pseudo, or minor pets: CLR BRD WIZ DRU RNG. Combined these are 69% of the classes. Your strategy of doing small changes every now and then does not work always well. For many things it would be better to have a long term strategy and investing more dev time and having a big solution instead a small half baked one. The pet inventory management is a small half baked solution. It is not a bad idea for a short term solution, but will be unefficient over the years. You might end up with more work in the end because a small solution combined with a big solution does mean extra dev time. As pets and pet classes are such an integral part of the game, most players would prefer a complete solution including UI pet inventory management. It would be better for the game in the long run.
The pet classes I spoke to are very happy to have this. Would they like a UI solution more? Of course. But they would highly object if you took away the current text command and told them, "We decided to spend six months to get you a UI instead, so you need to wait until then. Also, we will have to delay fixing a whole bunch of bugs for six months to get you your UI." Small changes count. For a lot. Big changes will be great, I want more big changes. Reality says that Darkpaw doesn't have the people for many big changes. I'll take small changes over nothing.
Small changes can be good as a stopgap. But they can also lower the need and motivation for a big solution. In the past, small / half baked / unfinished solutions had been the final solution for decades. Like the TSoL PC models with the broken TSoV armor textures.
And there's the rub (see bold). For some people they get a more rewarding and engaging gameplay doing quests and missions - and that's fine. What I don't get is why they want a different rewarding and engaging gameplay for others nerfed. The only way increasing mob kill exp affects you is positively if you somehow kill mobs outside of your quests / missions. Why can't both be feasible routes? Let's image they put all the exp back on mob kills and just hand out 0.08% a mission / task. That would be an option that would benefit me the most. I could then post to others to say suck it up and level via grind exp like the rest of us. Truth is; 1. There is a bunch of people who like questing and missions - and that's great. You get to benefit from playing in groups, better gear and a faster xp path (and would benefit for more exp on mob kills) 2. There is a bunch of people who liking to grind exp off mobs - often we cant access groups / missions etc. so all we're left with is Overseer or killing mobs. 3. We have Ngreth who seems to think the only grind in the game is killing mobs for exp which is a shocking response considering AAs, chase items, progression, currency, personas etc. I'm glad they did the AMA but all it told me was just how out-of-touch the developers are with a large portion of their player-base. It is true that we're in their world now, but some of the choices that have been made over recent years have been head-shaking.
The majority of players have adapted to doing progression for the majority of their XP. That's just the truth. The majority of players don't care for the grind at all and are in fact happy to not be required to do it. The Devs are not out of touch just because they told you something you didn't like
I don't know if that's true. EQ had some of its biggest numbers during the 'grind' era, not because the grind was inherently edge of your seat fun, but because you'd have time to chill and socialize not hurry between task/mission steps. (Yes expectations from games were different then too, but EQ is uniquely sort of locked in time compared to modern games) I think proof of this is the appeal of TLP's for a lot of players , being able to be out in the world playing with friends and travelling to target different zones for loot while earning reasonable XP. I don't think there's anything wrong with Merc/Partisan/Hero XP at all, but the nostalgia factor for most players (Imagine anyone who comes back to checkout EQ after a decade) is getting to hang out and mow down mobs with people they know who still play.
The appeal of classic/TLP servers does not really agree with this. TLP would be 100% dead if mob grinding wasn't accepted by the player base. Now making every raid non instanced competitive etc. Players don't generally want that, but they are quite fine sitting in a camp pulling mobs. Lets not forget that you STILL grind for AA's. If people "hated" grind, then everyone would be up in arms having to pull mobs to grind out thousands of AA's not to mention the Evolving items we get now.
Don't speak for the majority of people. Generally when anyone tries to assume what "the majority" wants, it based on personal experience/preference only. The fact is that the game REQUIRES "grind", because the simple fact is that you can do all of LS progression (mercs. partisans, missions) and still be short of level 125 means the xp has got to come from repeating something over and over again. And I haven't even mentioned the evolving neck. People want to be rewarded in a game for their time and effort. Changing the paradigm on how the reward takes place ... especially when culling something part way through the journey, regardless of what other positive things are added ... causes discontent. I have no idea how many EQ players don't like low xp mob kills, but there are some at least and lately some of the voices have grown louder. Whether or not it does anything to the bottom line, we'll see. I'm amazed at how many people restart on TLPs each year ... but they do it.
Very impressed by the number of questions answered. Even if we don't agree in everything, I'm happy that the team gave us the reasoning behind their decisions. Please keep up the fight against cheaters!
I'm not sure you are correct, but my argument doesn't need to take that into account. I'm simply asking for both ways to be feasible. If they put exp back on mob kills it would benefit both groups of players. Both of these choices are opposite sides of the same coin. If the devs only agree with one side, then I see that as them being out of touch with the opposite side. (just as if they were to bring back exp mob kill and reduce the mission / progression stuff, I'd feel they were out of touch with you and people like you)
How do you know? Do you work for daybreak and have access to some sort of internal statistic showing that people like to do progression? Please share that with us. All I see is players complaining about having to run the quests. People in my guild will do progression because they have to but they complain about it every step of the way. It is not the truth. There are plenty of people asking for exp to be put on mobs as it was for decades. Funny statement. Everquest is based on grind. Evolving items, camping names for gear, hunters, killing for collectibles, running missions 235647 times acquiring currency for augments. If people did not care for the grind, why would they do all those activities I just described? The game IS the grind.
No, that's your opinion. The TRUTH is that you don't know what the majority of players want...you only know what YOU want. Everquest doesn't have to be an either/or game. The devs have such a narrow vision of the game these days that it doesn't even occur to them that multiple paths for character advancement CAN exist at the same time. It IS possible to let everyone play the game the way they want to play it and enjoy themselves. Adjusting levels so that they're no longer hell levels, making grinding xp a viable option for leveling again DOES NOT in any way mean you have to take the xp rewards off of the tasks/achievements. Those xp rewards are all percentage based. If a task or achievement awards 10% of a level, then it doesn't matter if that level requires 100 xp points or 1 million xp points to get through...you're still going to get 10% of that level. The only thing that happens if you get rid of the artifical hell levels and make grinding viable again is that you make a lot of players happy. I don't understand why the pro-task xp crowd is so afraid of letting people grind out levels again...nobody is taking anything away from you. You've been conditioned by the devs for so long to believe that the only way to get something is to take something else away. That's never been a valid argument and it's complete and total nonsense. You can still do tasks/achievements to level...no one is taking that away from you.
Exactly! It is entirely possible for a game to use both paradigms in its design. One gives a restrictive way to play and the other opens up possibilities that could lead to greater player retention and happiness.
The quoted portion is true for some rewards, like collection achievements, Overseer regular experience rewards, and non-level increase expansion Mercenary and Partisans rewards. However, it doesn't appear to be the case for the last 3 level increase expansion progression rewards. Although the rewards are displayed to us as a percentage of a level, it's not the same percentage at every level. For instance, a hero achievement in LS gives 20.17% of level 120 but gives 57.68% of level 110. I wish I would have asked about this in the AMA, but I suspect these achievements are given a certain amount of experience points and the displayed percent is calculated as the ratio of experience points to experience pool for the level (actually a little more complex now). If that's correct, then in order to increase the percent of level for killing an npc without increasing the AA experience, the experience pool for the levels 111+ would need to be decreased, and the experience for the achievements would need to be decreased by the same factor. I certainly think the above is a possible way to keep the achievement rewards the same percent of level for 111+ (110 and lower would be smaller percents than they currently are) while making killing npcs more rewarding. While it's possible, and I don't think many players would have a problem with them doing this, I don't think there would actually be an equal exchange. I think if they were to decrease the amount of experience required to level at 111+, they would decrease the experience rewards from level-increase expansions by a larger factor. I personally would be okay with this as long as the time to level weren't significantly increased (acquiring the progression achievements requires killing many npcs).
But does it even matter? If you're using current (LS) content to level up a toon that is clearly lower level than the content is designed for and they're getting bigger chunks of xp, that seems to be logical. For example, if you had a group of 5 125 toons and used them to group with and powerlevel a 100 toon in LS zones, that lower level toon is gonna get bigger chunks of xp per kill than if you were killing stuff in RoF, or whatever the appropriate expansion is for level 100 toons. That lower level toon is getting a lot of xp per kill because these artifical hell levels haven't kicked in yet. I think it's the same situation with the achievements...lower level toons would get bigger chunks of xp from current progression content. And it hurts absolutely no one.
Honestly, this is the thing that concerns me the most. We all get that the resources are limited for the game, but someone needs to make sure that when a new feature is implemented, that feature is part of all forthcoming expansions unless a newer feature is introduced in a later expansion that replaces it. The persona feature is akin to the mapping system, find system, bazaar system, chat system, grouping, raiding, snaring, feigning death, etc. It is a fundamental feature that is at the core level of the game. It's not just a gimmick feature because it completely changes how people play the game. It should be treated with the same importance of all the core fundamental features of the game. If /follow, being able to form a group, the auto loot feature, or mounts stopped working in the game, you would fix that and not say "it's part of a previous project" so we don't have time for it. It would be a top priority fix because it is core to the game. The persona feature is a core-level feature to the game that should not be considered a feature of a previous project. It is now a fundamental feature of the GAME, and as such, it should warrant enough priority to spend some time fixing and evolving the feature in the next expansion. It should not be seen as "good enough" because it's not. It can be implemented better than currently, and since there was not enough time in the last expansion to do it, it should carry over to the current expansion to be completed. I happen to like the persona feature, and I hope that it continues to garner the devotion and respect that it deserves as a core feature of the game. Not all will use it, but the fact that it is optional should not make it any less important to the game. If optional use was a key factor in deciding what is important to the game, then mounts wouldn't be important. At any rate, that's my two cents. Hopefully it helps somehow.
