[Devs] Would you be open to creating QoL enhancements for EQ on Patreon?

Dear Esteemed EverQuest developers,

We know your time on the clock is valuable at Darkpaw and we appreciate all you do for EverQuest. We all have bills to pay, kids college tuition to save up for. Living in California is super expensive too. What if there was some way to compensate you (devs) for the time you spend off the clock on improving EQ by adding quality of life issues and fixing bugs?

Some of the best quality of life features have been created by EverQuest devs on their free time. One awesome EQ dev created the /useitem command during his lunchbreak. For that, many players such as myself, are grateful.

Would you be open to receiving subscriber payments on Patreon from EverQuest players who would like to help out, in return for working on quality of life improvements and fixing bugs?

Patreon subscribers could suggest QOL improvements on the Patreon forums, vote on them and then the EQ dev with the account could evaluate them, decide on one, then submit them to Darkpaw for final approval in the same way that current volunteer work by devs is approved.

This would be a voluntary program. There is nothing illegal about this as Patreon income is taxable just as Darkpaw salaries are taxable.

As a player and a whale, I'd gladly pay $50 a month on Patreon to see QOL improvements to EverQuest by devs in their spare time. Others may not be able to afford that. Patreon memberships could start at $5 per month and scale up.

This is a win-win scenario. EverQuest is improved because QOL items and bugs are being fixed and Darkpaw doesn't have to spend a dime. EQ devs do not have to volunteer or be a part of it. Those that do, can earn extra money and bask in the glory of knowing they made EQ better and will have the undying respect and gratitude of the EQ community.

Thanks in advance for your consideration on this matter.

I will pass on paying extra for upgrades and I am guessing I will not be in the minority.

You may be right. However, if only 100 EverQuest players supported a Darkpaw dev on Patron, that would be $500 dollars a month. At a rate $50 per hour, that would pay for 10 hours of off the clock volunteer dev time to work on much needed quality of life issues that would benefit all players.

Participations in a Patreon for EQ devs would be voluntary for both players and developers.

Passionate EQ players have tried everything. We've asked and pleaded for changes for many years on these forums for QOL changes but nothing seems to work. The only strategy that has not been tried is creating financial incentives for the devs.

I have to believe their are EQ devs that wouldn't mind earning extra money on Patreon for helping to make some simple quality of life enhancements for EverQuest off the clock. There is no downside to this. It would cost Daybreak Games nothing. Everybody wins.

I'd be happy to spearhead this initiative and talk to any interested devs in private about this. Thank you.

You do realize that it takes more then a single dev to get any of that work done right? Will take at least one other one to review any changes and multiple QA to test the changes to make sure it doesn’t break things. Just paying a single dev to get changes done isn’t enough. Besides I am sure that Daybreak would object to them working on the game off the clock while getting paid from another source.

If you're so inclined to throw extra money their way to help out with this there already is a system in place. Buy MTX such as pots, bags, and any other random stuff they have available in the cash shop. It essentially will achieve the same thing.

It was a bad idea when you suggested a Gofundme for Devs in the TLP forums, and it's a bad idea now.

I think it would make development much more difficult to coordinate, if individual devs also had to include various personal "side-gigs" for private sponsors.
Prioritizing features is best handled as a team exercise by the devs themselves, imho.

We can however, always submit suggestions in this very forum.

I will negate your "QOL improvements" and pay more, improvements which no doubt are casual in nature. Gods help you all when I win the lottery and buy the ip.

I also disbelieve that your QOL improvements are better than the rest just because you pay to have them "seen". I see all the time people want terrible ideas emplaced.

I'm pretty sure there are legal reasons why they cannot accept money from outside of their employer to do work for their employer.

Plus if their employer doesn't want finished products releasing as Live, then hey, whatever. We can beta test from November in through to March.

It's almost funny what people call a win-win scenario these days.

As a player I love the idea.

Unless you were able to raise some serious cash ($100k+) it just wouldn't be worth the hassle/risk.

would be better to open up that player made items thingy again "playerstudio" ?
and expand on that somehow........ what about player made dungeons like in eq2 ?

I don't think a publicly traded, or regular, company would allow their employees usage of company tools to earn money as a side hustle.

I would get fired if I were to design and program tooling from home using a company laptop and a seat of Siemens NX/Vericut and getting paid by someone else as an example.

Also, please stop with these types of threads. Daybreak employees are exactly that, employees. If they need better pay they can seek employment elsewhere like the rest of the world.

If you have money burning a hole in your pocket, throw it at these people. They could actually use it.

https://www.pantheonmmo.com/

Not all quality of life changes take the same time to implement. Not all would require multiple devs to implement and test. And, yes, we do have a test server where unpaid testers (players) test the content.

Why would Daybreak object to EQ devs earning extra money for making EQ a better MMORPG?

Daybreak Games currently allows EQ devs to work on improving EQ on their own time. Why would they care if they were compensated for the work they do on their free time?

Why is it a bad idea?

Are you opposed to Darkpaw making EverQuest better?

Are you opposed to EQ devs working off the clock making EQ better?

No. I won't stop posting these kinds of threads. I'm sorry that you don't appreciate outside the box thinking. The world is changing. People work differently. The gig and side-hustle economy is real.


Without fail, every day someone posts good suggestions on how to make EverQuest a better experience. The fact is that most if not all will never get implemented. Most companies would kill for the loyal fanbase that EQ has and the collective and institutional knowledge from this community.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. That my friends is what these forums are. You can post all you want and rarely do things get changed.

Then when someone posts actionable ideas on how to break up this logjam, then the usual suspects who are quite happy with the status quo come out of the woodwork and find things to object about and nitpick the thread to death with objections.

There hasn't been one legitimate objection to this idea yet. This thread was aimed primarily at the devs and Darkpaw management and not the forum questors who love to cut the tall poppies down to make themselves feel better.

What is there solution? They have no answers. They want you to pray and hope that QOL changes will magically make it into EQ. Or, maybe they just like EQ they way it is. These are the same people that didn't like monthly perks either.

This solution could help the devs make some extra money to help pay the bills each month and make EQ a better MMORPG. The fact that a few obstinate people are opposed to this is absolutely mind-boggling.

In my proposal, the QOL ideas would be voted on by Patreon subscribers, then the EQ dev would have to sign off on them, then their supervisor at Darkpaw would have to sign off on the changes. So the QOL changes would be meticulously vetted throughout the process.

All changes to the code base require someone to review the changes to make sure they will work as intended and not break other things as well as someone to test it to verify no issues are found. It doesn’t matter how big or small the changes are the process can’t be skipped.

As for the compensation there is likely many legal issues behind salaried workers getting extra money on the side from a Patreon and it might even be discouraged by Patreon for a corporation like Daybreak to set something up like this. But overall I don’t want random people deciding what they think is best of the game and would rather leave that up to the devs.