GoFundMe to help over-worked and underpaid devs

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Brontus, Oct 4, 2021.

  1. Accipiter Old Timer


    What proof do we have that they are underpaid? What proof do we have that they are overworked?

    Let's say EQ takes 40 full-time people to keep running. If they only have 30, they don't make the 30 do the work of 40. They just do 30 heads' worth of work. Not overworked.

    I abhor this idea. DPG employees are just employees. There is nothing special about them.
  2. Tweakfour17 Augur

    Thats quite a subjective statement, I'm sure you wouldn't have to dig too deep to find people who enjoy the live content and people who think the TLP treadmill is boring and dated.
    Stymie and Yinla like this.
  3. TheTone Elder


    Quite true - but each TLP you get a fresh start...you can go a whole different route playing the game. Maybe for hardcore people this isn't the case, but I've personally played 4 or 5 of the TLPs and made different characters, joined different guilds, and played different amounts of time and it felt like a somewhat different game.
  4. Machen New Member


    What makes you think the current dev team would make classic content you actually like, if you don't like what they are doing on live?
  5. Metanis Bad Company

    If you want to support a company you simply need to buy their products and convince your friends to do the same. Buy the premium expansion. Buy stuff from Marketplace. Create more Gold Accounts and configure them for autopay on a monthly basis. Buy EG7 stock (which has lost 2/3 of it's value since the EQ acquisition!).
    Stymie likes this.
  6. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    If DBG want to earn more money from EQ1 they could do what all the other companies do: Get more customers by raising the quality of the product.

    Its not like DBG can't afford to invest more resources into EQ1 already, they just choose to be cheap....
    Skuz likes this.
  7. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    EQ Devs are fairly well paid, their workload is high though but that's not unusual.
    It's the higher ups not actually wanting to put a lot more back into EQ, sure we have more devs now than we had last year - but even now we have way less than we had before SoE sold us out.

    A GoFundMe?
    What makes you think the money would even go to them anyway?
    100% the company takes it and spends it on any other game than EQ.

    If Daybreak wanted to spend more money on EQ it absolutely could, it's still the most profitable game they have.
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  8. Waring_McMarrin Augur


    Is that what they are doing wrong? Not trying to make good content for the game?
  9. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Well, look at it this way.

    The UI is outdated, cumbersome and massively bloated
    The graphics are circa 2004
    The gameplay is , boiled down, a rinse & repeat gear grind with a limited amount of flexibility in raid design.
    It also relies on a playstyle that at the high end requires a large amount of knowledge earned over years of playing to get somewhat effective use out of a class and a fairly high level of proficiency with that outdated cumbersome and massively bloated UI to make it workable.

    What about that is attractive to new players?
  10. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    And how much of that is due to the age of the game and how things have to be developed versus the effort they put in?
  11. Skrab East Cabilis #1 Realtor

    It’s time to introduce tips into the payment model. I’m sure a lot here would tip the standard 25%.
  12. Skrab East Cabilis #1 Realtor

    Yeah, Live expansions are very bad at this point. There’s no effort put into gameplay design, content, and rewards. Now, that I think about it EQ has mostly had bad expansions.
  13. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    It's not due to the age of the game, it's due to the lack of investment for a decade and a half while the money they could have pumped into keeping EQ fresh was siphoned off into dozens of other games, some of which got to launch and some which didn't.
    Come 2004 they sat on their laurels way too much instead of nurturing the game that birthed so many others.

    As far as effort goes I believe the current dev team and those of the past put in more than 100% actually, it's generally not the dev teams fault that the product has been financially neglected and left to stagnate in many ways. The devs have done what they can with what they had to work with, you can't build an expansion with 28 content-rich zones when you only have enough staff to create that for 6-8 zones.

    How much better could the devloper tools have been had the money & talent been there instead of being siphoned off & squandered?
    EQ is a legacy of its mismanagement as much as it is the genius of the talent making what went into the game.
    Can that gap be addressed?
    Yes, absolutely, the real question is will it.
  14. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    What Skuz said.

    I can clearly see that the devs are are doing everything they can, with the options they have. But the last expansions really shows how technically limited they are.
    Most of the recent expansions really looks like (admittedly well-made) game-mods made by people with no practical affordable access to the source-code, and where reuse-ablilty of older assets is a cost-cutting compromise they are forced to make.
    In a well-funded game, most of what we call emotes, would have real animations and sound-effects instead. The quests/raids are obviously designed with a very old-fashioned template(that they can't afford to improve) as a limitation.

    Not to mention that the client is really showing its age.

    When was the last time you played EQ and thought to yourself: "Wow! I didn't knew the game could do that!"

    They simply aren't given enough resources and it shows. :(
    Stymie and Gyurika Godofwar like this.
  15. Skrab East Cabilis #1 Realtor


    +1, SOE was the perfect of example of mismanaging gaming franchises.

    How do you manage to kill a Star Wars game?
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  16. Waring_McMarrin Augur


    You lose the contract because the owner wants to create a newer game and doesn't want competition for it?
  17. SithWizard Elder

    I will never forget the time I actually spent finding the illusive DBG headquarters via google maps to satisfy my own curiosity. It was located in a good sized industrial park with companies all over the place with packed parking lots. The DBG building had one hatchback car in front and an old couch sitting next to a dumpster in the back of the building. True story! LOL.

    Kind of random and off topic but it sure does tell us what we are working with!
    Stymie likes this.
  18. Gnothappening Augur

    Like what Skuz said, the reality is, EQ money paid for a lot of other DBG games. The devs do what they can.

    The only thing I don't understand is, in the age of money grab, why are 40 slot bags limited?
    Gyurika Godofwar and oldkracow like this.
  19. Accipiter Old Timer


    No. I'm not a philanthropist.
  20. Skrab East Cabilis #1 Realtor

    Just think how great EQ would be if everyone recruited 3 friends, then those 3 friends recruited friends, and so on. I don’t know if anyone has tried this business model, but I might see if I can get it going.
    Accipiter likes this.