If someone could explain why there is so much sobriety in this dinosaur old game, i would be 1 step further understanding what's going on with it all... The devs biggest worry seems to be that something is too powerful, easy or unbalanced in other ways. The players...geez it's so weird watching how some people almost fight over PoW progression being recorded. Others have a whole zoo of alts, and they are all super important (of course). The guilds...after being 7 years or so in mine, i prolly would have to apply again and couldn't join a raid for fun. And ultimately that of course will stop me from doing it now and then. And all this while the game is basically dying out. Eq is like visiting your mother, where every topic gets super important and overblown (while in reality it's usually rubbish talk). You love her, but how often do you have to bite your tongue.
Talk about a thankless job. I might be mistaken but I'm not aware of anywhere in the history of the game that a dev owes any mandatory explaination of whatever route they decide to move forward with. The fact they take the time to respond whether you agree or disagree with their choice is acceptable. It's pretty obvious they do care about the player base's opinion or you wouldn't have any dialogue with them. Amorcen
over 15 plus years in this game it is sad to me to see new developers come into the game with new ideas of how players should be "playing the game". Instead they should create content and let the people play it however they like. I have seen them try to force people to group, and the people who don't have time too leave the game. Make quests more exp, make mobs more exp, HAs, tasks, Ldons,... And then a new crew comes along and decides the previous was wrong and the players were wrong, and start all over. So now... lets SLOW down exp... all the while auto granting 3-4k AA to people. Yeah. Makes sense. Time for the next group.
Oh, and to add to the above... so far im happy I haven't bought the expansion for any of my accounts. I usually wait a few weeks to see what the players are saying, and I haven't seen much happiness. Plus pulling up the AA lists.. nothing really new except the great idea to make spell upgrades weaker and require you get get AA to make them better.
Welcome to the club. It feels good knowing that you made the right choice, huh? It feels justified after seeing what is going on with the game.
New devs? Where? Elidroth, Aristo, and Chandrok have been here a while. Prathun, Dzarn, Absor, and Elegist have been doing content for a while as well. Jansen has been doing TS stuff for a few years. Ngreth was brought back on after not being on EQ for some years. Rytan hasn't been on EQ in a while either, but he has classic spells named after him.
Yes we do and let's check something really simple, questions asked in person by people who most likely spent at minimum $500 if they don't live close to Las Vegas. Question 1: Mount keyring size. Answer 128. Slight omission that you would have to pay directly or indirectly (purchasing an SC mount) for 118 of those slots. https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/...age-your-mounts-with-a-mount-key-ring.214516/ 6 days before the expansion and 68 days after that answer the "transparency" shows up. Elidroth's quip turns from "thank you" to "thank you, now give us more money" for the sake of accuracy. Question 2: Getting TDS as part of the purchase of an SOE Live pass, something not new and this year there weren't widespread reports of players having access issues, although your word games result in needless confusion, https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/soe-live-free-expantion.214383/#post-3135213 "expansion launch" and https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/...e-darkened-sea-with-these-bonus-items.214362/ "The Darkened Sea launches on November 11" but it was made available on Oct 28th. Question 3: Major quest that is tradeskill related: it's a stretch goal, 2.5 months later no updates on this. Question 4: Mount keyring and heirloom: "collectible status", "will remain on the key ring", false, when this was changed players were not informed and only found out from trial and error after launch. Question 5: Hero's Forge: http://raidloot.com/Search.aspx?slot=Chest&text=Ornament relying on raidloot.com which lists 164 Chest Ornaments and two 7/8 augs with Ornament in the name "we have a Tribal set, we have a Combine set", "the Fire Elf stuff", Sol`Dal set comes out shortly after SOE Live, 2.5 months later and I'm not aware of any information on the other sets. Question 6: Raising Tradeskill caps: "we can post something up on the forums", no such post is made and now that the expansion is out we know the answer is no. Question 7: Hero's Forge Robes and Models: yes on Robes and they are in, not soon if ever on Models and they are not. Quesiton 8: What's in the Collector's Edition: "pretty soon" https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/...e-darkened-sea-with-these-bonus-items.214362/ 2 months later 12 days before launch, I guess someone 7 months pregnant might say the baby is due "pretty soon". Question 9: Loot system: still no updates on when/if this will go live or any posted information for people to even know the information Jenn presented without watching an hour long video let alone additional information that might exist 2.5 months later. Question 10: Ship-to-ship: joke interlude Question 11: Player designed housing: in the mix, no updates I'm aware of Question 12: TDS connection from existing world: Buried Sea to Tempest Temple yes, Wiz/Dru ports yes, although there is an issue with those: https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/porting-and-binding-in-tds.214841/ Question 13: Upgrading to Collectors: should work and it does Question 14/15: Staggered release: no and nothing has indicated otherwise since Question 16: New progression server: we talk about it, no specific plan, no additional information since Question 17: Epic 3.0: Epic 3.No still same answer for years even with some calling RoF class weapons 3.0 Question 18: Non-placeable items in Guild Hall closets: ask at non-TDS Q&A panel Question 19: Raid Progression: don't know yet, sort of know in game due to achievements Question 20: How many tiers: 3 tiers for group gear, 2 tiers for raid gear, now one raid tier and no posts were ever made about this, just quietly eliminated like half of the templates and 3 slots in T2 CotF. Question 21: Need for new gear and AA spell focus: new spell with old gear and no AA focus is an upgrade to old spell, simply false or requiring more disclaimers than a 2am infomercial to even approach truthiness. "continually evolving" would imply publicly seeking player feedback and this has yet to occur Question 22: Clicky port to TDS: haven't decided, the answer ends up being no Question 23: thank you interlude Question 24: complexity of raids: it's Alan (Absor) so probably 75-80% range, to be discovered Question 25: improved raid tools and/or raid banner: on the to do list and wouldn't be tied to an expansion, no updates since Question 26: show what mounts exist, ach for mounts: no won't show what mounts exist and doesn't, ach for mounts "has not been layed out, but can absolutely see that coming" but doesn't go live and never even a simply post like "some may remember Elidroth mentioning mount related ach at SOE Live, these won't be in at launch but may be part of a later patch" Question 27: Berserkers doing Druid Melee levels of damage interlude: Elidroth repeating stuff which is completely wrong about melee not doing more damage just by leveling (new combat tables, look them up) and a "huge" power increase from Rk.1 spells (math, look it up) Question 28: Ability to skip to T3: we don't want people to do that, but nothing is required in T1/2 other than doing progression once Question 29: Hybrids and Spell Focus AA: to be determined, aren't part of it Question 30: Beastlord shout out interlude So yes, you have a clear track record, no it's not transparency. You provide very little information and when things change you do not inform the players. From pretty drastic changes like raids going from 2 tiers to 1 to pretty simple changes like "only the 7 pure casting classes will be getting Spell Focus AA" posted publicly Making say a monthly post in Sense Heading even if it only says things "still working on loot system and no target date", "Kevin spoke to Rollen about housing" and "we ran some parses and no endurance Zerks do more melee damage than Druids" would be something to do if you wanted to communicate with players and provide transparency.
Understand having to do things that are 'not always popular,' but when over 90% of the response to change is negative . . . I'm wondering how well efforts to create 'fun and balanced' content are going. When changes are imposed just before design lock in Beta without discussion - I am left wondering how 'painstakingly' that decision was made, as opposed to being a shoot-for-the-hip response to a perceived problem. The experience nerf was widespread. And yet, the end result has been to encourage players to . . . congregate in those same HA's for hours and days that the nerfs were supposed to discourage. ROF experience got nerfed for Brell knows what reason - despite being the same level as COTF. (Some white con mobs are more equal than others, I guess.) My plan to work on unfinished ROF quests - experiencing content outside of HA's - is suddenly far less attractive. huge holes allowing people to bypass the intent of the nerfs were left, and are going to require more effort to plug and meanwhile people were 105 within hours of the expansion assuming that you do go through with a second round of nerfs on the HAs, by the time you get around to it the high end players - the ones most likely to run out of content - will already be 105. meanwhile, the middle tier and other players, the ones who generally progress at such a pace that they don't run out of content - well, doing a lot of that content has suddenly become a lot less rewarding for them too. So I am just left questioning how 'painstakingly' these decisions were made, seeing as how they haven't achieved their goal of getting people out of AAs - and by nerfing other level 100 content in fact are encouraging people to go back to them. Meanwhile other, more targeted solutions apparently weren't considered in SOE's 'painstaking' analysis: nerfing experience for some/all older tasks prior to TDS - similar to what was done with HOT tasks when VOA was released - perhaps linking whether or not the nerf was applied to whether or not an account had purchased TDS access. That would allow people limited to leveling to 100 to get the full experience while limited to levels the expansion was intended for, and prevent some of the methods used to bypass the intent of the original nerfs. If there is such concern about instances, or flipping instances - something done since DODH, if not earlier - then borrowing the code from your 'one-off' raids and imposing a task lockout on entering an instance, whether or not it is completed. Rather than nerfing the static mob exp, set the lockout to what you think an appropriate rate of exping would be for all the HAs at that questgiver - so that the impact of lockouts scales up as groups go faster (reducing the impact on the middle and lower tier. These are just two top of the head ideas. There are all sorts of mechanisms that could have been applied that would have done a better job of achieving SOE's apparent goals, and had less impact on most of the player base. Instead, the nerf bat was swung blindly and seems to have achieved the exact opposite of SOE's goals. 'Painstaking' decisions don't have to be 'painful' for the playerbase. And if they are, they should hopefully at least achieve their intent. The nerfs announced last week seem to fail on both counts. I'd like to see how SOE plans to 'fix' all this - not just 'we are looking at it (and right now inclined to do yet more nerfs)' before I bother getting TDS for multiple accounts. Because right now, other than knowing that my guild will be yammering for me to be 105 at some point, I don't see a lot of reason to get it for my main. Much less alts.
