Oakwynd Feedback

Of course in the case of the FTE mechanics changes then it is both high player impact and high coding effort.

They could have accomplished a similar result by increasing the rate the raid spawned, the same way they increase rare spawns at different times on all servers, just on TLP that would have been a perminant change.

They didn't want the same guilds killing the extra respawns so they created an AoC feature and made the same event availbale from an AOC which gave a lockout the same as modern raid content. As for Naggy and Vox in an AOC were setup as they were when they were introduced to EQ with no banish mechanic. The way all things should be, While many cannot go back to their earlier state Naggy and Vox could, thankfully they finally changed back the live versions too.

Introducing AoCs freed up GMS who tried to inforce a kill rota system.

I dont think you understand my post...at all. No, it wasnt a massive technical change. Conceptually? Yes it was. It literally changes 20 years of EQs primary game loop. If a simple change can change one of fundamental design concepts of EQ, its a massive change. You simply cannot deny that. There isn't an argument against it. You being unable to think beyond phsyical/technical change isnt my problem. So sure, FTE is changing mechanics and people are upset, but Mischief chsnged EQs entire game loop and nobody cared. Pending technical limitiations on if they get FTE working, both changes are massive for EQ, but in different ways.

Personally, Im more ok with mechanic changes than concept changes. They already had many mechanic changes over the years that have altered gameplay to varying degrees. I dont want them touching the design concepts of EQ. Thats what really makes EQ...EQ. Giving pseudo-Diablo style loot isnt EQ.

Rules in sports change all the time, the overall design of the sport does not. I dont see them swapping out hoops for goal posts in basketball any time soon. I do see them changing the rules of a travel violation, though.

It is still a core mechanic of the game and no one is saying that FTE isn't a large change just that it isn't the only core mechanic change to be tested on a T:LP server

You are getting too focused on the code of the game instead of how the changes impacted the game. Having the ability to raid every raid target once a week instead of just when you get the open world targets is a big change for the players.

This isn't trying to say anything about the FTE changes, just that there have been other core mechanic changes tested on TLP servers in the past.

You are getting to focused on the code behind a change and ignoring the impact that it has on the game and the players. Random loot allows for much more freedom in where you hunt for drops and RMT has a harder time of keeping items locked up.

That is the entire point you are missing, there is a significant difference in the level of effort here, the number of man hours required, and I do not believe there is enough time to course correct between now and release due to that. I did not once argue that the player impacts were not significant for any of these, in the grand scheme of things though that is 100% irrelevant when we are talking release schedules and Minimal Viable Product.

No, I get what you are saying, you are missing my point though, The level of effort to affect any of these changes is massively different in both terms of man hours as well as risk. I would also argue randomized loot has zero impact on the game loop from a technical aspect, its the same loop regardless of what an asset drops as a reward, if a player chooses to modify their gameplay based on those rewards that is a player choice not a technical one which are literally the only things considered when speaking about a "game loop" from a game design perspective.

Randomized loot hugely impacted the end user, I 100% agree, the technical level of effort was about as minimal as you can get, the risk extremely low, the man hours correspondingly low.

FTE also hugely impacts the end user, the level of effort is high to very high, risk is through the roof as demonstrated by the current release. The fact that this touches so many aspects of the game and involves code from the original engine just compounds that risk and the man hours are significant as they are still debugging and reworking it.

That is the comparison, do I hope they get FTE worked out and working flawlessly, yes, absolutely. Do I expect it to be by Oakwynds release date, absolutely not. The risk therefore they have to manage is, do we release with a broken implementation or turn it off and release without it with the expectation Oakwynd will get it enabled down the road sometime? I think it is reasonable that the player base knows the direction planned, they are at the fish or cut bait stage already.

And no one is talking about the level of effort from the devs rather the impact on the game.

Surely you grasp there is an absolute direct correlation....

No there isn't, the amount of work that the devs do on something doesn't directly correlate to the impact that it is going to have on the game. There are things that have required a massive amount of work to do but have no impact on the game and how we play it at all. Examples of this include past and future graphics engine updates and the current revamp of the UI. All of that takes a lot of work from the developers but doesn't change anything about the game itself.

And this is one of the reasons things like this get put off for years when the management thinks there isn't an instant reward or improvement, it doesn't need to be done no matter how much the code improvement will make it better and easier to add other more visible improvements. Many players, too, think such improvements are a 'waste of time' vs whatever instant gratification thing they want.

I wouldn't even be surprised if a lot of the issues with the FTE on Test are because de-spaghetting of code wasn't done in the past when it should have been because whomever was in charge didn't think it would ever matter.

So, the UI and the graphics of a game have zero impact on the end users????

Regardless, the teams doing Art and the teams doing the UI (a UX/UI team) are completely separate form the code developers every single place I have worked. However, the engine for EQ is their own (which has both positives and negatives, mostly negatives now days since the developers don't know the breadth of the codebase). And yes the graphics engine would have been updated by the developer team because of this.

You still seem to be missing the point that the time for the release to test was a few months ago to meet an Oakwynd release date with a MVP for FTE that functions as intended, not saying 100% exploit free but bug free absolutely. The fact that they have like 7 business days before the release does not bode well for anyone regardless of whether you are pro or against FTE.

All this time, money and customer lose over something no one asked for to solve a non existent problem.

This crap was clearly slapped together a month ago. FTE should have been planned and tested 2 years out minimum.

Not exactly exact that nobody asking for since for people playing on tlp the killstealing has been commented ad nauseam but the fact they thought resolving it by fte is their own idea. I wonder how many tickets over the year on tlp has been about toxicity like that probably in the tens of thousand if not more.

I bet a lot of those tickets are from people coming back to EQ and not knowing how the rules are now. When I first started back in 2017 I wasn't aware and was selecting GREED in a PUG group lol. Lots of tickets are from people who don't know its a DPS race now. I've seen on these forums people complaining about ksing not knowing its a dps race. The fact is though FTE isn't the answer when its operating the way it is on test. I am glad other games are around the corner to take me from this fiasco.

You get a trophy, you get a trophy, you get a trophy, WE ALL GET A TROPHY!!!!! Welcome to 2023, where you will cry if you get out DPS'd or if you dont get the tag first because your not running a macro or have good ping times or you just suck.

Whatever system is in place, ppl will cry. There is always a loser, up your game. Welcome to life.

That isn't what I said, which was it would have no impact on the game itself. Sure the players are going to notice a chance but the overall game is going to be exactly the same and how they play it is going to be exactly the same.

I am making no comments on when FTE should have been released to test or how large of an impact it is having on it so how could I be missing that point? The only thing I have been saying it it isn't the first (and won't be the last) major core mechanic change to be tested on a TLP.

Tonight's update on test fixed a good bit of the outstanding issues. Props to the devs for moving this quickly.