Maybe because they like money, I myself have multiple gold accounts that are paid with 2 year subscription, and for the first time I have not purchased this expansion and I always buy the new expansions for all my accounts. Over the years they have made a lot of money from me, and people like me who keep playing because of all the good memories, but I will go away and I am sure many other people like me will go away as well if the next expansion has such a huge time sink to gear up. I did not buy the new expansion for one reason the time invested is not worth the reward. Not only did they lose the money from the new expansion, but if I like an expansion I always end up spending a lot more money on the market.
The email I received made me laugh. It was targeted at the low-50s monk I made a week or two ago, rather than the main that can actually, you know, access the content. The script they used to pick accounts/characters seems flawed. @ Lora - I think all 3 of us potential piles of #2 have at least looked at AM5, but that's still a pretty small pool of people that can really rate those raids. Poll seems premature if they wanted that feedback.
The script used to choose which character to address this message to looked at which character you had logged on most recently from your account, when the survey was queued up. While this isn't the most ideal system, it's something that worked well for more players than it worked poorly for. I've already provided my feedback on this, and should we use this system again I'd love to either let players choose a character name they would like to be called when they opt into emails, or should that option be unavailable have the system look at which character has the most playtime. Ultimately it's pretty minor, but it's still something I'd like to see improved, especially if we're going to use surveys like these to poll players on other topics.
I agree, the naming is pretty minor (happened to work correctly on both of my accounts). Regardless of the naming thing, I really do hope that there will be surveys like this in the future, especially assuming the data is actually read/used.
I got it only on my oldest account and it was addressed to the first character that shows on the selection screen. One that is merely a bank mule that I haven't logged in for a couple months. There are two I login daily on that account and a third that I do about once every two weeks. I just figured you were trying to make it more personal and shrugged it off. Getting asked for feedback was what actually mattered to me. You could have addressed it to monkey butt for all I care. But if the script was supposed to have logic to grab the most recent, that script is broken. Unless of course this script happened to run after the one time I logged in that char a long time ago.
Characters can't answer any questions. To address the players who can answer the name is found in the field called First Name. I know you work with people who go by board handle names at least at times but 99.9% of people don't do that. Try saying "Hey Doug/Jenn/Alan" and see if anyone answers. If you hear "Hey Ry" use your best judgement in that situation.
Time /played is more than likely going to return a bazaar traders name. I'd suggest, first filter by level, then by /played. OR simply by achievement points. But it's whatever, like you said, minor
1- Task system - Tasks, beyond levels 1-10, should never be a cakewalk. Loot should always be generated from a spreadsheet. 2- Berserkers are not tanks. 3. EQ is a character advancement game through moving through a story/a progression. It's not a sandbox/console game where you put a quarter in and do Pac Man level 1 yet again and have a reasonable expectation of advancement. 4. EQ should have a curriculum aimed at challenging player that are in a variety of character advancement in a multiplayer progression game "schools". a. Playing sporadically in the larger game (not in HA's - EQ should never serve the console game market) but not concerned about progressing and thus not doing progression. b. group progression c. raid progression d. Likes being in a chatroom with a D&D theme. 5-99 etc. I. There are people who don't like EQ. They want Final Fantasy, DooM, Second Life, etc. They need to play a different product. II. Ford built a car that incorporated as much feedback from people as possible. The result, the Edsel , was horrendous. Ford built another car that was the vision of John Najjar and Phillip Clark - the Mustang. If players were good designers they'd be doing it for a living. Yes, companies should find out what their clients think, but no - they definitely should not be bound by their opinions. The D&D-like, Diku, EQ, WoW multi-player/grind/spreadsheet/progression though a script model works and is widely copied. Frankly were I designing something I'd be more apt to emulate vision/Mustang than customer committee/Edsel. (The best "crowd sourced" products almost always have a panel of experts that serves as a decision making board and another group of experts who do the actual implementation. They only appear to be customer opinion driven.)
With about 90,641 discussions and 1,121,239 messages ~and rising~ (give or take a small fraction from non-EQ related stuff) - how do you come to the figure that a very tiny percent of the actual player base posts on these forums?
Most of what I said was, they made these new zones not fun. They added extra roadblocks and time sinks to try to stretch an expansion the size we saw during the 2 a year release into a full year. It shows. Not fun, many pita aspects players don't like.
I can say of the 100+ people I play with in game, maybe 5 have posted in the last 6 months using forum accounts, and they generally only have 10 posts max. Granted, some wish to stay anonymous on the forums (which is fine), but my impression is the vast majority of people do not post much if at all here.
I guess i am not engaged anymore. just a suggestion, maybe a survey to the accounts that have paid current for over 10 years and have all expansions EXCEPT tds, perhaps there is a reason why some people who were engaged are not any longer.. .....nvm
It's one thing to trundle out a catch phrase when there's some truth to it, but when there isn't... "Speadsheet itemization" - in the not distant past and in some cases currently: Near raid quality rare items in group content (and in the case of some PoWar items, not so rare). Evolving helm Evolving shoulders Guantlets with unusual abilities Belts with unusual abilities Shields with procs First new slow weapon in a decade. Cripple offhand dagger Overhaste cloak in group content some very nice clickies in group and limited time group content. etc. etc etc One can certainly argue that standard issue items are mostly plain vanilla, but it's always been the case that better items take extral effort. Those that don't make that kind of effort might think everything is from the ready to wear section of a department store. But those who do make extra effort are so swamped with special items they almost don't feel special any more.
1- Tasks are for the most part easy unless you are a rogue or a berserker. Moreover they are prestented in the least creative and stimulating manner possible. In Wow the tasks are generally faster and more stimulating (though still boring for the most part) cut scenes make for an interesting and relevent reward for grinding them out, rather than an 'achievement' of mercenary or partisan of xyz. Simply boring often spending more time running than fighting. Don't get me wrong. I don't mind doing a real quest for a real reward, such as crafted darkforge or to armor etc. Eal quests like the spirit of garzicor where the reward was going after that item by going off the beaten path. Not some reward from hashing put a list of achievements unrelated to the Iitem. 2- of course berserkers are not tanks. But when not discing (the time ee are meant to sacrifice personal safety) we should be a sturdy enough class clad in pretty durable armor. Certainly not so flimsy that we get facerolled by the most basic of yard trash. If the initial concept of the class was the same as it is today I guarantee I would never have made one. 3- Eq was a sandbox and when it was a sandbox it was at its best. It certainly was never anything like a console game in its initial state. Stories came from the quests you CHOSE to do. The main story was your own experience and the people you interacted with. You never had boring tasks rammed down your throat. You went into the world found friends found a dungeon and fought mobs in the hopes of finding something special. If you were having a relaxed day you could hunt some animals outdoors for some exp or do some trading or tradeskilling. No really good meaningful advancement came unless you did a linear quest or went to a dangerous dungeon with a hardy group. Being forced through a boring path is not as rewarding to me as playing my way and sure many feel the same. 4 - progression to me is advancing your playing skill and your characters gear. I am not becoming a better player doing tasks. Hell even HA's are for the most part more interesting than partisan and mercenary quests. The only decent thing is normally the instances at the end of the chain. To advance my character I want to adventure into a dungeon and slaughter (or be slaughtered) tough mobs that fight back in the hopes of attaining some memorable gear. I guess this concept perhaps worked better when gear was not so readily available. Getting something felt good. Most meaningful item I have on my sk is my 2.0 cbq belt and willsapper. I could not even tell you the name of the armor I wear. I can tell you its tier from which expansion, but beyond that it was merely a faceless upgrade. Personally I always felt open world raiding was better as it meant that the very best gear was not available to everyone and this quests and group content would hold more value. The current eq model is a minimal investment cash grabbing scheme. Eq is imo in trouble and they wre milking it for every last penny with no intention of giving the game real in depth attention. They have thie hopes on eqnext a game which looks like its not aimed at old eqplayers at all and we are going to fund it at the expense of our game. As for your car analogy all I can say is that mmos and cars have little in common. Blizzard listens to its customers and gains around the million subs. Soe ignores us loses subs and expansion sales then sends out a survey to those the bought it when an intelligent business would ask customers who are turning their back where it went wrong. For me personally it went wrong a long time before tds was released. Boring generic content plus abysmal class balance and total dismissal of the opinions of the people who endure their rubbish class mechanics made me feel they don't deserve my money.
To further my point on gear look at for example dodh. I instead of vhoosing basic armor drops went with tradeskill armor with the highest ac Aug set I could find. I got my main focus on non visible slots as you know that was a CHOICE then. As a result my berserker was a lot more effective that someone who went the standard route. It took my more effort as the vast quantities of plat required for AoAA were a lot tough to get than dkp. My toon was tough through choice. He certainly did not getvstramrolled by yard trash, but he did not threaten the tanks by being in the tank order. This is an example of choice defining your toon, not some one size fits all formula that we live by today.
This is a great post. Its views are likely shared by many Kunark era veterans. Why has the game turned into relentless task-based progression? What was decidedly wrong with Classic through Velious gameplay? It will be interesting for a dev to respond.
1. Tasks are particularly easy for Berserkers, Rogues, and Wizards. Generally (a simplification but in essence a valid one) the only responsibilities these classes have is to DPS without getting killed and follow emotes while other classes do the heavy lifting. Don't like that bargain? Play an "everything" class. 2. Beserkers are never tanks just as Warriors are never really DPS - even when we are not tanking and using offensive rather than defensive discs. When not totally disregarding personal safety and doing great damage Beserkers are never bothered to study defensive tactics because of their fundamental disposition chain clad fighters. 3. EQ was always directed play from the very first nOObie quests in your home city and was always at its best as a directed play game. You could chose to play it as a sandbox game BUT you paid a price for doing that - being in Orc1 while others were killing Vox and Naggy. 4. Progression in EQ is advancing skills (Baking 300), the experience bar, making it through predecessor content to content with greater rewards, etc. It's not DooM. The ability to setup complicated macros on an automated keyboard is not paramount. Time spent effectively tackling the challenges that the game erects in front of rewards obtained by grinding or beating event scripts is paramount.- always has been. Open field raids and other features of sandbox games intentionally eliminate coordination with others challenge. Its come as you are playing rather than learn how to become part of a war machine - popular with short attention span likely to flit to a new product in 3 weeks players. 5. Blizzard listened to D&D, Diku, and EverQuest. Matter of fact, WoW was pretty notorious for not paying much attention to the opinions players expressed on forums. Hence some horribad decisions like Pandas. The fact that in both games the bulk of the population isn't milling about aimlessly at level 20 having sandbox fun is plenty of evidence most people get the progression model. Vision trumps the heck out of crowd sourced design by committee. But it does have to be reasonable vision. EQ's original concepts (some admittedly borrowed) were stellar.
Some classes can solo/molo solo tasks whereas most require a group for rogues and berserkers. The whole concept of "solo" tasks requiring a group is boggling to begin with. And, yes, they are tedious and boring run around doing busy work. Don't think he was arguing this point. The point was the trade offs are not being balanced across all classes. While some classes pay a lot for specialization, others have a lot of flexibility. How very wrong you are here. Quests were optional. I was raiding back then. I had multiple 50s in classic. I did at most 2-3 quests (paw, jboots and maybe one other I don't recall). The game was very much open and allowed you to play how you wanted. Tradeskills were optional for those that enjoyed them. There wasn't an uber quest item that required everyone do every trade. Quests were something that puzzle solvers and role players enjoyed (or evil races did to get faction). Every zone was open (the planes were level limited after a patch). The only limiting factor was level, gear, skill, and/or guts/stupidity. Event scripts are newer incarnations and honestly make game play less fun and less skilled. I watch people in the top raid guild on my server that know how to react to audio triggers completely fail to kill tds t3 named that I have no problem with wearing group gear. You're not interacting with others by following a trigger file that a raid leader sent you. Old open zone raids did require coordination to do at the highest level. The group game where mobs didn't just melt (as was the case in cotf) required coordination with different classes. Larger hp mobs in tds are somewhat of nod in that direction, but the large 30% gap between group and raid gear largely negates it for raid geared players who can just brute force through zone trash. In the old days, progression was 1) leveling 2) Acquiring gear 3) Learning how to play your class 4) Learning how other classes interacted with yours 5) Confidence Every response to players in the old days of EQ was along the lines of "the vision". I knew someone involved at Verant/SOE that became one of the first WoW devs. The original vision for Wow was to be more responsive than EQ and to be anti the EQ vision. That is do the things that EQ players were begging for on various forums. I didn't keep up with WoW, so they very well could have learned that players are often short sighted in their requests.
