Producer's Letter: July Update and What's Coming Up

I have to ask & hopefully no one takes offense as none is intended but...what about Test? Still no TDS, still nothing new to entice new players and our active player base is dwindling steadily. We went from having a guild raiding COTF tier 2, another guild working on older raids and TFO doing progression raids to having no active raid guilds at all.

I personally own TDS on 11 accounts and may get it for one or two more and move a couple more characters if I have incentive to do so. Right now I really can't justify spending money on EQ without some sort of reason to do so. Nothing against the TLP servers or anything but I'm not interested in them.

If I call a class OP enough it must be true...

On raids Magicians have little to no utility. We do have mod rods, but that need can be 100% fulfilled by a single Mage alt in the GGH. Other than that, all we provide is DPS. More specifically, we are a sustained DPS class, meaning we absolutely should (and do) lose to burst classes on short fights. However, we are supposed to make up for that with our sustained DPS, which we do not. Classes that are ~40-50% ahead of us on burst DPS are also sustaining at or above our levels (sometimes 30%+ depending on the event/class).

If you want to continue piss and moan about our ability to solo (while still being inferior to other DPS classes in any decent group) go ahead, but that was really so last year

why post an update with no new info ?

Want a unique rule, how about no common language? disable /ooc and any general zone wide talk in certain zones.

They did that, it was called Firiona Vie back in the day. One toon, no common tongue, no /ooc or general anything. Played on it, was very challenging.

you forgot 2 things

ksing back in the pnp
instancing/or expedition raids

I say mages are Overpowered at the moment because it is true. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either a mage themselves and doesn't want to lose that power, or doesn't actually play the game or understand it.

I assume that if it doesn't add to your own personal DPS or doesn't look flashy then you don't consider it to be utility.

Mod rods are important, though you don't seem to think so because it isnt parsable how much mana the raid gains by having them I suppose. Your pets are good if you properly utilize them on some events whether it's stunning mobs or keeping 2nd agro on some events(Lanys) Earth pet for rooting some adds as well perhaps... DS is another buff that I as a warrior like and view as good utility on a raid. (though I personally think that all DS buffs should be increased across the game) CoH is another great utility that I think has been sort of a lost art form in raids these days. I would like to see it somehow be utilized more often in future raids.

I'm curious about where you think the mage class should be in the DPS heirarchy on raid parses? Burn and sustained. What classes should be ahead of you in a pars, and what should be behind you for both circumstances. Also which events do you consider to be burst fights, and which sustained and where you as a mage should be on each events pars.

As to the % numbers you give... From the raids I'm on we have 1 mage who parses very well consistantly on both long duration and short duration and a combined on the night type of pars. The problem with combing or comparing burst and sustained is it depends on the raids overall dps. The more overall dps the better the burst type classes are going to be on a nights combined pars, and a raid with less dps the better the sustained are going to look on a nights combined pars.

I was looking forward to this weeks raids though and seeing where our mage ends up on the total combined pars, as usually he is top 5 easily on that. I'm very curious to see if he moves much and if so by how much this week.

I assume that remark was in reference to me calling Mages a one man wrecking crew in the group game? It's true and I'm not sure why you don't think mages are but /shrug. As to me pissing and moaning about mages, all we have to do is look at the recent history of our posts to see who has been pissing and moaning more about mages lately.

The following is a guess.

A no-box server is almost a pure coder issue. But instancing raids takes lots of Dev time. The few Devs we have are quite busy creating the Campaign. While our few coders are also always busy, it is likely that the Campaign does not require huge amounts of code work.

Unfortunately, this will mean that a great many code bugs and game improvements will be delayed or not even done. I can only hope the large amount of interest in progression servers translates into more subscriptions, and even more important, more money being spent on EQ (more coders, or even one more).

Thanks for posting an update, Holly.


As for the mages being adjusted, they also lowered AC on Arx mobs by up to 45%, which really benefits melee.

Sounds like your normal class balance adjustments to me.

I disagree, but I'm a Mage so I suppose I don't count. That said, we're behind in essentially every scenario in raid DPS. In the vast majority of groups, we struggle with mana regen and our spot is generally better served with other DPS classes. We do have our niche, which is solo/moloing and a small subset of all caster groups. If you have an issue with that, taking out your anger on our raid DPS spells seems to miss the mark. You do seem to have an odd infatuation with the class's power though, considering you aren't a mage.

By reading this list, it's fairly evident that you're grasping for straws. As I said, mod rods require 0 Mages in the raid; all you need is one alt in the GGH. And even so, they haven't even been upgraded for 5 years, meaning that utility (if you can call it that) has continually been stagnated. As far as our pets, uncontrollable, short duration, single target root/stun procs are useless when you have many classes that can root/stun single mobs much more reliably, and multiple classes that can AE stun/root mobs much more reliably. DS has also been stagnated to the point of worthlessness, and can (again) be filled by a single alt mage in the GGH. And CotH... seriously? It's disabled in the Arx Mentis raid expedition, and basically every other raid just ports you to where you need to be... Reading through this, again, the only semi notable utility is mod rods, which requires only a single Mage, and he doesn't even have to be in the raid. If you look through the abilities/utility of other "pure" DPS classes, you'll see items of similar potency/importance (i.e. relatively minor).

All burst classes should be well ahead of Mages, and they currently are, by about 40-50%, as I said before. However, in a sustained scenario, Mages should be ahead of those same classes, or there's no point in having a Mage take a spot that the other class could have filled. As far as casters go, Mages are traditionally below Wizards (currently true by a decent margain) on their burst and above Wizards on sustained (currently not true), and above Necros on burst (currently we're about equal) and below them on sustained (we're well below them atm). As far as burst, the closest we get in TDS is about 110s fights, which isn't truly burst by what I would consider the "traditional" definition (though I'm anticipating <100s Vitio/Purple Golem parses in the future). Sustained would be events like Arx 1/2/3/4/5/1B, which all vary from 7-15 ish minutes in length depending on the fight, at least for us.

As far as class order, assuming you have solid Wizards/Necs, they'll be ahead of equal skill level Mages on pretty much every combined. On traditional burst events (<100s) burst melee classes will also be well ahead, though the longer the fight goes out, the better we do relative to them (which is mostly how it should be, though I'd be fine with giving melee a bit more of a boost if raids continue to favor sustained as heavily as they currently do).

Edit: The original (and valid) question was to have a dev comment on why the rain nerfs took place. "Overpowered" is very broad, it's hard to know if they thought our burst was too high, our sustained was too high, our mana regen was too high, our group DPS was too high, they wanted to Make our DPS more consistent between non-AE and AE events/guilds, or some combination (or other thing). A class balance debate is all well and good, but is tangential to that original question. I obviously would not fault you at all for responding to my post, but I don't think this debate is going anywhere so this will be my last post on the subject here.

Thanks for the update Holly.

Can't make this happen across the board? You know you can. We know you can. Get it done.

I have no issue with this as long as it's restricted to those servers with the special rules. I have no desire to see this implemented across all existing servers; and in general conversation on Bristlebane a large number of players have stated they would quit if it was (myself included). To put it plainly and bluntly so that there's no misunderstanding - I will drop this game like a hot rock if your company tries making it so all servers are no bot/no box, and so will many others.

In addition to that, judging from your companies existing track record thus far (we have little faith with the constant screw ups; the slow fixes; and the woefully inadequate customer support where it takes days to get any sort of response for even the simplest of things) I would strongly suggest that the powers that be make damn sure that this change does not screw up the existing live servers, or you risk alienating the player base you have left. You've already annoyed the hell out of a lot of us with changes to the progression servers that have affected the live servers, please don't add these changes as well to that running list.

As to the rest of it - sounds great!

Except, it would not be a no box server right . . . as people would still box, but with multiple computers.

IS B x er would be obsolete though - as it can't span multiple OSs.

You wouldn't see many six boxers, but two or three boxes would still be common.

One alt parked in the guild hall doesn't really work so well in reality.. I mean I guess if no one dies, or someone forgot to delete old mod rods before new ones were cast or an event is taking a long time and you've used up your 3 rods and can start using more, then perhaps dropping someone from the dz and adding in the alt mage before each event and running him up to mass rods, then dropping him back out might work.. But who the hell would really do that? Making it seem that an alt mage parked in guild hall is just as useful as a mage in a raid is kind of a weak argument.

You are downplaying any utility the mage class can bring to a raid and then argue that any utility you can provide is meaningless because another class or an alt can do it as well.. That is a poor argument to make because I can just turn around and say that a cleric can heal better than any other class, so therefore no one should bother to heal because clerics are better suited to do so.

DS is something that I mentioned needs to be upgraded across the board for every class that can cast a DS buff. CoH again is something I mentioned needs to be implemented into raids in some way to make it useful and beneficial for a raid to have a mage in it. If you read what I said about CoH you would have perhaps understood what I was trying to convey.. about Future raids.. not current raids.

You sorta sidestepped some questions as I'm still not clear on what you beleive the mage as a class is, or where it should compare to other classes when it comes to DPS other than behind wizzards and necros. It seems to me though that you have a narrow view on what a mage is in raids, and that is a pure DPS caster. You could argue that this is what the devs have made you into by diminishing the other roles the class can serve as.

I was attempting to open up or broaden the discussion of what a mages role is in raids and what it should be. When I think of a Magician, I think of them as a utility class first and foremost through the arts of conjuration magic, and an Offensive Caster secondly.

Think of ways to work with that and make mages more desirable through utility rather than just DPS on raids. Summon items with clickable effects for casters with a twincast buff, hit count and a long refresh timer on it. For melee you could have a mage summon an item with a clickable Rune buff. or Spell shield buff, 100k. I can think of many other items that a mage could summon and be useful to raids. As for implementing a way for CoH to be useful on raids again, that one would be tougher to think of ways to do so but I would love to see it happen. I don't mean just a means to move a raid through a zone, I mean to actually make CoH needed during a fight and not just for banished tanks.

Take this for what you will. I still believe mages as a whole are an extremely powerful class right now and have been so for a while now even after the small pet nerfs and the nerfs to rain spells in raids and in the group game.[/quote][/quote][/quote][/quote][/quote][/quote]

Very glad to see that suggestion posts are read and action is taken when it makes sense. I especially like the wording Holly

Im still waiting for that happy day when someone from daybreak can say anything without all the complainers coming out. Of course they not going make it so u cant box on normal servers, they would lose too much money if they do. Though i think they should make it so you cant use bots on any. If u need a 3rd programe to box its a cheat, id like it stopped. But overall thanks for the update, Ive played this game since 1999, as a monk main a class thats had its ups and downs, but i still love this game. While i havent agreed with all changes when they were made overall i think the modern eq is fantastic a good mix of raid content, group content, and last few expansions even had special mobs designed to be solod/molod so something for everyone, ignore the complainers, eq isnt broken beyond repair, the sky isnt falling and life is good.

Holly,

Stop deflecting or flat out just not responding to why you made the recent caster changes. We want a reposonse as to why you did as you did. We don't want other people saying " oh you know why they did this mages are so OP and all". We want a response from DBG. People can quote this or say what they want. But end story we want a response from you.

Side Note
Many of us feel that content is being neglected so that you can focus on the new TLP. Well here's a hint. A lot of us do not play TLP. We lined your pockets with cash and now the rest of us playing current servers watch as instead of making the current game better your repackaging your old content and many of us are tired of the crying of the TLP population. Boo Hoo instance raid targets, get rid of botters. Guess what TLP? Old everquest wasn't like that. And you people will never be happy with any TLP server they make. That's like me saying "I wish I could go back to high school". It just wouldn't be the same. It's never going to be the same EVER. So just either be happy you at least get acknowledged or go pull out your old NES and pop in Mario or if you want a challenge pull out a Sega and play Echo if you want some nostalgia

@Zak I think Warriors shouldn't do any DMG period. Your there to tank and nothing else, that is the utility you bring to the raid and or group. /sarcasm off

I am confused why the group game gets brought up when discussing raiding situations. It has absolutely nothing to do with the group game and when talking about a Burst on raid or Sustained on RAID, bringing in any type of 'group game' argument is off-topic.

There isn't a single class where they are tuned because of the group game, except for Magicians. Your seriously in need of help if you think we are so powerful in the group game that we are forced to take nerfs in a Raiding scenario. Our exp rate is probably one of the worst for a DPS class (hooray mana problems), our Mana pool is horrendous thanks to this nerf meaning our group game sustained is out of whack compared to most DPS classes. We have a Beefy pet, what happens when you have a group with a tank and CC? All of that magnificent pet off-tank/tank skill is gone and it serves no purpose.

Out of touch with the game is pretty prevalent here. We are a very strong solo class, we do not gain EXP extremely well nor burn through named extremely fast. We have a pet who tanks well, but so do other classes that are in much better places then us in BOTH Group and Raid.

Your doing what every Warrior does here, our utility is trash. We are using Mod Rods from House of Thule that give back 22.5k mana in 15 minutes when people have over 130k pools. Do I need to mention Beastlords or Encs for mana regen? Maybe clerics?

If we were meant to be utility, we would actually have something better then the rest. We are middle of the road at best in some fairy tale world at utility.

Need to leave the group game at the door, OR start tuning/discussing about EVERY class there...

This is truth. However, this would curtail the boxing armies minus the few geeks running 6 pcs in their moms basement....or some dude running 6 vms on his pc...but even for them, they wont be able to run a program to make it easy..so they wont have much of and advantage.

I imagine two boxing will be popular with peeps running 2 computers but this is a far cry from box armies..and to be honest will be more like classic. I knew a lot of people who two boxed in the early days..I was one of them.