Err, the mount keyring wasn't even the original thing that was going to come out - it was for familiars ... and is the first step toward having a keyring for illusions. But the team felt, if I remember it right, it was easier and made more sense to do it for mounts first (plus the integral part of splitting the illusion with the bonus effects). I personally didn't realize how much I'd use the mount keyring but I use it quite a bit now. So count me one who is glad it's in game. I personally can't wait for the illusion keyring (I carry 50 illusions in my bags at all times). And I know several players who match their mount to whatever Player Studio robe they're wearing. Your #1 (binding in guild hall) I don't think is something that should ever be done; it's an instance. Guild hall is no different than other instances here. #2 is definitely something that would help. It's not a big deal though IMO.
And, if I understand correctly, you are one of the people to whom the devs listen? That's exactly what I'm talking about. How about an in-game poll: Familiar Keyring (since the mounts are already there) vs Allow Binding in GH? They are both things that code time can be spent on.
I was miffed with the need for a mount key ring. I personally hate mounts. If I never see another person on a flying carpet or severed had again, I'd not be upset. The main thing I use them for is to get the buff and then quickly dismiss the thing (thank you for the change that split the buffs out). The second is to be lazy with casters while boxing. It's convenient to not have to worry about sitting them to med. Honestly, I'd prefer coding time be spent to just get rid of the requirement to sit to meditate. It made sense years ago when mana and agro management was a much bigger deal. Sitting increased your agro. You didn't have a big enough mana pool nor agro reduction AAs to chain nuke. To maximize efficiency, you had to time your sitting with regen ticks. Knowing when to sit was part of the game play. Those things don't matter so much any more. Let's just admit that and allow sitting mana/endurance regen while standing (but not while casting or attacking). I'd never keep a mount up ever again and be very happy.
Amen, brother! But we are not a part of the 'in crowd'. We had no idea this feature was on the priority list, so we couldn't even protest until it was too late. The poster above somehow knew about the decision making process, in detail. And supported it. Seriously, would some dev check what percentage of players have used the Mount Keyring even once? Or make an in-game poll I suggested above? Or you can keep listening to your 'advisors' for 'player input' and then wonder why Pet Illusion Keyring isn't a roaring success.
Axxius, do you really believe what you say? Re-read what I said. I didn't think I'd be using the mount keyring when it came out. Thereby it's a logical conclusion to say I wouldn't have been super positive about the concept to begin with, right? Right! Please stop trying to push this vendetta you sometimes seem to have about things you think are going on which aren't.
That's not what you said. You said: And this - means you knew about it long before the rest of us, doesn't it? Can you tell us here how exactly did you know this: how the team felt, the initial plans, and other details? Back then, before the Mount Keyring was announced and it became too late to protest - did you voice a concern that this feature was not important enough to be implemented in TDS? Did you suggest that something else was more worthy of the coders' time? If so then you have my cincere apology. Otherwise, my point stands: the lack of transparency and dev-player communication leads to bad decisions. The Mount Keyring is a shining example.
No matter how many times it's said, you seem to have an issue understanding exactly what early information I or others might be given or how much influence we have on goals/future plans. The information I shared is from the discussions of the event at SoE Live from what JChan said herself in the panel discussions (not from some super secret meeting months or years in advance when they first started working on this). You seem to be back on the rant that there's this group of players, not you, who have information well in advance of when it's publicly announced of what the Dev team plans to come out with. That's almost never the case, including with your current 'bone to pick' unless you count 24 hours notice of this feature to be worthy of mention. I think the takeaway here is, it would be helpful to bounce ideas off the player base. More in advance than is currently done.
The dev panels were after the TDS announcement, i.e. it was already too late to revert that decision. Ok, then I misunderstood you. Your post sounded like you knew about the decision process while it was happening. If you were told about it post factum then I was wrong. Sorry. That's exactly my original point.
Chill out dude. Crystilla was just saying that she didn't think she'd be into that feature and it turns out that she kinda likes it and finds it useful after all. Get the heck over it. It's her opinion. And whether her opinion holds sway with developers or not - well, if it does and she doesn't agree with you, then too bad. Maybe you should be doing something to increase your credibility instead of attacking someone for their perceived influence over the game and personal opinion. "Transparency"? "Discussed with the player base"? A lot of the things that issues that are unpopular right now they did based on what they thought the player base wanted. Too many people disagree on too many issues. It makes more sense for them to stick to a rule of doing what makes sense in the game and tapping players for ideas than to listen to petty griping or the new whine of the month. The things you suggested mean nothing to me. I have no inkling that the developers are paying close attention to my opinions at all. I'm sure that if they were going to base their development goals on either your opinions or mine based on our clout as players they'd listen to you first. So should I go off on you for suggesting what amounts to crap to me? I mean, seriously, with all the things they could do you're going to whine about not having a bind point in the Guild Hall? Get - Over - It. A primary concern of yours is a Hero's Forge wardrobe change convenience issue? Get - Over - It. I don't care how long anyone has played the game. In just the short time I've played in what I've learned most people have issues with and from the opinions I've formed, if your biggest gripes are a bind point and a desire for a quick fire wardrobe option your priorities are screwed and you're the last person I'd want the developers basing their decisions from. No rational veteran EQ player is going to quit playing over not being able to change the look of their outfit fast enough or being able to bind in the GL, and no new players are going to be attracted by either of those issues. Get some perspective.
To the powers that be, In the off chance you'll read this and actually consider the merit of what I have to say, let me introduce myself and give you my input for what it's worth. I'm a newbie by EQ standards. I once played long ago, briefly. Briefly enough to get a Paladin to level 20-something mostly soloing and it took me over a year to do so in the little bit of time I was able to play. I continued to buy expansions that I never got around to installing after finally letting my subscription lapse. I came back in December and was pretty much as fresh as a daisy as a newbie. I am willing and able to pay for a year's subscription, but should I? I have yet to decide, especially in light of the sale of SOE by Sony. I may not be the typical EQ player. But then, what does the profile of the "typical" EQ player look like? I think most EQ players are atypical gamers at this point. Based on my experiences and what I've read, I have some feedback for you and this seems like the place to do it (since a lot of the posts here seem to be telling you folks what EQ should be like). Stop trying to cater to various groups. In other words, don't attempt to make changes or create content with the intent of pleasing veteran players or in attempts to attract new players. Stick to creating quality and creative content. Let the marketing team worry about selling the product. You aren't updating your content for the better when you dilute content or change things that are perceived as inconvenient. "Streamlining" will never work for EQ because it has a reputation already and no one attracted to EQ is going to play it because it has a streamlined user interface. Besides, simplifying isn't the equivalent of improving user interface. Tap your players for new content by tapping into their creativity, and by listening to what does and doesn't work. In reference to what does and doesn't work: This does not mean hearing a bunch of Shadow Knights or Beast Lords complaining about things that they can't do because their class isn't functional in that way, or complaining about how little races can't equip big race armor drops etc. I mean listen for functionality issues, and then actually play test them, and then actually fix them if they need fixed. Having content make sense and is compatible with the lore of the game should be THE standard and the litmus test by which you decide whether or not to add, subtract, or change things in the game. This should be a self evident value, but is apparently not, as elements of the game have seemingly become regressive. "Racial" differences, class differences, good-neutral-evil differences, they all must be important or you're ruining your own game. Ask any veteran player playing right now, or just check the numerous forum conversations about the topic: Race doesn't matter as you advance through the game. Classes have retained far more distinction than race, but there has been a bit too much crossover. It comes from trying to give everyone a pet, or summon, or heal, or buff, or DOT, or nuke, or etc... Just stop. If someone who plays necromancers isn't happy that their pet or whatever isn't as strong as a Beast Lord's or Magician's and cries because it's "useless" or broken - too bad. Or a Shadow Knight is unhappy because he can't resurrect or heal - too bad. Or a Cleric is upset because they don't get a pet at all - Too bad. They'll get over it. If you choose a unicorn, you get a unicorn. Why should anyone try to change a unicorn into a velociraptor because you chose a unicorn, but want your unicorn to be everything a velociraptor is? Catering to player whims like this under the guise of "listening to your customers" is dumb. Just stop. If the class is distinct within what it should be according to the lore and is functional enough to be playable - then it is what it should be. Polish it. Add creative new spells and skills to it. But don't try to make it what it shouldn't be because players who favor that class wish it had skills and abilities that more appropriately belong to another class. Armor should be race specific, not necessarily class specific. Armor that fits an Ogre shouldn't fit a half elf. Armor that fits a human shouldn't fit a troll. Armor that fits a dark elf shouldn't fit a Barbarian. Yeah, this is going to inconvenience players who are used to dumbed down generic armor. But then, having to gain experience and go from level 1 to level 105 is an inconvenience to people who are used to playing games without skill levels. Content that makes sense is quality content. Furthermore, the inherent physical aspects of races such as Ogres, Trolls, and Iksar in relation to the toughness of their hides/skin/scales and their physical stature and the relatively primitive and dull witted nature of Ogres and Trolls should limit their armor choices significantly anyway, regardless of class. When it comes to classes and armor and various other equipment, a better idea than simply saying a Monk can't wear plate armor or a Wizard can't wear chainmail or a Paladin can't wear cloth armor simply because you say so, give stat penalties outside of the ideal class(es) for that armor. For instance - For Monks you could give a huge dexterity and agility hits. For Wizards you could give huge wisdom and intelligence hits. Make all classes suffer huge charisma penalties for armor outside their class ideal. All this can be interpreted as effects brought on by the awkwardness and inappropriateness for certain types of armor for specific classes. AND, it still allows for crossover armors without making anything generic. Inherent race statistics should mean something. Change the max stat caps for different races to reflect distinct differences. Give different races distinct abilities that make a difference. The max cap for various skills should also reflect the differences between races. An Ogre or a Troll shouldn't necessarily be able to develop as high a skill level with a weapon as a Human or an Elf. But they should be able to Bash better, shouldn't they? These things make a difference. The difference between good and evil is supposed to make a difference in EQ. What happened to that? Was there some kind of ideological brain fart that brought about this uniform gray area that most of EQ has become? There are other games on the market. If someone doesn't want to believe in good and evil, if someone doesn't want to play a game that distinguishes the difference, if someone on your staff doesn't want to work on a game that makes that distinction - then they have other choices. Blurring the lines so as to make it virtually a non-factor doesn't make your game better. It makes it generic and creates illogical conflicts in the lore. I'm not making a case against a Neutral faction choice. But if someone chooses an evil faction or a good faction, it should make a distinct difference in the vast majority of the content of the game. The same with deities. It's supposed to matter on EQ. If you're determined that deities have no influence in your game then pick a deity free game. EQ has deities. Deities are suppose to make a difference. Anyone pledged to a deity of hate, fear, slaughter, and/or rot/disease/death isn't going to and shouldn't get along with someone pledged to love, valor, healing, and/or life. It adds color and diversity to the game. Nullifying the effects of a deity affiliation dulls the game.Update your old zones without dumbing them down. You don't have to make every city in Norrath like PoK or Crescent Reach to improve them. Just update the graphics and layout of the cities. If you're having a hard time with it, then recruit players to help rebuild the cities. Make sure the lore is kept in tact and just do it. Any veteran player claiming they'll quit if you get rid of old rusty music scores for places like Felwithe or Qeynos aren't worth listening to. Look at how empty those zones are now. How many times have you guys thought about updating cities and didn't because you were afraid of player backlash? What did it earn you? They aren't there anymore anyway. And neither are new players. And in updating old zones you have the opportunity to introduce new content to those zones. How about a new dungeon "Crypt" under Freeport or Qeynos? How about some forest on the map that doesn't even have a zone, getting one added? How about floating islands being introduced? How about new underwater zones? The only limit is your creativity. If you're missing decent inspiration, that is where you should be looking to your player base most. Not some imagined demographic you think you could attract to the game, but people who know Norrath.Anyway, this was my two cents for now. I love the game as it is, in comparison with the other games I've played, and if nothing at all changed, I'd still love it. But when you do change things, how about taking a new approach - Actually using the lore as a guideline instead of a hurdle?Take care,Omnicronimous
From what I have seen since I came back, the team has been pretty transparent as to what features are coming, what they're thinking about, and what they have gotten from player feedback. Coming in as an afterthought and complaining about a feature you don't like, but many others do is not only a waste of time, it's not productive. If you have better ideas, post them. The devs want to hear them, and hey, I want to hear them too. I see talk about an illusion and familiar keyring. These are great ideas. I'm not sure how much coding would be involved now that the mount keyring issues - I'm guessing since I haven't had any problems - have been solved, but I have a huge collection of illusions. I would love to be able to say, combine an attack bonus buff from the hideous harpy illusion with the centaur illusion for my ranger friend, or an armor buff from the gargoyle line of illusions with the Somnium Satyr illusion. My concern then becomes, will my enchanter also be able to use x illusion with x buff or does that only apply to illusion items? A familiar keyring is also a good idea. Several familiars have nice little buffs attached too them, while several have none and might be one someone prefers to use for appearance or roleplaying purposes. The Lord Nagafen familiar, which used to be rare, is now very common. If I could take the buff from that familiar and combine it with one of the familiars from the Forsworn Legends of Norrath set, which don't come with buffs, they would increase in value. While a lot of you like to slowly grind through the levels and then sit on the top waiting for new content, a larger portion of us like to play alts. Some players power level, some grind with friend alts, and some people like to go collect one of everything that they can get their hands on. Completion junkies make up a good portion of the active player base, and a lot of them have been waiting for keyring-like features to make their lives easier. Keeping that in mind, those people also pay considerably more per character on average in the station store and for collector's editions as well as Legends of Norrath packs, so they can complete their collections. This is a living, breathing world, but even our emotional attachment to this game (one I've had since 99') isn't enough to pay the bills. Every once in a while they have to put time into things like this to keep the lights on for people who are free to play and never buy anything (perhaps because they can't, that's fine) and for the people who want large content updates. I will not argue that a lot of people are unhappy with the current state of TDS, but the reality is: that's not going to be forever. As long as we continue to support the team with feedback, bug reports and even an occasional complaint, they will hear us, and the world will smooth out and continue to grow and evolve as the world we know and love. TLDR: Just remember that if they do add something that doesn't necessarily fit your play style, that doesn't mean they hate you, it just means your play style isn't the only kind the player base contains, and every, other people need some consideration too.
Somewhere over the years, EQ crossed over with Barbie Dress-up. People chose races for looks. They want to pick outfits, funny hats, particle nimbuses, armor dye, etc. They don't want to be penalized for choosing a specific look. Deity and factions sort of worked in classic. The world was large and the low zones had plenty of population for people to spread out by factions. It stopped having meaning as people started to all merge in to Guk (using the wrong evac spell as a druid when grouped with an evil race was always a good laugh) and when what became raiding was born with Naggy, Vox, Phin and the planes. The population was also more "gamer" than role player and allegiances to factions mattered little. Today there simply is too small a population to divide people and too few dev resources to duplicate content in a fair manor across deity and races. In more of a PvP focused game, I think it has a place. Modern EQ, I don't.
@Omnicronimous Many of the features you asked about are currently in game in a slightly different form. For instance: cultural armor. A gnome cannot wear Ogre cultural armor. Only a symbol of that Ogre's deity will be useable in that cultural armor, including agnostic. As far as generic world drops, can you imagine how much the economy would get screwed by iksar only drops? Almost nobody plays Trolls either. Imagine if Troll only stuff dropped a lot. All it does is open up the world to more complaints. I can see general chat bursting into flames just at the thought of it. Almost none of the generic item drops from the old world, except in the case of specifically sized gear, have race limitations aside from a very small number pertaining to lore. You can STILL craft sized gear, the recipes are still there if that's something you want to do. It's not very good, but then it never was. As far as the gear being worn by the wrong class suggestion: no thanks. I don't think you want to group with a warrior tank who wears a robe because it looks cool. Ornaments on the other hand: maybe. Actual gear with stats that make no sense: no. The amount of coding required for that nonsense and then having to probably immediately remove it, because it's such a bad idea, precludes that from ever happening (or at least I hope it does.) I've seen other MMOs try this, and it crashed and burned every time. I agree that the creative staff and coders should focus on content and stop worrying so much about those complaining about previous features that a lot of people actually like. That's just counterproductive.
I will try to give some constructive feedback about what me and my wife find fun in the last few years worth of expansions. Now we have yet to complete any expansion since HoT, but we have bought every expansion and have played in them, just not finished. We are also casual players. What we find fun: 1. HoT progression was fun. Doing the quests gave xp and meant something. Although the progression in TDS to me is more fun. We actually have to do more than just a group mission to progress ( i like having quests to do). The achievement system was very nice. My wife loves her trophies being displayed in her house too. 2. Having some of the old worlds mixed in with new worlds in RoF was fun to us. Having lots of Augs like RoF had was fun too and the collection system is a fun system ( just need more collection bags now) 3. HAs are alot of fun. Love having so many instances where i dont have to deal with KSers or people griefing because they think half the zone is theirs. 4. We love that in CotF when we kill a named mob that we are after that it actually drops that piece of gear that we wanted. We also loved that with most expansions except TDS there were lots of names to kill for hunter. 5. My wife loves the marketplace and housing aspect of the game. She loves to shop and decorate. 6. Getting something from the achievements other than xp (like in CotF and TDS) that benefits my characters in other ways. 7. We love being able to make our own gear that is pretty much on par with some of the gear that drops from names to help us in achieving our goals of killing said names. All the work maxing the tradeskills finally paid off. Now what is not fun: 1. Almost being forced to do dailies to enjoy decent xp. (daily HAs included) Also being forced into only 2 expansions to get any xp at all if i want to progress my characters beyond 100 is certainly NOT fun. 2. Not getting any decent XP for completing a quest. IT's called EVERQUEST not EVERGRIND. 3. Small zones with too few quests to work on. ( Katta Castrum in TDS has 6 names and 6 quests ( seriously!!!!)) 4. Being told what is fun to me. Dont tell me what i find is fun. I know what i find fun and dont need someone else telling me that. Unless your my wife. 5. Not overly fond of raid mechanics in the group game. If i want to see what the raiders end game is like i will just go raid. But i dont want to know what its like for them so i dont raid. 6. Paying full price for half of an expansion is not fun either. If 6 zones is the best you can do then just admit it and charge half the price since your giving us half the content. I am sure there is more that i like and dont like but thats a start i hope
Still reading. We are working on a pretty basic in-game poll that we hope to get out in the next week on some options we like for a new progression server. I'll post in this News forum when we can confirm the date the poll will show up and get a bit of info from the team as reference on the differences. Should be self-explanatory for most. There is a ton of discussions and data gathering on details now going on in the background as we iron out our plans. We get a little closer every day. The team is very patient with my newbness. It's amazing how much is coming back to me as they remind me how dev works on EQ. Still, the more feedback we get on what you love about EQ the more we can prioritize.
You can please all of the people sometimes. you can please some of the people all the time. but you'll never please all the people all the time ! My hats off to the new EQ team , give em a break ! The end of EQ is like global warming.........the end is always near, but my driveway is covered with snow and the temp is 4 below !! Doozy
The team is very patient with my newbness. It's amazing how much is coming back to me as they remind me how dev works on EQ. Still, the more feedback we get on what you love about EQ the more we can prioritize.” The Key Phrase here is "how dev works on EQ" THIS Has to be changed. The Dev Mindset, HAS to be changed. if Daybreak wishes to make a Profit then above all: The Dev Mindset Has To Change.
