What would your suggestion to make EQ greet again!

Seriously, scroll back and read 200+ pages of HA tuning drama.

Again, I didn't insist anything. Unless you are referring to another post outside of what you quoted I made no mention of it being an easy way out. Just a suggestion on a forum post about suggestions for making EQ greet again.

lol my bad wrong reply!

False. I didn't make the claim that the devs do not play EQ. I made general statements and put forth arguments in favor of employees using the products they are working for which you failed to appreciate, acknowledge, or refute. Conversely, you provided no evidence that the devs play the game either.

My examples make perfect sense, but you have chosen to denigrate them and see the glass half empty because you are white knighting for the devs out of a misguided sense of loyalty. I now regret replying to you because you made zero attempt to honestly evaluate and appreciate anything I said. Lesson learned.

Bottom line: developers who use their own products and service are better developers than those who do not

Question: do you think Darkpaw Games has the best talent in the MMO industry?

You are mispresenting what I said. I never claimed that employees should spend "significant" time in their off hours playing EQ. I related a experience I had with Sigil Games, which you chose to ignore.

Let's say you have two candidates for a design job working on EverQuest. Candidate 1 says that he wants the job but doesn't play EQ and has no intention of playing EQ in his spare time. Candidate 2 says that he wants the job and tells you he's super passionate and plays 2 hours each night.

Who do you think that Darkpaw Games will hire?

Answer: Candidate 2 will get the job

More shameless white knighting and unrequited love for the devs. How's it working out for you?

Bonus questions: Have you ever worked in the video game industry? How many MMOs have you worked on as a dev? How many AAA games have you worked on? How many awards have your games won?

If Brontus currently works for, or is affiliated with, another studio or gaming company, I think his/her levelling unsubstantiated, provocative criticism here could cross ethical conduct and guidelines. At the very least, most industry professionals don't openly criticize other professionals.

He/she could be violating the F.U.D. rule applied on another Daybreak forum (which is designed to prevent provocation and sabotage):

I wouldn't put sabotage by a competing studio beyond the realm of possibility.

Make no claims? I saw plenty of bullet points around them being required to play which wouldn't be needed if they are playing the game

There is no reason to force developers to use the product they develop in order for them to produce a good product. Your example of ordering from a delivery service is something that takes very little time and effort to do. The cooking example has more effort involved but unless they are having someone else make their food all the time it is something they will be doing naturally.

2 hours each night is not a significant amount of time invested? Once you account for all the time spent each day that 2 hours does take a chunk of time. If you have 9 hours for work (8 hours + 1 hour lunch), 1 hour of commute time (probably short for their location and 8 hours for sleep that leaves you with 6 hours in the day and spending 2 hours of that on a game is significant.

As for who gets the job I really don't think they are going to hire based just on play time in EQ but on their total qualifications and who they think is a best fit for the job. Just because they are passionate about playing EQ doesn't mean they have the skills needed to work on the game.

Not sure what that has to do with anything, people are going to get hired based on who can do the best job, not who likes the game the most.[/quote]

Only for those that fear a good challenge. During LDoN I had the most fun when it was fresh and challenging. Later all the players had much better equipment from PoP raids and higher levels and it became a boring grind. Scaling is more likely to keep the challenge factor up which is more fun to me than to grind obsolete content. Something that is not challenging does feel worthless. Something that is to much challenging is also not fun so balance is required. If you want to feel even more powerfull you could just go to Crushbone and totally own that zone but is that fun and if so for how long ?!

Dynamic level scaled zones (10 tiers) do require much less dev time than to build 10 zones. The only problem that I experienced with LDoN was that the dropped named mob gear was very bad and not dynamically scaled. But there was the alternative currency shop as a backup reward system so that adventures never was totally worthless.

Moving to harder content is a thing. The same content always being the same difficulty in a leveling up model game is dumb and lying to you about actually leveling up.

Level 120 thicket rats in misty? Nah. scaling makes games a grindfest. There's a whole life and economy in EQ around PLing. You want to kill that off too?

Scaled content sucks.Beginner zones and beginner quests should be just that. Not scaled conent also makes people move on when the XP drops off and the loots stagnante for level. Scaled content invites people sitting in the same spots forever.

If I want a good challenge, I join a server first raid guild, or solo red cons.

again, I point toward 200+ pages of scaled HA drama. ( and it's still not fixed!)

also interesting that you lead off with accusing me of being afraid of a challenge, like denigrate someone just on spec. +1

Also, the one thing you said you had issue with LDoN was that the devs didn't spend more time developing scaled loots. yet you go on to say it would be >less< work for them to have done so. I find this a mildy amusing disconnect.

EQ2 Chronomancer NPC.

There is one very big issue hindering EQ. The reliance of groups to get things done, but no incentive that other games provide to grouping with new people. Every time I come back I find the same problem, more people of left, and grouping options are limited. So, I move on to my other games.

Doing simple things like:
1.) Provide a group matcher that are queued and matched together to do certain group tasks / missions. And give an extra bonus of something like AA, or mission currency, additional loot... something that makes people want to queue into the random matcher.

2.) As above but as a daily with even more increased reward.

2.)No mercenary bonuses or hindrances. Like less drops and xp for having a merc in the group and/or add bonus loot, aa, mission currency, and loot for mercenaryless groups.

3. An ability to allow group leader to allow others to join mission / task in progress, and an ability for players to select join find group in progress.

Of course all the above should consider match makeup of at least 1 fighter, 1 cleric, 2dps, with an option to set the last 2 spots to what rolls are needed for the task

4.) Give enhanced rewards to those that have a full group.


Without incentive to group, people are either botting or going with people they know. As it is, the game is unplayable as a returning player with fewer and fewer friends still playing the game, and others ignoring returning players or the current format of the LFG window.

How can code lie ? It is more likely that players have illusions about becoming powerfull as scaled content is the core of the game since 23 years. It does not only affect instanced dynamical zones.

I was wrtiting about instanced zones so you can still grind lvl 3-9 thicket rats forever if you like to. I would totally destroy PL if I could as it did hurt the multiplayer aspect so much . No wonder that nobody can find a group during leveling up anymore with players and devs that have ruined their own land.

Just let them sit wherever they want even if this would mean that it is the same spot for many years. Do you have also a problem with that ?

But you haven't because you fear challenges, right ? Misty Thicket is sooo cozy.

This drama does exist since more than eight years I guess and might be never fixed because scaled instanced content does only rely on one parameter which is the PC level which is not enough for a good balance. Fully geared raid players > Free players with bazaar gear. PC "HP+level" would work so much better.

Actually I did not, you just took it personally. This phenomenon is called: A hit dog will holler.

You are messing up things here, please read again !

EQ needs their own Yoshi P and just nuke EQ and EQ2 and make it Everquest a realm reborn!

DBG create their own player automation software and charge per month like the apps they been banning people for recently. There is a reason people use it, it's called convenience which makes the game great fun to play, not so much without it trying to box 3 to however many toons you're running for your personal enjoyment of how you play your game.

Oh, the game desperately needs a /fov command, or a series of clickies that cast a permanent buff on you that increases magnification by something > 100%. Back in the day this didn't bother me, since I had played EQ for so long and back then in FPS games I never thought to change my FOV. By the time I quit way back when I had begun to change the FOV in games I played, but I was still accustomed to EQ and the fact that I played a druid and we have a spell line that increases magnification helped.

But coming back after all that time and playing other accounts without that? Pain, absolute pain. The /viewport commands helps some, but that creates black bars on the screen, granted it's in the space where my chat boxes are, but it's still annoying.

And yes, it has to increase magnification and it has to be more than 100% due to the weird way EQ handles this. Spyglasses and anything that causes your vision to zoom in increase magnification by something lower than 100%, while the druid/ranger spell lines still increase magnification, they do it by something greater than 100% which increases your FOV.

and fullscreen borderless while we're at it

Make augs lore equiped (type 3 and 8)
Add Belts to the Bandolier

I'm catching up from about 2 days ago, and haven't read replies past this one yet, to include if he already answered your question.


I don't quite take it as an all-or-nothing though, or even that he is accusing/implying that none do. There is really no telling how many do actively play the game at home "for fun" but it IS really hard to be deeply invested into more than 1 mmo at a time. So I know WoW Classic had the devs attention for a while.

Nono, it's not like we should think that they should not play other games, and frankly whatever they play on their own time, is their own business -- that being said, if it's a policy at the start like the example he gave with Sigil -- that's smart I think.

Because you're told up front, so if you sign on with the company, you're basically agreeing to their terms, and if you don't want them to worry about what you're playing on your own time, go work for a different company type deal.



a little more focused with my point --- I would venture to guess that half or most do play Everquest 1 at least 2-3 times a week for a couple of hours, and I mean really play it. But probably not all, there is probably several who are bored/tired with EQ, but a job is a job, and they haven't found one better, pays more, or worth uprooting their many years at the EQ office. --- further, I would find it really hard to play a game I work on, once I got home.


So not quite sure where the perfect answer/balance is on those two sides of the coin.

Like, Like, oh and Like, and Like!

(psst, tell them to do controller-UI too, you know for Steam Deck! or the various forms of remote play)

i absolutely HATE level scaling.

Hate it in ESO (even though I like that game) and on single player games that give an option, i always leave it off.

I totally want to feel like i'm getting stronger. I can't say what you said, any better.


Edit: Now that I'm caught up, I see the thread kind of went into a back and forth on two different things. 1) level scaling debate which for me, I hate level scaling being automatic so you don't feel like you're getting stronger, I do like however the LDoNs/HA/Missions and easy/hard options and such in EQ2 dungeons, but I mean, I'm selecting what i want that zone to be kind of thing, I guess the choice makes a difference? I'm not sure why I feel different about that -- but I hated it in ESO when they had that big major change in their One Tamriel update a few years back, and when shown the option in a recent single player game... I think it was A. Creed Origins... I don't know, I'd have to go look, i absolutely turned that off, but that's just my personal way, among video games and communities, level scaling seems to be a 50/50 debate (or close enough split debate)

The other thing, about devs/employers and all that. -- Brontus initial post with 20 different things all about making devs work harder, be in more tune with the game, seemed a bit harsh for me to fully co-sign, but you can't argue that he seems to want the game to get better, be better, and that in his mind, it all starts with the devs. -- Obiviously, I don't know where he's coming from, as if another mmo company, or gaming in general, but maybe he is a dev somewhere (or was) and hated "bad devs" "lazy devs" or whatever in reference to former coworkers he would see at the office (I mean all companies, all jobs have bad employees ..) --- I don't really know, but on the other hand, the FUD reference by Benito seems a bit of a stretch going towards the opposite extreme.

But, wtf do I know really? Anyway. just commenting, really interesting thread, I hope it keeps up, and I hope it doesn't get destroyed and locked due to infighting.

It's because we outed one of them! I saw what they said...!