Kander's Candor Questions thread! [Always Open]

Will there ever be a revamp of the Deity system?

I, too, miss actual quests. The overseers are just "whatever" to me. Something else I have to add to my ever-growing list of maintenance to do.

I'd prefer to see better RNG percentages in the game (why's everything gotta be a half of a half of a quarter of a percent chance to win!?) . There are lots of things I don't get due to RNG, like the key to the burned lands zones from KA. I tried all year long to get that key, and never saw one on any toon, while I watched someone else I know do it 3 times in as many months! There are things now on the overseer loot table that I've never seen since it's launch. There are things supposedly in the mission crates that I've never seen. Or like the bat mount from tossing pumpkin bombs during NOTD - I've watched folks go through hundreds of thousands of those pumpkins, and I know maybe 3 people with one... I don't even want to get started with adornment implementation RNG. I'm certain there are probably hundreds of other examples folks could add given time. Some folks have really terrible dice guys!

I would much prefer to have the goblin gambling games back than this overseer system of what amounts to me as a lazy attempt to say you are adding quest to the game. Its not a quest, it wasnt a good idea from the getgo and it was even a worse idea to present it in the broken form it was released in.
I cant speak for anyone other than myself, but to me this is just another side project getting in the way of quality content being released.
Try and dodge that stone

With the AA revamp i have the following questions.
What does this mean for Ascension Classes ? Most player expected a level increase for them in the next expansion. Now with the outlook of the AA reavamp and new AA points to grind. Will the Ascension Classes be (completely) phased out ?

Most would argue that you will also need a Stat crunch and lower stats for the AA revamp to be more effective.

The optimal / sub-optimal play thing is really spot on. I behaved totally differently when I was in a raid guild than I do now. Optimal was a must because we were only succeeding by a thin margin. Take those players and put them in a heroic instance and it's a speed run because even if you miss a few things, you're still going to pound it.

Sub-optimal does have a role. In heroic gear, a person in a group with no raiders should not take forever to kill the heroic bosses. Who wants to spend two hours on an instance? It's just hurting any interest in playing in groups. So people don't even try to maximize buffs, or gear buffs, or etc.. Why bother if you know you won't answer a call when you hear LFM?

Being decently geared for heroics is now such a complex maze that if you do join one and your dps isn't so good, you literally get shamed. If there's one thing I'd like to see, it's the injectors/inspirations/painlinks/forcelinks... etc simplified a bit. It was better when it was scroll of prowess. You didn't have to try and coordinate whether you were all going to use this one or that one. And I find myself in groups here an there having forgotten to renew my temp adorns. Then wondering what changed. Ohhhh yeah... except that today it's nearly as bad as trying to hit things with a rolling pin.

There's just so much in EQ2 that is pass/fail now. It's not like there's a happy center to the dps that lots of people can reach, and that would drive grouping and good times all around.

People do ask for guides to their class. Not many are written anymore.

People do ask for "casting order" and "spell efficiency" but sometimes they don't get a reply.

People do ask for how to work together with other classes in groups (like timing buffs), but they often aren't told how.

Kander,

It's getting harder and harder to have a range of skills from sub-optimal to optimal, especially as things get more out of whack and people either don't want to look dumb by daring to say something, then saying the wrong or outdated thing. Or they feel more in competition than cooperation with fellow players, so that's why they say nothing. Of course there's also, the overly frustrated good player who is so overwrought that they basically vent all the time.

I'm not suggesting faceroll, but it's gotten harder and harder and harder. How about we go the other way for a bit and fix the AA's and tooltips and rebalance things, and meanwhile make it a bit easier. I mean, you're going to make big changes. So don't expect us to instantly get it and have no learning curve.

People haven't even figured out all the new buffs yet, few players have temp adorns on all the time. Few that I see. Returning players have to be convinced that infusing is essential, not optional. We haven't even grok'd this new stuff yet (the casuals haven't).

If you go and change it all from the bottom up and we have all the complexity too, it might be like... eh, I'll come back when they're done with this change and things have settled down. But if you lull us into a sense of fun while it's happening... by revitalizing casual play for a bit, we might not notice that we've stayed longer than we expected to.

All I want to do, is log in, do the things I should do solo, then feel like I'll be welcome in a group. If that's too much to ask without awkward thinking and if hardmode is the only mode, then big changes will feel much more uncomfortable, imo.

PLEASE for the love of all the DEITIES in Norrath DO NOT remove anything from City Merchants or Loyalty merchants when you add new things, just add new things, there is nothing wrong with the old things, we still use them to decorate and having them available on the City Merchants and Loyalty Merchants keeps us from having to buy hoards of them and store them when we do get to see them because we do not know when or if we will see them again!!!!

*drops to one knee and pleads*

In heroic gear in heroic instances the time on them should not be over 30-45min as it should be a challenge with that level of gear on. And yes if I am in T3 raid gear and my whole grp is then the Heroic content should be super easy. That is why there is challenge mode and hopefully Expert to follow later this year. Nothing should just be given to players just because they bought the xpack, its a video game with a challenge to it. If you want everything given to you there are plenty of other games out there that lean in that direction. I, for one never want EQ2 to turn into that. Just my two cents and a rebuttal to your statement. Not judging your opinion, just want to show another opinion to your train of thought.

I have written guides. I know lots of others have written guides. Unfortunately it gets old writing them and then the same people who asked for a guide are asking in the next xpack because they don't want to do any homework of their own. I always ask for help after taking a break from the game to figure out whats changed. But as soon as I get that figured out I go right into "How do I do it better mode" and a lot of good players do it this way. Hell I have tried to help people who I thought really wanted help only to be told after I help them,"That is not how I play the game" or "I am a utility, I shouldn't have to play that way" and neither of these statements are wrong. But don't have this attitude and act like you want help when really you just want to be a casual. Enjoy the game for what it is at the casual level and move on.

As for casting orders and working in grps, this comes from experience. As you play your toon experience is gained in the knowledge of your class if you play it enough. You will pick up on which spells are working best for you. Working with your grp comes from you taking the time to read your spells and what they do. Some of the descriptions can be a bit confusing for some players but that is why you experiment and figure out what they really mean or intend as you use them and see the result of your labors.

No one should feel awkward when giving advise that was solicited. No one should ever down someone they see give advise that they may not agree with. Just throw your two cents in and why you feel that way and let the OP decide whats best. He/She may need to take both with a grain of salt and, god forbid, actually go test both to see what really works for them. Heroics are not Hard mode. Solo's are not hard mode. It felt like that to everyone when the xpack come out. But as we all got geared and worked through learning what the combat changes were and how our DPS was created this xpack it got easier and easier. It shouldn't all be watered down from the get go. You think your hurting for content now, imagine what you would be saying if that truly was the case.

@Semperfifofum I am not knocking you or trying to down you in any way. I just see things from a completely different point of view it seems. I hope you take this as a different opinion on the subject you have presented as it is a great topic to discuss. I do not mean to attack you. only that from my side I do not ever want to see EQ2 in easy mode per-say.

We can take this discussion to another thread to not detract from the Q&A if it becomes something that the devs want to concern themselves with. But I agree; I don't want to see EQ2 become an easy mode game in terms of character customization.

However the largest problem with AA's/Talent Trees (or character customization in general) right now is that they really become an illusion of choice outside of a handful of key nodes/items for better players, and a massive power increase over the players who don't know/care to make the right choices.

Additionally, there is so much ability & stat bloat in the game that there is an extremely wide range between where it is now, and easy mode.

Will you please hire a full time person or a full time intern dedicated to the TLE-Progression server?

Wow so it's true. The elitists really do enjoy the game being broken. It creates the elitism because the mechanics remain secret, only to be shared if the sharing is deemed necessary. Consider me the exact opposite of that.

When the game started being broken and full of bizarre mechanics, every one of my casual friends stopped playing. Right now, my friends and I can get maybe 4 people in a group, total. You want the game to die, then keep going with this hardmode stuff. But I miss my friends. And so do you whenever you're LFM and nobody shows up.

Anyone want to tell me how to "do my homework" when the tooltips are broken, the caps document is a joke, and there are no guides anymore. Additionally as I demonstrated before, the update notes aren't even including vital changes in my main class.

I never said "Jrox doesn't write guides anymore and it's all his fault there aren't any." But you do sound like you took it that way. And the arrogance of someone assuming that someone asking for help maybe doesn't really want help. Some people are so deep in judging others, that they can't see their own harshness. They "don't mean to" attack, but everything they do is an attack. Attack casual play, attack me. That's flat.

The elitists will win in the end because people get sick of arguing with them. Elitists who are obsessed enough to figure out the mechanics without guides or tooltips that were designed to be there, but no longer function right. So, they will never stop arguing this point until all the casuals are gone. Then the wet Sunday quacking of "Oh no, is the game dead? Where is everyone? So empty..."

Another question: Is the voice chat bar ever gonna be fixed so we can actually see whos talking like we used to instead of having to pull up the list of whos in voice and hope we dont have too scroll down to see?

1. Can we get scalable UI for 4K UHD displays?
2. Is it possible to add DXR/RTX ray tracing lighting to the game? https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq2/index.php?threads/real-time-ray-tracing-rtx-dxr-support.589359/

I have to agree.
I'm not sure who is being talked to that thinks the overseers are meaningful and engaging content rather than just matching icons and hoping to be blessed by the RNG gods when the timer runs to complete.

I agree as well. Overseer Mission cannot and shouldn't quests on Liver server. If there is only Kaitheel and his team designing quests, than i would think that player accept that all quests aren't available at the start of an expansion but will released in parts.
What eq2 needs is a Signature like the old ones (Fire&Ice, Peacock feather's or Claymore Saga) in length but in parts over an expansion released. Even smaller singature quests ("An ugly Bounty" RoK), HQs , L&L, Language would be welcome.

I would like to see the live servers as free trade servers

I would like to see ALL of the mercs seasons available for purchase ALL the time

I also agree. I'd feel better about it if I wasn't relying on it for essential drops that make me effective in game. As it is, the RNG nature of it turns me off. I do run it, but I'm not obsessive about doing it every time it's up.I probably run them once a day, maybe twice if lucky and that's all. There's a "worry investment" that's too high when you have to do things more often than once a day. Too high for me.

Or at least " a bit more free trade. "

This would be a monstrous effort . And I hope that someday either this game is updated to include it, or EQ3 arrives and includes it from the ground up. I also think that the UI could be more scalable especially as screens get bigger and resolutions are set higher... the text becomes miniaturized.

What's on the front burner right now, though, is AA revamp and class balancing, hopefully to include an update in the UI tooltips so the game is more transparent and easily understood by more of the players. What we have now is a black box to most people playing. Like playing D&D with no character sheet, or not much of one. I agree with the developers that this is the priority right now.

However I think they too really would enjoy working with a big overall graphics upgrade. That's not to say I think the game looks bad. I think it looks great, within the boundaries of what can be achieved.

Will you please drop shadow rares and return crafting to its former self? By that i mean only adept and expert spells no shadow junk and those spells bought and found as they were before BoL. Also return crafting of Master Crafted gear etc to the value it was before BoL.

As a side note, I rarely hunt for shadowed materials as I have very few books that require them because as with everything else in this expansion if its valuable it harder than hen's teeth to get. So imho this was time wasted that could have been spent on writing more quests or testing them. This is how I feel most of the new changes in this expansion, and I think the changes were added to eat up time so the absence of quests would not be so obvious. But hunting and not finding annoys Jack.

+replace