Community Letter: A Note from Jennifer Chan

Kander: You guys don't like quests, I've designed this overseer system to replace it, look, it's awesome.
Players: Erm, we love quests actually and really don't like the overseer system.
Kander: Yeah I totally understand, you guys don't like quests and the overseer system is awesome and everyone loves it.
Players: ..... no we hate it and want quests and real content back. Please for the love of all that is sacred!
Kander: What the game needs is more overseer, less quests, got it! We're listening to you!

I dont understand how a person like Kander can have the position he has had as creative director for a MMO game for what, a decade and come to the conclusion that his playerbase does not enjoy quests. Where did he or the team get this feedback from? Its mindblowing to me that they seem to think that.

Its either BS because they dont have the ressources to make enough quests for an expansion, which then means they need to stop releasing one each year or they actually get feedback from a very closed minority group that no one I have ever talked or heard about is included. The only other opinion is that they took the PoP quest feedback and thought wow players hate questing, when in fact, what everyone hates is doing the same quests over and over and over for faction to unlock the next real quest. If they cant see the difference between the two its obvious to me that no on the team actively plays eq2 anymore and have no idea what the playerbase is like in the year 2020.

Also overseers. Please dont spend more time on this system and just hit the kill switch as soon as possible and devote time to other features.

doubt the resources spent on overseers are significant, but if they are i agree with you dirgenoobforreal

Agreed. It sort of blew my mind when I heard him say that. I was like um NO what people don't like is the mind numbing grinding of the same thing over and over.

My views on EQ2 currently and for the past few years:

Stats:
Overall the stat bloat is beyond out of control. When numbers get so high they feel meaningless. Need stat squish badly.
Seriously at level 120 having 2000%+ crit chance, DPS numbers in the BILLIONS... I can not be the only one to think this is crazy?

AA:
Have not been pruned or tweaked properly for a long time. Half (literally) totally useless and just from an old era.

Ascension:
I personally hate this system. How can you summarize it... Just a way for everyone to get a few OP skills?
How about fixing the classes where 50% of the CA's/Spells are useless instead.

Gear Infusion:
Just throw this into the bloated systems pile really

Mercenaries:
Why oh why did we need to introduce a whole mercenary leveling and gearing system... Honestly when mercenaries were released I liked the idea, but leveling and gearing system for mercs was just not needed and seems like bloat.

Mounts:
As you can see my opinion on mercenaries don't even get me started on the mount leveling and gearing...

Overseer:
Ok really please stop with the bloated systems thanks.

Story line:
I appreciate each area and zone having its own unique quests and adventures, however I find the story line somewhat disconnected in the overall world. Am I on my own for this one? Did I not read enough quests? Growing up playing I loved doing things such as the Splitpaw Saga, zones like Nek Castle, but even back then I feel a lack of an overall goal or struggle.

I think there could be some sort of new player experience created that helps people get up to speed on the goings on and lore of the world, because there is so much of it but much tucked away and hidden (even in raids) that might help get people interested in the soul of the game.


To top it off, many of those systems can be maxed or bypassed all together by spending hefty chunks of cash. I have had my experience with F2P MMO's, and I feel I can say without a doubt you can buy your way to "endgame" here significantly easier than other games. (I feel like I have actually left out some systems that can be bought out...)

It just has to do with the sheer amount of systems of hours and hours of grinding you can bypass with a credit card, but then you also need a subscription to be able to use the endgame stuff anyways? I feel the balance between cash shop and subscription here is in a bad spot. Maybe I am way out of touch with what you need to be viable in a group now? I feel like you would need to put in a serious amount of hours to even be viable in a group. The thought of catching up is insane to me even as a vet, let alone how a new player might feel...

Maybe I am a bit of a purist, but I would not come back until some of the bloat and unnecessary systems have been removed, and the pay to win has been balanced.

I have a strong feeling EQ2 is only surviving on the same crowd that has been here for the past 16 years. From a new players perspective there is an old game with an old engine, very limited over-arching story (which may be a good thing for some), and a massive mess of systems to deal with.

Very curious to see the direction JChan takes the game and if innovations are truly made, that's what I feel this game desperately needs, not more P2W systems.

Thank you and I wished to direct my reply to you even though it applies to a lot of the other posts prior and following mine.

I have no clue where the thought that the player base in general disliked quests comes from or came from or when. I believe WE the players understand that you do not have the employees or financial resources that you had at SOE, and speaking for myself, and I believe a significant percent of the playerbase, I think that Darkpaw games has two viable options to give the players the quests they want with the resources and employees you currently have at your disposal:

Option 1 - Stop releasing an expansion every year, go to a 2 year expansion cycle, with GUs in the meantime as well as the events and holidays. Use this time to make a good, solid, quality expansion, that is tested by the players, and where the players' report is acted upon. Also use this time to fix what is broken and fix the bugs!!!

Option 2 - Also has the 2 year expansion cycle, BUT, you pull in the efforts of the volunteers that love this game and wish to help save it!!! The roleplayers that can write quests, signature lines, heritage quests, hallmark quests, and all the side quests, drop quests, the quests that were posted on trees, on wanted posters, hidden in objects in our world, and all the other quests I am not mentioning, we can work with a DPG overseer (Kander will like that reference) and anybody that would truly want to help would be more than willing to sign an agreement with DPG that states they know that anything they do for DPG is uncompensated in any way and the material becomes the property of DPG. There are also a lot of us that would volunteer to do grunt work that you do not have enough people to do so you have to take someone off another assignment to do. Same agreement as the roleplayers.

I assure you this works!!! I did this for over 10 years, first with Origin and then carried on with Electronic Arts when they bought out the remaining portion of the shares of the game from Origin Systems. I was eventually hired by Electronic Arts to be a Game Master. I was with UO from pre-alpha in 1995 until I split with Electronic Arts as I disagreed with the direction they were taking the game in 2010. I had begun playing EQ2 on 04 November 2004 and played it along with UO, and when I walked away from UO, EQ2 became my main game. I have 6 accounts right now with well over 160 characters most of which are on AB. The volunteer system works, you just have to set it up properly, legally, and run it correctly, much like the guide program.

There also needs to be a lower level GM, not one that can access account data, but one that can appear in game and assist players with smaller issues like they are stuck somewhere, or something for a quest is missing like an NPC, or a quest item isn't in their bag. Players feel the game company cares about their time and their experience in the game if they have a problem and can hit a help button and an actual person shows up and tries to help them. If the BGM (Baby GM) for lack of a better term, at this time, cannot assist the player, they can at least take information and submit it via an application or mail system to the devs so that it can be handled by the appropriate people. The player feels that YOU care and that he/she has been heard and the devs have the information they need to look into the issue. They could also help with harassment issues in general chat or in game, look at UO and give them a jail feature, it works, if you want to know more about it, send me a private message.

These would also be volunteers, they would be like guides, not able to go to their home servers, they would NOT have any God Powers, they might have a sparkly or flaming spell or two that does NO damage, they would have a separate account to BGM from and they cannot reveal to anybody that they are a BGM and would have to sign an agreement just like the other volunteers. I guarantee you, player happiness with DPG help will increase 100 fold, players hate the petition system and not having a phone number to call.

I personally submitted suggestions to Dreamweaver via forums PMs regarding guildhall and personal storage as was mentioned in one of the podcasts and I have not even received a reply that it was received or looked at. I love Dreamweaver and I suspect he has his hands full and has not grown his 6 other parents arms or 6 other parent eyes yet so I am not yelling about it, just nudging.

I won't start on crafting or you will never see an end to this message. Let me just close by saying, we have a lot of wonderful zones and systems that are already in place, such as Lesser Faydark, New Tunaria, the Group Crafting Missions on the Isle of Mara, all the crafting quests on the tables on the Thundering Steppes Docks and Nektulos Forest Docks, we have the Proof is in the Pudding, the Gathering Obsession, we have Raffik, all of these are what we want, this is what you need to look at. Do not change them, or take them away!!!! The only change we want is we want the quests for the Satyrs and the Brownies in Lesser Faydark given back to them so they no longer wander aimlessly about and we want the quests put back in New Tunaria. Heck just restore all the quests that have been removed from the game. Restore the suburbs and all their quests. You would have a lot of happy players. Do not remove the group crafting missions on the Isle of Mara, maybe update the rewards a bit, maybe add a few new missions to go along with the new levels of crafting, we know it can be done because a new one has been added since the originals were added to the game.

In short, look back in time to see the future, to see what we want and to see what will get returning players back and keep them here. You can make new lands and make things look new and shiny with the mechanics and game systems of the past that we loved and that we stay here hoping upon hope will come back.

Thank You

and PS

We hate Ascensions!!!

the best idea the Devs had ever was the TLE server , it's not so much about nostalgia but playing without the bloat , and bringing the old zones back to live .
I have started playing on Rivervale too and I took a look at the recipes you can get I am just overwhelmed and that id only a little part of the game .
We are lucky that this game is so beloved by so many .

We did a little of that with Landmark were almost all players helped to develop the game and many minds came together with ideas .
Unfortunately the system was just not working for the masses .
But having volunteers help is a good idea
Working from home on a computer is what the employees of DP are doing now , and they do far more technical
things than writing stories .

I totally agree Cyrrena. The offer to help has been put out there by many that I've seen. I've seen some of the stuff you RP's come up with and it is amazing. Makes me jealous that I'm not that creative LOL I don't understand myself why they won't take the help that is being offered to make the game better. It's sad to say because I love this game dearly, but I don't think they want it.

More quest, less needless grinding, and yes we hate ascensions.

I do enjoy quests tremendously and sometimes level lock at previous expansions to re-enjoy the story.

But I wonder how many people actually take the time to read through things and absorb the story and the lore vs how many people just click the first dialogue option every time it pops up and use the quest journal and wiki to point them towards the next step in the quest until the reward pops into their inventory and they move on to the next loot pinata.

Are questers truly in the minority? Maybe so...I did really enjoy the days when expansions had prelude lore posted online to accompany the new content. The Ethernauts (TSO) were kind of the golden age of EQ2 lore from my perspective.

I avow - often click on first option simply because for me it's foreign language and not everything is clear.. but just in case, if have time, I try to understand following. Another thing is that you are safe with relation to result of your clicks, in sense that in practice this has no influence. However, in some other "old school" games it still matters (although also often I get acquainted with contents of whole quest right away, through wiki, but this isn't what I would like, because I like to assume what is there matter)
Technically and practically, absorb of history of an scene or sequence of scenes doesn't play important role here. There are pros and cons to this. In any case, this is an established system of quest and its change seems inappropriate for many well reasons, as even if that were desired for much.. In addition, those who are interested in particular story, immersed in it anyway. It's like watching movie that you just watch solely for fun and without expecting practical benefits

I, for one, love the quests, and would much rather run around on my characters talking to people than send off an imaginary group (i.e., the Overseer's agents) to do something for me.

Some of the quests really have wonderful dialog, and some are quite humorous. Some are challenging in that the answers provided don't really work for the character I'm on (and in some cases wouldn't work for any of my characters), but I want to do the quest so I have to rationalize it somehow. I often write up my characters' adventures afterwards and tweak things to make them work.

There are generally two situations in which I will "click the first choice" (or the appropriate choice) without bothering at least a cursory read: if I've already done the quest a few times and know what to expect, or if I'm running with a friend who is not taking the time to read and I don't wish to hold them up. If it's my first time doing the quest I will try to read it regardless, and if there are multiple choices I will try to choose the one that makes the most sense for my character.

I am generally in agreement with Cyrenna on many points. I don't quite hate the Ascensions - I have found them quite useful on occasion - but I definitely agree that things have become far more complicated than is necessary or desirable. I feel like I am spending an awful lot of time on bookkeeping and logistics, time I would much rather spend out in the world immersed in story.

I agree with so much in this thread. I was around for another game where I heard many of the same types of pleas from the players.

Don't forget the lessons from SWG. This thread has many echos from that past. Listen to the players you still have.

the last poling we did asked things like what are you doing most of the time when your in game , it totally ignored the fact
that there are plenty of people that do more than just one thing , I for one like to do it all .

Kander : ho, you love quests ? So I implement a drop from chests with insignifiant chance to drop, you'll need 10 of this, and I call it quest, instead of collection ! Enjoy you have a new quest which will take you one full decade to finish !
Player : we hate this new quest
Kander : see, I'm right, players hate quests...

Congratulations on your promotion!

I'd just like to say that this part of your message worries me. We keep hearing from Kander about the lack of resources for developing quests, tradeskills, and other important content like raids. Then we get things like overseers. If there aren't enough resources to make core content work, then diverting those limited resources seems like it would make things worse.