Dungeon Maker Changes Coming Dec. 16

1. Turning off experience in Dungeon Maker

I understand your need to do this to be able to sell more Heroic Chars. We all understand that Sony needs money to pay the bills on making these games. (You just NERFed the fun players were having doing this.) But sense you consider it an exploit so be it.

2. Dungeon Mark rewards will be removed.

NERF 2. You do know NERF is a 4 dirty letter word to us players? I realize some of the items you can purchase are available in the SC store as well they should be. Don't remove the Dungeon Marks just raise the amount of Dungeon Marks we need to buy thoes items. Give us something to work for or opt to pay SC.

3. Dungeon Mark Rewards being removed will kill Dungeon Maker.

No one will bother to come see my dungeon if they can't get anything for doing so. I decorate houses and I have to beg players to come see them. I play through some Dungeons just to get a few Dungeon Marks to buy stuff to build with. I don't want them just given to me. Please don't take that away. That was fun.

4. Standard decorating items, like layouts, spawners, will be available for free in the DM toolbox and removed from the Dungeon Maker store category.

Please! NO!! Big Mistake! I do not want all that stuff cluttering up my Dungeon Maker Tool Box. I just want the stuff I buy with the Dungeon Marks in my DM Tool Box.

5. All Dungeon Maker dungeons will be unpublished so that decorating-focused dungeons can be republished
(vs. the dungeons created for maximum experience gain)

Probably a good idea

6. The Dungeon Maker category in the store will remain for the time being for players to spend leftover Dungeon Marks.

Gee you are so kind... I buy Dungeon stuff with my Dungeon Marks. Oh you are going to give me them all for free anyway. So in essence you have just NERFed another currency for me as you have done with all the other out dated currencies.
Thank You!

7. The Dungeon Maker feature will be included free for all players as part of the Free to Play experience.

So this means you will be refunding players who just purchased the Dungeon Maker. Please tell your bean counters that Azari said this is Not a good business move it only makes the players mad that did not get a refund but, it costs Sony money in the long run.

On the other hand if you have ripped DM apart as much as you have said above. Then what are you giving away? Nothing.
So probably a good call.

You are basically taking away everything that players liked about Dungeon Maker. And you are expecting us to decorate dungeons that no one will bother visiting much less vote on.


What do players like?

Players like fun prizes they can find or buy.
They like finding things in chests.
They like mob drops and they like the end prize DMs.
Players also like XP

.

David Georgeson said, "We are testing features for Landmark and EQ Next in all of our games as much as humanly possible."

I believe that Dungeon Maker is obviously one of these tests for Landmark. At this point it looks like a failed test that you now want to get rid of but don't know how, because players are going to want their money back. I don't want to see this test fail just becasue you don't have time or the man power to make a few changes to make it work. You guys NERFed it 2 years ago probably figuring it would fail and it could quietly die and the players found a way to revive it by exploiting it for XP.

At this point why do I even care? Because this crazy Dungeon Maker is awesome. I am a Decorator/Builder I decorate players houses in EQ2 and I build in Landmark. I want both games to grow and flurish. In EQ2 I use Dungeon Maker as my Wearhouse to store all my building supplies.

Say I have just been invited to a raid I want to go my backpacks are full of building supplies I open DM Wearhouse drop the supplies and leave DM Wearhouse and I am right back where I was when I was asked to join the raid. I need to meet with someone they don't want to leave where they are to come to me or I to them. I go into my DM Wearhouse make them a trustee and tell them to open their new Dungeon and hit the edit button. We meet and we both leave dungeon and go back to what we were doing. No interruption.... My biggest fear is that Dungeon Maker will be deleted for lack of player use.

You want new content Dungeon Maker can be new content. In Landmark I set up chests on my claim I make items to put in the chests. I set the permissions for players to take from the chests. Players come shopping for free items. They have fun doing that and some times they leave items in the chests or a thank you note. I fill the chests back up every day or so.
Please it is all about the fun. Don't take the fun away.

Vexrm Member Said,

"Neverwinter has player made dungeons.
Neverwinter allows those dungeons to drop loot of your level. I think it's a 90% drop for whites and then everything else is very
rare. However, you could, in theory, get a dungeon drop. They also include a daily quest to run these dungeons rewarding you with level appropriate tokens."

If something like this could be done it would make the Dungeon Maker rise again to being some new and great content for the EQ2 gaming community.

Exploits or Pay to Win
Buy a Heroic Char with SC
Buy 320 AAs Leveling with SC
Buy 280 AAs Leveling with SC
Buy or earn XP Bonus Potions
Double XP Weekends
Mentor down to PL in Lower Level Dungeons
Buy Debt Forgiveness Wands
Pay a player to be PLed
Leveling AAs in DM
Leveling XP in DM

All of these by-pass content
Even Normal leveling by-passes content

If a person by-passes content, they have no gripe. They need to go mentor down and have fun.

What happened to Play it your way? (Oh that was Sonys way not our way.)

Bottom line it is all about the money. The game needs to make money to keep going. I think we are all of one mind set. We all want the game to keep going and be a lot of fun to play and we want a fair shake in the process. We are all here to help.

Azari.Lite

Exactly. Why does it seem that whenever there is something good and fun in the game, it ends up getting the nerf sledge hammer. I enjoyed the change and distraction an occasional DM run would give me. It was convient also for occasionaly running an alt through for a level. (I have over twenty, will have to count them sometime).
Only a few posters here seem to be against the idea that we should have diversity and be able to play the game OUR way, not be forced into a tight, narrow grind fest and have to slug our way around. And to repeat myself and others here, I have NEVER heard anyone complaining about someone beating them to level 100 unfairly. Seriously getting to level 100 was not a race /contest for most of us, just a nice end result. Im still not maxed on my main yet either. I stopped using the DM to do the main content, its new after all. Now im woundering if I should have concentrated on the DMS instead of the new content with this inconsiderate overnerf. Just would prefer to have had the choice for MYSELF to make. Now a lot of folks will not be putting their dungeons back up, and the incentive to explore will really not be there.
REally, who wants to die a lot without having the ablitiy in that dungeon to earn it back.

What I see here, with the lack of adknowledgement by anyone that just maybe our views should be addressed that the management is going to go ahead and do just what they said they were going to to and the player base be d*****. Good way to add to the anger of the players. Just like the attitude of management back in eq1. I had hoped for better. You, EQ2 management promised better. Promised to listen to our input, promised to work on the game for us and introduce stuff we liked. Well we like the DMs. We don't like Nerfs, expecally with key features.

If this is the future attitude, I will not be bothering with eq next or landmark, as I don't need the aggravation. Seriously, I absolutely HATE NERFS! Especially ones that are so heavy handed and tone deaf.

I had posted earlier in this thread but have been giving the issue more thought.

Removing Dungeon Maker experience will not solve the problems of power-levelers. In every single mmo I have played (and I have played quite a few since starting SWG in 2003) there are always a group of players that choose to get their characters up to max level as quickly as possible and pay other players to help them do it. This is just a fact. The reason why the heroic characters are so appealing is also due to this fact. Some have the patience to slowly work at it but others do not.

I actually have a heroic character. It was level 50 something when I purchased those other levels for her. I could have just left her alone and would have if I hadn't been curious about how that particular feature worked. I am not upset at SOE for putting in that feature - the reasons were sound - new people to EQ2 wanted to play with their friends and that made it possible. That I was able to purchase it having an older account was just a perk for me. Being level 85 doesn't mean they are max level though - having been around EQ2 long enough I know that while buying those characters are loaded with perks - it definitely doesn't mean they can stop there. I still have a long way to go with my templar to reach max level and it didn't help at all with her crafting levels. I personally don't care though when I get to max with any of my characters.

I have a very limited understanding of why games like EQ2 are designed the way they are or what their bottom line is. However, I would think one of the bottom lines would be to have the players financially supporting the development company of it for as long as possible whether through subscription or through things like the Marketplace. Therefore it does seem counterproductive to allow people to level in 30 days or less in any way. This means the onus is on the companies putting out the title to create content that people find interesting. So why not ask them? It's easy enough to start a forum post asking for what people find fun.

This thread was started to let the playerbase know about a change to one of the ways people are using to level up their characters. Others have put in their opinion and it reminded me that the power-levelers always existed and will continue to exist. Really all this change will do is change the venue of where they do it.

I want to suggest a change to the core mechanics of EQ2 so that power-leveling can not be done instead of nerfing a way to gain experience. The more things to do that give experience add variety to game-play. I also want to say that perhaps the problem isn't with mechanics but with player attitude (as some people are not using Dungeon Maker to speed through leveling). That is also a bit more tricky.

I can not honestly say that anyone that power-leveled had a negative effect on my game play. I have my personal opinions on it (I do not approve of it) but to say its ruining my EQ2 experience? No. People complain regardless - and if it wasn't about this it would be about something else. I guess that is a question I will ask though.

Which people do you want to hear complaining? Those that are enjoying playing the game and all it has to offer or those that are here only to reach max level and then complain that there is nothing to do? Which gets me back to one of my previous points. Players like me are enjoying all the content in EQ2 - the content you are putting in is fun. I have been in EQ2 for 3778 days now and only now have I begun posting on the forums. I am doing so now because I feel this topic is important because a fix for a problem that has always existed and will always exist in an online game is going to negatively affect the fun I have here while logged in. The ones that are having fun are going to be the ones that are loyal - the ones that are just here to reach max and complain - well I just don't have the same confidence to say they will still be here.

I bought some of these yesterday and today not seeing them in the marketplace (checked today on several toons on my main account) and no boxes. Scratch that. I had several in a shared bank box. Now I will get on a character who possesses none of the boxes and check again. Yep, that was the issue. You cannot have any Box of Endless Usefulness in the shared bank, your inventory, or your private bank, if you want to buy more. Probably not in house vault as well. Didn't check that.

this is mostly your and a few players opinion and a sad situation. i have spent SC to build and share DM. i have used it to top off xp when quests run out and i have used it to test spell rotation... but never to skip content and im sure only a very few players have done this but now even they will bail due to the fact they are forced to Play Your Way...

i don't understand, the change is not overdue. we will be lucky we dont see a handful of rage quits which EQ does not need. what we need is MORE content that is innovative not just removing things that dev doesn't want to support any more.

sad you don't understand. what next? remove mercs?

What I don't understand about all this, is why the DM is such a big deal for the devs, I ran one once or twice to see what it was all about and decided it wasn't for me, so went back to the main content. It doesn't effect my game if folks go in to home made dungeons to shoot through levels. My friends and I meander through the regular content at our own pace. Why the need to take this toy away from people, judging by the outcry, they like it.
Surely this is a game, let us play our game, our own way. We invest our time and money to get enjoyment from it.

As I said earlier, I could debate points on both sides, but ultimately I feel the error is on SOE. I think I went through my first DM a day before they made this announcement. I have discussed this with friends, and I don’t see the issue. I understand that the experience was already reduced, and our general consensus was that the experience as it is/was at the point of the announcement was not just incredibly better than running quest. It is still work. The idea that you can “quickly gain experience without risk” is funny. I played EQ (1) for many, many years… there is not any risk in EQ2, period. As far as how long it takes to level, well that’s laughable. I still died in the dungeons, trying to go to fast. Some are very well made. I found a few to be very fun… after all, that is the point to this game… to have fun right? It’s a shame that very few will bother exploring them now. Sad.

The initial post sounds like SOE got their feelings hurt, because people were not just over joyed with the new expansion. I, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment, have not purchased or looked at it so I can only go by what I have heard/read. SOE’s reaction to this resembles that of a child who has had a bunch of silly kids call them a name. Instead of fixing the issue, they overact, in a way to imply. “don’t do that, or you will be punished”. Shame on you SOE.

To those that abused the system to reach the max level in hours… you defeat the argument about leveling to 85 and that of the redundancy of running the older content again. It is supposed to take a long time to max your level… it is supposed to be hard. Without the work, the reward is hollow. There is no honor, glory, or value and it speaks of your need for external reinforcement to make you feel “special”. Shame on you.

Now, I hate criticism without ideas of how to improve something, so bear with me please.

First off, I think any time that financial gain is a quest of how something game wise is developed, and not a pure focus on benefit to the game, it cheapens the game. I was ok with the market place offering visual aesthetics, but once you allow real world currency to offer an in game advantage you have now altered the game world. For this reason, your argument of skipping content, or reward without risk is very weak. Anyone wishing, (and able), to spend real word currency has an advantage, and it slants the in game economy. As I mentioned before, I played EQ for a long time, and the only option was a monthly fee. Even as I began playing EQ2 (in beta), there was the all access fee, but that was it. All game content was for the progression of the game. I left for many years, and did return, after the free to play was in place. It was in fact a good “gateway drug”, and I am now again, an all access member. Because I was away, there is a lot of content I am still exploring. In fact, I out level the content before I can finish the quest line. One of the reasons I went all access was so I could move my slider to 100% AA… but now that is not going to make much difference either. I have a few friends I recruited to start back with me, but we are still short numbers to complete some of the raid content. So… I told you ALL of that so you can understand my suggestions:

To address the argument that people are ‘skipping content’: They say they are not… they already have 3, 4, 5, 15, etc. characters that they have run through the content… so…

1. Increase the vet xp gain for every character someone has at max level. Will this decrease you xp potion sales… maybe, but make the bonus higher for all access members. And… call me crazy, but give me a way to throttle and/or turn it off so I can take my time if I want.

2. Develop lower level content. There is already a lot there, but maybe a quest line or two wouldn’t hurt. Make it solo able, but make it hard.

You don’t have to keep people busy in just the expansion. Borrow from your namesake and look at things such as monthly “Hot Zones” where the xp gain is higher for that month. Adjust the Crono XP so that, if you truly want them to play the content, it is beneficial for them to Crono down to a lower level to go through these “Hot Zones”.

Enough for now. Sorry so long winded.

I myself and my wife together have 5 accounts. We didn't use DM's for power leveling. We used it to get Marks, shinnies, add/ons. We also paid for all 5 accounts to have collector additions then. 1 perk was the DM's. So now its a ohhh well you paid and its not here. I understand some people used it for other reason yet who did they hurt? No one they Played their way. My grandson has a toon on a few of the accounts and all he plays is DM's for the tokens. He buys stuff for house and making his own DM's. Yet now its sorry it doesn't work that way anymore. SOE said no cause they are not getting the $30.00 for their Power leveling. Next SOE will say this is how the game is to be played and either play this way or you can not play. WTF you bill my Credit card every month for 5 accounts and 5 packs every year I PAY MY MONEY TO PLAY. You pay my accounts then tell me how to play.

The vet bonus of 20% per max level character with a max of 200% is quite fine - especially now that this bonus is applied to certain types of quest experience. Stacked with vitality, someone with the maximum bonus earns triple XP even before the application of a potion or any server-based temporary bonus. Also, anyone who is an actual veteran is probably not buying XP potions, especially not at the outset of creation of a new character. I have 10 years of vet on my account - I get something like 40 XP potions handed to me for free on every character I make, half of which are 110%, some more than 1 hour. None of these changes were made with the sole intent of generating sales.

Additionally, your second XP-related request already exists. You can right-click you experience bar and disable bonus experience at will. I think you can even disable gaining experience altogether - but quest XP still applies (but if you have the ability to adjust your AA slider, you can set it to 100% AA and the XP will funnel there instead).

In regard to item two, they are not going to put forth a significant portion of developer time to reinvent the wheel on the older content. They may put in some streamlined questlines or a small revamp of a newbie experience here and there, but don't expect anything grand.

The main focus they are implementing in response to player request though is more level-agnostic dungeons. This benefits players of all levels and account ages and is a better use of resources - both human and virtual. Once they are able to balance them so that players above 90 can partake, it will be even better overall. The older content is revitalized in this manner without having to specifically chrono for it, and it grants appropriate loot and relevant XP the entire time.

It can't be easy. I can Not be easy to see something once intended... fall victim to, in this case, merely a way to level One's character ...ummm Faster? Sooner? Who knows. Get outside and play, and blow that stink off kiddos!

Wife and I began this game on Lucan Dlere and Vox. Countless changes and updates/fixes because "we player" have to break it's intent to find it's worth. Sad for you guys and girls that dream up great content and implement the goodies.

I don't agree with pulling the Marks etc.. I mean why can't everything just continue as is? just Stop the Xp reward. There, incentive is back - Marks to be earned and goodies to be bought. I love see what I can get from Mystery crates ...that the correct name?

Holy "heck" levels Bat Freak ! Did I read that right:
"...:we don't want to spend weeks to get max level, so now..." Are you kidding me? Weeks?

Some folks need to be fined and confined man - to Everquest for a week of grind action in Burning Wood or Karnors Castle.
If you ask me, some of THAT is what's missing. Get these whiners hooked up with what Real leveling is. Man those where the days. You heard that Ding for adventure level and it was a BLOCK PARTY.
But... I digress.

I came here to say thanks SOE. Thank you for the tireless ( and seemingly in many cases 'thankless' ) effort. I Know we pay for it, so don't start with that tired noise. They do what they do and we do what we do. Period. Thank you for asking the tough question regarding the environments and for the sake of the whole, have to digital stones to do what needs to be done. Even
under fire.

I like DM. Even though I'm among those distinguished individuals that have Not as yet had or taken sufficient time to enjoy all its benefits. Just Drop the experiencing (that a word?) and keep the good stuff. Everyone wins.

T1st

I have been following this for days, and finally decided I should log in and comment.

Why has Sony made no comment on the very significant question of "Why Remove Tokens?"

Even if we admit that it is about the money lost in sales of heroic characters and repair kits, they can simply remove the repair kits from the DM market, and leave DMs as a playable, enjoyable part of the game.

That they claim this is about leveling too fast without content is bad enough, and something I find greatly insulting.
But that they won't even bother to respond to a very simple question makes it clear they have little concern for those of us who still play II.

I think those who suggested I abandon all SOE games when they broke, then killed Vanguard, were right after all.

Perhaps I am lucky that my AllAccess subscription came due just following this announcement, so I was able to end it at the correct time.
But I still hope they reconsider destroying the DM system entirely.

From the patch notes:

DUNGEON MAKER
Dungeon Maker dungeons no longer grant experience or rewards. Players can still spend existing tokens in the Marketplace.

It sounds like they listened to this request.

Fair enough, but my point here is that the "player" argument is that that's apparently not fast enough. I agree with you however, that should be enough. I too have 11 years of vet bonuses... I have yet to use any XP potions.

Thank you for this info! I was unaware that could be done.

I know, The focus is on the high end game. I just wish there was something for the returning or new player. I have gathered a few friends that are similar, but doing raids such as the epic weapons at the appropriate levels is not possible unless you join a larger guild and they help, and then they are just running you through it. I wish they would advertise or find a way to interest new players. For now it seems it's just a mad rush to level. I do love the level agnostic zones. Great work there. Maybe taking some of the older raid zones and revamp them to this style would work/help.

Ain't that the truth!!! How long do you think they would last if they had to wait for a spot to open in a group, or the group to leave from the "camp" you need. Or camp a named/place holder for days just to get the "shrink item" it rarely drops.

No, this is the same thing they stated at the beginning of this post. They have not addressed the reasons for removing the marks.

Upon logging onto an account that had not previously purchased Dungeon maker or any of the other AOD feature pack items, I found that the AOD bundle is no longer available. It appears now that rather than being able to purchase the full set for 4000 SC ($40) one now has to buy each one separately which comes to 6000 SC now that the DM is gone. Quite a jump for someone interested in buying all the features. That's about as much as I paid for the collectors edition of it when it originally came out! And it doesn't include channelers, freeblood or aerakyn.

I'm hoping this is an unintentional result of making the DM free to everyone (since before when the bundle was available if you bought one part of the bundle individually you had to buy the rest individually as well).

If it is intended, this is exactly the sort of thing you really should announce.

It doesn't sound like they listened to anything to me. Sure, it says players can spend existing tokens, but new rewards will no longer be granted.

Why do I have the feeling that that was COMPLETELY intentional?

The bundle option we offered is no longer available since the DM feature was part of that package. They are taking a look at putting together a new bundle for the remaining features, but there is no set date for availability at this time.

We those of us who bought the DM feature either with SC or in the bundled xpac release get a refund in the form of SC?

Update Notes: Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Discussion in 'Game Update Notes (Live)' started by Bunji, Yesterday at 5:42 PM.d

1. DUNGEON MAKER
   The Dungeon Maker feature is now available to all players.
   Dungeon Maker dungeons no longer grant experience or rewards. Players can still spend existing tokens in the Marketplace.
   Most avatars and toolbox objects are available to all players.
   Spawners no longer drop in the world.
   Current dungeons have been unpublished

Why? You just killed the reason whey most people go into these Dungeons. What is the reason to remove all XP and rewards from these zones?