EverQuest II Developer "Ask Me Anything" Chat Logs Now Available

Also my friends def pet 2.0 has mega increased his damage and my friend has no idea about what he is doing lol .

Feldon - thank you so much for posting this! Much appreciate that.

One point I think is important to mention
Burnt key can now drop in ANY ZONE of OF (not just OF1)
Burnt key drops now multiple times per day

I asked questions about -

~ What impacts, expectations, or concerns from the poorly mismanaged Landmark game that was led by Holly mean for EQ1 and EQ2. No answer.
~ If the next expansion will address any issues with players calling the current one P2W or a horrendous grind. Basically what could convince me as a new player to the game. No answer.
~ If the co-op group vs. group thing has an option not to be competitive. I don't care for competition against others. No answer.
~ If there was anything cool with tradeskills, such as raising a secondary profession on the same branch. They answered, no plan to do anything like that.
~ Mercenaries being only purchasable in an all-or-nothing type of way, nonrefundable etc. No way of knowing how they work or if I'll even like them unless I pay up first. Was sent a tell saying it's something to consider for low-tier (I don't know what that is in terms of mercs). (I did the Raffik timeline only to get walled by the "Buy the feature to hire Raffik!", which I consider bullcrap and convinces me more not to buy it) Right now the "buy it before you try it" way it is now I will just avoid. Meanwhile in EQ1 you get free cowardly mercenaries even with F2P accounts, and if you're All-Access you can hire better ones after some questing.
~ Asked again about the P2W direction the game seems to be going. No answer, which likely means yes.

Holly didn't answer anything, but she was there. /shrug. I don't feel let down that what I felt were the more important questions went unanswered and more of the fluff "can i have a paper plane mount" questions would, that's what an AMA basically is. Maybe they could have been more specific in saying the AMA should only relate to the next expansion.

I wanted to go to dev chat and tried to log into discord, but could not get in. Wasn't sure where to go.

What is the name of the planet that Antonica is on?

Guess you wanted to see questions that people care about, well then..

Will we ever be a knoll? Because I saw a knoll before

I'll go ahead and give some reasoning as to why you were not answered and maybe it will shed some light on why others were not answered as well. Skipping any mentioned that were answered.

This was not answered because it was combative and worded in a way as to attempt to take a jab at the development team for things that happened in other game(s) outside of EQ2. As this was an EQ2 dev chat it wasn't the appropriate setting for this question.

This was addressed already with Kander saying that the spell upgrades in the expansion would be the same way as past expansions with spell scrolls dropping/crafted etc. The only change is that you will now need the previous tier to get to the next tier as we felt it was too easy to bypass progression in spells by just getting the highest version. This hurt crafters as well as invalidated many drops which also led to complaints. Because it was already addressed by a previous question we chose to move on to another player's question to get as much coverage as we could.

This wasn't even a question more than it was just a statement.

I think if you take a look at the logs of questions, you will find we answered quite a few and we didn't avoid difficult questions. Answers on the Burnt key, fragments, p2w concerns, raid mitigations, resolve, public quests, itemization, class balance, etc. We are not trying to avoid any questions specifically and we are attempting to answer as much as we can to be more transparent with the community. If there are questions you feel were missed or need to be answered please try to attend one of the other AMA dev chats on other servers and see if you can get it answered there. Remember though, you get further being constructive or asking in a way that is conducive to an answer. Throwing an insult or masked insult (not saying you did, but others have) is not a good way of getting an answer.

Hope that helps clear some things up. If not feel free to shoot me/us a PM and we can discuss it.

Errrrorrrrrorrorororo if you can update your list,

In regards to tank agro the logic was "Its the GROUPS responsibility to assure agro, not just the tanks, everyone should work for it" (Paraphrased - would love a red name to verify so i can send silly people here )

Caith(i think) Also said he would look at adding tank stats to the SK EPIC v2 weapon as its the only tank epic without.
Cant remember who said it - probably ninja? -
<DEV> Will look at nightmares at see why its not working as intended for defilers. (Paraphrased, think i spotted it on the Maj'Dul AMA)

A few more tidbits...
Kander Might consider removing restrictions etc on current AA trees (But no new AA's)
<DEV> will look at fixing CoV so it doenst go on cooldown UNLESS it works
Kander : Summer ethereal is currently planned to be a mix of RNG and coins w a vendor.. (sounds like the ToT system)
Im sure there was more.

thanks for the read, Feldon.
As a potential returing player, it all seems confusing and I'd really like to know if they ever had returning players in mind at all concerning KA.
From what I've read so far, it doesn't seem that way

I appreciate your answers, Gninja. There was a lot of chatter I couldn't keep up with, and similar questions/answers probably didn't come to me as similar because I'm still just a sub-100 newb.

It's hard not to be a bit combative in some questioning and I'm sorry it feels that way, but Daybreak has been far more insulting. If a ship sinks the first thing to do is ask the captain for details, and in this case the captain said nothing and continued sailing two other ships. I know neither you nor other developers present probably can't answer for that, but the captain was there and present. If it's not the appropriate setting, where is? There are no other venues.

My question on the co-op competitive thing was badly worded, sorry. I meant to ask if its possible to do the event/mission or whatever it is *without* competing with another group, meaning just clear to the end or whatnot without having to grief the other team. Of course only one team will win in the end, but I might enjoy it more without interference and I'm too kind to interfere with others. I guess a better way is, can it just be a time trial race? Or is it a race in stages where you HAVE to reach/grief the other team to move on?

Spell progression, I had no idea how past expansions worked so others asked it in a better, more specific term. I may loom the P2W term over a lot but that's why I have my fingers crossed for the next expansion.

Again, sorry if I have a heavy tone to my words. I just don't want to see another repeat of Landmark. I'd like to think that if I peel off to play another game for several months, I can still come back to a still-running EQ.

In order to actually skip to the final rank you would need the master (which would be rare at the start of the expac) as well as a rare crafting material (spellshard/foundation) to actually make the grandmaster. At the start of the expac, people are probably making experts until they can slowly upgrade. The crafters would be able to make profit off of the experts, as it takes 3 different crafting classes to make them and it will be what people want. As the game is now, if an ascension ability drops and you don't need it, then it is sold in its current state and usually goes for just slightly under to equal that of the crafted version. Since people have to wait and there is a disparity in the dropped tiers, they just stack up on the broker pushing the price down over timer. There is no real profit to be made for a crafter that way. I am sure anyone can see this across all server brokers. Looking at the broker and the experts that have been there for a while for ascension abilities, it seems like people are making less profit now than what they would be able to make at the start of an expansion when mats and abilities are going for high.

My suggestion would be to allow people to upgrade to expert immediately, then have a tier progression if you want. This time you would need expert to get to master to get to grandmaster, just as you need grandmaster to get to ancient. Otherwise, this will just be another pay to win route for people, which a lot aren't finding tolerable in the first place. This route also makes it harder to keep alts up-to-date.

I have to admit that Revelations was hurting for players and I found myself playing alts for the raids about 70-80% of ToT (mystic and shadowknight), even through progression. Now in order to keep my alts up-to-date, I would have to complete ascension and epic, not including gearing for resolve, to have them at their peak raid readiness and now upgrade all their abilities one at a time to catch up to those who have paid to win. Now I don't even bother with my alts. However, alts aren't the big issue. What are new/returning players supposed to do to catch up? Not only, in the following expansion, will they have to re/gear up, grind ascension, obtain epic, but they will also probably have to obtain the current abilities in order to perform as well as attempt to progress the new abilities in some way, if their apprentice ranks aren't better than current grandmasters/ancients.

As much as I enjoy raiding the content you make Gninja, which is mainly why I play this game, I can't see myself playing the next expansion if the game is going to keep adding in more pay to win systems.

Spell consolidation?? It it that hard to know what you have already. Not enough hotbar space for them means you have too many assist macros or other BS on the hot bars lol.

Major class rebalance. BLs wait for it. Just like the end of COE, you're about to be able to do nothing again(they rebalanced then as well)

Tank threat good?? I guess if you enjoy putting conjys and beast lords with Pallay for amends all the time. (Oh wait class rebalance lol both getting the nerf bat)

Burnt key-cool that can only be given to one person one time as I have a guilty that's gotten it three times lol

Stat inflation- I can see a hit to relevance of pot being lessened.

Cloaks replacing the ts cloak that we all got since we were forced to TS anyway to get our epic- great idea. Ethereal waist with fervor would've been good idea for summer ethereal, just my opinion. It would replace the last tier roost belt that everyone is still wearing instead of replacing something we just got

AAs- could we get nonrelevant aas fixed? Like clerics divine recovery. Everyone is capped. Sure the extra pot for period is there but on need for the rest lol.

Ancestral balm, could we actually make it work. Remove effects with it should create an immunity but it doesn't.

I know with short team you all are busy , but should really look at fixing lots of broken stuff Instead of introducing more stuff and "tweaking" stuff that usually results in things being broken for another 2 weeks.

Oh yea. How about COV. Can we ever get that fixed to work 100% of the time like it's supposed to??

This is not a truthful response by the developers. They are basically saying we are doing this for you because this is what you want. However I am close to 100% sure that almost no one in the eq2 player base likes the upgrading tier by tier. If you plan on doing it this way you should just come out and say we are doing it this way so we can make some extra cash and keep the p2w flowing.

Clarification: It was stated that components for the profession spells will be setup and with the same rarity the same way as previous level increases.

So pretty much only obtainable by throwing a couple hundred bucks to a grand? I am seriously going to have to consider if I will be playing next expansion if it just going to seem like one final money grab. Perhaps try to figure out a way to make more money by doing proper marketing. This is a great game that has been intoxicated with the pay to win disease. Please do not let this disease put this game in a coffin.

Justify it all you like, changing the way we upgrade our spells to the same system employed by Ascension/Epic 2.0 abilities reeks of a cash grab to every EQ2 player and I'd implore you not to go through with it for level 101-110 spells.

They are extremely common now so I don't see that as being an issue if they stay like that, only time will tell if the rarity somehow changes between now and the expansion launch.

^ This. It's been said in the past that raids are built around Expert level abilities, and, in order to get progression on day 1, or even week 1, we won't have the upgraded versions yet unless we p2w. If that's not the intent, then change it back. The p2w is already strong with the ascension abilities, even with the adept/masters added in, due to their rarity. More p2w attempts are not acceptable.

have you seen what the passive damage from the reaper does in higher end content? If you were to just let the reaper attack without hitting any spells, it would not be pretty.

So the way I read this is that it will not be locked by tier. You can jump from apprentice to master without scribing every tier in between. We have never been required to scribe by tier in "previous level increases."

I think some should chill out to be honest. If the rarity is the same as previous levels in spells, I don't see that as pay to win. And the constant bombardment of P2W accusations being thrown around are unwarranted and make some of you sound like "Give it to me now" cry babies.

Just sayin...