Latest In-Game Poll--What was the objective?

I'm not clear on the objective of the latest in-game poll, but let be frank in my assessment that it has minimal value. Why do I say that? First, it was not developed by someone who has any time in the current xpac as a player, and if it was reviewed, I'd say the same of the reviewer. That's not a criticism, it's an honest assessment.
Those of us ordinary players already know the answer.

First of all, asking players to choose whether they adventure or TS/Harvest as an either/or choice is ludicrous. You have no choice but to do both. Either that, or you're buying fistfuls of kronos to sell on the broker so you can get the plat to either buy the weapons already made or the harvests or the gear for infusing. This game essentially requires you to constantly infuse your gear or level your weapons. With the recent changes making any dropped gear no salvage, no transmute, no trade, etc., you are required to either do it yourself by harvesting and making the infusers or buying it on the marketplace, while rendering PQs and key quests virtually worthless for the above reasons.

The poll goes on to ask you (pick one) whether you solo, group with guildies/friends, pickup group, or raid.
Spoiler alert---many of us are doing many of these things--not just one of them. This is current xpac game mechanics boys and girls. Granted, there are some who just want to harvest and others who just solo, but in CD, it's difficult to progress without being actively involved. Using myself as an example, I solo using weekly outdoors, harvesting daily to get the rares for crunching weps and making infusers. I literally split time doing adventure and harvesting/TSing. equally. Then there's grouping with friends/guildies to get celestial done or other goods and raiding for better gear, etc. Seldom do PQs and stopped doing key quests with the ninja nerfs to the gear because I'm not wasting time just to throw gear away. That's like buying a ticket to go on a roller coaster ride, but the ride doesn't work. Again, I'm not clear on what the objective was for doing that, but someone clearly has a disconnect going on.

I'm not venting here. I've done my fair share of developing polls for research purposes. One of the principle rules is having a clear objective for the information you're trying to get and then framing your choices around those. Under no circumstances do you confuse the poll taker by failing to grasp the realities of the environment they're currently in. Or put another way, you don't ask a chef how the customer likes their version of General Tsao's chicken when it's a French restaurant.

Again, I applaud the effort to tap into your customer's current playing conditions. Unfortunately, the way your poll was set up with single answer choices among many activities most of us are doing is simply not going to be productive--at least, not in my opinion.

I just did the poll and while I agree this will likely lead to nothing useful, I did not feel forced to pick answers I disagreed with, like most polls in the past.

Questions were not either/or, they were which of these choices do you do the most or prefer to do the most? Like a lot of people I do all of the above but I do have preferences and things I tend to do more. I found the choices easy.

I guess if you feel that you do two or more of the things equally then you will have problems answering. But just tell yourself, it's all meaningless anyway and then move on. :>

I just wonder if the folks on Nagafen got the same poll.

I have to agree. I solo, I raid, I craft, I decorate houses. The proportions vary depending on what is going on. During a house swap, I might spend almost all my time in Norrath decorating. During Summer Ethereals I would be doing a bunch of heroic grouping. I only raid a couple of times a week, but I do spend some time getting ready to raid, including all the harvesting and crafting that comes with needing to level planar weapons and infuse new gear.

Agree totally with Sigrdrifa. I enjoy ALL the things on the poll, and most of the people I know in game are the same. I have toons on live and TLE servers and they are both getting plenty of play-time. I do tend to solo when I'm levelling, but I love to raid and group too. I love to adventure, but I also love to tradeskill and decorate. So being asked to pick just one of each is pretty .. meh.

I looked at the poll and I somewhat disagree.

The first 3 questions are fine (they might have altered the wording since the OP) . Keep in mind that neither this forum or Discord/Twitter are representative of Norath's population. We all play in our own "Bubble" and are sure that if only EQ2 would become more casual/hardcore/decorating/solo/raid/tradeskill centric it would be a winner
Question 4&5 yeah they miss an "all of the above" answer.

[x] I spend my time LFG.

as one of the 5 or so people still playing on nagafen - yes i got the poll.

i thought the first question was stupid as i'm a max lvl crafter there and there's nobody to craft for, And i've already decorated a house with quest items and the mushroom grotto they accidentally put up in month 2, And i do not raid and wouldn't even if there were ever a full raid of peeps logged in, So there's nothing left to do but Adventure.

the choice between solo/duo or doing heroic content isn't very good as i'm used to duoing heroic content. i'm not really sure what they're calling "heroic content" anymore - what i call "heroic content" is dungeon crawls. with this latest gear revamp, they claimed that MC < Heroic gear drops. the overland no-up or ^ nameds in dlw clearly don't need a group and the gear is definitely > MC - in fact, it's BIS except for the odd piece from the epic dragons in CL and Ant. when you go to dungeons from SH on up, you're mostly getting gear drops for the previous tier and the legendary/fabled is mostly < MC.

don't remember the other questions until the last one and i have to say: i prefer playing on TLE servers but only if they include PvP and definitely NOT for nostalgia reasons which the poll indicated as the reason for wanting to play on TLE. my reason for wanting to playing on a PvP enabled TLE server is that there PvP enabled at a time before all the flying mounts, PQs, and p2w were the final nail in the coffin for the original pvp servers And i don't really enjoy any content past the original game and maybe DoF.

What I don't understand, about this poll, is how the results can possibly be valid or useful. Each character gets the poll so, someone like me, who has well over 125 characters, spread over 4 servers, could answer it 125 times. Even if it was limited to one submission, per account, I have 6 accounts so my opinion would count 6 times.

I spend most of my play time doing tradeskills, followed by adventuring (it's hard to harvest without adventuring and leveling up), and then decorating. It isn't the order I would prefer, but it is what the game requires as others have mentioned.

actually, if you will recall the "Flag" received, one poll PER Account. not per character on said account.
so, it could be thought the poll directed to the owner of the account.
vague yet arbitrary questions notwithstanding.

it's impossible to solo beyond the content meant to provide gear enabling heroic grouping ?
there are no Heros in EQ2. No trials for heracles ?
Same rewards for the same effort, and group/raid content needs motivation besides gear

I haven't seen this poll, but what's been described here is consistent with what I've seen in the past: the people designing these surveys have absolutely no idea what they are doing - and this goes back years and years.

Regardless of what its for, I still give my input.

There wasn't an option for liking to solo/playing my way/raiding

Filled it out and promptly forgot about it...til now. I swear, it doesn't take much to send some gamers into WOT (Wall of Text) mode.

I think the games in a pretty frustrating state atm and the poll failed to let paying players give feed back as they would have wanted I mean there was no spot to add additional comments .

The poll isn't for the players, it's for the developers. They were asking for the information they wanted. If they wanted open ended comments, they could have asked for them or they could just read here. *shrug*

Thanks for the clarification, Ceyarrecks. I answered the poll, on one character and then logged in another one to see if she also got the poll. She did, so that's why I wondered if we were supposed to answer with all our characters.

As strange as it may seem, there could be a reason for wanting all characters to answer a poll. My play style changes with classes as some are better able to solo than others.

I have characters who do a lot of decorating, others focus on harvesting, and still others do a lot of adventuring. Unfortunately, none of my characters normally group or raid anymore as I have to get up every few minutes and move around. Putting a character on "follow" rarely works plus it makes me feel bad that I'm not pulling my share of the load.

Sony and DB designed their dungeons to discourage players from abusing auto-follow. All those twists, turns and obstacles are part of what makes dungeon crawling so hard for me. I can adventure overland for hours but quickly get taxed when in most dungeons. I'm not complaining about how they construct dungeons--just stating why it is hard on me to dungeon crawl.

Personally, I don't want to see any of the main reasons for playing reduced. Players should be able to solo, group, or raid as they feel inclined. The same with harvesting, tradeskills, adventuring, questing, and decorating. I've stuck with EQ (and later, EQ2) all these years because I could do all of these things.

I've had to change my play style many times over the years and it was great not to have to change games when an illness, injury, work, or family responsibilities, limited how I could play. I think it is also nice that DB offers nostalgia, PVP, and free-trade servers.

But it may be that trying to be everything to everyone is cutting into profits so DB is looking for areas to cut back on developing new content and that is the purpose of their latest poll. Hopefully, the poll will give them the information they want. I wish they would share their findings with us as I would love to know the preferences of other players.

I agree with most of which has been said here. I think although the idea of the poll was good, the answers you got from me aren't complete. Should have been able to choose a few answers on a couple of those questions. And a fill in the blank at least for feedback.

My Game style isnt static, its dictated by where we are in the current release cycle. Right now, I do 2 things I raid, and I harvest for rares. And I have come to loath one of those 2 things. And then when the Celestial Doc is up I do a few heroic zones. and the bare min PQs cuz lets face it NOBODY like the air PQ. I would love to rune zones more, but again the current mechanics have changed how you can form groups. Pug groups on AB are almost non existent. And why would I run zone at this point, there is nothing worth getting, I have so many coins already with nothing to spend them on.... No BiS gear to target for... And that little venture into "fabled" Runyeye was a joke. No one I know runs that, not even for the shinies. Speaking of shines stop with the dang No trades, as of this second only 1 person in my guild has even completed the collection, because its impossible to get the no trade. If they have to be there make sure 1 drops at the end of every zone, that would get me going again,,, but as a wizard the neck piece you get at the end really isnt worth it.

The gear thing is totally out of hand this expac. Hell Im not even sure what tier I have anymore, and I made an excel sheet.and then to have to re- infuse it all again. Not to mention the darn weapon thing. You know it would have been a nice bone to allow us to get back the planar weapon things buy breaking down a fully level weapon. All this has led to my complete HATE of harvesting. 1000 rares to fully level a weapon. insane. And to have to do that well at least 3 or 4 times, with 2-3 slots......

What I dont mind is the Resolve gateway, that seems to have even some things out a bit. Even with t5 or whatever raid gear, heroic zones are still not a pushover. Cant just roll thru them unless you have a OP group. Unfortunately its also the problem with casual heroic groups. without the correct makeup, or at least 1 great healers and 1 uber DPSer and a power feed of some sort alot of zones cant be done by casual play style.

Anyway back to answers if I had my dream set up, it would be 65% Heroic Zones or group style of play, 25% Raid 10% tradeskilling , like harvesting and the like. I'm really not a decorator so props out to those that are. For me MMOs are a social game so thats where I want to spend the most time. with other players. Currently because of the heroic set up I tend to play with almost always just people I know. Every once in a while add a new person to the mix, but the dream set up would be for grouping to be easier, that might just honestly be a lack of plays on AB though. 2 years ago I Puged group 90% of the time now its like 5% or less.

Anyway I hope these more in depth answers help the devs in going forward. Just my opinion, not looking for troll responses.

Thanks for posting this, OP, and expanding on your thoughts. I largely agree and felt the same way when answering.

If anyone associated with the company cares to have the thoughts of a very long-time player who has been loyal to the EQ universe, here they are:

Regarding the question of how I like to spend my time. My strong preference is to raid, and outside of raid times to do heroic grouping. Tradeskilling/harvesting is a necessary evil for me and I don't do it any more than I have to, but the reality is that in this expansion if one wants to contribute to their raid, then they need to do the tradeskill stuff. Start with the fact that the CD Tradeskill line is what got me the recipes needed to craft weapons to kill the high-end mobs because of their super special buff. So the necessity of that is apparent. And add in the fact that planar weapons need to be leveled up, and it takes 500 (!!) greater planar weapon essences per item. I have max-leveled, I don't know, 8 or 9 weapons this expac, so you can do the math on what that's involved.

But let's dive into the raids a bit. The gating in this expansion has been ridiculous to say the least. We were at least alleviated from having to acquire every single upgrade, in order, for eight tiers of raid armor across seven armor slots for 24 players. That's more than 1300 drops a raid was expected to acquire when the expansion went live, and that's only for the armor slots. Nevermind the other 14 slots which all have similar progression, or the fact that you stealth changed bonus infusing so that lots of top end players have been lateral with their character growth for months now.

On top of that you made it so that mobs of certain tier can only be damaged using weapons which can only be crafted after a player earns 50 of a very rare item. Basically, once a raid can reliably complete all 3 raid weeklies each player can earn 6 a week, and there are scattered drops to be spread around beyond that. And in order to kill all raid mobs we need to make three separate weapons, meaning we need 150 of these drops. So what has happened is that for most of this expansion, half the raid more or less stands around because they can't damage the enemy while a few poor souls break their fingers because they have to spam attacks for 40 minutes. Which is what we have to do as a raid to progress because, you know, we need that sweet sweet resolve, but let me tell you, as a player whose role is to DPS, standing around and casting my handful of buffs/debuffs every few minutes does not keep me very engaged in the game.

Outside of raids, I enjoy heroic content. Pick up grouping has been close to dead for this entire expansion and here's why. In the beginning of the expansion, heroic content was extremely difficult. This has been touched on a bunch so I'm not going to spend much more time on it, but "the requirement to be more than you are to participate" summed it up well. You can't beat the mobs without having the gear that you get from beating the mobs. People became very closed-off on this and only grouped with players they knew and trusted because even then heroics were a slog. Now, heroic rewards are basically worthless to the players who can reliably complete these zones, so they don't have a reason to go, and new/returning players can't get the help they need to catch up. That is if they want to catch up with the dozens of adornments and other things they need besides gear. I know quite a few players whose frustration with the heroics curve in this expansion led them to stop playing.

Speaking of catching up, perhaps it's time to remove the Guk Strong debuff so players who want to finish their Guk rune can get it done?

I appreciate that getting it exactly right is tough. Make things too easy and people complain and lose interest. Make things to tough and people complain and lose interest. Remove gates and people blow through content, then complain that there is no content and lose interest. Put gates in and people complain about the gates and lose interest. I can't say that I know exactly what the answers are. But I can say that I've enjoyed just about every other expansion more than I've enjoyed this one, which has felt a lot like busywork at times.