May 2016 Producer’s Letter

ok it is the friday of memorial day weekend where is the announcement about the memorial day offerings.

I am in agreement with all the folk that would have liked a "No we don't want more servers" option.

read..on if you are used to grinding...

I like many am a 12 year+ vet of the game and have seen it change over the years so much, some for the better but more for the worse.
It never ceases to amaze me how out of touch with the wants and wishes of your community first Sony and now Daybreak could possibly be.
I like Ethereals, Grand new guild halls, great new loot but I pay a subscription and my willingness to continue lining your pockets is dwindling because I pay and play for fun and you are killing that. I started playing a game called Everquest now I play Evergrind
End game we grind for shinies, status, plat, harvestable's; for unobtainable food ingredients or grandmaster upgrades. We run heroic zones until we are blue in the face to get the correct class gear to drop. I must have run Algorithm 250 times or more and still haven't gotten a chain chest. where is the fun in that? Then to top it all. the hours, days, weeks, months and years of grind are belittled, bewilderment and amazement and other feelings that I can't even describe none of which are good set in, because, for instance, a merchant is introduced giving all the folk that don't work toward it an easy ride to the same level my hard earned work has allowed me to reach. Now the Thalumbra heroic zones are ground for queen coin and status and ...oh yes loot that you just bought because it wouldn't drop and are now cursing that you did.

Now we can look forward to the summer Ethereal grid based on luck so I will spend my time grinding for hours and hours and watch someone new to game get one first click of the mouse and then watch them enjoy the weather and the weapon not get used. Meanwhile my frustration grows.

Why can you not see that Everquest should still have questing not just one signature that you have to GRIND TWICE for 2 adornments which were rewarded because no one could get the previous ones without grinding their fingers to the knuckles.
Questing should offer good rewards, each class or race should have differing quests so playing alts is a different and wonderful new experience.
Create a new Currency exchange in banks so that all currencies can be exchanged into all currencies making none redundant, They can have different values!
Have relative quests for hero's based on their level and stature. I don't want to be killing rats if i'm level 100 but if i'm a lord I may have to quell an uprising, I'm saying I don't feel at end game I should necessarily be doing menial tasks without good reason but would love to have something to work toward long term. I don't want to have to run the same signature line twice for one character...what were you thinking?!


Don't spend time and money on new severs
Spend some money on advertising to fill the ones you have. I don't see a film coming out called "QUEST"!

You have been correcting old content to be relevant with current mechanics, good move.
You have great old zones but rarely anyone in them of their level. correct your mistakes making fabled zones of old is an ok move but not a great one. If you want to better utilize old content introduce more questing to those zones or in those zones. I don't see an issue having differing level quest related mobs in a zone as long as they can be circumvented or invisible at lower levels.

You have now reached a stage which allows players to purchase end game. To me that just makes no business sense at all it kills customer retention which ruins population on servers, regular income. blah blah blah. You are your own worst enemies and you are sytematicaly destroying Norrathian civilization.
One of the worst things this game has seen was the introduction of the ability to buy leveled, geared ready to play characters. You can be level one hundred in hours now, go to a merchant buy gear and be playing end game content. I'm sure I am not the only one that sees the issues this causes. Many players for instance don't know how to play the game or their character which only comes with experience and that has a detrimental effect on players who do. Pugging is a good example of this and can be a game of chance for an hour of fun or sheer hell.

Players need to strive toward a goal to feel achievement at the end. That does not mean grinding is a good thing because the journey needs to be fun and engaging, rewarding incentives along the way as long as they are worthy rewards helps surprise and keep that sense of accomplishment, the end result and reward obviously should be relative, an upgrade appealing and worth the time spent.

It loses it's appeal when a veteran player with 20 plus toons has to repeat this exact quest 20 times over (or 40 sig quests if you want cyan adorns) for the same reward even if the reward is the coolest thing since the sliced bread making machine a differing journey with differing surprises has got to be more engaging.


Basically introducing new servers is not going to improve the gaming experience.

Introducing ultra rare items that need to be found or ground for based on luck is neither fair nor fun.
If I knew the summer was going to offer me a series of difficult quest-lines that would guarantee me a class specific ethereal for each weapon slot upon completion of each quest series and that they included both solo and heroic difficulty along the routes were full of fun excitement and good storylines I might begin to get excited.

wow it feels like I just finished another grind, thanks Daybreak.

It's so disappointing to read this. The people want more content not more stupid @ss servers. Have an anonymous poll in DBG and I bet the majority of your staff think it's stupid too. You can do races and special 'Free Trade' loot on the servers we have. Wake up. You don't have to ride a terrible idea to the grave. Have the courage to let your creative ideas flow.

Love

Instead of trying to get people to start over in order to experience old content they should continue to scale dungeons up to 100, and I think adding an additional scaling factor based on the resolve of the group would be good too. Being able to roflstomp current heroic content is only fun for so long.

I am sorry .. but it is entirely unacceptable that you are waiting to announce this until so late. It is now past the deadline for many working players to request time off. This is poor planning and execution on the community managements part. Please try and do better with your customers in the future.

I don't mean to be a downer but I really don't think you will need to take time off for a Market sale aka=special promotions.

Now we can hope they'll throw in a double something because most players have their pitchforks out currently because of the poll/server announcement.

It is easy for companies to confuse what they want with what their customers want - Happens to all of us in virtually every context imaginable.

IMO, DBG is doing many things right. For example....

(1) The fabled zones are a great idea! I enjoy revisiting these old zones because it takes me back to the days earlier when my friends and I were roaming them and creating all kinds of havoc and mischief. It's an also an efficient way for DBG to recycle existing content and give us something else to do at end game. Well done

(2) The new content is usually pretty good. The encounters are interesting and challenging until we figure them out and gear past them. That's gonna happen in any game, and I enjoy the great creativity they put into designing them. I mean, that's not an easy job at all, and they do a great job with this.

(3) The artwork and animations are still excellent.

(4) It appears they are trying to give us new challenges every quarter or so. This is also great.

(5) The Drunder server is genius!

(6) Cash Shop. I actually think DBG does a really go job with this. I don't use it much, but there are no "pay to win" items in the cash shop like many other games. It's mostly all fun and fluff stuff for houses and appearance, with a few items that allow you level faster if you want to get to end-game. I don't even have a problem with the account feature adds for classes, races, or merc unlocks. These, to me, seem like reasonable and healthy business offers that are healthy for the game.

(7) Fun, non-fighting stuff. The illusions, titles, appearance items, house items, events - this is stuff has always been really well done, and is really fun. Good job


Things they are not, and typically have not done well:

(1) Embrace customer feedback. I am not a game designer, and i can only imagine how complex EQ2 and other games are to get into a product. So, I accept that there are many things that players want that may not be feasible (I also acknowledge that some of the things some players nag for are just plain stupid...).

On the other hand, my perception is that, for the most part, the company really doesn't care a whole lot about what we want. They decide what they want in their planning (what they think will be cool or easier to manage), and that's that. There appears to be a great disconnect between the company it's customers, and not a whole lot of interest in closing the gap.

For example, my personal take on the developer sponsored class improvement threads last year is that they were more patronizing to us than sincere. By and large, it is my belief that all the decisions about what changes were to be made were done before those threads were ever posted. Sure, they might have been looking for a wrinkle or two, but mostly, I believe the decisions were already made, and the vast majority of the player feedback on consensus issues was not addressed or even responded to.

Now, I know we all have different opinions about what we want to see, and obviously DBG can't make everyone happy about every change. But, there is a difference between issues like that and those where there is a substantial convergence of opinion on something that is not working or is not fun. I know that in most cases, not a single thing was done to fix those issues.

(2) Elimination of customer service. This used to be a HUGE selling point for EQ2 over its competitors, and it was an extremely important part of valuable loyalty currency the company enjoyed in the market place. Now, we have people posting on the forums that their credit card was charged when it shouldn't have been, etc, and they have no idea how to go about getting the problem solved. Personally, I have submitted very few tickets over my years of playing, but, I remember just how thankful I was, and how happy it made me to have a GM contact me in game to help me solve the problem. This was a HUGE selling point, and I'm so disappointed to see things where they are today.

(3) RNG. I have no problems with RNG. I have big problems with RNG mechanics that are so conservative it takes all the fun out of playing the game.

(4) Grinding. I have no problems grinding as long as i feel like I am making progress. Take for example deity points. I run a TON of zones on my tank, and i'm at something like 23% in the attribute I'm working. Now with the new gear, this leveling is mostly pointless, and even before this stuff, i had gotten to the point were i really didn't care any more. It's more annoying to sit there and single click 10 points in and watch the meter remain pretty much exactly where it was before. Note that the 100MM status grind really didn't bother me.Sure, it takes a long time, but you can see the needle actually move. This is ok!

(5) Communication. I understand there is a lot of dumb stuff on the forums that doesn't deserve a response. But as noted earlier, there are many items in which there is an overwhelming convergence of opinion that something is broken or not fun. When these issues are ignored, the company alienates its customers. Not a good idea if you want to keep them around.

Perhaps somethings can be fixed right away. Perhaps something won't be fixed until the next round of new content. Perhaps somethings simply can't be fixed. Perhaps some things need clarification.

Well, talk to us! Let us know. Some developers seem to really enjoy interacting with the players, and you know what, the players LOVE them, even when the news isn't so good.

Other developers do not enjoy interacting with us and that tension is clearly felt. This is ok, everyone is wired in their own way, but It would be a great idea to have someone who enjoys social interaction with customers actively engaging with them about their experience. If you don't particularly like people, fine, but find someone who does to handle people/customer stuff

(5) Hype: This is really also a communication issue, but please, Please, PLEASE stop with the over-hyping/spinning stuff that won't be supported by player experience. Candor please, because your credibility is starting to take a serious hit.

Bottom line:

(1) EQ2 is still a pretty good game, and we know the Developers DO care about the game and its customers. But, to be honest, the game is moving into a dangerous place at the moment, sentiment-wise.

(2) The quality of the gaming experience has been deteriorating, and the reason for this (I believe) is because of a fairly large disconnect between what the company wants to accomplish and what players think is fun and enjoyable, with no appearance of a substantive effort to embrace player feedback, communicate with us, and close this gap. Even if the movements in this regard were incremental, I think that if we could SEE you attending to it, it would go a long way to repairing the damage done over the last several years. I mean, maybe you are paying attention to the forums, maybe you are working on stuff, but we don't SEE it, and because of that, customers leave.

(3) Grinding content over, and over, and over with ultra conservative RNG boxes the give us little feeling we can influence our objectives in the game is not fun. If the game is not fun, we'll find something else to do. Figure something else out.

^^^ Absolutely, positively this!

I don't know where you work, but any place I have ever worked you need to give 2 week's notice to get time off, especially for holiday weekends. If you are waiting until the week before to ask for Memorial Day off you are in a bad spot to begin with. If you wanted to game on your day off you should have already asked for that time off a while ago. Not really feeling sorry for poor planning on the player's parts.

I must have a better job than you then.

So you think its acceptable to wait till the VERY LAST MINUTE to announce a weekend event? Must be nice to have such a free and open schedule.

And please, don't feel sorry for me, with an aggressive attitude like that I would rather not be associated with you in any way.

As I thought, double XP, so yes, some additional time to plan around life events would have been nice.

Poor planning and customer service.

I must say I thought they would post it before now under News and Announcements instead of just on the main EQ2 page.

Regardless, we're getting it. Hope you have all the time you need this weekend.

Jesus Maria why there are already double xp weekend, xp goes anyway on real servers quickly, and are the vials or the Agnostic is the leveling just for newcomers easy to quickly..
There are many other things you can do and you should. Silk Daybreak has taken all of Soe is much deteriorated the sevice is horrible atm.
Are all Eu servers have been merged, there is a pure Bot hard on Thurgadin, strange as it is not made according to its Policie say Eula Hand.
What we see again in summer an old Boring overtook zone masquerading as Fabled class performance, well is already difficult some new Wind purely to bring in service. GU100 is atm the biggest Fail Location ever.
Where are the creativen heads at Daybreak received them play comunnity sometimes what they want want, no only be server merges are now to come at random Rare Server.
The point is simply present all increasingly is around Eq2 the Muppet Show, or sit it your goal this game in because to let go abyss.
Here would be times Holly times attached tacheles to speak what you have just before or what will become of EQ2.

What on earth did you just say?

Oh the Guildhalls,, wrong choices,, gives us guildhalls that look good, sorry but I am tired of the big manly looking GH's that are brown brown red or orange,, I want to see something different in a Guildhall. I also want small guilds to be able access a new guildhall. Most smaller guilds will not be able to afford these.
Why different servers, just get rid of heirloom on all items. I have 2 accts and would love to be able to let my other acct use some of the stuff my main acct uses. Now you want me to make toons on another server to be able to access this " heirloom idea"?
No way, I have a guild on each server now and am not about to start all over again on another just for that tradeable heirloom idea. Just drop heirloom on all items, if we can kill a mob to actually get that item we deserve to do what we wish with it.
As for the vials,, LMAO,, not a good idea sorry. I will not spend my copper on that. I am not a big fan of grinding but I would rather grind the toon that needs it than buy a vial for that amt of DB coin.
Sorry, not a fan of any of these ideas.

I think the person was using google translate. Since he mentioned the EU servers, I'm going to assume english isn't thier native language. Google's gotten pretty good but mangles things a bit sometimes ( ok a lot..but it does make it at least mostly readable )

Ok so I wont be 100% negative on this. But I 'm with a few of these others on Guild Halls.

Give us something pretty. Yes Pretty.

Emerald Halls would make a good looking guild hall. Those that are truely interested in these would build their own buildiings.

Not saying no one agrees with you regarding SLR, but I think you'll find many disagree. While you make valid points, SLR auctions items typically not needed by the group/raid, another option to earn plat on those char's doing the work, and gives an opportunity for those less fortunate (typically due to RL) to have an opportunity to upgrade a piece of gear. SLR has been around a very long time, and IMO the least of the concerns here.

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When do the two new guild halls become live Iam so interested in seeing what they look like