So what do you think of the DarkPaw Games announcement?

Massively is NOT an industry magazine. It's a blog. Did you read their rationale for choosing Daybreak for their "Most Likely to Fail" award? Two of their (freelance) writers still talk about EQN and Landmark, one wants EQ3, and another brings up the never proven "Russian shell company" theory. They don't love the game, trust me. (Ok, caveat, maybe some writers are more reasonable than others).

This is how good Massively OP is as a news source (and how great their conspiracy theories are):

As always Adonilol nails it. Can we just give him Holly's job and get this game sorted out before its too late?

Its over a month since the last expansion release and you still have ground breaking bugs and gear progression completely broken. How anyone can defend DBGs, now Darkpaws predatory tactics is beyond me, but I guess its part stockholm syndrome part "I played this game for 15 years and its hard to get into a better game"

I clearly remember the eq2wire article "Everquests II's Black Box" and 3 years later its even more relevant and damaging than ever.

@Benito (on other topics you mentioned)

Your point about secrets is right, but you're indicating the wrong thing.

There are secrets in the strategies, they are temporary secrets until the player base figures them out and posts them on a guild forum, on something like EQ2Library (I really miss that site), or generally teaches each other how to do them.

The secrets aren't in the math. They never were. Gygax had this idea which everyone rejected way back in the day that the players shouldn't focus too much on the mechanics of the Dungeon Master. The reason was simple, the Dungeon Master could just adjust the difficulty on the fly and often did because players didn't like it if it was too easy or too hard. We had a resurgence of this problem with D&D 3rd edition where mobs were given tiers and ratings and the level of the players should match the difficulty rating.

I did some testing of that rating system and found that if I wanted to keep the difficulty at a challenge level that made people scared in a good way, I had to bump it up a notch from what the books said. But there were players who would say "OMG we're not supposed to be fighting THAT yet!!! It's too hard!" They didn't realize that if they were about to die, I could just decide that next round, the fight was over. I didn't do that much. But I wasn't going to kill the party to prove a point.

What the rating system did was cause a huge spike in "rules lawyering." And on EQ2 forums we engage in the crucible of rules lawyering quite a lot.

There's a good reason.

This is a community that supports all the types of FRPMMO gaming. Crafting is meant to be relevant. Casual play is meant to be satisfying and the game can be described as a carnival or fun-park for casuals. And most important for the long term health of EQ2, the raiding is actually difficult here. You can expect to die thousands of times after a new expac comes out, until your raid force figures it out. It's not easy. Not like other games. I've neglected PvP because I don't play it, but I think it makes a good contribution to the math-is-not-secret and rules lawyering aspects.

When we engage in rules lawyering it's because in EQ2, it matters. We don't just buy cosmetics and fool around in whatever local event has just popped. We argue reality via numbers and that's part of the fun for many players. It gets heated. Yeah.

There is no trade secret in the math, it's a feature that the math makes success very hard in some scenarios. And that triggers argument about how difficult it should be. That's just a normal day in the EQ2 forums.

What I've learned from the millions of salty cynical comments and backhanded helpfulness in Freeport server chat, and now Skyfire server chat (which now includes the Naggy folks), is that ego is a stumbling block to understanding.

Basically.

It gets even worse when you start to realize the random changes that happen all the time with no notes telling players that it is happening.

There are buffs in EQ2 stacking at the moment that weren't stacking prior to the Expansion, with no indication. This basically happens every single time an expansion/game update goes in. It's kinda fun to break the game with random little things that go in that they probably don't realize happen.

Either way, there aren't players who understand how very many stats work even on TLE where you have less stats at a smaller scale. Guardians not knowing they can't block from behind, and how protection on shields equates to uncontested block. Not understanding why their avoidance in the inspection window says 90% yet they avoid only 45% of hits in raids, how fervor works, what is multiplied first; potency, int, crit, etc.

I'm kind of amazed at how there isn't a guide on EQ2 Formula's from the developers. Even a basic indication of hey, mob is x level, x4. It has x base physical mitigation based on LevelxMitigation and here is the formula. If it has more, cool; we added a buff to the mob so you can know. Now it's kinda like, I have this info from Xelgad in 2013 in a random thread on the forums for a few things, other than that? Nothing.

It's cool to have your game be mysterious and require hours upon hours of testing to get a rough estimate of what could be the way the mechanics work. Right?

I've been asking since the start of Fallen Gate why a mob mitigation (combat mitigation) is even bothered to be included instead of just limiting our stats, basically radio silence.

I got caith to talk to me on the official discord about mechanics for about 15 messages before he thought you could strikethrough an uncontested dodge. I then laughed and remembered this guy is the one who makes all these things, and he doesn't even understand them.

I'm flattered, but at this point the rampant cash shop behavior I don't think is based off evil machinations of the developers, or Holly. The team hasn't changed much since SoE, layoffs are what hit them the worse, but new hires are low.

The real issue I have is the stat inflation, the lack of information offered to players, and the attitude of the developers. How insane is it that they don't think it's worth deeply explaining formulas and how the game works. In a time with a low population and the lack of players who care enough to really learn.

I don't see very many names on live who were from the early days of the game, a lot of people I see in the "top" guilds are new to the game, I can't expect anyone to remember little things from over the years in terms of changes, mechanics, etc to even begin to dissect it/have a conversation. I have reached out before, I received radio silence. I'm in no way an expert, but I would bet I know a lot about the game to the point where I could understand just about every stat/mechanic to work them into tooltips.

You all added.. 6 pages.

Also Feldon was correct about my reaction.

Now that I have read through the additional pages. This thread has run it's course, you're more than welcome to continue to have these conversations elsewhere, and I will be locking it, not deleting in case you feel the need to look back on it.

Please remember this, I am able to tell when arguments devolve, even if the parties are using flowery language to do it.

Shakespeare would be proud, I am just disappointed.