So you got your Community Resource Council

Players on the community councils don't get a "say". They have, over the years, provided feedback and thoughts about things. This is not a position in which players get to dictate anything. In the end, the business office and project manager (whatever their titles) are going to make decisions.

When possible, business needs and project management allowing, yes, the devs pay attention to feedback.

As for why people get banned on Discord, it's because the criticism isn't constructive, or is delivered rudely, from a place of assumed entitlement. Polite suggestions generally are fine.

Im sure thats the only reason people have been banned on discord. None of the prior CMs had an uptight view of "acceptable rear kissing" and definitely didn't their personal biases weigh his decisions....

Lol, no. You can 100% be banned from EQ2 Discord without doing or saying anything wrong. Saying it's only because of rudeness or belligerence is calling an awful lot of people liars. There have been threads on here and other forums, plus other discords with reams of evidence about the outrageously unfair bans some players have received.

Not the elite few though (who are often very noisy and critical on there). Strange that.

See, this is a comment that's non-constructive and sarcastic. This would probably get you banned on Discord. Consider offering your feedback as politely as you would in a business environment, you'll get people listening to your ideas then and not getting mad about the snark.

Honestly, don't you think you'd have to have awfully thin skin to dismiss everyone who expressed any kind of frustration or cynicism? Don't you think you could miss out on some very valuable feedback by permanently silencing everyone who doesn't think you're currently doing the job particularly well? It sounds a bit like someone we're hearing a lot about in the news right now no? Usually people comment because they care about the game. If their comment is not constructive on this occasion, who's to say that they aren't capable of providing valuable insight on another occasion once they're a bit more in control of their emotions?

The Emperor sure does like his new clothes.

I think we've perhaps got so used to the conditions here, of feedback IF it's positive and criticism ONLY if it's delivered skillfully twisted into positive feedback, that people start to parrot that rhetoric. In truth though, it's not normal and not ok. We should be able to make our point, and if changes made to the game are truly awful, we really ought to be able to say so. If you're doing something your paying customers don't like, you should absolutely expect negative feedback, not watered down, negative. And as an adult and a professional, you should be able to deal with that.

Take this with a grain of salt, but not everybody feels a need to tiptoe around you or your feelings. You put out an underpar or inferior product, knowingly, you should expect pushback. Im not required sugarcoat my feedback because you might take offense.

As to the discord ban, i dont particularly care. The quality of info has drastically fallen off in the last 4 years and its become a cesspool of misinformation and continued bad guidance. Much like these forums outside a select few posters.

Sigrdrifa is flat out one of the most helpful folks on the forums.

Like others, I had completely forgotten about this concept introduced almost 7 months ago. The fact that nothing has happened since this idea was floated back in March should tell you something. Frankly, if the devs haven't had time to do anything with it prior to now, I doubt it will see the light of day after the xpac launches. We all know, based on past experience over many xpacs, that they will be hard at work repairing the myriad of bugs and coding burps that every xpac has had for many long years now. I'm not being negative here, but I am a realist. This xpac is not even coming out until December. Does anyone involved in any aspect of this game---employee or player/customer---seriously think anything's going to happen in the 1st quarter?
As far as large numbers of applications, I'd encourage you to forego applications. Reach out to people who actually play the game and post here if you want valid, honest feedback. We all have been playing enough to know the players who are engaged in the game and might be interested or valuable. I'm not being elitist with this idea. But if you're into a "take all comers," you're wasting your time. You want people who have played enough to know what works and what doesn't and are willing to honestly evaluate ideas and give you feedback.

I got banned from discord years ago for simply stating the obvious that was happening at that time, it was on the lines of "here we go again, they have broken the server again" that was it. Got the ban for that.

On forums, I alongside many other people have given a lot of constructive feedback during betas over the years and large majority of it was not even given an acknowledgement by any of the devs and here we are again talking about the same old things. These issues are not slight, they are game breaking for a lot of people.

To say the critique is not constructive then you need to change your lens with which you view what is written. If you are selling a product and have a dwindling customer base, you will try to do your best and listen to the remaining customers and try to improve aspects of your product that can keep the boat steady a bit. It really isn't rocket science. Granted, they have reduced the amount of pay to win advantage the players had in the last expansion but given that the entire model of the game is based but have ignored the colossal issue with the game mechanics, itemisation and class balance.

This whole council thing seems like a gimmick and it will turn out to be yet another corporate checkbox exercise and a platform riddled with T&Cs to minimise critique of any kind.

I am retired and certainly not employed by DBG. I am old enough to have done my original coding using Hollerith cards.

In Real Life, if you want to communicate to a business, you speak like a person talking to a business, not some kid sassing some urchin on the street. If you don't, you get your complaint roundfiled. DBG is a business. The people with the power to make decisions are generally NOT the actual developers. That's why there is a business office and a project manager.

Actually the dynamic here is quite unusual. In the real world, if you pay for something and get something inferior, you would probably start off by politely pointing it out (no different here) and if your concerns are ignored or dismissed you would then escalate until you get the result you want and have paid for (not allowed here). Almost every single escalation here is because of concerns being ignored.

No chance they can fix everyone's idea of what needs fixing. But the game is still fun to me after 18 years.

I still have hope for the game, my expectations aren't going to change, though. History tells us what will happen, and we'd be fools to ignore the cycle. This game has it's fun parts, but I'm making less and less memorable experiences as time goes by. Most of those are specific people. I couldn't tell you a thing about what was happening in game at that moment. Unlike 15 years ago and I can tell you who was on what class in what group, what mob, what %, and a myriad of other details

It's the other players and lore that make this game worth playing. The mechanics/content side of things feels like a cluster and a 5th job I don't want.

Sometimes I wonder - Are the people who are happy with the state of EQ2 enjoying their time in spite of EQ2, or because of EQ2?

I have no doubt there are some people who absolutely love EQ2 as it is, and don't think the disastrous state of player stats, itemisation, class balance and game economy are a big deal. So long as they are enjoying their leisure time, that's what it is all about, all power to them.

This really has nothing to do with the Community Council. The Council tells them this stuff, but is purely advisory. The Big Kahunas make the decisions based on business needs.

If the current state of the game makes you hate it, then seriously it's time to find a game that pleases you. No game is perfect for everyone, and I strongly feel that play time should be something we do for fun.

Yes, there are things I'd like improved. I have not been wild about the "grinding for obols" treadmill this go-around, and I wish they'd make some changes to shorten recast times to some warlock spells, in particular. My biggest gripe is the in-game economy. I still think DBG should get some nice economics grad students to help work on ways to install plat sinks, and utilize the methods from old papers generated from the multi-terabyte data that Sony shared with scholars way back to start tracking and blocking cheaters better.

But I am kinda hooked on Norrath. If they totally tanked the end game, I confess I'd probably focus on running baby characters through TLE lower level content instead.

I didn't say it did. I was replying to what Spritza wrote.

It is interesting that you suggest the community council is incapable of motivating the EQ2 team to correct the dominant issues affecting the game, for the majority of the actual community.

Based on the last decade, and your statement, it's a challenge to suggest any actual good has come from these NDA special invite forums. At this point, they should just open it up to all.

Well, that's sort of what these forums are. I agree that if no improvements have come from them and won't come from them, then I don't see the point of having them at all. *shrug*

My comments mostly stem from the assumption from the initial dev post about them opening up the team only wanting individuals with rose colored glasses that only speak good about the game. That's laughable.

If you mean to tell me that you only want to read about how great you're doing, you don't need a special section of the forums for that. Just let the CM continue doing the job the way they've been doing it. Won't be anybody left to complain because even Sig abd Aven will be viewed as outside the status quo at this rate.

Sometimes they take the Council's suggestions. But some people have got the idea that the Community Council somehow has the power to force changes, and that's just not so... it's advisory.

Feedback is open to everyone, that's part of what happens here in these forums and on Discord. Its not that they never adopt suggestions from the Community Council, just that there's no power on the player council side to force change.

"Some people" is at best 1 person in this thread, and that purely depends on how you interpret what Arclite meant when they said:

You interpret that as Arclite suggesting the player council somehow has the power to force changes? If so, you are entitled to your interpretation, but I disagree with it.

In context of Arclite's paragraph, I believe it is a question directed at a Senior Community Manager, asking if the Player Council is purely ceremonial, or if it has actual tangible value by means of being heard by someone who is actually willing to take suggestions on board (thus having a say). Your responses suggest it is purely ceremonial unless arbitrarily deemed convenient, which is a pleasant surprise. If I misunderstood Arclite's intent, I hope they let me know.

Either way, your discussion with Arclite has nothing to do with my response to Spritza. I have no idea what you are trying to accomplish, aside from telling people who don't like it to leave, and declaring you are so hooked on EQ2 that you will keep playing no matter how bad they tank the end game. Good for you...