EQ TLP - Mischief (Free Trade / Random Loot)

Zaide said:

I think they’re more available than most people realize, especially if you can interact like a functioning human when you reach out (many TLP players struggle with this).

What does taking full advantage look like in this case?

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I agree that the delivery I’ve seen from most players (typically on the DB forums) comes from more emotion and criticism rather than facts and constructive feedback.

I work at a large software company and I have customers giving me feedback on our products every day. Prioritization of the feedback depends on the amount of money they pay us now / will pay us this fiscal, impact at the customer, how wide of a problem it is for other customers, how closely it aligns with our roadmap, and what we will have to delay to resource it.

The devs don’t seem to be engaged on the forums. They don’t seem to have a “Jeff Kaplan” releasing community updates and talking to people, especially since Dreamweaver moved on. Yes I know there is a new one appointed but don’t try tell me he’s been engaged like DW was. Petitions are a black box with canned responses. I’ve seen @mentioning Devs in discord a few times publicly work but only in the case of fire drills (DB store is down, server down, game breaking new bug, etc).

Taking full advantage to me would start with using your platform to educate people on what “interacting like a function human” with DB looks like. You did do this prior to Mischief launching when you pushed for (I think this was it) everyone to post on the forum requesting an additional server (thornblade).

There is very little useful communication in any available public format.

I compare this to when I played something like guild wars 2... Total night and day difference in the kind of information and feedback you would get from the game company.

I realize the team is quite small but an occasional person being able to have an IM conversation is not equivalent to good communication of the state of the game or changes happening to it.

I'm also quite sure, based on past behaviors by the team, that a well-known EQ streamer and guild leader has a little more pull to have their voice heard than some random, even if they're reasonable and nice.

DickTrickle said:

There is very little useful communication in any available public format.

I compare this to when I played something like guild wars 2... Total night and day difference in the kind of information and feedback you would get from the game company.

I realize the team is quite small but an occasional person being able to have an IM conversation is not equivalent to good communication of the state of the game or changes happening to it.

I'm also quite sure, based on past behaviors by the team, that a well-known EQ streamer and guild leader has a little more pull to have their voice heard than some random, even if they're reasonable and nice.

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This.

If you really want to be a rockstar, schedule your next discord session to talk about creating a better partnership between DB and its playerbase.

Here are some suggestions to start:

1. Poll the users. Quarterly. They need data. Create a "how are we doing poll" with multiple choice A, B, C, D answers. Make sure to include questions around server, playtime, experience to be able to filter the playerbase. Explain the intent behind the survey and the plan to act on it. Communicate what you can about the plan, say no to the stuff that doesn't make sense, and move on. Pick a few quick wins that have large impact to the community and are relatively easy to fix. The first one will hurt, but they will get easier over time.
2. Community Updates. Quarterly. Post updates regarding the game, findings from the polls, what's in the works, and what you said no to.
3. Forum Responses. Post clear guidelines for when a dev or community manager will engage on the forums. Then follow through. Delete the noise.
4. Community All Hands. Annual or bi-annual. Host a conference-in "All Hands" where the community manager, on Zoom, delivers announcements like new servers / TLP's, major updates to the roadmap, etc. Make someone the face of Everquest and empower them.

I'm not a game developer so someone else with more experience chime in. I do see how competitive software companies thrive and it's by being a customer at your own company and working backwards from that experience.

EQ's TAM isn't growing. It's surviving based on the 4-5k of us that play for nostalgia combined with a krono-drip for life support. I don't think there's a single person who would deny that's far more important than a few bugs.

I have created threads on these forums as well, so.... I am an ADMIN!!!

Bow down to my awesomeness fuckers! Someone get me an Admin tag stat!

I feel like producer letters are down to a yearly thing now? Edit: And the last one by JChan was so vague and without substance, it barely counts for anything.

When they decided to change the necromancer epic to not have it still be a best in slot item at max level, there was great communication. Or if you go back in time you'll see where a lot of big changes have lengthy communication about what they were doing and their thought processes behind it. That level I feel only happens about twice a year or so now.

Ultimately it is what it is and I doubt the team will ever get much larger in size, but I think if they were a little more forward thinking in their communications, players would be a bit more satisfied. At the very least you'd get a sense that they were actually doing some forward planning instead of simply being reactionary.

Dreamweaver was pretty widely well regarded and I had a good opinion of them for a while as well, but that was burned for me when they decided to shit all over Machin Shin back in ToV. I can't remember all of the specifics of it, but it had something to do with how raid instances worked on live for the longest time, and was changed in ToV. They made a change to how the lockouts worked, throwing MS under the bus for abusing something that was not even a glitch, but was actually just someone at daybreak deciding that they didn't mean for it to work that way...even though the actual messages output by the game itself said otherwise.

It was a stupid change, and it's their right to change how things work, but they decided to call out MS for it seemingly because some forum idiots that had never done an instanced raid on live brought out the pitchforks. Specifically what pissed me off about Dreamweaver is they refused to acknowledge the communication on it was completely unfairly accusing MS of wrongdoing, even after it was shown that it was daybreak's error.

Pharone said:

This. Exactly this.

People try to put a finger on what made EQ special over the years, and I've said time and time again that what made it special is the fact that it was a game world rather than a game. WoW and everything that came after it was a GAME first.

Its like this... the first person that used nitrous to make their car go insanely fast for a short period of time wasn't smacked on the head by God and told that isn't the intent of cars.

If they take everything out of EQ that wasn't "intended" game play, we wouldn't have root rotting, kiting, fear kiting, and so much more. The whole essence of what EverQuest is to all those who have played it over the years is the buggy gameplay that it was never programmed to do. Take that all away, and you have just another fantasy-baed MMORPG. Nothing more.

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I'm so fucking sick of all the restrictions modern MMOS put in.

The tiny leashes they put on every single mob that forces them to reset if they go further than like 20 feet from their spawn point is the worst. Tons of shit like this just utterly ruins games for me. They all add up and just squeeze the fun and ingenuity out of games.

Anyone with a Regal Band willing to trade a cord for sinew + urn + around 10k plat?

Edit: Got it

Zaide said:

Sadly I think DW was an anomaly. He was by far the best CM I ever saw in EQ.

I’d guess the team is just too small to interact as much as we’d like and often times when they do start interacting more it’s just used against them.

That said I think they’ve done a great job of listening to community desires and silently acting on them. Community outcry got us AoCs, annual TLPs, dozens of epic bottleneck changes, MoTM/MoTOW, VP and VT key changes, Truebox TLP, non true box TLP, a PoP locked server, a FV style server, pickzones, login queues, /follow working outside of groups and probably a lot more I don’t remember.

Often times they were silent on all of these topics or outright said they’d never do it until it hit the patch notes or announcements section. That could be improved for sure but in the end they are taking action to serve player base.

In the past when they allowed the community to vote it often produced awful outcomes like 6 month expansion unlocks, the Mayong server etc.

They do quarterly (?) producers letters which are usually pretty good. They’ve done AMAs both in discord and on these forums upon request as well.

Also they recently okayed the release of the original Everquest design document, so that will be awesome for folks to see in a few weeks here.

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I know you have a friendship with DW, and you are right that he was an anomaly in EQ, but in the gaming industry, he did his job.

Here are 5 active job postings for CM’s / CD’s, big and small companies, and one company you might know at the end:

Ubisoft

Ubisoft’s Community Team is responsible for managing relationships and communications with our player communities around the world. We accomplish this task by creating multi-channel campaigns that produce engaging content to grow and retain our community members.

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Amazon

· Foster a positive, constructive, and communicative community of Creators that feel heard and appreciated

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Mythical Games (who the fuck is Mythical games)

Be the champion of the audience: ensure that the editorial agenda serves our growing community. Oversee community engagement across all platforms and use insights to more effectively engage the audience.

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MWM Interactive (who the fuck is MWM)

S/he will be expected to create deep post-launch analysis, and understand how to create authentic connections with players.

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Daybreak Games

• Act as the central liaison between the player community and internal development
• Drive meaningful community engagement on all platforms, internal and external, with emphasis on social media, videos, livestreams and forums

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Most successful companies have accepted and evolved their thinking around customer engagement over the last 5-10 years, whereas I just see zero effort by DB.

I appreciate that you’ve listed some examples where public outcry lead to results, but to Dicktickles point, they have been reactive at best. Things being “used against them” is a rather pathetic excuse for them to give up. And being a CM (not even a good one) means having the emotional intelligence to de-escalate situations before, during, or after they get out of hand.

DB is betting big in the nostalgia of EQ and some new illusions to retain us long term.

how sexy is lodizal gonna be if he drops doze tears

if I had to guess. lodizal will probably share loot with the worst mighty buff mobs. so like lord bob... maybe the Hot symbol drakes. possibly even a step up if they do only 2 tiers. it could be zlandi velk vindi also. or if we learned anything from drusella... lodizal might share loot with... some non mighty buff, but still "raid" mobs? not really sure what else would be included in that though.

WW dragons.

I just wanted to all be horribly broken and fucked up. Give me claws of veeshan loot!