Everquest AMA Answered!

yerm

yerm

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I like that you cut the emotional problems eq sucks post but kept the followup referring to eq as a haven for mentally ill, and they all got super triggered by it out of context.

I really don't like that they acknowledge vet rewards are so powerful as to be necessary but refuse to change them or make them accessible. What a stupid ass response. You change the rewards that are poorly designed, and put the op ones being cut from a vet account locked barrier into normal aas. You dont need a time machine for this, you can literally move the rewards to aa and replace them with non op ones.

Or you can watch, like I do, a bunch of people drop dps alts on the same account instead of paying the company a bunch of money because this stupid constraint causes people to not place value on anything but a 7+ year old account. Terrible, terrible decision and no reason it cannot be fixed.
 
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Fight

Fight

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This was a tremendous success @a_skeleton_03 and the Daybreak staff represented themselves, their game, and their company well. Applause to all of you.
 
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Dr Neir

Dr Neir

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Bind on equip/no drop was in game long before wOw.
I asked what the UI limit was on vendors to buy items as in limit to visual shopping. They didnt understand the question.
The race quests like pike and skull cap, other races having some similar items, not wanting to revisit this is BS.
They are shills....
I question if they really played the game, but rather code whatever with no passion or exec BS guidance as usual then play some BS console army FPS shooter all night...jobs a job right....
 
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Utnayan

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Erronius said:
That's the stupidest thing I've read out of this so far.

If you find yourself arguing that content isn't worth the effort because of the ginormous PITA cockblock you gated it behind, then MAYBE there should have been a discussion about not gating VT behind a ginormous PITA cockblock in the first fucking place.
Click to expand...

Not to mention the reason why the early raid expansion zones were cockblocked to begin with was due to the fact the thing wasn’t finished / itemized to begin with.

And that course Continued on showing this very practice, up to and including banning a guild that showed it in its fully glory when conquest leveraged an exploit to kill an artificially bugged 4th warder. Through the maidens eye bug to prevent raid entry, and the frame slow with plane of water so they could finish PO time.

Anyway, thanks a_skeleton_03. :) good solid show. However I think the majority of this board knows more about this game and it’s development than anyone who works there.

Hopefully there is more. :)
 
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Utnayan

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Sieger said:
I'd put weight behind what a reasonable guy like Elidroth says vs an EQ PVP autist any day of the week. You're literally on crack cocaine if you think EQ PVP once received tons of resources, but it was clear by like, GoD and later era almost that entire player base had moved on, it'd be terrible business to invest dev hours into something no one would ever care about or spend money on.
Click to expand...

That point went over your head by 102 miles.
 
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Control

Control

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I missed this thread for a while, and I sort of wish that I'd kept missing it. There went a couple of hours that I'll never get back... so I guess it really is eq again :) :(
Doesn't seem like much has changed in eq dev land except the team has gotten smaller. It almost sounds like disussing things with a couple of people running an emu lol. "Oh jesus, improve the ui!? Are you fucking crazy?!"

Jenn: Do you have a computer from 1999 with a 28.8K modem and an ISP that supports it? That isn’t infected with viruses?
Jonathan: This is about as close to impossible as you can possibly get.
Alan: Money weighing enough to prevent you from moving?
Click to expand...

Tell us you don't have the money or that you don't think anyone would pay for it. That would make perfect sense! But no, instead, lets just call it impossible and tell us that we would need 20 year old hardware. /boggle
And obviously since a specific mechanic was expliotable, the entire thing is a stupid idea.

If we were to make a new EQ with the same graphics but better gameplay we’d only be cannibalizing our own player base, and making a new one with better graphics but the same gameplay is just as much work as making a modern MMO, but without the advantage of learning from 20 years of game development.
Click to expand...

So today I learned:
-100% of the cost of a modern mmo is graphics.
-You can only steal from your small and shrinking playerbase because attracting new players or re-attracting old players is impossible.
-EQ live's current gameplay apparently doesn't take advantage of anything learned in the last 20 years. (Ok, so he gets 1 out of 3 then? I guess the hard-to-believe part is that he admits it.)

Again, tell me no one would pay for this shit, and fine, I might disagree, but at least it's a reasonable answer. On the remote chance that any of the devs ever read this and care, for the love of god, forget graphics and gameplay upgrades and give the game a good usability pass*. I've tried to drag new people to into eq, and it's just impenetratable for them. When is the last time you sat a truely new player down, had them install the game and watch them try to play? (heavy emphasis on the try...) Have you ever actually done this? I have. You should do this (at least) annually with the entire dev team watching. Hell, even people who raided hardcore until GoD would be fully lost going back.

Admittedly, 20ish expansions of mechanics in various stages of disjointedness and abandonment is a lot to deal with on both sides, but usefully managing the clusterfuck seems like a much better option than pretending it doesn't exist. Sure, the players you still have are loyal, but you've made it practically impossible to grow that audience even when some of us try to drag new players (definitely kicking and screaming) in.

*Disclaimer: It's been a year or two since I've hit eq live, so maybe you've made a usability miracle happen since then.

Honestly, I just don't have enough snark left to properly comment on these gems:
And we could argue that Blizzard hasn't done anything with their IPs that we haven't done
But so is writing a book, but people still do it and make money at it.
Click to expand...
/sigh
 
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K

Kay

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Control said:
When is the last time you sat a truely new player down, had them install the game and watch them try to play? (heavy emphasis on the try...) Have you ever actually done this?
Click to expand...
I was on Discord with a friend trying to teach his friend to play. I missed the initial setup fiasco, but holy shit. It was just hours of raw panic and frustration. The guy made a half elf paladin and it just went downhill from there. Flash of Light in Blackburrow, murdering his friend with every gnoll ever born. I think he made it to level 11... 8 times or so. Probably a lot less amusing if you're in the middle of it, but it was pretty hilarious to listen to.
 
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A

a_skeleton_02

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ZyyzYzzy said:
Was it the one about the wall around qeynos and darkies?
Click to expand...

hah, no my question was actually (in my mind at least) legitimate.

"62. Do you think the meager profits EQ brings in is worth the continued and repeated harm your game inflicts on a vulnerable section of our society?
It takes one look at this forum, your official forum or in game to note that a very large portion of your game is filled with people who are mentally ill or emotionally unstable. Everquest is a haven for unsocialized outcasts and when you box them together they all begin to take on the traits and mannerism of the "biggest crazy in the room" consider it like a prison when someone goes in for a minor crime and becomes hardened while in prison.
Games like World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Fortnite all have functions in play to stop this antisocial behaviour from happening and to limit its effects upon others. Everquest not only shuns this but seems to embrace this toxic mentality with little to no in game support.
In 2015 a man armed with a Mace viciously beat a woman near to death, He was a known Everquest addict and withdrew from his social life to continue to play more Everquest, in 2011 a couple so addicted to Everquest neglected their children almost to death via starvation. Suicides like Sean Woolley are even more common as well as using Everquests in game currency Krono or ingame items in exhange for hard drugs is also the norm.
From suicides to drug abuse to child abuse Everquest has a known "body count" of broken families and lives.
The release of your most recent TLP servers shows me that Daybreak has no interest in the mental health of it's players by allowing and encouraging these "races" 48-72 hour gaming marathons with little to no sleep and Toxic open world encounters that often time resolves in real life threats of violence and Doxxing.
Will any of this change in the future or will daybreak continue to be complacent."
 
Punko

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a_skeleton_02 said:
hah, no my question was actually (in my mind at least) legitimate.

"62. Do you think the meager profits EQ brings in is worth the continued and repeated harm your game inflicts on a vulnerable section of our society?
Click to expand...

"Not really, but when you additionally consider the amount of drama it brings to the internet, the balance firmly flips towards EQ being worth it"

Comeon, no EQ would have meant no Sam Deathwalker, how can you doubt it even in its current state. There are still gems to discover and gold to mine for.
 
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Punko

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I would donate towards a small gift for the devs that took their time to reply to all this.

This isn't the most welcoming place, there is a lot of troll stuff and more troll stuff going on, seeing them step above that is great.

That includes E Elidroth
 
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yerm

yerm

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Punko said:
I would donate towards a small gift for the devs that took their time to reply to all this.

This isn't the most welcoming place, there is a lot of troll stuff and more troll stuff going on, seeing them step above that is great.

That includes E Elidroth
Click to expand...

I offered on their forums, they may think jokingly, to buy pizza for the devs if selo had a smooth launch and I could be playing at a passable rate within an hour. I googled nearby shops and had everything lined up to send a pizza dude with a couple pies to their office via using my business/travel cc. Was gonna send some wings for any keto or gluten free nerds. Vegans could get fucked.

I kept my money. Maybe next tlp.
 
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Locnar

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Not satisfied with their answers about classic EQ been lost to time and space when they have the untouched EQmac code sitting safe on a shelf. Also we should of asked them about vanguard.
 
Wingz

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a_skeleton_03 said:
110. What is Daybreak Games doing to make the Everquest community more Trans-Inclusive?

Anyway:

I was in a guild back during TBM and we could only field about like 40ish people for 54 man raids. Not enough to beat the events but more than just like a 24 person raid. I know a lot of guilds were in a similar situation and either merged or folded. (most folded) Unfortunately many of us just left the game and never logged in again. I'm sure there's attrition happening.

Holly,

Is there any plans to make smaller raids to appeal to smaller guilds?

You can keep the major raids but just make some T1/T2 raids in addition to your 54 mans. Smaller that only drop like 1-2 spells and 1-2 pieces of armor. This encourages some people to get together with some new apps in a less full blown raid environment. Kind of like an intro to raiding because most high end players go to Triton etc. Can't field a full 54 man raid at full strength? Try the easier 36 man raid that can drop something. Getting a small amount of something is better than getting a large amount of nothing. Especially if I'm logging in for 4 hours + and just waiting around. Only 3 clerics online and 2 shammys w/ 1 druid? That'd probably be good for a 42 man raid but definitely not a 54.

I know this is probably deaf ears but I'm be curious.

Alan: There are a lot of things to consider here. First, we can't just lower the maximum number of characters globally. It would do more harm than good. I know this because we tried it before, and it didn't go well. Secondly, it takes just as much effort to make a raid for 36 as it does for 54. I've read the post that suggest that we just make it easier and give worse loot. It doesn't work like that. It is never as simple as "just make it easier". I've made a LOT of raids so far, and it just isn't that simple. You'll have to trust me on that.

So, as with all things, we have to consider all of our players when we make decisions about how to use our time. If we were to make smaller raids, option would be to take the number of raids we create and divide them between the smaller and larger types in some way. This would have repercussions for larger guilds while helping smaller ones. It's really a no-win situation. So we opt to make the larger raids and hope that with gear and levels the smaller guilds can defeat those events later.

That being said, we are looking into a plan for helping smaller guilds to do that content earlier. Until we iron out exactly how we want to approach it, I don't want to talk specifics. Just know that this isn't something we are ignoring, it's just that the answer isn't as easy as some folks seem to think.
Click to expand...

First...the Trans question wasn't mine, no matter.

To the answer:

I know it takes "as much effort" but that doesn't mean that it's not worthwhile. The problem is that for ever since i think circle of drakes really the focus has been on full scale raids. I know they did the smaller group thing for Resplendant Temple but those just gave regular group items from what I remember.

Smaller raids but less loot. Don't have to do it for T4, or T3..or maybe even T2. But an easier smaller T1 as a viable alternative that drops 1 or 2 pieces of gear or maybe a "minor" T1 spell isn't crazy. If making 1 smaller raid is going to take up so much time (even with reused assets / models/ artwork) is such a problem maybe the team is worse off then I thought. The dev team made content that scales by level and doesn't that include spells too? Lets say a T4 raid is capped at level 135 of difficulty as an example. The T1 smaller raid with the same script and cap the zone entry at like 42.

I don't really accept this answer (though I guess I have too) because of the reason's it doesn't make sense just to count:

1) Re-used assets - Models / Zone, etc > Already exists!
2) Scripts > already exist. Smaller version of the same bigger raid.
3) Same gear / spells > Already exists!
4) Ability to make higher difficulty via dynamic zone scaling < exists with group zones already based on level. You could set the 36 man to like level 135 and the 54 to like 150 and let the amount of gear be the factor. Want more / better gear? Do the harder one..want the one that drops only 2 pieces and maybe a low level spell? Do the easier one.
5) Limit # of players entry into a dynamic spawn zone other than the typical 54! > already exists..see circle of Drakes.

The proof of concept is already here..it's just putting all these together.

But..i guess if they have no desire to do it....then it won't get done ...and that's really sad since all the pieces are there. It's just a matter of putting them together.


All that said...I do appreciate they took the time to answer and i'm sure it wasn't easy...since this is Hell they wandered into and came out looking pretty good.
 
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Synj

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Control said:
I missed this thread for a while, and I sort of wish that I'd kept missing it. There went a couple of hours that I'll never get back... so I guess it really is eq again :) :(
Doesn't seem like much has changed in eq dev land except the team has gotten smaller. It almost sounds like disussing things with a couple of people running an emu lol. "Oh jesus, improve the ui!? Are you fucking crazy?!"



Tell us you don't have the money or that you don't think anyone would pay for it. That would make perfect sense! But no, instead, lets just call it impossible and tell us that we would need 20 year old hardware. /boggle
And obviously since a specific mechanic was expliotable, the entire thing is a stupid idea.



So today I learned:
-100% of the cost of a modern mmo is graphics.
-You can only steal from your small and shrinking playerbase because attracting new players or re-attracting old players is impossible.
-EQ live's current gameplay apparently doesn't take advantage of anything learned in the last 20 years. (Ok, so he gets 1 out of 3 then? I guess the hard-to-believe part is that he admits it.)

Again, tell me no one would pay for this shit, and fine, I might disagree, but at least it's a reasonable answer. On the remote chance that any of the devs ever read this and care, for the love of god, forget graphics and gameplay upgrades and give the game a good usability pass*. I've tried to drag new people to into eq, and it's just impenetratable for them. When is the last time you sat a truely new player down, had them install the game and watch them try to play? (heavy emphasis on the try...) Have you ever actually done this? I have. You should do this (at least) annually with the entire dev team watching. Hell, even people who raided hardcore until GoD would be fully lost going back.

Admittedly, 20ish expansions of mechanics in various stages of disjointedness and abandonment is a lot to deal with on both sides, but usefully managing the clusterfuck seems like a much better option than pretending it doesn't exist. Sure, the players you still have are loyal, but you've made it practically impossible to grow that audience even when some of us try to drag new players (definitely kicking and screaming) in.

*Disclaimer: It's been a year or two since I've hit eq live, so maybe you've made a usability miracle happen since then.

Honestly, I just don't have enough snark left to properly comment on these gems:

/sigh
Click to expand...
Kay said:
I was on Discord with a friend trying to teach his friend to play. I missed the initial setup fiasco, but holy shit. It was just hours of raw panic and frustration. The guy made a half elf paladin and it just went downhill from there. Flash of Light in Blackburrow, murdering his friend with every gnoll ever born. I think he made it to level 11... 8 times or so. Probably a lot less amusing if you're in the middle of it, but it was pretty hilarious to listen to.
Click to expand...

 
E

Elidroth

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Punko said:
I would donate towards a small gift for the devs that took their time to reply to all this.

This isn't the most welcoming place, there is a lot of troll stuff and more troll stuff going on, seeing them step above that is great.

That includes E Elidroth
Click to expand...

Completely unnecessary, but thanks. I'm honestly just happy I was able to do some pretty cool stuff in a game that meant so much to me.. It was pretty surreal to wind up working on the game that I spent the better part of a decade playing almost like a 2nd job.
 
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