- Joined
- Mar 1, 2014
- RedCents
- 3,420¢
This is the transcript of the AMA held April 7th, 2020 (or well - more the "prettyfied" log):
dreamweaver: What features of the new Overseer system do you feel help characters "catch up"? Can you share thoughts on what you feel is a reasonable reward for players to obtain from that system in order to help them catch up?
dreamweaver: That is your first question!
Prathun: Perhaps "supplement" is a better term than "catch up." The Overseer system is meant to reward periodic interaction over the course of months (and if and when we extend the system, years). I worry that "catch up" conjures up the concept that a few weeks of play will max out your characters' benefits from the system. We want the Overseer system to be an evergreen addition to EverQuest.
dreamweaver: Question 2 - Could the team please look at increasing raid currency rates on Accelerated Unlock Schedule Servers. While I / others do not expect currency awards to be made entirely/fully proportionate to the accelerated rate, a 4x unlock speed with 2x currency rate for example increase seems a very reasonable increase to request. Some of the expansions such as TDS onwards will be awarding a lot less currency than RoF for example & we might be lucky to get maybe one item from currency in-era for those guilds that like to remain in the current expansion on their servers.
Ngreth: This is already coming to the game in the April patch. It uses the same multiplier as the keys. See test patch notes for confirmation
Aristo: That's going to work on live servers too!
dreamweaver: Question 3 - Will the developers consider having higher level or higher tier missions do anything beyond award additional overseer currency? Like more tradeskill items or more collectible summoners or more ornament summoners or more EXP? It seems like the only reward that consistently is scaling up is currency.
Ngreth: (people like that chocolate Ice Cream Emoji!)
Ngreth: They already do. The scaling favors higher tier more than higher level. It also scales with duration. We can have a conversation about adjusting the curve for concrete rewards. The more numerical rewards like Experience and currency will likely stay the way they are.
dreamweaver: Question 4 - Are there any concrete plans to adding older expansion tradeskill rewards to the artisan style overseer missions for example TSS global gems, OOW augments, PoP stuff, GoD stuff, etc.
Ngreth: Nothing Concrete, but they are under consideration.
dreamweaver: (Also...yes...definitely chocolate ice cream...for sure let's go with that.)
Ngreth: (I do know what it is... )
dreamweaver: Question 5 - This question is primarily for Ngreth, as it pertains to items. Are there any plans to tweak Heroic Intelligence or another stat to make stats/item upgrades more impactful for DPS casters?
Ngreth: There are conversations. We do not yet have concrete plans.
Aristo: Yes, we're not satisfied with the current state, but we don't have something solid to talk about right now.
Prathun: All this talk of concrete is mixing with my emotions.
dreamweaver: Question 6 - The recent issue with T3 notwithstanding, how has the team found the staggered release method to be generally successful? Is there potential to revisit the mechanism by which it unlocks to allow for more granularity in unlock time/dates – e.g. on Sundays?
Ngreth: Despite the hiccup, we think this method in general seems to be a good thing. There are things we would like to tweak, but nothing set. A thought is to use the Event system (The events that shows on the EQ calendar). This allows us to set an arbitrary date. No date we choose is going to be good for everyone. This is NOT a promise to change to that system.
Prathun: We'd definitely like to revisit the unlock system to give us more fine control over the unlock dates.
dreamweaver: Question 7 - On a related note, how has the team felt about ToV raid tuning?
AbsorEQ: It seems that we made them too easy. I'm fine with the first tier being "too easy", but I would like to have the later tiers be a bit harder than they turned out to be. There is a challenge tuning these things in beta. The timing of items, spells, and AA completion along with the fact that testers have nothing really to gain by putting in their best efforts can make it extremely hard to gauge the actual difficulty of events like this. We continue to try to improve the process.
Prathun: The raids in ToV fell on the "a little too easy" side. Even after the retune bumping up the challenge of tier 2, it's a little easier than I had aimed for.
niente: I think it's a good thing to have more accessible raid content.
Ngreth: I'm Happy with Servant of the Sleeper!
dreamweaver: Question 8 - Can we please have Gnome Beastlords and/or Gnome Monks?
Pip: Sadly, as much as I want to open up these options, I will have to defer to the amount of work needed for such an endeavor to my cohorts who knows what they are doing. (Or so they tell me, it's not like I can really argue with them.)
niente: My top choice is iksar berserker! Unfortunately adding new class/race combinations is a lot of work.
Aristo: All player races that have the monk-specific animations (flying kick, etc) can currently be monks. While we relatively recently got the ability back to make slight modifications to old models, we do not have the capability to add new sets of animations to our player models. So basically no new monk races with our current models.
AbsorEQ: Beastlords are animal lovers, they understand the wilderness and the ways of the beasts. Gnomes understand clockworks, magic, and caves. Note that their zoo has one animal in it... Beastlords is a no-go lore-wise for gnomes. As for monks... well... gnome != Yoda. I don't see them having the discipline to go through the training. That being said, I suppose it isn't the worst idea, as far as lore goes. Not the best, but not the worst. From the practical side, it's not very likely that we will be adding classes to races that don't already have them.
dreamweaver: Question 9 - Has there been any serious consideration for a seasonal TLP? That is, one that wipes and starts again after a set period of time.
AbsorEQ: We tried that with Quarm. The whole point of that server was to explore strange rulesets for short periods then reset. The uptake on that server was, frankly, bad. I am really not sure that EverQuest lends itself to limited lifespan for characters. Part of the appeal of the game is that we identify with the characters that we create and having them disappear after a few months may not appeal to folks. That being said, it might have been the chosen ruleset that made Quarm into a failure, and the idea is brought up in meetings from time to time, but no current plans for such a thing are in the works.
Pip: I like to spend my time off hours thinking of fun new ways to mess with players. I thought about a BR server where its open world PVP, cept after 3 months or so it resets, like a season. When it resets, whoever is left alive gets...I dont know, I never got that far when it comes to messing with players... "Whats in it for them?" <thinkingemoji>
Prathun: Ultimately, the Quarm server generated less interest than we had hoped for and required more development resources than we had expected.
niente: I love this idea. There are a lot of TLP ideas and the competition is fierce. It's not an insignificant amount of work to set them up, so we have to be careful what is chosen. It would be nice to avoid stomping on existing TLPs.
dreamweaver: Question 10 - What’s the plan with Overseer? Is it going to see expansions like LoN? Are you happy with it’s iteration? What niche were you intending it to serve?
AbsorEQ: There are still a lot of fine-tuning details we have planned for Overseer. There will always be things we want to make better about it. We built the system with plans for possible expansion, and if people seem to be enjoying it then we will certainly look into making more content for it. The first content was centered on Faydwer, and we have a lot of other places to send agents, and a lot more agents that could help the Overseer in their task... I don't know that we were aiming at any particular niche. It's probably better to say that we were trying to make something that everyone could engage with and various levels. Folks can just send a few agents on missions when they log in, then just go back to their regularly scheduled EverQuest, or they could spend time delving into the best strategies for the agents they have and in getting the ones they don't.
dreamweaver: Question 11- Are the overseer merchant prices going to stay really high? At the moment it’s going to take months to get one piece of plate armor.
Ngreth: The prices are changing in the April patch.
Ngreth: As the patch notes say, mostly down, two items up.
dreamweaver: More of a statement than a question 12 - JChan: Congrats, Alan: Glad you're still around, Dreamweaver: thanks for setting this up.
AbsorEQ: I'm not dead yet!
Pip: I'm super glad Absor is still around. I'm terrified of the idea of having to even come close to having to do his job. Jenn has always been amazing so I can't say anything more on that other than I'm happy to have to deal with her patience. Who is Dreamweaver? This is like Jeopardy! Why am I asking the questions here?!
Aristo: You'll be stone cold in a moment.
AbsorEQ: Pffft!
Pip: (absor is leaking)
dreamweaver: Concerning... but will be addressed later.
dreamweaver: Question 13 - Can you please make one of the new servers an FV Rule set we have been asking for a long time.
AbsorEQ: Well, to be fair only a few people are asking for it, they are just doing so with an admirable frequency... From my point of view, FV rules do not make good gameplay. Here's a question for those that say they want it, what if you could never transfer onto or off of the server, and it never merged with another? Is that still appealing?
niente: An FV rulset TLP would be great, and players definitely have a lot of interest in one. Currently this type of ruleset invites a lot of fraud and CS intervention, which we can't support at this time.
Prathun: Free trade rulesets bypass the primary game loop, which isn't ideal from a game design PoV.
dreamweaver: Question 14 - Alan, are you and/or DarkPaw Games now convinced that people do want to play PVP TLP as opposed to PVP Live? Are you aware there is a PVP trilogy fanbase playing on private servers? You mentioned before that new TLP types are possible. I believe that the PVP TLP appeal has been underestimated. Can we talk about this further?
AbsorEQ: I hate to say it, but I am more convinced now that not enough people want it to justify setting up such a server. The high population on the day that everyone was supposed to show up on Rallos was, frankly, very low. Certainly not enough to support a server. This would be my answer to most of your other questions about PVP things.
Aristo: There's definite passion out there. We just haven't ever seen the numbers.
dreamweaver: (This next question is a follow up to the last) Question 15 - Is it feasible to create a TLP on a different engine?
Pip: "Welcome to EverQuest, now download that other game if you want to play it". "Possible"? I mean, I didn't think I'd be ever in a position in my lifetime to be answering these questions, so anything is possible. However, "feasible", hard no.
AbsorEQ: Anything is possible. However, this isn't. Rebuilding the entire game just to stand up one progression server just isn't practical at all.
niente: I think an engine upgrade would be an enormous amount of work, sort of like rebuilding your house. Would be nice but probably isn't worth it.
Ngreth: To @niente 's point, it's like rebuilding your house while you're living in it and there's a constant hurricane during an earthquake.
dreamweaver: Question 16 - Can we have a discussion about removing/reducing all the really harsh racial NPC abilities on TRASH mobs?
AbsorEQ: I can look at those again, sure.
dreamweaver: Question 17 - How’s the work from home situation? Are you finding it easier or more difficult to get things done? I’m finding it difficult at home with coordinating, communication, and then family obligations.
AbsorEQ: Working at home, for me at least, hasn't been bad at all. I don't have anyone here to pester me, and I ate all my pets the first week, so disturbances are lower here. Also, I have tried to keep the experience working at home as much like being in the office as possible. Same routine, no television... stuff like that. Some things are a little awkward, but over all it isn't that bad. Of course it helps that we have great tech folks and our business is online and all that.
Aristo: For some things it's better. I have a lot more uninterrupted thinkin' time, which is good for deep solo projects like DoT consolidation. For other things, it's a lot more difficult. It's putting kinks in our ability to train and collaborate, for sure. Our artists are having a more difficult time being productive because they have more hardware constraints. I'm glad to have the capability we have to keep as productive as we are right now. But I also miss talking with my friends.
Pip: I'm a bit of an introvert, which is ironic if you've ever gotten to see our team meetings. I like my home, all my stuff is there. The biggest problem is yeah, I tend to get easily distracted and trying to be motivated to do stuff for work when all of my games are a button press away...it can be frustrating. After I'm done with work for the day, I take my dogs for a walk or something to try and "clear" before I go back to the same area and play. I hate to say that I'm kind of thriving nonetheless, but I am. I have a hard time tuning people out so being able to just close my door and pet my cat while I work so I dont get too distracted, thats nice.
niente: I like it but I am very stressed out by current events. People at the grocery store are physically repulsed by me like I have the plague, and I was forced to order cheese on the internet (from Wisconsin, which is great).
Ngreth: I'm a small percentage more effective at home, So it's working well for me. There are communication hurdles to overcome, but overall it's working great. I like the commute, and I love having daylight (I get Seasonal Affective Disorder in the cave office)
Prathun: I'm enjoying the very brief commute and the spacious window office, but you're right that coordinating is more difficult. I think we're getting better at this as we adapt to the work from home situation. My wife and I are working side-by-side and we are having to navigate what to do if we're both on a meeting at the same time. I can't imagine trying to wrangle children and have a virtual meeting at the same time. Eep!
dreamweaver: Question 18 - I know this was asked during the FoH AMA. Will we see The Burning Lands Part 2 for the next expansion or thereafter?
niente: That's classified
AbsorEQ: I hope that means that you liked it. I had a lot of fun with the concepts involved. And there certainly are more things to explore there. I can't tell you what's in the future, but I would love to explore that little world again.
Pip: You may not know this, but I came in during that expansion, so technically that was my first expansion, even though I introduced myself during this expansion. I still didn't feel like "part of the team" at that moment so I didnt feel...worthy? To come out right away and be like "IM HEEEEEERE". However, I learned A LOT during that expansion. Also, what @niente said, I could tell you what's coming, but then she will have to kill you.
dreamweaver: Question 19 - Is there a zone/ quest/ raid event/ expansion that you guys are particularly proud of or liked a lot?
AbsorEQ: I really enjoyed making the Al'Kabor's nightmare event for House of Thule. It gave me a chance to explore what a megalomaniac would fear and how he really views his companions.
Aristo: I was so thrilled to see how our art team brought Gorowyn to life. I designed some points to force perspective and it was really neat to see that work in 3D the same way it did in my head.
Ngreth: I'm probably the most proud of A Formal Dinner party, making a clue game work in EverQuest was a significant challenge. I wish I had thought of every possible exploit before it went live! I also enjoyed Cacophony of Oratory, the Simon says mechanic was fun to create. And overall, it was great being the Lead Designer during Veil of Alaris.
Pip: The Tower of Frozen Shadow in TOV. I knew going into that zone that there is already a ton of history behind it, and if I screw this up, it could be a huge deal. Luckily, the vets here are really good at patience and showing me how to do things in our game. Jonathan helped immensely but after that got out on beta and I was seeing everyones comments about it, I was thrilled. All of the work I do I am insanely happy to be a part of. The hardest lesson for me was to learn what IS "EverQuest", and to spin that in a new, yet familiar way. I also love telling people some of the inspirations for my quests. I like to tell Niente about my inspirations and she gets a huge kick out of the stories. Things like, how I named an NPC after Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, or how I saw a meme and made a whole quest off of one panel of said meme. The amount of story behind the story is why I'm in this industry and couldn't be happier being a part of one of the most storied MMOs in existence.
niente: zone: Plane of War, quest: Artisan's Prize, raid: Tris Wallow III expansion: LDoN (I didn't make these)
dreamweaver: Question 20 - On the flip side, is there a zone / quest/ raid event/ expansion that you guys regret or wish you would have done differently in hindsight?
AbsorEQ: As Dzarn and I have often discussed, the King Odeen raid event in Valdeholm might be the absolute worst thing I ever made. Not that any of the specific parts of it were bad, but because there were way, way too many parts. I was a young(er) fool back in those days. Today if I did all that again I would make that into five or six events. But I was trying to impress people. That's my excuse.
Ngreth: I'm not changing it, but I wish I did not make Ambleshift's Amazing Automated Amalgamator so complex. I was thinking "Crazy gnome" but think it ended up being "Crazy Dev." Like the other designers, part of it was me overthinking as a new designer.
Pip: Bruh, I don't even know what I did wrong on a normal day, how can I know what I regret!? There are a lot of times I had to change how a quest plays out because of restraints. For instance, at one point, I was going to have the players chase a cat around Eastern Wastes in TOV, but due to several reasons, I couldnt have 20 PCs following an annoying slow cat cause they are all stuck on the same quest step. So now Orctooth is a corralled around a specific area.
Aristo: While I'm really proud of how The Brothers Zek came out, especially as my first raid, it was far too complicated for where it fit in progression and I took too long to implement it. Also the Murdunk part, which is more important story-wise, feels like an afterthought and his potion mechanic is too complicated.
dreamweaver: Question 21 - If the game ever sunsets, who would you want to be the final boss and why?
AbsorEQ: Veeshan. If anyone is going to come along and end everything on Norrath, it's her.
Aristo: Scruffy the Rat.
Ngreth: What Alan Said. Veeshan the Destroyer!
niente: After Veeshan, the Nameless should appear and black-hole end the world.
Pip: Absor. "MAN LITERALLY TOO GRUMPY TO DIE"
dreamweaver: Question 22 - Has there ever been an event that you thought was going to be particularly hard, that was easily beaten by players ... and the reverse, one that would be on the easier side that gave a lot of players some trouble ? If so, what were they?
Pip: Doing an AMA where one question wasn't even a question while other questions include 2 questions. Who made it easier for you all to ask so many questions!?
AbsorEQ: This is pretty much every event I've ever made. Sometimes clues that I think make perfect sense just don't, or mechanics that seemed easy to me (and to the beta testers), turn out to be really hard in the real game. It would be a shorter list if you asked me which ones I think I got right...
dreamweaver:
Doing an AMA where one question wasn't even a question while other questions include 2 questions. Who made it easier for you all to ask so many questions!?
@Pip I WAS ME AND I HAVE ALMOST NO REGRETS
dreamweaver: Some regrets.
Pip: many ragerts
Aristo: No regerts
AbsorEQ: Regrets keep me alive.
Pip: this explains so much
Aristo: No, those are egrets that keep bringing you fish.
dreamweaver: Question 23 - Has there ever been consideration to selling the individual Expansion Only Bonus items in the marketplace? Or sell the "upgrades" for those expansions for the purpose of getting those items? Then again, some items (i.e. Mark of Brell) was only give 1 per account (I would love to have one on all my toons, not just one).
Pip: Yes, very much so.
Ngreth: Check with us after the April patch, we are trying more. We are only releasing them a bit at a time to see if the sales are worth the money spent (Design time since it's 90% work done in the past)
AbsorEQ: Yes, we have thought of offering the older expansion bonus items for sale. In fact, we recently did just that with the House of Thule stuff. Hopefully we can offer more things like that, if there is an interest. As for the beta rewards, I don't like the idea, personally. Those are rewards for helping us out, not just things you may have missed out on purchasing.
niente: These would be great, I think part of the issue is adding these is more work than it seems, because of legal issues with how the original items were originally sold (as a pack-in with an expansion, not a regular Marketplace item).
dreamweaver: Question 24 - Alan - given the continued popularity of the FV server and forum threads, has your view on people not wanting FV rules because they're a curse (from FoH AMA) changed at all?
AbsorEQ: It's weird being called out in these things. One thing I encourage people to remember is that seeing a "lot" of posts on a forum doesn't mean a whole lot when it comes to gauging interest in something. It's a starting point, sure, but if it's ten people making three thousand posts, it means a lot less. The question I have is why do people want an FV rules server? I suspect that the answer might not be because they like the rules to play with. As I asked before, if you can't transfer onto or off the server, ever, and the sever never gets merged, would anyone play on it? I don't think so, but I have no real way of knowing.
Pip: I'm not Alan but I want to give an answer anyways! He can have one of my questions. Alan, go tell them what its like to be a new dev on EQ please.
AbsorEQ: Being a new dev is like eating cake all day long.
Pip: with diabetes
AbsorEQ: You big baby
dreamweaver: Question 25 - In regards to stat food and stat drink - Will future food and drink require foraging and fishing on a massive scale? (Read afk foraging and fishing).
Pip: This has become a staple in MMOs since SLIGHTLY after EQ's success. I think it is something we should look into, but is it "EverQuest"?
Ngreth: The future is unknown. I will not rule it out nor commit to it. You are probably wondering why the extra parts to this question are not answered. they are leading and trying to "trap" me. This is an "Ask Me Anything" not answer anything, and while I make mistakes, I'm not falling into the trap that was set.
reamweaver: Question 26 - Can we see a return of pre expansion content? I know big ask, but I always found it a nice introduction as to why we were required to help the NPCs in new content.Loved building the blimp to allow us to get to Alaris.
AbsorEQ: Ah yes, the ol' expansion launch events! I don't think we'll see those again. There is less value to content that can only be seen once and then never again. I understand that this is part of what makes it special (best example: Bloody Kithicor). But expending the time on that rather than something that people can play more than once and have access to all the time is hard to justify. I loved making those things, but I don't think we'll see them again in the future.
dreamweaver: Question 27 - Why are there no female giants?....just curious
AbsorEQ: I can answer this for all the races that should have females but don't. Time and resources. If we only have time to make one sex for a thing you are going to kill, it's usually been the males. Probably sexist, but what can I say. It's the same frustrating reason that a lot of NPCs can't sit. That annoys me a lot. As a side note, it was also the reason for the story line of TBL. I noticed that we were missing sexes (or just didn't use some) for some of the genies and that sparked the story. They say limitations often make for the most creative solutions.
Pip: There are, but they are just SO big you cannot see them! (This is not canon)
Ngreth: It's also part of the reason Alarans are hermaphrodites. We wanted a large variance in looks, but we would have less with male and female, so we wrapped a story around a single gender race and got more variance! It's not the only reason. I wanted representation of non-binary, AND I wanted a different way for players to interact, a different kind of story.
niente: Maybe they disappeared, like entwives.
dreamweaver: Question 28 - Can we get an expansion based on Drinal, Norraths other moon?........pretty please.
AbsorEQ: /shrug.
dreamweaver: (I am being attacked by my cats)
Pip: We've already been to a moon...why would you want to go to ANOTHER moon. We have moon at home, just use that moon. Too many moons if you ask me!
AbsorEQ: (we're rooting for the cats)
Ngreth: I bring this up from time to time. It hasn't gained traction yet! Probably because I haven't planned a whole expansion around it and only brought up the idea as a place and other ideas tossed around sound fun too!
dreamweaver: Question 29 - ToV expansion had no prerequests for requesting missions and raids, can we see this appiled to older raids?
AbsorEQ: Probably not. There's isn't a lot of motivation to so, and even less so considering the effort that would be required.
Aristo: The only thing tougher than adding restrictions is taking them away.
dreamweaver: (Spelling out profanities are still going to get you kicked or banned remember this is an all ages channel)
Pip: (is mayonnaise a profanity?)
AbsorEQ: (yes)
dreamweaver: Question 30 - Is the ZEM in Velks Lab (ToV) correct? It appears to be giving less exp per mob than other ToV zones, and being both T2 and a dungeon I would expect it to be higher than somewhere like GD & EW.
AbsorEQ: I just checked, it's the same as the other tier 2 zones for that expansion. It's certainly not low. It is, in fact, exactly the same for all the zones in that expansion, including Great Divide and Eastern Wastes.
Ngreth: And the NPCs are sharing the same "NPC Base" (We call it "Relative Value" ) And have the same XP multiplier (1 for normal, 3-4 for rares) on the NPC's
Ngreth: I.E. they give the same EXP.
dreamweaver: Question 31 - Why are all reanimated hands left handed?
Pip: Something off about those reanimated, something about them doesnt feel...right.
AbsorEQ: Sinister - adjective - Definition 1: threatening or portending evil, harm, or trouble; ominous: a sinister remark. Definition 2: bad, evil, base, or wicked; fell: his sinister purposes. Definition 3: unfortunate; disastrous; unfavorable: a sinister accident. Definition 4: of or on the left side; left. Read into that what you will.
niente: I never noticed this before, I'm impressed. Maybe the artist was right handed and used their left to model?
dreamweaver: Question 32 - I hope you are all staying safe and avoiding the outside world as much as possible, what have you all been doing to while away your free time?
niente: Playing EQ
AbsorEQ: Sorry to say, I have gained about 20 minutes a day by not having to go into the office, now that showering is optional. I also have a lot more dishes to do now that I eat all my meals at home. It about evens out.
Aristo: It's nicer to not have to battle traffic to and from work, but I don't seem to have more free time than I did before. On the other hand, when my partner got appendicitis it was real cool to be here and get him to the hospital.
Ngreth: I have a 40 to 60 minute commute. I'm glad my commute is now 5 steps out of my office. I'm a mild introvert, with very poor social skills, but I am still missing interaction with my work friends. I have only made one trip further than my mailbox in about ten days, and that was, similar to Aristo, a trip to a hospital for outpatient surgery for my partner. She's fine though, just sore!
AbsorEQ: (oh, mail! I haven't picked mine up in more than a week...)
Pip: I'm a huge fan of MMOs, so I love playing other MMOs and other types of MMOs for research/inspiration. When I get sick of that I tend to play something more competitive, such as Rainbow Six:Siege or Heroes of the Storm. I love games, I've dedicated my life to games and gaming...thats why I enjoy baking now.
Pip: (I'm more creative without a shirt on anyways)
dreamweaver: Question 34 - what's up with the Necro Dot revamp?
Aristo: I'm working on it now! Shadowknights are going live in this patch and Necromancers are next. It may come in phases but I have the time blocked out for it and it will happen this year.
dreamweaver: Question 35 - The team has been rock stars over 20 years of delivering "content". Has anyone considered that the problem may no longer be content but teaching new players how to consume it easier?
AbsorEQ: It is probably fair to always assume that the problem is me.
Aristo: There's a lot to EQ, and like any other game that's been around this long there is a disadvantage to being presented with all of the years of changes at once rather than gradually over time. We could absolutely improve the new (or returning) player experience and it would take a lot of time to do so. We also have a lot of players who want as much new content as we can make and aren't benefitted directly by better training, so that's a powerful argument for where to apply our resources.
niente: My favorite solution is TLP servers that teach you the entire game slowly, with expert players along for the ride who like that replayability. There's no easy way to teach someone how to play EQ. I just wish more people stuck around past PoP on TLPs.
Pip: Y E S. However, EverQuest is supposed to be hard if you are a loner. That's the charm of EQ. It would actually make more sense to make a new game than it would be to remove the charm out of EQ.
dreamweaver: Question 36 - What plans are being made to help new players to learn how to play the game, especially on live servers? Heroic characters are helpful to get players to 85, but even at 85 all classes require a fair amount of knowledge about the game or the will instantly die to non-trivial monsters.
Pip: I brainstorm a lot about this, the bar is set pretty high already then the learning curve kicks in and then its worse. The Hero's Journey that was set up during the Serpent's Spine is a great start for players who want to learn the game. There is just SO MUCH in the game that to try and narrow down what you "should" be doing would be impossible, as you can go/do so much already.
AbsorEQ: This comes up often. We would be super happy to hear ideas from you all about what would help.
Ngreth: And if we make a class tutorial, we will be told loudly and by very many people how we did it wrong, and it should be this way.
niente: It would be amazing if new heroic characters had a class-specific instance (like a tutorial) to teach you the ropes. That would be a ton of work, and I don't know if it's worth the effort and design time to do that instead of making, well, 16 missions for Live content. I think TLPs are the next-best way to re-introduce people to the game.
dreamweaver: Question 37 - Going forward, what steps can the development team take to decrease the likelihood that bugs are not properly patched before it goes live? In this last three or four years of playing EQ, I cannot remember when new content was added to the game or the game was patched that didn't introduce new bugs. And to further that any bug that helps the player in anyway leads to an immediate emergency patch, while those that hurt the players must wait until the next monthly patch to get updated.
Pip: I'm very difficult on myself. When I see that there is an issue with the content I worked on and it made it to live, I feel ashamed. This is your world, we need to respect it, and those are peeks behind the curtain to remind you that this is a game. I hate reminding players that this is a game, I want them to be lost in our universe, much like an amusement park ride. "Its a Small World' gets comical at my age when you see someone from behind the scenes having to fix something, but even worse for the intended audience. I also get upset at myself for coming from a QA background (albeit, a short one), and not seeing these issues at the time of fruition. Short answer long, there is a reason bugs exist, theres no such thing as a perfect patch. Even if the players dont find bugs, they are still there, and can be found later.
AbsorEQ: We are always striving to improve our process. I can tell you that we do fix things that will break the economy or progression or whatever faster than we do things that may make things harder in game. It's, as always, a matter of resources. We certainly want to fix both things, but the first category are the types of things that can ruin the game entirely, the second can ruin and individual experience. Neither are good, for certain, but we have to fix the ones that have a greater, more immediate, and longer lasting effects first. Those also tend to be the issues that allow players to gain huge advantages.
Aristo: Emergency updates have costs in both time and currency, as well as their own set of risks, so we try to only do them when it is actually an emergency. And while we still catch the majority of bugs before they ever go live, shortening our patch process increases the likelihood of introducing more bugs. In other words, there are strong reasons for making fewer updates. We also try to look at every issue from the opposite side: What are the consequences if we wait to update this? If the consequence is "the game economy is damaged" or "someone can become max level instantly," we're more likely to have an early update than "this quest breaks sometimes." Sometimes the reason we don't update immediately to fix a problem is because we don't know how to fix it yet, or because fixing something "properly" will take more time than we have. It's a complex process in a complex game. We know it's frustrating to live through and we try to be as fair as we can be.
Ngreth: We always try to improve, but we will always be human. As the others have said, most of the bugs that "benefit players" that we "OMG fix now" would actually cause imbalance to the game, cause long term damage to the game, , shorten it's lifetime. Saying we always immediately fix bugs that are "good for the player" is hyperbolic. There are plenty of examples of bugs that affect players that we leave until the next patch, and some we never even fix, letting players have the "advantage." (Sometimes players don't know about these and just think it is the way it was intended, even if not) There are bugs that hurt the player for which we bring the server down as soon as we reasonably can.
niente: When I was really new, I took it extremely personally and was devastated every time something I did caused a bug. It also can be extremely stressful to patch (and emergency patch) the game. Part of getting (slightly) better at my job has been learning to relax, not panic, and not take things too personally when they go wrong. I still do feel we can do better regarding bugs, and it isn't easy. I would say that we do test things but sometimes they break in extremely unpredictable ways, that seem so obvious when they go live that of course they couldn't have been tested.. but they were! And sometimes they were implemented and tested by more than one developer who plays the game (for example, DoTs not being focused after death). We make mistakes, and I wish we could patch things perfectly every time. As for what gets an emergency patch - what can be hotfixed varies. For example, if a spell is broken it requires all servers to come down to fix. Other fixes are less disruptive, so that can be a reason why they do get fixed. Things are only fixed after the regular patch if it's an emergency (it's a non-insignificant amount of effort to do an emergency hotfix, which is development time that could be spent on adding new stuff, or fixing other problems), and each time is a triage situation. I am consistently impressed by what new and exciting ways the game breaks each time, and believe me, it disappoints me as much as it does you. What steps can be taken to improve this - more developers and more QA testers.
Ngreth: (this one created a wall of text!)
dreamweaver: (Giving people a moment to read everything lol)
AbsorEQ: (If I answer there will be a wall of text)
dreamweaver: The second question that is definitely a statement Question 38 - I just realized there is no questions for dreamweaver!
AbsorEQ: Don't talk to my son ever again!
Pip: Who?
dreamweaver:
Who?
@Pip hurtful.
Pip:
@Pip hurtful.
@dreamweaver good
dreamweaver: Question 39 - There has been criticism about the way experience is earned in ToV. Some of us dislike the idea of forced progression, myself included. Will this trend continue into future expansions?
Ngreth: There are criticisms about everything we do. In the last two expansions we increased the amount of experience required to level more than we increased tha amount of experience gained for killing an NPC. A ToV NPC does offer more exp per kill, but the amount of EXP required to level is larger than that increase. I like the idea of granting large amounts of experience for completing the content of an expansion. If it is is up to me, the answer is, yes, we will continue to grant large amounts of experience for completing content in the expansion, making it the most efficient way to gain levels. Will we always increase that amount of experienced required to gain a level as much as we did this time? That is a less certain decision for which I do not have an answer.
niente: Progression isn't forced, leveling just takes longer if you don't do it. I think you'll get more traction if you can explain what you don't like about progression or what's stopping you from doing it.
AbsorEQ: (looks up the definition of "forced"...)
dreamweaver: Question 40 - Can you add Ultron's Ultimate Unattuner to the marketplace?
Ngreth: At this time there is a specific decision to not add this item to the marketplace, we want various time delays to it's use.
Prathun: We do want there to be a meaningful reward for doing the expansion content progression as it's much more logistically difficult than farming NPCs. And we definitely don't want farming easy NPCs from older expansions to be the best way to level. (for question #39)
dreamweaver: I think Prathun was responding to question 39
dreamweaver: Question 41 - Are there any plans to increase heroic character levels? I don't believe a level 85 will be able to group with a level 120 and get xp when the next level increase happens.
Ngreth: Plans, yes. Details or a timetable, no.
dreamweaver: Question 42 - Raid loot in general. with tradeskill gear being the best option these past couple expansions and the growing theme. is it possible to just have chests drop Muhbis (tradeskill gear), Spells, then maybe add more currency reward per event win (currently 10 currency per win) perhaps increase the currency per win or instead of a bunch of random items extra in the chest, just drop 1k currency in the chest that could be distributed. so raid chest drops Tradeskill Raid item, Spells, 1k currency. I say this because it would be much easier to distribute 1k currency (or a currency = to RNG items in chest, however you would wanna do it to add to the randomness of item costs)
Ngreth: Interesting idea, but at this time I say: No.
Aristo: The psychological impact of going currency-first instead of item-first is why we don't want to do this. Essentially you no longer hope the thing you need drops, you now are certain it won't, and you will just have to grind through it X times to earn the points to buy it. We get a lot of flack whenever we say one way is more fun than the other, but there are studies on this.
Aristo: That may not sound like much of a distinction but it's a huge difference in feel.
dreamweaver: Question 43 - For Pip or any other new dev/designer. What do you do to get caught up with the vast codebase and disparate systems that make up EQ?
Aristo: Step 1: Stop drowning!
Pip: Lotta crying, I've often told people that it's like puff pastry. When you make something with puff pastry, the recipe always says "go buy some'' because making it is super hard and tedious and you need the right tool to do it well. Well, we take time and energy to ensure that we make the puff pastry for you all. I know out there, there is probably an easier way to do everything, but doing it the way EQ does it is amazing in the idea that I get to live in history. This is the closest I'll get in my career to time traveling or working in a museum. I love it, though there are a lot of times when I'm sitting with my head in my hands playing out that scene from "Wedding Singer" where the main character yells "This information would have been useful to me YESTERDAY!" over and over. Luckily, these people have worked with 20+ years of noobs showing up and trying to prove themselves, so they already know how to deal with me if I ever became one of "those guys", which is good, cause I welcome all criticism and teaching opportunities. The vets made me feel more comfortable about my work than I ever have within the first like...2 years. I was told from the get-go "We don't expect you to be useful for at least 2 years." to which I said "nuh uh, imma be useful right now!" They were right, and patient with me, and I wouldn't be nearly as happy in my career if I didn't have the support from all of the vets. Ultimately, imagine looking at a painting that has been painted on for the last 20 years, and then have someone say "now make it better". That's 20+ years of work done, what if I undo or mess up people's favorite parts? It's like that George Carlin joke, "What wine pairs well with Cap'n Crunch(tm)?". I feel like the Cap'n Crunch(tm) in this metaphor.
niente: When I was brand new on the code team I basically drowned in >30k line files for several days. I later learned that was not The Way. The game is huge and with a large codebase, mostly I don't go browsing for things - there has to be a specific issue and you can look for every place where that is mentioned. I will say IDEs and plugins do a lot of handholding that helps navigate that wasn't around when EQ was first made. Mostly I've learned from experience with solving new problems I haven't seen before (i.e. a real estate problem, or an item bug, or adding something new to the quest system for design).
AbsorEQ: Print it all out, put a bedsheet on it, learn through osmosis.
dreamweaver: Question 44 - LOYALTY VENDOR: Why is there a cap on how many Loyalty Tokens aka Crowns that you can have (not to be confused with Earning them), if this is a little bonus and encouragement for long term paid subscribers? And will there ever be better, even if more costly, items added? Like bigger bags (they are 16 slot atm), or more bags of alternative currency options, etc.?
Aristo: The maximum cap is to encourage you to spend the crowns you've earned once in a while, rather than collecting them infinitely and creating runaway inflation in the process.
Ngreth: As for more items, we added luck recently! That aside, This question sparked me to create a ticket to look at what we can add.
dreamweaver: Question 45 - Has there ever been consideration to selling the individual Expansion Only Bonus items in the marketplace? Or sell the "upgrades" for those expansions for the purpose of getting those items? Then again, some items (i.e. Mark of Brell) was only give 1 per account (I would love to have one on all my toons, not just one).
Ngreth: Check back soon
Pip: Lots of it
Aristo: Yep. Lots of consideration. Don't have more details.
dreamweaver: Question 46 - And how about rotating items through Marketplace categories we don't see anymore? There are a number of mounts, familiars and / or illusions that we never seem to have a chance to buy.
Ngreth: This is in the plans, but it does not have highest priority. The priority might change, but that is predicting the future, which is a task I do rather poorly.
dreamweaver: Question 47 - With the recent tier 3 launch snafu, have safeguards been put into place to ensure this cannot happen again?
Ngreth: Yes. Nothing is as foolproof as we think. It's also based on server time, and that is not accessible for the average designer to manipulate.
Aristo: We are VERY good fools.
dreamweaver: Question 48 - On a more general note: Did you ever figure out why Fragments of Alaran History don't drop from grey con mobs? At 115 I am finding it really hard to find mobs that drop the fragment.
Ngreth: Yes. It is designed that way. There is a setting we can add to loot that only allows it to drop when the NPC is in a certain con range, and that setting is used on these drops.
dreamweaver: Question 49 - Will you bring back bard only weapons? Rogues still get their daggers, rangers with their bows and wars with their weapons. Monks/Beastlords share but no love for the bards.
Ngreth: No. But I will consider being more consistent with the instruments.
dreamweaver: Question 50 - Can pure casters get a tunic for once to match their other gear slots, robes have become very boring and repetative and it would be nice to show off how lovely the soft silk looks underneath my robe!
Ngreth: This is a no win for me. If I do tunics, I'll get an equal amount of outrage for not doing it as a robe.
Pip: I remember playing late game WOW (at the time) and the end game mage gear was not a robe, but a pair of pants and a shirt. I was livid. My point is that changing too much from what is expected can cause issues, even unintentionally.
Ngreth: Also, Tunic ends up being leather, not cloth (for looks)
dreamweaver: Question 51 - Can we have an increase on the drop rate for Diamondized Precious Velium Ore please? Or at least have an instance drop at least 1 guarenteed? We cleared GD, ToFS and EW trash yesterday and the only drops we got was 2 luck augs and some tradeskill stuff, zero ore to make the augments, the NPCs didn't even drop PP.
Ngreth: No, I will not increase the drops. BUT, data is already set to roll a second time when the expansion is six months old. I can consider adding plat to the trash mobs, but that will be a team conversation, so I will not promise this.
Ngreth: I.E. when you kill a mob that can drop it, it will roll twice.
dreamweaver: Question 52 - (Overseer) Will the developers consider enabling current expansion rewards (tradeskills/collectibles) after a set period of time in that expansion. For example 6 months on Live servers or 1.5 months on TLP servers (about halfway through the expansion lifetime)?
niente: If Overseer is a catch-up system, how do we justify giving current era rewards for (effectively) standing in PoK? Also, every time something on TLPs has a sub-expansion period launch date, there are various problems and that work is added to each new TLP and existing TLPs (see Phinny RoF, CotF launches). I would say it has a greater cost to do this work than it's worth (just my personal opinion).
Ngreth: And as an aside, our minimum time interval on the requirements we can use for these rewards is a month, so it would be 1month or 2months not 1.5. (end even 1 month leaves out Selo... though they'll be "live" soon enough ) But, overall, Lucy's opinion is shared by the team.
dreamweaver: Question 53 - Do you think that there could be a way that community groups could design a themed set of items for the cash shop. Not for them to profit off of but in order to leave their mark on the game and let their players sport a certain look. For instance I am sure that Fires of Heaven might like to make an avenging celestial looking set for heroes forge and weapons.
niente: Your specific idea would be a lot of logistics and work, you might have more luck trying to convince Dreamweaver and/or Ngreth to do a player contest of some kind for an item name, or that type of thing.
Ngreth: Baring legal issues, Item naming is much more feasible than item art.
dreamweaver: Question 54 - Any updates on progress with addressing zone lag?
niente: We've added additional diagnostics for zone lag, right now we are mostly working on server merges. I think later in the year more work can be done. It's hard because this is very important, but fixing server crash issues and patching out new changes / necessary things for expansions, etc are also still going on.
dreamweaver: Question 55 - Have any of you ever played on either of the four original Zek servers (Rallos, Sullon, Tallon, Vallos)? If so, what's your most memorable moment from it?
niente: I played on Zek for about 2 weeks (I was playing someone else's cleric). This was during SoF, so I'm not sure it counts. We raided Crystallos. To me the most memorable thing was this wizard who had a decked out, $2.5k gaming PC spec'd to zone quickly. If he could zone first he would kill people before they finished zoning. The other really memorable thing was that no one on the server had completed the face aug because playing in open zones was so dangerous. To me, that was sad. I was really impressed with PVP style play and pretty much everyone I've met who was from a PVP server has been an amazing player. You can't be bad and survive on a PVP server (or can you?).
dreamweaver: Brutal.
dreamweaver: Alright everyone, I have devs that need to head to meetings and animals that won't stop pestering me. That is it for today, stay tuned for announcements about different formats and/or the next time we will be scheduling one of these. There were a ton of questions we didn't have time to get to and still need to be answered and I am sure some of these answers gave you more questions.
dreamweaver: Thank you for taking the time to read along with us today and if your question didn't get answered yet I am genuinely sorry. I know if we had the time we'd get through them all eventually.
dreamweaver: And for those of you faithfully using the emojis to spell out TLP I see you.
dreamweaver: What features of the new Overseer system do you feel help characters "catch up"? Can you share thoughts on what you feel is a reasonable reward for players to obtain from that system in order to help them catch up?
dreamweaver: That is your first question!
Prathun: Perhaps "supplement" is a better term than "catch up." The Overseer system is meant to reward periodic interaction over the course of months (and if and when we extend the system, years). I worry that "catch up" conjures up the concept that a few weeks of play will max out your characters' benefits from the system. We want the Overseer system to be an evergreen addition to EverQuest.
dreamweaver: Question 2 - Could the team please look at increasing raid currency rates on Accelerated Unlock Schedule Servers. While I / others do not expect currency awards to be made entirely/fully proportionate to the accelerated rate, a 4x unlock speed with 2x currency rate for example increase seems a very reasonable increase to request. Some of the expansions such as TDS onwards will be awarding a lot less currency than RoF for example & we might be lucky to get maybe one item from currency in-era for those guilds that like to remain in the current expansion on their servers.
Ngreth: This is already coming to the game in the April patch. It uses the same multiplier as the keys. See test patch notes for confirmation
Aristo: That's going to work on live servers too!
dreamweaver: Question 3 - Will the developers consider having higher level or higher tier missions do anything beyond award additional overseer currency? Like more tradeskill items or more collectible summoners or more ornament summoners or more EXP? It seems like the only reward that consistently is scaling up is currency.
Ngreth: (people like that chocolate Ice Cream Emoji!)
Ngreth: They already do. The scaling favors higher tier more than higher level. It also scales with duration. We can have a conversation about adjusting the curve for concrete rewards. The more numerical rewards like Experience and currency will likely stay the way they are.
dreamweaver: Question 4 - Are there any concrete plans to adding older expansion tradeskill rewards to the artisan style overseer missions for example TSS global gems, OOW augments, PoP stuff, GoD stuff, etc.
Ngreth: Nothing Concrete, but they are under consideration.
dreamweaver: (Also...yes...definitely chocolate ice cream...for sure let's go with that.)
Ngreth: (I do know what it is...
)dreamweaver: Question 5 - This question is primarily for Ngreth, as it pertains to items. Are there any plans to tweak Heroic Intelligence or another stat to make stats/item upgrades more impactful for DPS casters?
Ngreth: There are conversations. We do not yet have concrete plans.
Aristo: Yes, we're not satisfied with the current state, but we don't have something solid to talk about right now.
Prathun: All this talk of concrete is mixing with my emotions.
dreamweaver: Question 6 - The recent issue with T3 notwithstanding, how has the team found the staggered release method to be generally successful? Is there potential to revisit the mechanism by which it unlocks to allow for more granularity in unlock time/dates – e.g. on Sundays?
Ngreth: Despite the hiccup, we think this method in general seems to be a good thing. There are things we would like to tweak, but nothing set. A thought is to use the Event system (The events that shows on the EQ calendar). This allows us to set an arbitrary date. No date we choose is going to be good for everyone. This is NOT a promise to change to that system.
Prathun: We'd definitely like to revisit the unlock system to give us more fine control over the unlock dates.
dreamweaver: Question 7 - On a related note, how has the team felt about ToV raid tuning?
AbsorEQ: It seems that we made them too easy. I'm fine with the first tier being "too easy", but I would like to have the later tiers be a bit harder than they turned out to be. There is a challenge tuning these things in beta. The timing of items, spells, and AA completion along with the fact that testers have nothing really to gain by putting in their best efforts can make it extremely hard to gauge the actual difficulty of events like this. We continue to try to improve the process.
Prathun: The raids in ToV fell on the "a little too easy" side. Even after the retune bumping up the challenge of tier 2, it's a little easier than I had aimed for.
niente: I think it's a good thing to have more accessible raid content.
Ngreth: I'm Happy with Servant of the Sleeper!
dreamweaver: Question 8 - Can we please have Gnome Beastlords and/or Gnome Monks?
Pip: Sadly, as much as I want to open up these options, I will have to defer to the amount of work needed for such an endeavor to my cohorts who knows what they are doing. (Or so they tell me, it's not like I can really argue with them.)
niente: My top choice is iksar berserker! Unfortunately adding new class/race combinations is a lot of work.
Aristo: All player races that have the monk-specific animations (flying kick, etc) can currently be monks. While we relatively recently got the ability back to make slight modifications to old models, we do not have the capability to add new sets of animations to our player models. So basically no new monk races with our current models.
AbsorEQ: Beastlords are animal lovers, they understand the wilderness and the ways of the beasts. Gnomes understand clockworks, magic, and caves. Note that their zoo has one animal in it... Beastlords is a no-go lore-wise for gnomes. As for monks... well... gnome != Yoda. I don't see them having the discipline to go through the training. That being said, I suppose it isn't the worst idea, as far as lore goes. Not the best, but not the worst. From the practical side, it's not very likely that we will be adding classes to races that don't already have them.
dreamweaver: Question 9 - Has there been any serious consideration for a seasonal TLP? That is, one that wipes and starts again after a set period of time.
AbsorEQ: We tried that with Quarm. The whole point of that server was to explore strange rulesets for short periods then reset. The uptake on that server was, frankly, bad. I am really not sure that EverQuest lends itself to limited lifespan for characters. Part of the appeal of the game is that we identify with the characters that we create and having them disappear after a few months may not appeal to folks. That being said, it might have been the chosen ruleset that made Quarm into a failure, and the idea is brought up in meetings from time to time, but no current plans for such a thing are in the works.
Pip: I like to spend my time off hours thinking of fun new ways to mess with players. I thought about a BR server where its open world PVP, cept after 3 months or so it resets, like a season. When it resets, whoever is left alive gets...I dont know, I never got that far when it comes to messing with players... "Whats in it for them?" <thinkingemoji>
Prathun: Ultimately, the Quarm server generated less interest than we had hoped for and required more development resources than we had expected.
niente: I love this idea. There are a lot of TLP ideas and the competition is fierce. It's not an insignificant amount of work to set them up, so we have to be careful what is chosen. It would be nice to avoid stomping on existing TLPs.
dreamweaver: Question 10 - What’s the plan with Overseer? Is it going to see expansions like LoN? Are you happy with it’s iteration? What niche were you intending it to serve?
AbsorEQ: There are still a lot of fine-tuning details we have planned for Overseer. There will always be things we want to make better about it. We built the system with plans for possible expansion, and if people seem to be enjoying it then we will certainly look into making more content for it. The first content was centered on Faydwer, and we have a lot of other places to send agents, and a lot more agents that could help the Overseer in their task... I don't know that we were aiming at any particular niche. It's probably better to say that we were trying to make something that everyone could engage with and various levels. Folks can just send a few agents on missions when they log in, then just go back to their regularly scheduled EverQuest, or they could spend time delving into the best strategies for the agents they have and in getting the ones they don't.
dreamweaver: Question 11- Are the overseer merchant prices going to stay really high? At the moment it’s going to take months to get one piece of plate armor.
Ngreth: The prices are changing in the April patch.
Ngreth: As the patch notes say, mostly down, two items up.
dreamweaver: More of a statement than a question 12 - JChan: Congrats, Alan: Glad you're still around, Dreamweaver: thanks for setting this up.
AbsorEQ: I'm not dead yet!
Pip: I'm super glad Absor is still around. I'm terrified of the idea of having to even come close to having to do his job. Jenn has always been amazing so I can't say anything more on that other than I'm happy to have to deal with her patience. Who is Dreamweaver? This is like Jeopardy! Why am I asking the questions here?!
Aristo: You'll be stone cold in a moment.
AbsorEQ: Pffft!
Pip: (absor is leaking)
dreamweaver: Concerning... but will be addressed later.
dreamweaver: Question 13 - Can you please make one of the new servers an FV Rule set we have been asking for a long time.
AbsorEQ: Well, to be fair only a few people are asking for it, they are just doing so with an admirable frequency... From my point of view, FV rules do not make good gameplay. Here's a question for those that say they want it, what if you could never transfer onto or off of the server, and it never merged with another? Is that still appealing?
niente: An FV rulset TLP would be great, and players definitely have a lot of interest in one. Currently this type of ruleset invites a lot of fraud and CS intervention, which we can't support at this time.
Prathun: Free trade rulesets bypass the primary game loop, which isn't ideal from a game design PoV.
dreamweaver: Question 14 - Alan, are you and/or DarkPaw Games now convinced that people do want to play PVP TLP as opposed to PVP Live? Are you aware there is a PVP trilogy fanbase playing on private servers? You mentioned before that new TLP types are possible. I believe that the PVP TLP appeal has been underestimated. Can we talk about this further?
AbsorEQ: I hate to say it, but I am more convinced now that not enough people want it to justify setting up such a server. The high population on the day that everyone was supposed to show up on Rallos was, frankly, very low. Certainly not enough to support a server. This would be my answer to most of your other questions about PVP things.
Aristo: There's definite passion out there. We just haven't ever seen the numbers.
dreamweaver: (This next question is a follow up to the last) Question 15 - Is it feasible to create a TLP on a different engine?
Pip: "Welcome to EverQuest, now download that other game if you want to play it". "Possible"? I mean, I didn't think I'd be ever in a position in my lifetime to be answering these questions, so anything is possible. However, "feasible", hard no.
AbsorEQ: Anything is possible. However, this isn't. Rebuilding the entire game just to stand up one progression server just isn't practical at all.
niente: I think an engine upgrade would be an enormous amount of work, sort of like rebuilding your house. Would be nice but probably isn't worth it.
Ngreth: To @niente 's point, it's like rebuilding your house while you're living in it and there's a constant hurricane during an earthquake.
dreamweaver: Question 16 - Can we have a discussion about removing/reducing all the really harsh racial NPC abilities on TRASH mobs?
AbsorEQ: I can look at those again, sure.
dreamweaver: Question 17 - How’s the work from home situation? Are you finding it easier or more difficult to get things done? I’m finding it difficult at home with coordinating, communication, and then family obligations.
AbsorEQ: Working at home, for me at least, hasn't been bad at all. I don't have anyone here to pester me, and I ate all my pets the first week, so disturbances are lower here. Also, I have tried to keep the experience working at home as much like being in the office as possible. Same routine, no television... stuff like that. Some things are a little awkward, but over all it isn't that bad. Of course it helps that we have great tech folks and our business is online and all that.
Aristo: For some things it's better. I have a lot more uninterrupted thinkin' time, which is good for deep solo projects like DoT consolidation. For other things, it's a lot more difficult. It's putting kinks in our ability to train and collaborate, for sure. Our artists are having a more difficult time being productive because they have more hardware constraints. I'm glad to have the capability we have to keep as productive as we are right now. But I also miss talking with my friends.
Pip: I'm a bit of an introvert, which is ironic if you've ever gotten to see our team meetings. I like my home, all my stuff is there. The biggest problem is yeah, I tend to get easily distracted and trying to be motivated to do stuff for work when all of my games are a button press away...it can be frustrating. After I'm done with work for the day, I take my dogs for a walk or something to try and "clear" before I go back to the same area and play. I hate to say that I'm kind of thriving nonetheless, but I am. I have a hard time tuning people out so being able to just close my door and pet my cat while I work so I dont get too distracted, thats nice.
niente: I like it but I am very stressed out by current events. People at the grocery store are physically repulsed by me like I have the plague, and I was forced to order cheese on the internet (from Wisconsin, which is great).
Ngreth: I'm a small percentage more effective at home, So it's working well for me. There are communication hurdles to overcome, but overall it's working great. I like the commute, and I love having daylight (I get Seasonal Affective Disorder in the cave office)
Prathun: I'm enjoying the very brief commute and the spacious window office, but you're right that coordinating is more difficult. I think we're getting better at this as we adapt to the work from home situation. My wife and I are working side-by-side and we are having to navigate what to do if we're both on a meeting at the same time. I can't imagine trying to wrangle children and have a virtual meeting at the same time. Eep!
dreamweaver: Question 18 - I know this was asked during the FoH AMA. Will we see The Burning Lands Part 2 for the next expansion or thereafter?
niente: That's classified
AbsorEQ: I hope that means that you liked it. I had a lot of fun with the concepts involved. And there certainly are more things to explore there. I can't tell you what's in the future, but I would love to explore that little world again.
Pip: You may not know this, but I came in during that expansion, so technically that was my first expansion, even though I introduced myself during this expansion. I still didn't feel like "part of the team" at that moment so I didnt feel...worthy? To come out right away and be like "IM HEEEEEERE". However, I learned A LOT during that expansion. Also, what @niente said, I could tell you what's coming, but then she will have to kill you.
dreamweaver: Question 19 - Is there a zone/ quest/ raid event/ expansion that you guys are particularly proud of or liked a lot?
AbsorEQ: I really enjoyed making the Al'Kabor's nightmare event for House of Thule. It gave me a chance to explore what a megalomaniac would fear and how he really views his companions.
Aristo: I was so thrilled to see how our art team brought Gorowyn to life. I designed some points to force perspective and it was really neat to see that work in 3D the same way it did in my head.
Ngreth: I'm probably the most proud of A Formal Dinner party, making a clue game work in EverQuest was a significant challenge. I wish I had thought of every possible exploit before it went live! I also enjoyed Cacophony of Oratory, the Simon says mechanic was fun to create. And overall, it was great being the Lead Designer during Veil of Alaris.
Pip: The Tower of Frozen Shadow in TOV. I knew going into that zone that there is already a ton of history behind it, and if I screw this up, it could be a huge deal. Luckily, the vets here are really good at patience and showing me how to do things in our game. Jonathan helped immensely but after that got out on beta and I was seeing everyones comments about it, I was thrilled. All of the work I do I am insanely happy to be a part of. The hardest lesson for me was to learn what IS "EverQuest", and to spin that in a new, yet familiar way. I also love telling people some of the inspirations for my quests. I like to tell Niente about my inspirations and she gets a huge kick out of the stories. Things like, how I named an NPC after Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, or how I saw a meme and made a whole quest off of one panel of said meme. The amount of story behind the story is why I'm in this industry and couldn't be happier being a part of one of the most storied MMOs in existence.
niente: zone: Plane of War, quest: Artisan's Prize, raid: Tris Wallow III expansion: LDoN (I didn't make these)
dreamweaver: Question 20 - On the flip side, is there a zone / quest/ raid event/ expansion that you guys regret or wish you would have done differently in hindsight?
AbsorEQ: As Dzarn and I have often discussed, the King Odeen raid event in Valdeholm might be the absolute worst thing I ever made. Not that any of the specific parts of it were bad, but because there were way, way too many parts. I was a young(er) fool back in those days. Today if I did all that again I would make that into five or six events. But I was trying to impress people. That's my excuse.
Ngreth: I'm not changing it, but I wish I did not make Ambleshift's Amazing Automated Amalgamator so complex. I was thinking "Crazy gnome" but think it ended up being "Crazy Dev." Like the other designers, part of it was me overthinking as a new designer.
Pip: Bruh, I don't even know what I did wrong on a normal day, how can I know what I regret!? There are a lot of times I had to change how a quest plays out because of restraints. For instance, at one point, I was going to have the players chase a cat around Eastern Wastes in TOV, but due to several reasons, I couldnt have 20 PCs following an annoying slow cat cause they are all stuck on the same quest step. So now Orctooth is a corralled around a specific area.
Aristo: While I'm really proud of how The Brothers Zek came out, especially as my first raid, it was far too complicated for where it fit in progression and I took too long to implement it. Also the Murdunk part, which is more important story-wise, feels like an afterthought and his potion mechanic is too complicated.
dreamweaver: Question 21 - If the game ever sunsets, who would you want to be the final boss and why?
AbsorEQ: Veeshan. If anyone is going to come along and end everything on Norrath, it's her.
Aristo: Scruffy the Rat.
Ngreth: What Alan Said. Veeshan the Destroyer!
niente: After Veeshan, the Nameless should appear and black-hole end the world.
Pip: Absor. "MAN LITERALLY TOO GRUMPY TO DIE"
dreamweaver: Question 22 - Has there ever been an event that you thought was going to be particularly hard, that was easily beaten by players ... and the reverse, one that would be on the easier side that gave a lot of players some trouble ? If so, what were they?
Pip: Doing an AMA where one question wasn't even a question while other questions include 2 questions. Who made it easier for you all to ask so many questions!?
AbsorEQ: This is pretty much every event I've ever made. Sometimes clues that I think make perfect sense just don't, or mechanics that seemed easy to me (and to the beta testers), turn out to be really hard in the real game. It would be a shorter list if you asked me which ones I think I got right...
dreamweaver:
Doing an AMA where one question wasn't even a question while other questions include 2 questions. Who made it easier for you all to ask so many questions!?
@Pip I WAS ME AND I HAVE ALMOST NO REGRETS
dreamweaver: Some regrets.
Pip: many ragerts
Aristo: No regerts
AbsorEQ: Regrets keep me alive.
Pip: this explains so much
Aristo: No, those are egrets that keep bringing you fish.
dreamweaver: Question 23 - Has there ever been consideration to selling the individual Expansion Only Bonus items in the marketplace? Or sell the "upgrades" for those expansions for the purpose of getting those items? Then again, some items (i.e. Mark of Brell) was only give 1 per account (I would love to have one on all my toons, not just one).
Pip: Yes, very much so.
Ngreth: Check with us after the April patch, we are trying more. We are only releasing them a bit at a time to see if the sales are worth the money spent (Design time since it's 90% work done in the past)
AbsorEQ: Yes, we have thought of offering the older expansion bonus items for sale. In fact, we recently did just that with the House of Thule stuff. Hopefully we can offer more things like that, if there is an interest. As for the beta rewards, I don't like the idea, personally. Those are rewards for helping us out, not just things you may have missed out on purchasing.
niente: These would be great, I think part of the issue is adding these is more work than it seems, because of legal issues with how the original items were originally sold (as a pack-in with an expansion, not a regular Marketplace item).
dreamweaver: Question 24 - Alan - given the continued popularity of the FV server and forum threads, has your view on people not wanting FV rules because they're a curse (from FoH AMA) changed at all?
AbsorEQ: It's weird being called out in these things. One thing I encourage people to remember is that seeing a "lot" of posts on a forum doesn't mean a whole lot when it comes to gauging interest in something. It's a starting point, sure, but if it's ten people making three thousand posts, it means a lot less. The question I have is why do people want an FV rules server? I suspect that the answer might not be because they like the rules to play with. As I asked before, if you can't transfer onto or off the server, ever, and the sever never gets merged, would anyone play on it? I don't think so, but I have no real way of knowing.
Pip: I'm not Alan but I want to give an answer anyways! He can have one of my questions. Alan, go tell them what its like to be a new dev on EQ please.
AbsorEQ: Being a new dev is like eating cake all day long.
Pip: with diabetes
AbsorEQ: You big baby
dreamweaver: Question 25 - In regards to stat food and stat drink - Will future food and drink require foraging and fishing on a massive scale? (Read afk foraging and fishing).
Pip: This has become a staple in MMOs since SLIGHTLY after EQ's success. I think it is something we should look into, but is it "EverQuest"?
Ngreth: The future is unknown. I will not rule it out nor commit to it. You are probably wondering why the extra parts to this question are not answered. they are leading and trying to "trap" me. This is an "Ask Me Anything" not answer anything, and while I make mistakes, I'm not falling into the trap that was set.
reamweaver: Question 26 - Can we see a return of pre expansion content? I know big ask, but I always found it a nice introduction as to why we were required to help the NPCs in new content.Loved building the blimp to allow us to get to Alaris.
AbsorEQ: Ah yes, the ol' expansion launch events! I don't think we'll see those again. There is less value to content that can only be seen once and then never again. I understand that this is part of what makes it special (best example: Bloody Kithicor). But expending the time on that rather than something that people can play more than once and have access to all the time is hard to justify. I loved making those things, but I don't think we'll see them again in the future.
dreamweaver: Question 27 - Why are there no female giants?....just curious
AbsorEQ: I can answer this for all the races that should have females but don't. Time and resources. If we only have time to make one sex for a thing you are going to kill, it's usually been the males. Probably sexist, but what can I say. It's the same frustrating reason that a lot of NPCs can't sit. That annoys me a lot. As a side note, it was also the reason for the story line of TBL. I noticed that we were missing sexes (or just didn't use some) for some of the genies and that sparked the story. They say limitations often make for the most creative solutions.
Pip: There are, but they are just SO big you cannot see them! (This is not canon)
Ngreth: It's also part of the reason Alarans are hermaphrodites. We wanted a large variance in looks, but we would have less with male and female, so we wrapped a story around a single gender race and got more variance! It's not the only reason. I wanted representation of non-binary, AND I wanted a different way for players to interact, a different kind of story.
niente: Maybe they disappeared, like entwives.
dreamweaver: Question 28 - Can we get an expansion based on Drinal, Norraths other moon?........pretty please.
AbsorEQ: /shrug.
dreamweaver: (I am being attacked by my cats)
Pip: We've already been to a moon...why would you want to go to ANOTHER moon. We have moon at home, just use that moon. Too many moons if you ask me!
AbsorEQ: (we're rooting for the cats)
Ngreth: I bring this up from time to time. It hasn't gained traction yet! Probably because I haven't planned a whole expansion around it and only brought up the idea as a place and other ideas tossed around sound fun too!
dreamweaver: Question 29 - ToV expansion had no prerequests for requesting missions and raids, can we see this appiled to older raids?
AbsorEQ: Probably not. There's isn't a lot of motivation to so, and even less so considering the effort that would be required.
Aristo: The only thing tougher than adding restrictions is taking them away.
dreamweaver: (Spelling out profanities are still going to get you kicked or banned remember this is an all ages channel)
Pip: (is mayonnaise a profanity?)
AbsorEQ: (yes)
dreamweaver: Question 30 - Is the ZEM in Velks Lab (ToV) correct? It appears to be giving less exp per mob than other ToV zones, and being both T2 and a dungeon I would expect it to be higher than somewhere like GD & EW.
AbsorEQ: I just checked, it's the same as the other tier 2 zones for that expansion. It's certainly not low. It is, in fact, exactly the same for all the zones in that expansion, including Great Divide and Eastern Wastes.
Ngreth: And the NPCs are sharing the same "NPC Base" (We call it "Relative Value" ) And have the same XP multiplier (1 for normal, 3-4 for rares) on the NPC's
Ngreth: I.E. they give the same EXP.
dreamweaver: Question 31 - Why are all reanimated hands left handed?
Pip: Something off about those reanimated, something about them doesnt feel...right.
AbsorEQ: Sinister - adjective - Definition 1: threatening or portending evil, harm, or trouble; ominous: a sinister remark. Definition 2: bad, evil, base, or wicked; fell: his sinister purposes. Definition 3: unfortunate; disastrous; unfavorable: a sinister accident. Definition 4: of or on the left side; left. Read into that what you will.
niente: I never noticed this before, I'm impressed. Maybe the artist was right handed and used their left to model?
dreamweaver: Question 32 - I hope you are all staying safe and avoiding the outside world as much as possible, what have you all been doing to while away your free time?
niente: Playing EQ
AbsorEQ: Sorry to say, I have gained about 20 minutes a day by not having to go into the office, now that showering is optional. I also have a lot more dishes to do now that I eat all my meals at home. It about evens out.
Aristo: It's nicer to not have to battle traffic to and from work, but I don't seem to have more free time than I did before. On the other hand, when my partner got appendicitis it was real cool to be here and get him to the hospital.
Ngreth: I have a 40 to 60 minute commute. I'm glad my commute is now 5 steps out of my office. I'm a mild introvert, with very poor social skills, but I am still missing interaction with my work friends. I have only made one trip further than my mailbox in about ten days, and that was, similar to Aristo, a trip to a hospital for outpatient surgery for my partner. She's fine though, just sore!
AbsorEQ: (oh, mail! I haven't picked mine up in more than a week...)
Pip: I'm a huge fan of MMOs, so I love playing other MMOs and other types of MMOs for research/inspiration. When I get sick of that I tend to play something more competitive, such as Rainbow Six:Siege or Heroes of the Storm. I love games, I've dedicated my life to games and gaming...thats why I enjoy baking now.
Pip: (I'm more creative without a shirt on anyways)
dreamweaver: Question 34 - what's up with the Necro Dot revamp?
Aristo: I'm working on it now! Shadowknights are going live in this patch and Necromancers are next. It may come in phases but I have the time blocked out for it and it will happen this year.
dreamweaver: Question 35 - The team has been rock stars over 20 years of delivering "content". Has anyone considered that the problem may no longer be content but teaching new players how to consume it easier?
AbsorEQ: It is probably fair to always assume that the problem is me.
Aristo: There's a lot to EQ, and like any other game that's been around this long there is a disadvantage to being presented with all of the years of changes at once rather than gradually over time. We could absolutely improve the new (or returning) player experience and it would take a lot of time to do so. We also have a lot of players who want as much new content as we can make and aren't benefitted directly by better training, so that's a powerful argument for where to apply our resources.
niente: My favorite solution is TLP servers that teach you the entire game slowly, with expert players along for the ride who like that replayability. There's no easy way to teach someone how to play EQ. I just wish more people stuck around past PoP on TLPs.
Pip: Y E S. However, EverQuest is supposed to be hard if you are a loner. That's the charm of EQ. It would actually make more sense to make a new game than it would be to remove the charm out of EQ.
dreamweaver: Question 36 - What plans are being made to help new players to learn how to play the game, especially on live servers? Heroic characters are helpful to get players to 85, but even at 85 all classes require a fair amount of knowledge about the game or the will instantly die to non-trivial monsters.
Pip: I brainstorm a lot about this, the bar is set pretty high already then the learning curve kicks in and then its worse. The Hero's Journey that was set up during the Serpent's Spine is a great start for players who want to learn the game. There is just SO MUCH in the game that to try and narrow down what you "should" be doing would be impossible, as you can go/do so much already.
AbsorEQ: This comes up often. We would be super happy to hear ideas from you all about what would help.
Ngreth: And if we make a class tutorial, we will be told loudly and by very many people how we did it wrong, and it should be this way.
niente: It would be amazing if new heroic characters had a class-specific instance (like a tutorial) to teach you the ropes. That would be a ton of work, and I don't know if it's worth the effort and design time to do that instead of making, well, 16 missions for Live content. I think TLPs are the next-best way to re-introduce people to the game.
dreamweaver: Question 37 - Going forward, what steps can the development team take to decrease the likelihood that bugs are not properly patched before it goes live? In this last three or four years of playing EQ, I cannot remember when new content was added to the game or the game was patched that didn't introduce new bugs. And to further that any bug that helps the player in anyway leads to an immediate emergency patch, while those that hurt the players must wait until the next monthly patch to get updated.
Pip: I'm very difficult on myself. When I see that there is an issue with the content I worked on and it made it to live, I feel ashamed. This is your world, we need to respect it, and those are peeks behind the curtain to remind you that this is a game. I hate reminding players that this is a game, I want them to be lost in our universe, much like an amusement park ride. "Its a Small World' gets comical at my age when you see someone from behind the scenes having to fix something, but even worse for the intended audience. I also get upset at myself for coming from a QA background (albeit, a short one), and not seeing these issues at the time of fruition. Short answer long, there is a reason bugs exist, theres no such thing as a perfect patch. Even if the players dont find bugs, they are still there, and can be found later.
AbsorEQ: We are always striving to improve our process. I can tell you that we do fix things that will break the economy or progression or whatever faster than we do things that may make things harder in game. It's, as always, a matter of resources. We certainly want to fix both things, but the first category are the types of things that can ruin the game entirely, the second can ruin and individual experience. Neither are good, for certain, but we have to fix the ones that have a greater, more immediate, and longer lasting effects first. Those also tend to be the issues that allow players to gain huge advantages.
Aristo: Emergency updates have costs in both time and currency, as well as their own set of risks, so we try to only do them when it is actually an emergency. And while we still catch the majority of bugs before they ever go live, shortening our patch process increases the likelihood of introducing more bugs. In other words, there are strong reasons for making fewer updates. We also try to look at every issue from the opposite side: What are the consequences if we wait to update this? If the consequence is "the game economy is damaged" or "someone can become max level instantly," we're more likely to have an early update than "this quest breaks sometimes." Sometimes the reason we don't update immediately to fix a problem is because we don't know how to fix it yet, or because fixing something "properly" will take more time than we have. It's a complex process in a complex game. We know it's frustrating to live through and we try to be as fair as we can be.
Ngreth: We always try to improve, but we will always be human. As the others have said, most of the bugs that "benefit players" that we "OMG fix now" would actually cause imbalance to the game, cause long term damage to the game, , shorten it's lifetime. Saying we always immediately fix bugs that are "good for the player" is hyperbolic. There are plenty of examples of bugs that affect players that we leave until the next patch, and some we never even fix, letting players have the "advantage." (Sometimes players don't know about these and just think it is the way it was intended, even if not) There are bugs that hurt the player for which we bring the server down as soon as we reasonably can.
niente: When I was really new, I took it extremely personally and was devastated every time something I did caused a bug. It also can be extremely stressful to patch (and emergency patch) the game. Part of getting (slightly) better at my job has been learning to relax, not panic, and not take things too personally when they go wrong. I still do feel we can do better regarding bugs, and it isn't easy. I would say that we do test things but sometimes they break in extremely unpredictable ways, that seem so obvious when they go live that of course they couldn't have been tested.. but they were! And sometimes they were implemented and tested by more than one developer who plays the game (for example, DoTs not being focused after death). We make mistakes, and I wish we could patch things perfectly every time. As for what gets an emergency patch - what can be hotfixed varies. For example, if a spell is broken it requires all servers to come down to fix. Other fixes are less disruptive, so that can be a reason why they do get fixed. Things are only fixed after the regular patch if it's an emergency (it's a non-insignificant amount of effort to do an emergency hotfix, which is development time that could be spent on adding new stuff, or fixing other problems), and each time is a triage situation. I am consistently impressed by what new and exciting ways the game breaks each time, and believe me, it disappoints me as much as it does you. What steps can be taken to improve this - more developers and more QA testers.
Ngreth: (this one created a wall of text!)
dreamweaver: (Giving people a moment to read everything lol)
AbsorEQ: (If I answer there will be a wall of text)
dreamweaver: The second question that is definitely a statement Question 38 - I just realized there is no questions for dreamweaver!
AbsorEQ: Don't talk to my son ever again!
Pip: Who?
dreamweaver:
Who?
@Pip hurtful.
Pip:
@Pip hurtful.
@dreamweaver good
dreamweaver: Question 39 - There has been criticism about the way experience is earned in ToV. Some of us dislike the idea of forced progression, myself included. Will this trend continue into future expansions?
Ngreth: There are criticisms about everything we do. In the last two expansions we increased the amount of experience required to level more than we increased tha amount of experience gained for killing an NPC. A ToV NPC does offer more exp per kill, but the amount of EXP required to level is larger than that increase. I like the idea of granting large amounts of experience for completing the content of an expansion. If it is is up to me, the answer is, yes, we will continue to grant large amounts of experience for completing content in the expansion, making it the most efficient way to gain levels. Will we always increase that amount of experienced required to gain a level as much as we did this time? That is a less certain decision for which I do not have an answer.
niente: Progression isn't forced, leveling just takes longer if you don't do it. I think you'll get more traction if you can explain what you don't like about progression or what's stopping you from doing it.
AbsorEQ: (looks up the definition of "forced"...)
dreamweaver: Question 40 - Can you add Ultron's Ultimate Unattuner to the marketplace?
Ngreth: At this time there is a specific decision to not add this item to the marketplace, we want various time delays to it's use.
Prathun: We do want there to be a meaningful reward for doing the expansion content progression as it's much more logistically difficult than farming NPCs. And we definitely don't want farming easy NPCs from older expansions to be the best way to level. (for question #39)
dreamweaver: I think Prathun was responding to question 39
dreamweaver: Question 41 - Are there any plans to increase heroic character levels? I don't believe a level 85 will be able to group with a level 120 and get xp when the next level increase happens.
Ngreth: Plans, yes. Details or a timetable, no.
dreamweaver: Question 42 - Raid loot in general. with tradeskill gear being the best option these past couple expansions and the growing theme. is it possible to just have chests drop Muhbis (tradeskill gear), Spells, then maybe add more currency reward per event win (currently 10 currency per win) perhaps increase the currency per win or instead of a bunch of random items extra in the chest, just drop 1k currency in the chest that could be distributed. so raid chest drops Tradeskill Raid item, Spells, 1k currency. I say this because it would be much easier to distribute 1k currency (or a currency = to RNG items in chest, however you would wanna do it to add to the randomness of item costs)
Ngreth: Interesting idea, but at this time I say: No.
Aristo: The psychological impact of going currency-first instead of item-first is why we don't want to do this. Essentially you no longer hope the thing you need drops, you now are certain it won't, and you will just have to grind through it X times to earn the points to buy it. We get a lot of flack whenever we say one way is more fun than the other, but there are studies on this.
Aristo: That may not sound like much of a distinction but it's a huge difference in feel.
dreamweaver: Question 43 - For Pip or any other new dev/designer. What do you do to get caught up with the vast codebase and disparate systems that make up EQ?
Aristo: Step 1: Stop drowning!
Pip: Lotta crying, I've often told people that it's like puff pastry. When you make something with puff pastry, the recipe always says "go buy some'' because making it is super hard and tedious and you need the right tool to do it well. Well, we take time and energy to ensure that we make the puff pastry for you all. I know out there, there is probably an easier way to do everything, but doing it the way EQ does it is amazing in the idea that I get to live in history. This is the closest I'll get in my career to time traveling or working in a museum. I love it, though there are a lot of times when I'm sitting with my head in my hands playing out that scene from "Wedding Singer" where the main character yells "This information would have been useful to me YESTERDAY!" over and over. Luckily, these people have worked with 20+ years of noobs showing up and trying to prove themselves, so they already know how to deal with me if I ever became one of "those guys", which is good, cause I welcome all criticism and teaching opportunities. The vets made me feel more comfortable about my work than I ever have within the first like...2 years. I was told from the get-go "We don't expect you to be useful for at least 2 years." to which I said "nuh uh, imma be useful right now!" They were right, and patient with me, and I wouldn't be nearly as happy in my career if I didn't have the support from all of the vets. Ultimately, imagine looking at a painting that has been painted on for the last 20 years, and then have someone say "now make it better". That's 20+ years of work done, what if I undo or mess up people's favorite parts? It's like that George Carlin joke, "What wine pairs well with Cap'n Crunch(tm)?". I feel like the Cap'n Crunch(tm) in this metaphor.
niente: When I was brand new on the code team I basically drowned in >30k line files for several days. I later learned that was not The Way. The game is huge and with a large codebase, mostly I don't go browsing for things - there has to be a specific issue and you can look for every place where that is mentioned. I will say IDEs and plugins do a lot of handholding that helps navigate that wasn't around when EQ was first made. Mostly I've learned from experience with solving new problems I haven't seen before (i.e. a real estate problem, or an item bug, or adding something new to the quest system for design).
AbsorEQ: Print it all out, put a bedsheet on it, learn through osmosis.
dreamweaver: Question 44 - LOYALTY VENDOR: Why is there a cap on how many Loyalty Tokens aka Crowns that you can have (not to be confused with Earning them), if this is a little bonus and encouragement for long term paid subscribers? And will there ever be better, even if more costly, items added? Like bigger bags (they are 16 slot atm), or more bags of alternative currency options, etc.?
Aristo: The maximum cap is to encourage you to spend the crowns you've earned once in a while, rather than collecting them infinitely and creating runaway inflation in the process.
Ngreth: As for more items, we added luck recently! That aside, This question sparked me to create a ticket to look at what we can add.
dreamweaver: Question 45 - Has there ever been consideration to selling the individual Expansion Only Bonus items in the marketplace? Or sell the "upgrades" for those expansions for the purpose of getting those items? Then again, some items (i.e. Mark of Brell) was only give 1 per account (I would love to have one on all my toons, not just one).
Ngreth: Check back soon
Pip: Lots of it
Aristo: Yep. Lots of consideration. Don't have more details.
dreamweaver: Question 46 - And how about rotating items through Marketplace categories we don't see anymore? There are a number of mounts, familiars and / or illusions that we never seem to have a chance to buy.
Ngreth: This is in the plans, but it does not have highest priority. The priority might change, but that is predicting the future, which is a task I do rather poorly.
dreamweaver: Question 47 - With the recent tier 3 launch snafu, have safeguards been put into place to ensure this cannot happen again?
Ngreth: Yes. Nothing is as foolproof as we think. It's also based on server time, and that is not accessible for the average designer to manipulate.
Aristo: We are VERY good fools.
dreamweaver: Question 48 - On a more general note: Did you ever figure out why Fragments of Alaran History don't drop from grey con mobs? At 115 I am finding it really hard to find mobs that drop the fragment.
Ngreth: Yes. It is designed that way. There is a setting we can add to loot that only allows it to drop when the NPC is in a certain con range, and that setting is used on these drops.
dreamweaver: Question 49 - Will you bring back bard only weapons? Rogues still get their daggers, rangers with their bows and wars with their weapons. Monks/Beastlords share but no love for the bards.
Ngreth: No. But I will consider being more consistent with the instruments.
dreamweaver: Question 50 - Can pure casters get a tunic for once to match their other gear slots, robes have become very boring and repetative and it would be nice to show off how lovely the soft silk looks underneath my robe!
Ngreth: This is a no win for me. If I do tunics, I'll get an equal amount of outrage for not doing it as a robe.
Pip: I remember playing late game WOW (at the time) and the end game mage gear was not a robe, but a pair of pants and a shirt. I was livid. My point is that changing too much from what is expected can cause issues, even unintentionally.
Ngreth: Also, Tunic ends up being leather, not cloth (for looks)
dreamweaver: Question 51 - Can we have an increase on the drop rate for Diamondized Precious Velium Ore please? Or at least have an instance drop at least 1 guarenteed? We cleared GD, ToFS and EW trash yesterday and the only drops we got was 2 luck augs and some tradeskill stuff, zero ore to make the augments, the NPCs didn't even drop PP.
Ngreth: No, I will not increase the drops. BUT, data is already set to roll a second time when the expansion is six months old. I can consider adding plat to the trash mobs, but that will be a team conversation, so I will not promise this.
Ngreth: I.E. when you kill a mob that can drop it, it will roll twice.
dreamweaver: Question 52 - (Overseer) Will the developers consider enabling current expansion rewards (tradeskills/collectibles) after a set period of time in that expansion. For example 6 months on Live servers or 1.5 months on TLP servers (about halfway through the expansion lifetime)?
niente: If Overseer is a catch-up system, how do we justify giving current era rewards for (effectively) standing in PoK? Also, every time something on TLPs has a sub-expansion period launch date, there are various problems and that work is added to each new TLP and existing TLPs (see Phinny RoF, CotF launches). I would say it has a greater cost to do this work than it's worth (just my personal opinion).
Ngreth: And as an aside, our minimum time interval on the requirements we can use for these rewards is a month, so it would be 1month or 2months not 1.5. (end even 1 month leaves out Selo... though they'll be "live" soon enough
) But, overall, Lucy's opinion is shared by the team.dreamweaver: Question 53 - Do you think that there could be a way that community groups could design a themed set of items for the cash shop. Not for them to profit off of but in order to leave their mark on the game and let their players sport a certain look. For instance I am sure that Fires of Heaven might like to make an avenging celestial looking set for heroes forge and weapons.
niente: Your specific idea would be a lot of logistics and work, you might have more luck trying to convince Dreamweaver and/or Ngreth to do a player contest of some kind for an item name, or that type of thing.
Ngreth: Baring legal issues, Item naming is much more feasible than item art.
dreamweaver: Question 54 - Any updates on progress with addressing zone lag?
niente: We've added additional diagnostics for zone lag, right now we are mostly working on server merges. I think later in the year more work can be done. It's hard because this is very important, but fixing server crash issues and patching out new changes / necessary things for expansions, etc are also still going on.
dreamweaver: Question 55 - Have any of you ever played on either of the four original Zek servers (Rallos, Sullon, Tallon, Vallos)? If so, what's your most memorable moment from it?
niente: I played on Zek for about 2 weeks (I was playing someone else's cleric). This was during SoF, so I'm not sure it counts. We raided Crystallos. To me the most memorable thing was this wizard who had a decked out, $2.5k gaming PC spec'd to zone quickly. If he could zone first he would kill people before they finished zoning. The other really memorable thing was that no one on the server had completed the face aug because playing in open zones was so dangerous. To me, that was sad. I was really impressed with PVP style play and pretty much everyone I've met who was from a PVP server has been an amazing player. You can't be bad and survive on a PVP server (or can you?).
dreamweaver: Brutal.
dreamweaver: Alright everyone, I have devs that need to head to meetings and animals that won't stop pestering me. That is it for today, stay tuned for announcements about different formats and/or the next time we will be scheduling one of these. There were a ton of questions we didn't have time to get to and still need to be answered and I am sure some of these answers gave you more questions.
dreamweaver: Thank you for taking the time to read along with us today and if your question didn't get answered yet I am genuinely sorry. I know if we had the time we'd get through them all eventually.
dreamweaver: And for those of you faithfully using the emojis to spell out TLP I see you.