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Producer's Letter: Expansion 17, Beta and Preorders!

Discussion in 'EverQuest II General Discussion' started by Feldon, Oct 27, 2020.

  1. Fuli

    Fuli Well-Known Member

    Recall that in the old days, we had a dev who was more or less responsible for the development if each archetype along with a sufficient number of engineers to support the work. It wasn't perfect (points at your ranger while giving our assassin friends the stink eye...), but the flavor and uniqueness were there.

    Ever since DBG bought the franchise and gutted the staff, there's been a systematic effort to make development more manageable for the small number of folks remaining and thus, the watering down of the game and homogenizing of classes and combat.

    Given this reality, enter Kander who seems less concerned or capable of making the best of what they have to work from a creative aspect, and more interested in designing the game to maximize p2w/cash shop revenue.

    I'll give Jen credit, she's more or less put an end to the dishonest manipulation of customers, and I'm really happy about that.

    Yet, (imo), Kander is the wrong person for the job he's filling. It's not for me to dictate how EQ2 generates revenue, but it better interesting and it better be fun.

    Virtually every design decision made on Kander's watch appears to prioritize developer utility and cash shop revenue with very little care or attention toward customers.

    With Jen in charge, the game has a chance to continue, but they're going to need a more creative and inspiring "creative director "; one better able to balance the revenue model of the game, staffing constraints, and customer-focused design goals. Kander has shown us every year that he's incapable or uninterested in doing that.

    Jen has tackled part of the problem: the dishonest interaction with customers is largely gone. But now she's going to have to deal with second big part of the problem: finding someone who is capable of designing a game people enjoy given the limited resources she has at her disposal.

    I hope she can do it, but I'm not optimistic.
     
    Last edited: Nov 25, 2020
    • Agree Agree x 4
    • Winner Winner x 1
    • Optimistic Optimistic x 1
  2. Tkia

    Tkia Active Member

    While the namecheck almost certainly panders to his narcissistic nature, his inability to get in the last word over here must be driving him totally nuts. :p
     
    • Agree Agree x 2
  3. Tkia

    Tkia Active Member

    I think the AA revamp can be summed up as follows:
    Step1: Remove all unique/interesting/class defining/fun effects
    Step 2: Replace everything with 'effectiveness' (whatever that means)
    Step 3: Done!
    Bonus points: Class balance half done since all classes are now the same. More to follow!!
    Extra bonus points: No need to actually make any more changes as we can claim from the response that 'players don't like change'!
     
    • Agree Agree x 7
  4. Zynt

    Zynt Active Member


    Removing lifetaps from Sks is dumb af. The post will get locked almost immediately and maybe even deleted.
     
    • Agree Agree x 3
  5. Fuli

    Fuli Well-Known Member

    From what I've read, they've really jacked-up crusaders.
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  6. LuranEQ2

    LuranEQ2 Member

    You mean the entire game?
     
    • Agree Agree x 2
  7. Mermut

    Mermut Well-Known Member

    It seems mastercrafted gear requires 'patterns' in the coming expac...
     
    • Shocked Shocked x 2
  8. Fuli

    Fuli Well-Known Member

    Assuming they're "no trade".....'Cause crafters need to be incentivized to run the same sh*t a gazillion times for the next 12 months....
     
    • Agree Agree x 2
  9. Dano84

    Dano84 Active Member

    Caith is working on a big AA /Class balance update, no ETA yet, as per Dreamweaver a couple of days ago.

    Kander said yesterday on Discord : The mechanics Team will publish a "State of the AAs, Class balance, itemization etc" update in the coming week.

    They also intend to publish AA /Class changes on the Beta Patch notes from now on.
     
    Last edited: Nov 27, 2020
    • Informative Informative x 2
  10. Zynt

    Zynt Active Member

    I don't know if the release date has been set for EQ2 yet but EQ1 announced that theirs is on 12.8 and it's nowhere near ready. The assumption is that even if it isn't "ready" an earlier date is better that way the team won't be gone for two weeks for Christmas right after release and they will have time to patch. That thinking tells so much.
     
  11. Mermut

    Mermut Well-Known Member

    I read that as state of the ass.....
     
    • Like Like x 3
    • Agree Agree x 1
    • Funny Funny x 1
    • Winner Winner x 1
  12. Feldon

    Feldon Administrator Staff Member

    I read "We promise we're going to do those things players have been begging us to do for 8 years. For realsies this time."
     
    • Agree Agree x 2
    • Like Like x 1
    • Fishy Fishy x 1
  13. Cindrax

    Cindrax Active Member

    So, after they sold their preorders and people are beta testing while the xpac gets closer and closer to release.. perfect time to start think about balance and informing the players about the "state of AAs"...

    Perfect planning right there people... pure perfection!
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  14. Dano84

    Dano84 Active Member

    Don't tempt me to "correct" my post. ;)
     
  15. Dano84

    Dano84 Active Member

    Caith chimed in on an AA discussion on discord and it went "downhill". Player wondered why many AA changes (effectiveness) won't show up on Tooltips.
    He's explanation was that tooltips won't update as the system doesn't know whether the ability crits. In essence, it adds at the end of the calculation. Player are confused as some abilities have debuff and snare components, those can't crit and don't show up on the tooltip either.
    The outcome among players is that certain effectiveness is CA/Spell Fervor and doesn't do much.
    Players confronted Caith about this and he went silent.
    This AA revamp looks more and more "half-baked" and not well thought.
    The high-end player /raid community awaits the "State of AAs, Class Balance and itemization etc."now more eagerly.
     
    Last edited: Nov 29, 2020
    • Agree Agree x 1
    • Funny Funny x 1
    • Shocked Shocked x 1
  16. Feldon

    Feldon Administrator Staff Member

    Never trust an EQ2 tooltip.
     
    • Agree Agree x 3
  17. Wulfgyr / Erytheal

    Wulfgyr / Erytheal Active Member

    Trusting an EQ2 tooltip would be worse than masturbating with a cheese grater.
     
    • Shocked Shocked x 2
    • Funny Funny x 1
    • Informative Informative x 1
  18. Zynt

    Zynt Active Member

    Like I said, they're just going to **** the bed with this revamp. Anybody that had any hope of another outcome is fooling themselves.
     
    • Agree Agree x 2
  19. Errrorr

    Errrorr Active Member

    Caith explained Effectiveness a bit more earlier, and in short;

    For Damage, it's just Fervor. Plain and simple. If you had 300 Fervor, AA adds 20, you have 320 Fervor for that ability.
    For Buffs/Debuffs - It's effectively just Fervor, but doesn't include the Fervor stat. So if your debuff does 1000, AA adding 20 will make it do 1200.

    As it's a multiplier that takes place after Crits, it's not visible via tooltips.

    I suspect most players aren't seeing much difference, because when you have say 300 fervor already, adding another 15 is minimal.

    An ability with 10k base, with 15 Effectiveness, 0 Fervor, would go from 10,000 to 11500, a noticeable difference.
    An ability with 10k base with 15 effectiveness, 300 Fervor, would go from 40,000 to 41500 increase.
     
    • Informative Informative x 3
  20. Fuli

    Fuli Well-Known Member

    Ok, so the additional fervor itself is essentially meaningless.

    The translation of fervor bonus into an "effectiveness" stat can be substantial.

    Is there any particular reason why this stuff had to be pathed through a fervor value in the first place?

    This is the kind of sh*t they do that makes no sense (at least, to me).
     
    • Agree Agree x 2

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