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EQ2Wire Interview with Kander

Discussion in 'EverQuest II General Discussion' started by wiouxev, Apr 26, 2017.

  1. Uxtalzon

    Uxtalzon Member

    Going off old memory vault here, EQ's old code only allows a max conversion limit of 2.1 billion copper (32-bit number is 2,147,483,647), so converting down a million platinum into copper breaks that limit. So a fifth currency wasn't an option, instead it was an item that could be bought and sold. This was in 2014... so perhaps they learned not to try doing this in EQ2.

    Fluff question: How does Kander find the time to develop EQ2 and play as the lead singer for Dragonforce?
     
  2. Charryna

    Charryna New Member

    This probably falls under the PtW questions, but haven't seen this come up specifically.

    The last expansion that we saw adept scrolls dropping regularly from mobs was AOM and the associated content releases (Fabled EoF, Rum Cellar). That was 3 years ago. With the next expansion coming out requiring us to upgrade each ability in steps (journeyman, adept, expert, master, etc.) will adepts be dropping commonly in wood treasure chests once again? They have not been itemized for years. Or at least I can't remember the last time I killed a solo/heroic mob in ToT or KA that dropped anything below ornate.

    As a note, I am actually a fan of requiring this, since it does create some value/market for crafters again, BUT if they have adepts be very rare, or worse, rare and done in fragments like ascension scrolls, then it is going to be horrible. As a brigand, I have more than 20 abilities that will need to be upgraded between 101 and 110, if nothing gets consolidated.

    Speaking of that, there was talk of consolidating abilities post 100. Is there any additional information that Kander can give on this, and if not now, when will we get more details on this? Will this be for all classes, or just dps/utility? My healers get a lot of heals, with different functions, cast times, recast times, etc....not sure how effectively that can be consolidated. Are they going to ask for feedback from the classes/players on what we would want to see consolidated?
     
    • Like Like x 2
  3. Uxtalzon

    Uxtalzon Member

    What about optional quests for Adept books if I already have the Journeyman, Expert, and Master of that very skill sitting in my inventory? It's like killing a raid boss and bringing his head to the NPC for a reward, but the NPC says to pick up some apples first, or says "I don't trust you yet". I just killed your mortal enemy, and you don't trust me. Wat.

    And what about the obtuse research times on skills sub-100? I understand the greed aspect of getting players to pay up as a shortcut, but I just saw someone PL an alt to 100 AND get to 90 in tradeskills in two days. What about earning AA/Prestige points that you can spend to lower the research time? Right now the "pay or wait" that I suspect will prevail in the next expansion will just be more of the same, and probably even worse. I know those questions won't affect the near future, but if it flickers on a lightbulb for change in the long run, so be it.
     
  4. Dizzy

    Dizzy Active Member

    I liked the server based AMA's that were recently held even though they were outside my timezone. Are they going to continue and will there be further efforts made to improve player communications ?
     
    • Like Like x 1
  5. Halfbreed

    Halfbreed New Member

    They said they would do more soon, and Kander floated the idea of doing them quarterly. We shall see.
     
    • Like Like x 2
  6. Uxtalzon

    Uxtalzon Member

    Did that interview happen yet? If not, I have more questions.

    1. Players who abused PG beyond any reasonable amount have nearly completed their gear, if not already. Not everyone had the abilities to abuse it, so the entire facade of fairness is completely gone, and still is. What's the reason of letting it be?

    2. (Question below) Math: My best time ever was 10 minutes (9:56 to be exact). I'm a Paladin without Ascension. I'm low DPS. I'm a tank which STILL is not a requirement in groups even after changes attempting to force fighters into groups. My group usually loses.

    To calculate (after double currency ends) a Paladin starting in PG using my best time with worst match outcomes, in order to accumulate as much currency as the worst abusers in the first few days, they would get on average of 1 mark every 2.5 minutes (membership bonus included). That means to get over 4000 marks like the same players who got that many in the first 2-4 days of release, it would take that player 10,000 minutes = ~166 hours of non-stop, no pausing, no downtime, rest, sleep, or truancy. That's exactly one week. If they put in 3 hours a day every day, that's a minimum of two months of grinding.

    This doesn't take into account bonus marks for winning matches, nor future changes which may force even longer finish times because it was estimated to take around 30 minutes.

    TL;DR - To say it's unfair is a colossal understatement. It still is. Is there ANY regard for the disadvantaged, or are they/we just plain screwed?

    3. Why was the PG designed entirely around favoring DPS in every aspect? Leaderboards are dominated with DPS groups. Named are DPS kills. Classes with pets can out-DPS my Paladin by a factor of almost 50 still. As such, fighters still are considered more of a detriment to a group instead of a necessity.

    4. Why wasn't broken (and then widely abused) abilities labeled as exploits, when the skills, spells, and classes able to abuse the PG system were not available to everyone? How can it be explained to a player that any changes made because of the abusers will mostly only affect them because the abusers are already well-off?

    5. There are already so few groups in PG now that queue times take a few minutes, and the other group just doesn't exist. How will, for example, 3 players in the future with no opponents and no hope of beating the content with just the three of them even participate?
     
  7. Feldon

    Feldon Administrator Staff Member

    Why is EQ2 designed entirely around favoring DPS in every aspect? FTFY
     
    • Funny Funny x 2
  8. Sweatypie

    Sweatypie Active Member

    Thats not fair. We had that 1 or 2 raid encounters where power played a role! ENCHANTERS UNITE!
     
  9. Uyaem

    Uyaem Member

    I disagree. Most of the easier Vaedenmoor (sp?) zone revolves around being AFK. :D

    I agree that BG were and probably are broken beyond belief, but can we please stop calling people who figure out which abilities and classes work best exploiters?
    Yes, they exploit the abilities and mechanics to their favour, but exploiting in the gaming sense has been something else since forever, namely breaking the mechanics through one way or another, not employing them to one's favour.
    And I think you're aware of that, hence working around the matter by chosing the term 'abuser'.
     
  10. Shmogre

    Shmogre Active Member

    I think the problem there is that one dev has explicitly called people using abilities as they are in the game an exploit and made near-immediate changes to stop people from using them as implemented, while another admits they are very broken and will be fixed, but allows people to continue as-is with a server bonus going on and very good gear to be had.

    It's a mixed message from the folks in charge, which leads to confusion on the part of the players. :(
     
    • Like Like x 3
  11. Malleria

    Malleria Member

    Not even remotely true. The vast majority of "exploits" have in fact been when players use known broken mechanics to their advantage.
     
  12. Caam

    Caam Member

    I look at it this way: Last weekend was the beta test for the PG content. Rather than spin up a beta server for it, they just put it on live. Our "reward" for beta testing was to get as much of the stuff as we could before it went "live". Personally, I would rather beta testing be done before it goes live. But it seems that putting stuff on live before it is ready is the norm rather than the exception these days.

    So my next question for Kander is: Do they consider it acceptable to put unfinished content on live and have players find all the bugs? If not, why do they seem to do it so consistently?
     
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    • Winner Winner x 1
  13. Sweatypie

    Sweatypie Active Member

    From what I've been hearing bugged content has always been the norm for EQ2, no? Or are people overreacting?
     
  14. Caam

    Caam Member

    In the past, the number of major bugs in new content was small. And very rarely did they significantly impact game-play. There were several significant issues with the KA expansion. And the PG was definitely not ready for launch.

    To me, the issues that have been showing up lately are no-brainer things that any reasonable tester should have found. I don't expect the game to be perfect, especially a 12 year old game of this size. But what is going live right now is stuff that seems like it didn't get tested at all.
     
  15. Uyaem

    Uyaem Member

    I can't agree more but would add that automated testing should find these things. Especially with new scaling encounters like BG or PQ, test every single ability at every available spell quality in game through an automated test case, to ensure nothing is broken at release, or gets broken with updates later on. Testing and test cases like this are standard procedure where I work.

    I find it somewhere between mind boggling and frightning though that only a few Ascension abilities were so massively imbalanced in PGs, rather than the whole lot of them. It makes me wonder about how things are working under the hood there. And if all those spells are all that individual and different... well, then no wonder that a few behave oddly in different scenarios, and no wonder every fix brings new bugs.
    Even worse, it results in terrible maintainability and longevity for the game (code). And even more reasons for the type of tests mentioned above. :(
     
  16. Wurm

    Wurm Active Member

    Only thing that really bothers me is the frequent disconnects, zone to character select and fatal error crashes... they have been steadily getting worse week to week.
     
  17. Malleria

    Malleria Member

    Yep, can't log in again this morning because of fatal error. Discord is buzzing with the same problem. #BuildABetterLoginServer
     
  18. Conifur

    Conifur Member

    When players figured out which item they could buy cheap and resell at a far greater price they called it an exploit and banned a large number of them. When it was figured out people could trade Ascension Scrolls at the beginning they brought the server down immediately to fix it so people could not employ that to their favor. This they let go on and on and on. It pretty much points to me that they no longer care, they just want your money. I need to find a place to work with such a low bar for success.
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  19. Feldon

    Feldon Administrator Staff Member

    So 2 months... what's the story?
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  20. Uxtalzon

    Uxtalzon Member

    Last seen: April 29, 2017. "I'm doing an interview!" *poofs*

    I've seen wiouxev's name in discord maybe once ever.
     
    • Agree Agree x 1

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