There was a EQ Commnity Summit at SoE this weekend. Here is a round up of reports from various sources.

Highlights from Shaman board report: http://crucible.samanna.net/viewtopic.php?t=908

I asked [Maddoc] about solo mission content in DoD, and was reminded that EQ is a social, group-centric game. He also said that the overhead for instancing was the same for one toon or 50, and that it was impractical to use those resources on a single character.

Everyone pestered Zajeer about DoD mob difficulty versus itemization; he first explained his zone difficulty plan for non-raid content:

Corathus Creep similar to Nobles' Causeway
East Korlach similar to Wall of Slaughter
West Korlach similar to The Ruined City of Dranik
The Hive similar to MPG (non-trial content)
Illsalin similar to Riftseeker's Sanctum or Phase Three of Plane of Time
Dreadspire Keep similar to Quarm

- with 'hard' missions being one level higher (and Tipt/Vxed similar to upper Elementals for reference). SOE defined EQ events, generally, as: Raid (54 players, 5 loots), Large Event (30-36 players, 3-4 loots), or Small Events (18-24 players, 2 loots). Evolving Items could have up to eight levels, with a goal of approximately 10 hours of XP for each level, whereas Intelligent Items could have up to three levels, with slower levelling; he explained that only solo/group kill XP (not quest, not raid) went towards Intelligent item levels, and that class/race bonuses/penalties did not apply at all. Having said all that, he agreed to review the risk versus reward for DoD in general. Many players suggested that the difficulty was spot on, but the rewards were too low for those able to complete the missions.

I ambled over to Zajeer, and asked him about Detrimental Duration Extension Focus itemization and the possibility of augments of this nature. He stated that the current itemization was intended to require equipment choices and tradeoffs by the players, but that he would review the availability of seed effects.

I asked Oshran about BiC drops from GoD bosses, but he politely passed me to Prathun, explaining that BiC was not under his influence. Prathun confirmed that GoD bosses could drop zero to three BiC pieces per kill, and that they would be changed to force one per kill and allow up to three, but explained that the DoD release had stopped this fix from making it through QA. He could not give a go-live date, but assured me that it was ready for testing and would be pushed to live soonest.

Highlights from Cleric Board report: http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20678

GoM is indeed interacting improperly with Abundant Healing. Rashere is going to look into it this week. He thinks he has an idea of what's going on.

Mana and Endurance Regen
I mentioned the whole downtime issue in the DoD discussion (we were long since off the tracks) and there was a rather long discussion that boiled down to EQ not having an "in-combat" and "out-of-combat" state. They are working on it and I got the impression that none of the devs were pleased with where mana or endurance regen (Rashere actually stated he thought END regen was worse atm than mana) so there's hope that it will get a solution in the future.

Highlights from EQVault report: http://eqvault.ign.com/fullstory.php?id=11491 & http://eqvault.ign.com/fullstory.php?id=11494 & http://eqvault.ign.com/fullstory.php?id=11495

They are fixing the mission where when the spiders kill the gnome it does boot you out of the mission rather than letting you continue. This will be looked at right away.

If you don't get an AA when you finish a mission, zone back in and it should work.

Abundant Healing does block Gift of Mana and they are going to fix that.

They will check out the pet AA that causes the pet not to flurry in the middle and fix it.

The session then turned to loot in Depths of Darkhollow. Craig wanted feedback, and he got it. The community correspondents all felt that the loot was not worth the reward for the difficulty of the encounters because to defeat the encounters you had to have gear better than what dropped.
The gap between the casual player and the raider was discussed, and the dev team pointed out they designed the game so that raiders have 50% better gear than what drops for a casual player in single group encounters. That is their rule of thumb when designing raid-level drops.

The dev team also answered a tribute question. No-drop items will never be tributable, but any item that drops and has value is attributable.
They will seriously consider putting a banker in the guild lobby.

Class balancing is continuing and is an ongoing process. It is happening, according to Craig, they just have not posted anything.

I'll add more reports as I find them.

Did we have a Druid rep there? Seems many of the classes got some class related questions asked and I can think of one class that has more than a few *smiles*

If we did not have a druid rep there would it be ok if maybe one of our reps fired off a few questions for publication here?

Thanks

-Cass

I'd be willing to be a rep.. i have nothing better to do =p cept play EQ and sleep heh

I'd be willing to be a rep.. i have nothing better to do =p cept play EQ and sleep heh

No thanks :p

Did we have a Druid rep there?
Scirocco was / is the "official" druid rep.

I have no idea if he still is and if he was there.

He might have said something about a change in his status as druid rep that I missed or forgot.

My understanding is that our class rep Scirocco went to the Summit and is working on a write up.

Here are some other class write ups of the event:

GoBerserker.com has a nice summary of the Cleric report: http://www.goberserker.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=2931

Evolving items are tied to kills, not quest or MM exp rewards.

Find may soon mark your compass a la missions in zones where find paths cannot be created.

There may be a / command to activate items for macros in the near future...

Tradeskills currently have a 3% success rate for skillups with a random 10% chance added in. Soon that will be going to a fixed 13% (if I understood that correctly)

Merchants may soon show their default inventory first like the old system did.

Pottery changes coming Soon(tm)

PoP temper changes Soon(tm)

Druid stances are still on the dev to do list

Raid invitations for groups with members out of the zone were mentioned. No word on a fix but the devs weren't opposed.

Self DS cap may soon be increased

Guilds may soon get an "applicant" level with guild chat but no guild bank access

Guild banks may soon get withdrawal auditing
Guild banks may also get a "dump" command like the raid window

Raid windows may be sortable by class soon

/target may get a raidus boost

There may be a login server "boot" button to help people with 1018 problems. Not sure on this one as devs weren't sure if it would be exploitable.

The Steel Warrior has a write up here: http://www.thesteelwarrior.org/forum/showthread.php?t=12844

Nothing new except an explanation of how Taunt has been broken since Kunark.

Also, the Rogues throw in with their class rep who flew all the way from England to attend the summit: http://www.thesafehouse.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20745

Mostly rogue related, but this applies to druids:

- There are visible armour slot upgrades in DoD. They just aren't sets. Zajeer didn't want to do sets this time because some people complained that always having sets was a bit boring, so he's trying to mix it up a bit.

I am still the Druid Correspondent. And no, I didn't get invited to this Summit.

*shrugs*

I am still the Druid Correspondent. And no, I didn't get invited to this Summit.

*shrugs*

Would it be out of line to wonder why the Druid Class did not get an invite?


-Cass

Nimchip is mean... im telling mom! :P

I am still the Druid Correspondent. And no, I didn't get invited to this Summit.

*shrugs*

That's really weird..

I think Sony owes Scirocco and the druid class an appology as well as a free trip to Vegas for me to make up for this mistake :wavey:

Don't think they really wanted to discuss class balance in this summit from what I understand from reading the various reports, just seems people grabbed the devs and started asking questions :lmao:

Not all class reps get invited to all summits it seems. Clerics and some other classes didn't have one at the first one, not sure about summit 2.

for me to make up for this mistake
LOL -

Community Rep from SoE says:

As stated before, not all classes had a representative at the Summit. This Summit was not class based.

Source: http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/board/message?board.id=Veterans&message.id=127602

Hey guys

Really this wasn't a class balance summit. Most of the topics covered marketing, DoD and game progression. I got the impression that what sparked this was twofold

1. EQ2 devs needed some feedback on recent changes (I've heard they made some pretty big ones) so they decided to get EQ people out as well
2. EQ has virtually no new players entering the game which means, with attrition, EQ is still dying

The marketing discussion really focused on how to get new people in and a lot of stuff was mentioned but, honestly, most of the problem EQ has right now is the high cost of entry. To buy all the expansions you need you'll spend more to get in than you would to start fresh in EQ2 or WoW. The marketing guys took tons of notes. They'd also love to know what would help you guys get friends into EQ.

DoD feedback also largely sidestepped class issues. Most of the discussion focused on MMs, Shrouds and loot.

Of importance to druids tho (I made this post after Ruadh's summary)
Druid stances are still on the dev to do list
They didn't elaborate on it and, given the short time we had to discuss issues about classes, nobody asked. There was a lot of stuff on that to do list tho...

Incidentally, the EQ people who went (besides myself)
Loral (Mobhunter)
Gemdiver(Casters Realm)
Glorianna(Shaman's Crucible)
Samanna(owner of the shammy boards)
WingRider(independant mage)
GM of Circle of Legends (I forget his game name)
Mindy(EQ Vault)
A Ranger rep (again, I forget his name)
Nolrog (Tradeskill Correspondant)
Qaman (Graffes)
Krazaak (SK)

I'm sure I've forgot someone but there were so many EQ2 people there too.

2. EQ has virtually no new players entering the game which means, with attrition, EQ is still dying

The marketing discussion really focused on how to get new people in and a lot of stuff was mentioned but, honestly, most of the problem EQ has right now is the high cost of entry. To buy all the expansions you need you'll spend more to get in than you would to start fresh in EQ2 or WoW. The marketing guys took tons of notes. They'd also love to know what would help you guys get friends into EQ.
There are two ways to have a successful business. One is to keep your current customers and the other is to get new ones. A well run business does both.

Keeping your current customers should always be your top priority. Because there are a limited number of people who are willing to spend the time and money as well as have an interest in a MMORPG.

Sony seems to have forgotten this. Not only has their lousy customer service and lack of communication with the player base resulted in many people leaving the game, but word of mouth has spread from them to warn other people not to play.

The most basic means to communicate with their player base have been ignored.

Let's face it, the majority of players don't have the time and interest to go to Sony's forums and try to wade through the 124 (yes, there really are that many) forums at http://eqforums.station.sony.com/.

Nor do they visit sites like this one.

So what can Sony do? Easy, they have the perfect way to communicate with their players but they have wasted it.

Just add, *IN GAME*, a message window. They have added an in game email. All they need to do is add a MOTD window with add ons.

The MOTD window will have (of course) the MOTD. Even more important, it would have important information like the next patch date and time. For players that care about more information, there would be a few buttons in the MOTD window that would open up more windows. A current "Bugs being worked on" window would list bugs so that players could feel that the frustrating bugs that they have reported with /bug have actually been received and are being worked on (I personally find myself submitting bug reports on the same exact issues over and over because I have no idea if they are actually being worked on or if Sony just ignores my reports).

The information at http://eqlive.station.sony.com/updates/ is useless. If they would put some actual information there and have it accessible in game, maybe people would feel that there was some concern at Sony for the players and the game.

The in game help system sucks. Almost totally useless, I discovered almost by accident that the game actually has good information but you have to search the knowledge base in the Customer Service window to find it. Unless you decide to search the knowledge base (something most players not only wouldn't do because they are looking in the Help window for help but they would also have trouble framing their questions properly even if they discovered the knowledge base hidden under Customer Service) you can't find basic things like what the command is to add a player to your mission. Not only that, but I can't even open the Customer Service window when I just tried. New bug?

Far too many important game commands are command line only. While the power of the command line is great (see DOS, Linux, etc.) it requires you to memorize the commands. Especially when the in game help system doesn't even list them.

Again, this is basic grade school programming / business sense.

Hasn't anyone at Sony every played Civilization or any RPG game to learn how to make indexed, keyword, comprehensive help systems and quest journals?

They have made good progress with the Tutorial system. That is a must to get new players, since EQ is so complex. But that is the only thing they have finally, years later, done right.

It really comes down to whether or not Sony cares about EQ or just is milking it until it dies. This is basic, basic, basic stuff that takes only a very few people to do. How much effort to write a REAL manual (hypertexted, indexed, keywords) and have it downloaded to every players system and have it accessible in the game?

I guess more effort than Sony cares to do.

Whatever, I've been following this saga for years now. Every time that the player base shrinks, Sony decides to DO SOMETHING! And some things have improved. The game is much, much, much better than it was just a few years ago.

But the most basic idea of communication has never managed to make it past the suits at Sony. The famous quote from Verant, "We don't listen to what the players want, they don't know anything" is alive and well at Sony.

The incredible power of in game forums / messages / so on, is just totally ignored. The in game Journal is useless, in fact, someone here just suggested disabling it because it is so stupid that instead of just logging quest information, it logs EVERYTHING ("You have ruined you own lands, you'll not ruin mine" x 1,000) and slows down your system.

Whatever. I could go on and on. I've already posted too much here. You either get the idea or you don't.

Sony doesn't.

(I can be hired to help you understand this stuff, Sony. I would love to make money pointing out stuff that 90% of the people who visit here already know but you don't :)