The 1 Question

[Skratz]

"People don't drive their cars enough, so we are taking away their bicycles and giving them boats."

HAHAHAHAH, so true! Well said.


P.S. I want a boat!

[Nusa]

Sounds good to me. I haven't ridden my bike in a couple years, and there's a boat ramp only two miles away. Even a canoe would work.

[Grbage]

Going to be interesting to see if the devs have the guts to continue this. The war one question was answered and followed by 10 pages of flames to it. Have to side with the warriors because it sounded like the dev doesnt have much of an idea on what a warrior needs to maintain agro as other classes DPS goes up.

[hakaaba]

i dunno though.  Some of my guild wars have pretty rediculous aggro.  To the point where i can slow on inc and they still have it, heh.

PS.  Any news? heh  If its a weekly question, theyre kinda gonna have to answer it within the week.

[Grbage]

Top end warriors do have awesome agro but some are starting to see a slide as other classes dps go up but that is going off what I've read not personal knowledge. I do know that casual warrior agro isnt that hot as I also have 70 war with DoN weapons. They greatly improved my agro but still lose it on a regular basis and can't pull it back.

Essentially they were told that warrior specific tanking weapon model is dead and SOE is moving them to generic all/all weapons and non-weapon based agro is suppose to pick up the slack. Problem with that is End based disc for agro has been broken from almost day one and no sign of SOE fixing it.

[Rhoam]

Well, Soe doesnt "fix" things, they nerf the things that work too well, hehehe. My concern is that Soe never fixes alot of things because they dont make money by committing time to previous expansions, they make money by committing time to new expansion development. They throw us a bone now and then but its never anything that requires a serious time sink, such as the class re-envisionment that was supposed to have been completed long ago. I think it is unreasonable to expect wide range changes to our class, or any class at this point given the gradual decline in the number of players. EQ is going through a slow death and all SOE is interested in is funneling money out of the game while it can, not plowing resources into fixes for classes or old expansions. Its just good business sense I suppose, cant fault them for it.

[Gunzak]

I don't think EQ is gonna die but the numbers are definetely droping off.  I restarted on Firona Vie 6 weeks ago and at peak times I see less then 10 people 55-70 looking for a group.  There have been times where I see less then 20 people in the bazaar.  I realise Firona Vie is a different rule set server but thats pretty disheartening.

As far as class reenvisioning I had zero belief in SOE ever doing it.  I decided not to buy PoR and I am glad I didn't as most people on SOE's own message board hate it.  Auras don't work correctly, mobs hit too hard or have -600 resist mod dd/dots, traps dont work properly or at all, etc etc.

[Rhoam]

If you sit lfg on firiona vie for a long enough time, without being able to solo in the newer content, or gaining very little in the content where you can solo, do you think you will continue to play EQ?  I play on Saryn now, Mith Marr originally and the lfg window is low on numbers most of the time, people have given up doing pickup pop progression raids because they couldnt get the requisite numbers for the  raids. I guess a new round of server merges will correct this for a little while but honestly I believe the game is dying.  I can tell you that most of the people I play with are casual players who have simply run the course of content.  We quickly found out we couldnt do much in DoDh and stayed in don until we couldnt upgrade gear or progress any further and tore through the casual PoR content so fast that we have run out of stuff to do at this point. I see long time players/friends leaving in droves at present, people who played the game 30 plus hours per week. When people like that are leaving, and not going to play WoW or EQ2, but just quiting EQ with no immediate gaming plans, something is wrong. The recent releases of game content are  not compelling enough to hold casual players in the game, they dont want to raid, so they leave the game. So maybe the statement that the game in general is dying is incorrect, but the game is dying as far as casual player participation is concerned. Highend raiding will go on for as long as they can replenish numbers from the general population I suppose.

[Tastian]

"Any news? heh  If its a weekly question, theyre kinda gonna have to answer it within the week."

My very first sentance in the second post of this thread was...

"The question isn't definitely answered and as with the top 10 lists there is no guarantee of feedback.  "

This isn't a "question of the week" like some are trying to bill it and that is why I was very hesitant to make a big deal of it before seeing how things played out.  If it truely were a "ask one question this week, get an answer" type of thing I'd have atleast three stickied threads keeping track of the old questions, asking about new questions and showing a Q of questions to come.  Sadly, that just isn't the case. 

The questions some asked dealt with issues devs were on vaction and couldn't answer, E3 is going on, so others are out of the office, etc.  On top of that you have some devs that get hammered with 12 questions and other devs that don't get any just because of which classes choose which question.  *shrugs*

For right now I don't see this as anything different or new really.  If more feedback comes of it and if the community reacts well and it progresses to a true "question of the week" type of thing then it'll be great and I'm all for it.  For right now though we aren't at that point.  *shrugs*

[Gunzak]

Yeah I pretty much soloed or 2 boxed 1-59 and see myself having to solo most of the way to 70.  There are so few groups in Firona Vie that soloing or 2 boxing is gonna be about it.  So Far i have done 1 DoN group, 2 groups low 40s in Gunthak, 1 PoV group that lasted about an hour and 3 groups in Velks, 2 of which were only because I felt sorry for the people who were unable to solo on their own, a cleric and rogue.  The rogue could solo but would lose about 60% health per fight and have to spend several minutes medding.  I have gotten 3 or 4 offers for LDoN but I would rather solo in Velks for better experience so I always turned em down.  I am not too worried as I can solo all the way to 70 if needed but then the only options for upgrades will be in bazaar.

I plan to stay in Velks till 60, FG till 63 then move to Grieg's End or Danik Scar till 70 if I am forced to solo.  Before I move above 62 I plan to get a ton of AA to make my journey a bit easier as i expect groups will be rare and will need as much dps and mitigation as possible.  I can solo the EPs for my 61 to 63 spells but beyond that its gonna be difficult but luckily they are all for sale in the bazaar.  I figure I will get WA5, Paragon, SS, CS3, CA3, ND3 and PE1 before moving on as well as a a bunch of banked AA so I can buy BF every level it becomes available.

[Discordant]

In regards to the h2h thing, most beasts either use epic 2.0/2.5/zithulli blunt, or maybe Porthio or Vasella's 1HB, highend at least.  Before I got my DP blunt, I used AMV wraps, but since I've not been tempted at all for some reason to get Redfang or Guardian's Tonfa.  In our guild, the monks get first choice of the h2h and the beasts get first choice of the dps 1hb, so it all works out. Same thing with the damage augs from Demiplane.  It just makes more since lore wise in our current state to use 1HB so I wouldn't know where the h2h rumor came from.  A monk probably started it  :-D

[jitathab]

Regarding "question of the week" are we actually asking one question a week, and getting an answer "sometime in the future". Which is my understanding, or is it something else?

[Tastian]

This is why it's something I was very "eh" about to begin with.  It's not really how anyone has described it and a lot of people are getting various wrong ideas.  Basically, we ask specific question a week and it goes to a dev and hopefully it gets answered.  There is no guarantee it gets answered, there is no timeline, there isn't anything really. 

It's a behind the scenes change though and honestly I bleh, I just don't know.  It seems likely to piss a lot of people off that don't understand it, but it's not as bad or as good as most have made it out to be.  In all honesty it's almost no change at all for me.  *shrugs*  Soon as something actually happens I'll update, but at this point it's not even an offical change because we are just trying it out at this point. 

[Tardar]

I don't see this as anything.  Regardless of how we ask a question, regardless of the issues we think we have.  All of those issues get ignored and we get no answers.  So how is this any different?  Whether they ignore a Top 10 list, or whether they ignore a question a week, no real big difference from my point of view.

[Tastian]

Kinda negative, but really it's kinda accurate.  I said pretty much from the beginning that the top 10 list was one of the most minor things I did.  Lots focused on it, but there are hundreds of other threads and posts and e-mails and in game conversations dealing with all sorts of other issues.  It's not like we are now limited to one post a week that is only one question or anything like that.  That's another part of why I don't really like the "question of the week" title this has gotten.  Makes it sound like we are only bringing up one thing a week when in reality all sorts of bugs, old issues, server, zone, mob, etc. issues come up constantly as well.  If this one issue were guaranteed a little "dev quote" type of response then I could it as being something different, but honestly right now I don't even notice the change.  Heck I'm still updating the top 10 list behind the scenes and plan to release an update just as a means for helping beastlords see where others are at and have a list of some of the bigger issues.  *shrugs*