Ask Your Questions About Secrets of Faydwer
by Loral on October 06, 2007
We're going to try something different today. Post comments with your questions to the Everquest development team regarding the upcoming Secrets of Faydwer and, after editing and choosing among them, I shall submit them and hopefully receive responses for a future article.
Class specific questions, questions focused on a narrow scope of the game, and pompous jackassery will not be submitted.
Thank you,
Loral Ciriclight
6 October 2007
loral@loralciriclight.com
Comment Posted by: recant on October 7, 2007 12:14 AM
Are there any plans to increase the rate at which lower level players gain experience?
Comment Posted by: Aarkan on October 7, 2007 01:15 AM
Will there be any changes to the rate AA exp is earned and or changes to the AA system overall?
Comment Posted by: Chark on October 7, 2007 03:14 AM
Any Chance to get rid of Flagging in the New Expansion ?
Comment Posted by: Old Zork Player on October 7, 2007 07:45 AM
Piggybacking on Chark's comment. Any chance of them opening up some of the older content From SoL to say GoD? I can agree that some content that is relatively new being flag access ( earning your entrance) but we are about to hit the 14th expansion and content from four to five years ago are locked still. My main character went through this in the PoP and GoD days although the backflagging has helped but I don't believe that the Plane of Time really gets used as much now as before. I firmly believe that getting all those flags at this point is relatively difficult, the fact that there is much better equipment in newer expansions trying to get people to work through the flags when it is easier to just upgrade in a new expansions is quite unlikely. The time spent doing it now for the rewards are really not worth the effort except for maybe a few items here and there.
Comment Posted by: Loral on October 7, 2007 02:26 PM
Good questions, keep them coming.
Comment Posted by: thedood on October 7, 2007 04:17 PM
i can tell your really runnin out of material here.. im not hateing on ya tho.. eq is kinda zzZzzZz these days anyway.
Comment Posted by: Zolina on October 7, 2007 07:57 PM
Will the classes who have no traps or auras be getting one in SoF, or will they remain forever gimpy?
Comment Posted by: Tilluan on October 8, 2007 05:17 AM
1) What about to increase the level gap in DoN raids when level 80 will be introduced?
2) What about backflag quests for entering the Elemental Planes? (Fire, Earth, Water, Air) as people get directly backflagged for Time already and most guilds do not repeat the PoP Progresssion?
3) Will druids get their heal/dps instances?
Comment Posted by: Nightbringer on October 8, 2007 09:06 AM
With the multiple tiers of progression in this expansion, how is caster dps going to be balanced against the ever increasing melee dps?
Comment Posted by: Bamwrath on October 8, 2007 09:24 AM
New player models!!! This game is great but needs visual updating. This game could be a contender again!
Comment Posted by: Skuz Bukit on October 8, 2007 09:36 AM
Are there any plans to introduce a soloing element (quests being *threaded* leading a player from level to level, tradeskills being complimentary to the levelling process allowing you to manufacture equiptment you can actually use in the process) to the lower game (1-75) to allow players newer to the game to work towards the area of the game where *most* current players exist?
Any plans to alter the *con* system & related experience gains from mob kills & once-only quests, to allow for single player & group level mobs?
Are there any solid plans to gain new players rather than trying to reclaim former players?
Will itemisation be given the recognition of importance that it deserves? (great content & poor itemisation just wont work)
Will itemisation be much more complete than it was in TSS & TBS? (items still needing tuning 6months+ after release is really not acceptable)
Comment Posted by: Quaras on October 8, 2007 12:34 PM
Are there any plans to upgrade significantly interesting old quest/tradeskill items that have great value for non-raiders but have fallen by the wayside over the last 8 years. Specifically, the Coldain Prayer Shaw, Aid Grimel earring, Epics 2.0(to 2.5), BIC, etc... All of these well thought through quests have a ton of adherents and it would be great to have a means to upgrade these items over the next expansion or set of expansions -- it also would reintroduce people to older content.
Comment Posted by: Ghost of Zek on October 8, 2007 11:33 PM
First I'd like to say I really would love to hear answers to Aarkan and Chark's questions. The "redo" of the AA exp system was the #1 reason as a solo'ist why I finally called it quits, Quickly followed by the realization that with more and more expansions each with at least some "flagging", I was paying for content with a zero sum change of ever seeing it regardless of any personal ability to survive inside the areas.
Anyway, my question for the new expansion is with regards to game design and marketing.
In the past, EQ expansions have been marketed with a broad stroke saying the content was for levels "45 and above" or "70 and above".
What's been missing is the obvious need for AA's in order to make any use of the content.
The game designers are obviously aware of AA's when they design the content. Any level 65 with zero AA's warrior trying to tank WoS trash mobs will tell you that SOE all to obviously made some assuptions and didn't pass on to the player base what those assumptions where. This is further complicated in that it appears that while SOE may have meant level "65" to mean "level 65 plus 300 AA's" in one expansion, they turn out to mean "level 65 and 500 aa's" in a later expansion, all the while only ever saying "level 65".
In short, my question is this. Rather than feeding the buyers, and players a broad open "level x through y" range of content. Is SOE willing to fess up and tell the players (current and those that might if there was some honest communication return), what the REAL requirements are in order to make use of the new content.
Basically what I'd like to see is SOE break it down as follows;
1 zone level 45+
3 zones level 50+
10 instances level 50+ (with 30+ AAs)
6 zones level 65+ (with 300 AAs and gear with 100/100+ hp/mana min.)
Just lets have them be honest and let us know what the real assumptions are before we go off and give them another buck.
Comment Posted by: xsi on October 9, 2007 04:24 AM
Are there any plans with SoF to attract new players to the game, or will that be a goal of future expansions instead?
Comment Posted by: karrant on October 9, 2007 04:44 AM
Any plans for a server merge in the near future? Servers are underpopulated for ease of grouping in my opinion.
Comment Posted by: Hopeful on October 9, 2007 01:10 PM
Are there plans to make the pets meaningful again? Not as a substitute for warriors, of course, but allow some meaningful soloing?
Will there be a pet inspect window? Where we could replace fire/cold/magic based weapons as necessary without making a new pet?
Will there be a /pet swap command to exchange the "pocketed" pet with the active one?
Comment Posted by: xsi on October 9, 2007 02:58 PM
In the past two expansions, poor and/or unfinished itemization has been an undeniable problem. Has Merloc been given added manpower to work on itemization for this expansion and will said itemization undergo multiple rounds of feedback and change from beta testers, to try and weed out some of the usual obvious issues?
Comment Posted by: Loral on October 9, 2007 03:22 PM
Keep the questions coming! I will be sending them to SOE on Thursday so get them in soonest. If not I'm filling it with nothing but sloppy fanboi questions like "how cool was it to work on?" and "How much ass does the Sleeper kick?"
Don't let that happen. Post away.
Comment Posted by: xsi on October 10, 2007 01:57 AM
We were told that the new human models have been shelved, but that a different race is now being worked on, and that race's new models might be seen sometime around the launch of SoF. Is this still the case, and when can we start seeing screens to offer feedback? (And, are you still building everything off of the drakkin model, or has the reaction to the horrible human models changed your approach in that regard?)
Comment Posted by: Ragnaor on October 10, 2007 02:00 AM
Will they allow us to use "mousekeys"?
Comment Posted by: Bawrath on October 10, 2007 08:42 AM
Who cut Absor's hair?
Seriously, per my previous question, if they're not going to revamp the playermodels, can they at least comment on redesigning or adding new graphics for armor and weapons? The displayed graphics for armor for example are much too limited. How great would it be to actually have players look different from each other not just based upon color selection?
My warrior doesn't wear crafted armor any more but you'd never know that by looking at him.
Comment Posted by: Bamwrath on October 10, 2007 08:44 AM
Gads I almost forgot...
Will the Ents *EVER* find their wives?
Ack sorry wrong board.
Comment Posted by: RosesAreRed on October 10, 2007 01:14 PM
Please, Please, Please autoequip when looting corpse! It's such an unnecessary annoyance to have to individually loot every item and serves no purpose.
Comment Posted by: xsi on October 11, 2007 03:55 AM
How does SOE rank classes in their current state in terms of DPS and tanking, (it'd be great to get an actual ordered list for both), how much does this differ from the way they think the classes SHOULD be ranked, and what is being done in SoF to effect the necessary changes, (if any)?
Comment Posted by: Redhenna on October 11, 2007 05:00 AM
Hopefully this is in time...
Quick preface: I played EQ for 6 years, and played hardcore. My account expired in April, and I parted ways with EQ, but it was an amicable parting of the ways. I am not one of those bitter ex-players, explaining at length why EQ sucks. I don't think it does suck, and if it may have moved in a direction I did not like, I can still understand some of that reason. I think the devs do increbile things, considering how difficult some of those things probably are in a game as aged as EQ. While I still believe EQ is the best MMO out there(just not the one I want to play currently...maybe 6 years of any game is just too much), I also believe there are real issues, real problems with the game. As my questions are about those problems, they kinda seem negatively slanted. This is not because I think negatively of EQ, but because I am asking about areas of EQ where I do see problems.
1: For me, and a fair number of people I knew in EQ, the number 1 problem got to be the real, hard limits in progression, especially outside of raiding. I raided hardcore(though not endgame, DP level when I retired), but that alone was not enough to keep me interested. When you cannot get gear upgrades outside raids(which is understandable, having raid gear), cannot progress your character any more through experience(expendable AA's do not progress a character), and have seen the zones, done the quests...well, it makes it hard to log on. While this is not a problem for the majority of EQ, it is a problem, and a growing one. What, if anything, are you doing to solve this problem? Especially with the longer expansion cycle, it seems likely that this problem is only going to get worse, how do you plan to counteract this?
2: With the longer expansion cycle, and with the speed that some players consume content, do you have any plans to add new content between expansions, ala EQ2 and older EQ1, where new zones where added between expansions?
3: There are basically 2 primary ways to progress a character, through experience(levels and AA's), and items(3 ways if you count tradeskills). The last 2 expansions, itemization has been, to say the least, abysmal. For every good thing(and there have been a few), there has been bad, really bad. While part of the problem may be, down the road, aleviated by the longer expansion cycle, the lack of knowledge about what players are after in items shown these last two expansions suggests there will be some real stinkers for items coming. Further, next expansion is not on the one year cycle, so Merloc will not have that much longer to work on items for SoF. What is being done to ensure that this time, itemization is at least semidone for SoF, and to ensure that those items that are not done right at launch will get fixed in a timely manner? This is quite possibly the number one issue going on the last close to a year, with players at all levels of play being usatisfied with at least some aspects of itemzation, weaponry especially. With the shear volume of issues here, something really does have to be done to adress the way itemization is done, and how itemization is fixed when inevitable mistakes do happen. How do you(assuming you do) plan to adress this?
4: EQ is plagued with stability and gamebreaking issues. Sever crashes, zone crashes, west bug, and so on. Some of these problems have been around for years, and are only now being seriously looked at(west bug). With a program as old, and probably bloated as EQ is, problems of this type are probably inevitable to some extent. What is being done to attempt to improve EQs stability, and to ensure that gamebreaking issues(any crash bug, anything that requires you to relog to fix, or renders certain aspects of play impossible(eg west bug) are fixed promptly?
Sorry this is so long, I can get overly wordy some nights, when it is late and I should be asleep.
Comment Posted by: FairiesRock on October 11, 2007 08:22 PM
Could you increase the experience on monster missions? They're my favorite part of the game and the only reason I haven't jumped ship to WoW.
Comment Posted by: Loral on October 11, 2007 11:54 PM
The following questions have been submitted to Mobhunter. Keep an eye out for the answers in Mobhunter's next article. I will be locking the comments now to prevent spamming. Thank you for your submissions!
Questions for SOE:
Is there any intenttwelv to change the rate at which characters earn experience or AA experience?
What will the flagging system be like in Secrets of Faydwer?
After the release of Secrets of Faydwer, will SOE open up or reduce the flagging restrictions for older content? If so, when?
What is the plan for new player models?
Does Secrets of Faydwer include any improved solo hunting areas or solo quests?
How will Secrets of Faydwer address tradeskills and quests for non-raiders?
How will the content in Secrets of Faydwer be balanced against level and AAs? What amounts of AAs are players expected to have at what levels?
Is there an attempt to bring new players into EQ with Secrets of Faydwer or will that be left to future expansions?
How will itemization be handled in Secrets of Faydwer? How will it be addressed after release?
Is there any attempt in Secrets of Faydwer to increase gear rewards for high-end players in single groups?
Will there be any new content released between expansions?
Are there any new monster missions in Secrets of Faydwer? If not, is there any plan to add any in the future?
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Email Mike at mike@mikeshea.net for more questions or comments.