What DIDN’T Get Asked at Fan Faire?

Written by Feldon on . Posted in Commentary, Daybreak Live (SOE Live/Fan Faire)

It has to be frustrating at home to read “We’ll look into it” or “We’ll talk about it”. Realize that my writeups of each panel are on-the-fly and I simplify and summarize questions and answers as best I can. So any answer from the devs like “That is something we can look at” or “This is something we weren’t aware of” or “We need to talk to the team about this” or “We’ll put it on our list” sometimes got distilled into the ubiquitous “We’ll look into it”.

So what questions didn’t you see get asked at Fan Faire? I sense a lot of exasperation at the questions that do get asked that we’ve heard before (Q: When can we get armor dyes? A: If you want this, EQ2 will have to add flat-shaded armor that doesn’t use any Shaders 1.0 or 3.0) instead of the hard-hitting questions. Even I was surprised at how few raid content questions were asked compared to housing, grouping, itemization, PvP, and class balance questions.

During each panel, the devs are writing down every question and taking copious notes. I know sometimes people don’t believe it, but the devs do use these lists to decide what goes on their To Do list in addition to expansion duties. They look at what they can implement but will not break the game.

I got to talk to some of the devs for quite some time and raised the issues I’m passionate about, but I know there are folks who read EQ2Wire who have questions they’d like to see answered. Already some folks have posted their “why didn’t they ask?” questions in the comments under the live blog posts.

Here’s your chance to get some questions posed directly to the devs and I will do everything I can to get good answers for questions that are answerable. Now what does that mean — answerable?

This question is not answerable:

  • When will you fix brawlers?

This question is answerable:

  • Is there any chance bards can get additional blue AoE attacks?

This question is not answerable:

  • When will you fix rangers?

This question is answerable:

  • Can Rangers either get more utility, be brought up to assassins on DPS, or some other fix? Specifically can we have ranged flurry or some variation?

    Looking forward to seeing all your questions!!

    Trackback from your site.

    Comments (34)

    • Jeff

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      I’m sure you have the ranger questions covered so I’ll skip that. One idea that came to mind on avatars though. What if they brought back avatars and put a lockout on anyone that killed an avatar for 5 days, so they can’t kill any other avatars until the lockout is done. That would get rid of most the drama related to them and keep people from just farming them to death, giving other guilds a shot at them.

      I’m guessing the reason they don’t want to bring them back is due to drama and overpowered loot. This would fix that in a big way I think.

      Reply

    • starseeker

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      My Questions:
      Will an in game calendar be implemented to the Guild window in the UI so that guild leaders can arrange events/sign ups in game instead of relying on external website?

      To tie in with the previous question, Would there be a way to track attendance of events through the Guild UI window such as raid attendance %?

      Will there ever be persistent options on old world raid zones and instances (KOS/EOF/DOF), since these zones may be utilized more on the new servers?

      Is there any plans to make the new station cash herritage armor available in game as armor graphics? such as the dark elf heritage armor, or will it be a market place item only?

      Will there be more options for smaller raids (x2) in the future? There is a growing fear out there due to the new servers, that x4 raids will be harder to fill with the resent changes (although raids are already hard to fill as is), and perhaps making content for smaller groups of people would make it easier on guild leaders and give the player base more options.

      Reply

    • zerigo

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      ya since eq2x has been announced my guild has lost a few players that way, and a few that have just up and quit. Were down 6 raiders atm, More x2 would rock.

      Reply

    • starseeker

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      mine too. went from 20 to about 13-14 after the announcement. Thats why I ask 🙂

      Reply

    • Awnya2

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      Do the devs have any plans to re-vitalize Qeynos and Freeport so players actually have a reason to go there except to Crono or run to their homes? Its so sad to see such big beautiful cities not used.

      Do Devs have any plans to help ‘direct’ players to these cities?

      Reply

    • Striikor

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      When can we expect to see the definition of classes and roles Smokejumper talked about?

      Reply

    • Grimmond

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      Ask – Is there any possibility that the paladinRES spell could have it’s range increased from point blank … finding a dead body in some raids is nearly impossible. It was nerf’d a long time ago, but that nerf is needless now and this should be changed back to a useable range.

      Reply

    • Striikor

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      Also if class definitions and roles are not clarified and defined now, what is the basis and on what criteria are they making the class changes they did speak about.

      Reply

    • foozlesprite

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      Is there any chance that illusionist buffs could be reworked to become as useful as they once were now that most stats are effectively capped by raiders?

      Can Time Compression be reworked to allow self-casting like Upbeat Tempo and Battle Cry were, for soloing?

      It’s been 6 months. Are you ever going to fix the illusionist pet ‘dropping-on-zone’ bug?

      Reply

    • Justin

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      how is “when are you going to fix brawlers?” not a answerable question? brawlers still dont have a rollin a 6 YEAR OLD GAME.

      Rangers ae clearly broken! if they cant answer questions like that with specific details, they shouldnt be on this panel.

      Pathetic

      Reply

    • Onodi

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      quote: “ya since eq2x has been announced my guild has lost a few players that way, and a few that have just up and quit. Were down 6 raiders atm, More x2 would rock.”

      What about x2 scales of x4 zones (adjusting loot tables for the difficulty change)… good practice and gives smaller guilds an option to see end game raid zones without pickups which can be a roll of the dice…

      Reply

    • Rnara

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      Something that I know isn’t high on most people’s agenda, but:

      The graphics changes that are on test/the EQ2X alpha server right now, can they be made optional (like SOGA) or not? If not, why not?

      Reply

    • Zizzu

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      When will servers merge?
      Will Rangers be a total “ranged” class?
      Any chance that Hardmode gear will get a second look? Some items are really lacking for their effort. (EX: Earring of Animosity from HM Sages).

      Reply

    • Kalako

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      Why wasn’t the SOE Ustream channel working this year? We got a podcast from the Fan Faire (which tbh was excrutiating to watch!) and a panel for EQtuesday…. and that was it. I waited patiently for the EQ2 expac panel to come up and it never showed. Nothing did in fact, which was a little disappointing.
      The only info I’ve gleaned from this year’s Fan Faire is your brilliant work here Feldon. It still would have been nice to have seen some of the panel’s on Ustream like they showed last year. Being a UK player, I sincerely doubt I’ll ever get the chance to come to a Fan Faire. Watching the Ustream is the closest I can get! 😉

      Reply

    • Melanore

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      Hi all, Hi Feldon. You did an incredible job as always, thank you for all this!

      I’m just surprised that no question were asked regarding the disastrous state of the GU 57 with no content, just an UI revamp (to welcome F2P players …) and an awful downgrade of many spell FX …

      So my question is: “Would you start threads on the Look and Feel forum regarding each spell you want to visually change instead of bringing such bad effects that barely no one wants? In those threads, players could share their opinions on what should the spell look like.”

      Another question: “Velious announce was a bit disappointing, in terms of content announced. Don’t you think it’s time to bring some new mechanisms to the game in order to bring the fun factor back to the game? Classes should get totally new spells, of a new gender, things we have not yet seen in the game. Maybe introducing a new class, a new craft, or a system of dual class could make the gameplay more enjoyable. We can also talk about new mechanisms such as spell combos or reactive spell (only usable after a certain amount of conditions have been met).

      My last question: “The game has an incredible amount of Lore content. The Lore is delivered through quests, with a dialogue box system that starts getting boring and does not give the player much interaction with the world. We leave no prints in Norrath. Do you think this might get reviewed and maybe improved? Delivering quests and instances with more place for the players to take part in the history? Would be cool to see more sequences where you see your character taking part in the action, jumping across a hole cause by a collapsing floor … Your char running too a gate that is closing … Your char talking to the NPC’s but not through a chat box, but rather in a short movie with a moving camera, with eventually some members of your group taking part to the conversation (some pre-calculated sequence, just like the Cooperative Mission system in Guild Wars). There are so many ways to make the world and the system feel more alive … Just ask your community, I’m sure we’ll have great ideas!”

      Reply

    • Melanore

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      Ho, also … We’d like to see more quest that are hidden through the world. Not given by an NPC but you know, in the very first hours you played EQ2 … Remember your first visit of Stormhold and Varsoon … There you could read a book on a shelve to start a quest, there you could click a box to get a quest, there you could search a barrel to start a quest too … Now, all the quests seem to be given by NPC, not many of them are hidden in the world. That would be great to see more of clicky items in the world, to reinforce the exploration feeling

      Reply

    • Karith

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      Q: Because of the frequency in Fragment returns, is there anyway we can either see a double in the treasured drops from heroic instances or can we convert higher tiered types of components into lower tier ones? In example, can we convert powders into 10 fragments the same way we can build up a powder from 10 fragments?

      Reply

    • Dethdlr

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      I’d love to get an answer to this one: Can you add a slider to control the opacity of the Implied Target Arrow?

      This has been asked multiple times since 2007 and as far as I can tell, no dev has ever even acknowledged the question. It sounds like such an easy thing to implement and would be such a nice change for scouts that have to find the back of the mob to get in backstabs.

      Reply

    • Karnos

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      Q: Any chance guardians are going to get Unyielding Will (our death preventer) changed to a maintained buff, in the vein of Bloodletter, the SK version.

      Q: Any chance guardians could get some Damage Reduction to bring us closer to the other plate tanks in survivability? All other plate tanks have Damage Reduction in one form or another: paladins have 10% permanently and berserkers have 50% more than half the time, for instance, while guardians come in last with 5% for 10 sec as a relatively rare proc off our mythical.

      Reply

    • Sadres

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      Q: Instead of relying on third party auto-attack timers in order to make sure our autoattacks are never interrupted, wouldn’t it make sense for autoattack to simply not interrupt when casting CAs? It’s been mentioned as something which would potentially unbalance melee classes – but would it be possible to push something like this to test and simply see how it pans out?

      Reply

    • Feldon

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      Great questions so far!! I actually have answers to a few of them but will hold off until more have been posted. Please keep them rolling in. They can be REALLY specific, or general. And if you don’t feel comfortable posting here, by all means use Contact Us.

      Reply

    • Shai

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      I have 3 questions

      1) Re: Velious and the New Expansion

      One of the things I truly loved in EQ1 was the hugeness of the zones… you actually felt like you were traveling. The Karanas were amazingly enormous!! With Velious incoming…will we be able to get some of the feeling of travel back? Sadly EQ2 seems to have lost the sense of vastness and the feel of it being a real world with the way they have been doing zones lately.

      Velious was not a small expansion, and each zone was an adventure. I would really like to know if the zones will be representative of the massiveness of the original EQ1 version.

      2) I play a conjuror in EQ2. I would love one day to be able to decide what I want my pet to look like. Is it at all possible to choose from master versions of the same pet line and have that be the look of my pet? Like, my earth pet….if I prefered the Master T8 version of the earthen avatar, would I be able to choose that as my Master T9 pet’s look when I summon him?

      3) I would also like to know, are there mount appearance slots incoming at some point in the future? I cannot stand rhinos/wargs etc, and would much prefer being seen on a horse. And, will there be a possibility of mount bags etc?

      Reply

    • snowline

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      meh wish I could go to these things, crit bonus halved for wards never gets asked. 100 crit bonus from gear/buffs in raid on a cleric/druid becomes 50 crit bonus for a shammy because 7years ago someone wanted to make a 0.3 into a 0.15 crit bonus modifier for wards and wrote ward crit bonus divided by 2 instead of ward crit bonus minus 0.15.

      The further we progress down the route of crit bonus and potency as the only progression stats for healers, the more of an issue this becomes.

      2. Mystic mythical, before gu56 mystics healed less than defilers, after gu56 mystic mythical nerf mystics lost around 30% of our potential heal ceiling. Hard to accept when we got bane warding smashed to total uselessness the same patch, and we got the 2nd worst mythical nerf in gu55 beforehand, and mystics no longer have an edge in dps over any defiler that tries dpsing to offset for healing reductions.

      Reply

    • Isest

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      Well there were a few questions I would love to have asked. Like when is the warlock class and the troubadour class going to get a dev who actually plays that class to looks at some of our skills to see what can be done to fix the ones that dont work well.

      That and the real questions that was asked buy danced around. This being what makes you think there is a new sea of players just jumping up and down wanting to come play eq2. We been around 6 years, most folks left to go play other games. Do we honestly expect growth?

      Reply

    • Altuslumen

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      Are there any plans to change berserker (warriors) heals into damage reduction abilities instead? This would allow them to scale across content solo/heroic/raiding with ease and avoid the OP’ed soloing that is grounds for the upcoming fighter heal nerf.

      Reply

    • Redoak

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      My question is this:
      can illusionists get an option on the pet window that would allow us to select the spells casted by the pet. the best way to make a tank angry in groups is to have your pet root a mob before it gets to him. and it would also help the illy DPS slightly if one could make a spell order for the pet, and not have it use the spells that are not needed.

      Reply

    • Green Armadillo

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      I don’t know if this is “answerable” or not, but I’d love to hear the rationale behind adding flying mounts to the game. Is the thinking that players get annoyed when they’re stuck at the bottom of a cliff and can’t figure out how to get up top? I just don’t feel like this feature was really “missing” from the game up til now.

      Reply

    • Mike

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      Are there any plans going forward to adjust the class restriction system currently in place on EQ2X?

      Reply

    • Melanore

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      Hi Feldon, did you managed to ask all those questions to devs? Or did you get an email where you sent them to them?

      Reply

    • starseeker

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      Question from a guildie: If they copy their raid character that has fabled gear and masters, over to eq2x, and then decides to play for free, will they loose their spells since once you upgrade a spell you can’t use the lesser version and the free options is adept only. Will they not be able to equip their gear?

      Reply

    • Feldon

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      Melanore,

      This is a post-Fan Faire question list. I’ll put together the best questions and send them to the right folks. Some of the questions have actually been answered already in various places so I’ll answer those in my followup post.

      Reply

    • thatguy

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      rangers where talked about but was asked not to give info out but they are getting fixed as far as dps and there mythical buff.

      Reply

    • Starseeker

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      Question that came to mind while watching the pannel vids:
      Bard Jewelry, is there any plan to put casting modifiers (spell casting/ability casting/etc) on scout jewelry for bards? There is actually a official forum post about this as well.

      Reply

    • Kitalya

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      Are there any plans to fix loot in Lesser Faydark? One of my toons recently started questing there (having not ever quested there on any of my toons), and have found that a majority of the mobs drop a chest with one of the “Snuffing the Firelight” collectible pages, and that’s about it. The solo names in the zone seem to frequently drop “Uncommon” gear (yup, not even “Treasured”). I can’t possibly recommend this zone to anyone right now, and am going to probably finish up the few quests I have and move on, as I see no benefit in hanging around this zone. While I’m ranting, it also appears as though there’s still a few spots in here where nodes seem to be floating in the air, a problem which I thought was supposed to be fixed in a patch a year ago. All said and done, Lesser Faydark is now on my list of “zones to pretty much avoid” (and is the only zone on that list), and that’s unfortunate considering how beautiful the zone itself is (I love the look and feel of both Greater Faydark and Lesser Faydark). Please help save this zone!

      Reply

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