Feldon Starting the EverQuest II: Friday Q&A Panel…
Anyone have any water? đ
Update: This is a video of EverQuest II Panel #4 “Q&A #1” added on July 24, 2011.
Q: Mage pets die from AoEs.
A: AoE Immunity is something we have to look into. We have to look at the balance on this.
Q: Slippery floors are hilarious. Can we add them elsewhere?
Rothgar: Well I don’t know if we can go there, that’s a slippery slope.
Q: Can we get access to Tier 2 Guild Hall Amenities in Tier 1 halls? more amenities for Tier 2 Guild Halls? We don’t want to move to a bigger hall.
A: The city of Freeport is going to have more amenities, but we don’t plan to put them into smaller guild halls.
Q: Is there any progress on Account Linking?
A: We just haven’t had time.
Q: Ever since vitality potions went on the SC store, vitality seems to drop twice as fast.
A: Well that would be clever.
Q: Can we hide flying mounts on the ground?
A: Good suggestion. We’ll talk about it.
Q: I hate looking at the butt of my mount.
A: We positioned the Pegasus butt just for you. đ
Q: Combine classes like Shaman, Druid, Cleric, etc.? Get rid of subclasses and do so with AAs.
A: AAs right now are divvied up by subclass. We don’t want to get rid of the diversity that we have. We have fantasized about the possibility doing this. We talked about this 4-5 months ago extensively. But we fled screaming, because of what player reaction would be.
Q: Can Deity pets be reworked for the Stat revamp?
A: We are going to change it so deity pets give bonuses to all your main stats.
Q: Can we get a second Banker in the Guild Hall for tradeskill area?
Smoke: I have a love-hate relationship with Guild Hall Amenities. We love guilds and guild halls but they’re too damn good. It makes the rest of the world very empty. We have a moratorium on guild hall amenities until we can find a solution for this. This is why no Chronomage. We’ll see after we revamp Freeport.
Q: Illusions taking up inventory slots.
A: We want an Illusions tab in Inventory, or a way to Scribe illusions as permanent Spells. We are also looking at ways to put Quest Items in a separate bag or in your Journal. We don’t think most quest items should be in your inventory at all.
Q: Can the Kunark Writ Giver be updated for Sentinel’s Fate and Velious or lower levels?
A: We have discussed this rather than adding a bunch of separate ones. Possible.
Q: Respec your Adventure class at level 9 on an established Tradeskiller?
A: We meant to do that. It’s on the To Do list. We thought it was done but we jumped the gun. Some of it is done but it’s not completed.
Q: Can something be done about Fighter Taunts?
A: We understand that you don’t get much out of Fighter Taunts. We’ll get to it as soon as we can. After GU61.
Q: Can we get fighter weapons in a crate instead of always getting Brawler weapons.
Silius: Crating weapons is something we’ve talked about. We crated armor because it was class armor. When it comes to weapons, when we start crating weapons, it will become where people want everything crated. In previous expansions, we weighted Brawler weapon drop chance down so they drop less, but I’m not a fan of this idea.
Smoke: Well you know Beastlords use brawler gear.
Silius: War Runes are non-Heirloom. We wanted the character to earn them. Not that earning them for your account is any less. The future of War Runes is not exactly bright, so this may not even be an issue in the future.
Rijacki (in costume). SmokeJumper had to read the question. “Can NPCs get voiceovers again?”
Smoke: Yes. (More characters will get spot color voiceover, but doing full voiceover is crazy talk)
Q: There are some older Breastplate items that don’t match anything else.
A: As part of the reitemization, we’re making all new items. One of the tasks of Gninja is to come up with an appearance progression.
Q: I’ve completed Epic Repercussions on my Illusionist. I keep getting the message that I don’t qualify to cast the pet.
Player: When you have Rapidity on, and another buff that uses 3, then it glitches out.
A: We’ll take a look at it.
Q: To be able to switch mounts, I’m having to keep Mounts in my inventory and hotbar it.
A: We have an interface planned to fix this for Leapers and Gliders. We didn’t have it ready in time.
Q: Can we flag a house as a Guild Hall to put in Amenities?
A: Originally, the first T1 guild hall were the 5 room house. We could always talk about releasing smaller versions of the guild hall that use house art.
Q: Underwater mounts? Submersible Tinkered mounts?
Smoke: We’ve talked about it. The discussion ended when we got to the Dolphin mount, you got to the shore, and it didn’t work. đ
Silius: How about a flying dolphin mount?
Q: Chests in guild halls to put ammo, food, and other items for lowbies.
A: This is the age old discussion of convenience vs. performance.
A: We talked about Guild-only Broker and it ended up being a tremendous amount of work.
Q: Can we have a Slob rating/category as part of the house rating system?
A: Some of the Awards for House Rating we’re going to have like Chalices. Maybe we can have Awards for being at the bottom of the Ratings.
Q: Can cloud and disc mounts be used as flying appearance mounts?
A: We have had a lot of discussion. Fae and Arasai will be flyable soon without mounts. Next is maybe equipped wings.
Q: Dragon and Wyvern mounts?
Smoke: In Velious, half of the continent was Dragons. We’re not there yet. We have Velious content planned until 2013.
Q: What about the Class Manifesto you talked about last year?
A: You know what. The guy who promised that isn’t here anymore and it’s not coming. It’s just not coming. We’ll attack issues one at a time, but the class manifesto, I shouldn’t have told you about that because it’s unrealistic to expect that. We’re constantly changing the game. That manifesto would change every month. I should have never promised it. Sorry!
Q: Auto-Sort Inventory Feature?
Rothgar: Sort by type? I like that idea. It would be really cool to do. If I didn’t also have to do DYOD, Mercenaries. Maybe after November. đ
Q: 3rd year in a row on this. Exiles cannot do many quests. It’s completely random. Certain Signature quests we can some we can’t. Writs are all over the map.
(devs consulting)
Smoke: We have some ongoing discussions about what we want to do with Exiles. I can’t get into it. That discussion is very much alive, but we haven’t found the solution. And that solution is not necessarily what you’re thinking of.
Q: LoN interface, we have to click and click over and over to claim and open our packs.
A: i can talk to the LoN team about this.
Q: Raiding with the larger mobs, the pathing is really crazy.
A: This is a bug and we’re actively working on it.
Q: Why melee priests have 1.3 melee and 1.2 on casting crit modifier?
Xelgad: We did the math on the damage of spells vs. melee. We get parses on a regular basis. I don’t see it changing in the near future. We’re always looking at class balance. If we see that melee priests have a huge advantage, we’ll make a change.
Silius: Spell priests are about to get something that will help here.
Q: Can we get T2 guild halls in other cities besides Qeynos and Freeport?
A: The guy who would be doing custom guild halls is working on the Freeport revamp. đ
Q: Mentoring with crafting?
Kaitheel (jesting): And then maybe some tradeskill points could go to AA?
Silius: You dont really group tradeskill.
(lots of dev chat with each other)
Q: Can we increase the chat channel color #’s over 20?
A: We can talk about this.
Q: Can we get the Observatory and other T2 amenities in T1 halls?
A: This was done as a planned progression. We kept some items for higher levels. It encourages people to get higher guilds. Right or wrong this is how it was planned.
Q: Scout Pets for Summoners are a melee type pet. Summoners don’t really have Melee skills so there are problems with Shared stats. Mage pets attack very fast. Scout pets cast a combat art, melee autoattack, it’s all very slow casting. Through Possess Essence, I can cast with the pet a lot faster than it does through AI.
A: Scout pet is a Bard. Most Summoners don’t want to use a Bard pet. We can look at why it might be casting slower than it could.
Q: Leapers and Gliders, you have to cancel them to use the Barrel in Sentinel’s Fate.
A: It’s a bug. You’re not supposed to be able to get in the Barrel while on a mount. This is an easy fix. We didn’t think of the Gnomish Cannon when we did this.
Q: For EQ2X (Freeport), going to the Champion’s Respite Battlegrounds area is actually a penalty.
A: The two services are separate. We agree with you that it would be more fun that people could play together. But the community has told us how they feel about this. We don’t have any plans to merge these products at all.
Q: Champion’s Respite is pointless on the EQ2X server.
Rothgar: If you want to do other things, yeah you have to copy back. There’s still an advantage as far as zoning faster to the Battlegrounds zone. But we’re not sure how to fix this. It doesn’t seem to make sense to just remove Champion’s Respite for EQ2X. In the current situation there’s not much we can do about it.
Q: Can we look forward to the same mistreatment with the Dungeon Finder cross-server feature?
A: Nicely phrased. That’s a ways in the future. You’re painting a bleak picture. What you’re saying that Champion’s Respite in the Battlegrounds patch killed Battlegrounds Guilds?
Player: Yes.
Q: Is there a reason that all Ground mounts travel at 130% almost as fast as flying mounts?
A: I’ve been following these threads on the forums. When we added Leapers and Gliders we changed how mounts works. The old game of ground progression speed doesn’t really make sense anymore. We did a foot speed test in Commonlands. We compared all the mounts to see who could get to the end. If ground mounts move at 130%, with AAs you can go even more. So we wanted ground mounts to have advantage as a buff in dungeons.
Flying Mounts, they have a huge advantage. You can point in a direction, go AFK, grab a sandwich, come back, and you’re where you want to be. Leapers and Gliders require more active play as far as controlling the player and aiming. So we rewarded them with a bit more speed.
We didn’t get around to adjusting the prices and status of the Ground Mounts.
Q: Burynai pet doesn’t accept T9 fertilizers.
A: We’re aware of this.
Audience: There’s a Guild Hall Amenity for T9 fertilizers.
Q: Pack Pony seems to harvest things out of thin air. Can you send him off?
(Audience) You can send him off.
A: we can look at this.
Q: Can I hide other people’s mounts?
Q: This is for the PR people. We need Advertising.
(huge applause)
A: We do too. We’ll pass around the collection plate for the commercials. Marketing analyses how much they’re going to spend and then figure out the break even point. Players who come in have to stick around for enough months to justify it. TV ads are hugely expensive. All we’d do is lose money. We’re bringing back the Free Trial. We’ve redesigned the flow of the webpage to spell out why you should play EQ2 Live vs. EQ2X.
Q: Why not install EQ2 on Sony Laptops?
A: You’d think we’re all one big happy family at Sony, but it’s all separate divisions.
One thing we have added on Test is Youtube Video Recording. You can post videos of EQ2 directly to Youtube.
Q: With the new Drunder zones. I believe in progression. However with the new zones, I can’t take any casual players to Drunder, even Kael Drakkel zones. If the zones are going to keep getting harder with Game Updates. Do you believe the progression still working?
A: There will always be hard dungeons. We are focused on easy and hard zones. When we do normal mode raids, a lot of people attempt raids they would never normally try. You’d have to agree with me that people tend to play games that they can actually beat. What’s happening is that players are educating themselves to become better raiders by trying out Easy/Normal raids. We hope that trend will continue.
Q: Public Quests – Storm Gorge, nobody’s doing it anymore. The lag is crazy. You can’t heal.
A: The servers that have not yet been upgraded will be done in a week or so. That should take care of the majority of the lag. As far as PQs work we want to change how the loot works.
Rothgar: Come to the programming panel tomorrow we’ll be talking about Lag.
Q: Can we get a Pet Enlarge spell?
(audience yelling out NOOOOOOOOOO)
Q: Can we get a universal ammo slot to hold arrows, thrown ammo, etc.?
A: A generic ammo bag is in no way game breaking. We have to talk about this.
Q: Statue of Zek causes my hotbars to reset.
A: We just checked in a fix for that issue. Pool burn drains, when you finish the cast, it will no longer interrupt your casting.
Q: (same question about the Orc paintings) Can we get more paintings other than Orcs?
A: How about Orcs in a pink dress? Fresh batch of Ogre and Troll paintings coming up!
-discussions about the cost to make tinkered mender bots and you should get some of the money back. Person asking keeps saying it costs 8 xegonites to make — actually it costs 5, 2 of which you get back-
Q: Can we get a Self-Chronomage item to carry with us to mentor anywhere?
A: We have to talk about this. There are ramifications of social space to talk about first.
Q: Keychain for quest items. Also a visual reference to see what zones, areas we have access to.
Q: Call of Veteran is still broken.
Q: How do you expect Fighters to be able to tank or fight without 2 other classes for hate transfer? Can fighters be more in control of their hate generation?
A: Taunts are getting improved. As far as not needing other players, that doesn’t sound like something we intend to do.
END PANEL
Thanks all for tuning in! I’m gonna go get something to drink and then on to the Pool Party.
This was a Live Blog by EQ2Wire.com from SOE Fan Faire 2011 at Bally’s in Las Vegas, NV.
Seems last minute, but since we ARE getting Beastlord’s, can we get more details about what limits will be on Warders? Can we choose ANY animal in-game?
Warders are specific pets you train up. You dont just walk around and turn animals into Warders. Think quests.
Feldon, please ask them my question.
Could the inspect window get a major revamp? Seeing as it’s very outdated and showing very little information, I would like to see other people’s crit bonus, potency, crit mitigation and so forth without asking them what they have. I would also like AA specs added to the inspect window so I can see what people put their points in. This would make inspect window very advanced and totally revamped.
Personally I wish I could restrict my inspect window. Other than my guild mates I don’t need anyone seeing what gear I’m using, what my stats are, or any other details.
Much like achievement tab on inspect I wish I could hide it.
agree
would be nice to see other peoples critmit when you inspect them
I agree, a revamped inspect window would be nice.
Last year they said we would get the ability to crate armor sets to put them into our banks in a more compact way…but that seems to be forgotten. Wonder if that’ll be raised again.
Inspect window revamp is good, but showing AA specs is taking it too far. Just copying someone else’s spec doesn’t require any effort, and it takes hours of effort to fine tune a spec. Also, that fine tuned spec may not even work for your play style. Best to leave it as an option to wag your AA in the inspect window. As for showing the stats to determine if people are going to help or hurt your efforts…might not be a bad idea. (i.e. someone grouped said they have 140 CM, but they died EVERY AE that went off…so unlikely).
Since they are making beastlords t1 scout dps. can we make sure that sumoners are t1 dps now as well?
Thanks again Feldon for all your hard work! Great coverage.
“can we make sure that sumoners are t1 dps now as well?”
What on earth are you talking about the summoners in my guild outparse everyone else
LOL, put everything in inspect? Just make a gear score and working eq2players website and you can decide whether or not to even talk to whoever’s LFG.
Feldon, for part 2 of this, think we could ask them if they could PLEASE be consistent on hit boxes for mobs based on their relative size? i.e. 2 mobs of same size have hit boxes that are DRAMATICALLY different (one I’m standing on his shoes, the other I’m half across the room). This causes a LOT of grief for rangers getting their min distance covered.
For all the dps whingers…how about we just make every single class to the same dps and the same buff/debuff…what the heck…how about just ONE class with different apperances and spell names?
What’s T1 dps anyway? The GOOD summoners I play with are only EVER beat by wizards and warlocks on a parse, Kruzzen. 200K zw dps in a group without full HM raid gear seems pretty T1 to me.
Dirges are on par with summoners tbh.
Sorcs/Preds/Swash > Summoners/Brigs/Dirges > everyone else.
Great write up as always Feldon. You’re the best.
Interseting write up. I love how they doged the itemization problems all tegether.
Itemization panel is today.
Q: Can we get more amenities for Tier 2 Guild Halls? We donât want to move to a bigger hall.
Just to clarify the number of amenities you can put in a T2 guild hall is whatever number of amenities your guild level allows for. If you are a level 90 guild you can remain in a T1 hall and use all 35 amenity slots.
I’m not sure if the dev team didn’t understand the question or had forgotten about this change, but it’s been that way for quite some time.
Senya they wanted some of the unique t2 amenities like the conservatory item.
The change was made with GU52 by the way: http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=452904
GUILDS
User now gets the message âGuildLeader has kicked YourAltName from the guildâ if you are online and one of your alts is kicked (used to say âGuildLeader has kicked YOU from the guildâ.)
Changed the guild hall teleport pop up window to reuse the existing window rather than spawn multiples of the existing window.
Fixed a bug that sometimes causes a guild rally banner to deactivate before the two hour time limit.
Guilds are able to hire a research assistant hireling for their guild hall.
Fixed a bug causing level 79 guilds to only get 25 amenities instead of 29.
The guild hall amenity limit is no longer constrained by the size of the guild hall. The number of amenities allowed is now only based on your guildâs level.
Ahh, I see! I thought with the way the question was worded they thought the number of amenities was still capped by the size of the guild hall. My bad!