Feldon From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums:
Merry Frostfell, Norrath!
The team is about to fly off to their families, great food, and probably a hangover after the new year.
But before we go, we wanted to leave you all with a couple more updates (today and tomorrow) with some really good stuff in it.
Here’s the goodies, broken down by feature.
Dungeon Finder
- We are adding Contested Dungeons to the Dungeon Finder feature from levels 20 to 89. (Level 90 contested dungeons are *not* being added to DF because of itemization concerns.) You should see a lot more dungeons available to you now at the various levels of play.
- (The following update is occurring on Wednesday, 12/21) We’re increasing the rewards for using the Dungeon Finder system. We’re adding a daily quest you can get that pays out after you play with a Dungeon Finder group for 30 minutes or more. The mystery crates are the same type of crates offered as rewards in the Dungeon Maker marketplace category, so the rewards found there are great stuff!
Dungeon MAKER
- We are buffing the Adventurers in Dungeon Maker so they have more power. (They currently run out too quickly currently.) We have other new updates beyond this coming in the new year, but this immediate change helps make Dungeon Maker instances a lot more fun over the holidays.
- We’re adding more Effect Objects into the Dungeon Maker category in the marketplace. (Very useful things for builders that want their spawners to be more unique.)
- Many pure builders have asked for spawners, decorations, and maps to also be available for Station Cash, and not only for Dungeon Marks. So we’re adding “either or” prices to the Dungeon Maker category of items. You can purchase those types of items (spawners, decorations, and maps) for SC or for Dungeon Marks. NOTE: Power items, like the mystery crates and glass swords are *not* purchaseable with SC. You have to earn those items by collecting Dungeon Marks.
- You are now able to build and publish three dungeons instead of only one.
- And, of course, even though it’s currently only on the Test server, you will be able to play your own characters in Dungeon Maker instances soon. (You’ll no longer be constrained to Adventurers only!) (For more details on this, see http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/…topic_id=512106)
General Improvements
- In response to popular demand, we’re replacing the five-star rating system (for housing and dungeons) with a “Like” system instead. The ratings for each house will be converted from a star-rating to a percentage score based on how many players played your dungeon and “Liked” it. (Example: A 90% rating would indicated that 90% of the players that played your dungeon liked it.) You can choose to Like (or not) in each of the ratings categories for each dungeon/house.
- Additionally, to help players understand rankings categories a bit better, the categories in Dungeon Maker are being renamed “Action” and “Style”.
- The default leaderboard shown for dungeons is now “Highest Ranked (Style)”. We’re changing this from “Recently Published” so that players that casually try the first dungeon on the list don’t get such a random result on their first experience into the feature.
And one final note: We have heard from several players that they don’t realize that the “Dungeon Maker” category in the marketplace can be used to purchase rewards for ANY of your current characters. It’s unfortunate, but true, that some players thought the DM rewards were only to buff up their Adventurers instead of their actual characters. This is not the case. Those items are for your real characters. So…enjoy!
We here on the EQII dev team hope you all enjoy your holidays, have a very happy New Year, and we’re looking forward to returning so we can keep working on the best MMO on the planet.
See ya then!
— Dave “Smokejumper” Georgeson.
I wish they could accept that the dungeon maker is a giant failure, and just let it fade away. Dives me nuts knowing this is where my money is being funneled. I guess this is the path that leads to the best “nickle and dime” opportunities. It is a shame, a lot of games have great custom maps, but they allow the players to do more then decorate a zone. I’m sure they will soon ramp up the rewards to try and force players to participate.
I despise the like/dislike system over the 5 star ratings. YouTube changed their system from a 5 star thign to like/dislike a while back and I hated that as well. You get so much more of a detailed result whith 0-5 than you do with a yes or no vote.
The team is about to fly off to their families…
And this is the reason why I HATE HATE HATE November (and thusly more so, December) launch dates. The game is still very obviously broken in many overt/non-trivial ways, and yet, they cant humanly deny Xmas breaks for people.
So we get weeks of brokenness while they are off with their families, during the time when most of us have extra play time.
Sure am glad they took the time to “fix” meatbeast and take him away from everyone that had him.
If those are the only changes they’re making to the dungeon finder, I don’t see why they’re bothering with the effort. Zero people shared between more dungeons doesn’t mean more groups. Until they solve the issue of random dungeons not doing any kind of gear check before sending you to excessively difficult instances, dungeon finder groups will continue to fail, and no-one will queue for them. They don’t now, because the majority of groups created with dungeon finder do fail. (On Unrest, anyway.)
Trueflight,
It’s not a Like/Dislike system. It’s a Like system. Meaning that people cannot grief it. A star rating system depends on weeding out Trolls. Amazon.com and other sites have had great difficulty with weeding out false negative reviews. EQ2 doesn’t stand a chance trying to weed out all the malicious 1-star reviews. So they went to a Like system. I think it will work out in the end.
They also remove the fun Meatbeast pet from beastlords, maybe to SC it in a few weeks, and put the first appearance of blocks into the marketplace while Carpenters cry out for something to research other than earrings!
Merry Christmas SOE in the finest Scrooge form.
“Let them have fun? Bah Humbug, we have to make more money”
Looking at the Post here and in the last week or so, i do believe Feldon needs to rename the site ot eq2-flaming-wire.com.
Just wanted to say thanks for all your updates and posts through the year and looking forward to seeing more of it in 2012.
Have a great Xmas and new year.
@kaher lol its not only unrest its guk and I am sure the rest of the servers are the same way. The problem with DF is long que lines, and the ultimate fail groups you get. Lets face it DF is a fail, and adding a reward to it is not going to make it any better.
@panther have you ever read eq2flames? What I don’t see here is the cussing, the flaming and name calling, and the qq. This does not equal flames by any means. To say so is hyperbole. Just because folks complain does not mean its eq2flames.
Hmm changes to dungeon maker…I’ve played around with it bit and run some only to farm the dragon marks for a supply of the adornments but I believe this could have waited until new year meanwhile the AoD “xpac” has left me without using my own guilds guild hall due to memory error crashes and I’m not the only one..still no fixes but hey least we got the dungeon maker tweak….comical
They took away the Meatbeast pet? Really?
I just re-read … do you have to stay in the dungeon 20 or 30 minutes to get the reward? It was posted 20 minutes elsewhere.
Idk about the flaming unless feldon has already cleaned it up. There is some serious QQ’ing going on, but is there something to be happy about? This games heading down hill and fast, and its a shame because we all love it or we wouldn’t be sitting here reading fan sites.
Until I’m dead, it’s still my site, and it’s named appropriately. It’s EQ2Wire: EQ2 News and Commentary. If you just want to read sanitized news without the commentary, there are other sites for that.
When SOE screws up, we talk about it. When SOE does something great, we talk about it. The Data Feeds are FANTASTIC and I can’t wait to talk about them. But in the meantime, I’ve got Age of Discovery which is half-assed and rushed and we’re still waiting for fixes to a ton of leftover issues from 6-9 months ago.
EQ2 boss people needs a kick in the ass like EVE recently got this past summer that resulted in Crucible and a complete turn around in the direction it has taken.
Of course, (imo of course) EQ2 doesnt have the same type of playerbase that EVE does =P
The EVE players held a in game protest in the game. They all went to a single space station, and crashed the server as a message. (Now correct me if im wrong, EVE is a single server? If so, then you can imagine the effect that had.)