Tonight’s SOE Webcast: Dungeon Maker Revisited
From EverQuest2.com:
Come take another look at Dungeon Maker, one of the awesome new features in EverQuest II’s Age of Discovery Expansion. Host Linda “Brasse” Carlson (Director of Global Community Relations), a huge fan of Dungeon Maker, will interview Akil “Lyndro” Hooper (Lead Designer). They will chat about Extra Dungeon Mark Days, tips on how to spend your rewards, and information on our Test Server initiative that allows you to play your characters in Dungeon Maker. We may even give you a sneak peek at a new dungeon that is in the works.
Join us on Thursday, January 19th, 2012, at 4:00 p.m. US Pacific Time* on Twitch TV! The webcast is expected to last about 20 minutes.
Time Zone Conversions
- PST: January 19 @ 4:00pm
- EST: January 19 @ 7:00pm
- GMT: January 20 @ 0:00
- CET: January 20 @ 1:00
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Comments (21)
thelaststand
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wow that webcast sucked
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badcat
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I missed it unfortunately was working, and just got home. Can anybody say what all was discussed. Just wondering.
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Daniel
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Dungeon maker was a good idea, but i wish they would just focus more on fixing regular dungeons. Maybe adding better armor and new Nameds to make them more exciting, that way people will do them more.
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Kruzzen
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Missed the web cast and sounds like I din’t miss much. lol. Was there anything interesting at all? I have tried Dungeon Maker and right now the only purpose for it is an alternate way to get some baoxes, arrows, etc.
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Breanna
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I personally dont like dungeon maker, and want more focus on the game itself, it seems even raids have those drops for it which tbh are very annoying… take them out of raid chest please….
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Kwill
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I have also noticed an increase in drops of DM items from chests. Some do sell well on the broker, but that is predicated on the idea that people want to make dungeons and therefore will buy items to put in them. A shaky market indeed!
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Charn
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The Dungeon Maker is a good idea that was just implemented poorly.
Playing the Dungeons:
Not enough people use it or want to play them so it’s hard to find groups for them (either pick-up or guild groups), so I end up playing solo, mostly, in Dungeon Maker dungeons.
The avatars are good in that it enables me to experience something OTHER than my main and it makes it easier to “level the playing field” (as it were) for everyone, but there are inherent drawbacks:
A.) Too few abilities. Solo I choose the Dul’jham (sp?) fighter. I use 3 abilities in a fight 1=DD, 2=DD/Heal, 3=AoE. The fights consist of, 1, 1, wait for auto-attack, 1, 1, Wait for Auto-attack, 1, 2, wait for auto-attack and occasionally I throw a 3 in there ’cause I pulled two or more. I feel like I’m playing Free Realms. Even DCUO, the “action based” MMO, has 6 abilities I can put on my hotbar.
B.) No penalty for death. I pull too much, I die . . . so what? I just revive and run back to where I left off. No experience debt (though that’s trivial now at 90/320) and no repair costs, either. The only penalty is the time it takes to respawn and run back.
C.) (For some) No vested interest in the Avatars. MY main is who “I” want to play, who wants to play this thing? (Though personally I don’t mind having to play something new to break up the monotony or choose a character type we may not have in the group or when solo (no healer, pick the healer avatar, want a fighter, pick that one), but I get why some don’t want to. It’s good they’re giving us a choice, I just hope they balance our own characters AND the avatars so both can be viable in the same group).
The Design of Dungeons:
Not enough ability to design and tailor encounters to match my “Vision(tm)” of the Dungeon I’m creating. Sure I can do all the fancy and creative things I see in many houses, but I did that in my house, I don’t necessarily want to do it again especially if, though it may look cool, people won’t see it because it may be harder and get a low rating . . .
I’d also love to see (for example):
A.) The ability to ctrl+click and highlight up to 8 mobs then link them as one whole group. Then I’d have the ability to spread them around a room, in the hallways, or wherever I want, and I’d know that, if you aggro the one at the door, the other 7 are going to run in no matter where I put them (as long as it’s not past the leash point).
B.) The ability to ctrl+click buff items then choose WHICH mobs get that buff. Then I can tailor rooms and encounters and decide which mobs get which buffs no matter WHERE I put them in the room and not just the mobs near the buff item.
C.) To have a VISIBLE representation of the aggro range of mobs (similar to the targeting circle we see when we click on them) and have the ability to increase or decrease and set the actual aggro range. Then I, as the Dungeon Maker, will know what mobs are gonna come running when you cross an area.
D.) An easy way to run the Dungeon myself without having to publish it first. If that way exists, let me know, but I haven’t been able to figure it out.
E.) Being able to hover over a dungeon item when it drops for my regular character and seeing if I have it already AND consolidating all the dungeon items, at the very least, over one account, so I don’t have to log in and out of all my alts to see what they have so I can add it to a dungeon.
Overall, Dungeon Maker COULD be a lot more fun than it is now . . . but it needs a lot of work. And since SoE has limited resources, do we really wanting them using development time for an added “bonus feature” when so many things in the core game are just broken or need design changes themselves?
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Kwill
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My question is this: is Smokejumper actually still on vacation, or is he back now, and just not showing his face publicly? Apparently Amyneris is back, since she posted a rather snarky message on the “Where is Smokejumper” thread.
Does this mean she’s back, and Ilisuth is gone?
I could care less if SJ is on vacation, except for the fact that they are supposed to be releasing more game content in a month. Which seems a strange time to take this much time off. Some people post, “well they are running things without him” — every ship needs a leader, and his being gone (or at least not showing a public face) can’t be good for this next addition. Also, I think the community also needs a leader who is active, and his silence is bad for the game’s moral right now. The players want to hear the team has a handle on things, and not just dungeon maker for goodness sake, which hasn’t gone over gangbusters, obviously.
I don’t understand why our CR rep had to post a cryptic and in my mind, mildly disrespectful post as the only scrap of information for a legitimate question.
I also think it’s strange that the devs are posting on threads where they can actually fix things — the unnamed snakes, for instance — and ignoring a lot of posts that address real issues. I am guessing they can fix some things, and are throwing their hands up concerning the rest of the problems.
The team is just like the people who post here, folks just trying to their jobs, but it does seem to be a little desperate over there lately.
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Rocky
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCFN-t2t8OI
Figured I would post the link to the podcast in case anyone is interested in seeing it for themselves.(there’s two parts strangely enough)
Also smokejumper is the lead producer on a couple of sony projects, so i understand him not showing his face in any posts on the forums, but that means that someone else has to step up to that role.
Lack of communication leads to the dark side. No communication leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to a lot of pissed off gamers.
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badcat
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Thanks for posting that Rocky, I watched the entire 24 minutes of the most boring we cast in history. You would think the team would be like hey were excited, but from what I could tell they were really reserve.
@kwill, well I saw the post about where is smokey at, and well yea that thing took a hole new direction after the cr rep spoke up, then the it turned into a flame war on the op and others. You will have to ask with all the important announcements going on with eq, eq2 and all why is he not a part of all that. Instead you had smedley himself going we had this, and that. You would think the producer would want to be in that announcement. Maybe I am paranoid only time will tell. Were at 3 weeks since sj showed up. I worked at a lot of place in my life, the last one I had to be there for 5 years before getting 3 weeks, much less taking them all at one time. Some guy in that thread was like some companies give 6 weeks of vacation, I need to know who he works for, as that is not the norm. If SOE lets you accrue that many weeks off only after a few years, i need to get a job working for them.
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Kwill
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I had four weeks a year of vacation working at a university as an administrator, but that is not really the norm in most places. And frankly, I didn’t get to take my vacation when I wanted if we had an important project going on. Certainly not three weeks!
The community would be a lot happier if we saw strong leadership and a strong vision for the game — and probably not the strong vision of more station cash items!
Now we have new houses, and new armor sets … it really is getting to be a playhouse. I think that stuff is cool, too, but it is going way astray from the MMORPG that I remember.
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Striinger
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I get 4 weeks per year and 3 months after 10 years. The last place I worked gave 3 weeks then 4 after 5 years and 6 weeks after 10 years.
I you’re in a strong negotiating position you can reach agreement leveraging pay AND benefits. You get a much better outcome than just going for the cash.
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skippydippy
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Have to agree with Kwill here,
Noone would dent SJ the xmas holidays whatsoever but cmon we’re nearly through january a very important announcement made and he’s nowhere to be seen,it does seem odd to me at least,the timing of the holidays if nothing else.
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Kralus
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Great idea, horribly implemented. Why half ass it? Don’t include features that can’t be fully realized. That podcast was a whole lot of “we would love to do this, but we can’t”. WTF is the point of adding something if you can’t turn it into something great?
Typical.
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Kwill
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You guys that still play EQ1 better hope that SJ “Sauron” hasn’t turned his big eye to your game, in the hopes of putting up a nice fat marketplace for Station Cash. Or even … changing EQ1 over to the current FTP model.
If he’s not working on EQ2, what IS he working on?
There’s a nice tin hat moment for you.
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badcat
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@kwill maybe hes working on vanguard 🙂 Honestly I checked there are no post by him in vanguard, eq1, or even planet side.
So hes not working on any of those, possibly hes been stuck doing something with eq3 (eqnext) we all know its going to be free to play.
Somebody on our server swtor named them selves smokeblower lol. So who knows he might be playing it, we know he does play other games he has said so many times.
Passing around the tin foil hat.
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Xivian
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Any of the EQ2 developer’s (including SJ) touching EQNext would be a horrible, horrible thing…
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Me
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He’s probably interviewing for his next job. He does good at sinking ships, blaming his employers and then jumping ship. He’s good for about 2 years at a job before he rolls out.
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Kwill
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He lives!
From yesterday: “Lol. Sorry, folks. I went on a two-week vacation starting at the beginning of January. It’s nice to know I was missed.
GU 63 (the next installment of DoV) is in April, not February. You’ll start hearing about it soon. The Qeynos revamp (GU 64) is after that in mid-Summer.”
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Kwill
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And thanks Feldon for pointing out on the official boards that despite SJ’s breezy “GU 63 is April” the original date we all were expecting was next month.
I find it very annoying when people try to pretend a change is what they said all along. That’s not a characteristic of a good manager/producer. Just be honest that you couldn’t get it done in February — which is probably why SJ was able to take a two week vac in January.
All the usual suspects are protesting that the team is really doing a great job, despite many rational people pointing out otherwise.
Does anyone actually care about the Qeynos revamp? Why on earth are they spending resources on it, when there is so much else to do?
They are cranking out new mounts, each cuter than the next (I do love the new unicorn, but that’s cause there’s still a teenage girl lurking around somewhere inside me), pushing dollhouse features, and ignorning broken and probably new content. The mercs, which I freely use, have been game changing. Seriously, content is so trivial now at the lower levels. If I can blow through content, I can’t imagine what more competent players are doing! It’s kind of ridiculous. People that don’t want to decorate or collect mounts are going to get bored, and soon.
I suppose my problem in general is I don’t want to decorate or build my own dungeon, and the future doesn’t seem to hold much else at this point. It’s too easy to start spending cash on a game, which I don’t want to do. Already I buy 50SC repair kits for raids … because you don’t have to go back and buy a repair kit if you forgot one. Scary.
Some posters are suggesting this game is in maintenance mode, and I am starting to believe them.
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skippydippy
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I’m more convinced than ever that game is circling the drain it’ll become a testbed (much more than it has been i’m sure)so while i dont think itll shutr down anytime soon i do think the content will become ever longer between releases.
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