EverQuest II: April 29th AMAA Recap
Here is a recap of the Tuesday, April 29 EQ2 AMAA Reddit session!
Q: "Was the whole "artifact" thing abandoned? Is there any plan to tweak the old ones to make them more rewarding and visible to players who obtained them on a server? I have the Pulsing Gem of the Feerrott for example which has a wholy unique appearance...but is charm slot equipment only, and no trade on the assassin I never play anymore. Will these old artifacts be tweaked at all? Made Heirloom or given a buff form for their appearance? Will more artifacts be added to each expansion?"
A: "Artifacts haven't been abandoned. More on that from Kander in the EQ2 livestream on May 7...."
Q: "Any plans on making it easier to move large quantities of items other than drag and drop? For instance if I craft hundreds of housing items for someone, I find it tedious and tiresome trading 12 items at a time with dragging and dropping each one. Sometimes they give me permission to drop items at their house, still a long 1 at a time, drag and drop process. Not to mention I have to store most of the items in my bank, drag and drop in, drag and drop out. Only thing that makes it easier is switching the bags/boxes."
A: "We don't have any specific plans for that. How would you want something like that to work? The only thing that comes to mind is some sort of multi selection, but that'd be pretty kludgy."
Q: "Question, Is anything at all being done to help PvP server. At all, even a pat on the back? We are in dire need of help to bring players back to PvP. I know you guys have prob had tons of comments and questions about the pvp servers, but nothing has really been said, other than maybe something in the future. Details would be nice so players can prepare to hopefully come back. Anything even as small as a copy, or transfer one time only to only pvp server would help out. Thank you and hope everything is going well with the downtime. :)"
A: "The character copies aren't a small thing, it is a rather large thing. We have been discussing some of the unique issues that the PvP server has and we don't have any elegant solutions (Elegance being a combination of time investment vs. payoff). When we have information we'll give it to you."
Q: "Hello, can you do something with city tokens, like make them exchangeable to loyalty tokens? not into housing stuff so there pretty useless to me have thousands and can't use them :("
A: "In Holly's producer letter she mentioned that we are allowing conversion from currencies into tinkering and transmuting components. We had to limit the tokens you could convert away from excluding some that you could earn in large numbers, like city tokens. So there won't be any way to exchange away city tokens any time soon."
"City Tokens can be sold for status though, if you want to get rid of them. You need to move them out of your currency window into your inventory first, however."
Q: "There is clearly a lot of focus on the "what" and "how' of doing things, heavily influenced by the guided, formulaic model established by WoW and that most games are emulating. By this I mean the "Here is a zone, here is the first glowing feather you talk to, now let this glowing feather guide you systematically to every other glowing feather and kind of tell you a story" model that has been adopted and implemented over the last few expansions. I'm not necessarily condemning this model, as it works and has it's function and leads you through quests...but it is awful "safe"."
"Is there discussion or plan around moving a bit away from this and back towards a bit more of the original "why" of EQ2? The model that provided a world and set players out to explore the nooks and crannies of it? I think much of the focus is on making a solid introductory zone or chain of two zones and the central timeline of quests throughout it, as this lends more time to focus on end game content. Now one thing across all games I love is that EQ2 does end game content better than any others still, I have more fun duking it out on tactics for raid mobs than in any other games. Unfortunately with that there is a bit less soul and substance to the overland zones and little dungeon areas. How many here have obsessed over the various dropped book quests which used to literally reveal a page at a time of something that happened in the past that can explain this area we are in?"
"However (and I say this being mindful that way too often players are blinded by nostalgia goggles), it has been some time since there has been the experience of being dropped into a large area and encouraged to explore like with the original Nektulos Forest for example. There were many different little stories in this zone, lending to the past and to the future that EQ2 was building (Nek Castle for example). I think Cobalt Scar came close to this, and the sense of wonder and climax was more "there" than it has been in some areas for a while. Creating and building a story like this is time consuming and demanding yes, but will there ever be a shift back out of the safe way of introducing new zones and quests and a bit more of an aim to really just build a world?"
A: "I agree with much of what you said. I think the problem is way deeper than you think. It has to do with things like flight, and faster travel, and maps that show you all of your quest NPCs, and ROIs, and all the rest of the stuff. When EQ 2 launched you needed to explore the world because there was no option otherwise. Now instead of running from one end of Eidolon to the other, most people fly over the top of it, and drop in on the place where they need to be."
"I know this isn't really a solution. I don't have one, as I don't think we're going to make anything easier by removing these conveniences. One thing that we've discussed internally is taking some quests (Heritage quests perhaps) and turning off ROIs and helper info for them for the first X days (say a month), so in order to complete the quests you need to search or at least make the choice to seek external help, instead of getting that help fed directly to you from our UI. Maybe adding some sort of bonus for anyone who completes it within that timeframe. Then after that short window, you can choose to either do the quest with or without all the in-game helper information."
"I don't think that is a perfect solution, because I think that it only resolves part of what is causing the disconnect that you're talking about."
Q: "Anashti Sul's Familiar for flying mount. Must have. Will order pizza for ttobey if it happens :) http://eq2furniture.com/pictures/2/716557348.jpg"
A: "Not a bad idea."
Q:
- Will there very be servers similar to the original Everquest where they start restart the game without any expansions and gradually unlock the content as time goes on?
- Will there be any Heroic classes for mages or fighters?
- Will the Isle of Refuge ever be rehashed and reused in any other ways other than the Raid for Darathar? (i.e. a House, another Newbie zone, or resurgence in a Live Update)
- The Live Updates for Qeynos and Freeport really took away a lot of good roleplay venues. Will we ever see the wards again?
A:
- We discuss the subject often, it certainly is possible. It wouldn't be exactly like EQ, since we'd probably want to preserve the quest progression somehow without having to rebuild the entire hullabaloo.
- You mean like the channeler and beastlord but mage and fighter instead of healer and scout? We don't have plans to add any more classes currently.
- By Kaitheel and I have chatted about the Isle of Refuge, I don't want to rehash.
- Wards? You mean the hoods? We don't have any plans to add them back in as city content, just the adventure versions that went in with the new cities.
Q: "1) Is it possible to add a way to search through your entire account for an item? (Example, I remember I won XYZ item but I forget which toon I was on at the time.) Even if it means downloading a CSV of all your toons' inventories."
A: "1 is not likely because of how the data is stored. :("
Q: "As someone who left EQ1 for EQ2, and within a year or so quit both... What's the general consensus about the idea of making a separate EverQuests instead of just continually improving the original? I have more fond memories of EQ1, but both were fun until I stopped playing, now it just seems impossible to come back to either game. Any thing you'd point out as steps you've taken to entice old players back to your game?"
A: "The "returning player" problem is a difficult one, and something we can definitely improve upon -- how though, I'm not sure yet, especially when you log in and see numerous hot bars filled with abilities that are no longer familiar to you. For the time being, I'd recommend playing around with a trial Heroic character, which starts you out at 85 and gives you a simple hotbar layout, then unlocks a more advanced hot bar as you progress into the level."
