EverQuest II: April 29th AMAA Recap
Here is a recap of the Tuesday, April 29 EQ2 AMAA Reddit session!
Q: "There is so much unfinished lore in the game. I really am curious if there will ever be a time we stop adding more and more new ideas and go back and finish old ones? Maybe an expansion built around answering questions. A few examples would be: 1) Felwith/Firiona Vie's queendom/ Lenya and Mayong 2) what's Christanos planning/ what of her step son who opposes her? More Neriak lore in general is always welcomed. 3) what really and truly happened to Luclin?
a) Will we ever see it up close and personal? Current state or using chronomagic either one. There is more of course, but those are the ones I'm most interested in on a personal level. Maybe we need a Cataclysm type expansion; not another physical natural disaster but an updating of the world; showing old zones with new stories such as a shadowmanless Enchanted Lands and Felwithe reclaimed as a proper player city."
A: "The world of Norrath is full of lore that can always be expanded upon! That said, it's funny to me how often topics being explored internally fortuitously find themselves being discussed on the forums, asked of us at SOE Live, or here. Some of the exact topics you just listed are being touched on... and sooner than you think!"
A: There will always be threads in the storyline dangling. It gives us new places to pick up when we write quests and tell new stories. I doubt we would do a single expansion focused on answering questions, it would come across as very disjointed and would be nearly impossible to make it cohesive. As for what locations the story will and won't take us, where is the fun in knowing that?
Q: "Any chance to fix the quest "Courier for the Captain" as it was removed with GU57? The three other starter areas still have their newbie plate helm quests still available."
A: "Well, we can't return the quest to game, as the Greater Faydark Nursery quest lines and story were all changed at that time, but I just found the reward helms that "Courier for the Captain" awarded, and hooked them up to Captain Steelforge's quest, "Chipping and Shrumbling." Look for that change in an upcoming game update!"
Q: "Why in stratum dungen ,i always get booted to charater screen ? Its not my internet,becouse it dont kick my husband to character screen. Its during the sake fight, then i dont get my reward till i zone out, does it on raid/heroic and solo, but its really bugging me ?"
Q: "On the same PC if my missus does Shazzak on her defiler, she experiences no crashes. On her Conjurer she crashes/LD's around the 2nd or 3rd wave; haven't managed to identify whether it's Merc or Pet related yet. Others have been troubleshooting it at.. https://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/index.php?threads/stratum-cant-finish-off-shazak.547520/page-2#post-6060376"
A: "We've been investigating what specifically is going on with the Shazzak fight that is causing Summoners so many headaches, however it's being a pain to track down, or even to reproduce reliably. It's on our hot list."
Q: "Do you think you would ever consider adding a guild amenity for a depot for all tradeskill recipes - meaning regular tradeskill, tinker, and adornment? Those recipes take up a lot of space in the guild bank when everyone is donating them."
A: "We looked into this when we first added depots, and due to issues with how scrolls work this wasn't possible at the time. It's definitely something we would like to revisit in the future if time permits."
Q: "Any plans to look into the current healer issues which been becoming more predominant with the stats-flation of ToV? Specifically the less effectivness of Wards, and that reactives doesnt trigger of pulsing damage and dots. And if Yes, then when :)"
Q: (cont) "Any chance of having hate mechanics and numbers added to the post on mechnics in the forums? ie. hategain cap etc. I noticed the changes to reckless in this patch however, will fighters offensive stance ever be fixed? also could it be considered to have reckless not susped if the only people in the group is a merc?"
A: "1) Splitting these two up because they are really two separate topics.
1a.) We are constantly monitoring how class balance is changing, both from the inside, as well as receiving feedback from many active players. Currently, shaman’s are where we expect them to be in effectiveness when you combine their buffs, heals, wards, and very importantly, debuffs. With that said, nothing is ever fully static when it comes to balance concerns either.
1b.) Reactives don’t trigger off of damage over time ticks by design. In most encounters, this works as we want it to and provides the correct amount of healing per cast. In some encounters, most notably many high end raid encounters, this no longer functions in a way that is conducive to the encounter. We’ve made some ad-hoc changes to specific mob abilities to allow reactive to trigger off of ticks, and code is giving the design team the ability to do so in the future in a more sane and correct fashion.
2) Absolutely
3) We don’t have any plans to adjust Recklessnesss further at this time. The offensive stances are something on our radar, but we have no estimation as to when we’ll be looking into them as of now."
Q: "Do today's changes to Zordakalicus Ragefire's loot table include the addition of sparkling green gems that currently only drop in fabled HoF, or is it just the rare drop items such as bage of the stonehive, ahrmatal's scorching eye, ethereal wrist of the wyrmlord etc that have been added?"
A: "Any rare drop from the heroic ToV or Fabled instances, including the sparkling green gems."
Q: "About matchmaking services in EQ2, the base logic in the system is flawed. Have you considered inspiration from your much hated sister game, WoW? Basically the matchmaker logic works like this: It matches up players of different roles and once it has enough to do the content it gives each player in the possible group a prompt to ask if they are ready. If enough people say they are ready it puts them in the content. If too many people say not ready it starts looking for people again. In EQ2 it just dumps random roles in whenever the system thinks there might be enough people in queue. The vast majority of matchmaker groups come up with too few people and a terrible mix of roles in EQ2."
"A matchmaker in this game should search for 1 player of each base class at the very minimum before finishing a queue. Is any of this stuff being taken into consideration while reviewing the bg/dungeon matchmaker? If not the system will never work properly and might as well be scrapped."
A: "Absolutely, I don't have the design doc in front of me, but yes roles are being taken into consideration. The programmer working on matchmaker is making good progress on identifying the underlying issue with why the team builder isn't working correctly, or more specifically why it is never calling the code that places players on a specific team."
Q: "please please please can you increase the food/drink yield from spectral residue. I get that it's supposed to be rare, but upping the yield from 5 for a pristine to 20 wouldn't overinflate availability very much given a) how rare it is as a drop (it feels as though i get a master chest from the pillar mobs at least two thirds of the time) and b) that you then have to roll for it against 5 other players!!"
A: "When a consumable item grants a significant increase over other consumable items of the same level, chances are it is not intended to be used in every encounter. In specific the ancestral champion consumables are specifically intended to be used when needed, not something available all the time without significant effort."
Q: "I would like to see an easier account-based housing system, some kind of one-click button: make all characters on account automatically a trustee. Also perhaps, allow trustees to pull portal objects. I have a lot of prestige houses and when I make a new character it is a long process to get the character access to all my houses."
Q: "I would love this. Or a macro ability even to add all the names of the characters I normally add to trustee status... one.. by.. one."
A: "There's a bit of a privacy issue here. When you add a character, that player may not want you to know about all of the rest of their characters on their account. However, making it so you can copy the permissions from one of your other houses is an interesting idea."
Q: "I meant all of my own account(s). Not sure about the OP."
A: "Ah, well that's different (and easier). I'll put it on the list."
Q: "When are you going to open up Qyenos Starting area again, i saw that part of Qyenos is locked and you can get in, but i used to enjoy Antonia starting out, and its a a bit murky to jump over there from other start areas now.?"
A: "There are no plans to reopen the Isles of Refuge as starting character locations for either Freeport or Qeynos."
Q: "Any chance of increased drop rates for war runes? They are considered essential for raiders and I know I'm not the only one who's experienced months of frustration trying to get the right ones for my classes."
A: "We can look at increasing these drop rates a bit. I am unsure what they are currently, but we will look at it."
Q: "Are we likely to see any new x2 raid content?"
A: "Yes. We have plans for some new x2 content with the expansion this year."
