Author Topic: April 8, 2016 - Dev Q&A - Answers Part 2  (Read 8135 times)

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April 8, 2016 - Dev Q&A - Answers Part 2
« on: April 08, 2016, 07:00:18 PM »
Part 2 of the 17th Anniversary Dev Q&A is here, with your Submitted and Voted Upon Questions.

If you have not seen yesterdays - Answers Part 1, feel free to look at those as well!

Thank you again to everyone that Participated!


10: What is happening with Live server populations? Luclin feels empty most evenings after the raiders camp out.
We monitor server populations closely and we know that some servers have more activity at different points in the day than others.

We are doing some serious back-end work throughout the summer to support server stability. We may explore server merges in the future, but we won't be addressing that until we get past the back-end work.


9: With all the recent and upcoming changes to many classes' abilities, what is your current vision for all the EQ classes? How do you see tank roles, burst vs sustained dps, hybrids vs one purpose classes, non-tanks taking on tank roles in group content, and how is your design of future content affected by this class rebalancing?
We could talk for days about the vision for each class in EQ. The short version of it is we would like tanks, DPS, and healers of all classes to remain relevant in both group and raid content.

Class rebalancing can take days, weeks, or months to properly research and address. Game balance is a moving target, and as we make balance passes at the game, there are other things that catch the attention of our team. We are constantly striving to make the game a better and fairer experience for everyone involved.

Generally, content is balanced for the state of the game when it's released to live servers. We will make changes to content post-launch if we feel something is broken, unbalanced, or could use improvements. As always, feedback from the community is crucial to our team, and we look to our forums and other social channels for additional comments and concerns from our community.


8: With the rebalancing of classes that appears to be taking place, are there any plans to adjust the tuning of raids to compensate? Specifically, do you have plans to alleviate the burden of increasingly difficult DPS checks that low/mid-tier guilds are facing in early TBM raids?
With each patch, we spend time making adjustments to the tuning and balancing of classes, and tweaking additional game content. If there's a specific raid or an aspect of a raid that you feel has become too difficult (or too easy), please let us know through the forums.


7: What are the plans for the future of tradeskills? Will there be new quests such as the prayer shawl or will there be any new tradeskilled items in the future?
We would like to continue to have content for tradeskills, and as we scope out each update, we try to determine what content will appeal to the largest number of players. However, there are no current plans to add new long tradeskill quests similar to Coldain Prayer Shawl.


6: TBM group gear has terrific AC, HP, and heroics, but is strangely lacking in stats such as Spell Damage, Heal Amount, Attack, etc. While some of this is obtainable via the choice of type 9 aug used, where applicable, the type 9 with the highest AC is one of the pieces lacking the most in the aforementioned stats (which particularly hurts knights). Can we get those stats boosted for the group gear / augs where it is lacking?
This itemization was intentionally designed so players would have to choose the stats that mattered most to them, rather than having a single choice regarding which is the best for them in all situations. There are no current plans to boost the stats from this gear or these augments.


5: Can you share your debugging / work process when it comes to fixing bugs? There are a lot of ways to report something - /bug, on the EQ forums, and the DGC issue tracker. What is the best way for players to report and get something fixed?
The first step after we receive a bug report is verification. After someone verifies the bug, we'll research how to fix it, and implement a fix. Lastly, we'll test the fix and, if all goes well, we'll push the update live. The Daybreak Community Issue Tracker is an excellent way to report bugs, because it takes one step out of our process. When players verify bugs and provide notes on how our team can duplicate the problem, it vastly improves our process. Through the tracker, players can also vote to help us prioritize bugs that create the biggest issues for the community.

Reporting via /bug is also useful. This gives us additional in-game data when you're submitting a bug report, such as your exact in-game location and what NPC you had targeted.


4: Will players be seeing new "epic" items including class weapons, coldain shawls, stone tear, type items in the future?
There are no current plans to do epic class weapons. Right now, we are focused on developing content that a larger number of players can enjoy, as opposed to unique quests that are available to only a limited number of classes or players.


3: Any chance of some future posts explaining complex EQ mechanics, such as the AC post Dzarn made a while back, or the SPA list Prathun posted? Even if it's just a post on the EQ forum, this information is very helpful and appreciated.
We know that players appreciate having these deeper discussions on complex mechanics, and we love hearing their feedback. There's a high likelihood that there will be posts like this in the future, but there's currently not an ETA when the next one will pop up.


2: Itemization in TBM was very different from what we have seen in the past. All tiers of group and raid gear have type 5 augmentation slots to boost heroic stats, and a tier of group gear has type 9 slots to allow the gear to be used by anyone level 75+. Will we see this itemization format continued?
We are always looking into systems that make itemization interesting and compelling for players. By implementing gear this way, players of a variety of levels can take of advantage itemization in The Broken Mirror, and it makes the rewards from leveling scaling content relevant to players on a wider range of levels. We aren't ready to announce plans for future itemization, but we're looking at which formats work best for the content we'll release in the future.

If you have feedback on itemization, continue to share it with us on our official forums.


1: The highest voted improvements on the DGC Issue Tracker are an 85% flag indicator and an Augmentation Tab. Any update on progress on these, or some other improvements people have mentioned?
The Daybreak Community Issue Tracker has proved to be an invaluable tool for the team. Having players verify issues saves us a HUGE amount of time, letting us dedicate more resources to making improvements to the game. Requesting future game features via the Issue Tracker is valuable information to us as it lets us know what players would like to see added to the game. While we greatly appreciate this feedback, these requests aren't prioritized the same way bugs are in this tool.

Know that our team is working hard on new content and fixing bugs, and while we don't have an update for those specific features, we'll be sure to keep you posted on upcoming content!