Patch Notes: Sunday, June 1st, 2025

[Goregasmic]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Nah I believe the devs have said they envisioned that kiting might be a strategy with snare, which was why DoT damage being reduced if not snared was quickly added in the classic era when the devs realized that yes kiting was being used, which was expected, but that people weren't actually using snare to help do it because they could just outrun with SoW etc.

Makes more sense. I also find it hard to believe they didn't know people would camp the better items. How did they think dungeons would work on a populated server? People would play zonewide musical chair with camps every time the respawn timer is up? I understand they probably had limited testing but that's pretty basic dynamics with non linear/instanced dungeons.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by Goregasmic [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Makes more sense. I also find it hard to believe they didn't know people would camp the better items. How did they think dungeons would work on a populated server? People would play zonewide musical chair with camps every time the respawn timer is up? I understand they probably had limited testing but that's pretty basic dynamics with non linear/instanced dungeons.

If I had to take a guess, they probably thought people would focus more on adventuring instead of camping. Like dungeon crawling through a dungeon without stopping to camp a mob.

Everquest came from MUDDs and DnD. In those games you do an adventure (like a dungeon crawl) and you simply get whatever items you happen to find along the way. You didn't run a very specific part of the adventure over and over until you got the item you want.

[Potus]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Nah I believe the devs have said they envisioned that kiting might be a strategy with snare, which was why DoT damage being reduced if not snared was quickly added in the classic era when the devs realized that yes kiting was being used, which was expected, but that people weren't actually using snare to help do it because they could just outrun with SoW etc.

That's not what happened at all. Shaman and Druids were casting dots on red con NPCS and running around the zone until they died. So they put the 2/3 DoT dmg nerf on NPCs moving towards you, snared or not. If you rooted or feared the mob you didn't get dinged with the dmg reduction.

Almost every nerf that happened during classic EQ was the result of players being super jealous/mad/envious of a class playing the game in a way seen as gaining an advantage and going on the Sony Station/Verant forums and griping -- it's still the way it is here which is ironically the most accurate part of classic EQ.

[Goregasmic]

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

If I had to take a guess, they probably thought people would focus more on adventuring instead of camping. Like dungeon crawling through a dungeon without stopping to camp a mob.

Everquest came from MUDDs and DnD. In those games you do an adventure (like a dungeon crawl) and you simply get whatever items you happen to find along the way. You didn't run a very specific part of the adventure over and over until you got the item you want.

Yeah I totally understand but I don't see how this would work out if there's more than 2-3 parties in the zone already. Seems like their play testing was rather limited.

That and it was obvious people would want the more interesting items. You can't put 9int/wis on GEBs in classic and not expect most casters/healers will want it. Or SSOY or FBSS or whatever.

Originally Posted by Potus [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Almost every nerf that happened during classic EQ was the result of players being super jealous/mad/envious of a class playing the game in a way seen as gaining an advantage and going on the Sony Station/Verant forums and griping -- it's still the way it is here which is ironically the most accurate part of classic EQ.

I mained a wiz back then and I remember being mad at druids because they had every type of spell under the sun and you couldn't throw a stone without hitting a druid. They sure were a whiny bunch and it seemed to me verant cattered to them back then.

[Skyking]

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Everquest came from MUDDs and DnD. In those games you do an adventure (like a dungeon crawl) and you simply get whatever items you happen to find along the way. You didn't run a very specific part of the adventure over and over until you got the item you want.

this.

there is quite literally hours of interviews on Youtube with the devs talking about this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTWd...J42NMGmlgnFv7W

[cd288]

Originally Posted by Goregasmic [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Makes more sense. I also find it hard to believe they didn't know people would camp the better items. How did they think dungeons would work on a populated server? People would play zonewide musical chair with camps every time the respawn timer is up? I understand they probably had limited testing but that's pretty basic dynamics with non linear/instanced dungeons.

Well, to be fair they didn't think the game would be nearly as populated as they did. So as a general leveling matter they did expect more dungeon crawling. But yeah they certainly would've had to expect that there would be camping of specific mobs to some degree.

[Rygar]

Originally Posted by Potus [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

They literally thought the game would be entire groups of players moving through areas slowly as they explored and roleplayed. They didn't envision stuff like camping mobs. They were really surprised people sat at one spot for hours. Snare is to prevent runners. Lull and harmony are to break up monsters as you move into rooms. FD splitting and pulling was not part of the "vision" at all.

They never thought about 99% of the stuff in the game, they didn't even know what they were making at the time.

He is 100% correct here. I recall reading Brad interviews about him and the team confused on why people were content to sit in 1 spot all day in a dungeon instead of crawling around. Same with FD, I recall him saying it was intended to be a 'avoid death' situation, but when they started using it for splitting they kind of shrugged their shoulders at it. Man... they really should have made that thing a 6 min timer or something.... would be glorious.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

People often forget how little time goes into internal QA vs. customers playing the game. If you have a QA team of 100 people (that's a big QA team), you are getting 200,000 QA hours per year across the entire game from start to finish if they work 40 hours per week. This also includes features that get cut.

If you have 50,000 players play the game at launch, they will collectively reach 200,000 hours in 4 hours after launch. Players play the game way more than the devs. That's why players find bugs and unexpected ways to play.

[Jimjam]

Early 3d shoot em ups like Duke Nukem, side scrolling platformers like Sonic and top down rpgs like Zelda taught me in adventures to always push the boundaries of a game and find ‘secret areas’, so in any new adventure game I always try to get out of bounds/discover ‘secret areas’ in any new game, often ending up in me doing the game out of sequence (you weren’t meant to be able to climb into that area yet as you don’t have the proper item/mount/pokemon type thing).

I don’t blame it on QA, but there does seem to be a shift away from encouraging that kind of exploration.

[Goregasmic]

The QA I've done was on single player but it was mainly about finding bugs and making sure game mechanics and menus worked. Not sure to what extent they had people actually testing the group content beyond mechanics.