Prayer from a Nagafen player. (Dear God, please fix PvP.)

[We_want_your_soul]

I honestly don't understand the reasoning behind some of their changes. It's like they have a slot machine or a wheel that they spin to find out what they're going to change next. Oh hey, today we'll add level 2 spells. Tomorrow we might address server performance... nah let's just act like Shaders 3.0 is the solution, it'll surely confuse the computer illiterate!

Anyways, I definitely agree with Bryony about Exile. At this point of the game what's the issue with masters at this point minus changing classes. At the moment the only way the average person would exile is to the larger population side (Qeynos) because [Removed for Content] all your masters just isn't worth it otherwise. It's honestly to sad that the server isn't Free-for-all based outside of cities, but making Exile less of a hassle would actually seem inline with all the stupid stuff that hits live.

Honestly it takes longer to go from Freeport to Qeynos than it does to hit level 50. There is no loyalty to cities anymore when you can be a Paladin in Freeport or a Necromancer in Qeynos. There is no advantage to being exile, period. (Not that there was before, the few guilds that used it as a reason for lack of raiding progression are still in the exact same spot they were before.) At this point in the game the inability to communicate is beyond staggering. I have felt this way since the beginning, but the complete lack of speech between factions has completely ruined any real sense of community. Whatever perceived griefing they felt that people would do through speech is miniscule compared to real damage done by these Berlin Walls.

I have been playing on Crushbone every once in a while lately with a few friends and the chat itself is the same basic stuff as Nagafen, but the attitude is completely different. Take down the language barriers, open grouping to everyone and let it play out like it's supposed to. Player driven politics always trump any game enforced faction.

I could go on all day about issues in game that make no sense, from nerfs to buffs and everything in between but the single most killing attribute of an MMO is when you restrict players from interacting with players, especially on a pvp server.

[Cloakentuna]

Apsavage@Nagafen wrote:

I honestly don't understand the reasoning behind some of their changes. It's like they have a slot machine or a wheel that they spin to find out what they're going to change next. Oh hey, today we'll add level 2 spells. Tomorrow we might address server performance... nah let's just act like Shaders 3.0 is the solution, it'll surely confuse the computer illiterate!

Anyways, I definitely agree with Bryony about Exile. At this point of the game what's the issue with masters at this point minus changing classes. At the moment the only way the average person would exile is to the larger population side (Qeynos) because [Removed for Content] all your masters just isn't worth it otherwise. It's honestly to sad that the server isn't Free-for-all based outside of cities, but making Exile less of a hassle would actually seem inline with all the stupid stuff that hits live.

Honestly it takes longer to go from Freeport to Qeynos than it does to hit level 50. There is no loyalty to cities anymore when you can be a Paladin in Freeport or a Necromancer in Qeynos. There is no advantage to being exile, period. (Not that there was before, the few guilds that used it as a reason for lack of raiding progression are still in the exact same spot they were before.) At this point in the game the inability to communicate is beyond staggering. I have felt this way since the beginning, but the complete lack of speech between factions has completely ruined any real sense of community. Whatever perceived griefing they felt that people would do through speech is miniscule compared to real damage done by these Berlin Walls.

I have been playing on Crushbone every once in a while lately with a few friends and the chat itself is the same basic stuff as Nagafen, but the attitude is completely different. Take down the language barriers, open grouping to everyone and let it play out like it's supposed to. Player driven politics always trump any game enforced faction.

I could go on all day about issues in game that make no sense, from nerfs to buffs and everything in between but the single most killing attribute of an MMO is when you restrict players from interacting with players, especially on a pvp server.

QFE

[Messia]

Putyo@Nagafen wrote:

Oilthin already posted that the old fame system would be very hard to bring back because they would have to recode everything.

That is pretty terrible but there you go, dont expect any major changes until expac.

LoL.

ARE YOU KIDDING ? RECODE EVERYTHING? We all know every single stitch of code you have ever written is still on the server and the reason for so much lag... when you change something all you do is bypass old code and the process is still running in the background .. DUH ... you are your own worst enemy when you change something why don't you try actually reworking the code instead of bypassing it and laying it over the top .... THIS WOULD FIX THE LAG!

[Messia]

zyllith wrote:

Arieneth@Nagafen wrote:

Nagafen is a lost cause. i can't believe Olihin has been able to keep his job. easily the worst thing to happen to the server we call home. rewards for zerging and handing out gear to lazy scrubs. just a couple highlights of his genius. but i can tell you how he screwed up so bad. he listened to the crybabies. too many people couldn't handle pvp back when it was hard so he made it easier and easier. and now look at it...

this is why i want an EQ2 Classic server...T7, the glory days. i won't believe for a minute they don't have backups of all the old code.

... and other comments in a similar vein ...

Umm ... there are indeed a handful of people who passionately want to go back to the "old ways", where the lazy scrubs were slaughtered, when assassins lurked at rez points ready to oneshot an unwary traveler, where squads of FP's congregated at choke points again to slaughter the lazy scrubs, etc. etc.

Unfortunately, EQ2 costs money to run each and every day and SOE isn't making EQ2 as a public service, they are doing it to, well, make money.  Each quarter the dev's need to generate revenue and by "generate revenue" that means new people coming to the game.  Without new people coming to the game, and enjoying that game, then "revenue" doesn't come in and SOE decided to put it's money elsewhere.

Those "lazy scrubs", those "crybabies", those "people who couldn't handle pvp back when it was hard" most unfortunately make up a large portion of the "generate revenue" equation.  Look back at the subscriber counts over the last few years -- those "lazy bluebie servers" are going *up* in population, the PvP servers are going down.  If you don't have enough "new revenue" then SOE will make a simple business decision to first merge servers (oh yeah, they *did* do that) and then simply pack up the whole mess and put money into things that *do* generate revenue like the bluebie servers.

I can appreciate that some people enjoy the "good old days", and if only there were new players who appreciated the subtleties of being ganked hundreds of times until they "learned to play" and could start getting new gear, who were willing to put aside families, friends, school, work and all other aspects of life to put in the 5+ hrs each day for years in PvP rather than the "casual 2-4 hr per week" then I'm sure that Olihin and the devs would gladly make PvP just as hard core as it used to be, maybe more so.

Tragically, unfortunately, with much regret, that isn't happening.  Olihin and company are trying mightly to keep PvP in the game without alienating those "lazy scrubs" and "crybabies" who "only PvP 2-4hr every week" that "generate revenue" for the game that, ultimately, is a business for SOE.  I for one continue to appreciate the work that they are doing and hope that PvP will continue to become something to look forward to for the "lazy scrubs" and "crybabies" out there rather than just another gauntlet to run on the way to content -- and the BG's and WF's do just that.

I appreciate the lost years of your lives spent amassing tons of ultra-expensive PvP gear that can now be obtained by sitting AFK on the docks in a few evenings, and recognize the personal sacrifices each of the hard core people made to become one-shot overseers. 

It's a business.  Catering to the 95% of "lazy scrubs" and "crybabies" is what pays the bills, and what ultimately will determine what Olihin can and can't do, period. 

Sorry!

You sir are a [Removed for Content] ... Nagafen still has the largest population of any server .. Nagafen is their bread winner .. and if you kill pvp ... bye bye Eq2 .. and thats not just talk its FACT this server has more players than Befallen or any of the other servers.  Ironically Nagafen the largest populated server has less than 10 percent of its population participating in BGs .. the biggest fail at trying to "control" pvp i've ever seen.   People who want to play on a pvp server even the ones who are bad at pvp are here because they enjoy the random encounter of possibly having a fight while adventuring ... if they wanted instanced PVP i suspect they'd be playing WOW or Warhammer.

A simple solution to the Yellow highlight is called AN ADVERTISING BUDGET..... SOE doesn't believe in spending money on advertising .. they expect their "player base" to advertise the game .. well DUH do you really think anyone playing right now especially on the PVP server is going to have anything good to say about the game? ITS BROKEN DON'T PLAY IT .. thats what they will say so they have shot their best advertisers in the back.

Perhaps a lesson could have been learned from SWG and the "massive" changes made there the population went from 270,000 accounts to something like 30,000 in a matter of 30 to 60 days.  Thank god the changes here were not as massive and game changing all at once but the results are the same Ignore the player base who is telling you what they want and you will get a bag of manure instead of a sack full of subscription money

[Messia]

Froggleg@Nagafen wrote:

Apsavage@Nagafen wrote:

I honestly don't understand the reasoning behind some of their changes. It's like they have a slot machine or a wheel that they spin to find out what they're going to change next. Oh hey, today we'll add level 2 spells. Tomorrow we might address server performance... nah let's just act like Shaders 3.0 is the solution, it'll surely confuse the computer illiterate!

Anyways, I definitely agree with Bryony about Exile. At this point of the game what's the issue with masters at this point minus changing classes. At the moment the only way the average person would exile is to the larger population side (Qeynos) because [Removed for Content] all your masters just isn't worth it otherwise. It's honestly to sad that the server isn't Free-for-all based outside of cities, but making Exile less of a hassle would actually seem inline with all the stupid stuff that hits live.

Honestly it takes longer to go from Freeport to Qeynos than it does to hit level 50. There is no loyalty to cities anymore when you can be a Paladin in Freeport or a Necromancer in Qeynos. There is no advantage to being exile, period. (Not that there was before, the few guilds that used it as a reason for lack of raiding progression are still in the exact same spot they were before.) At this point in the game the inability to communicate is beyond staggering. I have felt this way since the beginning, but the complete lack of speech between factions has completely ruined any real sense of community. Whatever perceived griefing they felt that people would do through speech is miniscule compared to real damage done by these Berlin Walls.

I have been playing on Crushbone every once in a while lately with a few friends and the chat itself is the same basic stuff as Nagafen, but the attitude is completely different. Take down the language barriers, open grouping to everyone and let it play out like it's supposed to. Player driven politics always trump any game enforced faction.

I could go on all day about issues in game that make no sense, from nerfs to buffs and everything in between but the single most killing attribute of an MMO is when you restrict players from interacting with players, especially on a pvp server.

QFE

I will agree with you in part here but honestly in the past frog lack of communication was never an issue between factions, I believe the original poster was correct in assessing that putting in pvp writs and any easy way to pvp armor for lazy folks went a very long way in the downfall of pvp in general

[We_want_your_soul]

Messia@Nagafen wrote:

Froggleg@Nagafen wrote:

Apsavage@Nagafen wrote:

I honestly don't understand the reasoning behind some of their changes. It's like they have a slot machine or a wheel that they spin to find out what they're going to change next. Oh hey, today we'll add level 2 spells. Tomorrow we might address server performance... nah let's just act like Shaders 3.0 is the solution, it'll surely confuse the computer illiterate!

Anyways, I definitely agree with Bryony about Exile. At this point of the game what's the issue with masters at this point minus changing classes. At the moment the only way the average person would exile is to the larger population side (Qeynos) because [Removed for Content] all your masters just isn't worth it otherwise. It's honestly to sad that the server isn't Free-for-all based outside of cities, but making Exile less of a hassle would actually seem inline with all the stupid stuff that hits live.

Honestly it takes longer to go from Freeport to Qeynos than it does to hit level 50. There is no loyalty to cities anymore when you can be a Paladin in Freeport or a Necromancer in Qeynos. There is no advantage to being exile, period. (Not that there was before, the few guilds that used it as a reason for lack of raiding progression are still in the exact same spot they were before.) At this point in the game the inability to communicate is beyond staggering. I have felt this way since the beginning, but the complete lack of speech between factions has completely ruined any real sense of community. Whatever perceived griefing they felt that people would do through speech is miniscule compared to real damage done by these Berlin Walls.

I have been playing on Crushbone every once in a while lately with a few friends and the chat itself is the same basic stuff as Nagafen, but the attitude is completely different. Take down the language barriers, open grouping to everyone and let it play out like it's supposed to. Player driven politics always trump any game enforced faction.

I could go on all day about issues in game that make no sense, from nerfs to buffs and everything in between but the single most killing attribute of an MMO is when you restrict players from interacting with players, especially on a pvp server.

QFE

I will agree with you in part here but honestly in the past frog lack of communication was never an issue between factions, I believe the original poster was correct in assessing that putting in pvp writs and any easy way to pvp armor for lazy folks went a very long way in the downfall of pvp in general

I'm not sure what you're talking about so I'll put a few words behind it. Ever been exile? Have you or were you exile when Havoc and Sempiternal first hit exile the day it went live? That was some of most intense couple of days I've ever experienced in Everquest II, the top guild on the server beating the ever living crap out of the wannabe.

Were you possibly exile towards the end of EoF? Maybe witness Kraken's one week defiant stand? It was like a rally call from the underdog that actually worked.

Or during RoK, the last big expansion (imo) the constant war between Onyx and The Kraken drove nagafen to world prominance because for the first time a guild on Nagafen was in the top ten worldwide for a zone clear. The competition that being able to talk to each other created made alot of this happen that probably would have just been ZzzZzz otherwise.

Maybe the big atmosphere wasn't your cup of tea, but it encompassed a large aspect of the whole server. It was always a big fight attitude when you saw your rival in Exile, simply because if you had been talking trash and you got owned? Oh yea, everyone would definitely hear about it for at least 5 minutes

[max.power]

Messia@Nagafen wrote:

Nagafen still has the largest population of any server .. Nagafen is their bread winner .. and if you kill pvp ... bye bye Eq2 .. and thats not just talk its FACT this server has more players than Befallen or any of the other servers.

Yeah, great... so what? Population of Nagafen <<<<< Population of all other PvE servers together so even IF SOE would shut down Nagafen it wouldn't hurt them much (not to forget that many would just reroll on a PvE server).

FACT for you: EQ2-PvP is NOT what holds SOE over water. Stop acting like we are something special and important to SOE because we can kill other player's toons.

[zyllith]

Messia@Nagafen wrote:

Nagafen still has the largest population of any server .. Nagafen is their bread winner .. and if you kill pvp ... bye bye Eq2 .. and thats not just talk its FACT this server has more players than Befallen or any of the other servers.

You're going off of the count from the "network status" page, aren't you?  Most unfortunately, that is the "total toon population count", which includes a) inactive accounts and b) toons spread across user accounts.  What you need to look at for a true population count, and as I mentioned in the Warfields thread a few weeks back, is the "live" population count which can be determined by using the /who command and carefully examing the last line of that report.  Do this every hour or so during prime time, which will allow you to get an idea of the people popping in and out, and do this for three servers; Bazaar (PvE), Vox (light PvP) and Nag.  You will discover that although Nag has one of highest population counts it has lower active player count that Bazaar -- likely because pretty much everyone rolled a toon on Nag (hence the high population count) but for a variety of reasons choose not to actually *play* that toon ...

Don't take my word for this, of course, do the /who yourself and see what you find ...

[Dorsan]

zyllith wrote:

...the "live" population count which can be determined by using the /who command and carefully examing the last line of that report.  Do this every hour or so during prime time, which will allow you to get an idea of the people popping in and out, and do this for three servers; Bazaar (PvE), Vox (light PvP) and Nag.  You will discover that although Nag has one of highest population counts it has lower active player count that Bazaar -- likely because pretty much everyone rolled a toon on Nag (hence the high population count) but for a variety of reasons choose not to actually *play* that toon ...

/who only shows you how many players there are in the zone.. /who all shows all the online players and that is capped at 100 on Nagafen at all times. And don't forget that PvE server /who lists both queynos and freeport while PvP /who lists only your own faction.

[zyllith]

Dorsan@Nagafen wrote:

zyllith wrote:

...the "live" population count which can be determined by using the /who command and carefully examing the last line of that report.  Do this every hour or so during prime time, which will allow you to get an idea of the people popping in and out, and do this for three servers; Bazaar (PvE), Vox (light PvP) and Nag.  You will discover that although Nag has one of highest population counts it has lower active player count that Bazaar -- likely because pretty much everyone rolled a toon on Nag (hence the high population count) but for a variety of reasons choose not to actually *play* that toon ...

/who only shows you how many players there are in the zone.. /who all shows all the online players and that is capped at 100 on Nagafen at all times. And don't forget that PvE server /who lists both queynos and freeport while PvP /who lists only your own faction.

Quite right; it's a pretty inaccurate measure but it's a better metric than the simple NetStatusPop count and there are ways to get a better number.  Doing a /who in each shared zone (13 of 'em) will get a better number, doing this as a Q and as a FP on PvP and just a Q on PvE will get a better number, doing a /who [class] will get around the 100 count cap to get a better number, etc.

The point here is that the NetStatusPop has always been considered a bad metric; there are postings every so often here which show much better population counts (usually by level) and the OP crowing about how Nag was the top count and such just wasn't considering this ...

[Dorsan]

zyllith wrote:

Quite right; it's a pretty inaccurate measure but it's a better metric than the simple NetStatusPop count and there are ways to get a better number.  Doing a /who in each shared zone (13 of 'em) will get a better number, doing this as a Q and as a FP on PvP and just a Q on PvE will get a better number, doing a /who [class] will get around the 100 count cap to get a better number, etc.

The point here is that the NetStatusPop has always been considered a bad metric; there are postings every so often here which show much better population counts (usually by level) and the OP crowing about how Nag was the top count and such just wasn't considering this ...

Incorrect again. The /who [class] will produce you way more results on a PvE server because 99% of people on a PvP server are /anon so they will not show up in those queries. Also battlegrounds are way more popular on PvP servers compared to PvE so many people are going in/out in/out which also affects your results. The fact is /who is not a good measure of anything.

[Kiara]

I'm sorry to have to lock this thread, unfortunately too many people have resorted to being hateful to others and name-calling.

I've passed the concerns expressed in this thread along, but the thread cannot stay open any longer.

[SmokeJumper]

First bit of honesty : PvP is not our focus at the moment. Between the new user improvements and the expansion later this year, the majority of our focus is elsewhere.

Second bit of honesty : We know there are inadequacies. (Polite phrasing.) We *will* be looking into it and making changes. But there is no ETA for those changes yet.

Personal note: I've made a lot of PvP games in my game history. I'm looking forward to digging in with the team and talking through stuff. Just not quite yet.