BiggieFries

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I'm sticking with the game, but i'm slowly beginning to resent it. A lot of people do that with mmorpgs... consider all the furious posts and hatred directed at eq. People resent mmorpgs when they feel that mmorpg has caused them grief.


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Hehe these are the exact people I do concede may be disgruntled enough to quit because the developers changed the game. There are not many of these people though... Well I surely won't argue against the crack-like nature of MMOs. But doesn't the fact that these folks claim to hate it so much yet find enough value there to keep on playing say something?

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incompetant updates, nerfing blaster defense (by upgrading monster offense beyond what many blasters can handle), and their recent policy of "we're not going to tell you jack"...


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Yes, they have fumbled some updates but they've addressed all of the problems I've had with their updates. When they screw up, they generally come out and say so; you won't get that anywhere else. AFAIK, the only change that made mobs tougher was that many minions were chain-stunning; which they've admitted was a screwup and are fixing.

Not telling you jack? With the exception of smoke grenade, just about every single important change to an AT/power (in Issue 2) had its own "official thread" that actually led to some changes. And even SG had a few threads where the devs gave testing results of some bugs reported regarding SG. I don't know where else you're going to get this level of communication. Fact is, they don't actually have to tell us jack; but they do anyway. And they've shown willingness to actually act upon what they hear from us. They don't do everything we demand but they do listen and react. What else do you want?

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Many play EQ....


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Indeed.

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Many also left.


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Depends on how you define many. I don't think you can say "many" until your total subscriber count starts dropping. How else do you define many? .01%, .5%, 1%, 5%?

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Many didn't leave because there wasn't any good alternatives at the time...


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Yes, but many, many more kept playing and even more started playing despite "nerfs."

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What in the hell is your point?


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Maybe that not many really left in the grand scheme of things because of nerfing? The only people we know (or highly suspect) that leave because of nerfs are:
- People who post on the boards "thx for ruining my toon. bye"
- People who post on boards saying that their friend quit because his char got ruined by a nerf.

Forum-goers (ie the "informed" player) make up a small fraction of the player base. Suggesting that people flock from a game because of nerfs doesn't agree with the numbers, given the long-term growth success of EQ (you can find some comparative growth charts if you look around...). Do some players leave because of nerfs? Of course. Is it statistically significant? No; not even the number of people who post on forums is significant. Even if we all got nerfed and quit tomorrow, it would hardly be noticed. So what is my point then? Some players will leave; but it won't be many.

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The point of the post is many basters play AOES and he thinks if ya hit this many will leave. I agree. Hit Aoes what is left for a blaster but debt. Who cares what straw breaks the camels back, its broken and the camel is no more.


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- If (nerfing == MMORPG death) then how did EQ ever last as long as it did (ie still going...)? Let alone continue to grow until fairly recently, when the market became flooded with very good alternatives for players.
- What about single-target blasters? Did they pre-emptively leave the game?

While it may be true that many blasters who read and contribute to these boards may indeed leave if AoEs are "fixed," expanding this to the whole player base is a weak stretch. As we all know, this is a tiny portion of the user-base. In general, the players who "just play the game" learned how to play from the manual. These folks would run in fear from groups that are routine to many forum-goers. If these players notice anything beyond "Huh, that's weird. It worked different last time I played" I'd be very surprised. If you're going to hint at the fallout from changes to the game, keep in mind the sheer number of "uninformed" players who just play for fun.

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I can't say that an average of 282 hits/misses with a character against two varying mob levels is an accurate representation of the true "average accuracy"

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While you do need many more samples if you want to reach a particular error level, you don't in order to know that something is amiss if your numbers are nowhere near your expecations. This is the case here. I believe, if my statistics powers are still strong, he has about a 5% statistical measurement error here.

Also of note:
- With an SO Acc in Jack, you should be near the acc cap and thus hit almost 95% of the time. I believe it was stated that base acc vs an even for a pet is 75%. He's getting nowhere near what is expected.

- His numbers for even and +1 minions support each other. The acc vs even minions was 49%, acc vs +1 was 42%. While I'm sure this could be a coincidence, I think the fact that the numbers he got for +1 were lower than those for even bolster the validity of the numbers.