The Spirit Realm

I am curious: Is there any comunication about any shaman issue with a dev/the devs?
If so, has there ever been a reaction from a dev you are allowed to tell us?

probley not what your are asking
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts ... _id=161858

I try to gather information when asked to by the devs and I will always pass on feedback that is sent to me from the forums or via PM and will do it for any class not just shaman. Also the CC program was canceled and it is now the Community Leader program where we are not necessarily tied to working for the class we play.

Despite the earlier denials, I wonder if they will give us a level increae with the April patch.

Considering the "Public Realtions Genius" of SOE, I could see them raising it to level 90 today, saying that the spells and discs would be in next patch. And then tomorrow saying it was all an April Fools Joke.

And as nobody else seems to be digging this stuff up - /em looks at the "leaders"* - here's some more info...

Underfoot AAs, part 2. Now on Test and going live in April!

General AAs: earthen Alacrity / Allure / Artistry / Brawn / Brilliance / Sagacity / Stability, 5 ranks, 5 AAs per rank. (Total: 175 AAs)
These increase the cap for the various main stats (STR, DEX etc) by 5 points per rank.

Archetype AAs:
None

Class AAs:
Bear Patriarch - new rank of Rabid Bear (which explains why that appeared in the spells file earlier in the week!), 12 AAs
Extended Languid Bite - extends duration of Languid Bite by 1 tick per rank, 3 ranks at 7 AAs per rank
Hastened Malosinete - decreases cast time by 0.2 (sic) seconds per rank, 5 ranks at 5 AAs per rank

Total: 233 new AAs.

There's a new achievement of 5250 AA points too.

* - that's probably come across more snidely than I intended, although I do find the whole CL programme to be a bit of a farce really. I mean, honestly, this second round of AAs would have been planned for a while and it wouldn't have killed the devs to pass on info via the CLs (assuming they didn't and it's just not been relayed, that is). It's stupid that the first we hear of it is when we see them on the Beta spells_us.txt file, then a couple of days later on the Test file of the same name and then a day after that on Test itself. Why the lack of communication? What's the point of a "leader" programme at all when the "leading" is done by players poking around in the spells file? It sucks, frankly.

The CLs did not know about the new AAs. Several CLs noted on their respective class boards that they were not given any previous access to the new AAs.

I havent had much time today other then to get a quick look at the new AA on test but I expect to submit plenty of feedback on them.

Many times what we do know, we're not allowed to tell you until it hits test or the like anyways. And frequently we dont know about something until it hits test either, with no foreknowledge. I also do plenty of feedback gathering, be it just reading the forums and taking notes of what peopole are asking for / talking about, or asking directly in game. I'm always in the shaman channel for example, and can go back and read what people were talking about while i was at work etc.

The truth of the matter is, the shaman community as a whole is in good shape, and we dont have a whole lot of complaints, so it's not like there are earthshattering changes being made to our class that we need to keep you aware of. If we know of something ahead of time that affects shaman, and are allowed to tell you about it, we will. But once something hits test, it's just as easy for anyone else to log into test and see what's changed as it is for us to do so. Just because there are CLs that are shaman, doesnt mean we're going to spoon feed the game to you, post spoiler pages of content, etc. As a line in Samanna's sig says "Now the question is, do you want to be spoonfed, or do you want to be a Shaman?"

I didn't ask to be spoonfed, atleast to me it didn't feel like.

It just would be nice to get a small info what maybe has been forwarded, and if there is a reply what the reply was.

An example: casttime revamp. As far as I know, all caster and all priest but the shaman got a casttime revamp. The fact that shaman didn't received one, was it an oversight?

Thirdspire was parsed to be about 0 dps. Anyone ever parsed something different? Do the devs know about? Did ever any dev comment on this?

I feel there are some issues, where I would like to know if the devs are aware of. Would some information classify "spoonfed"? Thought that was what CC and now CL is about.

If knowing about which issues have been forwarded to the devs does qualify for a request to be "spoonfed" opt me in to those who want to be "spoonfed". If the whish to know about devs reactions to those cases does qualify for asking for spoilers than: "me please, give me spoilers" here.

It would be nice if the CC's could keep a thread updated with the issues that have been brought to the dev's attention and any feedback about those issues they are allowed to post. We don't need spoiler information but there are several issues that need to be fixed and I haven't heard anything about them.

Current Issues that I deal with Every Day:
- Counterbias Slow and HoT do not give any wear off messages.
- The individual effects of Unity have different ranges so you can be in range to cast Unity yet foresight and strength will be out of range and not land. (Should be easy to fix but has been broken for over a year.)
- Frost Gift does not grant the twin heal proc if the spell is resisted or does not land for some other reason.
- Group Shrink AA has an unecessary long recast time. (Not bugged but very annoying for no reason.)
- Lack of a Group Invis AA.
- Weak upgrades to the Cannibilaztion AA has made us fall behind in mana regen ability.

That's just what I can think of off the top of my head.

We are not broken by any means but we do have some issues and haven't seen many upgrades recently.

You want us to come and post that we have brought up issues because thats about all we can do unless told by the devs otherwise.

Not sure how much having a sticked list with a bunch of stuff we wont get feedback on will help and don't forget if you do find a bug make sure you pass it on to Tharkis or myself as we might not have noticed that bug before or had anyone else pass it on to us.

I don't know what the best solution is. I just know its frustrating to have bugs persist for months/years and no real way to tell if the devs are even aware of the problem. I bugged the Unity issue back during SoD and a lot more since then and it still hasn't been resolved. I bugged the UF spell issues in beta and several times since they went live. So I don't have a lot of confidence that bug reports are even read or if they are read then they sure aren't acted on.

Edit: Just wanted to add that I'm not blaming the CC's for the situation at all.

Remember when you find a bug don't just use the /bug command but send either Tharkis or myself a PM or tell in game.

On Wednesday, April 7, 2010, starting at 1:00 pm PDT, join us on the SOE Ustream channel as we turn the spotlight on the Quality Assurance department here at Sony Online Entertainment. The event is expected to last 1 hour (PST is -7 GMT: 2:00 pm MDT, 3:00 pm CDT, 4:00 pm EDT, 8:00 pm GMT, 9:00 pm CET)

It says in the full message that they'll be talking specifically about things like /bug and /feedback processing. Go! Be heard!