Give us your feedback on the July event!

[Ibn]

Use this thread to tell us what you think of the July event: Treaties in Stone.

July event info (http://ac.turbinegames.com/index.php?page_id=252)

July event known issues (http://forums.ac.turbinegames.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11412)

We are aware that many players are currently experiencing Zone ticket authorization errors and we are working to resolve this as quickly as possible.

[Dj_Viper]

All the new content looks great. Havn't been able to log in yet though.

My main concern is UA still....either fix UA or make the other classes stronger. I'm tired of seeing all of Darktide switch their Sword characters to UA because it is more powerful. It is the only class that does all types of damage, has a phantom that is extremely over powered and has a higher damage over time ratio. On top of all this, it costs the least amount of skill credits which allows them to specialize in way too much. UA needs to be fixed.

[osirisd3t]

I can't log in how am i suppose to give you feedback, get away from zone already they suck

[cambria]

omg i would like to know that ticket i need> am i trying to get on a cheap ride?lol

[Ibn]

The servers will be coming down later today to resolve the reported Zone authorization issues. Exact ETA on the downtime will follow when I have it. Total downtime for this hotfix should not exceed three hours.

[Ibn]

The servers will be coming down at approximately 1:00PM PDT / 4:00 PM EDT / 8:00 PM GMT. Expected downtime is approximately three hours.

[Syrlacc]

The bug of creatures ignoring your presence does not seem to have been properly fixed. Within minutes of logging on I had a two Nefanes just float in the air right next to me on the Singularity Caul. I believe they spawned while I was fighting other stuff in the area and simply did not register my presence, even after I started vulning/attacking them.

[po-dunk]

I sincerely wish that more notice had been given ingame before the servers came down. I was muling some stuff between chars and when I logged on the second character to pick up the stuff I was trying to mule I got the message "worlds coming down. log off now". I had time to pick up one item before I was booted. I guess the rest of my stuff is gone. Why wasn't there a message upon login minutes before the worlds came down? I know things happen that cause the world(s) to be taken down but this really stinks to lose items when it easily could have been avoided. Being on the east coast I guess i'l have to wait till tomorrow before I can actually get ingame to offer any feedback on the patch itself.

[Shoku-Ti]

I would like to know why, darn near i'd say 80% of patches require a hot fix. If you guys had a test team, or a test team that knew what to look for. You all could save time and effort, and save us the players agrivation and down time.

On a side note, since the leader / loyalty code has been cracked, and we know you lied threw your teeth, with the comment that it was going to be better for us in the long run. Is there a plan to tweak it so that the casual player, isn't a burden to have as a vassal, or having mules sworn into allegaince to be able to recall mansion, doesn't totaly screw over your pass up. I honestly believe if I use my 2 accounts, and swear to myself to help lvl a trade skill mule, dump ungodly amounts of xp into loyalty and leader. As well as wasting credits to spec leader and loyalty. I shouldn't be screwed over because I have a friends mule under me for the last 4 years.

I honestly wonder if the plan was intended to totaly nerf vassal/ patron xp, or if programmer was simply and completely inept.

[TheKnight]

Looking through the dev notes and rollout artical, I don't see any mention of the New Item Magic Banes Expiring messages being fixed. For the love of god don't tell me that you guys left in the 90+ lines of spam of:

Impenatrability has expired on Helmet
Impenatrability has expired on Gloves
Impenatrability has expired on Armor
Impenatrability has expired on Leggings
Impenatrability has expired on Shield
WHOOOOM!
Bludgeoning Bane has expired on Helmet
Bludgeoning Bane has expired on Gloves
Bludgeoning Bane has expired on Armor
Bludgeoning Bane has expired on Leggings
Bludgeoning Bane has expired on Shield
WHOOOOM!
Piercing Bane has expired on Helmet
Piercing Bane has expired on Gloves
Piercing Bane has expired on Armor
Piercing Bane has expired on Leggings
Piercing Bane has expired on Shield
WHOOOOM!

Ibn please tell me the devs did NOT leave this mess in....

Regards

[Ibn]

Originally posted by Syrlacc
The bug of creatures ignoring your presence does not seem to have been properly fixed. Within minutes of logging on I had a two Nefanes just float in the air right next to me on the Singularity Caul. I believe they spawned while I was fighting other stuff in the area and simply did not register my presence, even after I started vulning/attacking them.

There was one specific bug that could cause this that was fixed. There may still be other reasons that this can occur.

[Ibn]

Originally posted by po-dunk
I sincerely wish that more notice had been given ingame before the servers came down.

We made an announcement on all worlds 30 minutes prior to the shutdown in addition to the immediate notice. Unfortunately we do not at this time have the ability to create on-the-fly messages that will be seen at login. This is something that is being worked on as part of the billing migration.

[po-dunk]

A message 30 minutes prior is great if you are ingame then. I was ingame about 5 minutes total before I was booted. I'm just glad the stuff i'm losing isn't ubar or hard to replace. Someday I'l learn not to bother on patch day.

[Mr_Fred]

....never do anything "important" in game on patch day.


As far as the patch goes...I can't really comment, as I couldn't get in this afternoon to try to see any of the content. It all looks pretty good on the notes...but of course, Zone ruins everyone's fun...yet again. ;)

[Berean]

I appreciate the minor fixes. "It is no longer possible to lock housing chests with a lockpick" is my favorite. I'm hoping the Renegade fire is yard hookable; my momma always told me not to build bonfires in the house. (Don't ask; I'm not sure why I wanted to). I never play a war mage but I love the improvement to CS and CB for them, because of the high cost of specializing war magic. I'm also glad the NPC's will stop yawning; that was annoying. This won't make them disapear from being idle, right? I really like the individualized scroll icons. I appreciate the continuing efforts to fix typos too.

I enjoyed the fact that new quests were released throughout the last month. I hope this approach will continue this month.

To address login problems, could you use a Turbine web page to access the Microsoft servers? I can see reasons why this would not work, but I'm a dreamer. The "play AC" link from www.asheronscall.com takes people to an outdated and seriously unfriendly web page. Also, I hate being redirected to the MSN gamezone when I log into Passport from http://classic.zone.msn.com/asheronscallxp/minilaunch2.asp
I can imagine fixes to login problems that involve using a Turbine front-end and a Microsoft back-end. But, like I said, I'm a dreamer.

[Paraduck]

Hizk Ri's Temple: It's always nice to have something challenging each patch. Very fun quest and actually makes you think before you act. ;) The Prison spell and the unpickable doors are a nice touch too -- effectively eliminates the solobility of it. I do think there should have been some more rewards though. At least one person in my fellowship was disapponited because there was nothing (other than the armor) that he could use.

[Wolfe]

Diamond Idol says "use this item to equip it", but that doesn't work, you have to drag it to the weapon slot.

[Brando]

Thank you so much for removing e-motes from collectors

I was so tired of that moron waving at me while i was trying to give him my hard earned drudge charm. ;)

[Zeds]

I dont know about the July event

BECAUSE I can't log into the freakin GAME!!!

Also I see you have gone out of your way to break decal again, soon I hope you will realize that decal is your friend and has kept this game from tanking for a long time now .

Why do you not try to at least inform the decal devs as to what is going on ahead of time so they can patch it in a reasonable time ?

It would be good for US , good for them and good for you.

barring that you should incorporate all decal apps into the game so we dont have to wait for it to be fixed each patch( yes the game is still that unenjoyable as it stands on it's own without the features decal adds )

[JakeTheMuss_HG]

non-yawning NPCs

Thank you


Thank you, Thank you, Thank you
Thank you :p

[Jet-eye-nite]

1 The NPC yawn is not fixed ? I saw more than one doing it and had to wait for 2 because they were busy .
2 Does the add of this magic def item on missile loot mean once done no imbue can follow ?
3 Still no lub for any one but high lvls and mages , there are others that don't fit into these classes.
4 I hear the KaBoom is still IG
5 Loot from what has been seen so far still, pfft.
6 I wonder how to swear my mules to allegiance as to not nerf anyone they might sign to ?
7 I had hoped to see /aht or /ls but a not this time around ?
Still more time IG needed before I give my grade for the patch ,more later .

[Scout X]

Aegis imbue for bow.... we don't get a shield, so the only defense left against melees is melee def. You put that aegis on bow, and unless the bow is naturally greater that +10 mod, our bows are going to start penalizing us in the melee def area. which leaves us with no melee protection.

A melee, who hides behind a shield and melee def, just sacrifices a shield, and can still hide behind the defense skill.

wtf is this?


and mages new crits... my archer sure as hell isn't hitting biakas for 2k+, thnx.

i love my archer being pwnt, it would suck to be able to compare to the massive health of mages, or the defensive capabilities of melees, and still be able to not hit our targets in pvp.

[Logan Conrad]

Ibn (from June's Event Feedback thread):

"I just talked to Wumpus and Mirin about this -- we'll try to get this fixed for July. The Elari should definitely be better than the Panaq."

I take it that the Sublime Elari didn't get fixed this month?

[Mr_Fred]

I'm not a man of many wants....

How about actually matching that blackmire armor up with the existing stuff? :-)




Oh yea...and I dont' suppose there is really any point to trying to put ageis capability on an already imbued AR bow...right? Course...thats the only bow I'd want to put it on...silly me. *shrug*

[romside]

Hizk Ri's Temple:

There the Ancient armor long boots and the ancient armor gaunts.

Scenenario are the colours intended? They don't fit with the bracers and Bp.

Ahh and the Xbow is not hookable.

Romside

[sandman]

How hard is it for you to adjust the loot profile on the Hea Champions? They are still dropping vanilla kite shields. Granted, this isn't an earthshaking issue but how much trouble would it be to fix this?

[Zuug]

1) Would be nice if the new Blackmire Crossbow were hookable.
2) Most people I've seen talking about it, including myself, would have preferred if you had kept the new Blackmire gaunts and boots the same color scheme as the breastplate and bracers.
3) Why is the new Blackmire Crossbow worse than the bow? That makes *zero* sense.
4) Was it intentional for the door that opens when you kill the boss mob at the end of the new Blackmire quest to close in about 5 seconds? Not cool, pretty stupid actually.
5) The new aegis effect that can be put on missile weapons is great, except for the melee penalty. Another extremely stupid idea. Get rid of that or apply that melee penalty to the sanguinary shields too.
6) The guruk things in the new BM quest look very, very cool.
7) The platform part of the new BM quest was very well designed and very cool. Big thumbs up for that part of the quest, I enjoyed it.

[TheKnight]

Ibn,

Again did the devs leave in the Item Magic Bane spells expiring, with the 90+ lines a second flooding out your chat box? I don't see any mention of it being fixed in either the dev notes or rollout article. Would appriciate an answer on this.

Regards

*Edit*

Nevermind, my friend told me that the 90+ lines of item banes wearing off is STILL in game. I can't begin to express my severe disapointment here, as this is totally unexceptable now. It is now going on for 2+ months with this insanity of spam from Item Banes expiring, totally flooding out the chat system.

This is beyond unexceptable and frankly I can't belive you devs did not fix this ASAP and now left it in for month 2! You never gave me an address to send my complaints to as when I asked for one to write to the company to send in my complaint about this mess.

If this is how you guys treat paying customers, then I am glad I left because of this nightmare you call patches, where now not only have you raised war magics power to a totally unfair level, but did not even bother to correct the constant flood of item banes wearing out. I am Extremly disapointed with your company. :mad: :mad: :mad: You will most certainly never see business from me again after over 3+ years of loyal support, if that matters at all to you guys at Turbine.

Regards

[Hemorhage]

this patch is one of the best ones i have ever seen, mearly because of the improvement for CS CB for mages.

it has been a long time comming that mages have the abililty to crit somthing for 2k. For years i have seen archers do it (respectivaly with the proper buffs, vulns, and debuffs) as well as melee. Before this patch the only thing my mages was worth was the ability to vuln. now i can truly Pimpslap mobs.

thanx turbine :P

great patch.

[Stilp]

With reference to the new BM3 quest & the jumping section...

Love the quest, apart from one minor gripe. Please can you use different colours to red & green (blue, yellow, pink(!), anything but the red/green combo!). I am colour blind in reds & greens (& remember hearing a statistic than 1 in 12 males are in the same position) so was very hard to tell the difference betwen the eyes (well, impossibile actually! Had to ask a flatmate to point them out to me!).

Thanks :)

Stilp

[Madgic]

Hiya Me again,

OK to answer an earlier post. yes you can add the Aeigis effect Imbue to a fully tinked and imbued weapon, there was no skill check that I could notice I did it to mine AR +166%

HOWEVER DONT BOTHER

It doesnt work and is a waste of 10% meleeD.

I spent 8 hours working on it, eventually got it, Imbued my Favourite Bow, and the difference to war hits was non detectable.

BTW before anyone says anything about skill etc Im Lvl 185 max spec Magic D and Bow. So im assuming if its not gonna work for me its not gonna work for anyone else.

I appreciate that possably the intent was not to protect Missile toons or perhaps im just misunderstanding what a magic absorbing property should do. but with the new stuff you got planned for mages soon please you gotta give us a break!!!

Please Turbine if the Aegis bow is working as intended please give me a tool to remove it I dont want it Ive wasted a perfectly good bow for nothing.

Also the crits from mages are rediculous now my noob buff bot was criting for over 2K a pop last night thats stupid.

PLease bear in mind there are more clases of character playing this game other than mages. I desperatly do not want to have to play my mage all the time just to keep up.

When my Main joins in fellow hunts i feel like a leecher now.

If you keep upping power you will end up destroying the game so really giving mages al this awsome power really is going to do some massive damage.

Please try not to hurt my game i love it but its becoming more and more hurtful every patch. I can not increase her skills anymore to keep up with mages she is already maxed out and compared to others in her class is prety dam good, I just need something to make me not sigh every time i get a pathetic 480 crit while my hunting partner 100 levels my junior is hitting for 2k.

[Mildly amused]

Feel free to ignore me when I complain about balance or lack of.

But read the VN boards. Get ingame and talk with people. Get ingame and play a melee past level 90. Get ingame and try to get in a Caul fellow with said melee. Melee is dead for a long time but now archery is dying as well as absolutely positively everybody is going mage.

[Akawa]

I have to admit, I'm not overly impressed.

I realise that the majority of players are high lvl (80+ perhaps), but the lack of new content for lower lvls makes me think the Devs have given up on anyone under 40. I believe the lvl 20 person has access to 2 new dungeons this patch. However, those dungeons are a tad hard for the lvl 20 to get to alone. Lin was "restructured" for the 20-40 crowd, but what lvl 20 can survive there? Obviously the VG team plays with buff bots, since no lvl 20 under his own power can hack it in Lin. :(

You might suggest to your testers next time to try playing things at various levels, without high level buffs & twinkage. That way they can give you feedback on how your "restructuring" is effecting everyone, not just the lvl 80+ who breezes through everything.

Ya know... like "normal players". :rolleyes:

[Jinnsman]

great patch imo!

while i still feel that generally speaking mages did not need the love, it does bring them up the DOT ladder quite a bit. My mage may actually get more kills in VOD/CAUL now - those pesky archers/melees always take advantage of my kindness w/ imp/vuln! the increase to crit damage does not feel unbalancing which is a great thing.

love the new idols - tad hard for me to get by myself, but with a few friends it is a fun 'quest'. still have some work to do to complete my first aegias (sp?) bow! While it it a lot of work to put one together, the fun is in the journey!

still a lot of exploring for me to do!

[Lilstarr]

I am a level 168 mage, and my hunting partner, my husband, is a level 163 archer. Last night we went to Caul so I could test my CB and CS wands.
Within an hour of hunting, I only landed a crit with my CB about 4 or 5 times. When I tried my CS, I crit often, but only for 550 - 700 points of damage. I vulned and imped everything as usual, so my archer partner could kill fast as well. We normally have 2 critters on us at a time. Even when I got a "big" crit with my CB, my baddie was only half dead by the time my hubbys critter was killed, and he would then finish mine off as well.
It was a bit frustrating to kill tons of biakas, hellions, marionettes, ravagers....and never see a crit!
So, based on what I have found so far, I don't think the archers/melees have anything to worry about in regards to mages being more powerful. My hubby archer still outkills me every time! :)
Just my opinion.

[Forsaken one]

The sky is falling a mage can crit for 2k.


Guess what CB has a 5% chance to land so that so called UBER CB damage will land maby 1 time per monster. Archers/melees will still get the kills on MOST of the end game monsters.
(5k+ health monsters)


I do have hige level archer and mage but I 'll still stick with my archer.

[KsBabe]

I am another archer that put the aegis on my fully tinked AR bow and to be honest, it seems not to work. I get spells landed on me that I did resist! And I was wondering did anyone notice while hunting last night that critters was hitting harder than normal? I was fully buffed with sevens, baned out with them also and was getting hit from critters that normally dont touch me. It was like melee D wasnt buffed or my armor wasnt baned and I didnt have any prots on me at all, an augmented (sp?) drudge was hitting me for 20-60 points of damage and I could before the patch stand up to a pack of those and not get hit for more than 30 points while killing all of them.
My husband, who btw is a lvl 142 mage, was watching me fight and asked me what buffs/banes did I not put on me, I ran to a safe spot, showed him that I was fully buffed out and he said, WOW, it seems like you dont have melee at all anymore!
As for mages update, while hunting with my hubby last night, he didnt see a difference at all with any of his imbued magic casting items and yes he has CB and CS. As for outkilling him, I couldnt because I was too busy trying to heal and stay alive to kill anything!
If anyone else has seen this problem, please tell me!

[Shaolin]

Virindi slayer weapons are a joke,

unless you are a mage that is....

if you are going to make life magic a must so that the slayer effect is noticable than just bite the bullet and put a life magic req on them.

my ultimate sword was doing pathetic damage, crit for 23 ??

for gods sake, i suggest you stop catering to 3 school chars
and make all the weaps slayer properties not require vulns or imps etc.....

as it is without a mage or life magic the melee weaps are pitifull.

item magic expiry messages need to be worked on as you know,
i guess we have to rely on 3rd party plugins or a couple of months
down the line to fix this.

overall a decent patch...
but i am sorely disapointed with v slayer weaps.

[Krom]

This has happend to me in past patches and i don't think it's fair for me to have to pay for it.
things were fine that after patch I log in and get in game but after like 2 mins. I get booted out of game . "lost server"
I can get back in but the same thing happens . after like 2 mins I get yellow than red than lose server.
I usually have to wait till next patch for it to be fixed. thus you get a free month out of me and i get zip.
Please get in in game. e-mail me with what i can do to make it happen.

thanks

[Ibn]

Originally posted by Logan Conrad
Ibn (from June's Event Feedback thread):

"I just talked to Wumpus and Mirin about this -- we'll try to get this fixed for July. The Elari should definitely be better than the Panaq."

I take it that the Sublime Elari didn't get fixed this month?

If you'll notice, later in the thread I responded to my own post and wrote:

"Upon further discussion... while some change may still be made, these bows are not designed for use by players who can self-cast 7s already, they are designed for lower-level players. For these players, the bows are as good as intended."

[Ibn]

Originally posted by Mr_Fred
Oh yea...and I dont' suppose there is really any point to trying to put ageis capability on an already imbued AR bow...right? Course...thats the only bow I'd want to put it on...silly me. *shrug*

Why wouldn't you want to do that? It sounds like a good plan to me.

[Ibn]

Originally posted by sandman
How hard is it for you to adjust the loot profile on the Hea Champions? They are still dropping vanilla kite shields. Granted, this isn't an earthshaking issue but how much trouble would it be to fix this?

This isn't a treasure drop, it's actually a trophy drop. A quirky one sure, but a trophy drop. So it's not "taking the place" of any treasure-generated loot on the creature.

[Scout X]

I don't know about you guys, but whoever made the blackmire pieces this month is color blind. The boots dont match the gaunts, the guants dont match the suit, the suit doesnt match the boots, the whole friggen thing doesnt match, is this punishment for being good armor? wtf

[StickyDarkstaff]

Originally posted by KsBabe
I was fully buffed out and he said, WOW, it seems like you dont have melee at all anymore!


Not sure if you noticed, it it looks like the imbue takes 10% off the melee D of your bow......

That is why you would be getting hit more often...

[Ibn]

Some comments...

The Blackmire weapons should be hookable. This is a bug, I've confirmed with Orion and added it to our known issues list. Hopefully they will be made hookable for August.

Due to inherent restrictions on the art we can use for hand and food armor, it was not possible to make all pieces of the armor color match exactly.

I have brought the issue with the banes wearing off simultaneously to the team, resolving it is going to prove very challenging due to the way the spell and sound systems work. We are looking at it but I cannot guarantee any change to this in the near future.

[Ibn]

Originally posted by Krom
This has happend to me in past patches and i don't think it's fair for me to have to pay for it.
things were fine that after patch I log in and get in game but after like 2 mins. I get booted out of game . "lost server"
I can get back in but the same thing happens . after like 2 mins I get yellow than red than lose server.
I usually have to wait till next patch for it to be fixed. thus you get a free month out of me and i get zip.
Please get in in game. e-mail me with what i can do to make it happen.

Have you tried contacting our technical support (http://ac.turbinegames.com/index.php?page_id=173)?

[Madgic]

HIya me again,

I notice im not the only one "not" seeing a difference in the Aegis effect Bows and non Aegis effect bows.

Any chance we could get clarification as to weather or not they are working properly? or if we are all expecting something that was not intended?

My expectations were to not get hit for as much with war magic. (much the same as the Aegis effect Shields that this imbue was supposed to be compensation for)

[KF_AC]

Ibn,
you gotta make the archery Aegis Removable, it also needs to be used with ALL weapons, including hollow and weeping.
There is no parity right now.

[Ibn]

Originally posted by Madgic
HIya me again,

I notice im not the only one "not" seeing a difference in the Aegis effect Bows and non Aegis effect bows.

Any chance we could get clarification as to weather or not they are working properly? or if we are all expecting something that was not intended?

My expectations were to not get hit for as much with war magic. (much the same as the Aegis effect Shields that this imbue was supposed to be compensation for)

We have tested them and they are working as designed. On average you should see a reduction in war magic damage based on your Magic Defense skill.

[Madgic]

Hiya me again,

Thanks for the reply but!!!

Ive done testing and its not working for me!! as stated in the post earlier I have maximised and specialised magic D and im receiving an average over 10 war spells a drop in damage of 2 points compared to that of the aegis shield an average of about 80.

I will do more testing but surely this is not as intended?

[Heideggar]

"Due to inherent restrictions on the art we can use for hand and food armor, it was not possible to make all pieces of the armor color match exactly.

I have brought the issue with the banes wearing off simultaneously to the team, resolving it is going to prove very challenging due to the way the spell and sound systems work. We are looking at it but I cannot guarantee any change to this in the near future." - Ibn

hand and food armor!?

omg, will you let us make a real MEAT shield? lol

Ibn, when my spells expire, I lag from it. When my spells start to go, I try to make sure I'm not doing important/deadly activities. It's a hinderence to my gameplay, or rather, normal gameplay. I can deal with it, but it can get annoying. A few others have said that it annoys them (from family and friends), but most haven't really commented on it much.



For the Aegis Bow person saying it doesn't quite work:

Are you using wards in your tests?
Are the war spells the same as the wards?
Are you using wards in one test case and not another?

Just curious. I tend to see a much more noticeable drop in damage with an aegis+ward than just the aegis itself.

[Rick9719]

Ho hum another update more weapons, more armor. No sign of what we REALLY need.

Where, I ask you, is the melted butter for Olthoi legs?!? Cows are in the game. What is the delay here? Don't tell be these bugs aren't good eating. But no melted butter? Really.

Another big problem is the absence of weapons with Rabbit Slaying as a property.

Of course what we really need is some sort of incense oil to deal with the smell of burning Tuskers.

And where, I ask you is the backpack emporium? How long do we have to keep charging all over the planet just to get the right color backpacks?

Lets get to work on these REAL problems. : )

-Estel

[Ibn]

Originally posted by Heideggar
Ibn, when my spells expire, I lag from it. When my spells start to go, I try to make sure I'm not doing important/deadly activities. It's a hinderence to my gameplay, or rather, normal gameplay.

I'm not saying it's not an issue. I know it's an issue. I'm saying we most likely will not be able to resolve it in the near future. The alternative is to remove the new Item buffing system altogether, which seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

[Logan Conrad]

Originally posted by Ibn
If you'll notice, later in the thread I responded to my own post and wrote:

"Upon further discussion... while some change may still be made, these bows are not designed for use by players who can self-cast 7s already, they are designed for lower-level players. For these players, the bows are as good as intended."


Sorry, I didn't notice that. I kind of stopped following that thread.

I understand that the weapons are not necessarily designed for people that can self-cast 7s. My concern is the fact that you need to be higher level (35+) before you can even begin to start looking for the Elari, while with the Palenqual Panaqs (and other weapons) you can be level 5 and get one! (Not that you'd be able to equip it.) It might just be me, but that doesn't make any sense. Plus comparing the bows special properties the Palenqual is going to be better than the Elari, which to me should be the other way around based on the difficulty in getting.

[Madgic]

Hiya me again,

No wards in either case.

I have done more testing and it seems perhaps if instead of a reduction you get a resist then maybe, there is something happening.

Without Aegis bow / With Aegis bow
156 / 112
196 / 154
103 / 184
143 / 124
156 / 107
172 / 137
102 / 198
112 / 176
198 / 101
120 / 179
___ . ___
1458/1475

Resists Without / Resists with

8 . / . 12

Crit without / Crit with

268 / 240

tests performed using Vuln VII and Slash Ark VII a quest orb (healers heart) and no Wards.

totals including Crits

Without / With

1726 / 1715 =(-11)

It took me along time to calculate all this LOL But hope it helps to demonstrate what im getting at.

Just a side note I am Spec and Maxed Magic d but only 10 10 focus self start resulting in magic D only being 357 buffed Could this be my problem. Oh and Im not having this trouble with the aegis shield BTW thats working fine.

[Synnah]

when my spells expire, I lag from it. When my spells start to go, I try to make sure I'm not doing important/deadly activities. It's a hinderence to my gameplay, or rather, normal gameplay.

Wouldn't you want to be in a safe spot with your buffs expiring anyway? :rolleyes:

[Cheyanne-Autumn]

Originally posted by Ibn
I'm not saying it's not an issue. I know it's an issue. I'm saying we most likely will not be able to resolve it in the near future. The alternative is to remove the new Item buffing system altogether, which seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Personally, I know I'd rather keep the MUCH better item banes and deal with the lag when the buffs wear off, as opposed to getting rid of the lag and the item bane love going with it :pGreat patch :)

[Heideggar]

Ibn: I know I know. I just wanted to give ya feedback on it. It's not really bad for me, as I am sorta used to lag and knowing when my spells expire. Just thought I'd say that I'd like it to change, but if it's really that bad... I think people can get by for a bit... I think hehe.

But Ibn, I think you're ignoring my biggest concern:

"omg, will you let us make a real MEAT shield? lol"

Perhaps meat helmets to match!?


re:Wards: I'll have to find my buddy and do some tests of our own. I'll get back to you and see what we come up with. It seems wierd in your data that you'd have a higher damage intake, or even an equal damage intake, from having your aegis bow equiped.

Now, would I be in a safe place when my buffs expire? Yes and No. It really depends. If I'm running somewhere, I don't really have to be buffed, but if I lag because of this, and end up running/stalling in some things that had the possibility of killing me if I was in peace mode unbuffed... then yeah, that can be annoying if it's my buffs expiring that cause that hehe. Some things I can fight while buffing, some things I can't. With the stutter lag from spells expiring, it makes it a bit more interesting to buff while fighting something : ) I'm a mage and I can evade stuff, so that helps in doing some of the things others may not do so well. On the flip side, my magics aren't quite as strong. It's the playstyle I chose for this guy hehe.

[zathros]

Originally posted by Madgic
Hiya me again,

No wards in either case.

I have done more testing and it seems perhaps if instead of a reduction you get a resist then maybe, there is something happening.

[...]


Testing with a Gaerlan wand that does exactly 200 points would be more informative. If I had an Aegis bow I'd do it myself. :)

[KsBabe]

I noticed the bigger hits BEFORE I got aegis on my bow. I was also using my Bludg Rendering Bow which doesnt have aegis when I was getting hit so much.
My husband noticed the hits when I was hitting the parts for the aegis to add to the bow so that wasnt the problem, and I have talked to other players and they too have noticed they are getting hit harder than normal and they dont use bows.
I am going to hunt out at VoD tonight and see if I see a difference and I will post it tomorrow on the amount of warspells that the bow helps me absorb. It will be easy since I only have it on my AR bow and I use several different types of bow there, but so far using it, I have yet to see a difference,

[Ibn]

I just doublechecked the aegis effect myself.

I took a brand new character, edited his health up to make sure he'd survive the hit, and blasted him with the inherent spell on a Gaerlan wand (great suggestion, btw). Wham, 200 damage.

Then I edited his Magic Defense up to about 190 and gave him an Aegis shield. Hit him with the spell. Wham, about 180 damage.

Took away the Aegis shield and gave him a Dark bow. Hit him with the spell. Wham, about 180 damage. Identical.

[Chupon]

hectacombs work well for testing as well, no variance on those as long as you use the same health

[Madgic]

Hiya me again.

Must be my bad luck LOL.

Thanks for retesting ill just have to accept that it does work and allow it to warm up LOL.

Oh Just had a PKL against a mage and he panicked because of the bow and I owned him LOL, so it has its uses after all....

Thanks again.

[pacesetter]

Originally posted by Ibn
I'm not saying it's not an issue. I know it's an issue. I'm saying we most likely will not be able to resolve it in the near future. The alternative is to remove the new Item buffing system altogether, which seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water.


would it be feasable to just get one notice? something like:
the spell, swordsmans bane on your armor has expired.

the only drawback I see is if you bane each piece seperately, which almost no one does unless they are using a buff bot for banes. Even then you would know your banes are going and it's time to re-buff or get to safety.

[Duo_of_Frostfel]

I, for one, dont really have any complaints. So the boots and gaunts dont match; big deal. Most people wouldent trade their majors on sollz/gaunts for blackmire armor anyway.

My biggest gripe is the Golem Idols. I love my Diamond Idol! It's the niftiest little toy I've ever seen IG. My only problem is, you can hold them, thats about it.

Would it possible to change to Idols to behave like Bunny Orbs next patch? Being able to cast magic with a little Diamond Golem would own :D A golem standing animation with Diamond Golem sparkles would be great as well, like Pack Golems move a little bit, and have leaves come off of them.


Great patch guys :)

[Electronic Sign]

First off I love the patch, but I have only one suggestion (not complaint) about the Fetish of Dark Idol's you added to the game.

I have no problem with archers gaining these abilities; I just don't think you should limit the use of the Fetish to them. Melees have been saying for a long time that if the aegies had an AL it would be a much more uesful item to use. Well by adding the use of the fetish to say loot shields (like you have with loot bows) you would be making the playing field more even.

By adding this to loot shields you would alleviate a couple of the problems that melee's have been having with the aegies since it's conception. You would also increase the use of loot shields in the game, make one of the best parts of being melee functional (the shield), and balance out the classes a bit.

This is just my opinion on the subject though. Mind you I'm not melee, just a mage who want's to see the melees in his monarchy be a little happier about being melee.

[BlenderMT]

Ok.

My only complaint, and the one noone else has brought up yet. The new Sing Wand used in PK.

Im an archer so I get called out on a lot of mage issues, but this one is just terrible.....

Because of being an archer I only have 300 buffed health, this is at level 144. Now, today i was fighting a mage who was using the new sing wand, get hit with one war and went from full health to dead.

STOP WITH THE MAGE LOVE IN PVP.

If you wanna hear all of my reasons, then please, ask for a post and ill do it on another topic thats not this one cuz they all date back to every single patch before this one in terms of pvp.

*edit*

Max damage crit I saw last night was 328, which is just nuts.

[Mystic-Rogue]

I am gonna have to agree w/ blender 100% on this the wand is insane i was fighting on my friends mage 406 health vs another mage who had jest gotten the new wand i get hit for 156 healed for about 90 and then got hit again and died.
We later jest tested around to post on the boards I will see if i cant find where it is.
K i found it,

You slash Lazy for 157 points with Blade Arc VII.
Critical hit! You mangle Lazy for 238 points with Blade Arc VII.
You slash Lazy for 178 points with Blade Arc VII.
Critical hit! You mangle Lazy for 307 points with Blade Arc VII.
You slash Lazy for 170 points with Blade Arc VII.
You say, "huge variance"
You slash Lazy for 193 points with Blade Arc VII.
You slash Lazy for 188 points with Blade Arc VII.
Critical hit! You mangle Lazy for 302 points with Blade Arc VII.
Critical hit! You mangle Lazy for 278 points with Blade Arc VII.

[TheKnight]

Ibn thanks for the reply,

Can't the devs make a filter for bane spells expiring temporarally? Something like @filter item magic or @filter spell expiring ?
Even if the sounds of WHOOOM stay in, at least to take care of the spell flood in the main chat overflowing your chat buffers.

We should not haveto use third party programs to filter out a mess up by the devs honestly, as this is a direct result of the new item magics being put in. And I would still like to know who in the world at Q & A allowed something like this to slip by, so I can really give him a pieace of my mind and write to your company's president expressing my dissatisfaction with this mess.

Regards

[DtLS]

Originally posted by Ibn
Some comments...
Due to inherent restrictions on the art we can use for hand and food armor, it was not possible to make all pieces of the armor color match exactly.


Can this be fixed with the graphics upgrade coming in the expansion, or can the other pieces of armor be changed to match the guantlets and boots?

[Kunkuzi]

You really do need to go back and re read your posts. No not this post but all of your posts. Do you remember when you were complaining about how BOW and Cross Bow were too powerful,
Then it was Dagger, Then it was Sword. Now it is Mage. Frankly all Turbine is trying to do is balance it out. Mages don't get the added benefit of an imperil and vuln. So it is only nautral that when they vuln something they should hit hard. Look at the raw cost for a mage. We are talking about 16 points just to train War magic. That is a **** load of skill credits, but wait we aren't done yet. Lets say that same mage wants to specialize war magic, Thats right another 12 points. We are talking 28 points just so specialize war mage. What else could I get for that same 28 points

hmmmm

crossbow train 6
Crossbow Spec 6
thats 12

melee D train 10
Melee D spec 10

thats 32

how about UA spec 6 (sho toon)
Melee D train and spec that is 20

total of 26

still less than specing 1 freaking skill.

Why not just go back and read your history of this game. for the longest time mages have been neglected and only wanted for their vulns. Now that they are being brought in line all the Melee's are crying like a little school girl.

Great Job turbine. I wish more people realized the hard work you put into this game day in and day out.

Thanks for all you have done Orion.
I am still enjoying the G-Man quest

Sincerely,

Kunkuzi of Wintersebb

[Vlad Morbius]

Enough about the costs of skills for crying out loud!
Once you've spent all your skill credits you've spent them and the complaints lie in the fact that once you've attained that level and the same xp has been spent there should be parity and there just isn't.
So dress it up anyway you want to those who play mage know full well that a true tank archer and melee have no chance to outkill them, and thats where the unbalance comes into play!
Only hybrid characters can compete in killing most types of high end creatures or those who rely on the vulns of a fellowship mage.
Things won't change, the game has become more and more geared for mages and life hybrids, that's how they want it. My advice roll a mage toon, and start to level him up ;)

[Vitae Boy]

I love the patch. I didn't get to play much on Wednesday because it didn't like my zone ticket or something like that, so I played ten hours yesterday.
My biggest complaint is that playing for so long gives me a headache. My next complaint is that Maggie had me starting the Moars quest in the little mud cave WAY on the other side of the island and made me work my way back. I would have liked the item spells going off to be a little friendlier, and the great elariwood golems should be easier to find. I hunted for four hours trying to find one and the only one a saw was in the hands of they guy that took my kill while I was trying to heal. (playing in the middle of six or seven ursuins in mage armor and a crown hurts)
I like all the new quests. I haven't gotten to do the blackmire yet, but I'm sure I can get someone to take me. I spent several hours doing the Moars yesterday and enjoyed everything except the run. The false dead ends and the part of the aquamarine prisms where you had to jump down into the trees were cool. I enjoyed running around and looking at all the little environments the moarsmen were growing. Made slaughtering them and almost dying every few minutes more interesting.
I can't really say I enjoyed the idol hunting because I never got anything out of it.
The singularity weapon quest was fun too. Take out the hollows and it would be perfect :P
Thanks so much for the mage crits. I havn't seen numbers like that since there were glacial golem margraves in Qualabar. For those who think mages are too strong now, my level 30 sword character killed margraves faster than my mage does now. It took him two hits to kill without a crit. He was also using a CS sword so crits happened alot. Swarthy matties are so much more fun now. It might be a bit too powerful, but it is closer than it was last month. Thanks for finally helping us :)

I never play a war mage but I love the improvement to CS and CB for them, because of the high cost of specializing war magic.
OMG I never thought I would hear that from someone other than a mage! THX! :D

Also I see you have gone out of your way to break decal again, soon I hope you will realize that decal is your friend and has kept this game from tanking for a long time now .
Hmm. I REALLY don't think they break decal on purpose. It seems to fine the way it works now. They come out with a patch, decal updates. Every time. Decal was working the day of patch this month. I'm sure you can survive a day or two.

3 Still no lub for any one but high lvls and mages , there are others that don't fit into these classes.
They say this every month, but every month there is a quest for all level ranges. The blackmire has four different level ranges. The Moars has five. Where's the lack of love for low levels that aren't mages.

A melee, who hides behind a shield and melee def, just sacrifices a shield, and can still hide behind the defense skill. ... i love my archer being pwnt, it would suck to be able to compare to the massive health of mages, or the defensive capabilities of melees, and still be able to not hit our targets in pvp.
Archers have an easier time with melee defense than melees. Melees are Coord & Str/3, archers only have Coord/3. Thats an extra 90 attribute points to put somewhere (like quickness) when you make your char. You can compare to the massive health of mages if you want. In PvP, melees get very little bonus from their shield. The weepings ignore something like 90% of a shield. We have been told there is more archer love in the near future.

Aegis imbue for bow.... we don't get a shield, so the only defense left against melees is melee def. You put that aegis on bow, and unless the bow is naturally greater that +10 mod, our bows are going to start penalizing us in the melee def area. which leaves us with no melee protection.
If the melees choose to use an Aegis, they get don't get a shield either. Your bow doesn't naturally have to be greater than +10, thats why we have brass. If two or four percent decrease in your melee defense skill leaves you with no protection, you should go check and make sure you put points into coord when you made your char and bothered to train melee defense.

Nevermind, my friend told me that the 90+ lines of item banes wearing off is STILL in game. I can't begin to express my severe disapointment here, as this is totally unexceptable now. It is now going on for 2+ months with this insanity of spam from Item Banes expiring, totally flooding out the chat system.

This is beyond unexceptable and frankly I can't belive you devs did not fix this ASAP and now left it in for month 2! You never gave me an address to send my complaints to as when I asked for one to write to the company to send in my complaint about this mess.

If this is how you guys treat paying customers, then I am glad I left because of this nightmare you call patches, where now not only have you raised war magics power to a totally unfair level, but did not even bother to correct the constant flood of item banes wearing out. I am Extremly disapointed with your company. You will most certainly never see business from me again after over 3+ years of loyal support, if that matters at all to you guys at Turbine.
Interesting idea. If your going to quit, don't complain about how the game sucks. That's a lot of big words for so small a problem. Sure it's annoying, but nothing to quit over. They didn't fix it ASAP because it wasn't enough of a problem to fix ASAP. I'm sure they will get around to it someday. Not even going to start on the war magic statement. Oh, you spelled unacceptable wrong twice.

[Ibn]

I just spoke to the team about the Ultimate Singularity Wands and we agree that their Biting Strike and Crushing Blow combo may well be overpowered in PvP. Not sure exactly what we're going to do about it yet, but we agree that it's an issue and should be fixed.

[Vlad Morbius]

IBN,
You!! are admitting that a mage may be slightly overpowered....is Hell freezing over?, is the moon blue? more importantly is there light at the end of this dismal tunnel of unbalanced toons?
Sorry for riding you bud lol! I'm thinking i may be happy i copy pasted that response before you could change it hehe!!

[zathros]

Originally posted by Ibn
I just spoke to the team about the Ultimate Singularity Wands and we agree that their Biting Strike and Crushing Blow combo may well be overpowered in PvP. Not sure exactly what we're going to do about it yet, but we agree that it's an issue and should be fixed.

Isparian Slayer with a multiplier of less than one? You could balance things and cause great confusion at the same time!

[Jinnsman]

Originally posted by TheKnight
Ibn,

Again did the devs leave in the Item Magic Bane spells expiring, with the 90+ lines a second flooding out your chat box? I don't see any mention of it being fixed in either the dev notes or rollout article. Would appriciate an answer on this.

Regards

*Edit*

Nevermind, my friend told me that the 90+ lines of item banes wearing off is STILL in game. I can't begin to express my severe disapointment here, as this is totally unexceptable now. It is now going on for 2+ months with this insanity of spam from Item Banes expiring, totally flooding out the chat system.

This is beyond unexceptable and frankly I can't belive you devs did not fix this ASAP and now left it in for month 2! You never gave me an address to send my complaints to as when I asked for one to write to the company to send in my complaint about this mess.

If this is how you guys treat paying customers, then I am glad I left because of this nightmare you call patches, where now not only have you raised war magics power to a totally unfair level, but did not even bother to correct the constant flood of item banes wearing out. I am Extremly disapointed with your company. :mad: :mad: :mad: You will most certainly never see business from me again after over 3+ years of loyal support, if that matters at all to you guys at Turbine.

Regards

:D
Absolutely my favorite post to date! OH NO! THE HORROR OF IT ALL! I MUST QUIT THIS GAME AT ONCE BECAUSE ALL MY ITEM SPELLS EXPIRE AT THE SAME TIME. Lets forget the fact that they have always spammed when expiring. It is only the fact that we can cast them at the same time that has made it more noticeable. So what if once an hour (half hour in the worst case) you get slammed with a max of 10*8=80 messages over a 2 minute period.

War magic raised to an unfair level? HELLO! have you even played as a mage? A CB Crit occurs 5% of the time and yes it is now wonderful when it hits... gee, so that is what archers/melee's have enjoyed for the past year or so. Prior to this patch my mage would commonly crit for LESS than a regular hit, that was annoying!

My archer can still compete and usually out kill a mage on VOD/CAUL, where the mage changes are most useful/apparent, but the DOT gap has been closed significantly.

While i don't think that mages needed the love, I do feel that the implementation was reasonable and fair.

[Winter]

Originally posted by Cheyanne-Autumn
Personally, I know I'd rather keep the MUCH better item banes and deal with the lag when the buffs wear off, as opposed to getting rid of the lag and the item bane love going with it :pGreat patch :)

I dont want the banes to go either. Perhaps give us an option to turn just the spell expiration sound event off?

[Frieze]

Originally posted by Madgic
OK to answer an earlier post. yes you can add the Aeigis effect Imbue to a fully tinked and imbued weapon, there was no skill check that I could notice I did it to mine AR +166%

HOWEVER DONT BOTHER

It doesnt work and is a waste of 10% meleeD.

I spent 8 hours working on it, eventually got it, Imbued my Favourite Bow, and the difference to war hits was non detectable.

BTW before anyone says anything about skill etc Im Lvl 185 max spec Magic D and Bow. So im assuming if its not gonna work for me its not gonna work for anyone else.
I tested mine right away and it works... I only have 265 base magic D or so. For me it's about a 20% reduction. I tested it in PvP, so we were able to control all factors (vulned, not vulned, etc)

[Mystic-Rogue]

Well as a sword I can't compete w/ mages what so ever on caul and can only compete w/ mages in vod only becouse the mage vluns for the melee and by the time he gets it vluned/debuffed its probably is already at about 60-70%health. I think 3k damage on crits vs biakas is to much even if it is 5% of the time melee's only crit 10%(so i hear) becouse a melee/archer max damage armor rendering weapons only crit for 800 tops. I play a level 150 mage and a level 150 sword and as a mage I find it nice to crit for that much but find it way over powering at the same time.

[Vlad Morbius]

Ok, I thought someone else would have put 2 and 2 together by now, but I'll take it to the next step. I have been saying that mages are overpowered for quite some time and I think the final proof lies in this statement from IBN "I just spoke to the team about the Ultimate Singularity Wands and we agree that their Biting Strike and Crushing Blow combo may well be overpowered in PvP. Not sure exactly what we're going to do about it yet, but we agree that it's an issue and should be fixed."

If all other classes have the same weapon bonuses but are not considered overpowered then there is only one conclusion to draw and that is.... mages are overpowered!! Now that the problem has finally been acknowledged by Turbine let's see if they fix it , or proceed with the "in concept" mage love next month ;)

[Chainfx]

This is a minor issue I know, but the spells Flange Aegis and Lance Aegis have the exact same icons (slash prot).

[MATTHEW S]

when i hear a noise like banes going,,i just turn my volume down for a sec...i think the patch was really fun so far,anytime a company can add content monthly its a good thing...im unsure why you feel you have to compete with mages,cant you just go out to hunt and just have fun?i been playing since the start of ac and to this day its a gas,the only drag is peeps complaining about everything without having 1 productive thing to say about the game...oh well..
good patch

[Ibn]

Originally posted by Vlad Morbius
If all other classes have the same weapon bonuses but are not considered overpowered then there is only one conclusion to draw and that is.... mages are overpowered!! Now that the problem has finally been acknowledged by Turbine let's see if they fix it , or proceed with the "in concept" mage love next month ;)

This is not the case. Crits on melee weapons are based on the damage of the weapon, whereas crits on magic casters are based on the damage of the spell that the mage is casting. You're comparing apples to oranges.

[FmrSentFlatfoot]

Welp, I hate to say "I told ya so"... but, I told ya so! lol :p

I just spoke to the team about the Ultimate Singularity Wands and we agree that their Biting Strike and Crushing Blow combo may well be overpowered in PvP.

Not just PvP, Ibn. You said the difference might add another 35HP compared with prepatch crits? Well, my 180 Mage friend now hits for 130+ over what he used to. That's quite a large margin between the stated 35. If Monsters can also do this, then my claim of instant death is also true.

That new wand is the death of meleers and whatever it touches. Virindi Slayer? As if mages couldn't wipe out Quidox/Paradox fast enough before? Absurd.

I'm a high level archer. I've never in my whole time of being high level seen a 3200HP+ Crit from my bow, even after a vuln. I don't know who dreams up these tales, I'm all maxed out with a 166% Bow. Go figure.

Mages gripe about archers... well, stop vulning for them, and then you can laugh at them when they crit for 100 or something crazy like that.

War magic raised to an unfair level? HELLO! have you even played as a mage?

Yep, I have.. and I also agree with the very few "honest" mages who say that War Magic was already insanely overpowered, and this new update makes it virtually pointless for meleers to even continue playing AC. I know that's exactly how I feel when I play my melee toons. My mage? Different story.. I feel like GOD now. But then guilt hits home hard because I know what it's like to be a meleer also, and then I feel real BAD for the other meleers who have come to a crossroads, knowing they don't even stand a chance anymore if Turbine continues to make mages UNTOUCHABLE, like they are now.


Well as a sword I can't compete w/ mages what so ever on caul and can only compete w/ mages in vod only becouse the mage vluns for the melee and by the time he gets it vluned/debuffed its probably is already at about 60-70%health.

See? There it is in a nut shell, the truth that Turbine closes their eyes to. It's not right you guys (Devs), you want for everyone to feel like they're part of the WHOLE, then make it so we're ALL equal, across the board. This can be done while still maintaining class differences! All it takes is proper BALANCE... that elusive thing that you haven't been able to grasp hold of for almost 6 years now.

Anyway, that's enough from me.. I foretold about this before the patch went in, and here it is, just like I said... and even Ibn now realizes it.

[Sabu]

There are pluses and minuses to each class. Melees can survive on caul... if you dont believe it then actually try it... ofcourse you have to be able to vuln.(for the harder part) Your post is just the ussual im a melee lettme inept the armor of a mage and do more damage than a warbolt against monsters!

I cant wait to try out the patch... but i havnt been able to connect yet.

[Vlad Morbius]

I'm aware that i'm not comparing apples to apples, but anyway you slice it orange(Magic) is still sweeter.
My point seems to always get lost. Whatever method is being used to calculate damage obviously still gives mages a bigger advantage in overall damage, and it does so without the scarifice of any components needed to solo all high end creatures of the game, making it the only true class that can maximize xp hunting on their own. This becomes just as absurd when you bring in a hybrid melee character as the cost of the melee is some 15% higher experience to fully maximize their necessary skills.
This improperly balanced skill has constantly seen advantages ;
- low burden attack items(wands)
- foci/less burden
- high end armor for defense
- all types of damage
- long range and arc attack
- virtually assured healing ability
- higher overall base health(end max)
- ability to escape(wand in hand)
- ability to evade war spells at range
With all these obvious benefits and no major disadvantages (archers pathing, melee's lack of high end melee only monsters and greater xp costs) how can making this class any more powerful be justified. The fact remains that even if this wand issue is fixed the base problem won't be and what I find even more aggravating is you can find hundreds of posts telling you that these mage changes were going to be a mistake. Did that deter them from being implemented, NO, and now we have to suffer more content loss as a result of another mistake being fixed. What is the point of opinion based letters if they aren't going to be taken seriously? Are we to see more mistakes made by the upcoming mage upgrades while other classes fail to get the help they need or will something finally be done to start making much needed changes wiithout further unbalancing being added, only to have it fixed at a later date.

[Focus]

I loved the update to the Singularity Weapons Quest. Please, Oh Please make the items ivoryable like the old Upgraded Weapons.

I got the Updated Crossbow and now I'm lugging around 1920 burden that I really don't need all the time. Besides, it will look so cool on my wall next the the glowing green one.

-Focus

[moobieman]

food?

[Qwilan]

Originally posted by Vlad Morbius
I'm aware that i'm not comparing apples to apples, but anyway you slice it orange(Magic) is still sweeter.
My point seems to always get lost. Whatever method is being used to calculate damage obviously still gives mages a bigger advantage in overall damage, and it does so without the scarifice of any components needed to solo all high end creatures of the game, making it the only true class that can maximize xp hunting on their own. This becomes just as absurd when you bring in a hybrid melee character as the cost of the melee is some 15% higher experience to fully maximize their necessary skills.
This improperly balanced skill has constantly seen advantages ;
- low burden attack items(wands)
- foci/less burden
- high end armor for defense
- all types of damage
- long range and arc attack
- virtually assured healing ability
- higher overall base health(end max)
- ability to escape(wand in hand)
- ability to evade war spells at range
With all these obvious benefits and no major disadvantages (archers pathing, melee's lack of high end melee only monsters and greater xp costs) how can making this class any more powerful be justified. The fact remains that even if this wand issue is fixed the base problem won't be and what I find even more aggravating is you can find hundreds of posts telling you that these mage changes were going to be a mistake. Did that deter them from being implemented, NO, and now we have to suffer more content loss as a result of another mistake being fixed. What is the point of opinion based letters if they aren't going to be taken seriously? Are we to see more mistakes made by the upcoming mage upgrades while other classes fail to get the help they need or will something finally be done to start making much needed changes wiithout further unbalancing being added, only to have it fixed at a later date.

This may be the first time I have ever heard of somone saying that foci is a good thing.... I completely agree... I Used to play 3 years ago before foci was introduced and I remember constantly being overburdened on my mage and I was carrying 4 full pack of components. It is cool to see that someone else remembers the good old days of Comps. Prismatic tapers and scarabs don't count as comps really.... go by 20 of every herb, taper, and talsman and tell me how many packs you have free... if you are a mage with all 4 schools... buy 50 of each...

[Mystic-Rogue]

Flatfoot I to share some of the same opinions you do about loseing the erge to play a melee becouse they cant compete for the higher yielding exp creatures, and that war magic is indeed overpowered(atleast in my view) becouse i have played a mage and melee both.

[MisatoX]

blackmire III is laggy and undoable on 56k

new sing weapons let mages swat vod virindi like they are nothing while are worse then AR weapons for melees



but the undead portal gem quest was kind of fun for 20 minutes.

[FmrSentFlatfoot]

Your post is just the ussual im a melee lettme inept the armor of a mage and do more damage than a warbolt against monsters!

Nope, for my 50 Billion XP and all maxed out abilities, I want to do the SAME damage a mage does, not more. I just want equality, nothing extra.

Simple.

[romside]

Originally posted by Ibn
I'm not saying it's not an issue. I know it's an issue. I'm saying we most likely will not be able to resolve it in the near future. The alternative is to remove the new Item buffing system altogether, which seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

my temporäry solution for that:

In the sounds/grafics panel take of the marking at sounds effect. Not a really great solution but no more whaaaammmms, when the banes go off.


Romside

[The Darkness]

I fail to see the issue with the sing weapons and them leading to mages being overpowered in PvM (as PvP will be addressed).

Virindi go down fast to a sing wand now after its vulned? Yes.

Virindi go down even faster to the singularity sword after its vulned/impd? Oh yes.

Looks like balance to me.

[EvilElvis]

People don't like it because the 2 best mobs to hunt for xp groups are VoD virindi and Biaka's.

Mages own biakas, and now they completely decimate vod virindi.

[Forsaken one]

Just a little hint for killing Biaka'swith a sword Try CB cold

Max damage CB cold sword tinked9 times with Iron WILL give you a close if not uper hand in killing them faster then a mage.

People please play both end of the game befor you think one is over powered then the other.

In the vod A archer with cold and CS bow will kill raders in 3-5 hits. A mage 13-20 hits. If you are a archer in the vod and cant out kill mages on 90% of the monsters I think you need to find out what you are doing wrong. AR and CS maxed tinked with debuffs walk over a mage any day.

As for not having life well not sure what to tell you.....

[FmrSentFlatfoot]

In the sounds/grafics panel take of the marking at sounds effect. Not a really great solution but no more whaaaammmms, when the banes go off.

Or better still, do like me... turn all sound off entirely and turn up the tunes on your stereo, and if it's late at night, put your headphones on with the tunes. ;)

Don't like music? Silence is golden too. Who needs to hear AC? Just watch your health (priority #1) or stamina if you're Melee, or both, and you'll be just fine. :)


Virindi go down even faster to the singularity sword after its vulned/impd? Oh yes.

But that's just the point, the key being "IF" it's vulned/imped. If you, as a melee cannot vuln/imp, and mages decide they want everything for themselves (which they now CAN do), they just won't vuln/imp for you, will they!? Of course not!

So no, that's not balance, It's an unfair advantage.

Besides, monsters that attack in groups a melee can't handle without a mage providing heals along with the vulns/imps; yet a mage can easily handle it due to healing/draining on the fly. Mage lives, and melee dies in the same situation.

Not quite balanced, is it. No, not by a long shot.

People please play both end of the game befor you think one is over powered then the other.
As for not having life well not sure what to tell you.....

Yeah, but again you're talking about imped/vulned. Most melees don't have the skill that a mage has to land the imp/vuln even if they do have Life! So your comment is false on that basis.

Mages own biakas, and now they completely decimate vod virindi.

Yup, they do... and even my lvl 180 mage friend says that wand is totally insane and far to easy, and Turbine should take it away again, because it's just rediculous how much power a mage had PRIOR to that wand... it's totally NOT needed.

I agree 1000% even if I like it on my own mage, which is a gimp at level 110 compared to my friend.

So, Turbine does it once again... creates a tool that's way overpowered, and now they gotta nerf it, making it double work, taking away from something else they could've done that would've provided more fun for ALL.

I guess the Ken Karl legacy lives on. *sigh*

[MisatoX]

Originally posted by The Darkness
I fail to see the issue with the sing weapons and them leading to mages being overpowered in PvM (as PvP will be addressed).

Virindi go down fast to a sing wand now after its vulned? Yes.

Virindi go down even faster to the singularity sword after its vulned/impd? Oh yes.

Looks like balance to me.

A paradox with imp + vuln VII on it gets hit for less with a sing sword then with my AR. it still takes around the same time to kill them as before this patch.

Meanwhile mages kill them with 4-5 spells.

Ya....

[TheKnight]

Vitae Boy and Jinnsman,

First off this is not a thread to attack my postings, this is a thread to express your views on july's patch, so can you to stay on topic perhaps?

Secondly if either of you bothered to read my other posts you would see it is not just because of the bane spells expiring,but the un-needed boast to mage power as well, not to mention, not fixing sticky melee and archers.

We pay turbine to have an enjoyable gaming experiance, not to haveto turn our sound off, or be forced to use third party apps because they messed up with leaving in the spam of item banes expiring. It's bad enough core bugs still aren't fixed years later, but to call Item Magic Banes expiring a "small" issue is really silly.

But enough of this, I'm done with AC1 and I'll speak with my wallet.

Regards

[BlenderMT]

Ok, Ok. I honestly do not care about the sing wand when it pertains to PvM. Crit for however much you want against a monster. If mages only wanna vuln for their wars on Caul, as long as im in the fellow, you can outkill me as much as you want while I just sit there and waste arrows. I dont care either way. Ill sit at the drop if it makes you think im more usefull lol.

At 144 I dont give a **** what i do for hunting anymore or how many more Biakas I kill then a mage, so much xp is needed now that Caul or any Mob place like 80+ hive or VoD is the only reasonable place to hunt.

Theres no more more fun of just roaming the wilds killing every monster you see, making a trek from mayoi to qala and hunting the whole way. Hopeing to see a Hoary on the way and praying you dont die somewhere you cant remember how to get to.

Its over, its done. If you are honestly going to make a big deal out of someone hitting for more then you on caul, then you need to get your priorities straight. You sit in the same spot for 3+ hours and attack the same creature over, and over, and over, and over. If mages criting for too much is ruining your fun, then I dont know how you were having fun in the first place.


Anyways......

My opinion on how to fix things will come mostly from a PvP standpoint. But mages are the furthest thing from needing any love. Lets deal out a typical fight between my archer, and a mage.

It starts, obviously with vulns. Now, while im running around trying not to get hit for 250 with one damn bolt, Im *hitting* them for around 50, IF they are in crappy armor like GSC. Now, by *hitting* I mean if I can hit them at all, between either, A) they are slidecasting/fastcasting at an incredible rate and can dodge arrows easily unless im RIGHT next to them, or B) Their 10coord/10quick starting char with missile d trained is SOMEHOW evading my arrows up till 1/4 speed.

Now you may not think 2 slots on the speed bar is a lot, but when your fighting a mage its the difference between life and death. In those 2 extra seconds it takes to fire the arrow, the mage has definatly already fastcasted a heal7, which is WAY more powerful then you should of made it a couple patches ago.

As an archer I have to crit a max end mage AT LEAST 3 times in a row, if hes in good armor, which most mages are, that will drop him to about 110 health. Which, if he hasnt healed yet, he can still heal in 2 shots back to full. Now, when i get shot I can heal back to full in 1 try from 40, and most mages complain about that. Well, I took a skill ONLY for the purpose of being able to heal from 40 to full in 1 shot. NO life magic heals shouldnt be that powefull because you have a TON of great other things going on with life magic for a mage.

If archers/melees had to whip out a wand every time they needed to heal and cast heal 7 or stam to health7, wed be dead before we got the spell off. Mages can pull the spell off without even thinking and still remain slidcasting and dodging anything I can throw at them.

I dont know, I guess im saying fix the dynamics of PvP BEFORE you fix the damage. If you fix the dynamics you may no longer have to fix the damage EVERY SINGLE PATCH and can focus that time and effort on more content or new live events. ANYTHING.

Honestly fixing the damage and dynamics shoul be your top priority, IF you manage to fix it, by putting all your brain powers to it in one month, and asking us for feedback on EVERY INCH OF IT, then hopefully it can be solved for good. And it will save you the time of going back and rethinking it every patch.

[Sabu]

Originally posted by FmrSentFlatfoot
Your post is just the ussual im a melee lettme inept the armor of a mage and do more damage than a warbolt against monsters!

Nope, for my 50 Billion XP and all maxed out abilities, I want to do the SAME damage a mage does, not more. I just want equality, nothing extra.

Simple.

Ofcourse your forgetting that... you have a SHIELD!!! As a mage I take far more damage then when I play with my Melee. Archers can fire faster than mages and do more damage than mages with a vuln/imp. I've hunted with my first patron with him soloing mobs in VoD as an archer with life.

Against a maxxed health Mage im not sure about how an archer can kill them ,but against a non maxxed hp mage a bow can make a good impact.I've seen it done, and he was extremely good at it.

[FmrSentFlatfoot]

Originally posted by Sabu
Ofcourse your forgetting that... you have a SHIELD!!!

Oh PLEASE... tell me where it is! Please show me HOW to use it! As an ARCHER, I'd give anything to have a SHIELD!!! :rolleyes:


Archers can fire faster than mages and do more damage than mages with a vuln/imp. I've hunted with my first patron with him soloing mobs in VoD as an archer with life.

With the new sing wand? Not anymore! Actually, very rarely could I outdo a mage in Caul/VoD when imped/vulned.

I don't understand you mages with these absurd claims that you always make about how meleers, archer in particular outdo mages, it's a dream... it's not realistic, what planet are you on? What drug are you taking that makes you see this happening? It just doesn't. If my BEST RL Friend, who is a level 180 mage (spec Life/War/Critter) says that mages are sickly overpowered compared to ALL other classes... I'd say he KNOWS what he's talking about, wouldn't you? Probably not.. but then you're wrong. He's right.

[Crabby Appleton]

If we are going talk about balance and mage being able to hit virindi and biakas for nearly 2k..(mage still has to vul the monster to get that crit with a sing wand) then lets also talk about the melee/archer that with an imp. and vul one shots titanium dillos vod Lugies Drudge serephs vod gromnies the vod Undead hits oblitorators for 4500+etc etc.

a mage has finnaly gotten a weapon that puts them on par with the melee/archer,and I will add that we still dont one shot any thing.

Melees/archers have gotten all kinda of stuff and the Mage was left behind

they wanded melee bonus on wands..they got it..less war damge they got an ageis bettor wepaons..they got renders they even got there own armor.

as far as PvP make the Sing wand no wield if you are red or pink that will end the whining

if you want to make true balance give me back 12 skill credits on the cost of specing war then you can do what you want with balance that will make war magic spec 16 skill credits like sword or bow

If any thing maybe the devs should take a look at melee/archer vod hunting and reduce there power,then you can have the sing wand back

Crabby Appleton

[Mat Icefalcon]

I'm not going to go on and on about the mage love. I will say tho, that a melee can survive in Caul and VoD if ya have life and uber melee, as I am one that does so. Don't expect the gigantic xp if you're not in a group with a mage.

Okies I look at the monster level distribution map for Caul and VoD. For several months I have been frustrated while hunting these areas. Xp is acceptible. Loot doesn't seem right. What I mean here is that why is it that monsters are dropping 250/300 wield weapons here???? Shouldn't they be dropping in the lower monster areas?
I really think that the monsters treasure table should be re-evaluated on these and just get rid of the 250/300 wields and use only 325 wield tables??? Any comments on this IBN?

Overall I like this update. Much better than some of the previous ones this year.

[FmrSentFlatfoot]

Originally posted by Crabby Appleton
If we are going talk about balance and mage being able to hit virindi and biakas for nearly 2k..(mage still has to vul the monster to get that crit with a sing wand) then lets also talk about the melee/archer that with an imp. and vul one shots titanium dillos vod Lugies Drudge serephs vod gromnies the vod Undead hits oblitorators for 4500+etc etc.

4500+ now? What happened to 3200? ROFL. Be serious! No archer EVER gets close to 4500, and I've never once seen 3200 with my bow. You people just want to talk for the sake of talking.

One shot a Seraph? LOL, One shot a VoD Lugie? LOLx2, One shot a Titanium Dillo? LOLx3!! I WISH it were true.. but it's not. Maybe half of 4500.. but that's it.

a mage has finnaly gotten a weapon that puts them on par with the melee/archer,and I will add that we still dont one shot any thing.

Then you suck as a mage. My level 110 mage one shots LOTS of things (without the sing wand), and I'm not talking rabbits here. lol I can one or two shot a lot of things my Archer requires 6-20 shots to kill. So get your facts straight before making absurd, baseless claims.

Melees/archers have gotten all kinda of stuff and the Mage was left behind

Again untrue.

they wanded melee bonus on wands..they got it..

Um, no.. that was for Mages, primarily. Get your facts straight.

less war damge they got an ageis

Which does next to nothing.

they got renders they even got there own armor.

There where? The word is "their". Anyway, the weapons were made in an attempt to stay on par with Mages, but as per usual, they failed horribly, and still do.

if you want to make true balance give me back 12 skill credits on the cost of specing war then you can do what you want with balance that will make war magic spec 16 skill credits like sword or bow

Okay, sounds fair... but war magic is reduced to be no more powerful than bow or any of the other melee weapons. Plus Bow and all other melee weapons power modifier is to be based on focus/self, not coordination/strength, that way we're equal in having high health, and our Life/Creature/Item/Magic D/ etc., is on par with yours. At least then PvP would be fair, as would hunting PvM. Instead of 110-180 HP hits, War is reduced to 60-100HP. Yep.. good plan.. let's do it! :)

If any thing maybe the devs should take a look at melee/archer vod hunting and reduce there power,then you can have the sing wand back

No prob there either... but then you lose ring spells, arcs, streaks, and have as much hardship to land an Imp/Vuln as Melees do.

Fair is fair, after all. :p

[KF_AC]

so much useless bla bla.
All those who were saying that mobs will hit for 500 are proven wrong.
As far as VoD and Caul, what does it really matter who hits for how much?
Everybody kills their monster in the end. A mage will kill a monster 15 seconds quicker? Big deal.
Not considering that most players form fellowships to hunt those places.

The patch has problems, mostly PvP related. The virindi wand is being fixed, which is good. The archery aegis on the other hand is totally ridiculous.
Like mages, most archers start with low strength. Turbine is now forcing them to carry extra equipment. What's the logic behind that?

[Heideggar]

In VoD, it's not that uncommon for people to 1 hit VoD lugians. People have done it using xbows with CB and the appropriate vulns. Same goes for seraphs using pierce.

If you double vuln an undead, and fire bait the shield, you have the possibility to one hit them. Same goes for the gromnies, the dillos, the jellos, etc. etc.

That doesn't mean that everything there will go down in that same manner.

I've fought in VoD with melee and missle people in small groups and big groups. High level people and low level people. I can't say a mage got a kill too often when there was a melee/missle person attacking the same creature.

But of course, these are in group fights, where people work together. A mage usually debuffs because they have the best ability to do so, but that doesn't mean there aren't other non-mages in those groups that couldn't debuff, as I've seen some do, and do rather well.

One of the nice things about VoD is that I could take these missle/melee people there and they'd do just awesome damage there and we'd all benefit from it because we're all in the same fellow. Isn't that the same for Caul fellows!? I've only denied people from a fellow because it was a family hunting, the person wasn't prepared to be there (bringing an appropriate weapon helps), or the person was a thief/griefer/whatever. Is the issue that melee/missle people are not being allowed into the fellows with the mages to make the xp!? Is it how the mages used to say that they wanted to be able to compete with melee/missle people at VoD!? Or is it that melee/missle people want to solo for the same xp that mages do!?

I've heard of some people not allowing melee/missle people into fellows for the most xp, but I've seen that in VoD to mages. Either way, it can be a concern to some, but I've never seen it to be a problem to get into a fellowship. Or is it!?

I can see the "mages do more damage now, and I wanna do the same" argument. It's definetly enjoyable to feel you're a big contributor to a group, and to yourself, as well as to know you're benefiting the most from the time you're on, hunting.

Is it that melee/missle people want to get xp at the same rate as mages do when solo!? I can see that. Some people don't have the time to go into all these fellows, or different playstyles, but still want to keep the idea of their "tank" character templates, or what have you.

But there are good things and bad things to every template, and I don't think people look at how their skills and attributes help the overall gameplay ability of their template(s).

I honestly don't see a problem with mages doing more damage. There are few fellowships that don't have mages, and that means melee/missle people will benefit. If it's the solo part, why not make your character to be more solo-able? life/bow/melee D, and Sword/Life/Melee, is what I consider to be the equivalents of the life/war/creature template. There are definetly good and bad things about these templates. I'm sure some will say that something else is better than them, or worse, but that's my opinion.

The more and more I read these replies I wonder to myself: Most mages try to maximize their magic abilities to better overcome their adversaries. Which, makes sense. Now, when I think of the melee/missle people, I get more of a sense that they make their characters depending on some D&D history they had, coupled with some imagination about what their character should be, and then based on this odd form of a template, they hope and pray that it is best maximized to overcome adversaries in comparison to others who chose the skills and abilities to best suit them. It's almost like people chose to make less than perfect characters, and wonder why they are less than perfect, and can't deal with that fact.

Now, if I went out and made a sword person, with all defensive abilities. Sword, magic D, melee D, missle D. Should I expect to be doing the same damage as a mage, who doesn't have much in the way of defenses? You'd think not, but many find that since they took a skill, and not another to compliment it, they should do the damage of several skills combined. That just doesn't make sense to me.

Mages take skills that compliment their abilities, to make them better. Melee/Missle people don't do that often enough from what I see. A mage, using rendings, ain't half bad, but on high level stuff, they need life magic to do the most damage. So do melee/missle people. Archers and melees swing around twice as fast as a mage can attack (full power/full accuracy). But these things are included much in the DoT of things.

It's great to say, yeah, I critted something for 4500, or 3200, or whatever, but if it's a 1/20 chance, and you regularly hit for 300, it doesn't make a big DoT. Perhaps if someone gave a rundown on the DoT before and after on some things, it _might_ have a bit more impact on the discussion.


Gonna move on to some other stuff now hehe.

Virindi Slayer on the melee/missle weapons. The quest is pretty easy, just semi-time consuming. But, like the tumerok slayer orb, and the olthoi slayer gaerlan wands, they're just as easy to get. It seems odd that such easy quests give mages the clearly best benefits from using them. If the slayer properties could be toned up in favor of the melee/missle people (what I'd like to see), or it toned down for the mages, I think it'd help put the slayer properties into their correct perspectives.

If the slayer properties were toned up for the melee/missle classes they'd use it for Virindi, but I'm fairly confident their staple weapons (AR, CS, etc.) would still be used for quite a bit of what they fight. Not to mention, carrying around another weapon, is another pack slot plus burden, and for some that burden can be extraordinairy.


Singularity Wand (Life and War), should never have been allowed to have their multipliers from the imbues to affect people in PvP. You had mentioned in your article that people would not be effected by Critical Strike and Critical Blow changes. You should never have let the lower type of imbues, when coupled for sure, ever be seen on the PvP battlefields. Now, people have to deal with insane war damage hits for an entire month. That's a lot of people not having fun because of one easy to get weapon. People getting hit for 300-350 on a crit from war magic, as often as they crit, should not ever happen. Even people with 100 starting endurance can't stand up to that unless they have billions of xp. A hotfix should have been done, but really, all weapons should have been PvP tested before implementing, and that clearly was not done.


Blackmire 3: I like the end boss's dynamic, but.... I was wondering if you could tweak him a bit. Maybe he vulns someone, then he portals away up top, then casts an arc at them, all in a row!? I dunno, maybe that's a bit much, but I think it may add some more Intelligence to it's AI. Or at least seemingly. Maybe have him run around, then cast arcs at people, more like a PvP fight. *shrug*.

hmm, think that's it...

Haven't done much with the aegis on missle weapons yet. Dunno if I want to either. Being able to debuff a loot gen weapon, it being subject to shield damage reduction, and things like this... just doesn't seem fruitful. Not to mention, it takes minimal effort to get a weeping weapon, and what could be weeks finding and tinkering up a good missle weapon for this aegis ability. Though, you said the aegis was more for PvM, but... I think one of the strengths of missle people is their ability to evade, and that's cut down here with this. MANY things don't just cast war magic. I can't think of too many things that use war magic, but not physical damage as well. Wisps... ummm *scratch head*. I don't think there are too many hehe.


Please fix the missle PvP dynamic. This should be number one priority for you guys at Turbine. It's been over a year if I'm not mistaken. Maybe you should just let missle people buff up stacks of arrows, and have the arrows (missle ammo) be applied towards PvP, and not PvM, just like you did for CS and CB with mages. So, it'd cost them time to buff up their ammo (drawback), but if they hit people, they'd do double damage (or whatever).

Maybe this suggestion was already said, dunno, but I know Turbine has tried several other player suggestions with failure.

[Frieze]

Originally posted by FmrSentFlatfoot
4500+ now? What happened to 3200? ROFL. Be serious! No archer EVER gets close to 4500, and I've never once seen 3200 with my bow. You people just want to talk for the sake of talking.

One shot a Seraph? LOL, One shot a VoD Lugie? LOLx2, One shot a Titanium Dillo? LOLx3!! I WISH it were true.. but it's not. Maybe half of 4500.. but that's it. It's true with CB, but it's still LOL... because why would I use CB on a Dillo when I hit it for almost 2k with CS (non crit)?

[Wolfe]

With regard to war magic crits:

I appreciate that war magic definately needed some tweaking, given it's skill cost etc. etc. etc.

However I'm slightly concerned that since the patch I've seen several instances where high XP fellowships on caul are not allowing people to join unless they are a mage. Extreme? yes, however is this actually balanced if it's making this much of a difference?

[sollo]

Well, for once I am actually enjoying playing my 4 and a half year old mage. Wish some of you would just remember it is a game and is meant to be fun for all.

[Crabby Appleton]

think you cant hit an Oblitorator for 4500+...try a CB bow with slash deadly arrows imp and vul 7(hit for 600+ on none crits).My mage with a CS wand with the new july patch will hit for 900 tops(sing wand 1100 is the best I have had on an Ob) And yes you can one shot a sereph...try a CB and lvl 7 vul and piercing...titanium dillos...try a CB with lvl 7 vul and slash...vod lugies try CB lvl 7 imp and frost gromnies CB lvl 7 frost and imp.I know this I have a lvl 145 archer with 166 CB bow and maxed cord and nearly maxed bow skill,I also have a lvl 188 tri spec mage,so yes I have a clue and I am not just talking to be talking


As far as wands with melee on them...not to many mages have melee,I will grant there out there but not many.They were made for the melees who whined about being penilized on melee when they wielded a wand.mages would want a magic def bonus on the wand more then the piddly 2.5% that you can get at most.

All a melee has to do is add brass and you are good to go.Maybe the melee def on the wands should have been an imbue

Crabby Appleton

[Dutton]

Originally posted by The Darkness
I fail to see the issue with the sing weapons and them leading to mages being overpowered in PvM (as PvP will be addressed).

Virindi go down fast to a sing wand now after its vulned? Yes.

Virindi go down even faster to the singularity sword after its vulned/impd? Oh yes.

Looks like balance to me.


How fast does that same Virindi go down without the life inepts on it?

A melee character needs a mage (or to be a hybrid mage themselves) in order to kill the high level content.

A mage does not need a melee character.

{rambling mode on}

I'm lvl 142 Spec Life/Melee D/UA, that's something like 42 credits spent.

A spec Life/War mage is something like 44 credits spent. And he didn't have to spread attribute points around like I did for the melee skills.

Any other melee character will have higher credit cost for the same skills.

There is no way in a very hot place that I can come close to a mages ability to fight any level content. For nearly the same amount of credits spent, a mage will out perform my character in just about any situation.

With that 100 focus, 100 self start, a mage's magic d will take care of the war spells.

With that 100 focus/self, a mage's magic skill will be the best it can be. (OK, my 100 stren/coord maxes my attack skill)

And when the mage takes damage, drain health. He don't have to break out of combat, use an elixir or heal hit (and thus lowering his defense skill) As a friend says "Hit me? You're just hurting yourself."

I'm melee, I get to hide behind a shield, which doesn't do spit against magic. My magic d will never be squat (I've spent over 255 million on it alone, not counting focus and self raises). Max tinkered armor reduces damage almost to the point that having a shield is usless anyway.

374 base melee d (454 buffed) and a huge bonus because of my buffed weapon and I still get hit by the group melee attacks. The particular critter I'm targeted and currently attacking will still hit me 10% of the time.

Let the mages in VoD/Caul stop casting gossamer flesh on the critters and see how many melee/archers out kill them.

I still have fun in the game, as long as I don't hunt with mages. I don't make uber xp. If I make 4 mil an hour soloing, I count it a blessing and don't cry that I'm not making 30 mil because I'm doing it and not using a mage with his atomic weapons.

Almost the entire secondary skill set in the game uses focus. All tinkers, healing, lockpick, ALL of them. Who has high focus as part of their primary skill set? Mages.

If a melee wants to sacrifice something, then they go high focus.... but now they won't have as high melee d or health.

Ah... this is getting too long and it won't convince anyone of the inequality of the system anyway... minds have already been made up and cast in stone....

[daemo_nn]

(No.)

Those lugians? yeah, don't use AR mmk? don't use fire either. use the right weapons and the right damage type and you'll be suprised! :|

On my level 57 archer (yes, FIFTY SEVEN), I can outkill my mage on gromnies, dillos, lugians, etc, still. Do I care? No!

Do I care that whinie cry babies ruin my gaming experience? Yes! Don't say things are over powered until 1) you know the right damage type to use (no, not pierce on everything!), 2) the right weapon to use (no, not AR on everything!).

HONESTLY, the only class that needs love now is archers (and, honestly, that is only in PvP. they do perfect PvM, thank you very much)

I have a char in all classes btw so don't give me that.

"How fast does that same Virindi go down without the life inepts on it?" That is an utterly stupid point. Why the hell would you be fighting it otherwise?









BTW, great patch Ibn. Bm3 is laggy as heck though :( I have cable too :\

[FmrSentFlatfoot]

It's almost like people chose to make less than perfect characters, and wonder why they are less than perfect, and can't deal with that fact.

They wouldn't be less than perfect, if the game dynamics and possibilities within were created by thinking, intelligent developers, with a sense of fairness in giving one class ultimate everything while leaving the rest out of the picture.

All those who were saying that mobs will hit for 500 are proven wrong.

All those who said the mage love was badly needed, are proven wrong. (something I told everyone pre-patch) They've admitted the Sing Wand makes mages far too powerful.

Let the mages in VoD/Caul stop casting gossamer flesh on the critters and see how many melee/archers out kill them.

Thanks Dutton, nice to see someone else say what I've made the whole point of ALL my arguments, that people in here always turn a blind eye to, in almost every instance.
So many of you keep leaving out the above FACT, and then lambaste me for what I say. If you'd READ what I am saying, you'd realize that by taking away the imps/vulns, all other classes don't even remotely come close to a mage's power.

Someone recently said to me, that meleers got rend weapons? Well DUH, don't mages use Rend wands? LOL They sure do, and their rend wand abilities outdo melee/archer rend weapon damage 5:1 and sometimes 10:1. THAT'S the argument, and it's valid, and it's true. A mage doesn't HAVE to vuln for themselves.. they just need their rend wand. A mage HAS to vuln/imp for a meleer because a meleers rend weapon won't even come remotely close to having the same impact as a mages rend-only attack! The meleer HAS to have it vulned/imped first so they can kill it WITH their AR weapon. So you see, the rend weapon for meleers only works for LOW-END critters in solo mode, and they MUST use AR in VoD/Caul with the help of a mage, the only exception being if they have a high enough life magic skill to imp/vuln on their own, which in most cases just isn't possible.

Fmr, you need to shut up. You don't know what you're talking about.

daemo_nn: Have you read the Forum RULES? I bet you haven't. I don't converse with people who say I need to shut up. People like you shouldn't even be allowed to post in here, if you are going to issue personal attacks on others. Your post is being forwarded to a Moderator.

[Dutton]

The rudness and personal insults were called for why? Because you don't agree with what I posted? How about we have a discussion and not a flame fest.

However, you're absolutely right about why would I be fighting that virindi without imps/vulns on it, I wouldn't.

That was the point. A mage can go anywhere and fight anything in the game without the need for a melee. A melee needs a mage or to be a mage themselves for all high level content.

You assume I don't know the correct weapons/damage types to use on VoD critters.... in correct. I didn't mention any weapon/damage types in my post, don't read into things.

I hunt VoD solo a lot. I am a hybrid melee, I do my own imps/vulns. I must buff several weapons (for different damage types) to hunt there. A mage just needs one, a wand.

</b>On my level 57 archer (yes, FIFTY SEVEN), I can outkill my mage on gromnies, dillos, lugians, etc, still. Do I care? No!</b>

Your archer outkills a mage and there are no imps/vulns on the critter? I don't think so. And at fifty-seven, you're not going to be putting them on yourself.

[FmrSentFlatfoot]

Hehe.. not only that, but at 57, I don't care what you claim... you don't have the skill to even TOUCH anything in VoD/Caul. You likely don't even survive beyond 20-30 seconds of monster engagement. :p

[daemo_nn]

Yet again you show your ignorance.

Not everyone gimps themselves.

[Scout X]

If a mage doesnt cast imperil FOR the melee/archer, mage wins.

If the melee/archer leaves, the mage still wins.





and this whole skill credit carp you guys keep bringing up. If there was a "lesser war magic" that cost less points (i.e. axe/mace/spear), WOULD YOU TRAIN IT? Theres my skill credit observation. IF there was a skill like... great bow/great sword that costed a ton, i would train it if it meant more power, but the 16 credit melee/range skills is as high as i can get. I'd love to spend more on weaponry focus, but the game has nothing to offer in that area. So the only power left is mage because it "costs more"... aka... only choice. Only magic offense choice also (life bolts dont count)

[FmrSentFlatfoot]

Another insult? Gee, you're good at it aren't you....

No, not everyone gimps themselves, but a level 57 in VoD = Gimped. Doesn't require much for anyone to comprehend that.

[Heideggar]

LvL 57's in VoD aren't gimped. I'm not gonna say they'll be out there alone by any means, but in a group they can hold their own if they have good equipment, spend their xp well, and are descent players.

I've taken lvl 40 people out there. It might be selective killing for a bit, but it can be done with good results.



I"m faily confident it's that people gimp themselves, then complain that it doesn't compete with the best templates.

hehe, I'm still trying to narrow down this whole problem in my head though. See, the top mages, top melees, and top missle people do pretty well solo, and pretty well in fellows. They can honestly go anywhere they please with the best templates in each class. They also do very well in groups.

Now, these are top end mages, melee, and missle templates.

When I say top-end, I mean life/war/creature or life/war/magic D mage, life/bow/melee D archers, and sword/life/melee D melees. Those kinds of templates, or those real close, are what I deem as high-end templates.

Now, these templates, as said previously, do well alone, and in groups, but people choose not to use templates that are like this. Many choose not to have life magic to increase their damage. Remember, offensive magic is a % to succeed. So, if a melee/missle person can get a double vuln on in 4 casts or so, that's great, because that's all they need. They don't need continuous successive successes with magic, like a mage, and so, their magics don't need to be at the top to be best used.

So, some people choose not to have life magic on their melee/missle templates so they can be "tanks", or some odd template. Why is it that melee/missle people do not pick up a skill to increase their damage, when they can!? Honestly, please help me here.

Is it because they want to have <attack weapon>, spec'd melee D, spec'd missle D, spec'd healing, or something like this!? Is it a "don't want to use magics" thing? Is it a "I don't want to spend time preparing an enemy for attack like a mage?" Please, give me some reasons someone would not pick up life magic for their character to increase their damage.

Personally, I've not chosen life magic on some of my melees because I didn't want to spend the time to cast spells. I wanted the relaxed life a melee had just whacking at things without having to press tons of buttons. He can pick up life spec'd without a problem, but that's the reason I don't pick up life on a lot of my guys. It's either I don't want to imperil/vuln stuff to do more damage, or I want to use them in group fights with another mage.

Now, whatever option you pick, that's fine. Everyone has different playstyles. But, I'd still like to know in more detail why people choose not to take up life magic, complain about not doing the damage with life magic, but can take up life magic. It boggles me hehe.

But, I don't think that's quite the problem. Content is part of the problem. Many may remember, long ago, there were tons of melee centric dungeons, but those number of dungeons have semi-dwindled compared to the playebase and/or do not offer the same benefits of hunting out in the open against magic casting creatures. This, I think, is part of it. Adding some more melee/missle related areas and dungeons, would help spread out the options people have, that they once used to have.

Though, I think it deals more with the gimpy mages vs the gimpy melees vs the gimpy missle people.

Now, take a no-life melee or missle person and an all-trained mage. The mage will be able to go to VoD, caul, etc. but with some difficulty, that's for sure, _but_ they'll be able to kill what they want without a huge problem. Those same no-life melees and archers will be able to, but with a much greater difficulty. A difficulty so great, it makes it almost worthless to be doing it.

The mage, though all-trained, still has access to a damage increasing skill (life), their attack weapon (war), buffs (creature and item), and also other skills as well. The melee does not get the benefits of a damage increasing magic to couple with a main non-rending attack.

If you look at the lower end templates, you'll see that's where the difficulties/problems arise. When viewing low end melee-missle people with high-end templates, you can see the huge gap, but it's the gap between the low-end templates that is the cause for concern here.

Fixing the low end templates so they are a bit more solo'able, similar to a low end mage, would get closer to fixing things. Though.... a melee/missle person usually options for higher defenses by not spending the skill credits on life magic, and perhaps other magic related skills. That increase to defenses should be considered in balancing the low-end out.

Low-End templates, to me, feel more like a person choice template, that has it's own unique positives and negatives.

I'm still contemplating whether if it's capable of allowing for all templates to be high-end templates, but.... When you spend time, resources, etc. preparing a creature (lets say this is a hybrid archer doing this) it would seem that doing more damage than someone who didn't spend the time, resources, etc. would make sense. The skill credit game is something that doesn't hold all the truth of why someone should be doing better than another. Some skills play off each other, some don't. But also, time spent doing certain things. If a melee/missle person spends the xp to be able to vuln things, they should do more damage than someone who doesn't. They spent the time, efforts, less xp into other skills related to their class, and things like this.

No time is spent in pressing the Delete key.


Some things I'd like to see for melee/missle people:

Slayer properties looked at. I, as a mage, can hit something for what looks like rending weapon damage, on tumeroks (fire), with an assault orb. Melee and missle people town crier their tumerok slayer weapons, or it collects dust hehe.

low-end templates given a bit of love to help with soloability. Perhaps a bit higher rending effect, so with a top notch skill, they can hit like they're using a lvl 7 vuln.
Maybe lower the armor on some creatures.

One thing that a vassal and I were joking about was shooting wars from melee weapons like you would with a wand lol. This may not be something melee/missle people want, but I think it'd be funny, and actually... probably usable if done correctly.

As an example: SoLL shoots Holy Bolts. Each bolt does 90-120 damage. Spellcraft: Special

When I say special, I mean, the spellcraft will be whatever your arcane lore is + 10% of your melee attack skill. So, say you have a 300 buffed lore skill, and a 420 buffed melee Skill. You'd shoot a 90-120 holy damage bolt with a 342 war skill.

It may just seem wierd, I dunno. Say you're fighting something alone, and it's anti-melee. You're hitting for 10s, but your Flaming Takuba has Flame Bolt VI. You could hit the creature for 90-120 instead of 10s. I figure if the animation would be slow enough, so in PvP it wouldn't be bad.

hehe, now I'm rambling again.

Anyways, it's not the high end templates, it's the low end that need some help, but to help out the low end could mean the high end templates could get a huge boost, as imperil and vuln are multipliers of damage.


Flatfoot, how come you seem to always be on someone's bad side, and/or arguing with them on this forum? You rarely discuss things. It takes two to tango, ya know.

[Vlad Morbius]

Heiddegar
"Anyways, it's not the high end templates, it's the low end that need some help, but to help out the low end could mean the high end templates could get a huge boost, as imperil and vuln are multipliers of damage."
This is exactly why i think the next changes will cripple this game, and possibly cause a mass exodus for those who are tired of yelling into a deaf ear!

[Lloth]

Usually I only write to complain but this time I had been anticipating the patch! First one for a while that I was watching the calendar.

All in all, I love this patch. I'm a mage and I thought some mage luv was needed.

Those new monsters in BM3 look cooool =D And although alot of time was spent waiting on the jumpingly challenged, it was a great dungeon to play over all.

As a fan of the Sing. wand I feel I must defend it lol. With the sing wand I do crits of up to 1000 on non-virindi bad guys. Best crit I've gotten on a VoD V was 1900 and change (with the Sing wand). CB tho... Well it varies alot but the best crit I've gotten so far was 3700 and change on a VoD Banderling. One thing tho, I might just be unlucky, but not against every bad guy do I even see a crit with a CB wand. And I've noticed norm hits with vuln/war are doing a little bit less than they used to (CB wand just hittin without crits).

My main Lloth is a lvl 161 BM w/ 445 buffed war (think its like 367 base?) Anyway, that means I get max effect from my CS and CB, so I'm guessing that no ones crit'n vod V's for over 1900ish dmg, 1000 ish every other bad guy dmg with the sing wand. It's obviously not working at full power and thats probably a good thing lol. Hey, I can dream of a fully functioning CS/CB in one wand can't I? =P

Oh ya, I made a UA toon last week. 2 days old IG and is lvl 72 already =) OHN is one of my fav. dungeons just cuz it goes so deep it just "feels" like an adventure lol. She evades consistantly to the point where even banes are moot if you can manage to stay behind your shield.

With a 8 times tinkered bludg rend cestus and 408 skill (no SS gaunts yet), I'm smackin away for 45-75 dmg a punch and crit, well dunno exacfly but its pretty darn often. Those are about 130ish if I remember correctly. Anyway, point is, unless the mage with me was using ring spells, I'd kill the bug dead before his hands got done raising. Sometimes only taking 2 shots if I got lucky with two crits in a row. Magic does more dmg, but is slower to attack. Melee is very fast attack but lower dmg. Makes sense to me.

Btw, all my toons are 3school. I like to be easily independant. With 205 base life skill (whats that buffed? +67?) my trained life UA toon landed 2nd try on the 60+ Olthoi Matron with imperil 5 lol. I then proceded to beat her down with ease....

[ufhamlet]

Overall, a magnificent patch, folks. Thank you!

- The 3rd Temple. A GREAT quest. It had more elements than any other in the game. The art on the Tormenteds and the Burun was masterful. Further, the Burun had great personality. Two ideas that may or may not have been expressed:

* Make the use of the 4 eyes in the Jump room a one-time flag per character lifetime. To be honest, I haven't tested this, but I have a feeling that if that was the case, someone would have said so by now.
* Add 3 or 4 reward choices for August. More fellowship spells, a War-only wand, a Raiment of some sort, jewelry items...something. 3 items, 1 of which is a weapon that a very small number of people have didn't quite cut it. As always, I'd advocate a series of tinkerer or artisan item that cast 6's and/or moderates in applicable attributes and skills.


- The Vesayan quests. I'm hoping and praying that I missed something. I formed the 80+ gem and explored every nook and cranny of that dungeon. 3million XP and some so-so lore are a little thin, don't you think? I was hoping to hear that there might be some sort of cooperative effort across all 5 levels to accomplish some sort of worthwhile goal, but so far, I've been disappointed.


- I can't wait to find the "1/2-dyes" shown in the portal.dat. It may be a snipe hunt, but I'm hoping and praying that those exist. If they're a trick, you have one patsy trying to find them.


- I love the Magic Absorption quest. It offers an option! You get a huge benefit for a sizable sacrifice. Thank you for giving the player a tradeoff. Further, this type of thing spurs on the economy in many ways, offering new timed pack dolls, tradeable quest items, including the Fetish itself, and Mahogany and imbue-worthy missile weapons. GREAT dynamic.

[bertman]

I keep reading how many people are going to quit because of the changes. Which cahnges? Any changes. Every time something changes, people threaten to quit. It amazes me that there are people still playing at all with all the quit threat threads there are. Except, they threaten to quit, then say they quit, then 2 days later they are back on the boards threatening to quit again.

What most of the quit-threateners don't realize is that there is a human component to this game. The developers are human and the players are human. When the developers come up with a good idea, it's like, "Yeah great idea!" Like item buffs casting all at once is fantastic. I love it. But they all end at once. It gets noisy, startled me once or twice, but hey, I am smart enough to see why this is happening, so I live with it. Maybe they could forsee that it would do this, maybe they overlooked it. They could have waited another month, but I'm glad they didn't. And this whole ultimate wand thing, well it probably seemed like a neat idea, and there are people now using it that will be very upset when this is reverted back to its previous state.

Incidentally, if you have never written a computer program, then you need to shut up, because it is virtually impossible to forsee all the possible outcomes of a programming decision. You have to anticipate every possible keystroke, every possible mouse click, every possible background application. It can't be done. They could test it more thoroughly, but at some point you have to take what you get. You can test for years and not catch every bug. I am sure there are bugs in Microsoft Windows 3.1 that haven't been discovered yet. So lighten up and enjoy the changes, and if you don't like them, maybe you can say so. If you threaten to quit, please just quit, or quit threatening. You aren't going to get anything from the devs, and if I knew who you were in game, I would ask you what you are still doing there.

[introp]

Having played a number of days in this patch, let me say that after several months of great improvements we've taken a step backwards.

Aegis on bows -- A neat idea, but poorly done. Archers have only melee D to avoid damage. Melees have shield and melee D. To use an aegis-type item melees must give up one of two defenses whereas we must give up our only one? My opinion: sorely disappointed

Aegis on bows (part 2) -- melees can chose to use their aegis shield independent of weapon choice. For example, they could use aegis plus weeping or aegis plus phantom. Archers have only the choice of a loot-generated missile weapon. The obvious problems are debuffing the weapon and the lack of shield hollow/slayer/hollow/phantom options. My opinion: sorely disappointed

War magic crits -- Good idea. The consistantly higher crits from monsters hurt, and I'm still a little sore over that, but I feel it was for the better good and I'll get used to it. I'm a little concerned about where this is headed. My opinion: happy, still getting used to it

War magic CS/CB wand improvements -- CS definitely needed some love, though I'm a little concerned it may be *too* much. War damage was well-balanced before and now you've just give a big boost to DoT. I'm still playing with CS on my mage, so I'm still adjusting to this, too. Verdict: concerned about balance and future trends (see below)

Ultimate Singularity wands -- Too much damage in PvM and PvP. Mages rule all hunting grounds that I've visited. Their DoT improvement with the crit/CB/CS/wand changes is pretty staggering to me when viewed in the context of the work it took to keep the various weapon skills balanced.

Looking into the future I'm concerned that you're making war magic behave like other weapon skills when they are very dissimilar in operation. Among the obvious differences is that loot wands do not have damage (or attack) modifiers like physical weapons. I feel that a casting item's CS/CB ought behave differently than a weapon's CS/CB to ensure that everyone gets a reasonably similar damage output.

*sigh*

[zenoth]

Ac has become a very fluid game. Yes character of the season,

is what we have now. I am not worried at all because i can

switch classes and abilities quite easily, it just take a little while.

I started off as dagger and everyone laughed at me, esp when

i would pk a mage for fun. I really got good at the tuck and roll

and run with tail between legs maneuver.

Next, after skill changes came about i went to crossbow skill.

I didnt get the laughs, but still nor did i win more than 1 in 5

battles. Sure i do admit i am not a great pk or pkl person i just

dabble in it like most. After all how serious did i take it DAGGER,

then CROSSBOW, i musta ben outta my head.

Three years later i do pretty well at level 165, i can imp vuln in vod

and make some pretty good exp. There are few if any places i

cannot hunt.

So why the post? Well i can do better! Maybe the twang of the

crossbow has lost its luster, and if i go back and take dagger

all the ladies will make fun of me again for having the smallest

weapon around.

WAR magic has become a very attractive melee weapon now.

Yes MELEE, one using it has all things in it i went dagger and

crossbow for, actually maybe it is MELEE and MISSILE?!?:confused:

I can wade into battle with FULL PLATE mail armor, brandishing

a wand that smacks the best lances and duelist weapons aside.

Fourty-ONE melee def mod with CS, CB FIRE, and BLUDGEON

wands i now have. No melee fighter can best this, i am stronger

than all the 3 Muskateers with my pocket wand.

Dont dismiss this new melee class, IT IS ABSOLUTELY POWERFUL.

I will keep melee def spec lower quick to 10 base, and still have

a higher MODIFIED melee def skill with a 41 def that my 186 mod

xbows have only a puny 27 mod defense( or 17 if i choose to

destroy them with AEGIS, I WOULD RATHER THROWN THEN ONTO

THE NEW CAMP FIREES WE HAVE.

As i convert over the next couple of months to my new melee

class (the wand melee). My melee def goes up, my magic def

goes up alot, my encumberance and weight level goes way down.

I dont have to have fletching mules stocking hundreds of

arrowheads. And the newest benefit my DOT will be hmm ok stay

about the same, mind you xbow life melee def spec at high level

is a very good combo. Simply put i think i can do better, so i will.


The grand delima was how to make missile do better in PVP.

That was the question, that was what this was all about.

So we closed the gap about 10 percent with the fast fire more

accuracy thingey. And we closed the gap about ZERO percent

in PVP with the missile aegis. Tracking was the fix, i dont think

we have heard much, except its gonna take a lonnnnng time to

do. So i dont expect 1 thing to be the fix all, but now we are

on number 2 and we only took a few baby steps.


Ok, so now what do we do? I dont presume to know what

everone else will, i surely love ac and will still be around.


I bet ya this, i can switch to my new MELEE MAGE uber templace

before ac can fix the archery catastrophy. And i can even

probably gather the gems to switch back for when they finally do

fix it.

I cya in game, gimme some time, i'll be blasting stuff along time

before this is fixed.

O yea and btw, no way am i gonna quit, the contect is delightful,

its just a matter of the pen being stronger than the sword.:p

[KPD157]

Luggie Boulders hurt now if they are hollow :)

Nuff said :) Thank you for making the game exciting Turbine love the challenge ;)

[Ashikaga]

I was going to write point by point on the issues I see with the latest patch.

But I see Introp has already covered all I wanted to add.

To summarize...

- Missile Aegis is poorly implemented to have any positvie effect on PK for archers.

- It was fair enough to do something to improve War magic. But, I think you have overpowered it now.

- Why oh why give mages more pk options with the Singularity wands? I think its well accepted that they are the most overpowered pk class. Especially when archers have been waiting at least a year for some sort of boost and little effective has been done so far.

btw I have high level mages, archers and melees - alll of which I play.

[FmrSentFlatfoot]

Luggie Boulders hurt now if they are hollow

To think, that was one of the main reasons I trained Missile and didn't spec Life. That's about to change. I have a maxed trained life of 321, I should have 352 when I spec it. That should easily allow me to land a vuln first or second try everytime on Caul/VoD critters. Yep, those boulders sure hurt even with missile... making missile yet another useless, worthless skill. If there's anything Turbine is good at, it's making what was semi-seemingly balanced, unbalanced. :confused:

Oh well, now it's time for uber Life magic for an archer... now maybe I can give some of these absurdly overpowered mages a run for the money. Maybe I can hit stuff for that mystical, never before seen 4500HP that many talk about. heh

Of course, as usual.. a mage will likely watch me vuln something, and take the kill. So easy when a melee has to take the time to put the wand away and re-equip their weapon. Now if only we could vuln while holding our weapons. Now THAT would be balance.

I won't hold my breath though.

[Crabby Appleton]

yes you can hit an Oblitorator for 4500+ with a 166 CB bow with a lvl 7 slash vul and a lvl 7 imperial....you will crit for 4500+ I have done it many times

but since the new sing bow came out you crit so much more.

My archer is lvl 146 max out cord and a base 367 bow skill with a lvl 7 imperial and a lvl 7 slash vul I crit at 1609 on an OB and I get alot of them,it out kills my CB bow and AR bow.the sing bow is a darn nice bow.I hope they dont nerf it.

But I here there going to nerf the sing wand sooo maybe the sing bow and sword will get nerfed also


Crabby Appleton

[FmrSentFlatfoot]

My archer is lvl 146 max out cord and a base 367 bow skill with a lvl 7 imperial and a lvl 7 slash vul I crit at 1609 on an OB and I get alot of them,it out kills my CB bow and AR bow.the sing bow is a darn nice bow.I hope they dont nerf it.

I hope that was a typo, 1609 is not quite 4500. ;)

I think they're only addressing the wand. The wand does insane silly stupid absurd power compared to anything else they've ever given to mages. The other weapons NEVER get anywhere close to what mages get, when they design a weapon for each class. You've seen people say that they get still as much if not more damage from their AR as they do from the new Bound Sing. That pretty much makes the sing another wall hanger piece of trash.

The wand needs nerfing REAL BAD... but the melee weapons need an increase even over the wand nerf to stay in-line with what the nerfed wand will likely be able to do anyway.

They may tone down the wand, but they'll still make darn sure the mages have the upper hand. They always have... always will.

[Hemorhage]

and whats wrong with mages being somewhat over powered?

war mages cost the most credit wise, are the hardest to level, and cost the most pyreal wise. so for everyone that gets 1/2 dozen skills and true 4 school mages are limited to barely one other skill minus Mana C and arcane lore.

[Forsaken one]

For you archers that dont have a clue how to hunt in the VOD
As for debuffs get a clue. You dont need to be a mage to land them just need the right items. Majors quest items there are lots of things that can help you. IF YOU USE THEM. This is where chains plugins and mass xp hurt the game.(Yes I do love my plugins) Most people have no clue........


VOD
Drudges Seraphs CS Piercing 3-5 hits
Gromnie CS cold 2-4 hits
Raider CS cold 3-5 hits
Dillo CS Slash 2-4 hits

And yes you can get 4500 hits and no you dont need maxed skill to land hits like this.

[Vlad Morbius]

Go to the discussions board and read the rest of this Crimsons'
post, you may learn something about true costs and balance;

Crimson Ghost:
"Many people argue that the reason war is so overpowered is based on skill points (seeing as it costs 16 to spec sword and 28 to spec war), however, until we see characters running around with only Sword spec and nothing else trained and only War spec and nothing else trained, that point is moot. Arguably, for a melee character to be effective today in the high level content they must be a hybrid and have spec Sword/Life, trained MeleeD/Healing/Creature/Item/ManaC (total of 74 skill points) and a fairly fragile balance in innate stats. For a mage to be effective they need spec War/Life, trained Creature/Item/ManaC (total of 66 skill points). Of course it can be argued that a melee does not need spec life magic, but bear in mind I’m talking about the having a character with the ability to imp/vuln monsters as well as kill them. With these 2 setups, both characters would be able to fully self buff, debuff monsters and attack. Now, if we were to take these two characters and max out their essential skills, it would cost the melee exactly 25,022,341,915xp*, it would cost the mage exactly 20,832,469,811xp*. So roughly speaking the melee must make approx 15%+ more total xp than the mage to max out his essential skills (or exactly 4,189,872,104xp*). I'm not even taking into account the primary stats as sword only uses str/coord and war foc/self so it's redundant what they cost to max, although it COULD again be argued that sword must take into account quickness AND endurance while mages only need endurance so you could tack on another 4,019,438,644xp* for quickness. So as you can see, a "complete" mage is actually 8 skill points cheaper and a considerable amount of total xp cheaper than a "complete" melee designed for high-end content. So please, enough with the "WAR COSTS 12 TO SPEC!11!1" arguments already. I'm also aware that some people will say mages need arcane for their wands and majors to be effective, but it could just as easily be argued for melees (the same could be said about missile) so that point becomes completely redundant (p.s: you dont NEED majors.. you just want them )."

So no more mage whining k,
:rolleyes:

[KF_AC]

I don't think I am getting thru to the Devs here.

Hello Turbies, the archery aegis is useless .

What are you going to do about it?

Useless because:

1. you make archers, low strength templates, carry even more equipment.

2. loot weapons are loatherable.

3. AR 166 does less damage than weeping.

This is not even mentioning the arrow speed and pathing problems.

What is needed is a removable aegis, used on all weapons, including hollow, weeping, phantom.

Yes all the above is for PvP, because in PvM aegis does not matter to anyone who has played the game for over 15 days.
Your monsters are predictable and slow, dodging them is very easy. Aegis is redundant for an archer.

thanks for your time.

[Jet-eye-nite]

speaking only from the stand point of a lvl 50+ on VT ,the loot is none less than horrible. I killed a number of 115 swarm E's today and out of the kills had no keepers infact the avg quanity of loot was 2-3 items , why so little ? And the mix ranged from 250-325 wield (skill) and from 200-300 on (any of the MD's) . Things in this mix were such as ; ws 7 3-10 ua 325 weild with rank also ( that is just pure D ****) ,arcane regs upwards of 300 which I am guessing is about lvl 100+ , TONS of useless salvage . I again hope this renewal of loot profile is not done by a long shot .

Lag on VT is very bad (there were 1475 reported IG when I signed in) .

Is there a reason for having to spell out these blindstone spells ?
Would not /ht work as well ?

Ibn responded eariler about a quick test he performed, I sure hope this is not the norm to check out weather a function is correct or not :eek:

Why on such a new server with a fragile economy was last months MC hording aloud to continue ? It just skews pyreal,plats for some time now for those of us that play the game straight up as apposed to some cheats having an unfair advantage that was aloud to continue once it was found out :mad: :rolleyes:

[Silver_Mage_MT]

Ibn just curious, Do you have to be facing the War Spell for Dark Bow's effects to work. Such as the Shield? Mines workin fine im just curious

[Ashikaga]

Heideggar writes..

"And, the creatures don't have magic D of 415 lol. Don't make it so dramatic, sheesh."

Wrong...

At the Vod, Lugians and Virindi Paradoxes have a magic D of 415.

Virindi Quidiox aren't far behind at 410.

Gromnies range from 396-411.

Ursuins, Mattekars and Armoredillos have relatively low magic D's around 366.

Virtually everything else sits around 390-400.

[-Op-]

Something needs to be fixed with Aun Ralirea, searching for something that isn't even spawned is unfair. It needs to be CONSTANTLY ingame. Its a quest put in this game, No point in making it such a rare spawn. People spend alotta time looking for it, while its not even spawned. Please help

[BlenderMT]

Originally posted by Hemorhage
and whats wrong with mages being somewhat over powered?

war mages cost the most credit wise, are the hardest to level, and cost the most pyreal wise. so for everyone that gets 1/2 dozen skills and true 4 school mages are limited to barely one other skill minus Mana C and arcane lore.

The skill credits again. Yes it costs the most but what other skills can a template where 100 end/focus/self use other then healing? A mage with melee or missile or any of the melee weapons would suck with 10 starting attributes. The point of a mage is to be a mage, kill things fast with wars, and heal faster with life. They dont need any more skills.

And as for those skills, you worry about maxing Focus, Self, End, War, Life, Critter, and Health. Thats basically every skill you have trained, but its far less then I have to worry about on my archer. In order for him to be totally effective compared to even a non maxed mage, I have to max 5+ more stats then mages.

As far as hardest to level. You try having gotten my 10 end archer up to lvl 100 when he didnt get melee till 80. My newbie mage I can run around any tuskers dungeon and kill 6 tuskers at a time throwing rings around, thats hard to level?

And pyreals? My archer now kills about 5000 tapers a wekk in buffs and vulns. BUT thats only 125k when using a master mage. When taking arrows i have to make into account? Forget it.

I spend AT LEAST 1 mill in pyreals each week making arrowheads, its almost 300k to make just 100 wrapped elemental.

[Shao Majii]

Thrilled with content except one thing: the new Blackmire quest. I hate the jumping part. With just the right amount of lag, this becomes nearly impossible. After falling, I jumped into the pit to start my way back up and was slammed with enough lag to stop me for over a min. Sometime durring that, I was killed.

Please, no more FPS style jumping. Lag doesn't work well with this. It wouldn't be so bad if this wasn't a one way quest but it's still poor to have complex jumps like this. I will not be attempting this quest again.

The dungeon looks great and mucho props for it's design, but the jumping part sucks. Missing a platform by a few feet is annoying enough without having to go through all that completely over again, only to miss another one because of lag. Disappointing that I have to miss out on the rest of the quest.

Side note about the platforms: they are small enough that DT'ers will have problems completeing this quest in groups since they can't walk through eachother. That alone could cause them to miss the jumps.

[bertman]

I have a suggestion to make: An archer shield, along the lines of the Mattekar Arm Guard. This would be called an arm guard, and it would be equipped to the shield slot. It could drop like a shield with other loot and be made of the same materials as shields. You could make it have armor value, banes, anything you could have with a loot-generated shield, plus an Aegis-like quality as an imbue, similar to the zircon imbue, but with a scalable effect rather than a fixed effect. You could make it visible on the character, which would require some artwork. And you could make it unequipable with melee weapons, but equipable with thrown weapons. This would alleviate the burden issue with multiple bows, since already there is a lot of burden associated with arrows. It should not penalize melee defense. And since magic crits by monsters are getting dangerous to melee characters, you coul make teh aegis-like imdue work for Archer Shields and regular shields as well. What do you think?

[RTA_FF]

Having spent hours upon hours looking for Ralirea for one of my vassals, I have to wonder: Is this really how the quest was designed?"

1) It's designed to be a rare spawn.
That's fine. It should never be a given to find him.

HOWEVER, how much sense does it make to have NO WAY to influence whether he spawns? This is catering to the elite of the game: Those who can afford to be in the right place at the right time (all the time).

Turbine needs a better evaluation of the long term player of this game. I suspect that it would find that it is someone who has time to play but not 24/7.

2) It's designed to ignore the lore written around the quest?
I know the world has a prejudice against short people, but hey, Aun Arantah was an ok guy.

I guess having to talk to him has always been irrelevant, but then, the Devs have to do something with their time.

In the past, there have been quotes about how leveling was not intended to be a grind; about how we should be grateful for ANY reward for certain quests (Bobo comes to mind); or how we, as players, just don't understand what's involved in coding.

I got all that. I still play.

But there's a world of difference between having something rare be a pleasing surprise and having something that was simply uncommon become discouragingly hopeless.

It would have been more thoughtful and considerate to the players if a change such as the one made to Ralirea's spawn, had been disclosed in a LTTP or otherwise previously announced.

[RTA_FF]

p.s. Karwin the Carrot Soup guy up at Bandit Castle still emotes stretching and yawning.

07/22/04 12:39:54 Karwin, the Lunatic is too busy to accept gifts right now.

[Kachina]

The Ultimate Singularity Scepters are unbalancing in PvP combat. We are working to find a good resolution to this.

- Blood Fiends infrequently drop a kite shield that cannot be identified. This is a bug, they should not be dropping this shield. The shield itself is AL40.


__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations


Give me an all white dot server! no pvp pink or red! I am sick of being nerfed for pvp!

[BlenderMT]

Give me an all white dot server! no pvp pink or red! I am sick of being nerfed for pvp!



Now that just may be THE craziest/dumbest thing ive ever heard anyone say.

[Kajabor]

I have read a good amount of the posts between calls so if I missed something, sorry.

I have not had the time to experience this new patch in game yet, but from I have heard so far, this patch was not one of the best, in my opinion as well as last months patch. I have been working 16 hour days for the past 2 months so most of this is based on facts displayed on paper. And, as the past has showed us, things can look good on paper, but can be a total disaster when applied into society, such as communism.

I did not get a chance to reflect on June's patch, so I may go down memory lane and reflect on some of the items implemented on the last patch, which supports some of the opinions that I have for this patch for example, the decrease of damage inflicted by sword especially weeping sword and now with the change to sing weapons patriculary mages in a pvp environment is just rediculious.

No melee can take a mage now. Sword had a pretty good chance at challenging a mage before June, a small change during June, and now they have no chance with this patch. I know that you are all looking into changing the damage on the new sign wands, but with the change made to sword, you are unbalancing pvp yet again. Granted, the increase for melee weapons was needed, but now sword has become useless. I can do more damage with a UA both pvp and pvm.

As far as the pvm discussion goes, all monseters have their strenghs and their weaknesses. That is how the game is meant to be so people would come together and make a fellowship to kill various monsters. That has been the intent of the game since day 1. In VOD, if there is a monster you can't kill, that is probably because you are the wrong class, thus you go with someone that can kill it. Dev's are not going to compromise their fellowship goal just so all classes can kill a high level monster. The reason that evey server isnt complete pvp is because they want people to work together in game. Darktide has figured this out a long time ago. It's not that we want to be ready for some group of people out in VOD that we need to kill, it's so we can gain the highest amount of XP per hour. If you decide to go out by yourself and hunt, that's fine. If you can't kill it, oh well. Stop being so selfish and share the wealth with someone that can. Fellowship, look it up and think MMORPG.

As far as mages lacking the high hits on monsters, I have to agree with this one. I can hit some monster, vulned and imped, with a cb for over 3000. Only a very few number of high level monsters, but with the right equipment, its not unseen. With a mage, they never hit over 1000. I have hunted in VOD long enough to see a mass of mages get wiped out with ease. If they have even just one melee or archer, they have no problems. So, the change to mages on a pvm environment was definately called for.

Now, back to pvp. You all have raised the lower end melees and given archers a better chance with the changes to hollow weapons, finally. As I stated before, you have taken sword and crippled it. Sword does less damage over time than ua or dagger due to having slower attack speeds. Melees have a very hard time killing people one on one. A mage can hit me from 30 to 300+ in one hit (with a crit). A melee, if they are lucky, can hit from 2 to 150+ in one hit depending on his power and for the 150, you need a crit. With a mage, all it takes is 3 spells to kill someone and if you are a melee, its not that hard to land all 3: vuln, war, war. With a melee its switch to a wand, vuln, imp, switch to your weapon, run right up to the guy and start swinging. It would take 3 crits to kill someone 126+. Now, its going to be hard for the melee to even land on the mage. Most mages have 100 focus self and endurance. So, they can have the highest magic plus the highest resist and the most health. With a melee, you have the lowest magic, lowest health, and the lowest resist. The mage will hit the melee almost every time. The mage will resist the melee a majority of the time. All of this is dependent on how you make your character. Yes, a mage usualy has no melee d so the melee can hit every time, but when it comes to damage, the mage will win every time. He does not have to change weapons, he doesnt have to go out of war mode, all he has to do is sit there and tap a key on a few icons. Melees have to switch around their equipment mid battle and to get a decent heal off, he has to go out of war mode. Thus, mages have the easiest recovery rate over anyone else in the pvp environment.

Archers have the worst time in pvp especially against mages. They have to change equipment mid battle as much as melees and they also have to go out of war mode to get a decent heal off. They are also burdened by people wiggling back and forth. They are the easiest to dodge and anyone can dodge them. With an archer, you do have a possible benefit of having high magic and high resist. For years, the damage inflicted by archers has been a joke. Against a mage, they have little chance of surviving since mages can wiggle around. You wiggle around and wait for the shot to go off, you wiggle around, a little less, but still wiggling, and then slam you in the face for 30 to 300+. Now, I have not tested this yet, but the new "aegis" for archers, I do not know if you are able to apply them to weeping weapons. Once I get a day off, I will test this. So again, same scenario with an archer as with the melee: 3 wars can kill him and it takes almost the same amount of steps for an archer to kill a mage as it does for a melee.

The mage has had well more power in the pvp environment before this patch and with the past 2 patches, you have given them a few more classes to be worried about, but the factor of how much they have to worry is still slim. They are still overpowered and it looks like there is no end to their reign of power. Balancing all 3 classes to doing the same amount of damage in the same amount of time would be ideal and have to force people to base pvp more on strategy than on player class. You all wanted an answer to the pvp paradox, well, there you go. Let melees crit for 300+ like mages as well as archers or drop mage crits down to 150+ like with archers and melees. Make a full power melee weapon, full acc archery weapon, and a level 7 war spell take the same time to execute. Now, your attacks will not be overpowered and the only dependent factor anyone will think about is which class they want to defend themselves against.

One other thing that I would like answered. When you all put the vines in the mage hut in the middle of Xarabydun, where did you move Fadsahil to?

[Kajabor]

Yeah, I have to agree with you on the caul situation. Although, a good number of the things out there, I can evade and hit, but that mostly pertains to all the lower and meduim level creatures out there. The high end monsters, well, you can forget that.

As far as putting in high xp flow spawn spots is because its hard to level in AC. Once you get to 126, you need lots of xp in order to up your skills. It becomes an endless battle to get one point into something when you get that high. You hunt in a group for an hour and make 60 mil, but that is only enough to up one skill, in most cases. They just need to have random spawns instead of fixed spawns. That way, you still have your high xp flow monsters but you have to move around in order to get that xp.

[Leetum_al-Roxor]

Ok Devs, you guys have lost all common sense...Mages are way too damn over powered, they have more heath then melees can now do....way too much damage, melees are no longer welcome in caul because we cant 2 hit baikas and hellions..thanx for screwing this game up.

heres an idea....


delete everything, start all over

and then delete it again, stop doing stupid gem quests that have a .05% chance of dropping take a lesson from Verant and learn how to make an MMO I have played this game too long and have seen you guys screw up too much, mages from the begining have been over power starting when they could drain you while you were going through portal space if any of you can still recall that.


MAGES ARE WAY TO FREAKING OVER POWERED!

MELEES SUCK AT LIFE AND NEED TO /DIE

ARCHERS/XBOW/TW ARE JUST STUPID BECAUSE THEY CANT DO ANYTHING!

want balance...make new war magic protections, and GIVE these to monsters also it is rediculas what you have done to this game. Obviously you are all very unexperienced developers, or you just are experienced and are having a good laugh.


....bah...


*edit* btw when I say screw up, I mean you made it so a certian hand full of people were aloud to reach a part of the game that not everyone else can reach now. first mistake, allowing xp chains to ever exist. second mistake, decal. nuff said. Just let AC slowly die, you've stabbed it, its bleeding, let it die in peace.

[Kajabor]

I know where you are coming from, but, as much as I hate to admit it, with the technology that was available with the creation of AC, which was limited at best, it has come a long way and we are seeing the limitations of the graphics/physics engine. Take a look at the games that came out the same time that AC did and keep in mind that the entire game is coded for network play. Now, take a look at how much has changed since then.

I have complained about more than just the overpowering mages. They want to give some balance to the game, but what exactly would put mages on the level as other player classes on a pvm environment? There are monsters that mages are not able to kill and there are monsters that can be killed by mages. Both categories have monster that dispense large sums of XP. Most are scattered about dereth in various places. Many are located at VOD. Some are located at Caul.

The point that Turbine has always tried to get across is that fact that this game is meant to be played as an mmorpg. That was why they had and allowed experience chains through vassals and patrons as well as fellowship xp sharing. They don't expect one person to go out and do everything on their own. If that is what they intended, they would have never put in other buffs.

Now, you are problaly going to say that no one will hunt with you or no one will help you. Well, then maybe you need to go look for some people that will. Even on darktide, it is not that rare to find someone that doesn't mind helping you out. That is what monarchies are for. Yes, some can be a pain and not want to help you and, but there is always some people that do. There are hundreds of thousands of people that play this game on multiple servers. You can not possbily tell me that not one person wouldn't mind helping you level for a bit or even just buffing you up.

In many of the monarchies on darktide, and I am sure that many on the other servers have this as well, they have created buff bots specifically for monarchy members. Some even buff non-monarchy members for a fee and some do it for free.

My point here is that you are not alone in this game and there are people who have said the same thing that you have about the problems with leveling. I have friends that tell me all the time that they have a hard time leveling. Find those other people in game and do something about it. Don't come on the boards and complain about it, that will get you nowhere.

[Ibn]

Originally posted by Kachina
Give me an all white dot server! no pvp pink or red! I am sick of being nerfed for pvp!

The fix we are putting in for the Scepters will not affect their abilities in PvM combat.

[Winter]

Originally posted by Leetum_al-Roxor
MAGES ARE WAY TO FREAKING OVER POWERED!

MELEES SUCK AT LIFE AND NEED TO /DIE

ARCHERS/XBOW/TW ARE JUST STUPID BECAUSE THEY CANT DO ANYTHING!

[/B]

You want balance? The kind of balance you want has the devs remove everything related to life magic and item banes and buffs. Everything goes on base damage of the weapon/spell. THEN they must rebalance everything to that curve. Think it will happen? I sure dont. Instead I trained life. Can't beat em? Join em.

[Mystic-Rogue]

I can't even remeber the last time somthing in pvm got nerfed becouse of pvp.

[FmrSentFlatfoot]

Kajabor writes:

There are hundreds of thousands of people that play this game on multiple servers.

***Hundreds*** of Thousands???!!???!?!!?!??!!?!??!

/e falls off chair in disbelief! :eek:

No seriously, Kajabor? Try 10,000 (all servers)... even at peak times, it's not a whole lot more than this, and I'd say even less most of the time.

Hundreds of thousands. The servers are rated to accept up to 3,000 at any one time... or at least the old archaic MS Servers we had, could. When we did approach those numbers waaaaay back when, the poor servers almost died and the people playing were so lagged out, it would've made AO look like a dream during their beta. (which we all know was just atrocious)

There's not many LARGE stadiums that hold even One Hundred Thousand people. That's a LOT of people. :p

[Kajabor]

There was a site that had all the mmorpgs and listed on a chart the number of players there were for each game. It was not far from it. Now, a server is only rated to hold 3000 people at one time, how were we able to put more than that number on.... I think the servers was called Shadowclaim. The test server for the new hardware.

Another thing that I will always bring up is the situation with exploits. Since exploits affect all aspects of the game, including the amount of lag in game, I was wondering if there are plans to fix any of the well known terrors of the game.

I was playing in game and I fought 2 mages today. Now, a small factor that I completely forgot: fastcasting. This falls under the speed of attacks balancing I posted earlier. A mage, and I have the timestamps to prove it, can shoot a level 7 war spell every 2 seconds and that includes the time it takes to land on the target. Now, it takes a melee, sword in particular, about 4 seconds to swing and hit at full power. Now, a mage can deal an average for 240 damage in 4 seconds. I can not crit with sword for more than 119 with a weeping.

I would love to hear an explanation as to why this is still a problem? This problem has plagued us for well over a year now and you are giving mages weapons that are more powerfull than the weeping wands? I fail to see the logic in this. You also lowered the amount of damage sword can deal.

I am a computer tech with much experience in programming, thus, logic is my business. I fail to see the logic in Turbine's actions in the past few patches to "balance" the classes.

Please, enlighten me. Am I missing something? Or is it something else?

Please, explain the logic of these actions, Ibn.

[FmrSentFlatfoot]

Originally posted by Kajabor
There was a site that had all the mmorpgs and listed on a chart the number of players there were for each game. It was not far from it. Now, a server is only rated to hold 3000 people at one time, how were we able to put more than that number on.... I think the servers was called Shadowclaim. The test server for the new hardware.

Notice my first response was about the old MS servers handling 3,000. If they were using a newer server for Shadowclaim, then maybe it could handle 10,000 at most, but not more than that. Even newer games such as the upcoming Darkfall are boasting server scalability as high as 10,000. You're not going to get anymore than that without causing intense packet loss and roundtrip pings, causing such a horrid experience that the game would be a total flop due to unplayability.

When you first say Hundreds of Thousands, and then back it up with "It was not far from it." Do you have ANY idea how many people that is? Also, what was it, was it One Hundred Thousand, Two, Three, Four...... Nine Hundred Thousand? :rolleyes:

Divide 100,000 by 10 servers and maybe it's possible. But current AC doesn't come anywhere close to that, and I doubt it ever will.
Each 100,000 increase means each server has 20,000 and up to 90,000 per server.

Sorry, we don't have the technology for that yet. Logic dictates maybe in another 5 to 10 years, maybe longer.

[SpaghettiBender]

If we are unable to play for 2 or 3 days, we are entitled to a 10% refund on our subscriptions seeing as our product is unavailable...with 3 accts I expect to see a refund! :mad:

/e holds hid breath

[puma_elvsdragon]

Wow i'm really surprised at how upset people are at each other. just play the damn game. the whole monarchy and fellowship system was implemented to bring players together. Lets face one fact that i don't think anyone will complain about. with the right strategy and a properly gathered group of players of all types (melee, missle, mage) will always have better xp, than a whole bunch of individuals running around screaming "no fair no fair". Don't know about the rest of you all but my mom didn't like that kind of behavior.

thanks for letting me say my little bit. I genuinely hope to play with every one of you some day.

[BlenderMT]

Wow i'm really surprised at how upset people are at each other. just play the damn game. the whole monarchy and fellowship system was implemented to bring players together.


Ok, I cant go any longer withought getting this out. Monarcies, fellowships, any sort of loyalty that used to be had in these things is dead.

NOT by the removal chains.

But by PKL.

Before PKL when there was just Red, everyone in a monarchy was closer much more then they are now. At least for a LOT of monarchies PKing is a large part of the game for many of the main members.

When the attrocity known as PKL came out all loyalty to a monarchy or friends was lost. WHO CARES if they lose their buffs? Noone, so who cares who you fight against today, you may be in the same fellow as them tomorrow fighting the people you are fellowed with today? Someone attacking someone else in your monarchy? Oh well, just sit there and watch, its only buffs, who cares if hes in your monarchy.

When PK was the only option, people had loyalties, people had friendships and understandings with other players. Now the only loyalties lie in themselves and how their record stands on PKHunter. Every day you can gain a new enemy, but at the same time the next day he could be a friend again. PKL has made things so volotile in game its not even funny.

PK there were never day to day changes in monarchies or who your friends/enemies were, it was an ongoing, FUN war. Someone in the same monarchy would NEVER stand there and watch as a guildmate got attacked, they would NEVER be in a fellow with their enemies just for a day, and events were being set up every weekend.

Now your lucky if you set up a PKL event and 10 people show up for it.


Anywyas, that was more an argument for getting rid of PKL all togeather then for what the July patch was.

But still. It has ruined the game and a lot of the fun that was PKing. Maybe other people just forgot what it was like to have fear when running though a town to get comps, what it was to have loyalties to your friends and not just for the day, what it was to have fun with your guild PKing instead of just a new fellow every day, what it was to have a war of Zaikhal versus Al-Jalima.


I miss the days of red.

[bertman]

What I am getting from the announcements is that there are multiple servers for each world, running in clusters. Clustering allows multiple discreet servers to operate on the same data. Chances are, the game data is stored in a SAN array, which is shared between the servers in the cluster. When a lanblock laods, this is where it comes from, and when a landblock is unloaded, it si saved there with corpses and the like.
The servers are probably linked by a fiber-channel cluster controller, which is like full-duplex fiber optic in a star topology. Server hardware can handle RAM in quantities exceeding 4 gigabytes, and upwards of 8 processors per actual server unit. I would surmise that the server clusters are 3 at least per world with at least 4 processors per server. I'm speculating.
But from this, I would guess that the limiting factors are hardware performance issues like processor speed and quantity, RAM, and bandwidth on the link between the servers in the cluster and on the internet. So, upgrading to faster hardware would positively impact the client experience.
It seems also that some database functions are performed by servers that are seperate from the actual game servers. Most probably, every time your character saves, the data is removed from the game server and updated in a SQL database on another server. Thus, all the character data is stored in a database on a server that saves data from multiple worlds, and can probably save data on upwards of 100000 characters per database.
I think it is more of a software issue than a hardware issue how many characters can be saved offline. I would venture a bet that housing data is stored in a seperate database, which is cross-referenced to the character that owns it.
Anyway, the capacity of the actual game world is about 2500 logged-in users at this point, which I think has been for at least 2 years, since I used to see messages sayin the server is full at 2500 when I first started. This is most likely a software-imposed limitation in response to observed performance at different numbers of users online, but it may also be something to do with bandwidth and Zone server issues. I think that advancements in technology will increase the performance, and allow more users to connect at current performance levels.
Historically, advancing technology has managed to double the perfomance of processors every 18 months, so we should be able to see a doubling of connected users every 18 months, excluding software factors that limit the number of objects the game can handle. I would assume that since I started playing, technology has at least doubled the MIPS of current processors, and possibly doubled again. The number of broadband users has also skyrocketed compared to dial-up users. I would conclude that the 3000 number is arbitrary, and could be modified upwards fairly easily if the hardware were current. Given that hardware performance has double at least twice in the last four years, 12000 users per game server (cluster) would not be beyond possibility, and so we get very close to 100000 users online concurrently with 8 worlds running simultaneously, with current technology. Newer software might achieve 15000 or more, so I could easily imagine games with 50K users online at the same time, within 5 years at the most.

[FmrSentFlatfoot]

Originally posted by bertman
Historically, advancing technology has managed to double the perfomance of processors every 18 months


I agree with most of what you say, but you're missing one KEY point. It means Turbine would have to upgrade their hardware/software to the latest most powerful equipment, every 18 months.

What I say to that? Dream on! :p

What Turbine would more than likely say to that? Dream on! :p

Just give me a Holodeck like STTNG, you can keep the rest. :D

[EarthScoprio]

Okay, I understand the infrequent and unplanned downtime that is caused by hardware and software issues, but to have to rollback the servers to Sunday morning because someone was too lazy to perform a nightly backup... is simply unacceptable!!! :confused:

Now ofcourse, some of you players or Devs might say, if I don't like it, I can simply leave the game and find something else to do. The problem is this, I choose to play this game and I pay a monthly fee and have been doing so since beta and I really want Turbine to give me and the rest of us who are asking a "reasonable" explanation of why the cluster failed and why there were no preventive measures put in place ahead of time to simply mitigate this risk all together!

Frankly, since Turbine has taken control of the servers from MS, the quality has deteriorated in both presentation (ex: message box used to appear to say the servers are down and will be down for "n" hours, not any more since the switch) and maintenance (more downtime than normal, patches are no longer on a regular day, instaed they change based on when the Devs are ready to deploy...) All of this sounds Amantuerish (if this is even a word). Its high time you guys put in some quality control and improve this game to the level that it deserves considering the monthly cost associated with it. If you can't do that, for whatever reason, just simply say so; in other words, give us the option to stay or leave under the conditions you dictate. But to promise quality service and deliver a below par product is simply unbusiness like, "Amatuerish". :o

Refund for downtime time, might make some happy, but not me. I pay for the product and I expect it to perform. I am software engineer and if I build software products that go down as much as this one does, I would lose my job without my boss missing a beat. So guys, please repect our intelligence and tell us why did this really happen and how it will not happen again, otherwise we might start specualting that it may have happened due to Turbine being cheap in putting quality redundant hardware in place to increase profit margin... ;)

[bertman]

It isn't necessary to upgrade to new hardware every 18 months. I was not saying that they should. Why would I think less of Turbine as a company if they didn't? I'm quite satisfied with Turbine, thank you very much. I have never threatened to quit AC, either, unlike some who say they quit, yet keep posting on and on like they are still playing. There is more to delivering a game like AC than just keeping a datacenter running. Any internet site that is 100% available, but with content that never changes, would be useless to most people after a very short time. And changing content does not come without a cost, especially if that content is to be interesting.

I was saying that it may be possible, as the other poster stated, to have 100k players in a game. It could be 100k subscribers, and it is possible that with newer hardware, perhaps 15k players online in a single AC world might be possible. And in today's migration, I would bet that we are getting more advanced hardware. I say this because you can't buy new hardware that is identical to hardware available only a year ago, because they don't make it any more. Turbine would have to have had the equipment sitting in boxes in the basement all this time for that to happen. If I have to experience 2 days of downtime, plus one day of rollback, I would be happier than happy if the equipment they are using is 2 times faster than the equipment being replaced.

[Henshi_Muyo]

Turbine is wasting my time and my money with their crashes and their rollbacks. They OWE the players of AC because everything i have done from sunday and monday will now be basically gone. If i could post how mad and upset i'm with turbine right now i would probably get banned from this forum and the game. Keep up with ur equipment and stop ticking people off. that

Thumbs down make that X10 this patch really sucks. Not because of the downtimes but everything put together. :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad::mad:

[FmrSentFlatfoot]

"Amatuerish"

Amateurish. (Amateur) Amateur-like or Amateur-like qualities works better for me.

I agree with you. But understand this is not the first time this has happened, and it likely won't be the last. As much as people may dislike it, things DO break now and then, just like in real life when your car breaks down when you're 20+ miles away from the nearest service centre. What then, do you write the car manufacturer and demand to know why their quality control isn't better? No, you just accept that nothing lasts forever, get it fixed, and continue onwards down the road of life. ;)

[Lord-of-Light]

Well, I guess I'll just have to be one of the few that agrees with Turbine's decision to address the Caulcano issues once they determined that they were problematic.

I'd note that they did have a coupl of other options. One would have been to substantially reduce the frequency with which/number of times that these particular crits spawned; had this been the method chosen, I suspect that most (but not all) of the folks who are upset would still have been as or more upset with that "fix" as well.

Another option would have been to beef up those crits' stats to be more commensurate with the XP reward. Entirely aside from the fact that this would have limited the area to even fewer players that were still able to handle the challenge, and thus made this part of the game even more elitist than it has been up to now.

But, as Ibn indicated, that wasn't the real problem. The real problem was that the XP these crits were generating was simply too high, and their presence was raising what -- in terms of expectations -- we were accustomed to, and leaving them ingame would even further raise those expectations for the next group of super-high level critters that would be introduced.

And that's the kind of cycle that just can't last indefinitely. You can already see it in threads on these boards (or those on ACV, etc.) where folks are asking that the lvl cap be raised...and that the spec point limit be raised...and the threads asking for even higher lvl hunting areas, or for counterpart "melee-friendly" areas and counterpart "missile-user-friendly" areas.

And the gap between very high level players and other players, particularly new/low level players, continues to widen...so much so that there are more threads about the Devs needing to come up with ways to remove the "tedium" of lower lvl play and make it easier to get to lvl 50, where the "real game" starts.

Sorry, while I don't have a problem with those of my fellow ACers for whom the game is all about XP and leveling, I simply don't think that that's where the long term future/viability of this game rests (if it has one).

And the challenge of these crits will still be there, and their loot profile will apparently remain unchanged; all that's changed is the XP yield...and it's my understanding that the change is to roughly halfway between what it first was and is now.

That seems like a pretty good compromise to me.

[SpaghettiBender]

Now this IS unaccpetable ; we have endured a 48 hour outage, a roll-back and now the TD server is once again offline. Any player not in world cannot connect or reconnect to the server. Turbine is on the verge of alienating many players if they are unable to keep their product accessable. There is a growing number, myself included, who do not ned nor desire aggravation from what is supposed to be a pleasurable diversion from R/L.

[Seregil]

Once again that dizzying intellect of Turbine has screwed the pooch! As a level 93, unburdened, with a jump skill of 459, I was at the Tusker Holding when all of a sudden I found that I couldn't jump out of the pit if I missed the bridge. This is unacceptable. What the @#$^ good is a jump skill if we cannot use it. It is a long run to the Holding and having to recall out and run back is not worth the trouble. Thank you Turbine for once again ruining a good exp quest. I might as well get a exp refund on jump skill if this is the way Turbine is going to nerf this skill.

[Herne]

Hey All. I started playing AC when it first came out, played AC2 when it came it. Stopped playing for 2 years and have come back this month. Amazingly, even after a 2 year hiatus, my original gimped old school characters were still there.

Here is what i have noticed in 3 weeks of play.

The Game has changed. The Game has changed for the better!
I have been having a blast playing again. I have not been able to do any quests yet because there are so many, I dont know which to do. Also, in my monarchy, I am pretty low level so there are few people that I can run with. But that is also changing.

I went to Tusker Island - Awesome
I bought a cottage - Awesome
I began to tinker - Awesome - well except the results
I went with my main and forgot how to boil water! (Skill return)
I freaked when I saw the new banderlings, crystal golems, gold golems, tiny little tuskers throwing coconuts!


Comments on the boards have not changed, the arguments remain the same. the bad spelling remains the same. The balancing remains the same.

OMG, they had a crash, hardware blew up. That sticks in a major way, but, all is not lost, they got the worlds back up and only lost what 2 days. No biggie. In two days 15 soldiers died in Iraq. Hardware crash is small beans to me.

After a long break here's my bottom line: the game is balanced, not perfectly but this isnt a perfect world. Turbine is taking ownership of their prgram, Turbine is being very talkative and responsive. And I am looking forward to august event!

My one complaint: after 6 years, is there anyway to update teh graphics engine. AC2 is so beautiful..Imagine the Temple of Ithanac done onteh AC2 engine..LOL

BTW, ever thought about tossing AC on a mainframe - 0% downtown..LOL

The Dinosaurs are back, and were very angry!

Herne

[bertman]

You know you can get out of the place under the bridge by jumping up on a tusker then jumping out. It's a challenge, but it can be done.

If something is unacceptable, don't accept it. If most of the people who complain about every single problem as if it were a personal affront had even the slightest inkling of what it takes to write even a simple program, let alone a multiuser client-server application, they might have a little respect. The only way Turbine can win is to stabilize the game at some epoch, and never add any more content. So we get acceptable, but no monthly updates? That's unacceptable! So quit complaining and get a life.

[FmrSentFlatfoot]

Seregil:

The same can happen at Tusker Pits, the small bridge just before you jump down to the bottom to the Tusk Room, if you happen to wind up below that bridge, you're not getting back up unless you have 450+ Jump Skill. You also need 450 at Holding as well.
If you can't land on the bridge, it means you need more jumping lessons... start practicing! ;)

Herne:

Um, two years?! You came back after two year into a low level toon, and you find it a real cool, well balanced game. That's totally understandable. That's the equivalent of having never played this game before, so it's no big surprise that you find the current AC an awesome wonderland.

Let us know how you feel in another 3-4 months. :p

[Seregil]

One thing is for certain in this game, if you don't complain, nothing will change. There was absolutely no reason for the change in that pit. It still required a good jump skill to get out, so why mess with it. No reason other than to **** people off. I specifically raised my jump so that I could jump out of pits or atop walls, huts, off mountains, etc.

[Herne]

Originally posted by FmrSentFlatfoot
Seregil:

The same can happen at Tusker Pits, the small bridge just before you jump down to the bottom to the Tusk Room, if you happen to wind up below that bridge, you're not getting back up unless you have 450+ Jump Skill. You also need 450 at Holding as well.
If you can't land on the bridge, it means you need more jumping lessons... start practicing! ;)

Herne:

Um, two years?! You came back after two year into a low level toon, and you find it a real cool, well balanced game. That's totally understandable. That's the equivalent of having never played this game before, so it's no big surprise that you find the current AC an awesome wonderland.

Let us know how you feel in another 3-4 months. :p

Never said he was low level. He is a lower level then most people in his monarchy. 47 is nothing to sneeze at especially since I am a casual player.

And I did not say well balanced, i said it was balanced, but not perferct. Anyone can point to singular instance where things are out of balance to prove your theory that it is all out of balance, that type of thinking is called Cognitive Bias: You only acknowledge what fits your theory. Obviously you only skimmed the my post.

(no need to be insulting)

Most just say oh well this isnt balanced so everything is wrong.
Oh, there was a hardware failure, its the end of the world.
Oh (insert class) get all the love/are uber.

Hardly anyone noticed the really good stuff..progressive story line, new dungeons, new treasure, better looking armor, live interaction with characters frlom the story line.

Sad.

H

[Hemorhage]

^ schooled.

[Kajabor]

Herne,

I don't know if you went over my previous posts in this topic, but I described the pvp balancing issue in great detail between the three classes. Pvp balancing has been a big problem for a long time now with all the changes they have made between the classes and with all the exploits that have been discovered in game.

As far as the hardware issue goes, there will always be hardware issues. The system has been running, in my opinion, quite well for being up 24/7/365 for almost 8 years now. Finally, some hardware gave out. In that much time with under such stress, it is not uncommon. I have to deal with an exchange server everyday that has a problem with its information store service. Why? I don't know and of course Microsoft is no help on the issue. This has been on ongoing issue for the past 3 months. Turbine fixed their hardware issue in 2 days.

People who don't work in IT do not understand the workings of such a system. All they want is it to work. They don't want to deal with downtime and they want things at a snap of a finger. People will always complain about something when it is not working. When something in game is not balanced, of course people will talk about it and when it starts to become on ongoing issue, people will start to get impatient and start to complain about it more often. Numerous exploits such as gear have been a problem for over 2 years now.

Now, what people do not realize is that this hardware issue could have been a result of an exploit. For example: gear "optimizes" a few dll files to transmit their information to the servers faster than what turbine regulates the client upload speed, which is why gear makes people in game move around faster and able to do more in a certain amount of time than anyone else. When you overclock a computer, you start having heat issues. Well, if you change the upload speed to the server, the server has to compensate which means it has to adjust itself in order to work with what it is being told to process. Say the server hardware, in this case, the NIC/Network Card/LAN Card is already at maximum upload and download speed. Everyone is sending information to the server at a speed regulated that everyone updates at the same time in game. Now, you have someone uloading at 3 times that speed. Now, the server has to push itself to meet this speed which will cause lag for everyone. Now, if the regulating program says that everyone receives updates every second and one person is trying to push a thrid that time, he is now effecting the transfer rate of information on the software that regulates the speed, thus pushing the processor beyond its limits, as well as, the hard drive in which the game and regulating software resides, the hard drive which the swap file resides, processor power, memory, northbridge which controls the flow of information to memory and processor, southbridge which controls flow of information between NIC, PCI slots, ide controllers, and if the hard drive is scsi, your scsi controller is in one of those pci slots, thus everything is being forced beyond capacity which in turn requires more power when driven beyond capacity and then any one of those items then burns out and breaks because it was not made to take such stress and the server was not made to be put to anything beyond it standards.

This is just one possibility of why the server hardware failied.

Everything can affect the server. People do not undestand this concept and they don't care. As long as they have an upper hand in this game, they don't care if the melt the server. As long as the server is working, they are happy. Once it goes down, they get mad. The mindset of the majority of people in this game is that if something broke, it is never their fault.

Now, I am not saying this is completely the user's fault. Turbine should have done away with this years ago. Prevenative maintenance. If Turbine had implemented something that barred the use of gear two years ago and put something in that enforces it completely, we would see, at the very least, a 50% drop in lag especially on Darktide.

Again, this is just one example and I used gear as an example because the people that do use it usually don't deny it game. There are a few that do, but most will tell you if they are or not.

They do not care if it the results means that Turbine has to fix the server every day because it is not their problem. They don't have to fix it. Ignorance is bliss and the majority of people all this world will live and die by that saying. If someone gets a virus on their computer, do you ever hear them say that it was because they did something? No. Never their fault. All they did was download something off the internet. But, it wasn't their fault that they got the virus.

If people continue to exploit in game, they should be ready to face downtime. Turbine did not intend for their physics/graphics engine to be fooled by people breaking animation, forcing changes in game that were never part of the equation. Implementing code that manipulates the source code in AC.

Going back to my statement about my exchange server. I installed it and turned it on. It worked fine for months. I did not have to touch it until someone tried something that was never intended to be part of the exchange server. Someone who doesnt know how the exchange server works or interacts with other applications and hardware. But, it is my fault that it is not working.

Ignorance is bliss.

Now. People use exploits to get the upper hand in game. In most cases it is to help balance the game. It is unfortunate that they need this, but when Turbine tries to balance one aspect of the game, they unbalance another. They never go back to the basics. People spin jump because melees stick all the time. People gear because run skill is underpowered so a mage with higher run than a melee can run away since run caps at like 300 and the variance in the skill is slim to none. Of course, you have other exploits because people can not take losing or playing a game that is balanced such as mages who have to fastcast/speedcast because they need to throw a level 7 war spell in hit the target every 2 seconds.

I am not saying that "oh well this isnt balanced so everything is wrong." What I am saying is that if this game was balanced, there would be no need for exploits. If turbine would take charge and ban exploits and balance the game, people would enjoy it more. More people would be playing. Turbine could spend their money on hiring people to upgrade the game and servers than having to hire people to govern the game, replace parts on the outdated servers, and having less lag in game as well as less downtime.

[Herne]

Kajabor,

I have skimmed your posts, but since I do not play PVP, I tend not to get involved in those arguments. I have no experience with that side of the game, and therefore, have no basis for an opinion.

PVP is a different world from the Game itself and has different dynamics and problems seperate from the Game itself. The line for me is when the dynamics of PVP spill over into the the non-PVP realm, when more resources are devoted to satisfying a very small portion of the player base, when a small portion of the player base uses tools that negatively effect the larger portion - and those players KNOW that its effecting the whole, that's when I voice my opinion.

I remember gear quite well, and I remember how badly it effected game play for everyone. I applauded Turbine at every step they used to stem gear. Personally, they should have used stronger tactics.

My point was non-specific to an individual post - unfortunately a very sad person took it as his/hers/its personal crusade.

If you argue that there is a problem with object A because of reasons 1,2,3. That's great.

If you argue that because person A perceives an unfair advantage and everything is worthless and the game shoudl be shut down and the developers are stupid, then you are wasting everyone's time, dragging everything into the mud.

A couple small flaws does not ruin the whole. The whole could be great, and merely needs some refinement in problem areas.

As to your accurate discussion of hardware, cool. Right on the money. You reflected what I said about people over reacting to the hardware failure and turning around making outrageous demands, putting the developers down. I'm quite tired of whiners whose sole methodology is to cry like spoiled brats.

I lost two days of play time like everyone else, and a few items I fought hard for; but, hey, i'll just play again and get them back. No real loss because nothing in the Game is real.

Coming back after a two year hiatus, I very quickly saw the massive changes that occured within the game, and they were all good. The fact that they were so evident shows just how much the Turbine team has invested in this game, improving and fixing areas. I also saw some of the same problems from before as well. I'd rather take the high road, rather than sink into the mud.

H

[goldeelox]

Since base 290 req bow is 130 + and base 290 req xbow is 150-155 I assume the 132 damage mod on the ultimate singularity xbow is a bugg? Shouldn't it be a 152 for this ultimate weapon ??
Just wondering because I would try it but It Is Heavy and for the mod let me see pierse rend 179 mod or 132 sing upgrade mod ummm thinking?
Ty going to hunt ivory :Þ
Goldeelox!