Give us your feedback on the October Letter to the Players! [Archive]

Heideggar

10-01-2004, 06:10 PM

Could you give some more information as to why you're having more maintenance outside of your other maintenance? Doesn't this equate to more time not able to play? Or are these schedule maintenances suppose to alleviate a lot of the problems people experience with packet loss, lag, and other assorted server issues!? I just don't quite understand the need for it. Mind giving some more info behind this?

Salvaging Skill:

"The Salvaging skill cannot be specialized and is not based on any attributes. The Salvaging skill's curve for rate of return when salvaging is considerably different from the curve used for the existing Tinkering skills." - Turbine

considerably different? So different that I only have to put in a little XP to see big returns? Well, guess I'll get a nice chunk of XP back from those "tink-salvaging" skills I've got on my guys. Though, I thought you had said that having the ability to salvage well without putting a lot of xp into the skill would allow a big influx of salvage into the trade market or something, which was undesirable.

It's good that everyone gets to salvage well, and without too much trouble, as it's almost an essential part of playing this game these days. Would love to see some solid racial balance some day though.

"To this end, all characters will receive Gems of Forgetfulness for each trained Tinkering skill upon first login after the October event. These Gems will not count against the quest timer for skill sellback. " Turbine

I hope this means I can untrain Item Tinkering on my gharu'ndim characters lol

More salvage than normal is kinda cool, and I think this is a solid good step. Glad you were able to get this done "sooner than later".

It's kinda sucky to hear that it's going to take so long to balance the racial groups though. I know there are some really good ideas out there, but we won't get to see them to fruitation because of the lack of resources available to do stuff... sigh, due to billing migration, X-Pack, moving, etc.

Good job on the salvaging overall imo. I know quite a few friends that will be happy for this : )

Ust Improvements:

Ibn, is it just usting the salvage, or is it Ust + Combine!? Makes a huge difference. I don't want 5.00 steel diluting my bag of 10.00 steel.

If it's just usting, and not combining, I think it's good. I like #2 and #3. Too bad they weren't done a lot sooner hehe.

Crafting Quests:

More crafting quests, cool. Thought the tinkering skills would be getting something soon though!? Thought it was mentioned that siraluuns would be dropping trophies for tinker skills. But, *sigh* you shouldn't, or at least not for item tinkering. All ya need is this huge populace of gharu'ndims pumping up item tinkering and using this to make xp!?

Tooth Changes:

10 mill. xp every couple of weeks is rather low. I don't understand why you don't require having multiple trade skills to be a requirement. If this is for tradesmen, gear it for real trademules. If you don't have a real tradesmule, wouldn't you have the skill credits to take up combat abilities, which is what these rewards are suppose to supplement!? You guys are making this harder than what it really is. Having 3 spec'd trades skills is a descent amount of skill credits. Can't you check to see what the starting attributes are as well!? You could really narrow down who can really use these trademule/tinkmule rewards if you'd just look at what constitutes a real trademule/tinker mule, which is what this is geared for. But hey, spend more time and resources you guys can't afford. See, you guys say "very high levels of skill" by using these rewards. How many rewards do I have to turn in to raise alchemy, cooking, or fletching one point when they cost 50 mill to raise? I could say that you could reach very high levels killing rabbits around Tou Tou, as long as you have 50 years to wait. Hey, I'm all for stopping the abuse, but you're gonna end up nerfing this to where you're gonna have to start all over if you're not careful.

We'll see how this plays out.

In Development:

While it's good stuff, there isn't a whole lot there lol. Sounds like you've got everyone trying to help balance PvP.

In-Concept:

You guys have nothing In Concept? That's just wrong on all sorts of game development levels lol.

CinnamonGirl

10-01-2004, 06:27 PM

PartyVT

10-01-2004, 06:33 PM

Ibn, two questions:

Will there be a new spell to buff the salvaging skill? Also I very much hope that the skill check is not on the same scale as with the regular tinker skills: for instance for a return of 100% on work 10 items I need about 450-ish skill. With no underlying stats there is no way to reach 450.

kat/CG
O-

it is not on the same scale according to the LttP

if it cannot be buffed that means it is balanced for nonbuffed chars, i.e. chars without creature dont need to carry another item just for one buff, great :D

CinnamonGirl

10-01-2004, 06:37 PM

Heh looks like I missed that paragraph.

Oh and much <3 for the >100% return. No more annoying 99 units of Work9 granite that needs an entire work 9 item wasted just to top off.

Step

10-01-2004, 06:40 PM

Good news on the salvaging, this will be a big timesaver for everyone.
Looking forward as usual to this event

Add these to your in concept since this letter had none ;)

Couple of things i would like to see mentioned somewhere in the future is possible a tinker to change a melee d/missile d activation to magic d/raise arcane lore activation req. You guys gave us the Magic d requirements for cove armor but just about all of the high al armor thats out there has ridiculously high missile or melee d activation requirements so its worthless junk sittin on a mule waiting for the day when the IN CONCEPT letter has this subheading: Additional Tinkers Coming

And more filters, two i can think of right off hand

@filter -expirations, aka 'the significant other/parental unit screams "what the hell was that noise" while you cringe to reach for the lower sound volume" bane expirations'

@filter -component usage, i would like the option to see my magic spells success or failure but lose the spam from comp burns

Edit for a possible IN CONCEPT, A buddy and I were hunting Hidden Caverns one night and thought if the developers want to make the assess skills valuable again we pondered combining them or changing one into an assess environment, where the skill provides a person a chance to avoid dispels/traps or see hidden levers and the like, cuz the debuff trap and the rocks suxors ;)

-Kaxak-

10-01-2004, 06:58 PM

ROFL , Just like last month I can see once again there won't be any content to the Oct. patch .... just fixes and more fixes , and in the months to come it doesn't look like much content is gonna be added either , just more bug fixes and nurfs for PvP weapons . Oh Boy !!!

I guess since you guys have a major laps of content to add to the game , maybe you can at least give us ONE good nurf and that is stop the "RAIN" ... my ping rate goes up 100 to 200 ms when it rains and I'm on a DSL connection with an AMD qs 3200+ comp . so I know the increse in ms. isn't on my end ........ lmfao it rained about 20 hours a day in the summer WTF is that ? .......

Signed , for $12:95 we don't get alot anymore huh , figures :rolleyes:

Ibn

10-01-2004, 07:00 PM

Well I am not abusive, yet I am going to be nerfed. I think this is a Colossal error in judgement on your part. I have a true trademule http://www.acstats.com/server/solclaim.nsf/open/Atomic+Punk?opendocument
and his skills are just over 400 base, now you are nerfing his xp that he was Legitimately receiving. Bstrds

Our goal is to allow characters to reach very high levels of skill through these interactions. You have reached very high levels of skill. I understand that you're upset you can't get as much XP from these quests, but the level of skill you currently have gives you a very good chance of succeeding at almost all existing Alchemy and Fletching interactions.

Ibn

10-01-2004, 07:02 PM

What! nothing about a report on Aun Raleria and other elusive spawns? are you skipping out agian? it isnt full Lttp by my opinion.

not even scarecrows???

The spawn rate of Aun Ralirea is being increased. I didn't consider this to be a complicated change worthy of the LttP, considering I just described it in a single sentence. But yes, the change is in for October.

Ibn

10-01-2004, 07:04 PM

Quick question :
Does the data base stores informations about our char like : "how long since he trained-speced this skill ?", "Did he started with it, or trained it later?"

It could be usefull for craft quest to determine % reward.

No. No date information is stored regarding when a character acquired a skill, or how he acquired it.

Gatt

10-01-2004, 07:10 PM

Ibn

10-01-2004, 07:14 PM

Could you give some more information as to why you're having more maintenance outside of your other maintenance?

The Tuesday morning maintenance window was actually initially proposed by Operations way back in Jan/Feb when we started taking over the servers from Microsoft. It hadn't been announced because we hadn't seen any need to use it. Now as we move forward with the billing migration launch it may become necessary to do small amounts of maintenance on a regular basis. Not WILL, but MAY. So better to announce it now than wait until the last minute.

You're right though, there's been more maintenance recently than in the past. This is a combination of prep work for the billing launch and also our work to move the last of the worlds off the old legacy database hardware.

considerably different? So different that I only have to put in a little XP to see big returns? Well, guess I'll get a nice chunk of XP back from those "tink-salvaging" skills I've got on my guys. Though, I thought you had said that having the ability to salvage well without putting a lot of xp into the skill would allow a big influx of salvage into the trade market or something, which was undesirable.

I can't make a direct corrolation between a Tinkering skill and the Salvage skill in terms of return for XP spent, because the Tinkering skill is based off of attributes and the Salvaging skill is not. IN GENERAL, I believe that spending XP on Salvaging is a more efficient way of increasing rate of return. However there are special cases... for example a Gharu'n character with Item Tinkering trained inherently, and very high base Focus and Coordination, can get a decent rate of return from Item Tink without putting any XP into it. Put 100 XP into Item Tink and 100 XP into Salvage -- Item Tink still gives you the better rate of return.

I hope this means I can untrain Item Tinkering on my gharu'ndim characters lol

You can get the XP back, at least. :)

Ibn, is it just usting the salvage, or is it Ust + Combine!? Makes a huge difference. I don't want 5.00 steel diluting my bag of 10.00 steel.

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking... but I think I can answer it this way. The Ust will not inherently distinguish between workmanship grades of salvage. This was an option we had spec'd out but had to table due to the amount of additional time to implement.

More crafting quests, cool. Thought the tinkering skills would be getting something soon though!? Thought it was mentioned that siraluuns would be dropping trophies for tinker skills. But, *sigh* you shouldn't, or at least not for item tinkering. All ya need is this huge populace of gharu'ndims pumping up item tinkering and using this to make xp!?

That's still on the table, we would tell you if it'd been completely pulled. Most likely it will have the same type of cap as the gromnie teeth interactions, but that's still up in the air.

10 mill. xp every couple of weeks is rather low. I don't understand why you don't require having multiple trade skills to be a requirement.

That's 10 mill per tooth. So for a single craft skill that's 50 mill a week. Your second idea is rather interesting but can't be done without a lot of complicated engineering.

You guys have nothing In Concept? That's just wrong on all sorts of game development levels lol.

We have nothing NEW In-Concept. There are a lot of older In-Concept topics that are still being kicked around internally.

Ibn

10-01-2004, 07:16 PM

Will there be a new spell to buff the salvaging skill?

Yes, but not in October.

Ibn

10-01-2004, 07:18 PM

ROFL , Just like last month I can see once again there won't be any content to the Oct. patch .... just fixes and more fixes , and in the months to come it doesn't look like much content is gonna be added either , just more bug fixes and nurfs for PvP weapons . Oh Boy !!!

As always, the LttP makes no mention of what new quests, dungeons, and items are coming in the next event.

I guess since you guys have a major laps of content to add to the game , maybe you can at least give us ONE good nurf and that is stop the "RAIN"

This wasn't into the LttP, but some environmental changes made in September and October are specifically intended to lower the occurance of rain in Dereth. You're welcome. :)

Fezzic

10-01-2004, 07:37 PM

There was no mention of rebalancing all the MOB's who became more dangerous with the increase in level I - VI war magic. Does this mean that there are no plans to do so?

Please either increase the exp across the board for war magic casting monsters or decrease the level of the spell that they are likely to cast. As things are, my melees would be crazy to hunt anything other than olthoi and tuskers from levels 1-100. That's not acceptable gameplay for me.

Ibn

10-01-2004, 08:09 PM

Dom on TD

10-01-2004, 08:15 PM

I wanna start by saying tht you can remove my post, ban me or whatever, but if you do, it's only because the truth hurts. So at least read it before you toss it.

"There was no mention of rebalancing all the MOB's who became more dangerous with the increase in level I - VI war magic. Does this mean that there are no plans to do so? "

They were too busy figuring out nerfs to worry about little things like that.

I can't believe you're nerfing something else this month. This enforces the rule "exploit early, exploit often". Why does it upset you that people find ways to make the junk quests/npc's useful? Does it offend the Devs that people can actually make the ordeal of hunting for every type of Gromnie tooth worthwhile? Does it bother them that those teeth are worth alot now? I think I know what it is. You guys want to find wings, but can't because everyone else is hunting Gromnies for teeth. It's pathetic that we get a LttP with nothing but news about server maintenance and nerfs. Don't bother with trivial things like adding new quests, or improving on anything, just NERF US TIL WE LEAVE. BTW, I haven't been laundering xp through teeth, but it doesn't offend me that other people do. What DOES offend me is that you promised the trades characters quests that would be worthwhile and spending 3 hours hunting to find 1 tooth (I did this last night) for 10 million lousy xp isn't worthwhile. BTW, if you'd have made tusks worthwhile for 126+ toons, maybe you wouldn't have so many laundering XP.

1 more note. You think people actually use Jump Tesseraes to make their jump higher or the scroll of dark rain for Magic Def? They Launder xp that way too. You think people don't use cast macros to get high magic skils only to untrain them all later and spend XP on other things, since they didn't want 3 schools? That's just like UCM.

It isn't just on DT where people like easy XP, it's everywhere. You nerfed chains, banned UCM, nerfed Teeth, nerfed Caul island. Why not take away tinkering, cap every skill/attribute at 100 raises, and tell us to do away so you can have the servers to yourselves. If you keep nerfing us, in the end, all that will be left playing AC is Turbine's staff. In the words of Joe Dirt, It's not what YOU like, it's about the CONSUMERS and what THEY want.

PM with and let me know how much YOU, the Turbine Staff likes to hunt for 3-4 hours just to raise 1 skill 1 point.

Edit: Thanks for the salvaging skill. Like it will really help now that I've based my templates around having to have a Tinkering skill trained.

LOL I just saw that we don't even get Scarecrow masks on the ONE MONTH/YEAR that they're available. Why would you nerf a mask? It's THAT hard to put in?

Keep up the good work guys, there's still like 7 people per server that look forward to patch day.

Balthazar

10-01-2004, 08:41 PM

Regarding scarecrows and masks -- these will not be going in for October. There'll be more on this in the Rollout Article, but essentially the beginning of Festival season is being delayed so that the High Queen can focus her energies on the encroaching Burun.

(That's the in-game reason. For the out-of-game reason, replace "High Queen" with "Live Team" and "her" with "their".)

So, the LiveTeam is focusing their energies on the encroaching Burun? Yikes, just be careful when you go from your car to the office door, as they are fast and might jump out at you.

Frank The Knife

10-01-2004, 08:42 PM

PvP Weapons Changes............

"In June of this year"

Everyone got a whole lvl cause of a servers broke for a day.

So what kind of Recompense can we expect for playing with flawed weapons which the whole AC PK community told and beged you NOT to implement?

5 months of needless deaths, lost death items and the horrible weapon output that mine and other melee characters are nerfed so bad that we couldnt kill anyone with a hint of skill.

What reward do we get for our patience?

Should I just unsubscribe till you fix it?

Ling Mei

10-01-2004, 08:54 PM

Character B is the exact opposite: He's got a starting Coordination and Focus of 10, has put a minimum amount of experience into them, and at 300 is one point away from capping his trained Cooking.

For an Ash Tooth craft reward, Character A earns about 6 million experience into his Cooking skill. Character B earns about 420 million!

Alright, is it just me that sees this as really off, mathematically?

Ash teeth give 10% of the xp to raise a skill ONE POINT.

As a TRAINED Skill, his last point of Cooking will be 306,860,483xp.

So, explain to me how 10% of that is over 420 million xp? Its not, its 30 million.

I also have to echo that I think a 10 million xp reward is not fair to PURE trade chars who are trying to cap skills, and have no other way of earning xp. Not everyone chooses to bribe or recruit vassals, not every allegiance is large, some are a very small number of friends who do not wish to have new members, and that is their choice. Part of what has made AC great is the ability to play the game the way you want to, and NOT be forced into things, unlike many other games that force you into grouping, etc. If I want to only have 5 followers that is my choice, and you should find a way to let everyone level a trade mule.

There seem to be other ways that you could solve this, one that comes to mind is making trade skills untrainable, or, putting an extended timer on them, of like 6 months. Any TRUE trade char would never untrain the skill in the first place, and that would solve the issue of people just training and untraining to whore xp.

I think what saddens me the most about AC, is the extent that the exploiting players go to, JUST to get xp. The only thing it ends up doing is hurting the legitimate players. These pitiful people can't play the game honestly, so they resort to tricks and exploits, forcing Turbine to go to great measures to stop them, but in the process, hurting the honest, moral players. Truly sad.

Legitimate Monarchs now have no reward at all for being a monarch, unless they wish to force people to move to be directs. Well not all monarchs are xp whores, or want their people to move JUST to get them more xp, but they have absolutely no rewards now for being a monarch, unless they get hardcore directs. That's just so sad, I can't tell you. One of the things I enjoyed was the knowledge that I was giving back to my monarch, even in a small way, when I was playing chars 2-3 tiers below him. Now, he gets basically nothing from my efforts, and there is nothing else I can offer him.

Drainer_of_DT

10-01-2004, 09:33 PM

Please let there be some interesting content in this patch. From the Lttp it looks like a whole lot of nothing =/

I'm not a fan of the current story arc at all, but I would expect october to be a time when the arc starts to expload like it has in the past.

jordvik

10-01-2004, 09:42 PM

Ibn, I am begging and pleading here. Please give us an update on the war magic rebalances. This last month was truely aweful for me and unlike any other month I spent about 50% less in game as I have for every month in the last year. I appreciate the fact that you wanted to give a boost for lower level mages, but the damage that level 6 spells on either level 6 or 7 vulns is just detrimental in PvM (I dont pvp so i cant say here). Please Please give us something here. :(

Cuttler

10-01-2004, 09:55 PM

The goal of this change is to eliminate the abusive behavior, with minimal impact on the tradeskill characters that these quests are intended for. We're confident that this change will still allow tradeskill character to advance to very high levels of skill through these interactions while preventing the quests from being misused by other characters.

Ibn, I do not agree with the way you are choosing to fix the teeth exploit. I agree that it should be fixed but your choice, although better then your first one, is still detramental to tradeskill characters who, as you state, the quest is geared towards.

You state this won't hurt my tradeskill character but it will. The cap for the top 30% tooth takes place at 200 raises in a speced skill. My trademule has cooking and alchemy (doesnt even have fletching) and both have been raised more then 200 times now. Therefore he will lose part of the boost that was designed for him. Neither skill is receiving a 100% chance to even carve that copper tooth though they are in the 90% range. Increaseing my focus and coordination is not an option to improve his ability to carve this tooth because, as a TRADEMULE, he has no fighting skills to hunt and make xp and people don't take too kindly to others spaming in the MP for vassals.

You say this is a tradeskill quest then make it one! If you want to prevent playable characters from using this quest to their benifit than add a check on tooth pass-in that checkes for a usable offensive skill (or a harratage skill over a set low base). If a character has no offensive skill they are truly a tradeskill character and should receive the FULL amount from their tooth. If they have an offensive skill then inact the cap if it's justified.

You need to realize that it is not easy to just drum up vassals anymore due to the lack of new people entering this game. And true new people deserve a patron who actually logs in to play for the direct channel communication, not a mule. You also need to realize that it takes a high level skill to have a decient chance of not distroying the copper and brass teeth in the first place and those are the one's most affected by your lovely little cap. After all, the higher the % to the skill, the sooner the cap will take effect but the more skill you need to assure you don't need 5 to 10 extra teeth ready to carve for failures. Please think more in depth on how this change will affect the very type of character the quest was meant to help.

Dom on TD

10-01-2004, 10:31 PM

" Character B is the exact opposite: He's got a starting Coordination and Focus of 10, has put a minimum amount of experience into them, and at 300 is one point away from capping his trained Cooking.

For an Ash Tooth craft reward, Character A earns about 6 million experience into his Cooking skill. Character B earns about 420 million!

Alright, is it just me that sees this as really off, mathematically? " -Ling Mei

You're looking at the proposed solution that they shot down (I think). One based on the total XP invested in the skill. They did a poor job explaining it for sure.

I have 1 question. If a person chooses to play a character with diminished skills for months (the time it takes to get all the untrain gems, and spec gems to fix a template) so that he/she can benifit from this, why do they not deserve the experience reward from it? Skill credits aren't unlimited, and people can't train all 3 trade skills to exploit this without getting those 14 credits from somewhere. Spec/untrain gems are still on 2 week timers. They are still hunting/questing with a nerfed character. That SHOULD make turbine happy. It would make me happy if my job was nerfing templates, and someone did the job for me.

On the thread about the XP chain nerf, it was suggested that people make playable characters and level them to a high level, then untrain/train, and spend the xp from combat skills in trade skills. This is the same principle, only in reverse. If I was to do a Harbinger quest and put a point into UA, only to untrain it and spend that experience into cooking, I would be applauded. But alas, the double standard sticks AGAIN!

KPD157

10-01-2004, 11:13 PM

Going to do just what they said in the LTTP about turning in your skills if your not using it for the Tinkering :)

I was surprised that it uses no Stats but then It would have had to use 4 stats to be correct and I didn't have a good idea of how that would be done so making it like Loyality and Leadership is fine :)

I like the option to turn on or off Salvaging all Items or just the ones of one type. Right now I use a plugin that allows me to sort it out easy and I would hate having to rewrite it to fix all the errors such a command would cause :)

Thank you Turbine for giving us this Salvaging Skill it will be a Life Saver :)

Kawari

10-02-2004, 12:51 AM

I'm not sure if this has been brought to the table yet, but in regards to the whole Gromnie Tooth issue, here is a simple way to resolve the laundering of XP without pissing off 90% of the trades mules..

There is no new tech involved (that i know of) to prevent this so there should be no problems implementing it and it will make XP laundering trick too tiresome for anyone to want to do as regularly as they can now.

To start, you need to rework how the Gems of forgetfulness work for tradeskills. Currently, when you use a gem it reverts a skill to trained or untrained and refunds all experience no matter where you moved it from. I suggest that you change the way the gems for Cooking, Alchemy and Fletching work so that if you unspecialize the skill it will NOT refund the experience, instead it will leave the skill at the level it would be if it were trained instead of specialized.

With that done, the simplest way to fix the experience laundering trick is to put a check on the teeth when they are handed in, if the tradeskill is specialized than the player handing the tooth in will recieve the full benefits. If the skill is only trained, than the "cap" will come into play. What this will do is allow true trades characters to still achieve even higher levels of skills and actually be able to one day see maxing their skills out without having to whore experience from vassals or hunt. It will also force those who wish to use the experience laundering trick to wait a full month before gaining any benefit, and, because the trade skill needs to be specialized in order to recieve the full benefit, force players that wish to use this to even further gimp their characters.

This way there will be less desire to use this method of ''laundering'' because the exploiter must first specialize the skill, and then get two gems to remove it and be allowed to place the experience elsewhere, all the while being forced to give up even more precious skill credits for a few hours hunting worth of experience. At the same time, tradeskills mules will still be able to advance, even at the high levels.

Dom on TD

10-02-2004, 01:21 AM

Oops forgot about this one.

Will there be an untrain gem already in place for the Salvaging skill? If I can't salvage as much with the salvaging skill as I am with my weapon tinkering, then I'll want my XP back to put back into weapon tinkering. I haven't laundered XP, so 250 million is alot of nonrefundable XP for me to throw into a skill that may or may NOT help me.

Alok

10-02-2004, 02:34 AM

You know, October is the same place every year. This will be the second (THIRD?!) year that masks have been pushed back to November.

A little planning ahead would be nice next year.

Ibn Ghon

10-02-2004, 02:35 AM

I assume Gharu can sell item tink as well. Otherwise you are screwing anyone Gharu.

Alok

10-02-2004, 02:44 AM

Nevermind that you can make your own DI's, for free, without anyone else's help.

*edit* When are you gonna start *****ing about Aluvians and Assess Person? I don't see them on here whining.

JJC

10-02-2004, 02:47 AM

From the letter:

> ... some players have used this and the skill sellback quest as a way to "launder" experience into a non-craft skill. The introduction of additional percentage-based rewards only exacerbated this behavior.

> Instead, we have chosen to put a flat cap on the reward of any individual Gromnie Tooth

You've correctly identifed the problem as people were using the untraining gems as an experience mill. Lowering how much they get doesn't fix the problem.

Fix the problem. Because we all know you will introduce another problem just like this one in a few months that will go unchecked because you didn't fix the problem when you finally saw the problem.

JJC

Ibn Ghon

10-02-2004, 02:58 AM

Nevermind that you can make your own DI's, for free, without anyone else's help.

*edit* When are you gonna start *****ing about Aluvians and Assess Person? I don't see them on here whining.

They aren't getting nerfed so of course they aren't whining. A mule can put gold on something. I can BUY DIs as well. I repeat, don't force me to take a duplicate skill.

Cuttler

10-02-2004, 03:07 AM

You arn't going to be able to sell back item tink on a Ghrun (well at least not at this time) anymore then any of the other herritage skills. I could on my Aluvian but since there isn't anything else worthwhile to do with the 2 skill credits it would give I'm I'm sure I won't. It would be nice if the developers would drop the cost of creature assessment, perhaps people would actually take that skill if they are stuck with the 2 extra credits. I would.

Personally I could care less about the new free skill. I will continue to salvage with my characters that have a tinker skill trained and put my xp elsewhere on my non-tinker characters. Dumping xp into salvaging is a waste of good experiance as far as I'm concerned. At least with the tinker skills you can do more then just melt a bunch of junk.

Eruditus

10-02-2004, 03:17 AM

So Ibn since there is no longer any point at all in playing Gharu or Aluvian when PvM and Sho are about to be nerfed in PvP could perhaps shed a little light on what the future holds for heritage group balancing?

Or is the idea to make all heritage skills so innately pathetic that it will not matter which group you pick?

Dj_Viper

10-02-2004, 03:27 AM

After your done unbalancing the races after this patch, how long is it going to take you to fix? As long as it's taking you to fix sword/melee damage in PvP? Now Gharu' is completely worthless. You should have at least done this after fixing UA, now Sho is EVEN BETTER. Thanks Turbine.

Hmmmm, now I have staff, and item tinkering (the most useless tinker skill). Everyone else has salvaging now, and they can even get over 100% when they salvage. I guess I'll just use that gem of forgetfullness and count is as my second worthless skill. Now, the Gharu race is COMPLETELY worthless. Thanks.

When will this be fixed?

Gatt

10-02-2004, 04:55 AM

They aren't getting nerfed so of course they aren't whining. A mule can put gold on something. I can BUY DIs as well. I repeat, don't force me to take a duplicate skill.

Um, It's not costing you any skill credits, and you can pop any and all Xps out of the skill even if it doesn't untrain the skill so how did you lose?

In addition to that, Gharu gets Staff as a racial. A blud weapon with a narrower variance than UA. Far superior to dagger, and overall preferable to UA on a Mage as the mage loses substantially in UA by their lack of strength. Considering almost every critter in the game is reasonably to incredibly vulnerable to Blud, I'd say I'd take that race over UA on *any* Non-melee character.

Alluvian is the one that's SOL in terms of racial balance. Saddeled with Dagger and Assess Person. Dagger's DOT is horrible unless you're imp/vulning *everything*, and assess person is absolutely useless. And Yes, I've been playing a dagger character since 2002, I know it sucks.

Eruditus

10-02-2004, 05:48 AM

So ANOTHER year where the masks are to be delayed... Im sorry but they just arn't as much fun in November.

Alok

10-02-2004, 07:34 AM

Just because you're using the skill for something it was never really intended for doesn't mean that you're getting nerfed, you <bleep>. If you don't like it...well...tough. Shove it.

:rolleyes:

"Wahh, I based my character around the fact that Gharu have the only useful secondary skill in the ENTIRE GAME, AND NOW IT WILL ONLY BE SLIGHTLY LESS USEFUL INSTEAD OF COMPLETELY USELESS LIKE ASSESS PERSON AND UA ON A MAGE/ARCHER/ANY OTHER MELEE! ****WHATEVER WILL I DO?!?!*****"

Cry...us...a..river.

PartyVT

10-02-2004, 07:55 AM

Dagger's DOT is horrible unless you're imp/vulning *everything*, and assess person is absolutely useless. And Yes, I've been playing a dagger character since 2002, I know it sucks.

Dagger does ~2/3 of the damage of sword yet sword costs 12 credits more to spec..

Granted, these extra 50% damage sword has over dagger might be needed in some cases...but you get 12 extra credits..its a simple decision...either damage or credits

DadgaSilverhand

10-02-2004, 10:01 AM

Now it gonna be 3rd straight years and this time "No Masks"?, very depressing for Oct's traditional Haunting spirits and november isnt same mood as october.

it is so depressing and it make me feel i wish if somehow i just won a huge lottery jackpot, i would make a business hostile takeover and rid of mean people and get eagerly well-trained folks that know how and do the job right.

Get October back on traditional festival mask month. leave those "Live team ops" on Dec months to celebrate the yearly "milestone of launched live AC" after it was released in dec 1999(?) instead at the end of Buruns' attempted conquest story line just like last year after the end of story of Olthoi's ancient queen during last september 2003. but why in oct 2004? dont make sense.
you just now alienated some folks and i was looking forward in hope to find scarecrow mask this year after last 2 failed searching Oct 2003 and 2002., that is long 3 years of waiting!!! that isnt very nice.

Myk

10-02-2004, 10:16 AM

Ibn,

Why is it that the "bow bug" is getting fixed but fast casting and slide casting are not?

Seems wrong to fix one animation break and not the other 2.

Helmar

10-02-2004, 11:15 AM

Ibn,

Why is it that the "bow bug" is getting fixed but fast casting and slide casting are not?

Seems wrong to fix one animation break and not the other 2.

Probably because that's the only one they've nailed down so far. If the other two were simple issues, they'd have been fixed years ago.

simpleton87

10-02-2004, 11:30 AM

They aren't getting nerfed so of course they aren't whining. A mule can put gold on something. I can BUY DIs as well. I repeat, don't force me to take a duplicate skill.

I'd like to point out something.... WHY THE H3LL WOULD YOU COMPLAIN OVER A FREE SKILL!?!?! Sho Gets nothing!

Smarten up lad.

Crimson-Ghost

10-02-2004, 11:50 AM

Bow bug has been around longer than both of those problems, so I imagine that it takes seniority, also, if you played on DT at all you would see how horribly abused the bug is now that its gone "public". If you don't believe how old the bug is, it was around when I started on DT in 00 and I got killed in shoushi with it.

The speed increase for bows on their pvp weapon set is nice but I think now that it has proved not too unbalancing it should also be implemented on the PvM side. In using my phantom on executors and other high level virindi I have very much loved the fact that I dont miss every arrow as they are advancing on me.

As for the masks, its disssapointing as personally, I found the burun storyline boring and very uninspired compared to other much more engaging storylines. I am glad to see Ibn responding to a large amount of IMPORTANT reqeusts/replies for once rather than OT or barely relevant ones. Keep up the good work with replies Ibn, its a welcome change to the past where the one post where somebody whines about their solls not looking shiny enough is the only post that gets a "official" reply.

The salvaging skill, WOW :D , I am eternally thankful for this, on my sho archer (who i've been playing essentially as my main for awhile now) I will benefit very much from this. The overall improvements to salvaging is a great step forward for the game IMO and I think that it looks like it well be well implemented. As for the nerf on the crafting quests, it changes nothing for me as I only have a low end mule to fletch for me, but I can see how the high end people are a little bit upset. I think what people need to remember is that even though your lvl 150+ mule is being "hurt" you should consider all the other people with 126 or sub 126 main characters who fall further and futher behind every month due to people exploiting this bug, sacrifice for the greater good :eek: .

The fact that balance in pvp has even be aknowledged is welcome news to me, although I must again talk about my discontent with no news on the "rebalancing AL level on VoD/Caul creatures" as has been mentioned in the past. Melee vs Mage PvM balance is still very much out of whack and I think it should be addressed more aggressively by the devs. I'd very much like to know the official response on when this will be addressed Ibn, it was promised months ago and since then not another word has been posted about the topic, please tell me you've not forgotten about it.

Not a horrible patch, nerf-wise I suppose, the people complaining about gharu are crazy, this does nothing to nerf you, it only makes other races more appealing. Personally, I don't know ANYONE who choose a race for their racial skill unless its a sho who intends to be UA. I think if aluvians had their assess person skill changed to assess monster they would be a bit more viable, or perhaps make all races start with assess monter as well as their regular skills, because as it is, that would be a nice skill to have but nobody is going to sacrifice the creds for it.

Teysrol

10-02-2004, 01:27 PM

Ibn, I suggest you either:

a) Put a link in the "In-Concept" part of the current/upcoming LttPs that links to the last LttP that contained In-Concept stuff.

or better yet

b) Copy+paste the latest In-Concept stuff (even if it hasn't been changed for a few months) into current/upcoming LttP.

It just seems that EVERYTIME someone says "what, no In-Concept stuff??!?" and then you have to re-explain what's going with that. Just a suggestion.

Heideggar

10-02-2004, 01:44 PM

"succeeding at almost all existing" - Ibn

What happens when you guys put something into the game that requires a higher skill requirement? Will you also be adding in a good means to get xp to reach a skill necessary to have a good chance of success?

"I'm not entirely sure what you're asking... but I think I can answer it this way. The Ust will not inherently distinguish between workmanship grades of salvage. This was an option we had spec'd out but had to table due to the amount of additional time to implement." - Ibn

I had written an explanation, but I figured since you guys spent a lot of time with this I could kinda cut it out. What I mean is, there are two operations you do on salvage. 1) You salvage a single item and 2) you combine your similar salvage types together. #1 is the salvagine, #2 is the combining. If your ingame UST in the Oct event does just #1, that's good, because it does not combine similar salvage types, but just pumps back out into your main pack all the individual bags of salvage for each item usted/salvaged. If you salvage/ust AND combine all in the same motion by pressing "salvage" and putting in multiple types of salvage (2 diff. iron, 3 diff. steel, 2 diff mahog), you'll end up combining low craft salvage with high craft salvage, which is very undesirable for materials like steel, iron, granite, mahogany, opal, and others.

Ex. 9.00 mahogany, 8.00 steel, 5.00 mahogany, 9.00 steel, 4.00 steel, 5.00 steel

These 6 items are in my main pack, and are the only items that are able to be put in the ingame UST.

As per the LttP, I'd be able to drag my main pack to the UST and all these items would be put in for "salvaging".

If you only have one item in the ust, and press "salvage", you get one bag of X amount. I term this salvaging, even though your ingame UST salvages and combines salvage. So, we'll call this single item salvaging "Usting", and "Combine" is the mixing of like materials into a single bag of salvage.

So, I have all these different materials in your ingame UST. When I press salvage, will I get bag 6 bags into my main pack cooresponding to each item Usted? Or, will I get bag 2 bags, one for the 14 units of 7.00 mahogany (9.00 combingin with 5.00.. which is bad), and one for 26 units of steel 6'ish steel? The first is the "Usting" or as I called it salvaging, and the second is Usting/salvaging AND combining.

The first is more desirable than the second imo. The second case is good if I know that the salvage I'm collecting doesn't get above a certain threshold, that usually being 7.00. Craft 8, 9, and 10 are usually in their own seperate bags to yield better results from the last few tinkers of an item.

Hope that helps clear that up.

"Your second idea is rather interesting but can't be done without a lot of complicated engineering." - Ibn

50 mill xp if I am at the Cap, let alone how little this xp is when I have higher skills.

Btw, my second idea that's rather interesting was mentioned quite some time ago when we were talking about the Ash Gromnie Tooth rewards/nerfing, and future Tooth Rewards, so... it's actually a rather old idea. Would it really take a lot of engineering though!? Wouldn't you set flags not too unlike you would for wield requirements? Wield requirements check to see if you have a skill, then to see if that skill is at a certain base level right!? Can you guys not discern if someone has something spec'd or not? *scratch head*. Thing is Ibn, not sure how long this would take you, but after you get it set up, would you be able to use the same ability that you'd get from this to stop future nerfing of XP-rewards for trades mules? Tinkermules? future AC content? Am I looking too far ahead here!? You've spent how many months and man hours fixing and tweeking this!? Would you not have been able to get a lot of this idea done instead, and have a solid ability do avoid more exploitation!?

Add in this to your requirements to use teeth:
There seem to be other ways that you could solve this, one that comes to mind is making trade skills untrainable, or, putting an extended timer on them, of like 6 months. Any TRUE trade char would never untrain the skill in the first place, and that would solve the issue of people just training and untraining to whore xp. " - Ling Mei

"We have nothing NEW In-Concept. There are a lot of older In-Concept topics that are still being kicked around internally." - Ibn

I know that you guys have older In-Concept topics, and I still think that nothing new is not a good thing. Maybe help though, to put in some or all of your In-Concept topics just to keep people up to date on what you guys are throwing around.

"Will there be a new spell to buff the salvaging skill? - Cinnammon

Yes, but not in October. - ibn"

Why are you putting this (the buff for the new salvaging skill, and the skill itself) into the game in two parts!? This could possibly make the salvaging skill not worthwhile for an entire month or more, depending on when you get this buff into the game. 40 more points to a skill could be a lot, but it's hard to say, you didn't exactly answer my question about it well.

Item tinkering is a trained skill, and is on one type of xp-curve. It can also be raised through attributes. Salvaging skill, I'd assume, would raise just like a trained skill. But, Ibn, if the check to salvage something with 100% success is 280 buffed compared to 450 in item tinkering, that can be huge. There is obviously going to be a discrepency between salvaging skill and a tinkering skill because of how they're raised. Now, throw in this lack of a buff, and we don't know how that's going to affect the possibly usefullness of this new skill. Afterall, that's wtf you guys want to do, give people a universal salvaging ability! How can someone do that when they have to spend so much more xp to raise that skill?

btw, will there be an untrain salvaging skill in case it really sucks a lot? I can see that someone who can't buff this skill may find it to suck because they can't afford to spend 250 mill xp to get it high enough. You should figure this out Ibn, if you're going to put so much emphasis on it : /

The more I read Ibn, the more this "help" looks half-a553d :(

Hunter

10-02-2004, 02:30 PM

The gromnie tooth nerfing is horrible

This type of short sited additions and over-nerfing is what disheartens players about the game and its developers.

Hentaya

10-02-2004, 04:38 PM

Salvaging skill, I'd assume, would raise just like a trained skill.

Well, yes and no, since the LTTP stated "The Salvaging skill's curve for rate of return when salvaging is considerably different from the curve used for the existing Tinkering skills."

Which makes sense. If the RoR curve was the same AND the skill raised like every other trained skill, you'd only be able to get to 290 or so innit (gee, I didn't know how much reliance I placed on treestats.com to find max numbers), where you'd need a 410 or so (to buff to 450) to have a decent chance of getting 10/10 all the time on Priceless salvages.

But, whatever. We'll find out in a couple weeks, right? :)

What irks me is, and correct me if I'm wrong, this First Ever Mention of the fact that, well, we'll give you Tinking forgetfullness gems. Gee, do you think you might have mentioned this when you first ANNOUNCED that the Salvage skill would be in this patch? So we didn't waste our gem pulls, and very, very limited pack space, getting them already? Sigh.

As for the teeth nerf...well, my crafter's only level 70, full tradeskills and tinking skills, and so she's not getting hardly anything on percentage-based turn-ins anyhow. Just another time when my inability to exploit early and often costs me advancement....

-- Hentaya...trying to make it to level 100 with a day 6 release Sorcerer, before she's 5 years old. :)

JJC

10-02-2004, 05:11 PM

> What irks me is, and correct me if I'm wrong, this First Ever Mention of the fact that, well, we'll give you Tinking forgetfullness gems.

It was in the LLTP when first announced.

JJC

Hentaya

10-02-2004, 05:31 PM

> It was in the LLTP when first announced.

Well, here's the Sept LttP section on it, out of In Development...

Salvaging Skill
In October we are working on a new skill for all characters – Salvaging. All existing characters would have this skill as soon as they log in after the October event, and all new characters would start with it.

When using an Ust to salvage items, the Salvaging skill would be considered along with the Tinkering skills when determining how much salvage the player receives. If Salvaging were higher than all the player's Tinkering skills, it would be used for the skill check; otherwise the highest Tinkering skill would be used.

Other aspects of the skill – such as which attributes, if any, it will be tied to – are still being worked on.

Nothing at all about free gems to forget your Tinkering skills. When I read that announcement last month, I started getting Tinkering removal gems over my...innumerable accounts. I'm just wondering if I missed a notification before this months LttP about the largess of forgetfullness gems, issall. :)

<Probably just a matter of not being decided upon till last week by Ops, but...>

Faolain

10-02-2004, 08:37 PM

When are you guys gonna realize this game has no future? This game is now 5 years old and PvP is still imbalanced. Why? Simply because:

1) PvP has no priority.
2) They have no one on the current team who actually knows what PvP is.

What happened to the PvP "Vision"? What happened to the dedicated man at the dev team working with PvP issues? Oh right, after including some "well thought-out" ideas like lures on breastplates, loathering weepings etc you had to scratch all your brilliant ideas and revert everything. And now after you buffed hollows/phantoms, we can hope for a fix 4 months after it was addressed.

What happened to issues like:

1) Fastcast.
2) Jump spin.
3) Bow bug.

I think srand addressed fastcast 2 years ago and wanted to do a complete workover on animations. The other 2 problems are also connected to your physical engine, but I doubt something will ever get done. If anything, you will bump bow speed back to what it was before it was increased. That's several months of players abusing game mechanics, 2 months of "fixing" bow, and bow back to what it used to be. Why cant you test your "well thought" out ideas before you patch them? It has been proved time and time again that you have failed. Why not put up a test server to let the players who actually participate in PvP test out the changes?

But I guess as long as we get changes to how we can salvage stuff, we should all shut up and be satisfied.

JakeTheMuss_HG

10-02-2004, 09:20 PM

The spawn rate of Aun Ralirea is being increased. I didn't consider this to be a complicated change worthy of the LttP, considering I just described it in a single sentence. But yes, the change is in for October.

THANK YOU :)

thanks so much!!

Havagu

10-02-2004, 09:21 PM

WOOT! :D
Finally, my Aluvian characters wont have to house recall and mule over all of their loot. So my Gharu'ndim character can salvage it down for a high amount.

And thanks for fixing the problem with salvaging multiple items at once.
No more having to do everything one at a time, to get the full amount.

And salvaging multiple different types of loot at the same time. Very cool.
You just made my tinker mule very happy.

Jet-eye-nite

10-02-2004, 09:33 PM

1.Kinda sad ,you have to devote so much time to cheaters.
a. why still allow the cheater to gain 4 mil more xp than the player
that is truley a cook ?
2.Salvage skill ? Another xp drainer OR will you add in the loot-o-matic minor-major salvage skill items ?

Kajabor

10-02-2004, 10:01 PM

Of all the things you all fix in terms of bugs and exploits, you take away the one thing that gives bow a chance in the pvp arena.

I have an idea. Dedicate all of your resources to the expansion. If the only thing that is going to help bring people back to playing this game due to numreous mistakes left in game is the expansion, I say dedicate as many resources as possible into completing that expansion.

Neocron 2 is just about finished. The beta test, even with some of the glitches that would crash the game, was bliss in comparison to game play on every apect of the game including pvp when compared to AC.

In Neocron, I can speak my mind and get my point across using the most profound terms. If I curse, they know that I am mad at something and they ASK me what exactly is the problem. If I say that there is a bug that does this, I get a response on an average of 72 hours. The bug reports that I post here get a response from anywhere between 24 hours to 2 years.

You all have over 5 years of experience in this industry, but your all are falling behind all the competitors in customer service, technical support, and just the total enjoyment of the game.

You all are still fixing issues that were a problem 2 to 3 years ago. You gave feedback on the issue for all of a week, put something in that did little to nothing to fix them, and then you left the issue alone no matter how much feedback you received on the "fix".

I am glad that you all are in the gaming industry because if you were any kind of practical company, say a bank for instance, if you all implemented your own online backing software and there is a problem with your funds transfer part of the software where it only transfered half the amount you specified and your fix made it so that instead of half of the transfer is lost only a quarter is and then you all drop the issue all together and make a small comment about every quarter of the fiscal year to try to appeas the masses stating that you all are "looking into another fix" and repeating that process for years.

A lot of people are getting tired of waiting. I got tired over a year ago. I make an appearance here and there, but now that you have increased your price to participate in something that has been riddled with problems for years, that will come to an end real quick. I have no problem paying for something that works, but I have issues with paying for something that is not working correctly and the developers, in my opinion, neglect the problems as well as the demand for fixes.

You finally come out with a fix for one bug and it is a bug that is used significantly less than any other bug plaguing this game. I am all about getting things fixed, but that tells me that resources are not being allocated well in interest to the people that play this game. I dont know if this is was intentional or not. Who knows, maybe your dev team is being paid to make the rest of the character classes in game completely inept while trying to make it look like that the changes are really to balance the game.

It is not farfetched. I am sure that the majority of the AC community has heard of Laton (don't remember how to spell his name) when he paid off most of the Frostfell community just to get the most experience in the game as well as the highest leveled characters on that server a few years ago.

Here is an idea, tag along with a few players in game on all servers and observe what is going on. I really do not comprehend how in the world you all can say that something is fixed when it is absolutely obvious that your fixes fail in game. If you want some examples, message me and I will get in game and show you that the majority of your fixes in game have failed.

Just as a side note, yes it is nice to have new content every month, but when it comes down to having new stuff to play with along with unresolved issues that hinders gameplay or old stuff to play with issues being resolved, I would pick the latter of the two any day of the week.

Madgic

10-03-2004, 04:52 AM

HIya me again,

Just checking,

Did you say that you are fixing the ability to fast cast or looking at it?

Rapid-Fire Bow Bug Fix
Since the early days of Asheron's Call, there has been a bug with the projectile attack system and the animation system that could allow a character to fire arrows or bolts very rapidly. Recently there's been a surge in the number of players using this bug, particularly on Darktide. For November we are working on a fix to this long-standing bug.

Oh Ok no my bad Just gonan Nerf Bow again.

Just because there are more mages using Fast cast and more mages moaning about fast arrows doesnt mean that when a Bow character finds an exploit of there own that the War fast cast should continue to be ignored.

They give with one hand and take away with the other, all the time ignoring the hunger in between.

I know you are fed up with hearing this but hay.

I have maxed meleD and melees cant hit me
I have maxed missile D and missile toons cant hit me
I have maxed magic D and Level 3 spells still land regularly

I play the game cause i love it not because it works!!!!

Ashida Kim

10-03-2004, 07:16 AM

In reference to the Salvaging questions brought up, and whether or not the bags are combined when you salvage multiple salvage types together, I too am hoping that the bags do not get combined. If they do, would it be possible to add a checkbox on the salvaging window to give us the choice of combining salvage or not? :D

EshuunDara

10-03-2004, 04:05 PM

agreed -- that would be the most useful Ust feature -- just to chuck everything in there, and for every object you're usting, you get back a partial bag. That way, we don't worry about mixing the work 10 steel with the work 7 steel, we just drag the pack into the ust, hit salvage, then combine it by hand.

It would be even better if the ust could be set to only combine salvage of the same workmanship (heck, I'd settle for a visual indicator of what work a bag is without having to ID it first).

Crabby Appleton

10-04-2004, 02:36 AM

you call this a monthly patch?

Looks to me that its all fixes from past patchs with the exception of the salvaging skill.

pretty lame

Vane_MT

10-04-2004, 04:03 AM

I just have one question.

If we are to recieve the Salvaging Skill, and our toons are Garu, then we have 2 skill credits that we were unable to use on other skills, but the other races have/had available to them. :confused: What is intended to remedy this? I know I for one would like to have those two skill credits returned to me if I decide to untrain Item Tinkering and put my points into Salvaging as suggested. Please give us some feed back as to what the Developers intentions are.

Thanks

Protes

10-04-2004, 06:31 AM

I have a question about the new Salvaging skill, will there be Creature Enchament spell scrolls, cantrips, etc. available to buy and/or loot in Oct patch?

Harzah

10-04-2004, 09:27 AM

Finally had a chance to read the LTTP.

I still think, as others here have argued more eloquently than I, that you've got the cart before the horse with regards to how the Gromnie teeth rewards are being handled. I personally don't mind the xp being limited in and of itself, but doing that alone to 'fix' the exploit is not attending to the actual problem. This leaves the window for new exploits of the same variety open.

Consider Character C, who has Alchemy specialized and has optimized his character for Alchemy. He's started with 100 Coordination and 100 Focus and has always raised his attributes along with raising his Alchemy.

When does Character C start hitting the cap? Most likely he won't hit the cap until between 350 and 375 Alchemy, depending on where he's put his experience. Even at 375 experience it's possible that he'll only hit the cap on the Copper Tooth reward, the 30% reward.

This part bothers me a bit - because Alchemy, unlike Cooking so much, is useful higher than that 375 and I would like to get it to its max, which if I used the calculator correctly should be 429 with my Cook (100 foc/coord). Don't get me wrong the xp will be very nice and is certainly better than nothing, but I'm wondering if there are any plans to put in some sort of reward for higher levels? Considering how the system has been used thus far I kind of doubt it but I'd thought I'd ask.

RE: Ust improvements:

Those are really great. I'm very happy to see that you're going to be putting in multiple items salvaging. I thank you very much. My wrists thank you even more :P.

Now if you could possibly make it easier to tell different work bag of salvage apart for us blind folks ;) (Maybe something could be done with the background at least, rather like the spell icons - which get change as you approach the level 7 spells.)

RE: Salvaging Skill

"When any player attempts to use an Ust to salvage an item or items, the game will check to see what skill will give him the greatest return – one of his Tinkering skills, or the Salvaging skill."

Excellent. People who chose Gharu simply for the salvage can quit complaining - the xp they spent is still valid for the purpose they spent it.

"The Salvaging skill, at very high levels, can actually have a rate of return of greater than 100%!"

I don't know that that is such a hot idea, to be perfectly frank. It will probably depend on how much over 100% the rate of return really is, and how high a skill is needed to get that.

Also, regarding this 'free' salvaging skill: If, for instance, we put xp into it and decide later (for whatever weird reason) we want that xp *back*, is it going to be possible?

Elistra

10-04-2004, 10:57 AM

Ibn, if it's possible could you put the change with Ralirea in the Letter to the Players also? This is the most welcome news I've heard in awhile.

There were ppl so fed up on my home server that they were offering 1,000 plats on VNboards to the first person to give them the coords to Ralirea, lol.

I don't know who won that, or if someone finally found him. I spent several hours looking though, to no avail. (And more recently, I've been trying to find Ralirea for a few alternate characters of mine also, also to no avail.)

Yula_the_Mighty

10-04-2004, 11:42 AM

One thing that really annoys me about each LttP is the following;

If not mentioned elsewhere in this Letter, topics listed as In Concept in prior articles have not changed status.)

Because of the way your web site is organized it is a pain to find the older LttPs. That is even assuming that I am willing to look at a half dozen LttPs to try and figure out what is in concept.

Would you please copy the previous month's in Concept section into the new LttP and then make any updates that are necessary?

Thanks,

Yula the Mighty - HG

Neue Regel

10-04-2004, 12:17 PM

I still believe that there is a better way to handle the tooth reward issue and prevent similar exploits in the future.

There should be a lengthened timer on changing a skill from trained to untrained to trained again. Or from specd to trained back to specd again. I will explain further:

Say a player goes to the temple and grabs a gem to untrain alchemy. Under the current system they can immediately train that skill again. My proposal would put a time limit on training that skill again. Like 60-90 days. The same thing applies to the other scenario. Say a player has alchemy specd and uses a gem to knock it down to trained. Under the current system a player can get a gem in two weeks to spec it again. Make that timer 60-90 days too. There should be no other reason other than to exploit something for a player to make these skill moves. No player is going to use this method with that timer tied to the untraining the skill and even if they did, the xp earned would not be that signifacant. If these rules would be adopted, then this and any unforeseen exploit in the future could be thwarted by this adaptation to the system.

coma_black

10-04-2004, 01:10 PM

All i can say is WOW after 5 years someone is going to fix a bug.
I don't mean to sound bitter (but i am).

This is just one of about 100 bugs/exploits that is finally getting looked into. :eek:

Now how about the Gearlan gems that have no timer and people just run into thin air.
Wait maybe the gear or speed altering programs that can only be detected a certain way (yes i tested it and found how to avoid detection and how to get caught)

These are just a few examples i can list at least 50 without much thought.
I hope these downtimes include some looking into some of the other bugs that have made this game not very fun anymore.

simpleton87

10-04-2004, 01:28 PM

seavapor

10-04-2004, 03:49 PM

I understand the laundering problem with xp and skills. However, your changes to the crafting quests hurts the high level crafter who is near max attributes more than anyone. So I offer you a much simpler solution, make the quest xp non-refundable when untrained.
I understand your earlier comment regarding how one need not be at near max to perform the current level of crafting needed in the game - a balance issue. And something that can easily be changed with a new game item with high reqs. But, I look to the application of this quest/reward system to tinkering skills in the future, where max attributes are extremely usefull in the game.

Regarding salvage, just give everyone 100% salvage and be done with it. The low salvage return is like a regressive tax. You hurt the new player and make the game harder for them to enjoy. Why bother salvaging when you get 1 unit at a time regardless of work? Also, I am a little confused on the Salvaging skill with higher returns. At what point does one get greater than 100%? And if above that point, but lower than tinker skill, will I get just 100% because tinker skill is higher?

Seems like your ginning up for a massive influx of new players, what's the secret? hehe.

silentswarlock

10-04-2004, 08:51 PM

been a few pages since was mentioned but as far as the mobs being supervillians with the increase of war 1-6 it does need to be addressed either thru better xp rewards or fixing the incredible amounts of damage they do 4-5 peerless or cabies can wipe a player in meer seconds!

Zenra_Icewind

10-04-2004, 10:50 PM

Tevatron

10-05-2004, 03:55 AM

Salvaging skill is great and all, but will there be a new spell introduced to Buff it :D or will it just be base skill, whatever XP you put into it will be all you get to use on the skill, because all the other tinkering skills you can buff.

It was already stated that a spell was coming but not in October, so I would recommend folks holding off on using their gems until that spell is introduced, otherwise you will gimp your salvaging ability possibly.

I would also like to suggest it be one spell for all manner of tinking. Is there any real purpose of having more than one spell?

Shugenja Kyu

10-05-2004, 04:35 AM

Giving us skill sell back gems for item tinkering is all well but what ever shall I do with all the millions of XP my mages has put into Coord just to raise Item tink?
Will you give us a coord sellback gem also?

Zenra_Icewind

10-05-2004, 08:50 AM

Well I =P on the salvaging skill. I like my Item Tinking. It's great for making my DIs for me. =D I don't plan on dropping it. Besides, if I drop it, what am I gonna do with all this gold my vassel keep hording for me off trade bots? Muwah.

Dereth Mozart

10-05-2004, 08:57 AM

Well, this is just my two pyreals on the upcoming patch.

Point one, Maintenance Window:

I think this is a good idea esp since there seems to be a lot of maintenance needed, and I'm sure we'll all agree we're tired with spontaneous downtimes. At least this way, unless something unforeseen happens, we'll have a set possible down time at a time when most players aren't online anyway. Well, except for me, but I barely see anyone else so it's a good move.

Point two, Salvaging Skill:

I don't really see a point for this for existing characters. The only good thing about this will be for re-rolls and new characters because those of us who have created a character for serious salvaging have already probably made them as gharu so we could max the salvaging tink skill, and in TD I'm already hitting high levels, so it's useless for me, and probably others already up there too. But it's good for new people, at least they'll be able to use aluvian or sho if they wish.

Point three, Ust Improvements:

This one I like. It'll eliminate the usting them one by one making it faster, plus we'll save time usting with the multi ust ability. The only thing I see that this won't make a difference on is when I'm usting certain materials, like steel. I don't want to ust them all together, because I like to be sure they're all the same quality so I wind up with some bags of 5.00, and some of 7.00 and so on. It makes a huge difference when you're on the 6th, 7th and 8th tinks for armor. Maybe you could check into that and see why it's so bloody hard to tink the armor on the last try, and why it has to have the highest quality of steel in order to work. Frankly I'd like to see 100% in tinking instead of this 99% because a maxed tinker shouldn't blow anything up. In real life a metal smith doesn't destroy what they're working on and actually very rarely damage it because they know what they're doing and have years of experience. Going back to usting though, this is a positive change.

Point four, Crafting Quests:

Nothing new. You've been introducing new things all along, to keep players from stock piling the items for handing in.

Point five, Gromnie Teeth:

Is it just me or does anyone else feel that we're basically being insulted here? I'm sorry to say this but this is an insult, because not all players try to find ways around all the changes that have been created to confine and constrict players into a specific role. It's as if you see us as 5 year olds, and many of us are over 30, and deserve better respect than this.
You could argue that hunting and quests give you xp, but when you have 12 million or more till the next level that could entail hours and hours of playing.....which is exactly what you want, because a player who's playing for hours is a player who will keep paying monthly too. Which is sad. I'm finding myself playing the game less and less each month because I'm just not interested in putting in a hard day at work, then working hard on a game. It's a bloody game, but sometimes it feels like work. I figure so what if some are finding ways to make it more profitable for themselves. That's what we do in life is it not? How many people can honestly say they have never in their life ever tried to find a way to make life easier for themselves? Whether that be gambling, playing the lottery, or looking for a job that pays higher wages than the one they have currently. People work to advance, and what I'm seeing is turbine allows for advancement, but only as they wish it to be, and only in the way they wish it to be. So that sums it up clearly.....the game belongs to turbine, that's true. But players are not serfs, and unhappy players are players that may look for another game to play. Our monarchy in LC of 800 players, only has right now about 20 active and of those active, most days they're not in game anymore. It's because of things like this. We might have 3 online during the week, with 8 total by the weekend because of a quest, but without a quest in mind, they just don't play anymore. It's because AC is not as fun as it used to be. It could be argued that the game is doing just as well, but 2 years ago when I began to play, I'd see as many as 1,000 in LC at the same time. Now I see no more than 700, and in WE there are over 100 houses available. I see at least one house pretty much every morning in LC and TD as available, and TD last time I looked had mansions available, whereas before it might take days to see a cottage come up and then you'd have to dash for it against at least one or two other players also going after it. But not anymore. It's because the game is loosing it's pleasure factor, and people come to play a game to have fun, not be penalized for doing it their way.
BTW, I don't do the crafting quests. I havn't time for them since I get around one hour a day only to play if I play. And yet I still feel insulted, those using it should more so feel this.

Point five, In Development:

I guess I have no comment except to say I'm glad you listened to the players on the weapons changes. But since they don't pertain to me I really can't say much.

All in all I think this is the patch where I'll be catching up on a few other hobbies because life is short, and I'm not going to spend an hour in game for usting or salvaging. Sorry turbine. Not all months can be exciting, I know. And it's good to get outside and do other things now and then. God knows some of the players I've seen have no life outside of their mutli ac accounts and that's truly sad. But without addicted players who will put up with whatever you give them, I guess you wouldn't have an income either.

Uncensored

10-05-2004, 08:58 AM

Maintenance Window: Excellent idea
Salvaging Skill: Long time waiting on this, I'm glad its being added.
Ust Improvements: I like the changes made here, some helpfull indeed
Crafting Quests: eh what can you do. Your trying to keep everything fair, but you will have people complain regardless.

Additional Comments:
I know someone also mentioned what about the xp placed into coord or other attributes to help raise their tinkering skill, will there ever be a gem to bring that to its original start? A simple yes or no will suffice. :)

Bamboo_MT

10-05-2004, 09:39 AM

I am upset about the masks and the scarecrows not being in the October patch. I know this sounds lame but the scarecrows are one of my favorite monsters in the game. I would have much rather had the Burun story arch stretched out a little to allow for the scarecrow content to be placed in the October patch. Where it belongs.

Please do somthing to make me go WoW.

MeTaGarfield

10-05-2004, 10:29 AM

My two cents, as I just got kicked out of the game because of maintenance. Acutally, it will probably amount to about a dollar when I am finished.

First:
Taking down the server.
As it is now, you get a global message a few times before the game is brought down. Easy to miss if fighting, even easier to miss if switching characters.
Make some kind of icon in the client that says "world countdown in progress", maybe a crossed over hour glass or something, then you click it to see expected downtime (when game is going down and when it is expected back up in _local_ time, easily done on the client).
Add something to the login screen as well.

Second: Percentage rewards are bad.
I know the reason why the percentage rewards where invented, the multimillion rewards (3 M in the case of the old pincer) is less than an hours hunting in a good spot even for a level 47 mage. Hardly worth getting for those who just got to the level to obtain it, definitely a waste of time for higher levels. On the other hand, a 50 million reward would bring a level 1 almost to level 50 in an instant, as was shown by those notes you could hand over that gave about 1-2 million each (Olthoi Chasm).

But % rewards are overall bad, because they give higher rewards when doing the task gets easier. Fixed rewards are worth more at lower level, and so the relative reward for doing something while it is hard is better than when it gets easy. Also, in the case of skills, they put the specialised character at an disadvantage.

Example (I use some numbers of Maggie site for crafting gromnie teeth):
skill 100 - 5000 ivory
skill 150 - 30000 jade
skill 200 - 100000 swamp
skill 250 - 25% (now 10%) ash gromnie tooth

I'll assume (because I don't have time to do the full math) that about 2/3 of the skill comes from experience put into the skill and 1/3 are from stats.

Specialized 100/100 trade mule. Starting skill 73 (I'll use 75).

So you need to raise your skill this number of times for the rewards, the cost for the next point (assuming spec'd) has been added along with a comment.
16 - 5000 - 183 - You will get 15 skill levels!
50 - 30000 - 1167 - You will get 16 skill levels!
83 - 100000 - 10075 - You will get 8 skill levels!
116 - 10% - 80802 - You get 8080 exp points, or just slightly more than the ivory tooth.

As you can see, the % reward is worth much less than the fixed rewards, unless you have the skill trained of course.
Trained skill and assuming the same ratio for stats and skill increments (not likely, speced skills tend to be cheaper to raise if you put more into the skill and less into the stats):
16 - 5000 - 456 - 8 skill levels
50 - 30000 - 2919 - 7 skill levels
83 - 100000 - 25188 - 3 skill levels
116 - 10% - 289505 - 28950 exp, or about the same as a jade tooth.

Exact numbers will vary, but this clearly (?) shows why % based rewards are especially bad for skills.

The ash tooth should be (if we assume the same kind of diminishing return for higher skills as the table indicate) about 2 skill levels for the spec'd (or 200k exp). Or better yet, do the calculations "for real" assuming a 100 focus/coordination trade mule with cooking/alchemy/fletching spec'd putting all their exp into these skills and stats using the optimal formula. Then give a fixed reward that will give several skill levels at the 50% mark. Say 10. The first two rewards would be lovered some (maybe) but the ash would be almost 1M exp.

3 - The real culprit
But the big problem here is still the spec/unspec quest dynamics.

The timer shold be on using the gems, not on pickup. This way the price to pay for doing some "xp laundry" is having to live with the skill changes for at least two weeks. This will of course make it harder to change skills as well, there would be a period of 2-4 weeks where your main skill would be trained instead of speced, but this is not necessarily a bad thing.

Then of course, is this really so bad a problem?

30M exp is maybe 2 hours hunting for a decent to high level character, probably less. To get those pesky teeth you have to hunt for more time than that, and unless they are in your normal hunting range (or you know a fixed spawn that you run past from time to time, but then you aint getting many teeth at all) this is time better spent hunting things your own size.

If you purchase the teeth, than someone obviously consider your payment worth the effort of getting them for you.

Again, there is the ever present ghost of UCM, you could stay in a dungeon with lots of gromnies and kill them over and over the whole night at low risk of getting killed by the gromnies, and if you picked a seldom visited place the envoys might miss you as well. Exp macroing in a well known high yield spot is more dangerous both monster- and envoy-vise.

Phosphine

10-05-2004, 11:17 AM

hello after a 3 month leave of absence

having a set time for server maintainence is a great idea for the sys engineers and the players.

I like the idea of Salvaging, and thats its free to all characters. Please make sure we can untrain it and get our xp back if we don't like it. This will help my Aluvian characters out quite a bit. I would like to see a spell buff for Salvaging as well. Any chance we can see the xp curve on it? Is it similar to Leadership/Loyalty?

I would like to keep the item tinkering skill intact for gharu characters. I do not think it would be very responsible to nerf characters that are were/are true to the Gharu lore as merchants and tinkerers.

I think you really need to look at Aluvian skill sets before addressing whether Gharu characters will have a change to thier freebie Item Tinkering, like maybe giving them Axe instead of Dagger.

XP changes: I think you need to find a way to aid the legitimate players. How about doing something like Harbinger for trade skills and connect it to the shadowhunter armor smiths? Like a house deed that adds +1 to your skill every time you complete the quest.

evolutionoccurs

10-05-2004, 12:36 PM

Complications on racial balancing. I see no complications at all. Make it where you can sell back trained : Staff-4credits, Dagger-4credits , UA-6credits,Assess Person-2credits,Item Tink-2credits. Than Anyone with these skills can keep em or lose em. Makes everyone happy. And as far as extra credits above lvl 126 come ToD expansion i'd 'like' to see a credit at lvl 130 and every 5-lvls till 150, than do the 1/10lvls . I mean heh, i like having lots of stuff trained, but if it's every 10 starting another credit at 130 and up than I guess i'll have to live with that long as you fixed the balancing as implied above. I mean like 'Maybe' 10% of the population uses Racial Weapons Along with their Primary Weapon. I'd have to think less % actually does Do to Game Experience (first hand knowledge). Have it where dagger,UA,
and Staff upon character build are thereafter an option to train/spec and the starting credits would be 56.

Great Job on Salvaging / UST updates. :)
More crafting quests are great too.

OMG OMG OMG, just read that the Ust Does not filter between grades, lmao than it's no use at all. DUH. I mean i loot ws 4,5,6,7,8,9,10 steel Do you really think it'd be wise for me to combine ws 4 steel with ws 10 ??? So what good is it if it does not salvage according to lvl of ws ? I mean we still are left with having to Salvage EXACTLY like we used to. duh. Waistin your time here guys....

DrCykosis

10-05-2004, 04:57 PM

What I want to know about the Oct is MASK'S?!?! That's always been the fun part of Oct for me. Took me about 3 yrs to get a darn Scarecrow one, still need the upgraded one though, and knath now also...
Oh and thanks for the Multi-Salvage that should save some time also. :)

po-dunk

10-05-2004, 07:17 PM

I have an idea that would greatly benefit true trade chars. Create another quest that takes 3 weeks to complete with the final reward being worth the same xp that the gromnie teeth offer now (3 skill points of xp). This would make it so that true trade chars can advance their skills in an efficient manner without letting temporary trade skill chars to obtain insane xp in a short time. The quest could be one that requires zero hunting but to complete the quest you have to do alot of running arround to get the supplies (no give/no drop) needed to craft new items that can be turned in for the rewards. I think that the trade char should be the one to actually perform a quest. I'd be willing to bet that most trade chars are not obtaining gromnie teeth by hunting them but from another char hunting the gromnies and them muling them over to the trade char

Heideggar

10-05-2004, 08:04 PM

I wouldn't mind a quest where it takes 3 weeks to complete to get all the XP, but I'd rather have many tasks than many places to run to, and _then_ to do a task. My tradesmule doubles as a regular mule in most respects. I barely tollerate the running on my guys with 400+ run, let alone the ones that can run at warp-mollasses.

imo, if Turbine used half of the ideas here to make these quests "trade mule only" they'd have to spend less time dealing with this, but maybe it's just me. I don't know exactly what the code looks like, but I'd _think_ it'd take less time than implementing, tweaking, nerfing, tweaking, nerfing, tweaking, implementing, tweak, nerf, etc. etc. just because of the lack of a good means of distinguishing who's a tradesmule and who isn't. I think we've pretty much figured out who's a true tradesmule and who isn't.

1) Always have alchemy, fletching, cooking spec'd with pretty good focus and coord.

2) Rarely changes (untrains, unspec'z, spec'z, trains, etc.) these skills.

3) Not necessarily designed for hunting.

Now, Ibn said that #1 is an interesting idea, but doesn't know how much engineering time it'd take. (fyi, I, and probably others, suggested this months ago before the new teeth came into game)

#2 deals more with the temple of enlightenment and forgetfullness temple timers. Not sure how easy or hard that is to change that. Since I'd think you'd get flagged for a "use" and thus starting the timer once you pick up a gem, then they'd have to figure out a new time depending on what you picked up, where as it could be now you it's all the same timer. Though, imo, that'd just be setting a new variable number to the "timer object", but they may be coding in something non Object Oriented.

#3 hard to find out really. I think there were 1 or 2 other suggestions that helped define what a true tradesmule is.

Hope Ibn writes this stuff down. I should send him a couple bucks so he can go to Staples and get a notebook *teases*.

I've got 3 AC notebooks filled with coords (pre maggies and other info sites), directions, info on trade skills, etc. etc. hehe

Zenra_Icewind

10-05-2004, 11:48 PM

Masks are prolly going to be postponed until November like they were last year because of the story arc. I hope that's not the case, but that's what I suspect with the festival season not being held in october, but being implemented until the month after. Joy.

wang-son

10-06-2004, 07:34 PM

I agree, rapid-fire bow bug=Bad :), but on that note, whatever happened to increasing the weapon animation for missle weapons PvP?

Palemare

10-07-2004, 12:10 PM

:confused:
I think this news is very lacking. On Thisledown we have over 900 apartments open. Why not offer each account the option to buy an apartment for additonal storage? How can their being vacant help the game. I sure could use additional storage.

Second you talk of throwing weapons bug.. Well when will you address the auto target bug. The auto target fails to lock onto beasties that are closest and my toon runs into a swarm trying to get to the beastie the farthest away, or tries to kill beasties on mountains across the valley.

These obvious problems need to be address.

Hay where is the spell checker too????

Kossuth

10-08-2004, 06:30 AM

1) Always have alchemy, fletching, cooking spec'd with pretty good focus and coord.

2) Rarely changes (untrains, unspec'z, spec'z, trains, etc.) these skills.

3) Not necessarily designed for hunting.

The slight complication for those of us at high level is that 1) just may not be true. That said I dare anyone to say my maxed focus/coord/end/weapon tinkering/armour tinkering/magic item tinkering (almost maxed item tinkering) character isn't a dedicated crafter tinker just because I chose to specialise leadership rather than fletching and my cooking/crafting/fletching are only about 80% of the max possible. The full set of majors I also have for my skills might also give away my focus!!! Other than that Heideggar it was a very erudite and well argued summary.

Ibn, I really think you're missing something that a lot of people who level crafters have in common. We feel a great sense of accomplishment and indeed competition in gaining high levels of our skills AND the feeling that it makes us a valued member of our monarchies. A "good" skill is plain useless when we have to do a craft interaction. Without a near 100% chance at some of the crafts there is no way I am going to risk destroying the items/ingredients that someone has spent time and pyreals gathering. Imagine if you turned around to sword or war users and said "sorry, we're putting a 10 million cap on the xp you can earn each week from killing monsters because a good skill is all you need". There would quite properly be an uproar. You've obviously decided that genuine crafters don't matter.

Way to go to make those of us who like to help others and be good monarchy members feel hurt. Now I know that Turbine consider that I'm apparently either an exploiter or don't merit the ability to get my craft skills to high levels. :(

Shojimbo

10-09-2004, 08:28 AM

So, what will we need for salvage skill to obtain 100%?

UKAK

10-09-2004, 11:00 AM

Not sure if this has being mentioned but,

to lose item tink will mean gharu is well nerfed, who would choose this civ for a staff att??

alv to me is a waste of time, sho on the other hand offers a saveing of 6 credits. why ruin this race? will i get 2 or 4 credits when i HAVE to drop it? can u make it possible for me to change race now being a monarch i have a mansion I AM not willing to go a chase another 20 GG's.

I understand with improvements comes problems, but a little more thought needed here, as in, why nerf gharu and leave the others for 1,2 or 3 months?

Now a very grumpy monarch who wishs he had gone Sho!!

Auron IX

10-09-2004, 11:51 AM

PvP Weapons Changes
In June of this year, we made a number of changes to the Weeping, Hollow and Phantom weapons. After watching the feedback on these changes and more internal testing, we determined that the tools and data we had used to justify the changes were flawed. For November we will be making additional changes to bring these weapons in line with our goals for them. We'll be presenting additional information regarding these changes in the November Letter to the Players as well as frequently asking for feedback in our PvP Discussions forum.

So darktide melees get the shaft yet another patch. You guys fail to see some people play the game to pvp. `

UKAK

10-09-2004, 11:58 AM

They seem to live in there own little world where only there thoughts count, without us there is no game.

We cant go haveing 500 att swords etc, but we need more testing before they introduce these radical changes.

Psychosis

10-10-2004, 07:49 AM

What I'd like to know about the bulk salvaging is....I got a ton of items in my pack to salvage, I drag my whole pack to the UST. I click salvage...If I have enough Items from Gold to complete a full bag and 1/2 Will I get the full bag and 1/2? Or will it Dfault to just 1 full bag of gold? Other then that So far sounds awsome!

Sassy Dawn

10-10-2004, 01:54 PM

Ibn,

You'all do such a great job, however I was wondering is there ever going to be a improvement to the (OH so ) :confused: slow animation of the Xbox. We are basically dead meat in PvP and even the monsters can hit us twice before we get our second shot off, and I am nearly capped. :eek:

I made a mage to PvP with, but she is over 30 levels lower (still under 126) and far from capping anything, would be cool to use my Main for PvP.

Keep up the great work - 4 years and still love this game. :D

Sassy Dawn / Rogue Spirit

kermit

10-10-2004, 10:56 PM

I hope they remembered to add a sellback gem so if we dont like the way new salavage skill works we can get our xp back.

jaymiller

10-11-2004, 01:03 AM

Ok i dont reply much on here but after reading this and the reviews of the others on the forum. You think Turbine would get a clue that not only do we not like change but we like playing this game the way we always have. I have to say when they pulled the xp chains that really sucked, then they started enforcing the UCM crap and now the guys that are really getting hurt by all of this is the ones who do not have the time to play the game daily but enjoy it. So i have to ask this, how long does Turbine want to keep AC1 around? They bought it back from M$ to shut it down? Cause if this game keeps going the direction it has it will see a direct impact of unhappy gamers leaving for other games. Like myself I have already pre-ordered EQ2 cause I am getting tired of the crap. I know it may not be any better and may actually be worse but enough is enough already. After 5 years of playing I have had enough of the "engineers" telling me what they "think" is best for the ones who actually shell out the dough and time to keep there jobs going. Maybe this.. you actually do what we ask of you. Supply and demand.. we want something one way provide it or we will go where we can get it. Simple as that... enough of my rant and rambling on. Cya

Ibn Ghon

10-11-2004, 01:58 AM

You are nerfing Gharu. Increase their damage the cost to 6 credits. Otherwise any staffer is screwed.

And plz fix your post timer lol. Pathetic.

mishop

10-11-2004, 08:10 AM

I like the salvage changes a lot =)

Ibn

10-11-2004, 03:39 PM

Ibn,

Why is it that the "bow bug" is getting fixed but fast casting and slide casting are not?

Seems wrong to fix one animation break and not the other 2.

One is within our resources to fix without breaking other things. The others are not.

longjoey

10-11-2004, 05:12 PM

Well I guess I could try a different race other than Ghuar...

Jet-eye-nite

10-12-2004, 12:39 AM

I have to agree with seavapor ,just give everyone 100% salvage and be done with it . Or it will add to the ever building xp drain(s) you now place on us anyway .You are already for the most part washing out tinkering anyway with this lame 33%. Have you ever taken the time to cal time frame from collection to salvage to skill prep to final tinker attempt, I bet not(I have taken weeks to complete certain salvage types and ws,only to see a prized item poof).While I am on the subject why is there so much silver and gold and so little of other items ? I guess it goes along the lines of why you have never taken the kite shield off the tums . Why are so fearful of success in the player base ? :eek:

MHulan de Shamp

10-13-2004, 02:25 PM

It is great that you started to use UTC time in adetion to the local times.
(as in "This maintenance window will begin at 6AM PDT / 9AM EDT / 1PM UTC and will last for two hours.")

Could you please use it evrywhere (mosty in State of the Network)?

Sarge

10-15-2004, 03:34 AM

hmm I'm not usually this rude, but I just can't help myself today. I have never read a thread with soo many crying *****es. I guess I'll have to stay away from the feedback topics from now on.

Go write your own game children, then you don't have to type your complaints, just ***** at yourselves.

Absolutely hilarious :Þ

ohhh ummm... It's not fair and your mean to me gimme more xp and free skill credits or something and umm undo the nerfs plzthx

haha

edit:BTW I'm not referring to everyone. Some had very good points....and I had no idea these boards filter potty mouths. Cool, BUT IT'S NOT FAIR! lmao

Junkyard Dog

10-15-2004, 05:10 AM

OK, somewhat different observation on the salvaging skill. (Post-patch.)

At the very low levels of the salvaging skill, if you have no other tink skills to fall back on you can get a result of "unusable," I.E., it fails.

While higher values of the skill do result in more units of salvage being returned, there is one additional point that I did not see mentioned. The pyreal value (as a percentage of the original item value) also increases. At skill 100, its about 25%. OK, no big deal. Nothing to write home about. But, as the skill increases, so does the value of the salvage produced. But let's remember the WEIGHT factor of salvaged items... that the weight of a 2500BU hauberk is now reduced to 100BU... along with everything else that went in to making up that bag of salvage by the time you are done!
Although buying the salvage skill gets really expensive in terms of skill points (about 10 mil per point at 160, and 160=about 40% return) the ability to get a good percentage of the value at a fraction of the weight would be worth it, in my opinion.
Since the original LttP stated that at high skill levels the return could be more than 100%, it seems to me that this might be what they were talking about - both amount of salvage and the VALUE of the salvage. Like many other things introduced to the game (including the salvaging skills themselves) it seems like this is another way to introduce some features of AC2 into the much more popular ACDM. In AC2 you could convert all your treasure to cash "in the field."
If the salvaging skill is leading up to a way to do this for ACDM, and they do follow up with ways to increase the skill via linking it to an attribute and new buffs, or even reducing the exp required to raise it, then I am all for it. You would be able to salvage almost any treasure into lower burden salvage and get as much or more than the original heavy items when you sell the salvage. More time hunting! Pack slots saved!

(Oh, I almost forgot. By way of comparison, if the tinkering skill is used instead of the salvaging skill, it SEEMS that the value return is capped at 20%, regardless. And again, I want to stress that I am talking about the pyreal value of the salvage, not the number of units you get.)

I would be intersted in seeing any other results you get from this.

Junkyard Dog, Wintersebb.