Give us your feedback on the December Letter to the Players!

[Ibn]

Please use this thread to give us your feedback to the December Letter to the Players (http://ac.turbinegames.com/index.php?page_id=322).

[KPD157]

Now that looks like a Good LTTP Ibn :)

I like the fact that you are listening to that debate on Life Magic as well as continueing the efforts to make towns viable places to congregate :)

Even though I have been dissapointed with the lack of New Halloween Stuff during Halloween I think its great we will be getting them before next Halloween rather than they being blown off :)

[Shelendil]

One very small nitpick.

magic casters with 290 and 310 War Magic wield requirements.

Will anything for martyr mages be available? Particularly as this class needs a boost at the higher levels?

[Sake]

sigh... more drain-proof monsters...

[AlphaSwift]

A couple of points:

First, "This is because we are using some security features of IE for migration, and these features are only found in IE 5.5 with 128-bit encryption or IE 6."

If you're starting from scratch on this, why don't you give Mozilla Firefox some love. At the moment, the ONLY thing I use IE for is my Passport/AC Log in process. I was really hoping to be able to dump that. Very disappointing.


Secondly, higher level wield requirement weapons. Just this month, I completed a 10x tinked set of AR and Rending weapons. All max damage UBER weapons. Now, they are less than uber. And the hundreds of plats, bags of high work salvage and tons of time are now blown away.

All in all, can't say I'm happy at the moment.

[ElgarL]

All I have to say is "Go Holtburg" ;).

[Aluvious]

A couple of points:

First, "This is because we are using some security features of IE for migration, and these features are only found in IE 5.5 with 128-bit encryption or IE 6."

If you're starting from scratch on this, why don't you give Mozilla Firefox some love. At the moment, the ONLY thing I use IE for is my Passport/AC Log in process. I was really hoping to be able to dump that. Very disappointing.


Secondly, higher level wield requirement weapons. Just this month, I completed a 10x tinked set of AR and Rending weapons. All max damage UBER weapons. Now, they are less than uber. And the hundreds of plats, bags of high work salvage and tons of time are now blown away.

All in all, can't say I'm happy at the moment.

SELL THEM NOW!!!!! lol :D I haven't tinked a weapon in months because I knew this was coming. Turbine has been talking about it for months.

[Doom]

Why don't you make mages totally useless?

"This means that melee and missile attacks require that the creature be Imperil'd to do the same damage as a war magic attack."

Oh it does does it? I have seen melees and archers 2 shot a drudge after an imperil. I don't beleive i have ever seen a mage do this. Oh and what about lugians? Melee's and Archer's can sometimes 3 shot these if they are lucky. As a mage i sit there and continuously hit these for about 2 - 3 mins.

Now that melees don't have to spec life magic to hunt, they can keep missle, magic, and melee d speced.

Hell devs why don't you just add the ability to put a second imbune in a melees weapon? I think it would be great to have a sword with pierce and CS, to use on a monster that has low enough armor lvls that an emperil is not needed.

Other dungeons should also benifit from this. I'm telling you i would rather go to 80+ Matron, or Lucuna than a dungeon where i can fellow and make 40 mill+ with just a rend weapon. /SARCASM

Good job turbine. Loev the new idea!!!!! /SARCASM

*thumbs up*

[MisatoX]

Hey Ibn, do you guys think it'll be safe to start turning back into a tank again with the new changes? Right now I have spec'd life on my sword guy with 100 innate focus, which I'd like to unspec and shift the focus back into quick. Will there still be a lot of things that are going to require melees to have spec'd life to hunt?

Just a lot of gem collecting ahead of me it looks like :)

[Zhen_Ebonfire]

Billing Changes Yellow Flag

I wanted to make sure your billing migrations would handle my scenario, which I believe is a fairly uncommon usage of Passport.

I have 3 AC accounts, and only 1 Passport account. I've attached the 3 Zone "nicknames" associated with my AC accounts to this 1 Passport account. When I need to log a different AC account, I do not log out of Passport.

Instead...
- I use the "Support" link on Zone.com menu bar.
- I choose the "Change nickname" option/link, and then switch to a different Zone ID.
- After I complete this change, I go back to the AC Start page, and fire up a new client window (from a different starting room). This allows me to have up to 4 AC start rooms up and active on my desktop with up to 4 different AC accounts.

Logging a separate AC account then becomes merely a matter of changing focus to the window for that acct and then hitting start.

PLEASE be aware of this scenario and account for it in your new billing/login system.

TIA

[Alissa]

OMG!!
Can you not default to IE?
Can you not make something compatible with other browsers, Firefox, Netscape, Opera?

There are many who hate IE. The only reason I still use it is for Windows update and of course AC.

IE is a totally bug ridden hack fest, make something that is compliant across the board. You want to leave MS but then drop back to their lagging technology.

[Gatt]

To that end, one thing we are considering is the introduction of a high-level hunting ground or dungeon populated by creatures that are immune to all non-projectile magic. This would allow us to give them an armor level that is fair to melee and missile characters without having to worry about whether or not the creature becomes too easy once Imperil'd; the creature would be immune to Imperil spells. However, War Mages and Martyr Mages would still be effective against these creatures.

Big trouble here.

How will these creatures address Rending? If they are too easy with Imperil/Vulns on them, will they completely ignore Rending weapons? How will they balance against Mages with Rending casters if they don't ignore Rending?

[Trieze]

Why do mages suddenly complain when turbine wants to open up a melee/missle hunting dungeon or area?

Mages have caul(where you see mostly ALL mage fellows), they have VOD, Launca, and other places.

Besides the olthoi hives, and possible some burun dungeons, i can't think of a place for a mele, or missle char without life to level up.

What's wrong with giving a non life-melee/missle character a place to level up?

And no, they're not "nerfing" mages..

And Doom, mages aren't useless, were talking about ONE dungeon. No one is going to touch you in your little caul fellow in crater blasting ice bolts at marguls.

Im hopeing these monsters will be like crystal golems are today. Have a dungeon of nice XP crystal golems. Not golems, but what there defences are. Mages can kill em, but they have to whip out a melee weapon.

[SCM]

@permit Firefox.
This should be the default browser for AC & anyone using the net. :)

At last some melee love.
Looks like a great patch coming up.

[Alltu_Tru]

Great :) love it all :D

short message to some posters here, these monsters will be imp proof, and mage vuln proof, they did not say anything about being rend proof, because rend does not come from a mages spell in any way shape or form

and the only time my lvl 122 archer has ever two shot a VoD drudge was when the monster was VULNED AND IMPED as well as getting at least one crit, it didnt happen all that often!! so get a clue please :D since the new dungeon/hunting ground will be imp AND spell vulned proof, the damage will be a LOT closer to each other from all skill points of veiw, dont you think they crunched the numbers before starting this? to at least make sure it was possible? :)

[GKusnick]

As I read it, the LttP does not say you will need IE to play the game after the migration. What it says is that you will need IE to migrate your account over to the new system. In other words, the migration tool requires IE to validate your existing Passport credentials, but the new launcher doesn't, since it uses a different authentication technology that's not browser-based.

Since you need IE to log in now, updating it one last time to migrate your accounts doesn't seem like that big a deal.

[Jet-eye-nite]

#1. As far as the non-mage guys I play all I ever wanted was ability to get some of that sweet loot that abounded on the caul/vod mobs
#2. I would hope your town upgrades would include some of the normal things we have to go elsewhere now to get , plats,arrow types,peas,sell rates,fresh new items sold be NPC's,higher buy rates and maybe even use bronze statue as buffer to certain skills such as cooking,alch,tinkering.
I would futher hope that the casinos would have a fresh overhaul allowing my things to be sold or traded there such as keys,scrolls,quest items or even xp((slot machines with possible nice BIG payout would be real nice)xp gains for my trade/tinkers would be real nice).
#3. I myself had hoped we would be done with the zone by now and hoped for the drop of the .Net passport,but I will say I am glad you didn't rush some poorly done fix .
#4. Upper weild items could be nice if properly done ,please make them scarce if you must but don't clutter them up with regs like rank 8 ,magic def 350 or other such pfft type weild regs , maybe even some new +'s.
Maybe even give us the choice of either imbueing these weapons or hilting them . :D

[immortalbob]

I agree with SCM, will there be support for any mozilla based internet browsers with the new billing migration?


Firefox please


edit: i can't spell

[DadgaSilverhand]

Hm, Casino moving closer to Holtberg, Shoushi, and Yaraq.

Sound like Elysa's Favor Ring Connection. update? hm...

No other hint as Ibn said, i am assuming Turbine will set town stamp a new timer? if that is so, it is good news! 5 mins or 10 mins whatever is sound good. since 24 hr timer isnt game breaking for lucky gold letters to turn in, because most folks hit 21st level within 4-5 hrs.
if not, then i will look forward in few months.

Thx for not blowing off the fun stuffs and stress-free quests on the masks and guises.
look like we all going to do "Nightmare on Christmas Eve II" LOL!!!

[MaddyFF]

Secondly, higher level wield requirement weapons. Just this month, I completed a 10x tinked set of AR and Rending weapons. All max damage UBER weapons. Now, they are less than uber. And the hundreds of plats, bags of high work salvage and tons of time are now blown away.

So I take it you are a "No" vote on change in AC? Uber stuff of days gone day have always been replaced by something new. Mattekar coat and yoroi leggings, or a mattekar robe with an old style olthoi helm used to be the uber armor.

Things change, and I'm glad they do.

Oh yeah, IE is fine with me, I still haven't bothered to install Firefox. :p

[Brokos]

What is to wait on? It is ONE dungeon or ONE area... good grief. Do it then talk about it. Really.

What the game has been missing for way way too long are melee/archer dungeons like Olthoi Hordes Nest for level 80+. Once melees and archers hit that and reach level 95 or so it's basically over. Whereas mages have good high level places to drain and cast spells forevermore.

[Gouru]

This is because we are using some security features of IE for migration, and these features are only found in IE 5.5 with 128-bit encryption or IE 6.

Note it says "FOR MIGRATION" not for continued play. The current Turbine launcher does not require IE to use, and isn't that the launcher planned for the future?

[Renegade Knight]

Turbine, for the magic req. tier casting items, DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT LET THEM HAVE THE DMG BONUS IN PKL OR PK!

[pacesetter]

hmmm nother mage nerf. I had hoped we would be done with that.

If this is the case mages need to cast FASTER. Also you just took away our ability to cast magic yield so we can hit em. Gee Thx.

why not just build pre imped baddies for the melees and leave our magic alone????

Since you are making war the same as melee weaps and life useless, can we get a 12 skill point rebate for war and 6 skill point rebate for life??
Then at least we could spec a melee skill so we can compete.


this s*** needs some more thinking before you crash us again.

[Zelum]

I am glad to hear about the new melee/missile dungeon. My High level tank archer is useless in Caul and VoD on his own, My lower level mage of course does very well there. There is a tremendous amount of imbalance in this case and my archer is unable to benefit from the fantasic loot to be had at caul. I would welcome the change!! :rolleyes:

[pacesetter]

What is to wait on? It is ONE dungeon or ONE area... good grief. Do it then talk about it. Really.

What the game has been missing for way way too long are melee/archer dungeons like Olthoi Hordes Nest for level 80+. Once melees and archers hit that and reach level 95 or so it's basically over. Whereas mages have good high level places to drain and cast spells forevermore.

ummm VoD is loaded with baddies for melee/archer as well as mage food and the melee/archer group does as well as mages.

Also in caul My archer has fun without mage help. I may not kill as fast as if I or a mage vulns but I do kill.

Seems like melees and archers want to do 400 damage but do it 4X as fast as a mage can cast.

Get rid of my 6 second wind-up and I won't complain.

Do you have a mage?? where do you hunt??? have you explored options??

[Number-Sun]

Well it seems that Turbine got the attention of a few players with this letter. :)

I don't see the point of masks in DEC but it seems to make a few people happy. I would think the time could have been spent on more useful ventures but that's probably a done deal at this point.

New weapons means more salvage needed so the economy will liven up considerably. I'm happy to see the game is not going to stagnate in this area. Guess I'll need new AR, CS, CB and rend weapons LOL :D

It will be interesting to see how monsters fare against these new weapons since I don't have problems killing monsters in VOD as it is. I'm spec melee/life/sword

I like the idea of a different type of dungeon.

Sounds like an interesting update. Let's hope there are no disasterous bugs where the worlds have to be taken down for emergency patches or worse.

I would like to see a committment to improved QA in one of these LTTP's

[therkyn]

Nice... increased damage good, a non-life spec place to hunt - good (but make it 3 or it'll be camped)... Oh, and remember that nerf of the Tuskers you did on AL? You were obviously very successful, you moved all of the people into Holding or Lacuna... that may need some more balancing to look at.

OH, hey, no more forced fellow dungeons (salvage scroll quest) that you cannot repeat please... that does not support teamwork once you've done it.

-t

[the_dove]

When the billing migration is complete, how would that effect the current status Zone accounts as far as subscriptions are concerned? (What if someone paid for 6 months of subscription ahead of time? Who would that carry over?)

[TheKnight]

Good to see the migration is going well and on schedule. Bummed about losing Orion and Mirin as they are some very talented people, and they will be missed. *waves* :)

As for the other items:

I. Masks and Guises

Ya is all I can say. Looking forward to finding some new masks and Guises.

II. Social Centers

Excellent that your moving Casino's closer to the towns, and frankly it's about time heh. For the portals thumbs up both ways, as that will make it much easier to get around. And finally adjusting the starter quests is another good idea, for preperations for the expansion.

III. Higher Wield Req Weapons

I have mixed feelings about this, as it will do some damage in the short term to imbued/tinkered weapons but in the long run I see nothing but good come out of this. Looking forward to seeing what kind of damage increase we are talking about here.

IV. In Concept

All I can say is THANK GOD FINALLY! Mages have both Caul and VOD and this is melee love if i've ever seen it. First with the excellent health/mana rations and now this for down the road. Keep up the melee love, as it will be really nice to have a melee only hunting ground for a change.

Life magic however is a different story, most people use it for protections only, unless they have a very high life magic skill and then they also use it offensivly to vuln monsters. What this does however is it forces archers/melee's to pick up this magic school because frankly you need it for the protects and you can't take anything down in caul/vod without it. (well you can but it takes double the effort to do so and makes it very fusterating)

So what I would reccomend to do for those archers/melees without lifemagic is to adjust the Armor Rending to more appropriate levels. Right now AR only ignores a portion of the targets armor, however if you look at how imperil works with life magic:

Imperil Other I - Decreases the target's natural armor by 20 points.
Imperil Other II - Decreases the target's natural armor by 50 points.
Imperil Other III - Decreases the target's natural armor by 75 points.
Imperil Other IV - Decreases the target's natural armor by 100 points.
Imperil Other V - Decreases the target's natural armor by 150 points.
Imperil Other VI - Decreases the target's natural armor by 200 points.

Now all ren weapons act as if a vuln 6 was cast, such as if you use an Acid Ren weapon, that target would be Vuln Acid 6. But AR rens don't work that way as it only ignores the partial armor. So my question is why does an AR Ren not Decrease the targets armor by 200 points just like a Imperil level 6 spell would, when it's true for all other Ren types. (fire/cold/lighting/acid)

This is why archers/melee's need a mage to vuln something for them first if it has very high AL, as a melee/archer can't even touch the creature without it being Imperiled first. If AR rens where adjusted to not ignore partial armor and go full , I think we would see alot more archers/melees in Caul and VOD.

Overall good news, and thanks for the melee love it's been long overdue honestly.

Regards

[Zaerik-MT]

IBN-
Can you explain what you mean by "Changing our .NET Passports". I dont really understand...

[baybear57]

The name of the December event is "The Calm?" Is that the same calm that typically comes before the storm?

/e gets all giddy thinking about the new year :)

[Cezium]

New dev's i've never heard of working on AC makes me real iffy about the future.

Tinking up new casters for all elements I use doesn't sound fun at all. Most melee's need one less than archers and mages, ever think of that geniuses?

Sword 16 credits to spec, slash and pierce as one damage
UA - also can do slash and pierce at once
Axe/mace - whatever damages they both do
Mage(28 credit)/Archer(16 credits) - no synergy announced.

I want a dev to actually reply to that concern.

Glad for the melee leveling but I don't think they low level melee's or mages that can't hunt vod understand that a mage of the same level will usually die consistantly in the 80+ matron hive. Mages also don't do damage output anywhere near what a melee can do on an imperiled and vulned creature.

For example. I have 28x base sword on my mage. Using a perfect isparian sword after i imp and vuln it can kill a peerless drudge in 1 hit all the time. War magic doesn't have this output.

[Yew Wan Sum]

I hate the Zone.

I hate IE just as much.

You aren't rid of MS until you are rid of IE as well.

I reiterate the call allready made by many to allow Firefox and other browsers to work with AC. In fact, why is a browser necessary at ALL? Other games have a login built in. AC should as well.

If you are only using API calls which are installed in the system with IE dll's, then so be it.

I do NOT want to have to use a browser to log in, and I do not want to have to play virtual hopscotch to switch accounts. Anything less than a custom login is less than acceptable.




Lifeless Toon Hunting

Its about time you DID something, so I applaud this move, even though I have twice as many mages as missle/melee combined.

It might actually put mages and archers/melees on the proper footing for once. If the mobs are life-debuff-immune, but not rend-effect immune, then by selecting the proper weapon/wand you are good to go without the need for Life. AL can be balanced out such that archers aren't 1-shotting everything, but for once I'd like to see a place where mages and 3schoolers die by the dozens while true tanks own the place. Don't get me wrong, my mages won't like it one bit, but I simply won't take them there. They have the other 99.99% of Dereth as their sandbox.

Oh yeah, make some of the mobs use elemental hollow damage(Hollow Cold should be fun =P). Force a choice between overall AL and protection vs. the new baddies. Better yet, show us a place where tinkered cov shines, and tinkered cov on true tanks shine even brighter.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was enough content specifically for each character type that you actually had a *reason* to have them all?

Also, *please* *please* *please* make some of this hunting area OUTSIDE. I SOOOOO long for my archer to have a place to go under the open sky rather than trolling about in dank tunnels, hunched over trying to fletch a bundle of arrows in the dark, without even the comfort of a metal shield to stave off the flood of foes.

Once again, nice work and glad to see you doing something about it.

[JJC]

Adding a high level non casting land is wrong on many points. First is that it doesn't solve the problem. Second is that it supports a defacto segregation. Third is that it's not inline with skill costs. And finally, like the loot rebalances, it's just going to add to the overall problem when it's time to really fix it.

Giving non casters a place to hunt is essentially already done. While lacking anything close to variety you can accomplish that in bug and ape dungeons. While it's not as lucrative as VoD or Caul it's not nearly as dangerous either. Having these areas doesn't mean the problem doesn't exists. Adding more of them doesn't make the problem go away.

Keeping mages in one area, which they don't even have to be since they can still get good returns on war only in the proposed area, and non casters in another does nothing for the community as a whole. You are making efforts to get people to gather in towns and then turn around and make them fight in different areas based on templates.

Having to cast less spells is always a plus even for mages. If it's identical to the VoD and Caul in rewards then everyone will be there and you are still at the point where some players are simply not welcome. If somehow mages are unwelcome then it's just making seperate sandlots decided by how buffs are worn. This doesn't build community. It build distaste. People can't hunt together since ones magic or anothers melee weapon doesn't offer anything to the other depending on where they are.

Skill costs shouldn't be dismissed so easily. There are other ways of solving the problem by using other skills ingame already. Once more, they can actually fix the problem. How are these ideas not automatically superior?

This quick fix and damn the consequences attitude nonsense is overdone. Didn't you see that when it came time to fix the loot system? If you thought that the old system was sloppy just wait til you bite the bullet on this issue. When you fix the problem, you fix the problem. Illconsidered repairs cause more problems than they fix.

If this solution is the best, why not apply it to all the monsters ingame right now? No special area, no new monsters needed and it works forward too. We all know why you won't do that and that is because it isn't the right answer. It's a broken fix on a broken system.

You got it half right when you said that it wasn't the final solution; It's not a solution at all. The amount of problems it's going to introduce is mindboggling. If this is supposedly content for non casters, will it be designed for those not buffed with 7's or will the spell level discrepency still exists? Will it be equally balanced for those who don't buff armor, since we are talking non casters for the most part here, or will those dripping magic be vastly over protected? To get by all that magical protection will you have up the damage so much that buffing is the only way to go?

It's not just about the ability to deal out damage. The broken dynamics of magic vs. lore go well beyond a DOT table. Fixing one aspect while ignoring the others to their detriment is a mistake, and that is what this is all about. Fix the problem and you fix the problem. There are no fixes anywhere in the LttP on the problems with magics.

JJC

[Gatt]

New dev's i've never heard of working on AC makes me real iffy about the future.

Tinking up new casters for all elements I use doesn't sound fun at all. Most melee's need one less than archers and mages, ever think of that geniuses?

Sword 16 credits to spec, slash and pierce as one damage
UA - also can do slash and pierce at once
Axe/mace - whatever damages they both do
Mage(28 credit)/Archer(16 credits) - no synergy announced.

I want a dev to actually reply to that concern.

Glad for the melee leveling but I don't think they low level melee's or mages that can't hunt vod understand that a mage of the same level will usually die consistantly in the 80+ matron hive. Mages also don't do damage output anywhere near what a melee can do on an imperiled and vulned creature.

For example. I have 28x base sword on my mage. Using a perfect isparian sword after i imp and vuln it can kill a peerless drudge in 1 hit all the time. War magic doesn't have this output.

You've got a couple serious misconceptions, and one I'm calling shennagins on.

First, None of the Melee weapons do both damage types at the same time. All of them do one or the other depending on either the weapon or the power setting. So, all of the Melee Weapons need a seperate Render for each type. AR isn't part of the equation, RR outdamages it on everything that isn't debuffed.

Melee's can't debuff anything with the ease that a Mage can. I'm consistently outkilled anywhere I go, even with my 370 buffed Life, because I have to try to debuff without a yield, and land two spells. Meanwhile the Mage can debuff it in a fraction of the time, and may not even need to do anything other than yield if he prefers Rendings. Nor does the Mage have to go Peace mode, switch to a caster, debuff eventually, switch to Peace mode, equip weapon, equip shield, kill.

Finally, Shennagins. You can most certainly debuff the Blue Drudge with ease. But you *aren't* one shotting it. When I was in the low 400's I would swing and miss at least 2/3 of the time if not more on them. With a 340 buffed skill, You are not one shotting. You're swinging forever before you hit.

[Cezium]

You've got a couple serious misconceptions, and one I'm calling shennagins on.

First, None of the Melee weapons do both damage types at the same time. All of them do one or the other depending on either the weapon or the power setting. So, all of the Melee Weapons need a seperate Render for each type. AR isn't part of the equation, RR outdamages it on everything that isn't debuffed.

Melee's can't debuff anything with the ease that a Mage can. I'm consistently outkilled anywhere I go, even with my 370 buffed Life, because I have to try to debuff without a yield, and land two spells. Meanwhile the Mage can debuff it in a fraction of the time, and may not even need to do anything other than yield if he prefers Rendings. Nor does the Mage have to go Peace mode, switch to a caster, debuff eventually, switch to Peace mode, equip weapon, equip shield, kill.

Finally, Shennagins. You can most certainly debuff the Blue Drudge with ease. But you *aren't* one shotting it. When I was in the low 400's I would swing and miss at least 2/3 of the time if not more on them. With a 340 buffed skill, You are not one shotting. You're swinging forever before you hit.

AR/CS/CB get the benefit. I was talking about those not rends. Don't distort that. ONE LANDED MAIN IMBUE does 2 types of damage on some melee weapons. I can't remember if axe/mace get 2 types on one weapon so I'll edit that out and add spear.

Sometimes I pull out a focus stone or other special item to yield of vuln then use a CS imbued caster. If you exit combat mode this is negligably faster than getting a sword and shield.

Having imperil vuln and a proper weapon outdamage anything a mage can ever do alone. You aren't supposed to have imperil for solo hunting unless you make a sacrifice for it.

My sword buffs to 368 with an isparian and that has a +25 buffed attack mod. I swing 3-4 times and the drudge dies in one hit. I said one hit not one swing.

btw I love the word shenanigans use it more.

[Lance]

As an above poster mentioned, would like to see how the Martyr Mage will be dealt with in the upcoming scheme of things.

Also joining the Firefox bandwagon here, please consider support for it.

[Cezium]

About the billing,
If billing doesn't open an IE window and just uses some drivers installed with IE 6 I don't really care. If I ever have to use IE specifically for AC I will be choked. I use dual client to launch AC. IE gets no use on my PC.

[MaddyFF]

II reiterate the call allready made by many to allow Firefox and other browsers to work with AC. In fact, why is a browser necessary at ALL? Other games have a login built in. AC should as well.

They probably will use their own login.

[Shelendil]

Well ok, let's look at what equipment each class needs.

Mages will need 2 wands for each element, a render and a CS (or CB if you prefer that). That's 14.

Archers and melees will be pulling from AR, CS, and render for each element. That's a potential of 21. You're right that some melees don't get every attack, so that knocks us down to 18.

I'm frankly not seeing the imbalance that you do.

[Vlad Morbius]

Well that's a great start guys!
Please refrain from making it a dungeon, we have bug and monkey dungeons, and I prefer to fight in the open areas. Melee/missile need our own VoD / Caul hunt area :D
I guess next year I may actually be able to hunt my melee again and gain some decent xp. It would be great if you could make it effective for Jan since melee's would also like the chance to horde up some xp for the Augmentation gems coming, it's the only fair thing to do :cool:
Also as far as the other ideas, I really hope it's along the lines of stand alone(no need for imp) melee/ missile weapons so the rest of the game is opened up to us again ;)

[Hamfast]

As per your direction, I have updated my passport accounts and changed the passwords... made sure the Credit Card Info is up to date and all...

I have 3 accounts at the moment, 2 old (passport), 1 new (Turbine)... After the migration, will I be able to use the Turbine Launching System (SWEET!!! :cool: ) or will I be using a modified Zone launching system (klunly :o and slow :( )...

If you are unable to tell, I am quite impressed with the Turbine Launch Code, it is quick and easy and does not leave a ton of stuff running in the back ground...

Oh, and Welcome to the Far Left Coast, hope your moves went well...

[silvurhawke]

My greatest fear of the new "high level" hunting is it will be group required. Now the high level areas (Caul and VoD) are very mage centric and a decent sized mage can go solo there to their hearts content. The problem is this is where the good loot is. I recently returned to the game a month ago after a 5 month break and the loot available to archers and melee solo in places like the Plains and Extreme Dires absolutely sucks. I have played a TON in the past month and my playstyle is 100% looting. I play to find new and interesting shiny objects.

Finally my Life archer is big enough to explore a bit in the VoD and Caul but it is tiring and tough for him but the little he has played in those areas the differnece in loot is vast and striking.

From my point of view archers and melees need a place to give comparable loot to VoD and Caul. Unlike most AC veterans I couldn't care less about XP's. Leveling means nothing to me other than the ability to kill bigger stuff with better loot.

But it sounds to me like this "new" type lifemagicproof type of content will prove to be tough for everyone and therefore be group required and that mages will be as good or better than melee/archer. Mages have a lot of advantages (I have one of those too) that melee and archers don't. Particularly survivability in dense magic casting swarms with higher inherent magic defense but especially once touch heal VII. Mage gets hit, boom and they are healed. No funky animation switch, no drop out of attack mode to lower defenses, just keep casting and blasting.

Please just give us a place where the melee/archer can not only compete but dominate and get a chance at the loot the mages scoop hourly in the VoD and Caul.

[Gordian]

Why don't you make mages totally useless?

"This means that melee and missile attacks require that the creature be Imperil'd to do the same damage as a war magic attack."

Oh it does does it? I have seen melees and archers 2 shot a drudge after an imperil. I don't beleive i have ever seen a mage do this. Oh and what about lugians? Melee's and Archer's can sometimes 3 shot these if they are lucky. As a mage i sit there and continuously hit these for about 2 - 3 mins.

<Rest of stupid rant deleted>

*thumbs up*

You know Doom, if I take a low life melee into VoD and start attacking things then I'll hit most things for less than 100 points each. On some of them with shields I hit in the SINGLE DIGITS. With the regen rates, some creatures are impossible for a tank melee/archer. For others it takes 5+ minutes to kill. So ya, there NEEDS to be high level content that doesn't require an imperil. In fact you should be happy that on these new creatures the imperil will in fact not allow these hybrid melee/archers to be so incredibly powerful. Whatever these creatures are, war mages with rending wands sound like they'll still be doing fine. Life mages will be required to use lifebolt/heals though honestly I hope they aren't drain proof.

So until you know what you're talking about Doom how about you just keep your trap shut ok? There's a difference between a Tank and a Hybrid that you apparently were unaware of.


Now Turbine says "An issue that's been raised by the community frequently over the last several months" and yet they hope to have some high level tank hunting in place for most likely February. Well, thanks I guess. I'll keep reading the boards and will reactivate my accounts when this is in place. I just think 6 months is a long time to wait to fix what is such an obvious issue.

[Heideggar]

"Until that time, the Producer responsibilities will be divided between meanbeard, Executive Director Steven "Ski-Dawg" Kaminsky, and me - Alex "Ibn" Beckers. " - Turbine

Ski-Dawg? lol *still laughing* I'm sure you'll do an excellent job.

"We're continuing our internal work on migrating all of you off of Microsoft's .NET Passport and MSN Gaming Zone billing and authentication, and on to Turbine's proprietary billing system and launcher. " - Turbine

Still? I was hoping you guys would actually get done with this by the end of summer, which is what I recall you guys saying as a time frame to when you'd finish. I think it's good that Turbine be careful with this, and make sure it goes as smooth as possible, but at the same time I feel that the billing is hurting the game by pulling resources away from game tech and content. I mentioned this last month, and months prior. Nothing new from me on this topic really.

"As we've mentioned in previous Letters, the creature masks and guises that traditionally enter the game in October were held back until the December event due to resource scheduling issues. Starting in December, you'll be able to find all your old favorites, as well as a few new ones!" - Turbine

Dunno, but I think you wouldn't have this problem if resources weren't pulled away for billing and X-Pack. Ok, so I get guises in december that are made for October's season. I may be off on this, but I don't see people getting them other than to get them. It's really not seasonal in a roleplaying sense. New guises... eh, we'll see. I hear a lot, and will wait till I see em. Santa Claus would be interesting...

Social Centers:

I'm glad you guys are finally getting around to this. I look forward to hearing/seeing more of what you have in store.

1) Making the portals into the towns more consistent and increasing the number of portals out of the towns.
2) Moving the casinos closer to the towns.
3) Adjusting the starter quests based in these towns.

#1) While increasing the portals into and out of a town is nice (making it a hub of sorts) there are several towns atm that do just this. Consider Tou Tou for example. There's quick access to Arwic (subway), Al-Jalima, Khayyaban, Lin, Uziz, PK alter, and several more. If you make many towns into the same kind of portal system you'll fall right back into where you are now. If everything is the same, everyone is spread out, which goes against the social interaction point we're trying to make.

#2) Moving casinos... hmmm. I know I've told you guys this before. A casino could be right next door to me in real life and I'd never go if the games sucked. The games suck. The center of the town could be the casino and you'll never see me there because of it. Simple as that. Sure, some people go to them, course they have a lot of cash and they're bored silly. I'm hoping some of the tech you've experimented with via the burun king quests will finally, albeit slowly, make their way into new casino games.

#3) While I'm sure this is important, you'd have to have a descent amount of new people, which I don't see.

As for the "Coming Soon" portion... not a lot there. So... you want to make towns better, whoopdie do. Any monarch can create an alliance with a couple others to make a town center. Not anything worth noting. Maybe you guys could tell me how to filter spell expiration? I use El Tank for that. ElGarl doesn't work for you, I don't pay him, and he was kind enough to do that. Thanks Elgarl.


In Development:
"None of these items are guaranteed to be added for January as scheduling and priorities can change." - Turbine

Yeah, I know, I've been around long enough to know that _anything_ can be pushed back for months if not a year or more. I think some of us are used to it and numb to the effects.


Higher-Wield Req weapons. I think it's nice you're putting these in, but there's such an imbalance as it is when considering PvM, pack space, PvP, synergy, etc. This first tier is the first tier of many that will involve months of rebalancing many aspects of the AC combat system.



High level Hunting and Life Magic:

I think this will be an intersting thing to experience, whether with my mages, archers, or melee guys. I say throw it in. imo, it's been way too long since something has even been considered in changing this trend. As you said, since Turbine Nation (early 2004) nothing has been done. This area should be outside. Being surrounded brings out the more real tanks/no-life characters. Would also be nice if you could make this non-macro'able too, but you kinda run into problems with that out in the open vs indoors (dungeon).


I suppose I could comment on mansions, casinos, and some other things that I'm semi pationate about, but I think you guys are trying, and some things are still in progress, so I'm waiting it out to see what comes. In the mean time I will try to at least pay every other month to keep my mansion until something is done *shrug*. Just ain't much to do, sorry : /

I was hoping I'd read about multi-weapon and shield item buffs, or that you guys have finally figured out how to improve the salvaging/usting process for people who DON"T use U.S.T. plugin.

Would be nice if you guys could figure out the invisible structure stuff at housing, as well as the invisible bug, and why getting a quicker route to the basement is such a hard thing to do.


Comments for some others:

"What's wrong with giving a non life-melee/missle character a place to level up?" - Trieze

I don't think it's wrong as much as the ease at which people can level in these places currently. I can go afk in an 80+ matron hive and _never_ worry about dying (no decal running) on a lvl 80 guy (ANY TEMPLATE). Go to 80+ west dires, and you will die amongst the stuff there at lvl 80 easily, and you earn less XP. So explain to me that?

Caul, VoD, and these other "mage friendly" places are simply tougher than these other no-magic places. The rewards should equal the effort/risk involved. It's unfortunate that melee/missle guys tend to do rather less on Caul stuff than mages, however in VoD many instances this is reversed.

"were talking about ONE dungeon" NO, we're talk about one dungeon initially, and many more to come. If mages can whip out their racial weapon to kill these golems, how easy will that dungeon be for real melee/missle guys? Why would something so easy merit such good XP/rewards?

What I'm visualizing is a group of creatures that don't cast vulns, but cast a mix of war spells that are hard to resist and hard hitting melee attacks. Their windup is much like a player's, in that it's slow, you can see it, and you can dodge it. Have this out in the open so people can run around, have room to dodge stuff, and things like that. Throw in some tall trees, a couple very small areas to buff, and possibly something sorta new. Everyone has at least heard of creatures fighting each other because a volley snagged another creature. How about Turbine set something up where an allied spawn of tumeroks or lugians come in and start battling a spawn of creatures. For every ally that is kept alive, the loot on the creatures that they were fighting is increased by 20% and is top tier. This is rather random, but I think it would add a bit of excitement to the outdoors hunting. Killing enemies with the allies, as well as keeping allies alive could have a secondary effect where you get flagged to have access to better ally prices at their stores, or to have an ally upgrade a piece of armor or a weapon. Perhaps the allies would give a gift to the warriors who battle beside them (10 granite keys, 10 herbal kits, and 5 thanking stones, for 20 allies saved and 30 enemies killed).


I am the master of getting off topic hehe.

[Asper]

This means that melee and missile attacks require that the creature be Imperil'd to do the same damage as a war magic attack....This would allow us to give them an armor level that is fair to melee and missile characters without having to worry about whether or not the creature becomes too easy once Imperil'd; the creature would be immune to Imperil spells.

Methinks someone hath been reading too much Elizabethan poetry.

IMPERILLED is a perfectly legitimate word, and not one that (in this century anyway) is normally contracted by substituting an apostrophe for "le".

[Uzi-El]

True, we haven't really been told why the Burun invasion is suddenly over, but when you think about it, it fits. After all, we were never told why they were a threat to begin with ;)

[NecX]

WTH are you all talking about crying "Mage Nerf"???

I have multiple 100+ characters, basically one of each type and by far my mage trashes everything and anything wherever I hunt with him (exception being crystal-type golems that war magic doesn't really hurt, but how common are those...)

With my Archer or Melee I can't even consider soloing in VoD or Caul or the OP or any higher level place with them.
My Melee has the 80+ Matron hive... which is usually over populated... and I haven't tried with my archer since she got trashed in there the last time I took her (guess she's just chicken)...

The ONLY time my archer or melee matches the xp/hr my mage makes is when they've got a mage debuffing everything for them, which I don't know how other mages can stand vulning stuff for a melee or archer when their 2 or 3 debuffs coulda just been a couple war spells that nearly kills whatever the critter is (not including VoD/Caul critters)

Then there's VoD & Caul... my mage can solo any part of both places... something my melee & archer will NEVER be able to do.

My only complaint about this new dungon or hunting area is this:
MAKE MORE THAN JUST 1 DUNGON/AREA PLEASE!!!
You know as soon as it's added everybody and their brother & sister are going to flock to this place. Just like in phynos menace, or the 80+ Matron Hive, or the Mages in Caulcano... One place gets too populated and the "elite" take it over, add enough for everybody for a change (make it a really big area kinda like the Olthoi North or OP).


and...
Merry Christmoween everyone!

Are the Scarecrows gonna be set on fire so they're warm in the snow?
*Note: This is where you see a new creature:
Scarecrow + Fire Elemental = Burning Man? The official spokesperson for Christmoween

[MaddyFF]

The ONLY time my archer or melee matches the xp/hr my mage makes is when they've got a mage debuffing everything for them, which I don't know how other mages can stand vulning stuff for a melee or archer when their 2 or 3 debuffs coulda just been a couple war spells that nearly kills whatever the critter is (not including VoD/Caul critters)

My level 104 mage loves fellowing with an archer or melee fighter, meat shield for her :). We'll go through mobs much faster then if my mage was hunting solo.

[Dom on TD]

"To that end, one thing we are considering is the introduction of a high-level hunting ground or dungeon populated by creatures that are immune to all non-projectile magic. This would allow us to give them an armor level that is fair to melee and missile characters without having to worry about whether or not the creature becomes too easy once Imperil'd; the creature would be immune to Imperil spells. However, War Mages and Martyr Mages would still be effective against these creatures."

"We've been teasing these for several months now and we're happy to be able to announce that the first tiers will likely be added to loot in the January event. These include new melee weapons with a 350 wield requirement, missile weapons with a 315 wield requirement and magic casters with 290 and 310 War Magic wield requirements."

Well, you finally did it. It always has to be good news/bad news with you doesn't it? You're giving me a place to hunt, but telling me that the set of weapons I've been building for almost a year is now going to be sub standard. I guess looting for weeks on end to get one good weapon imbued is fun for you. Well it isn't for me. I might resubscribe after you've pulled your collective heads out of your butts and quit adjusting the weapons. It's just too much heartache to see all those hours of looting go to waste.

But at least the tradebots will be happy that the salvage will be back in demand.....

[Gordian]

[QUOTE=Dom on TD
Well, you finally did it. It always has to be good news/bad news with you doesn't it? You're giving me a place to hunt, but telling me that the set of weapons I've been building for almost a year is now going to be sub standard. I guess looting for weeks on end to get one good weapon imbued is fun for you. Well it isn't for me. I might resubscribe after you've pulled your collective heads out of your butts and quit adjusting the weapons. It's just too much heartache to see all those hours of looting go to waste.

But at least the tradebots will be happy that the salvage will be back in demand.....[/QUOTE]


I really can't understand this sort of thinking (sic). Loot is an integral part of the game. Having the opportunity to loot better weapons is always great. The items you had before are just as effective as they were previously. The only impact is on trade value but with new wield levels coming out the traders will have more to look forward to.

In general this is a great addition.. something worthwhile to collect. The previous hours of looting did not go to waste. You found something you wanted and used it for some amount of time. How is that a waste?

This is a dynamic game. If you can't understand it then go back and keep using the 4-16 swords, or the 2-7 cestus or 6.5-13 Hammer or 112% Bow. It's the journey that is fun.. not the destination.

[mgs316]

Why don't you just allow us to add a imperil to our current weapons, thus increasing their damage output, and in turn raising the weild requirements.

That way current weapons aren't effected, you don't need to create some whole new hunting area and monsters, and just make it easier.

For f-ing the love of God.

And if you want, introduce these new weapons but have them have an even higher requirement.

[Crimson-Ghost]

First off, i'm glad you're not once again delaying masks and guises, we've been waiting far too long for that.

Secondly, the open discussion about the life magic balance at high levels is very much appreciated, I know myself and many others have spent a lot of time testing and writing up essays on this topic, it seemed without any notice from turbine. Glad to see that some hard number crunching and well thought out essay analysis can have any kind of influence on you guys.

To all the people complaining about the dungeon, I hardly see how having one area of the game where mages can't yield (I Imagine the magic d on these creatures would be low to begin with, have SOME foresight here people), is going to be a big deal. It looks to me that they're saying that the creatures will be immune to all non projectile spells but they didn't say one word about they're innate defences and all the people assuming that they will be the next crystal golems are making assess out of themselves (see: tired pun about assuming).

As for the weapons and people complaining, how can you be so callous and zealous with your rediculous flames. Can you even fathom how many times in the course of AC i've had to buy a new suit and/or replace my entire weapon set because something "more uber" came out? As was stated earlier in the thread, many of use graduated from matti coats and studded leather leggings to olthoi helms and hoary robes. You don't think we paid an arm and a leg for them at that time? Of course we did, it's a fact that as a game progresses you find newer and better items and upgrade. I fail to see how giving us stronger weaponry is a bad thing, sure it means we can CHOOSE to find better equipment, but to me that's quite a bit more fun than mindless xp hunting at high levels (typically when you have a full set of 10x tinked uber weapons). Aside from being able to brag on the forums or to your friends that you have the "uberest gear on teh planet" and you're obvious ego relations to your gear, I can't possibly see why upgrading would be a bad thing. It's not like you HAVE to get new weapons and it's also not like you're current weaponry will be useless, it will still be just as uber as it was after the items are released, but now the "best" weapons will be slightly stronger.

All in all, I can say the changes coming are looking good and I can only hope that the introduction of new content stays as planned and isn't effected by all the zealous people crying "nerf" before they actually consider the reality of things. A few monsters that might give mages a hard time but give high level melees an area to hunt in as opposed to the hundreds that high level tanks cannot touch, you tell me how fair it is.

Oh and I vote for adding the content in January, the sooner I can build up some xp on my tank the better, because as it is he's just stagnating.

[Myk]

Ibn,

Please say this new high level content will be outside (not in a dungeon), drop the same loot as VoD and high level caull critters and not be just one critter. If the three things I am asking for are not involved then the devs are wasting time. Do it once and do it right.

[Gouru]

I hate the Zone.

I reiterate the call allready made by many to allow Firefox and other browsers to work with AC. In fact, why is a browser necessary at ALL? Other games have a login built in. AC should as well.



Have you even bothered to LOOK at the new launcher? It does NOT use IE, it is a standalone launcher.

Encryption libraries are part of IE, you do NOT have launch an explorer window to use them. You don't need to launch ANY browser to use the new login. Firefox and others WILL work with AC. However, you will STILL have to have a version of IE with 128 bit encryption libraries installed (just like you currently need for Decal).

[Vlad Morbius]

I know this has been stated before, but adding a 5th weapon spell with a slightly lower effect then the highest imperil spell is still the simplest solution.

Don't get me wrong, i love the fact we may finally get a new hunt ground, but in all fairness, way way WAY! too much time has elapsed between bringing this issue to the board and having you do something about it. I mean look at it this way, it was brought up months prior to the ACPL and that was in August which means by the time you put it in (February) most likely it will have been nearly a year before this temporary stop gap has been added.

This new hunt ground and a more equitable solution needs to be your Primary concern to avoid losing any more players to the new games! :cool:

[agnari]

The basic issue is that missile and melee damage is reduced by the creature's effective armor level to the given element in addition to its natural resistances, while war magic damage ignores armor levels and only is reduced by resistances. This means that melee and missile attacks require that the creature be Imperil'd to do the same damage as a war magic attack


THE SAME? what kind of drugs are those folks on, yeah in the VoD after a vul/imperil as a mage i may crit for 800-900 while an archer/melee can do 3,000 to 4,000.

same damage, what a joke! somehow i don't think 800 on a crit which takes longer to cast then a single arrow or one weapon swing is THE SAME as 4digit damage that the A/M's do.

[Tarasque]

Will love to see the new content, masks??? pllllhhhhh, don't bother on my account, my packs and storage are all full with usable stuff.

Ok, so you want to increase the attendance in towns.... who cares about the towns??? You want higher attendance.. get rid of portal storms, because quite frankly, I don't have any problems at the mansion with those, but as soon as I go to market, hit the sub, or head into town with more than 5 or 6 people I start getting hit with Portal Storm warnings telling me to leave the area. It's annoying, it's distracting and I will never "come together" in a town for other than comps and start/required contact for quests. Don't waste your time. Why is it so important for you to be congregating people in towns anyway??? You have been talking about it for a year and a half... oh ya, you said you will be talking more about that later... oh well.

Mages... hmmm what can I say? If you are going to start reducing the effectiveness of our skills, increase our speed. It pi$$e$ me off to no end to watch a sword/bow chacter hit a mob 3-6 times in the time it takes me to vuln and start the windup for a war spell, and then come in here and have to listen to the whines about how things are soo imbalanced. Can't tell ya how many times I was greifed in VoD by bow characters as soon as I had done all the life work on a mob...Ya, I would agree that my mage blows the heck out of things with yields and vulns in place, but I have yet to ever hit as hard as a bow with the exception of the "slayer" type weapons given the same monster and same vulns (there are exceptions to this of course, but the same applies in the opposite direction). If you put me out war only, with a rend caster, I'm no better off than a rend melee/missle weapon given the speed difference. Things always seemed to be pretty well balanced when I switched from toon to toon (but you obviously have empirical data other than that found in the "whiner count" on the boards) to back up your assertions that there is imbalance. You want to make a melee only area, god bless you make it so. But I can tell you now, that I will be moving to hunting only with other mages, and the missle/melee be-damned... so much for community. Don't get me wrong, I look at myself as a mage, but in contrast I also have more melee/missle characters than mages, and all are in nearly as advanced levels, it just so happens that during this period I enjoy playing with mages more than my other combat toons. As far as group dynamics go... quite frankly I get tired of the missle/melees always taking the kills I work up.

You keep monkeying around with the characters and instead of improving, you keep ending up nerfing... already gave up dagger and I liked him way more than my mage.. I died alot, but he was a blast to play, and could actually hold his own untill you "balanced" the character and mucked him up so bad that he's now a missle character..

I have an idea, tell me which character type you favor and are going to be improving and I will go ahead and start fixing my toons by moving my skills and attributes around on my mages now... :p

[Alok]

The higher wield-req melee weapons will simply do more damage than existing weapons. The missile weapons and magic casters will gain a damage bonus based off a specific elemental type.

*edit* Now that my brain has had time to grind through this PROPERLY...

Can someone at Turbine explain what the hell is meant by a "damage bonus based off a specific elemental type" please?

Will the wands and bows be spawing in lootgen with Slashing Bonus or whatever, and then have to be imbued? The way the lootgen currently works, the odds of looting the right damage type, plus the max damage bow (since someone thought it was a good idea to make crappy bows available in lootgen..thanks a lot..), plus decent melee mods, PLUS LANDING AN IMBUE....seems infinitesmally pathetic.

I haven't found a single useable 130% bow since the last set of loot changes went in. Friend of mine found two work 4's. :confused:

[Merubin]

Sword, already outdamaging bow, gets another damage upgrade.The DoT tests I've seen almost always showed bow as doing more damage.

Bows are getting a damage upgrade as well, the difference is that you'll be required to use different bows for different elements just like melees already have to.

[Seng]

I would love to hear some details on the new launcher, specifically how "standalone" it is.

If it doesn't rely on a bunch of underlying Windoze code, it would be REALLY nice to get AC running under WineX on Linux...

AC is the >only< thing that keeps Windows of any sort installed on my main PC.

[nofeir]

Making transport to and from some towns better is a good start to promote more activity, as would be moving the casino closer. You should also consider lifting the selling restriction. Not being able to sell anything worth more than 10k has meant that I've long ago quit going to Holtburg for anything but the collector.

Another thing that might help would be to make all the vendors sell all types of trade notes, and (pie in the sky) make them buy loot at a slightly HIGHER rate than elsewhere. Can you see an economic thread here? I don't believe transportation alone will do what you want.

How about mana and stamina pools in the town square too? If there's a super place to buff, that might help promote more activity. To that end you could also add a Font of Jojii and a Head of the Homunculus somewhere in town. I use both at the mansion while buffing, but might buff in a town if they were available.

It's going to take more than just good transportation to activate a town. Things like I've mentioned might enable me to convince my monarch to change our allegiance hometown to Holtburg instead of Cragstone. Simply because there are a few more portals there won't do it.

[Winter]

Melee centric hunting ground... Im thinking mana blighted area in the south dires, where a magical cactastrophe occured, which augmented the creatures in that geographical region. Its still a band aid for a bullet wound guys, the content needs to be balanced for the templates first and foremost, but in the meantime, it's a step in the right direction...at least for keeping subs active...

I like that you are adding higher req melee weapons for more pure damage to those templates, but I think its completely asinine to give foci and missile weapons only a bonus for element type. Thats what rending imbues are for, are they not? I personally don't think my mage needs a damage bonus with the current state of content. My archer and my sword both could use a boost for that competitive edge that's been missing since the day VoD was introduced. My suggestion is as follows.

(1.)Add the next tier of melee weapons as planned.

(2.)Add the next bow tier with a universal damage bonus (like the melee weapon) and let us choose how we want to use it.

(3.)If #2 isnt an option for whatever reason, save yourself some time, save your players some frustration, and make a new tier of arrows instead.

(4.)Hold off on the Foci tiers. Christ-on-a-crutch, you guys upped war damage across the board, also resulting in unbalanced PVM for everyone, which is still not fixed. I dont know about you, but saying "lets up war damage again, but only for players this time." sounds like a very bad idea to me. To those out there that thing you DO need more damage, you will most likely get it, and then have it taken away by the nerf bat.

[BrightYellow]

2 comments here:

change to armor imbues: currently, a +1 in defense reduces the chance to be hit by 1.5% when you are fighting something at or around your level. It has little to no impact when you are fighting way below or way above your level.

The proposed system will apply to all levels regardless of the skill or the opponent. I see two consequences that I personnally dislike, although I am aware some may like it (otherwise why would you go out of your way and change the current system? Still, in a feedback thread, I feel the need to voice this).

- It will reward those who fight well below their level, at the expense of those who fight challenging creatures (the latter will face a reduction from 1.5% per imbue to 1%, plus it will be capped at 5).
- It will also favor maxed out chars, not because they fight below their level, but for a very different reason. Currently, one can compensate the last points in skill with skill-boosting cantrips or the imbues. Without the possibility to imbue your way to the last 9 points in a skill, only XP will get you there. But the last 9 points in a skill cost almost exactly as much as all the points under them together (about 2 billion). It is, regarding defense, comparable to a change of majors from a +15 skill boost to a +15% damage bonus.

I hope this is one of your unthought about changes, and that you won't go further in this route.


Life magic at high level:
I really appreciate the efforts of providing fun content for high level no-life chars, so that they don't have to cast imperil. This is a great move, long overdue.

What I am worried about is the other part of your considerations. You plan to review the armor level of Caul and VoD monsters. If it is to lower it (and that is what I guess from the context), then you are making a big mistake, besides being completely inconsistent in your fix (imperil-immune creatures are just the exact opposite fix compared to lowering AL, see below for an explanation). The reason is that hybrids already leave in the dust all pure classes (melee, archers, mages) regarding DoT, TODAY, on EVERY SINGLE MONSTER of Caul. I have not made as extensive tests in the VoD, but I have very accurate data gathered in Caul. I have seen utterly wrong numbers on these boards, I am sure you have a way to make your own (if not, give me a way to PM you more than 500 chars, and you will have them for Caul).

If you add the fact that the magic defense in Caul is fairly low (around 400 for the worst I think), you can have creature/life specialised hybrids who can play like a debuffer mage, but use AR weapons that deal a LOT more damage than war magic or rending weapons.

If you lower this AL so that you significantly improve the DoT of users of rending weapons, you will further widen the gap between hybrids and the rest (including regular melee using rending weapons). Let me say it again: lowering the armor level in Caul/VoD will shorten the gap between rending-melees and mages, but widen the gap between hybrids and both mages and rending-melees, because Imperil will become even more effective than it is now. (for those who are not familiar with the game system: imperil removes a fixed value to the AL of a monster. It has almost no impact on high AL, but multiplies the damage by a huge number on low AL. This is why when you have Gossamer Flesh in these days of tinked armor, it's not worth dispelling, but when a diamond used to cast imp6 on you in the old faran robe days, it was a major problem).
Currently, doomsharks can fall in one arrow, because of their too low armor level. Tomorrow, what else?

Instead of making Imperil more effective, I think it would be much smarter to make some VoD/Caul variants of some of these new rending-friendly imperil-immune monsters that you plan to introduce. To me, it's the only way to counter the problem you guys created with AR. Finally, don't forget that life hybrids do pay a lot of skill points to be able to be the top damage dealers. Don't make it pointless. I think hybrids SHOULD out-damage mages and rending archer/melee. Mages are powerful already, and don't need any boost. Only rending users should be worked on, and lowering the armor level will solve their problem at the expense of totally breaking the game in favor of hybrids (I mean, come on, they already make 45 mil solo sustained, that's enough of a reward for the skill points. Why make it even more powerful? I do have a life archer who buffs to 407, it's already sickening how poweful he is compared to my mages who have 4 or 5 times his XP). So, be smart and not religious about these issues. Keep the hybrids more powerful than other classes, keep mages around where they are, raise the rending users, and don't break the whole thing. VoD is an example of a broken first attempt at high health creatures, Caul is much more balanced. Imagine biakas with the AL of Dooms... Do you want a VoD situation where only a handful of monsters are hunt, creating arguments between players? (you can't expect decency in this game, people will steal kills and jump others).

[Vlad Morbius]

I have to say i agree with the fact that mages do not need to be further empowered. I don't wish for anything to be taken away from them, but they most certainly don't need any further bonuses, just look at the mistake you've made with the melee d bonus wands.
Also for those who are panicking about these weapon increases, don't!because it means nothing for most of us who are unable to imperil the creatures now and won't do a darn bit of good until AL levels are adjusted which i don't see happening until mid year if by then :rolleyes:

[Seng]

I would love to hear some details on the new launcher, specifically how "standalone" it is.

If it doesn't rely on a bunch of underlying Windoze code, it would be REALLY nice to get AC running under WineX on Linux...

AC is the >only< thing that keeps Windows of any sort installed on my main PC.

[Launfal]

THE SAME? what kind of drugs are those folks on, yeah in the VoD after a vul/imperil as a mage i may crit for 800-900 while an archer/melee can do 3,000 to 4,000.

same damage, what a joke! somehow i don't think 800 on a crit which takes longer to cast then a single arrow or one weapon swing is THE SAME as 4digit damage that the A/M's do.

Agnari, I'm not sure if your just a super gimped mage using lvl 1 spells on caul monsters or just an idiot.

I am a lvl 171 grief/life archer and I solo hunt caul a lot. After I vuln a biaka or hellion, I hit for in around 300 normal and in the 600's with crits. This is assuming they don't loathe my bow, which they normally do, then I hit for 200's and 400's crits.

Now a good mage I know crits marguls for in the 1000's or up into the 3000's with CB.

If what you said was true then why in the world is it mages dominate caulcano? And why was I, a lvl 171 char told I could not join a fellow of mages hunting caul becuase melees/archers are "inefficient"?

[Seishin_HG]

It is my contention that the changes being made to correct the LIFE magic imbalance may be a bit off track.

There are few people that believe nothing needs to be done and I am not one of those.

The points: I see Melees and Missle characters being able to hit the creatures but not keep ahead of the healing rates.

I see mages not being able to consistently land until the creature is debuffed.

I like that weapons are going to be given a damage bonus at the higher levels, that will help.

The healing rate is what I think is really out of whack.

Increased damage of weapons at higher level and reducing the healing rate should help considerably.

My concern is that the game itself is about to be nerfed (made too easy) rather than simply correcting the imbalance.

Plus, the changes apparently will not affect places like VoD and Caul.

Finally, some changes are very necessary for melees. Archers tend to already outkill mages. I have seen archers get a VoD creature to 50% while waiting for the mage to land a yield in order to debuff. Befor the Debuffs are landed the creature is dead. So, I have little sympathy for the "power" of archers! :)

Lowering the healing rates and increasing the damage should help archers considerably. The question is, how are melee's helped without making Archers even more overpowered.

Yes, I play mage, melee, and archer.

[Heideggar]

Agnari, I'm not sure if your just a super gimped mage using lvl 1 spells on caul monsters or just an idiot. - Launfal

Agnari clearly said VoD, yet you are talking about Caul. No need to call people an idiot when you have problems with reading comprehension : /

[neosorcerer]

IBN
Starting in December, you'll be able to find all your old favorites, as well as a few new ones!
Does this include prepatch banderling and mosswart masks? because they are part of all my old favorites?

[Silifi Of Death]

Mages... hmmm what can I say? If you are going to start reducing the effectiveness of our skills, increase our speed. It pi$$e$ me off to no end to watch a sword/bow chacter hit a mob 3-6 times in the time it takes me to vuln and start the windup for a war spell, and then come in here and have to listen to the whines about how things are soo imbalanced. Can't tell ya how many times I was greifed in VoD by bow characters as soon as I had done all the life work on a mob...Ya, I would agree that my mage blows the heck out of things with yields and vulns in place, but I have yet to ever hit as hard as a bow with the exception of the "slayer" type weapons given the same monster and same vulns (there are exceptions to this of course, but the same applies in the opposite direction). If you put me out war only, with a rend caster, I'm no better off than a rend melee/missle weapon given the speed difference. Things always seemed to be pretty well balanced when I switched from toon to toon (but you obviously have empirical data other than that found in the "whiner count" on the boards) to back up your assertions that there is imbalance. You want to make a melee only area, god bless you make it so. But I can tell you now, that I will be moving to hunting only with other mages, and the missle/melee be-damned... so much for community. Don't get me wrong, I look at myself as a mage, but in contrast I also have more melee/missle characters than mages, and all are in nearly as advanced levels, it just so happens that during this period I enjoy playing with mages more than my other combat toons. As far as group dynamics go... quite frankly I get tired of the missle/melees always taking the kills I work up.

You keep monkeying around with the characters and instead of improving, you keep ending up nerfing... already gave up dagger and I liked him way more than my mage.. I died alot, but he was a blast to play, and could actually hold his own untill you "balanced" the character and mucked him up so bad that he's now a missle character..

I have an idea, tell me which character type you favor and are going to be improving and I will go ahead and start fixing my toons by moving my skills and attributes around on my mages now... :p

1. It's not a melee-only area. This is just a place where you can make the same xp as Caul/VoD with an RR wand instead and you won't need to debuff. Don't you just love how people jump to conclusions? READ THE DAMN LETTER.

2. It's not a nerf for mages. If you don't go there then you'll still have the same xp as you used to. They aren't nerfing the xp for spec-life chars, they're improving it for tanks. Again, read before you open your mouth

3. They've been improving mages in PvP and PvM since day one, melees (tank melees anyway) have always been playing the catch up game, always behind hybrids and mages.

[Vlad Morbius]

Indeed and well said Silifi!

[Suicidal Bowman]

ok so if you're going to up the damage on melee weapons and just give missle weapons a bonus to specific damage types. it better be BIG difference, I don't want to sit around thinking. "gee if only I have my fire rend bow, then I'd show these shadow a thing or two" granted, I can always fire rend a fire bow, but I want to be able to pick up that fire bow, unrended, and toss some shadow into the glowing embers of my deadly fire-arrows, without having to switch to my fire rended bow to find out what does more damage. it's potinetiallu life threating to do such when the Virindi Paradox is staring at me going "mmmm, dinner is served" Personally I think you should skip that and just give missle characters better armor rending abilies that will STACK with Armor rending. Imperil is weak compared to Vulning. bring Armor rending up with weapons that do more FOR armor rending and we've got something. not that don't look forward to heh heh heh, FIERY DEATH. but I'd look mroe forward to put a messy hole in a drudge, rather than lighting one on fire and seeing it roll around on the ground screaming in pain while mages go "uuh hmmm, one hit a drudge Seraph Mysic? that's it, I'm out"

right now your just adding to tinkers, that's no good. you want to add something. add MORE tinkers to higher req missles and wands. Give missle characters their Heart Seekers. remember those? you dicided a LONG time ago, "why fix it? it never worked? who cares if everyone spend their hard earned trade goods to buy the best and it's only second rate?"

So I'm bitter... what missle character WASN'T after that fiasco?

[Whimcycle]

Humph,


"Masks and Guises
As we've mentioned in previous Letters, the creature masks and guises that traditionally enter the game in October were held back until the December event due to resource scheduling issues. Starting in December, you'll be able to find all your old favorites, as well as a few new ones!"

Yeah, okay, there is nothing that reminds me more of a brisk December day
than Halloween Mask and Monster Suits! Good job there! So, when can we start looking for the Holiday Poles, Groundhog Day?

Whimcycle

[GKusnick]

I would love to hear some details on the new launcher, specifically how "standalone" it is.Those details have been available since the October patch:

http://ac.turbinegames.com/index.php?page_id=291

If you want more detail than that, download the launcher and try it out.

[AWP]

"This is because we are using some security features of IE for migration..."

Yeah, that's what IE is known for.....its security features.

[AWP]

"To that end, one thing we are considering is the introduction of a high-level hunting ground or dungeon populated by creatures that are immune to all non-projectile magic. This would allow us to give them an armor level that is fair to melee and missile characters without having to worry about whether or not the creature becomes too easy once Imperil'd; the creature would be immune to Imperil spells. However, War Mages and Martyr Mages would still be effective against these creatures."

I can not in any way see how this addresses any problem at all. Melees/Missles can fight new creatures in this area you mention without imperiling them. Mages can fight them as normal except without vulning them.

In existing areas, Melees/Missles can fight creatures without imperiling them. Mages can fight them as normal, including vulning them.

Such an area may cater to Melee/Missile characters and drive Mages away. But no one is asking for that. We do not want to go our separate ways and not see each other.

I think overall, you have a good grasp of what the problem is. You mention that you are considering long-term solutions for it. Keep working on those solutions and skip this short-term fix altogether.

It doesn't really fix anything. And it doesn't address the actual problem.

Actually, it adds a new problem. Now you have yet one more variation of a creature that is an exception to some of the established rules of the game, and you will have headaches designing content and maintaining balance for this exception.

[Heideggar]

I would think, idealy, that you'd want an outdoor place that has a mix of different creatures. Some creatures will be best suited for melee characters and will be harder to kill by a missle or mage. Some creatures will be best suited for archers and will be harder to kill by melee and mage. Some creatures will be best suited for mages and harder to kill by missle or melee.

This way, every class has the ability to pick and choose and do just as well as any other when solo. The best XP in this area would be a mix of classes in the same fellowship, but that's not to say that a mix of a single or two-type class fellowship wouldn't do pretty well either.

That's kinda what I'd like to see. I know it's not real detailed, but it's what I saw in VoD when it first came out. Except for the solo tank-character part, VoD has met mage, hybrid, and mixed fellow benefits. This is mostly due to life magic capabilities in these last three categories. Spending the time/effort/skill credits/xp to debuff a creature should carry some benefits. If someone does more than another to weaken a creature, they should have a bonus to being able to kill that creature.

I dunno, I think tank characters are interesting, I mean, I have some myself, but it feels like people want all the defenses of a tank AND be able to deal out the same damage as the top hitters without having to do _anything_ for it. If it comes to pass where tanks do the same damage as people who prepare their kills, for the same rewards, it will be a very sad day in AC's history.

[Vlad Morbius]

Although we are all anxious to see the long term solutions, this problem has existed for far too long and melees have fallen so far behind in the xp factor of the game that something is needed short term. What many fail to see as one of the main reasons population is down, IS the fact that those character templates became all but useless and unrewarding to play, so many just skipped the option of rerolling and left! If something isn't done even as a short term solution to hold the remaining player base here, there will no longer be an AC1. That's the reality in a nutshell.
Ask any current monarch and they will tell you they've heard these same reasons from many of their group members. Nobody wants to play a game that isn't fun anymore. This was a major issue and should have been taken care of a very long time ago and the game would not be in the state it is currently :cool:

[rolly]

im sure I echo many others who posted but I'll post mine just to pile the numbers on this topic. Ever since my toons have reached the lvl of 50, I've seen a terrible imbalance from mages and Melee only. Melee alone is worthless at higher lvls. Magic users on the other hand, do enormous amounts of damage, to the tunes of THOUSANDS of points of damage.. where the melee could never dream of hitting for those numbers. I know the mage is a more complex fighting figure but making EVERY creature in VOD impossible for a melee to kill with out dragging a mage w/him is pretty unfair. I applaud you for your attempts to balance this out but I would encourage you to go further. Mages are far too powerful. War magic is absurdly powerful, Ring spells are ridiculously powerful.. one lvl 80 mage kills 20 tuskers in 4 shots with ring.. same lvl melee takes 6 swings per to kill. At 2 seconds per swing thats 12 seconds per tusker that's about 4 minutes to kill all 20.

A mage in the VOD kills in a few spells, creatures that take over 5 minutes for a lvl 100 UA to kill. Of course, adding a mage to the equation, the UA kills the creature in several hits..

Mages by default have much higher magic D. then any char that does not use focus and willpower to boost its primary skills. This is a HUGE factor in fighting creatures over 100 as the more challenging critters cast debuffs then hit you for 150 points or greater with war magic... Mages.. scoff at this as the magic D. is inherently high and if they put points into it.. they are basically free from getting debuffs... Melees, have no chance of resisting a spell. We dont put the same amount into focus and willpower, so the cost of raising the magic D. is astronomical when trying to get to an effective lvl.

I would love to be an equal to mages.. to have somewhere that I too can hunt and not be tethered to a mage. I don't want to be "required" to hunt with a mage so I can kill things that are equal to my lvl. I should be able to hunt my character where others of my lvl hunt and be as successful as they are. For now, I shelf my lvl 99 toon. I'm a loner, I don't do group hunts.
Is my voice heard as well? am I represented too?

[Heideggar]

I can't say Vlad isn't off base on this at all. I try to help everyone in my allegiance learn non-tank templates, help them reroll them, level them, with gear, etc. etc. hehe, it takes a bit to take a dedicated tank melee and throw them into a hybrid or mage roll. I hear a lot of "so many buttons and bars!" lol. or, "how do I setup a good spellbar", "how do I slide cast, fast cast?", "what's some good equipment?". everything, but...

mostly from my tank friends I hear:

almost word for word :

Monte Cristo tells you, "I just ignore the virindi. It takes too long to kill them. It's just not worth it." He's a lvl 126 sword, melee D, magic D item-only tank.

I, on my no melee D UA guy pull out my Gaerlan Life Wand, slash vuln it (I've got 383 life at lvl 107) and use my phantom. In a couple swings it's toast. For those that can vuln descently, this same tactic works amazingly for black breaths too.

I also hear/see how long it takes for them to buff their shield plus all their weapons. I carry 12 UA weapons on my no-melee D hybrid guy, and that's because he only has 12 UA weapons.

1) Alter AL of creatures so they don't suck so much for melee/missle folks
2) allow for multi-weapon and shield buffing
3) introduce a secondary quest obtainable magical pack where the only things you can put inside of it are tinkered items. That way people can option to put in tinkered DIs, weapons, wands, ivory-applied quest items, and the like.
4) high level hunting areas where any class can hunt solo equally, but a mixed fellow provides better returns.


With these new tiers of weapons means more pack space used. Pack space is pretty limited as is.

I would _think_ that would be a good start.

[Same T'ing]

I left about 8 months ago. One of the prime reasons was
the fact that every OTHER character was roaring past my
puny U/A ...

U/A has always been the red headed step child ... And don't
tell me to go play a mage ... That would REALLY suck ...

Toe to Toe is the only way to go ....

(I just might try playing again in January)

(IF YOU GET IT RIGHT !!!!)



Same ... Level ~135 U/A

[Yan_HG]

I am happy that the "no life magic" issue made it in to the to do list, but I wonder what these "other ideas" you've been discussing are. The new hunting grounds idea is ok, but then high level pure melees such as myself are given one good hunting ground. One which (as it sounded like in the LttP) hybrids and mages could hunt as effectively in as the less magic-centric characters.

So if the exp is better in these new dungeons than the Caul or VoD, the pure melees have their new hunting grounds, but get to see it overcrowded with mages and hybrids. If the exp is worse than in the Caul or VoD, pure melees have a new hunting ground, but still level slower than their magic-using counterparts.

When the new areas are made (assuming they're going to dungeons), could you do me a favor and throw in a few(hundred) dispel and mana-blight traps in at least one of them? Or even perhaps invisible NPCs who throw dispels and mana drains freely so you're not safe even if you find some place to stand still. Those with life magic have places they excel in hunting, those without should have theirs as well, no?

[MaddyFF]

Yeah, that's what IE is known for.....its security features.

For what they are planning on using it for (taking a guess), it would probably work better then Firefox. ;)

[Poison-Elf]

Month after month character types being nerfed so a couple one or two types can keep getting better and better stuff and ablitities, is rediculous.

I think this months notes is another example. Lets see, everyone gets nerfed, oh but the same certain few characters. Here is a simple break down.
Mages have weak attributes to melee = Melee wands with 15 melee, tinkerable, and a level 7 spell. Melee low attributes to magic defense = 2.5 md on a weapon if your lucky, not tinkerable, no level 7 spell.

Mages with a melee wand now in the 40+ % range, stand in lacuna with 40 tuskers not touching them, casting ring spells killing several at once. Solution = take life vulns away from everyone that does need them to kill, give mages a better wand to stand in lacuna and do faster killing with ring spells. Mages kill all the bosses in the game, while everyone else gets to stand around. How about nerf mages down to the same level everyone else is.

If they have to actually imbue some wands like the rest of us that would be great, a minor start. From what I get from reading this letter, is mages again are being upgraded. Lets pretend that a sword 24- 40 is what a sword guy has that can be fully tinked. (Any sword guy knows these are one in a billion, in comparison to all the other max weapons everywhere, and why they sell for over 300 sings when one appears, let alone 15 15 mods) So the new swords going to be in the range of 130 - 260 or something. We all know that no way are we going to get something equal in comparison to mages etc. I am thinking the new wields will be another stupid rapier or something with one more point to max, due to the past updates. So what this boils down to, is mages again are being upgraded in the sense they loose something they don't use, and also getting a better weapon. The rest of us loose the ability to invuln, or imperil creatures so we can do half the dammage the mages do.

Lets face the facts, another mage upgrade. Who wants to test this, go in the game and try it once and see the facts. What would you like to test, my sing sword against a mages sing weapon, how about my noble sword against a noble wand. I know, a frost rend sword against a frost rend wand on a king.
Down the line mages will beat ya out to around 10 times the damage. What sword guy does a single shot in pk? Get real, this is also why the new kings can't be vuln, everyone else would have a shot at them, but no, just the mages. So the rest of you melees, go do a king quest and get a idea what this uber patch will do for you. You may crit now and then for 70- 80, but that is ok, mages will kill everything for ya.

I can't believe some of the posts I read here, sounds like most the mages think if they yell louder everyone will believe their non-sense. I can pick out one creature like some of these guys and make a rediculous point too, but the facts are mages extremely out balance the game. Everytime a subject comes up they jump on I spent more skill credits, so what. Now that they may have to imbue some wands, what a end to the world. Maybe they should get always non max weapons to use like some of us. I have had a post on TD trading max bows for max swords unimbued comparitable stats, yet to get anyone, because they are all full of crap. Taking one critter like a virindi, and using that as my only comparison to what a sword does against a mage, is rediculous. What is a fact, is mages always get a better item, I can't even think of a quest sword I would call comparible to the mage item. (noble weapon, perfect example)

I do agree that other character types should be able to hunt in their class just as well as any other character. This has been my biggest problem on this mud, the very much so out class character types versus others. Skill credits has nothing to do with what you do with a character and build into it. So dropping these 15, 10 wands left and right and 130 bows wk 5 and lower everywhere, then swords and any other weapon should be just as easy. Mages have multiple attack, nobody else does. Given basically better melee then any melee characters, and whine that there is one critter in the game somewhere a melee hits better? Maybe make it so every boss in the game is hit by another character type than a mage for once, and let them face what others have to. I don't think taking life from those who do use it is a answer. If so, then in this area I would also say take away the mages war spell to bypass armor then, let them try a few hits at like 20 points on something.

[Trieze]

wonder if we'll get a teaser + pics tommarow :confused:

[Myk]

The higher wield-req melee weapons will simply do more damage than existing weapons. The missile weapons and magic casters will gain a damage bonus based off a specific elemental type. For example, a 290 or 310 wield-req caster might receive a damage bonus to all fire-based War spells. For all other spells, it would act the same as a standard caster.:


You guys do realize this is a bow NERF right? The plus side for bow has always been doing all damage types with one bow. Bow can not use shield so thats how it evened out with sword. Now from what the LTTP reads bow will no longer have that plus side. This is a bunch of carp. You should be making a new type of arrow that has higher wield reqs and a higher fletching skill check.

Please really think about the big picture before taking away the one advantage to being a missile weapons user. If someone says bow has a range attack...you are correct. It has a range attack for about 10 seconds from the first shot is fired until the mob of critters gets yo you. Range attack is highly overrated

[shidenkai]

Hmm..

If I get a war wield req fire damage bonus wand that's decent, and imbue it with fire rending capability, is it going to start hitting comparable to a Level 7 fire Vuln (at higher skill ranges of course - if it doesn't, then really, why bother adding it)? If the 'rend' is comparable to a 6 Vuln now at the high end with magics (which it appears to be), I can see this improvement combined with your non-Life melee/missile monster love being the death of the Life Skill in general. It definitely lines Life up to be the next Item Magic, really, think about this one. Yes I realize that the transfer spells and healing will keep it viable for the mage class, but if you move things towards the lack of need for a Vuln or Imperil, then absolutely no one save PvPers will need spec'd life.

If you really do go down this path, seriously consider a skill credit refund for those who have Life Magic, maybe like 10/8 or 12/6. Otherwise I'll definitely be de-spec'ing Life Magic once I get my top of the line new rending casters in place.

[Neue Regel]

Yes, yet another bow nerf......
Why cant we have higher damge?
I mainly play in VoD, so I MAINLY use an AR bow. So will I have any benifit from these new bows then?

[Blue Wiz Of SC]

:mad:
Would you please define your definition of balanced? :confused:
1. A melee can hit for 1000's of HP. :D
2. A mage hits for 100's of HP. :eek:
3. Life Magic has all but been made a secondary skill. :mad:
4. You took the only mage weapon that was decent (still could not hit for the 5 to 8000 HP like a melee) the Sing Weapon and nerfed it. :mad: :mad:
5. You speak of "The Community", well I for one do not believe you are balanced, but favor the melee. Ever since Life Magic was made inepted by capping the drains. :(
6. Grats to all the melee :) , have fun, Mages are here to carry your stams and throw you a heal since we can not compete in damage. :rolleyes:

7 the "Concept" casting devices are a nice "Concept" and I will reserve judgement till I see ONE.

8. I do not know what kind of drop rate you plan for these new "Mage Wonder Weapons", How many IG Months will take to get them.

9. I am glad for the melee toons, you get a great advancement.

10. If you want to have balance, let a mage hit for the same damage a melee does.

(BTW I have played with many melee on VOD and Caul and they kill in seconds what it takes a mage to kill in minutes, if the mage lives that long)

Well I have done my venting, but have little hope that age of the mage will ever return. If you want balance, go back and look at the game 4 or 5 years ago before you done all this balancing.

PS: It takes 16 skill points to cast war, it costs 6 to swing a sword, Where is your balcance!?

[Blue Wiz Of SC]

If you want to improve the game. Make a Melee a Melee and a Mage a Mage. You keep trying to make a comparison of apples to oranges. You keep trying to make it so someone can bring a knife to gun fight. Worst of all the knife gets higher hit points.

[Ryori]

I wish Turbine had found better ways for high level damage changes than this. I know some people like the tinkering system, but I have grown to see it as another rinse and repeat cycle.

Finding good weapons and the salvage is not a difficult process, but it is time consuming. Time consuming things tend to cause "solutions" to come up to reduce the amount of time spent. I do not mind spending time on an action a few times, but over and over gets very boring.

[Yan_HG]

You guys do realize this is a bow NERF right? The plus side for bow has always been doing all damage types with one bow. Bow can not use shield so thats how it evened out with sword. Now from what the LTTP reads bow will no longer have that plus side. This is a bunch of carp. You should be making a new type of arrow that has higher wield reqs and a higher fletching skill check.

Please really think about the big picture before taking away the one advantage to being a missile weapons user. If someone says bow has a range attack...you are correct. It has a range attack for about 10 seconds from the first shot is fired until the mob of critters gets yo you. Range attack is highly overrated
They did think about the big picture. Welcome to the hell of the melees.

You will still be able to use any element you please with any bow. Each higher wield bow will simply be stronger with a certain element. That's still more functionality than any melee has with their AR weapons. You still have your slayer weapons which can do any element. Melees are stuck using pierce, slash, or bludge on burun. Makes the mages angry when they have to vuln for a sword guy, a spear guy, a mace guy, and themselves. They'd much rather have three archers along to match their element of choice.

Ranged attacks are better than you may think. Try pretending you have to be in melee range to harm a creature. Run up within poking distance of spawns in VoD and see how many other spawns of creatures decide to join the party. Try getting swarmed into a corner with olthoi and only being able to attack four of them selected at random- choose one of the wrong ones, and you're suddenly no longer in the corner, you're in the dead center of the spawn. Try killing Gaerlan without the wall of melees to protect you. Try killing Gaerlan's door from point blank. I believe you are taking your range for granted.

6. Grats to all the melee , have fun, Mages are here to carry your stams and throw you a heal since we can not compete in damage.
I wish you were on HG, I'd offer for you to follow Yan around and compete for kills. Even the martyr mages around my level tend to outdamage me because I can't vuln. If a melee is outdamaging you, it's likely that:
A. The melee is actually half-mage and uses life magic for vulns.
B. You vulned for the melee then concentrated on keeping him and yourself alive.
C. You're in a swarm dungeon and don't know what a ring spell is.
D. You're trying to kill a Crystal Golem with cooking inneptitude spells.
E. The melee is level 250 and you are too low to ever dream of landing a spell on the creature.

[Vlad Morbius]

LOL! :D indeed! I can't believe some still come here trying to spout that kind of utter nonsense :rolleyes:

[Cotonagiu]

Having started this game in beta as a young sword melee d spec character named Pelios, I have always noted the total reliance that melee and missle characters in this game have to the life and creature magics. Several steps have been made to balance this, but one thing that I never saw was an attempt to give the melees something that the mages have had since day 1... a place to call their own.

This new dungeon is a great idea, but a few things I see that could cause a problem. 1st and foremost, if projectilce spells will work, then there is absolutely nothing keeping a rend mage from doing the same thing in this dungeon that they do in VoD, Caul, Lacuna, and any other high level dungeons. In effect all this does is eliminate the need for a support mage. On the flip side, melees will probably and archers most certainly will do TOO much damage to a creature with low natural armor. This will create the most camped dungeon in the game, which will cause constant bickering and complaints. So here is my suggestion:

Create a dungeon that has creatures similar in difficulty to VoD and Caul. Lower the regen rate on these creatures so that the overall damage over time (DoT) increases so that a melee or archer can kill these creatures but they are not a 1 or 2 hit attempt. Perhaps lower the natural armor a bit, but still make it comparable to that of the Matron hives (I can hit an Olthoi Swarm guardian for almost 200 with a fully tinked cestus). Finally, to lower the camping that would inevitably occur from mages with the uber 40% melee wands, either make the creatures hollow damage that is comparable to the Lugians that walk VoD, or do something unique... make their attacks focus only on the BASE melee/missile defense of a character attacking them. Someone with high base melee/missile d would not be affected all that much, but mages would be fodder in a dungeon like this. Finally, to make the dungeon more difficult for the extreme melees, either make the spawn rates comparable to places like Matron hives, or add a few spell casting critters to balance the fold. Adding casters would make the dungeon EXTREMELY difficult for melees, so the spells they cast would have to be monitored very carefully. Creating the insane spawn rates would impose the issue of loot distribution because it creates a dungeon that yields uber loot and does so very quickly. I can't really think of a way to correct that issue, but hey, you have the degree, not me :)

I think it is a step in the right direction, but if the issue that I addressed isn't looked at very carefully you will ultimately just be making a new lacuna dungeon for war mages, and with the advent of damage specialized wands it will be camped to death by those mages. My 2p

Fueled-By-Hatred
Certified vitae donator, can deliver

[SamWaldo]

I like your idea about helping those of us Meleers out that don't have a high Life skill to Imp critter so that we can stand side by side with Mages and kill the same things, but one thing I didn't like was that you said that they will still be able to be killed by those same Mages.

How about putting another batch of critter out there that are not able to be killed by a Mage, similar to Crystal Golem/Lords. There are only a few critters out there that a Mage can not kill except with a Meleer/Archers help, but yet there are so many that a Meleer cant kill without a Mages help.

Most of your Meleer's can't get thier skill high enough to land on anything in some of the high areas, unless they are 130+ lvl. Even with a Spec'ed skill you will have prob's landing on some of them.

Also I would like to see in the future places similar to the dungeons out on AL and ML for the other races of critters; Tummies, Lugians, Gromnies, Golems(small and large), Grievvers, Dillos and all the other critters out there to balance out the rnage of places one can go to hunt.

It is getting a bit out of hand where you have to chose between Olthoi or Tuskers if you want to do any dungeon hunting. How about adding a few higher level Citidel's our around Linvak Tukal? With higher Lugians in them; Tiatus, Jugg's, Titans, Extas. Not mixing them up, just have one place with Extas in them, one place with Tiatus, one with Jugg's and one with Titans. Place SSK chest inside them and make them WORTH fighting towards for the loot. Like it was in the old days. Dungeons that spawn better loot then some.

[Gaetano]

Turbine you are to wishy-washy. You created this problem. Instead of sticking to your guns and keeping AC challenging and using ingame resources to create new and exciting things; you listen to an over vocal populace and tried to make everyone happy. People are always wanting to know your stand on classes, but fail to see that your stance was very viewable when they created their characters. Look at the point cost for skills. If this was to be a true classless game they all combat skills would be equal in cost, therefore justifying the equality in damage. This is not the case. War magic specialized cost 8pts over any other combat or defensive skill. It should do more damage, plain and simple. Sword, Axe, Mace, Staff, Daggers, Box, Cross Bow and UA should all do damage based on what it cost to acquire the skill. Equality of damage is down right wrong. Why should we all be the same? The over all majority of players are mages, either War, Sword, Ua, Bow and even Dagger mages, but mages all the same. One minute they are debuffing with a wand, the next out comes their choosen item for dealing out death. This creates unbalance not balance.

Your solution was to create a area of uber powerful, mega health monsters that mob together like cattle for high level "Life" engorged mages to feed upon. As you can easily see this was the solution and only created a greater divide among players.

I have both Bow/Dagger no life character and a War no life mage. I have gone from level 1-126 with my War mage. I monkey hunted my Bow toon for what seems to be forever. Why? Because those of us that refuse to take life get penalized for being different. Now you say we are going to give you a special dungeon to go and play in. Again, not a good viable solution and it fixes nothing. Gird up, and make the hard decissions. Allow us to be different and stop trying to make us all do the same damage. OR...make all offensive skills cost the same...same for defensive skills. Now you have the pefect cookie-cutter game. :mad:

Please stop adding bandaids to major wounds in the game and just fix them. Devote 1-2 patches per year to making this happen. Players will understand and respect your resolve, I know I will. :D

OT: Would you also use in game collector items to create new and improved items. Give us a reason to hold on to shards, motes, crystals, hides, ect.

[silvurhawke]

Here's the whole problem with the high level hunting debate. Turbine devs simply don't understand the game. They keep trying to make "group" content but what they refuse to undertsnad that a mage IS a group!

The game was broken badly and then they fixed it. Mages ruled supremely in the dark days of Troop the clueless. But then he left to lead the charge on AC2 :) But the new team came in and gave us newer high damage melee and missle weapons. Then they let us tinker them. Then they let us imbue them with AR ans CS and CB. Then they let us put rends on them. Now the melee and missle charaters could compete. They could tackle whatever the game threw at them and it was fun. You now longer needed to beg a mage to kill a Diamond Lord for you. Or help you through Shendoalain or Aerlinthe or any other quest a mage could solo and a group of 4 non-mages couldn't. Heaven for bid if you had to face an Executor or some other such nonsense and you didn't have a mage along for the ride. Just go try and kill a Vapor or Plasma golem with pre tinked old school weapons and no debuffs. But finally they fixed all that. The game was fair and fixed and fun for all!

So what did they do as soon as it was fixed? They broke it all again! They added "group" content via the VoD and the Caul. But it was only group content if you weren't a mage. Mages could solo again but the poor bastard stepchildren of AC, the melees and missle users needed to group with a mage or spec life magic like the old days.

The devs just have never understood the power of a mage and the fact that every attempt they make for "group" content ends up being "mage" content. To make matters worse the only possible way to get consistently good loot is to hunt the Caul and VoD. Since melees and archers are stuck with Hives, the Plains and the extreme Dires they are SOL when it comes to premier loot. I couldn't care less about XP, I just want a shot at good loot every time I strap it up and go out for a hunt. The only way I can do it is with my life spec archer and my mage when he gets alittle bigger. My 2 level 100+ guys (Macer and tank xbower) don't have a prayer. They can tear up the Plains and west dires but that's the top of the ladder for them and they have been doing that stuff for the past 25 levels. They can't move up because they aren't mages and they can never solo anything in the Caul or VoD.

Turbine do us all a favor. Forget about trying to make high level group content. Levers and split group quests are lame and the only "tough" mionsters are only tough for non-mages with ultra high health, armor, thick shields and regen rates. Make it fair. Make lthe good loot available to the melees and archers. And once and for all realize that A MAGE IS A GROUP with your ridiculous design theories. Understand YOUR game! Let us all have fun and advance not just the mages. You fixed the mistakes of the past only to repeat them with the exact same mistakes of your own.

[Gustaive]

Am I missing something? I see alot of complaints about mage nerfs...how is there a nerf?

What? A new dungeon for life magic-less fellows is bad? Want to hunt there? Shoot your magic bolts and life bolts. Mad because melees are doing more damage? Goto Caul where the mages are doing more damage to Marguls than I ever will with a sword.

[Samis]

:confused:

Ok, so if imperal is no longer affective, will that also include the armor rend weapons?. If we are taking out the ability to use life magic’s for the people who chose not to buy the skill in these dungeons then armor rend should also be nerfed since it is a rend that was given to melee players to bypass imperal.
This idea has me confused. Since all characters are able to buy the skills that they want at creation and they made a choice to not have life magic or not make it combat effective these dungeons are penalizing the people that paid the 20 skill credits to have a combat effective skill. for the people that bring up caul, I have seen melee people out there who built there players to be able to resist the magic’s that are cast at them. If you are making a dungeon for melee players might you also make one that is slanted for mages of a high level, something that does little melee attacks and just magic, a lot of it, to detour the melee players from entering and giving the mages a place to level. if you are going to cater to one group who made the choice not to take life and pay the skill credits then I think it is fair that the mages that did spend the 20 skill credits to spec life be rewarded as well. I know that Turbine is trying to make the players happy but at the same time you are adding game content that seems like it would yield little or no enjoyment or opportunity for advancement for mages who use life magic. If you are going to make these dungeons and take life magic out of the picture then is there a way to nerf all rends including biting strike and crushing blow? If the melee players want a dungeon where life magic doesn’t work then by all means lets give it to them but take life magic away totally for mages and melee it would still be a better place for melee people but it wouldn’t be aimed to please one group of players in the game. I am sorry if this sounds like I am pitching a fit but the letter makes it sound like you are building a dungeon for just one group of players and I have seen a lot of patches built more for the benefit of melee/missile that for mages, the olthoi dungeons are an example mages can go in there but we take a lot of damage compared to melee and I have noticed that they have a high magic resistance in compared to there melee defense. I would like the content of the updates to be even for all player classes not just for whoever pitches the biggest fit.

[TheKnight]

I need to chime in here about this whole Mage vs Melee/Archer tank stuff for a minute. I have seen both sides say their peace about how War Magic is the most expensive skill and thus should be the strongest. Mages are very versitle and thus they should be, however there are core problems with how this has progressed over the years. Some of which are:

I. Mages wearing melee type armor, getting insane heavy AL protection which was only designed for melee charecters.

II. Mages getting +melee d wands. This totally unbalances the point of being a mage to begin with. Pure mages should NEVER be able to stand in a heavy melee centric dungeon and dodge constantly. And it makes PVP a joke, as Melee toons can't even land on the mages wielding such a ridiculously tinkered out +melee d wand.

When this game first came out you NEVER saw a mage wearing heavy AL armor, it was just not possible due to the sheer burden of the things like the old platemail armor. But as macroing took over more and more mages leveled to insanly high levels and is where you start running into the problems. Since they could then just keep raising strenght to be able to wear that high AL armor. This totally and utterly unbalanced the game from the foundation up and frankly some major changes need to be made to compensate for this.

First you guys at turbine need to put in set caps for stats for the different classes. Having it the way it is now, by allowing anyone to raise their base stats to max level as long as they have the xp for it, is the core reason so much is out of wack 4+years later.

Cap off a mages strenght at xx number (can't wear heavy AL armor)
Cap off an archers strenght at xx number ( can't wear heavy AL armor)
Cap off a melees focus at xx number (can't wear robes/magic heavy req items)

This is the only way to bring true balance to this games classes. You would not even need to make this new area for melee/archers if this was already implamented, as no class could dominate over the other like mages do right now.

A mage should be allowed to wear robes and that is it. Asheron is always in a robe for goodness sake, yet you allow mage players to run around in Melee Tank Armor.

Archers should be restriced to leather armor, but will be more mobile from using it. Archers also have no business wearing Tank Armor.

Melee's should wear Tank Armor and nothing else. Melee's have no business in robes or leather items, that are supposed to be for Mages and Archers.

Every single Roleplaying game adheres to some form or another of D&D ruleset, expect this game. It is why it is so totally out of balance and why you just now after 4+years are finally making a melee/archer tank only place to hunt who don't have life magic. As said by other folks in this thread mages are totally overpowered and have been for a very very long time now.
It is utter bulllock that a mage can Spec Melee D, find a +melee d wand and tinker that up and NEVER get touched again by a melee specific monster. It is pure and utter bullock. The same if a melee grabbed a +magic d and tinkered it up and never got hit by magic again with magic d spec'd. And i'm really sick and tired of hearing all of these bull stories of how melee's/archers outdamages mages in Caul/VOD. I'm going to make this crystal clear, we don't outdamage you UNLESS YOU IMPERIL IT FIRST! And for Melee/Archers who don't have life magic, we will NEVER outdamage you. Even the hybrids who have life magic will NEVER outdamage you, plain and simple. So STOP making this retarded argument already!

Fact is Mages should not be allowed to spec melee d at all. Melee's should not be allowed to spec magic d at all. Archers are the in the middleground there but they also should not be allowed to spec melee or magic d.
Now if you make a hybrid then that's a different story, as they are much harder to level and I can see hybrids using both. But pure War Mages should NEVER be able to spec a skill in which they have no clue how to use.
Comeon you don't see Asheron with spec melee d do you? If that was the case how did martine pimp slap him with one finger and it almost killed him. You guys need to take a long hard look at these serious imbalances and make corrections acoordingly, before the expansion hits. Otherwise you will have wasted all that money on buying back this franchise, only to lose it to it self destructing.

Patches will only do so much, there needs to be groundbreaking changes to this game to have any hope of recapuring it's former glory and 10,000+ players of old. With WOW out right now and others like Matrix Online coming in Janurary 2005, how are you going to keep players interested in this game when Mages rule everything, since this game was created.

I do appluad you for your efforts however, as you are trying to balance out the problems and for that my hats off to you guys/gals at turbine. But it has been 4+ long years of these core gameplay issues and unless major changes are implamented, and soon this upcoming expansion is not going to bring in the numbers you are looking for, and that as we all know is bad for business.

As for this expansion, it is already getting close to christmas time and we have yet to see any screenshots, or more details on just what else is in the expansion. (besides lore related) I am sure I, like most all your players would like more information on just what else is being added. It worries me that we have yet to see a single in-game screenshot of these improved graphics, but we are shown snippets from the ACPL of two very small slides. Your fans (despite leaving and coming back time and again) are loyal to AC and is why they keep returning to this game. There is something different about this game and how it works. It sticks out as an original in this very un-original world of ours, and this needs to be encouraged with different play styles and to not be punished for not picking to be a mage.

When you have over 90% of your population playing as mages (more or less) the red flags should have immediatly gone up and bells gone off. AC is about variety and not about conforming to only one class ruling them all. The pure life mage is a pefect example of this, as they are next to impossible to play as given how horrid their drain damage is, yet I see no mention of this class being addressed despite that the template is still at the creation screen.
Either give the pure life mages some love, or just totally remove them from the class menus.

For other issues with the expansion, who has Billions of XP lying around waiting to be spent on Augmentation gems, besides the chained and macroed players of the past? How in the world do you expect people to hit 126 in a resonable amount of time, let alone this new cap of 257? I mean your really taking this to the extreme by catering to the chain/macro people of long ago. If you are not going to make changes to how we recieve xp and how it's calculated, please let us know right now and save us the grief of trying to reach 257 with an even more insane level grind, like 126 was not bad enough already. I for one really hope you guys/gals at turbine make changes to how we get xp, otherwise I don't know how in the world you are going to convince new/old players to stick around long enough to hit 126, let alone 257.

There is alot of work to be done to finally balance this game out, but I strongly belive not only is it possible but inevitable. Either it get's balanced out propely or the end result is going to be exactally what happend with AC2 and your populations will continue to dwindle down until you are forced to shut it all down. And that would be a horrible way to go out, not with a bang but a weak sputter. And frankly AC deserves alot better then that, it deserves to become the best once again and show all these other MMORPG games how it's supposed to be done.


Regards

[Samis]

my mage doesnt have melee defense speced he does use quest armor wich is heavy but i cant dodge a slug with a weeks notice, my point wasnt that mages are being out damaged it was to show that if we are going to cater to all the people screaming for balance or what they see as balance then we should be catering to all charicter classes. I have a high level archer and have done comparisons in alot of dungeons, but to build a dungeon as one of the people said "Im hopeing these monsters will be like crystal golems are today. Have a dungeon of nice XP crystal golems. Not golems, but what there defences are. Mages can kill em, but they have to whip out a melee weapon." then i think they should build a dungeon where melee players need to use a wand to do damage. I agree that balance needs to come from a differant path than just catering to whoever whines the most.

[Vlad Morbius]

I cannot believe the amount of weak minded uninformed people that continue to post their doomsday views about the demise of mages with the upcoming patch lol!
Now what really galls me is to see people posting about the fact they feel slighted that melee's are going to get a hunt ground of their own all the while raking in xp and hording uber loot from Caul mage fellows, knowing full well that these changes are still months away :mad:

If it wasn't for the fact that Turbine had finally commited to trying to fix this many more would be gone for good, and it may allready be too late.
I am among a lot of AC veterans that are p o'd about the fact it took this long for us to re-educate Turbine and get them to pull their heads out of the sand and actually take a hard look at how bad the game's balance had become.
I know that many have been rattling their sabers trying to draw attention to the size and scope of this problem for a year now. It took over 6 plus months just to get them to admit there was a problem and now 6 months after that they are planning to somewhat address the issue, all the while the problem eats away at the player base! What has really made me the angriest about all of this , is the fact that a lot of this past year was wasted arguing with them and trying to get the point across ...and why? TO SAVE THEIR GAME!

After taking some time to review the history of how the events unfolded over the past year,(something Turbine should have done) i have been left with a very sour view of Turbine and how they handled this whole mess. When this game dies, and it will, I hope those involved in it's death at the very least learn from their mistakes and don't carry them into future projects.

You want my advice? not that you'll take it....drop the work on the billing and concentrate all your resources in resolving this issue, which should have been done many months ago :rolleyes:

[GhettoPhabulas]

Its the common sentiment among the DT community that allowing UCM for us would add more content for that 1 server than if you multiplied that last 6-12 months of patches by the number of servers there are.

[Bruiserk]

Turbine screwed up when they made the magic an entirely different system from melee/missile attacks.

The only "real" fix is an entire re-write of the combat system, so that both combat systems work under the same rules.

Then remove imperil, and adjust armor ratings.


The problem is, the real fix for the problem involves more work than Turbine is willing to do, so we get a dungeon that's a "no imp" zone. As someone else said, a band-aid over a bullet hole.

[Cotonagiu]

[QUOTE=Samis]but to build a dungeon as one of the people said "Im hopeing these monsters will be like crystal golems are today. Have a dungeon of nice XP crystal golems. Not golems, but what there defences are. Mages can kill em, but they have to whip out a melee weapon." then i think they should build a dungeon where melee players need to use a wand to do damage.[QUOTE]


Samis, have you ever attempted to kill anything in VoD or Caul WITHOUT using a wand as a melee? Because last time I checked, if I go solo in VoD and I dont cast imperils and spells to reduce health regen (which correct me if Im wrong, but doesnt that require a wand), I have no chance of ever killing anything there... sounds to me like we are getting EXACTLY what we deserve...

Fueled-By-Hatred
certified vitae donor, will deliver!

[Pharo_HG]

hmmm didnt see anything about increasing the amount of hookable mansion portals so we can use all 6 from the King quests as well as the king idol staute or the blackmire portals..... while on this thought, more floor hooks on the mansion lawn for the preceeding.....



just a thought

[immortalbob]

Pharo_HG,

that will probably show up in the dev notes/rollout as a bug fix or whatnot

[Samis]

of course it does because you are looking for a solution that will build a place for a melee player only, and i do spend time in VOD with my mage and my archer it just requires a fellow which was the intended result of VOD

[silvurhawke]

"it just requires a fellow which was the intended result of VOD"

Therin lies the rub. It is INTENDED for fellowships and groups. Yet fellowships and groups are only required for melees and archers. Mages and hybrids need not apply to the group requirement. This was the point of my earlier post. Point being the devs don't have a clue! What is intended as group content always ends up being MAGE content. They need to learn their own game then they need to save ther own game if it is still savable. They need to save it with inherent fairness. All I care about is loot. Give me something, ANYTHING, that will give me a shot at VoD/Caul loot.

[GhettoPhabulas]

You do not need to effing imbue 50 thousand weapons. At most you need 3 rends and 1-2 AR's.

[Bhodi Amashi]

"A mage should be allowed to wear robes and that is it."

So if I'm spec'd in Life Magic and Sword...am I a mage or a melee?

[Samis]

my archer fights out in VOD solo for the simple fact that i chose to put points into my life magic, This debate isnt weather there are areas that require life magic to make it viable, there are. Now that we have that out of the way why should the game cater specific areas that nerf the life magic skill for people that chose not to take it. my mage doesnt have melee defense and doesnt fight well in VOD solo or Caul, i am in a group. if we are going to make a dungeon that is made for a melee player then the same token should apply to mages as in my prior post the qoute that the dungeon should be of crystal golems is clearly a melee players view of nerfing a mage so i brought the point of makeing a dungeon that nerfed melee in return. niether one of them is what turbine is talking about.

[Poison-Elf]

That is something else I would like to see as well, house hooks. There are way too many wall hooks versus floor hooks. The flag hooks should be able to be used for dolls, as floor hooks. Hookable items should have a directional on them to face any direction. The introduction month after month of things taking hooks for use, with no change in hooks is taking its toll. Portals, font, head, all start adding up to no house item locations.

[TheKnight]

Bohdi you are what is called a hybrid then, and special rules would apply to you in that case, as it would to all hybrid charecters. Something in between archer and melee armor I would day, but not full blown high AL stuff that is supposed to be melee only.

The game can be balanced if the classes are brought into proper alignment as I stated earlier. Turbine either needs to fix the classes or totally remove the set templates at startup because, nobody plays this game without some form of magic. This is the entire issue here, as mages are specing melee combat skills, and melee's are specing casting skills.

There needs to be a clear line drawn here to define the classes, and if turbine is not willing to do this, then remove the template options at start up totally and just tell players point blank that AC1 is a magic heavy world and you will need magic to play. Come right out and say that we are all hybrids in one way or another and be done with it then, instead of flip flopping around the issues for years on end.

There was a time back 3 1/2 years ago before the spell economy was removed and we had to learn spells with components, that things where actually pretty balanced. Not everyone had all the same spells, and mages where not the invincible/overpowered class they have now become years later. Back then mages could not take down lugians with easy, because all they could wear where robes.

Really you look at any other MMORPG out on the market today and you will NEVER see a pure mage in heavy melee combat armor, and it's one of the reasons why the populations are as low as they are right now. There is no clear cut logic to the way things are right now, it is all a blur of magic/combat. Some people like to play pure mages, other enjoy being pure melees. However you don't give people that choice, as you NEED item magic to get around. Last time I checked warriors did not use magic, they used their combat skills. Arcane Lore was the solution (and proper one at that) for melee's as warriors did use totems and magical charms when needed, but otherwise shunned the use of magic as they had strong convictions about it's corrupting properties.

Mages are the exact opposite, embracing magic/mana and the flow of this and reval in the use of the arts. They shun the use of hand to hand combat and view it as a barbaric and primative form of attack/defense and would much rather prefer to use magic to do the same things.

Every single game out there adheres to these basic rules, except here in AC where it used to adhere to those rules long ago when the population was at it's highest, to fast forward to now when everyone and their momma has become a hybrid of some sort or another. There is no uniqueness anymore in AC with the classes, it has all blurred into a big Stew mixing everything into one, no one ingrediant stands out above the others.

To recapture your old player populations you NEED to fix the CORE problems with AC, like the classes and set the stats for each class in stone. Put your foot down and start making the classes act like themselfs and not something else. With the expansion coming out there needs to be an overhaul of the classes and finally balanced out after all these years, because from what we have seen these features in the expansion alone will not bring back those old server populations, features such as:

I. Updated Graphics
This is nice and all and it may grab a few people's attention but don't expect the bulk of your new players to come in just because it's getting a graphical update.

II. Augmentation Gems

Nobody, with the excption of macroers/chain xp people have BILLIONS of XP just lying around. You are soley catering to the macroers/ xp chain people of old if you keep it this way by costing billions of xp. And frankly it only encourages more people to macro and to UCM, something which you state you do not allow, yet how else are people to get Billions of XP without XP chains/macroing if the xp we make stays as it is right now. Your shooting yourselfs in the foot with this if you put it in as is.


III. New playable race

Again just like the graphic update, you might get a few new people playing to check this out, but it will not be your best selling point by far.


IV. New quests/items/weapons/armor

This will probably draw in the bulk of the new players, as well as some older players who moved on to other games. Yet we have heard nothing in regards to any of these new items, as it's being kept all under tight wraps. No offense but unless you unveil at least SOME INFO before Christmas, I don't know how much of an impact your going to have on newer players, as well as the older vets. Pre-Christmas is your best time to reveil new information, because as we all know when christmas hits, everyone is going to be busy with their new toys and won't give a second thought to this game while their off playing their new computer/video game on a new system/xbow/ps2/gamecube etc etc.

I hope AC does become balanced and more people return to this game like we had back in 2000 with 10,000+ people on the servers. I hope it comes back to life and shines once more. However none of this can happen if the core of this game is not balanced and corrected before the expansion hits the stores, as all it will be then is a bigger xp treadmill with better graphics. And I don't care how spruced up you make it, an xp level treadmill is always going to be an xp level treadmill, unless you act now and fix it.


Regards

[GhettoPhabulas]

Really you look at any other MMORPG out on the market today and you will NEVER see a pure mage in heavy melee combat armor,


And all those games suck, now sit the hell down and stfu with your DnD rules they are not want in AC.

[TheKnight]

Real mature there ghetto,

If you can't bring something productive into this this discussion then don't post insults, ok thanks bye.

Regards

[Vlad Morbius]

Well if you're waiting for him to make any intelligent mature contribution, you'll be here a long time lol! :cool:

[Hopeslayer]

Really you look at any other MMORPG out on the market today and you will NEVER see a pure mage in heavy melee combat armor,


And all those games suck, now sit the hell down and stfu with your DnD rules they are not want in AC.


ok so he could have said it nicer, But i have to agree in the fact that there are things about AC that i love and keep me here.

1. manipulation of stats. if i want to be a melee with magic stats I can or reverse as a mage with melee stats.

2. game speed and char movment speed.. I hate slow runing games...I love all the portals and speed to where you can get somewhere in this game. and even thogh its all the same attack animation..its not slow.

3. CONSTANT CHANGE!!!.. some are good some are bad but it makes it diferent.

4. Movement controlls... fast and can do almost anything. (on side note that is also what makes AC pk so damn fun full controll)

************************************************** *******

As for the Lttp IE sucks and hope its like someone said where you will only have to use it to migrate then you can toss it.

also playing mage, melee, and archer chars. TY if its done right Mages are still at full power with just rending cause the vun of lvl 6 isnt that big of a deal from a lvl 7. BUT on my melee and archer I might do the same, maybe even better with a Vun and Imp. But Im gimping my char to be able to Vun.

I want to be able to play my Tank melee and tank archer agin not a spec life char I spend so mush time trying to imp and vun..(and you do have to do both cause just imping and using rending just dont cut it) that i get killed alot cause i cant even evade anymore. (also I want to be able to get rid of life magic totaly as i can use jewelry to cover my life stuff, i only have it for vuns, and that is such a wast)


One last thing... Rending wands are great...Rending weapons are only good for low lvl stuff..because even if the things are imped...Rendings on melee stuff just dont compare to AR.. If you could work out some way to have the Rending be up there with ar it would help to.

[Cotonagiu]

my archer fights out in VOD solo for the simple fact that i chose to put points into my life magic, This debate isnt weather there are areas that require life magic to make it viable, there are. Now that we have that out of the way why should the game cater specific areas that nerf the life magic skill for people that chose not to take it. my mage doesnt have melee defense and doesnt fight well in VOD solo or Caul, i am in a group. if we are going to make a dungeon that is made for a melee player then the same token should apply to mages as in my prior post the qoute that the dungeon should be of crystal golems is clearly a melee players view of nerfing a mage so i brought the point of makeing a dungeon that nerfed melee in return. niether one of them is what turbine is talking about.

Ok, if this is the case, can you please tell me 1 character OTHER than a war mage that can successfully fight in VoD solo without life magic? You argue that the whole purpose of VoD was group play, when in fact mages can EASILY solo there (Im not sure how you get owned there so bad, my level 160 mage can camp there all day without getting touched, but my level 184 melee struggles there). The simple fact is a war mage can go literally anywhere in the game and be fine, because they have the same chance for decent armor as their melee counterpart, plus they are better equipped to spec magic def, which makes them far more resistant to spellcasters. Finally, unlike a melee who has to be on top of the creature, they can perch, dodge, and otherwise avoid incoming spells far more effeciently than a melee can.

You say the arguement isnt whether or not there are places where life magic are required for anyone but a war mage... Well there are places where melees can handle the mobs without life, but the biggest complaint is that all the really decent loot is on creatures that DO require life if yer not a rend wand monkey. I would say that 75% of the player base could give a care less about xp... it is so pathetically easy to accrue in this game that no one pays it any attention. Loot, however, is the BIGGEST part of this game, and having an area with the best loot where only 1 class can solo is unbalancing, and unless you want them to take away your caul or your VoD, be happy that you will have less competition, because Im going to be in my new dungeon... that is unless wand monkeys can still do well there, and then we have to fight for a good spot, as opposed to having one for ourselves....

[Vlad Morbius]

Well said, but my hopes lean towards an area, and not a macro dungeon. I do however also hope they put a rush into the permanent fix as everyone including Turbine knows this is but a bandaid solution to what could be a fatal wound. :cool:

[Daliaeod]

I wonder if these new wield req weapons for mages will be in addition to rends. So for example, you have a maxed out war skill fit with majors and such and do damage comporable to Level 6 vuln with fire rend.

If you have a wand that has a fire damage bonus would that stack with the rend to make each attack seem as though a level 7 vuln was cast. If so mages are going to become even more powerful, and if not what is the point to adding the damage bonus on wands.

I can see this new hunting ground with monsters immune to life magic a kick butt place to bring a melee. For what I can predict it is going to be an area with monsters with very high health, low armor level and high magic defense yielding a lot of xp.

Actually a new hunting ground is not necessary just make the spawn in the 80 hive 4x as fast with only swarm muties allowing melees in a full fellow to pull an average of 100mil an hour. If they did this and made them immune to all magic, you would definately here all the whines for "I dont have life magic" immediately stop.

It would be funny because then the mages of dereth would complain that they they are too weak.

I am not bashing mages in anyway here, in fact i have a level 111 mage and would love it if my melee vassals had a good place to hunt melee stuff and not worry about getting blasted by chain war spells.

Straz Level 111 BM HG

[KiaFF]

In the interest of this new dungeon which is just a "dream" at this point in time i think it would be a good thing, if your a mage and do not like this idea, make a melee/missle char...thats why you have 6 characters slots for. I have 2 accounts which includes 1 mage, i enjoy playing melee/missle a bit more than mage but that doesn't mean i won't make or have 1. As far as those of you who are whining about mages or melee/missle chars having a bigger advantage over the other in lets say VoD or Caul, i think you forget the point of why these areas were created in the game......TEAMWORK!!. These places are only soloable by the elitest of players. I'm not complaining about anything within the game because in order to balance the entire game out to make mages melees and missle chars even on all grounds they would have to start from scratch and i'm sure you people who complain about mages getting nerfed each time Turbne tries to get things balanced would just LOVE that. hehe

Don't hate the player or the game.... just the character ;]

[Vlad Morbius]

Elitest my butt LOL! My CLaW mage has been soloing VoD ever since he was level 95 and speced creature. It is much much easier to solo VoD and make good xp with him then my level 160 melee. :cool:

[Hopeslayer]

One other thing id like to add since someone said that speeding up the spawn rate on some bugs is a good fix for xp..


Spawn rate increase IMO is not always the best thing since Loot dont fall to ground anymore. Id rather have a decent speed spawn with the monster worth MORE xp. since this gives you time to loot.

I know solo hunting in a fast spwn area sucks sometimes cause i cant loot and check the monster in time or soon as i try the spawn in on me agin killing me if i stand there to loot. (hate using decal but if i know i need to make some plats cause of runing low i Have to have it scan for me cause if not ill run out of time before respawn if i manualy ID)

[Ares Blackheart]

If you want to improve the game. Make a Melee a Melee and a Mage a Mage. You keep trying to make a comparison of apples to oranges. You keep trying to make it so someone can bring a knife to gun fight. Worst of all the knife gets higher hit points.

If you ment to say the GUN gets higher hp then:
perfect, your a genius

[shidenkai]

TheKnight-

"Mages are the exact opposite, embracing magic/mana and the flow of this and reval in the use of the arts. They shun the use of hand to hand combat and view it as a barbaric and primative form of attack/defense and would much rather prefer to use magic to do the same things."

They can also wear bunny shoes, funky masks, a pin-striped zoot suit, and numerous otherworldly things.

We're not fighting dwarves, orcs, goblins, gnomes (although we do have a lawn gnomish-drudge), demons, dragons, elfs, dark elves, high elves, or anything elf-like here.

"There is something different about this game and how it works. It sticks out as an original in this very un-original world of ours, and this needs to be encouraged with different play styles and to not be punished for not picking to be a mage."

You said it. Namely that we're not fighting dwarves, orcs, goblins, gnomes (although we do have a lawn gnomish-drudge), demons, dragons, elfs, dark elves, high elves, or anything elf-like here. Namely that we're not playing by AD&D rules here, contrary to just about every other game out there in the genre. That's how it's original, that's how it's different.

I applaud your ideas about differentiating amongst classes in that manner, but that's far from an original idea. AC has been, and the good lord willing, should continue to be about skillsets, not classes.

[TheKnight]

Shidenkai thanks, and I think your comments are dead on the spot as well.
Now I don't mean to literally make AC into a D&D ruleset, but when you have class templates at the start of the game, how are these not classes then?

You have warriors/mages/archers/healers/vagabonds etc. Those are all classes last time I checked a D&D rulebook. Now AC is totally skill based, but you have to admit that those starting class templates are pretty much mis-information, as this game is not class based.

What I am suggesting to turbine is either totally remove that startup mis-information of classes, as this will only confuse new players, or fix AC so we fit into the class based templates they have put out. And before anyone says "But I hate class based games", they should still leave in the skill based the way it is. The only differance is cap the starting stats to a certain amount and not the way it is currently which like I said before allows mages to wear melee specific armor, and melee's to do well against magic if they put the amount of xp needed into magic d.

That is all I am saying

Regards

[decadoice]

Hi there,

Issue: Changing the mel def imbue from +1 to Mel Def to 1% less damage (max 5%)

Problem: I just spent months, selling all my resources to buy enough materials to make a fully tinked 9 piece suit all imbued with Peridot. I only finished it this patch. If you go and make the proposed change then about three years of resources of mine have been wasted. As an archer I mostly hunt with the Aegis imbue on my Xbow - make this change and my suit of armour becomes useless.

Request: Please DO NOT make this change!

My background: I guess very few players use the Peridto imbue, otherwise, why are you considering changing it? I like it because 9 incremental points to invulnerability is equivalent to about 900M Xp for me. Thats a huge amount when you consider the max Xp I can make in a buff round at lvl 116 is 20M. Combine the +9 Peridot imbue with Defender 7 and whatever is on the Xbow and I think it improves defense. Not hugely, but it makes a difference. I decided to get rid of my majors suit for this.

Solution: Couldnt you stick with the original plan you had and change it to a % increase to Mel Def ? If you think 1% is too high, then lower it. If this doesnt work, then dont change it at all.

One more stab: Really, I sold majors, sings, plats, SSKs and more to get enough armour, peridot and steel to make this suit. The suit has not even been complete for one month. This change will make all that effort / time and ig resources wasted. Is this really what you want to see happen ?

Thanks for reading - hope you consider this.

Dec

[Ftuoil_Xelrash]

SAVE DARKTIDE!!!

[Poison-Elf]

There is some good points there by Knight. The fact still remains though, if there are no character class (such as D@D), why are mages then given these things that no other class gets. Like I said in the first post, what is equal in reguard to the melee 15, 9 tinkerd, level 7 spell for other classes that have a week area like this, as mages do. My sword guy can stand in a dungeon with a sword with melee, and a shield and take hits. Put a wand on like this and walk around and smell the roses, this is rediculous. Basically for those that specified and worked at a skill like this (melee), they got a huge slap in the face and others got it for free. If wands are going to be put in the same class as melee weapons, why don't they have to tinker the damage or something else on it like we do if it is to be effective.

My view still remains the same, now that we have specialized a second skill (life magic) they want to take that away. So this is where it stands, give mages anything the melees have that will benefit them, and keep down sizing the other characters. So a uber melee has specialized melee, life and weapon. Down with two of the three, and in my case since its sword, getting a set of 100% swords togetter is impossible. Even when a sword character has to make a set of CS, AR, CB, Rend. A mage makes a set of rend, a CS and a CB and done. A bow who has just one attribute to max, and other missle, have a set of rend to make, a AR, a CS, a CB.

I do not see any change in mages that would be a so-called melee dungeon. When you are casting ring spells, and wall spells for multiple attacks, I have never seen any mage go around doing vuln's and imps first on each critter. Now with a more powerful wand, no need to do vuln's and imps. It will be even easier then ever before, to ring spell stuff to death, standing there with a melee wand and higher melee than melee characters. I still think this will be really no different than the kings now. You can't vuln or imp them or they counter that. So everyone is fighting a so called melee critter, yet everytime it is a mage who brings it down. I have a mage nearly half the level my sword character is, but he can do a heck of alot more dammage to a king.

[TheKnight]

Thanks Poison-Elf, and I do also agree with what you are saying here.
The whole idea I imagine with the +melee d on wands was for melees to not lose their defenses when switching to spellcasting mode. However you guys at turbine did not put a restircion on these wands, and thus all the mages are using them now to stand in the middle of a melee centric monster mob and never get hit.

This needs to be fixed ASAP, as mages are already overpowered, and this in turn makes it even more evident. Put a restriction on the +melee d wands such as you need spec melee d in order to use, high level preferably. Something only a pure melee would be able to achieve.
Allowing mages to have this effect on top of melee high AL armor is really going to far now honestly. It's bad enough they can wear our high AL armor, but then for them to outperform us in melee combat, when they are MAGES for goodness sake is just plain crazy. We melee's are the warriors here, NOT the mages, and if left in as is will only hamper players both in PVP and in PVM servers, all in favor of the mages.

Either the classes need to be enforced properly or you guys/gals at turbine need to just come out and say point blank to your customers that you will always favor the mages over any other class, as is evident by this insanity of +melee d on wands. In fact just remove all the +melee d +magic d +missle d's on all wands, problem solved.

Regards

[Heideggar]

If there was the ability to add a slayer property to loot generated weapons (balanced for melee, missle, and mage), as well as being able to tinker the magic D on melee and missle weapons, would that be in the right direction of balancing the melee D vs magic D on mages vs Melee/Missle!?

Essentially in PvP, the problem is melees are missing mages pretty often. The mage's weapon is debuffable though. However, giving melee/missle people the option to increase their magic D through tinkering would give more survivability with more resists and higher damage reduction with an aegis. A melee D wand gives survivability against a melee, magic D gives survivability against mages, movement gives survivability against missle.

Tinkering the magic D means not tinkering the damage, which is the downside, but the slayer property could help equal that out, as well as increasing the magic D base on weapons and/or the possibility of capping the number of magic D tinkers on a weapon.

With new wield weapons coming out, this may work.

*shrug* Just looking for opinions on it.

[Fezzic]

How many months has it been since the war magic damage was increased for level I - VI spells?

Still no update to the mid-level creatures that are now more dangerous because of this change.

...disappointing.

[Fezzic]

Sorry for posting twice in a row, but I was just browsing through many of the replies so far. It seems that there are lots of folks torqued off over the addition of a non-projectile-magic immuned creature.

Here is my thought.

The problem is that the high AL makes the critter too difficult, by comparison, for a non-life melee character to kill versus mages and hybrids. However, if the AL is lowered, then Imperil becomes more overpowered than it already is.

Why not decrease the AL for those specific creatures that are out of balance, and decrease the effectiveness of all Imperil spells? This should make creatures easier to kill for a melee character sans life magic without making the hybrid more overpowered because of the imperil he can land.

This would be lots of work for the devs because each creature would need to be reviewed individually to determine if a drop in AL is warranted. Tusker Guards, for example, could be left alone because of an already laughable AL.


If done correctly, the following should result:

1. Melees without life will be more effective against extreme level content
2. Melees with life magic will be just as effective as before
3. War mages will be unaffected
4. Support mages will be less important because the effectivness of their imperil has been nerfed. This is more important for those that like to powerlevel other characters.


I have no data on the magnitues of the AL of most creatures, so I don't know if this is feasible. It's just an alternative idea.

[turnstyles]

Ahhh, the hybrids are done with life magic...its no longer a convenience if they cannot imp a level 235 virinidi...

im so sad for them.

maybe i should complain that even with 430 buffed life magic and a yield it sometimes takes up to 8 tries to land a vuln on these vod and caul mobs i am supposedly owning.

turbine wont listen tho - im a mage, not a hybrid.

(((i am hoping that remark about new weild casters having a special property towards an element will not mean i need 5 cs casters, one for each element and one for blade/pierce/bludge....now that would be a mage nerf.)))

[-SouthernAvenge]

Nice to see you guys ignored pvp once again.

but HEY MASKS ARE IN!!! :mad:

[Ashbringer]

(((i am hoping that remark about new weild casters having a special property towards an element will not mean i need 5 cs casters, one for each element and one for blade/pierce/bludge....now that would be a mage nerf.)))

Well I for one am hoping that that is exactly what it means. It is about time they nerfed mages a bit. A melee has to go out and find different element swords and Render them each for thier element and and AR and maybe one or 2 crit strikes.

I myself carry about 14 swords. 2 quest ones that cant drop and 12 others to be ready for situations.....

I do hope that is how it works out.

Oh, and I dunno what your prob is with Life magic. I have it Spec'd at about 380-90 buffed and land on VoD Virindi within 2 or 3 tries.

[Harzah]

Looks cool, nice to see you're thinking about the whole aspect of Life Magic. It's not clear however: are you considering Vulns in the same boat as Imperil? Thus something that is immune to Imperil would be also immune to any Vulns? Also, what about Drains? It would be unfair I think to make the same creatures drain resistant or immune. Make it harder to drain em maybe, just make it possible.

About the newer weapon reqs: I was quite surprised to see you're only starting at 350 (melee anyway) but maybe that's a good thing. Also, the only issue I have with that is what tier loot are they going to be put into and will that crowd out the, say, 325s?

[TheFetus]

okay with the billing changes in the next few months, if i have an account, but no cd key, would I be able to register the account in the new system?

and since I havent been back and i have no idea if you have done this

hell, for the fun of it... bring back some of the old starting towns/outposts... with a bunch of people, east nanto was hella fun.

and start working on Darktide more. the PVP is suffering! the game, which used to be fun, is not what it used to be.

[GhettoPhabulas]

I myself carry about 14 swords. 2 quest ones that cant drop and 12 others to be ready for situations.....


You do not need to CS every element, AR every element, RR every element. There are like 3 elements that need anything. Fire, slash, and piercing, and bludgeon if you have access to that. Thats it. Acid? Use bludgeon. Frost on VOD lugians...use fire just as good almost. Lightning? Whats vulnerable to lightning in melee damage lol

[Azuma of VT]

Dont want a certain type of class in a dungeon?
Make the entry requirement for the portal Spec'd X (fill in appropriate skill here)

Towns as new thriving centers?
Excellent. Remove restrictions on sell rates, and make all mage comps available in them.

Balance?
Never NEVER going to happen. The player base always changes with the changes. Once the new L33t template has come out, everyone migrates to it. Their current Uber toon is stowed and they level like mad with a new toon until yet more changes come about, then it's back to the origianl one.

Character Levels?
I think it's funny when a guy says, "My level XXX (Yes, 3 places were used intentionally here) can't get decent loot and XP at XYZ location, but that class can." How are your efforts going to raise your vassals working out? Remember us? The guys you spam the crap out of in town when you see we don't belong to a monarchy? You do give us an item or two when we start to fidget. I guess it pacifies us and get us back on to making you even more xp.
But that's ok...You're soloing your butt off for Millions of xp in some obscure loc worrying about that mage/acher/melee that seems to be doing so much better than you.

XP Earnings?
Put a limit on XP earnings. You earn a certain amount of xp and you have to do a quest or 2 or 3. Heaven forbid you look at the world as a whole and not just that little center of attention you call yourself.

Life Magic? Questions? The name pretty much sums it up I would think.
Maybe it should have it's name changed to Life/Death magic so the confused folks out there wondering why they aren't doing as well as someone that has it can finally understand what it is.

If you say you want the same opportunities as a melee/mage/archer/hybrid has, then don't be going to the mansion and getting those level 7 buffs before you go out. Once you have been augmented by a mage, you are invalidating any numbers generated in an effort to find balance.

It would be pretty funny to see all the Buff Bots on all worlds remove all
profiles except Mage. Bet that brings everyone together to make new friends.
Oh, and the new Melee hunting grounds? They would STILL be empty without a mage somehere out there giving a little love to the non-mage person before he set out on his grand adventure.

----------------------------------------
Sub-50: Spear, Dagger, Sword, UA, Axe, Martyr, War, and probably soon Bow player.

[Erlic]

[QUOTE=AlphaSwift]A couple of points:

First, "This is because we are using some security features of IE for migration, and these features are only found in IE 5.5 with 128-bit encryption or IE 6."

If you're starting from scratch on this, why don't you give Mozilla Firefox some love. At the moment, the ONLY thing I use IE for is my Passport/AC Log in process. I was really hoping to be able to dump that. Very disappointing.

Ditto! Please give this a lot of thought. Now that we don't have to bow toward microsoft, why even use it.

[Strider]

Its not so much melees need thier own place to hunt, cause you know if you make it a decent place the mages will flock there too so won't be a "melee" spot at all. Unless yall make it a place with critters immune to wars also, and don't think yall want to do that and not saying should be like that either.

Its yall made caul such a uber place to hunt but then made it almost impossible for a average melee to survive there yet a average mage can. Please don't drag out the "my lvl 220 sword toon does fine there" argument please. I'm talking average toons not the super duper maxed out ones.

Why can't yall just make caul a little less melee unfriendly? In my opinion mages can survive there cause they can heal and drain no matter how far down they are in health. That and they can do large amounts of damage fairly quickly, combined with thier high magicd and now can have decent meleed with wands having meleed mod. My lvl 118 mage can hunt there (he has to be careful but he can) while my psuedo lvl 165 ua can't. Not really advocating making it soloable by melees, as for some reason yall don't want to do that, you've always wanted mages to be most powerful for some reason. But at least make it so a couple 3 or so melees can hunt there too, and I don't mean just on the fringes picking off the junk stuff.

Also not saying you should tone down the critters there because everyone likes a challenge, but give melees the ability to heal by getting rid of the must have stamina to use healing kits and the ability to use them even if down to like 5 health reliably. Melees are already at a disadvantage as they can't do some damage like mages/archers can before critter ever gets to them so how about getting rid of the added disadvantages using healing kits have. That would at least give melees a fighting chance IMO.

Don't even mention potions cause unless you lower the bu on them considerably and up the amount they do unreasonable to carry as many as you'd need, to rely on them. They are good for emergencies once in a while is about all in extreme places. Mages don't have to carry anything "extra" to heal, while kits are something extra to carry there not so bad cause of the light weight and number of heals each has. Just useless in places like caul cause once you get hit with a big spell your dead meat cause of the constant fails you get with them. Either that or let there be melee weapons that allow you to cast only healing/rejuv spells. Name it Paladin mod maybe. In most games/stories I've ever played/read mages usually are restricted in the type of armor (if any) they can wear but in AC no restriction at all. So since AC went against that "conventional" restrictions on mages, is it so unreasonable to give melee weapons a mod to allow casting of selective life spells.

Might need to tone down the biggest hits you take from magic also but maybe not. Remember most melees don't have 100/100 in focus/self so they can't ever get magicd as high as mages can. And before the mages bring out the arguement they can't get meleed as high for same reason (lower coord/quick) a mage doesnt take as much damage from melee attacks cause they can wear the best armor just like melees can, so they aren't taking damage from melee attacks like melees do from magic attacks.

I'm not trying to make it sound like mages have a unfair advantage, just melees have an unfair disadvantage. Not saying melees should be better then mages either, just give melees the same fighting chance is all. Then maybe won't see as much of the "only want high lvl mages in fellows" in the best hunting areas.

Strider

[Mildly amused]

"These include new melee weapons with a 350 wield requirement, missile weapons with a 315 wield requirement and magic casters with 290 and 310 War Magic wield requirements. "

Currently
325 wield melee weapons (with maximum damage, maximum attack mod and minimum variance) are needed for 100% of maximum melee damage,
290 wield bows (with maximum damage mod) are needed for 100% of maximum bow damage,
and *ANY* wand is perfectly fine for 100% of maximum magic damage.

Now -in the unlikely event I got your drift right- you obviously plan to add a)more additonal levels of casters than you do for missile and melee weapons and b) the *new* wield tiers start lower for war magic than they do for melee and missile and c) each additonal wield level giving at least a marginal damage increase. I hope that wont screw balance even more than it already is in favor of war magic.

You might want to think about that again, then rethink, check and most likely doublecheck before you -again- introduce a 'I win'-weapon for mages as you did before with the singularity wand. Hopefully you are able to get your math correct on the first attempt this time.

In case the new wields do not affect CS, CB and AR imbues, disregard my post.

[Ironfield]

The in-game credits have been updated.

:confused: What exact does that mean :confused:

[Milon]

If you really think about it, the non-projectile, magic-immune creatures are just normal mobs immune to life and creature magic. :rolleyes: They are still weak to projectile magic, i.e. War Magic. :cool: Thus, mages are still able to kill these things with any type of imbued wand, just at a slower rate an/or less damage per war spell. :eek: If you go to Lugian Excavations, who do you see XPing there? Melees, right? :confused: Long time ago, none of the mages I knew could land any type of life or creature debuff on these guys in the dungeon. :( Not sure if War worked or not. But, the point is that it is no difference other than level.

[QueZart]

I have and do Play Melee/Mage/Archer Classes No Hybrid I think they are Cheezy cheats

On New Wield/Req Weapons/Wands

New Weapons Great! I look Forward to the Chance to Improve My Melee Weapons. I cant see any problem with this as long as Ya dont get Way crazy with the Stats on em.

Wield Req Wands.. I Like the Idea But The Fact that these will give DMG Bonus Of Only Certain types seems poor Judgement to me. For all the reasons Already Stated.

A Full 4 School Mages Using Foci Only has 3 Packs to use, Old System Mages Have 3 and Half depending on how many Peas etc they Carry. These new Proposed Wands will just agrivate an already tight Inventory system.

Now If these Had an Option of different Type of Skill Req Wands (War, Item, Critter, Life) where the Req would be for that skill and either Giive a Bonus % to that Skill. Or a Type of Wand that Gave DMG Bonus, ANY type of DMG or a Wand Type that Had Faster Animation Speed (Only a lil faster a few 100 MS or so depending on wield Req) But again as You add Options you will aggrivate People Who Simply MUST have 1 of everything and Must Have an Uber One at that..

Anyway I think the Wield Req Wands Need More thought put into them.


On the Proposed New Huntign Grounds For Melees hhmm as has been said B4 If ya do Make more then 1 and PLEASE DONT Make it in a Dungeon, So Sick of fighting in a Hole with my Melee. And again the Loot does need to be on Par with Caul and VoD.

But IMO this is only a stop Gap measure and a poor one at that, You need to address the entire Issue and find a way of Leveling the Playing Field across the Board No matter where You Hunt or What Kind of character you hunt with. This would probably take Major recoding of the Game tho.


The basic issue is that missile and melee damage is reduced by the creature's effective armor level to the given element in addition to its natural resistances, while war magic damage ignores armor levels and only is reduced by resistances. This means that melee and missile attacks require that the creature be Imperil'd to do the same damage as a war magic attack.


That Last Line Isn't Quite True. Against a Creature that Has been both Imperil'd and Vulned a Melee/Archer Can Do WAY More DMG then a Mage, But I think this as the way it should be. Becuase in Normal Play this woudl Take 2 People playing in sync to accomplish a Mage and a Melee/Archer.

A Hybrid Character unbalances this tho I really Dislike this type a character and Wish you would do Something to Get rid Of Them Make it so You CANNOT have Life Trained if you have a Weapon Type Specialized or Vise/Versa so the only way these could be Made is if Both Life and Weapon are Trained and Neither Spec'd. I dont know how you'd work sumthing like around Race weapon skills tho. These Characters are at the Heart of most the Imbalancing Issues.

As for addressing the balance between Mage and Melee/Archer I think Rends are a Major step in the right direction. But not quite enough.

As I have seen suggested before Improving Item Magic which has been promised for a long time by adding Imperil Like spells Only not as powerful as Imperil but maybe equal to a Armor Rend Imbue. OR making Armor Rend a Sub Imbue that can be Layer'd over a Normal Rend at say the same 33.3% chance to land. But I like the Idea of New Item spells better.

Anyway Thats My Buck Fifty

[Silifi Of Death]

If they want to fix the life magic problem do what the original team did after Aerlinthe was introduced. Use the Vesayens.

Just revamp the Vesayens to have higher level content. 100+ content. Can it really be all that hard?

What I would do is just give the Scalvus lords on the island hollow weapons... Any time you give a good xp critter hollow weapons you help the game.

Would it be all that hard just to add some hollow creatures to Caul/VoD?