Tell us what you think of the topics In Development

[Ibn]

The March Letter to the Players Follow-Up (http://ac.turbinegames.com/index.php?page_id=211#indev)

[Julian's Touch]

Waho!

Portal settlement : Ok it will upset many people because they will have to run, but OMG i proposed this idea, except it was a command /house summon. Gems are a far better idea! it will value house's location, and dealing gems or running to get one for a group is nice.

Content revision : always good to update, and Green seeds dungeon is lost nowhere (should have some portal leading to the same dungeon) and the lugian quest was actualy out dated, yup.

Vendor : woot thumbs up! i remember people stacking in Teth because the buy rate was amazing.

Dispel : well i am worried about the useless of Random number, and also the use of the Awakener (gonna be changed?) since, as i posted in a thread, if you walk 20 times on a tusker gift trap, debuffiing will requiere like 5-6 attemps, to dispell 1 spell ....

Buff improvement : Are healing and transfere going into the life self also ? The idea is AMAZING ! great yes, mostly i am a melee :)

House timer : sure, nerf Niro! and yup if you play on different servers, it could be disturbing, but oh well, it's good.

Treasure change : i want to say "Finaly ! missile and magic def mod!'

Second class weapon : not sure i understood it :d

Fellowship spells : go on, it will work in team with fellowship quest for amazing possibility :) i already see a buff : protect 100% from fire, and then in the quest, you have to get a fire bolt casted on you doing like 100.000 damage, even a pro VII + ward would kill you, but you have the 100% fellow spell quest !

Envoy policy : Neat. If they do their job alright, it will be great, except i would like a spying in order they can't either steal an item, or give a special item to someone. ALSO, could they have a broadcast when they ban an UCM ? like : Broadcast server => XXX got banned for UCMing. (with a filter) it would be sweet, better than "hall of shame"


Actually, i think the feedback will all say you should have done it before, and you have to do it before :)

[Woodlock]

Quote- The Marketplace. On some worlds, trade bots are not placed in the outlying rooms and instead cluster in the primary portal drop room. This can create graphical lag and issues for players who are portaling in to the Marketplace.
------------------

It has always really bugged me to go to marketplace and 90% of the bots are in the darn hall!! If the envoys move them into the boothes enough times maybe they will get the hint. :D

[Omran]

If you make Gems of Stillness dispell only a limited number of spells, you must first make it so that there is only one instance of each debuff tracked on each character.

[Solan]

I think I posted my complaints about the settlment portals in the wrong place.... anyway, I am happy with the proposed 'fix' for bots in the main room of Marketplace.

[Myk]

A new pathing type for missile attacks. War Mages have the ability to choose between Bolts and Arcs for the purposes of targeting, whereas missile users have only one option. We are investigating the possibility of giving archers a pathing option. This would likely be either through some sort of option in the attack bar, or through a new form of ammunition.


While this will help missile ammo needs its area of impact increased a tad to help offset the zxc twitch.

Is this something thats being looked into as well?

[Turgis]

I like most of it except the housing portal removal kind of sucks it will make "easy travel" a heck of alot harder, no more run to qual hit land bridges portal and run to spec dungeon type of travel now you will have to find a gem seller :mad: I also think the changes to dispell gems suck badly especially since you have some mobs that go nutso casting debuffs. I hope you will look into making the dispell spells cheaper than the 300 mana they are and making the dispell potions lighter and stackable since people will have to carry a bunch now.

Love the envoy suggestions of being able to uninscribe items and move market bots!

[Turgis]

I AGREE 100%!!!

Originally posted by Omran
If you make Gems of Stillness dispell only a limited number of spells, you must first make it so that there is only one instance of each debuff tracked on each character.

[Pigroast]

Linvak Tukal is still in game? :P Great idea to direct portal to it.

Dispell gems - perhaps have them behave differently depending on if you are pk or not?

Buffing improvements - great ideas

house purchase timer - better than nothing but it should be differnt. the seller of villas is just going to make 13 less now

Treasure changes - Phase 3? Please be honest and tell us how long this is going to drag out.

[Darklord_Famine]

THANK YOU!

You are planning on doing two things that I have been asking for for ages:

Ridding us of settlement portals. I miss the treks my fellows and I would make across the countryside to get from point A to point B.

Finally restoring some level of realism to the vendor buy-sell rates. Please say you are gonna remove those Ayan/Teth portals tho.

As for mansion improvements, how bout' them hookable portals someone mentioned prior to DM's release?

The marketplace enforcement will be nice. On my backup box I get kicked if I try and log in in the marketplace.

Thanks again.

[KPD157]

I don't like the removing Inscription thing too much I Think maybe you should be able to add too it maybe but only the person who actually wrote it should have the right to remove it ?) unless its something that wasn't written by a Character but instead an NPC :)

[Isawa]

I cannot express how happy removing inscriptions makes me. I have so many items that are retired and inscribed by people who quit. This change seriously makes my month. I can't wait for it to be implemented.

The other things are wonderful also: level 7 dispell spells, settlement gems, and upgrades to the islands. It's all great.

There are two things I'm slightly worried about though: removing the accuracy penalty from missile weapons and magic defense modifiers on weapons. If you removed the accuracy penalty from missile weapons, it would make missile defense nearly useless in pvp unless you upgrade the weepings with missile mods also.

Magic defense mods on weapons are also going to be insanely overpowered unless you take it really easy. We have lots of spec magic d characters that buff near 400 magic d as it is. If you make the bonus too high, it will be near impossible to land magic on them.

Those are the two things I'm mostly worried about. Be careful with the new modifiers and please don't allow archers to machine gun people with no penalty to skill. I agree it can be reduced, but no penalty is insanely overpowered.

[GKusnick]

Getting rid of the settlement portals will be a good thing, I think. It will still be possible to get around easily if you plan ahead. We'll have a one-month grace period to stock up on settlement gems, and after that it's just a matter of replacing each gem as you use it by buying a new one from the settlement vendor. The only real effect will be that on patch day, new quest locations will have to be reached the old-fashioned way, by running cross-country, instead of hopping the express train to the nearest settlement. And that's probably a good thing.

[Tehanu]

Settlement Portals -- I really don't like the gem idea. Why? Because I have so many items taking up pack space and storage space already. I really don't need more items to take up space. I'd rather the portal stay there, or you keep the "lamp post" at the site of the portal hub, and by using the lamp post, players can be transported to a mini subway dungeon that has all the portals for that particular hub. I don't think that the removal of the portal hubs will make people run around the landscape more. Instead, when doing a quest, it will make ONE person (quest leader) run around the landscape to buy the gems so the rest of the fellowship can skip all the running around altogether.

Dispell gem changes -- Two things. First, I understand the issue. However, I would appreciate it if you would first make sure that repeated instances of a particular spell cast on you would simply update the timer of that spell. It is ridiculous to have six invuln V's layered on a character when you could just update the expiration timer fo the single spell. That way when you use a gem, you could obliterate the spell altogether. It's one of the most annoying things about the dispell spells...you cast it and you clear one layer of spells and have to cast it a few more times to clear the same spell.

Second. I really wish you would separate things from PvP and PvM. Gems are maybe abused by people in PvP play. But for those of us that do not play PvP, what's the harm? Have the mobs been compalining? You have PvP checks on things like log out timers, portal entry timers...can you make the dispell gems function differently when the character is PK or PKL?

Defensive modifiers on casting items -- OMG! Took you guys long enough!!! Seriously! However, I once again feel like I have wasted a ton of salvage and a ton of nice wands with imbues over the past year. I'm glad you have notified us though as I will be stockpiling salvage for the day these items come into the game. And I won't waste another bag of opal on my current casting items as they will be obsolete in a few months.

inscription changes -- I really don't like this at all. The whole point of inscriptions was confers a small piece of imortality...to leave your stamp in the game. It's rare today to find items inscribed by characters that played way back in the old early days of AC, mostly because the items are obsolete. I think inscriptions should never be removable. If you want an item uninscribed you either find the person who inscribed it and ask them, or you find an appropriate replacement item. Period. It's people that play this game, and when they inscribe an item, it puts a stamp on that item that's symbolic of the person that played the game. Erasing that inscription means that objects in the game matter more than the people that play the game. I think that's a sad way to look at an online game.

vendors -- good start. I'm one of those that found no problem with the way vendors used to function before they went all trust on us and started price fixing. I wish the vendor rates could be more dynamic. I thought it would be cool to install a home town function where characters could declare one town as their "home town" and would get a significant discount from all vendors in that town (in terms of buying rates). It's like if I always buy from Belbecca in Eastham, you'd think that she'd toss in a couple of extra mana stones now and then to reward me for being a loyal customer. If the buy rates were as low as master mages, etc., then maybe people would frequent their homw towns more instead of heading to the master mage or martine's retreat for all of their brief shopping, thus contributing to revival of towns...

[Televangelist]

All of these changes are excellent, except for one.

New Defense Modifiers. In April, you will be able to find Melee Defense modifiers on casting items, and Missile Defense and Magic Defense modifiers on all weapons and casting items. Casters will now be able to have Defender cast on them, as well as be tinkered with Brass. At some point in the future we may create equivalent spells and tinkers for Missile Defense and Magic Defense modifiers on weapons and casters.


This will do two things:


1) It will make it impossible for an archer to fight anyone.

2) It will make it impossible to *touch* a Magic-Defense-Max'ed mage.



As it is, an archer can do virtually *nothing* to a mage/melee who has missile defense trained. The huge charge-up times necessary to hit someone with missile defense (i.e. not machine gun or close to it) push Archers further down when what they need is more help.


The modifier to maxed magic defense... Increasing magic defense with no way to counteract it is a HUGE problem. If anything, player's magic defense levels in PvP need to be going DOWN, not up.


This change, as proposed, would be incredibly destructive to PvP.


However, what we need most is some preliminary number ranges for these bonuses; we need to know about what we're dealing with, but the bottom line is that this change takes problems that already exist and makes them *even worse*.



I can see how this change would be fun for PvM -- I really do. But for PvP, they'll destroy the system.

[Julian's Touch]

Originally posted by Julian's Touch
Portal settlement : Ok it will upset many people because they will have to run...

Haahha i said it in first post :D

[Chiun]

Why ditch the settlement portals? They can easily be beautified. Just put them in a dungeon.

I hate running 40km overland.

Back in 2000, I remember running out to Kara....I thought it stunk then, and I still do. And, I have a lot higher run skill on my toons now.

And for those of you that like to run, feel free. No one makes you take the settlement portals today.

There are still places where you have to run 25km at a time. Venemous Nidus is one.

It seems like a manic-depressive sort of list...we'll cut self buffs down to lvl 1 speed (GREAT!!), and in return for the 1 - 2 minutes you save on the buff cycle, now you have to spend 15 incremental minutes running around. How is this a good change?

Overall, I like the way things are going...the low level transfer spells are a great idea...IMO, they are designed to take back some of the benefits that people with untrained life magic are reaping by having a life mastery 6/7 cast on them. That's cool, because they didn't spend the 12 credits to get life magic to begin with...things done to balance the game so skills are fairly valued with their costs are appreciated.

But, over time, the tedious things have been addressed...things like spell comp restocking being automated, then spell comps basically going away (now scarabs and prismatic tapers and foci), and alchemy/fletching changes to wrapped heads instead of 10 at a time.

Why seriously jack up travel times or force people to carry gems that take up pack space? It was GREAT when settlement portals were introduced...I felt like the player base got a lot of unexpected playing time benefit by getting easier access to the rest of Dereth. I also think the story about settlement portal hubs being unattractive is silly.

[MaddyFF]

Nice ideas with the envoys.

An idea for a fellowship spell: Teleport.

When used, the magic caster selects a party member from the fellowship panel and that person is teleported to the casters locations. Might have to limit it to outside unless it can be insured that people can not bypass a quest flag by using this.

Since this spell has lots of power, it will cost a lot. It would use Item Magic as its school, be level VII, and have a hefty mana cost, like 200. In addition it would have a timer so the mage can recover from casting this spell, something like a minute or two. I might it even make it burn ALL your comps used in casting the spell, a play would go bye-bye everytime you use it.

Rares sound interesting, but need to be very careful with this. I mean VERY careful.

Oh yeah.melee d on wands... When can I heal myself without coming out of combat mode and taking a melee d penalty now? There is a balance here between the classes with regards to melee d, and the bonuses and penalities you get with them. Maybe we can expect a melee d penalty when a mage casts a drain/transfer or heal spell then?

[Myk]

Are the settlement port gems only going to be available for the month of april?

If thats the case then this change is horrible as not everyone loves running in a line for 20 mins.

[Flynn]

I'm all for removing the housing portals, they do make it just too easy to get around. A couple of suggestions about the gems though:
1) Make them stackable. PLEASE.
2) An NPC in each settlement? Although in terms of game mechanics this would work, it doesn't do much for the 'feel' of the game. I'd suggest being able to buy 'blank' gems from the arcanum, and 'imprinting' them with the portal space coordinates of the settlement by using the 'blank' gem on the spinning fiery cube thing in the middle of each settlement.

Incidentally though, what about lone cottages or villas? Or mansions for that matter? How about being able to use the blank gems I mentioned above (or perhaps a different type) on the covenant crystal itself to create a recall gem?

Overall though, HUGE improvement in communication, definitely a major step forward.

[Pureblade]

The changes coming up sounds pretty snazzy. My primary worry is about the dispell gems losing their effectiveness. As a melee my casting ability tends to be pretty poor, and therefor dispelling high level spells can be burdensome. There are times when I'll have 20 or more negative spells on me, most dupes. If you could make it so that any additional negative spells merely extend the timer, not count as another spell, it would definitely be very good.

Losing the settlement portals will also suck a little bit, but I've been around since long before they were here, and I didn't have much trouble finding my way around then!

BTW I really like that you guys are moving this type of information out in the open. I believe it will foster a better relationship between you and players.

[Solan]

Okay, I just had a misconception fixed. I have been thinking the vendors for settlement gems would be in the towns closest to the current hubs. Thus, the wording of the letter said that the gems would not be sold after April (really bad idea and made no sense to me)

I see now that the vendors will be in the settlements themselves and much makes more sense. The wording now means to me that April will be the only month with easy access. I am sorry for complaining. I like this idea. mostly


Although... this change is going to seriously mess with the utility of AC Explorer. :(


The gem change still bugs me. Now, if the gems remove all instances of any particular spell and count is as one spell, I would be much happier.

[Oldin]

I personally do not like the suggested changes to housing portals. Traveling and seeing the world is one thing when you are first introduced to a game, and when the game is top of the line graphics at the time and its pretty to look at. And although AC still has okay graphics they definetly aren't top of the line and the game especially isn't new to anyone. Having to travel as much as that would mean would only *hugely* decrease the enjoyment I get out of this game.

But I do like the rest of the changes I think =] Just with the removal of inscriptions, please just give the Envoys a set of guildlines of what they can and can not remove. I think anything inscribed by someone thats an obvious attempt to **** off thieves like "this item is stolen if its not in my hands" or anything like that should never be uninscribed by an Envoy. Or perhaps only removing inscriptoins that were an obvious attempt to just ID something such as the objects stats/properties. Again, I mainly object to the removal of any inscription that states it as property of anyone, including if the inscription states the object was a gift, such as "To Norehsa, Friendship forever."

[Rauth]

I think I like it all.

What I like the most about it is that there is a chance for feedback so you can make adjustments without having to promise to revisit things in future updates or completely backtrack.

Some of the defense mod changes will no doubt need significant play-testing to get the min and max ranges generating on loot balanced (especially since they will be tinkable.) Definitely lend an ear to the major PKs on this - but for PVM I think it's great.

As for the vendor love & settlement portal changes:

*drudgedance*

[thethem]

New Defense Modifiers. In April, you will be able to find Melee Defense modifiers on casting items, and Missile Defense and Magic Defense modifiers on all weapons and casting items. Casters will now be able to have Defender cast on them, as well as be tinkered with Brass.
I think this is a bad idea. There's little enough disparity between most character archetypes now. Allowing cross-class modifiers is just incentive for even more characters to use some sort of hybrid template. :mad:


“Second-class” Weapons Get Upgrades
This is *long* overdue. :)

[Dushman]

Why not have a settlement portal gem seller in the town?

It seems logical that near the Agent of the Arcanum there would be a seller of said portal gems to entice you to go spend the writ you just got as a reward.

Less NPC's cluttering up the landscape, and one more reason to visit a town ;)

[Aiko II]

Instead of having a vendor at each settlement portal sell a gem to said settlement, I would have the master mages sell them all. That way you can go to one place for the route you are running. Settlement portals are as much a part of travel in Dereth now as The Abandoned Mine Subway.

[TTF]

The idea of having vendors to purchase our settlement gems is very nice, much more professional than the settlement rings; however....On the one hand, you're giving us more playing time by decreasing buff times, then you turn around and decrease our play times by increasing our run times to access gems.

I think the gems are a wonderful Idea, but I propose 3 vendors only- one in each capital. The vendor in Hebian-to for example, would sell gems to all of the sho towns. His dropdown vendor menu would be every sho town. Click on a town like 'Sawato' and you'd see the gems for all of the settlements accessed from Sawato. Decreased lag at each settlement from the vendors spread across the landscape. Increased play time from accessing the gems in central locations. Increased functionality from the gems themselves by letting us open a portal to 'x' location from a central meeting spot like a monarchy mansion to run a quest that starts from that location. All in all, that would be a win-win situation from a players perspective that remembers the 'run to the sun' to refine chorizite ore back in the day.

Opinions?

[Grayson]

Mmm.. mixed feelings.

Settlement Portals:

Not a fan of this at all. Like someone else already said - 3 years ago, running around Dereth was a thrill. Now, a lot of the time it's just tedious. The landscape is boring, there's no particular challenge to it, so it's just a pointless time-sink.

The "They look ugly" is ridiculous. Stick them in an enclosure or a dungeon if that's the actual concern.

Content Revision:

Starter town revisions are good.

Linvak Tukal getting revised is great news. The stone hangings from LT are still by far my favorite house decoration - more of those would be awesome :)

Little Green Seeds.. meh. So few of the colors get regularily used that this is a minor change.

Vendor Buy-Sell Rates:

Hate this change. Please stop messing with the buy/sell rates of towns. Some folks like me have been "living" in a town for a very long time, and it's really frustrating having the buy/sell rate go to **** overnight. I hated it the first two times you guys did this, and I'll hate it even more this time around.

What's the point in having different vendor rates at all? Standardize it at 80% or something, and let people choose to live where they want to live, without them having to suck up a large penalty to income to do so. At worst, leave the rates alone, and make towns viable in other ways.

Having unique buy rates doesn't add "flavor". It's like getting a friendly pat on the cheek by the guy that just kicked you in the shin.

Dispel Revisions:

Potions sound like a nice idea, as long as they require a reasonable skill to produce. I'm not a fan of the random removals though, especially with numbers as low as 1-6. Unless they stack to several hundred and weigh almost nothing, they're not going to be viable to use anywhere that monsters debuff you.

As others have said, this is entirely different if a Dispel removes -all- instances of that spell effect on you.

Dispel gem change.. blech. I didn't use them all that often, but I did for questing and if I got -really- badly debuffed. They're annoying enough to get that it's expensive to overuse them, but it's an option.

Buffing Improvements:

With the transfer change, anyone that wants to use Item/Creature is pretty much going to need Life magic, or carry a huge supply of extremely heavy and difficult to produce mana potions. The Life VI wand didn't work well, but it worked. Characters without Life magic really need some way to regenerate mana. Ulgrim's mug is about the only other way to do so after this change :(

Housing Purchase Timer:

Helps, but without it spanning worlds, guys like Niro aren't going to be slowed down much. Level up characters on each world, and just rotate worlds as you buy/sell property. It doesn't matter to them what world the property is on after all.

Treasure Changes:

Att/MD/MC mods appearing more often is nice, especially at higher levels of loot.

MagicD mods on casting orbs? I pity any non 100 f/s melee or archer going up against a mage in PK(L) after that change. 393 MagicD is already tough enough to land on.

And the fact that mages can cast their Heal while retaining their bonuses, but melee/archers don't get the same while dropping out of combat to heal is a bit galling.

Casting devices with Hermetic link and Cantrips are very cool though. By "any spells that can be found on them" I assume you mean Item spells, and not Self Creature buffs? If so, not quite so cool, but still handy.

Second-Class Weapons:

Definately a nice change, particularily for mace.

Fellowship Spells:

No opinion until we get more info ;)

Envoy Policy Changes:

Inscription removal - finally. Thank you!

Bots moving to the side rooms will be nice as well.

[Naegleria]

I don't think that adding gems for the settlement hubs will have the effect that you desire. When moving in a group for a fellowship hunt or a quest there will either be a giant line at the shop to buy the needed gems or the quest leader will be made to get enough for everyone. Can you tie to a settlement pillar? I have never tried that. Perhaps that would be a way to Tie to a place without having the portal there. That way the leader could buy a single gem, go to the settlement and tie to the pillar.

If you think the Settlement hubs are ulgy (and I have not heard anyone state such) then placing them underground in a similar manner to Old and New subway would be a way to handle this.

[Solan]

If you MUST remove the portals, why not put the vendor at the foot of the pillar that currently marks the 'center' of the portal hubs? Is making us run all over heck and gone just to get anywhere really necessary?

Putting the vendors in the settlements instead of more centralized will pretty much remove the utility of these portals for anything but ROUTINE runs. That is, lets say I want to do a quest I have never done before. Right now, I use the nearest settlement portal. After this change is complete, I MIGHT find the gem in Marketplace (but the search would take longer than running) or I just run straight there (I never liked the concept of using my online time just to get where I want to go. It was my objection to MMORPGs in the first place - ask my brothers) which is also tedious. I think I will not only dislike 'run here, run there, run back, run over there, ad nauseum' more, but I will NEVER get anyone to run them with me. :(

[Vehementi]

I agree/no comment on everything except:

- +magic defense% on wands will destroy the hell out of PVP. Either bring up a test server to test this (because it's that critical of a change), or stop considering it right now.

- dispel stuff: consider that 1-6 spells is an incredibly large amount of debuffs. IMO, the best ones should dispel 1-3 randomly, with a chance to "crit" for 6 removals. Nobody is ever going to cast more than 2 item debuffs on you, for example. This will just cause people to chaincast the same debuff over and over so the person would have to chug multiple potions to remove all the imperil VII's.

Edit:

- don't waste the Envoys' time with the inscription removal stuff. It's just not worth it.

[Vehementi]

Originally posted by Flynn
2) An NPC in each settlement? Although in terms of game mechanics this would work, it doesn't do much for the 'feel' of the game. I'd suggest being able to buy 'blank' gems from the arcanum, and 'imprinting' them with the portal space coordinates of the settlement by using the 'blank' gem on the spinning fiery cube thing in the middle of each settlement.

Yes! Brilliant idea. That works on so many levels.

[Surfal]

re: Settlement Portals:

Just put the vendor in the town that the settlement portal was previously nearby; so instead of going to Cragstone then running outside town to the settlement portals and taking the right one, I run IN to Cragstone, buy the recall gem I need and pop it?

This way you put a lot fewer vendors on the landscape, as well, since you could have each vendor sell gems for the portals that you take out.

If you're wanting to put vendors in the housing settlements for other reasons... then do that for other reasons - but as described, you're making something MORE tedious than it was, which is counter to your stated intentions with the game.

Just imnsho.

If you were to also put Subway, Jungle Sub and the other place's portals in one of the side rooms of the marketplace, you would ease great deals of tedium and allow monarchy buffbots to offer more interesting destinations.

[sylphia]

OK Part 2 :)

I do NOT like the idea of removing the settlement portal hubs. I dont care if they look ugly or not. They have become invaluable for their use as quicker transportation to places we want to go. If I want o explore, I wil do so; I DO NOT want to be forced to run 100 miles through Dereth to get to a spot that was previously accessible by using the portal rings. Adding them in was one of the best things you did. If I want to keep the convenience of these rings, I would have to go to every single settlement and buy a gem from it next month, and store them on my mules just in case I might need them later. Packspace is already highly limited for me, and I have TWO accounts not just one. I have done my time running where I need to go; it is NOT a fun aspct of the game to have to run for 20-30 minutes just to get somewhere. The portal networks (including the settlement portals) offer us the ability to cut that time drastically. I cannot stress this enough, DO NOT remove the settlement portals. If folks complain they look ugly, plant some flowers and make designes with the portal layouts. While you are at it, push the critter spawns back away from the path from towns to rings. And yes, I realize that this proposed change could severely crippl ethe house buying macros--at the expense of ALL players' convenience. Find another way.

I am all for making more towns like Shoushi. It is more than a little confusing when a town has multiple portals in, each with a different drop zone. Putting the LSes in towns makes more sense; towns should have naturally sprung up around the lifestones as the centerpieces, looking at it logically. Another functionality I would like to see, specifically in Nexus Towns is a revision of the portal networks. The idea of the Explorer quests is to get new players to go to other towns and see what is out there. I have recently been doing them alot, and I have been reminded of something I used to detest way back when I was one of the littles: Going from certain Nexus towns (and more importantly BACK) is an extremely long and tedious process, aprticularly if you are a newbie mage with 15 run. For example, I can go from Rithwic to Holtburg and back again with relative ease, if I know where the portals are at. But say I go from Rithwic to Shoushi instead. In order to get back, I have to go to Yanshi, Yaraq, Samsur, Holtburg, and THEN finally to Rithwic. Try that with 15 run (assuming you know where each of those portals are located). Mindnumbingly boring and tedious. Since these are starter or nexus towns, make the travel on them easier: Each of the nexus towns should have a portal to each of the other nexus towns. Since there are always going to be 8 portals, it even make sit possible to have a decorative layout for them :) A good place to put them would be around the LS that you place in the center of each town. One thing that shoudl be added to their functionality though is that they must be USED in order to activate (like summoned and housing portals) to prevent accidentally stumbling into them going to or from the LS. The way the LS is set up in Shoushi is again a perfect example; it has a nice bit of decoration, its set right in the middle of the town, and has plenty of room around it for such a ring. And have all portals leading into the town drop you at or near the LS. ALl of this would alleviate having to use 3PAs or lots and lots of notes to keep track of where each portal is in each town and where it drops you, and more importantly it would remove alot of the BLAH from traveling.

Vendors:
I would prefer personally that you leave all vendors in a given town at the same rate, whatever that adjusted rate per town is. Folks wont sell at the ones that buy are reduced rates and wont buy at the ones that have increased rates if there is another vendor in town that offers better profit margins, so the worse of the two would be useless pixles. All this does is increase the number of vendors we have to go to in each town in order to get the best deals. I dont see this as more variety or flavor; I see it as more wasted time shopping and doing the mundane tasks. If you are going to give one vendor 90% instead of the 80% the rest of the town has, pick one and set them all to it and leave it alone. If you want to monkey around with buy/sell rates, then up the rates in the dires towns like they used to be, to give players an incentive to go there again. I would like to see ppl visiting AB again for something BESIDES killing one another. When you nerfed the rates in dires towns, you effectively rendered them even more useless than normal towns.

My thoughts on the Dispels are already in print HERE (http://forums.ac.turbinegames.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=43510&l#post43510)

Buffs:
I approve unconditionally the improvements planned :) Of course we will still be casting our S2M/H2M and revites at the same old speeds, but its still a drastic improvement. Now please adress HEALING (http://forums.ac.turbinegames.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3002&perpage=15&pagenumber=1) , since it is also an integral part of the buffing process for many player. We have been waiting for an answer on this for over a month now; I think its about time we got a response. And it relates specifically to improvements that could be made to the buffing process.

My thoughts on your plans for houses:
http://forums.ac.turbinegames.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=42783&#post42783

Treasure changes:
I have hung in there and stuck with you guys on this one and tried to defend the changes; all in all I think they have been needed for some time and I continue to support the, though I wish they were done so we could get back to some sense of normality. Please reconsider the peas, though. They are not an ABSOLUTE necessity for us to fund our outings, but they are an excellent source of cash that requireminimal packspace and come with very low BU. They are ideal for a mage to loot.

On weapons, I like the proposed changes. I hope this means that low end weapons will see an increase in modifiers. A +1% mod on attack or defense has no real impact on a lvl 1-20 character, but 5-10% is really nice. I dont believe it would be imbalancing; higher loot weapons would still have their appeal in that they have higher damage ratings and the potential to spawn with better spells or tighter variances. And since the amount os adjustment from the mods is based on the toon's skill level, a +10% to skill has not where enar as much increase on a lvl 1 toon as on a lvl 100; they self-balance. Yes, add the spells and tinekrs for Missile and Magic Defense. I am glad to see that non-melee defense toons finally get a little love for their other defenses. Just make sire you implement them the same way defender worksm not hermatic link. While you are at it, PLEASE change hermatic link to wok the way defender and heartseeker do. Unlike the other two spells, hermatic link doesnt affect your chnces to hit or miss in any way, so I see no reason why we shouldnt be able to save mana whether we have a focus stone or a loot-generated wand in our hands.

Second class weapons:
Good, now more of the items that drop on critters have a chance of actually being useful for something besdes selling. realistically, there is no reason to have suites of weapons that drop as part fo the random lot, which are almost never used simply because they offer no advantage or are severely handicapped compared to other weapons of the same class. If I know that one suite of weapons has max damage, and another of the same class only gets to half of that, why would I ever bother with the second class?

Fellowship spells = the *******, FINALLY i get some "support mage" loving. My ideas on how fellowship spells could be implemented are HERE (http://forums.ac.turbinegames.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=6782&#post6782)

Envoys,
I have no real problems with the proposals here. I would prefer that you just give us the ability to remove inscriptions ourselves--not edit, just remove entirely; being able to edit someone else's inscriptions only opens the door to various abuses. But we should be able to delete them ourselves; frankly, I would rather see Envoys' time dedicated to more important tasks than this. And none of that silliness making it a tinker of some kind to remove the inscriptions, please. Just a simple pop-up of "Would you like to remove the inscription on this item?" when we click in the area if it is inscribed by anyone whose GUID does not match that of the toon doing the clicking.

Ok thats it for this one; on to part 3 :)

[Frieze]

Part of the reason I returned to Asheron's Call after a two year break was the fact that I could get around so easily via the settlement portals. (another large reason would be the minimal mob/item "camping" in AC)

I hate downtime.

And, I obviously don't care if something is ugly, or I wouldn't have come back for good because I'd have been too preoccupied with the fact that my character's feet are just squares.

Please, please do not remove settlement portals. MOVE them, maybe... like move them into their town's respective residential halls, but while "exploring Dereth's countryside" SOUNDS all well and good, to us players it's more of an annoyance than anything else.

It's cliché to say, but, AC is a game - we play it to escape the annoyances of real life. As nostalgic as I can get for "the good 'ol days" of AC, pre-settlement portals, I would be extremely disappointed if we take such a large step backwards in fast and efficient traveling.

----

However, if in exchange we got a vehicle or an animal or something to make traveling nearly as fast, it would be an easier adjustment.

[Roadkill]

Ok, i realize this might not be the right place for this post, but I couldn't find a player feedback thread that is just for suggestions.

How about a timer similar to the one that shows time left on buffs but shows time left on armor banes?

[Gondor]

I can not express how disappointed I am to read about your intentions to remove the settlement portals!!! I feel strongly enough about this that I registered here just to be able to post my view. The time I have available to actually play AC is valuable & limited. It seems that you understand the need to reduce mundane, time consuming tasks in-game, as you are working towards speeding up the buffing process, but to force me to run all over the place to get around is a primitive move. To say that the planned removal is because you have received complaints that they are ugly is ridiculous!! The ONLY benefit I could imagine from this change is to reduce the ease of those who monopolize housing, and you seem to have a handle on that with the 30 day purchase timer you have in mind. Your plans, outside of the portal removal, seem to be positive changes, but this idea is a HUGE step backwards!! PLEASE reconsider this move!

[Rauth]

Here's a further thought on the settlement gems:

Instead of a gem seller at each settlement (or in addition to) what about an Arcanum Alchemist inside the Agent of the Arcanum offices (basement?) of each town that sells gems to all the settlements that are currently accessible from the town settlement portals. Or was it the intention to create an opportunity for players to set up such an arrangement themselves?

Maybe an Arcanum Alchemist npc could also divulge (for a price) bits of info about new quests (such as which gems seem particularly popular after rumors of a new type of _____ or a mysterious portal leading to _____ being discovered...) .

Since the secret to creating these gems appears to have been embraced by the Arcanum, maybe some master mages could begin carrying Kara gems? Or gems to similarly "neglected" towns like Xarabydun?

[Welsley]

To balance some of the negative feedback on this issue: Frankly, I love the idea of nuking the settlement portals. If you go through with it, I'll do a happy jig. (And in general, I am impressed with the direction you're taking the game in.)

I always thought having portals scattered from heck to breakfast was a pretty tacky implementation, and portal gems are a much better idea. I do think that the idea given above, about buying blank gems and "imprinting" them at a settlement, is very slick, and would be preferable to vendors if it's possible.

By now people are very accustomed to having easy access to every nook and cranny of the continent, so it would have been much better to do it this way from the start. But obviously you already know that, or you wouldn't be planning to change it.

You've applied "better late than never" reasoning to bigger changes than this, though. I personally think you ought to forge ahead with this, but my reasons for saying so are completely selfish, natch. It would simply be a positive change to the game world from my point of view; I'm not claiming anything else.

As an aside, making the portals summoned by the gems tieable and summonable, if possible, would probably soften the blow of the change. I don't really have an opinion one way or the other as to whether that should be done, but it's one possible compromise.


In general, I'd like to say that there is an audience for these changes that are designed to improve the "feel of the world." I don't pretend to know how big that audience is, just that I'm part of it. I may be in the minority, but changes like this and the vendor rate adjustments make me pretty happy.

I realize it's difficult to strike a balance between "game" and "world," particularly when all your players want different things. At various times it's been skewed too far in both directions. It seems like you're headed toward a pretty good balance, though.


On the topic of inscriptions, if you're going to allow all inscriptions to be removed, and not just obscene ones, I'm not sure I see the logic in making the Envoys do it.

Why not allow any character to wipe any inscription (perhaps with a toggle in the options panel to act as a safeguard against removing inscriptions by accident), and cut out the middleman? It seems like the middleman in this case could be dealing with more important support issues.

(Edited to add: I guess the flip side is, when it comes to allowing all players to erase all inscriptions, the Live team could be dealing with more important coding issues as well. So I guess you know where resources are available and where they aren't. :))

[LeifThorssonJr]

Originally posted by Flynn
An NPC in each settlement? Although in terms of game mechanics this would work, it doesn't do much for the 'feel' of the game. I'd suggest being able to buy 'blank' gems from the arcanum, and 'imprinting' them with the portal space coordinates of the settlement by using the 'blank' gem on the spinning fiery cube thing in the middle of each settlement.

Incidentally though, what about lone cottages or villas? Or mansions for that matter? How about being able to use the blank gems I mentioned above (or perhaps a different type) on the covenant crystal itself to create a recall gem?

Overall though, HUGE improvement in communication, definitely a major step forward.


WOW!!! this is an awesome suggestion!

The only thing i could add to it, is to have 2 types of blank gems... one to rceall, and one to summon... make either type be able to be used on the settlement spinning thing, but only the recall gem on the covenant crystal... partly because there are already drop points established for every settlement, but not really a portal drop point set up for each house...

i totally agree with Flynn, that an NPC in each settlement would pretty much suck... if i saw a dude standing in the middle of my street every day, i'd wanna kick him.... and i think my toons would too....

maybe even a couple different levels of summon gems, like the spells, that have different durations... if they were high enough value, would make DI's alot easier to come by... like 5k for recall, 10k for summon1, 15k for summon2, and 20k for summon3... that way, they wouldn't be so high value as to unbalance, but high enough so that you could give them to lowbie vassals as DI's so they wouldn't lose all their armor when they died....

as for the GoS... please don't make them any more useless for PvM than they are now.... even with their current strength, if i am going to be using them, i have to carry almost a pck of them, since the critters that use debuffs chain cast the debuffs they use.... I think that making them work differently if you are PK is a good idea, since i can see how they make it very hard to debuff in PvP...

[Gafoon]

I posted this in the wrong thread but....

Settlement portals: You're really trying very hard to prevent me from hunting with my wife, aren't you?

Gafoon's house is right in the middle of the 60-80 hunting area. It's an awesome location for a random buff session out hunting.

But ifyou remove the settlement portals, She has no way of getting there. Currently she's tied to the settlement portal, but if you remove that portal, it blows her tie away. And now every time she want to hunt (or when she needs to get back to recover her body), she's got to either run from her lifestone out to stonehold, or she's got to buy a gem.

Not a good thing, in either case.

If the gems summoned a tieable portal that wouldn't be THAT bad, but I've gotta say that this one sucks the big one.

I spent 50 levels on Gafoon as an item-less character, it wasn't fun running everywhere he went. I don't want to resume that - running to stonehold is NOT fun.

I'm gonna be frank here (No, you're Gafoon, not Frank, silly)... I'm getting seriously concerned with the vision that you guys have with the game. It's fascinating. When you guys were partnered with Microsoft, everyone on the boards was CONVINCED that Microsoft was ruining the games, and that the game would be so much better if Turbine didn't have to deal with the Microsoft shackles. Now I'm starting to wonder if Microsoft wasn't putting on the brakes because they knew what they had a better idea of what was good for this game than you guys did.

Between the brittlemail debacle, the loot system changes, and now this one, I'm really seriously beginning to wonder if you guys play the same game that the rest of us play. At least you're discussing this one with us with enough advance notice that we've got a chance of convincing you guys to change your mind.

As I said in a post about the loot rebalancing issue last week. We AC players are both extraordinarily conservative and very afraid of change. We like the game as it is, and we don't like surprises.

We've gotten used to the convenience of the settlement portals. At an absolute minimum, they render an item-less character viable - without them, an item-less character can't get around without constantly hitching a ride from another character (I know - see my point above). The proposal to add gems does NOT balance the convenience of having those portals available.

[Welsley]

As I said in a post about the loot rebalancing issue last week. We AC players are both extraordinarily conservative and very afraid of change. We like the game as it is, and we don't like surprises.

These kinds of statements bother me, because the author assumes that he speaks for everyone, or anyone but himself and those whose opinions are directly known to him.

"We AC players" are not necessarily either of the things you mentioned. Personally, I am neither extraordinarily conservative or afraid of change. I like change; I like surprises. Seeing things get shaken up from time to time is what keeps me interested, and convinces me that the devs still have a passion for the game.

Turbine has the impossible task of trying to please both of us, and thousands of other people who do not think exactly the way you or I do.

Edit: grammar, clarity

[Konnir]

Settlement portals

I also do not like the planned changes. I agree with those who have cited the problems of dozens of different portal gems and limited pack space.

Also, this change would make it even easier for house macroers who stock up on all the gems the first month. They can then stay in the safety of the marketplace, or any other safe location and get to the majority of housing in an instant.

If the issue is only esthetics, I would agree with putting the portals in a dungeon, either the excellent suggestion above where you are transported to the settlement portals upon interaction with the lamp or whatever other structure you can devise.

Alternatively, I think the vendors should be in an accessible place so we do not have to get bogged down by carrying dozens of portal gems. I think the idea of gem vendors in the capitals is also a good one.

To me, all this mechanic does is make it more inconvenient and boring to get to various place in Dereth.

If it were up to me, I'd put just 1 gem vendor in the marketplace or a portal in the market place that bring you to a nexus settlement portal dungeon with all the portal, but I'm sure this will not happen. :D

Dispel spell/potion/gems

Like some of the previous posters, I think this will only be acceptable if there is only 1 instance of any type of debuff. Hence, if you are debuffed with Weakness V and then before it runs out, you get hit with a VI, the V is automatically dispelled and only the VI remains. If you are then hit with another VI, the former is dispelled and the current one starts. That way, you will never have multiple instaces of the same type of spell of differnt levels to dispell. Alternatively, the mechanic could be that if a level 6 dispell is used, all debuffs below 6 are dispelled and a random number of VI are also dispelled (again with only single instance).

I also agree, that if this new random mechanic is adopted, the gems, potions need to be stackable (because many more will be needed) and relatively light (lighter than trade elixirs because more will be needed if a character is severely debuffed).

Those are my primary concerns.
Thanks.

[Albion_the_Grey]

Settlement Portals -- I really don't like the gem idea. Why? Because I have so many items taking up pack space and storage space already. I really don't need more items to take up space. I'd rather the portal stay there, or you keep the "lamp post" at the site of the portal hub, and by using the lamp post, players can be transported to a mini subway dungeon that has all the portals for that particular hub. I don't think that the removal of the portal hubs will make people run around the landscape more. Instead, when doing a quest, it will make ONE person (quest leader) run around the landscape to buy the gems so the rest of the fellowship can skip all the running around altogether.

I like the idea of a dungeon (maybe use up the old tutorial dungeons taking up space), with a portal on the outskirts of town (much like apts).

[Sabu]

ya put a set day or Time every 2 weeks or month (1 day a month?) probally is the best idea for +envoys.

[Fish]

I think what you have done here is great, but one thing i would like you to take in consideration is bringing back attack skill modifier on a bow, xbow, or thrown weapons in order to compinsate fort the higher Missle Deffense that was added about a year ago.

Thanx,
Fish

[cstanleytech]

This is in regards to "New Defense Modifiers. In April, you will be able to find Melee Defense modifiers on casting items, and Missile Defense and Magic Defense modifiers on all weapons and casting items. Casters will now be able to have Defender cast on them, as well as be tinkered with Brass. At some point in the future we may create equivalent spells and tinkers for Missile Defense and Magic Defense modifiers on weapons and casters."
How do you the devs except mages to afford this let alone be useful really for mages ?
With the current balance in pvm a mage almost has to spec life and often war to land on a vuln on a monster and then to land the war spells so that takes up alot of skill points.
Add the fact most mages start 100 focus and self which does not leave much if any for quickness and coord and it makes a huge diffence where as a hybrid can start 10 focus and self and in time be able to use the same spells for defense that a mage can cast.
Currently hyrbrids already enjoy the full benefits of magic yet a mage will never enjoy the full benefits of melee or missle d though.
So again how will this really help mages ?

[Cassandra]

Settlement Portals
You gave two reasons for doing this, the first, and largest, is they're ugly (I happen too like them, lol) and the second, to get people to explorer more (less of an issue)

Ugliness
I think this could more easily be solved by creating a "dungeon" (kind of like the sub, but preferably just one room/no monsters) in each town, with the portals inside, and Voila! No more ugly! (I also think name plates [on the wall] above the portals would be very nice, especially since there are about twenty portals in each)

Laziness
Most people would find other ways to get around, maybe not [I]as good, but there still wouldn't be a lot of exploration, and on top of that, if you're using a settlement portal (or other), it's probably for a particular reason, and there for exploring would be kind of a distraction

In general, I don't like this idea, and don't see any real benefits

Content Revisions
Town & Quest revisions are always good

Vendor Buy-Sell Rates
This makes newbie towns useless, the point of a town, is mostly, to sell, so everyone should just have to go to Ayan to get good money for their things? If it's possible, maybe vendors could base their buy/sell percentage on the value of an item, like say you sell a 150p bracelet to the Rithwic jeweler, you'd get maybe 50% of the value (or whatever percent), then you sell a 15k bracelet, you'd get like 90%

Dispel Revisions
As I only use dispels (gems) occasionally, I think this is a reasonable idea, though I do agree with a previous poster, that it should remove all instances of that particular spell, otherwise it would be worthless

Buffing Improvements
Good to see those of us who choose to train and buff ourselves are getting some perks

As for banes, cutting the time down would be a good idea, not to a level 1, but some, since baning everything can take upwards of 40 spells, even if it does affect everyone, I think this would be nice in general

House Purchase Timer
Good, good & good

"Second Class" Weapons Get Upgrades
I like this, being a staffer, where you don't even look at a staff unless it's that one type, it's seems pretty useless to have some weapon types with such low damages, that they aren't even worth looking at (or really having any loot that's not even worth a look)

Fellowship Spells
Very nice, though I wonder, will they be affected by the new casting times, also I would hope to see group heals (in the form of spells & kits)

Envoy Policy Changes

Inscriptions
Good idea, but I think it would be best it there were only set times & places where it would be done, because it's not as if it's something you couldn't wait a few days or a week for

The Marketplace
I'm on SC, so, we don't have this problem, but I've seen it on other servers, and think that the envoys portaling them into a stall would be a good idea

On SC, the bots use the right room, but instead of using the stalls, they line the entry, which can also be a lag problem

And, the top floor has like 4 stalls, so no one ever goes up there, so I think they should either be removed, or there should be more, to make it more useful, and used

[Netmage]

I'm not gonna reply on the items listed. I haven't really given them much thought.

However, I will comment on the whole concept of information.

Creating a set of realistic near term goals for yourselves and announcing them early enough for the players to grasp them, then slowly phasing them in as possible.

Brilliant!

Players love when you keep them informed. They feel they are as much owners of the game as you do that way.


I will ask one thing tho. Specifically to IBN.
Any plans to see more robes in dereth. Tinkerable or realistic AL. It's a bit hard to grasp with real armor being 64+ banes and robes being 8 I know that.
Just would be nice to see mages wear robes again. As it should be. It would seem tech exists to have them require war magic with a base or something. Perk for a mage?

Sin Zwang

[Korrigan]

My favorite part is of course about the bots being disciplined. Thanks you for that !

---

Crafting confirmation : making one or more Decal plugins obsolete is always a good move. Go on !

Ulgrim : dang, gotta find a recall scroll ... :p

---

Settlement portals replaced by gems : I think it's a great idea. Just make the gems for a same settlement stack, please !

Arm, heart mind revisited ! I always likes this quest, time to redo it once it's upgraded. Giving easy access to Linvak is also a great move !

Dispell gems ... hum ... if they become stackable then yes, maybe ... I'd rather see this affect only PKs though.

Faster buffing is always welcome !

Melee defense bonus on casters ? Magic defense bonus on swords ? My chars will love this, I just curious to see what is will do to the general balance ...

Fellowship spells : can't wait to see how this will work :)

Kudos again if for the plan to clean the marketplace !

---

For the concept part, I'll keep my comments until they come closer to release, my favorites being (in this order) new armor, missile attack improvement and revision of old quests.

[AC-Vet]

I think alot of the ideas refresh the game....and renew confidence that "Fun" isn't a forgotten word.

I do have a question about this transitional period that you all are going through....

Will turbine only be working on the new projects or will we see old content being fixed and addressed. I'll give a few examples and if anyone chooses to include more..ok by me.....

The most disturbing right now is the broken Chat options.
Also Quest that are now incomplete due to critter relocation from months ago, such as Quiddy Orb- haven't seen a northern or southern blackclaw leader is months-do they still exsist?, Singularity Weapon upgrade- The Mire witch dropping the shroud around AB area, is now relocated to a area that they didn't drop before...is this fixed? The Solh quest was suspended do to a upgrade months ago but yet the infusions and blood are still available- any Eta? There are more but its late and my brain stopped 8 beers ago but these stuck out......hehehe I have 1 additional request....I base my thought off of Maggies site listings of new and old quest...can Turbine include a similar site that list all new, old, and retired quest, seeing your the developer, you have the best resources to have a complete and up to date listing....I don't mean spoilers, just a listing of quests that are current and thier status of upgrades.
Thanks

[fodderboy]

I have concerns with the idea of removing the housing portals. I've never complained about them; indeed, I found them convenient to get to distant locations quickly. As a solo player who gets to play only a few hours here and there I need to maximaze the time I have available. The idea of the transport gems is intriguing but will they be a permanent addition to the game or will they be removed when the housing transport hubs are removed?

Supplying tinkering characters with more info about success/failure chances is a good step in the right direction. What I would also like to see are stats on successful imbues i.e. the number of successful attempts versus total attempts.

[TTF]

Another idea I had, though I don't like it as much as my first one, because I like the added functionality of the gems- if they're easy to get...how about moving all the portals inside thier respective meeting halls, and breathe some life back into those moldy buildings that no one uses since 'insta-og' became yesterdays templates?

[Brand_AC]

I have already given my opinion of the Envoy system in the thread titled "Comment on the Envoys and CoC Here". If you have not yet read it, I would be greatfull if you did.





Thanks,
-Brandor

[Gafoon]

Welsley,
The only justification I can make for my "Us Players" generalization is that it is a generalization.

And if you've been reading the boards when ANY of the changes have been discussed, I think my generalization holds.

There hasn't been a change mentioned YET that hasn't had someone saying "I've been nerfed!". Even the ones I think are non contraversial (level 7 self buffs taking as long as level 1 buffs) have worried some players (people think that their buff-bot-dependant template will be left off quests because buffing others takes too long).

When there's a significant set of people complaining about EVERY change proposed (at some form or another), then I think my comment holds true.

Remember - the primary definition of the word conservative is "Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change". It doesn't mean "Voting Republican". In the old Soviet Union, the conservatives were the ones that were proposing MORE government control over the economy, and the liberals were the ones that proposed reducing the role of government in peoples day-to-day lives.

And while there may be the individual out there that has welcomed all the changes that have been proposed, there are clearly many many players that have not been as accepting of the changes.

[Aaryna]

My opinion is not going to matter much... but for what it's worth, here I go. I'll try an item by item response...

Settlement Portals

Yes! Finally! You're removing the free rides, and making people actually get off their lazy butts to travel. THANK YOU!

My only suggestion on this one is to, instead of a vendor at the settlement, simply have a pedestal at the base of the rotating flame "signpost" which spawns a portal gem on a very fast timer.


Content Revisions

Need more detail on this, but that should be reserved until April. We do need some mystery after all. Sounds good.

My request here is to make sure that the Arm, Mind, Heart quest does not degenerate into another reward-of-the-month. Make it honorable. Make it mean something. Make the player care about the story behind it, and not just the reward... You know - like it is now, but with easier to use quest dynamics.

*knows where her next Lifestone will be*


Vendor Buy/Sell Rates

Level-appropriate rates? Uniqueness for towns? I can't see any room for complaint here... sounds like an excellent change.

BTW, while you're at this... ADD LIGHTS TO ARWIC TAVERN! I asked once nicely. I like to go there and hang out, but it's so gloomy... :)


Dispel Revisions

Sounds great, but I have some reservations:

Spells: This is fine, but I remember the Dev chat mentioned all the spells are being changed to only dispel negatives. And you're considering lowering the mana cost. I think these are both mistakes - these drawbacks help to balance the spell's power. And they are VERY powerful. Leave the mana cost as it is, but as for positive spells, make it so they have a maximum ammount of the random selection that can be positive. For I - IV it should be one, and for V - VII it should be two. That way there's still the risk, but it's not a terrible one. 1-6 spells for the VII sounds good, too.

Potions: Excellent! Move them up, increase the craft difficulty a bit. No one is going to miss a potion that dispels second-sphere enchantments, let alone first. However, give them the same drawback that the spells have, with a lesser effect. IV and below dispel negative only, V and above dispel no more than one positive spell. This will help balance the power of having the ability to stack dispels like this. These should have the same random range as their spell counterparts.

Gems: Thank you! These things have been WAY too powerful, for WAY too long. As for the random range - each level of gem should take their spell equivalent's range, and add two to both the lower and upper limits. Do not make them stackable. They're more efficient, they don't dispel positives at any level, they're easy to get - not being stackable is the balance.

Other Thoughts on Dispels: The suggestions I've made above, I believe, would make all three types of dispel viable options, and add strategy to choosing which you use. As has been posted above, however, you NEED to make sure that when a spell with a duration surpasses another spell with a duration, it removes that spell rather than simply overlapping. And, while we're on the subject of the Tusker Traps, make sure they dispel VII's in a random range, too. ;) Also, make sure your changes to the Gems of Stillness don't affect Aerfalle's dispel any.


Buffing "Improvements"

Here's where I get angry. These are NOT improvements, in any way shape or form. Unless you call throwing away your entire game universe an improvement. Sorry, but needing to gather mana for a spell is a law of the universe. It shouldn't just be removed because it's more convenient! Powerful magic takes more time to prepare. It's not a difficult concept to grasp. This is a mistake. To the level that if this happens as you've planned, I will unsubscribe after two years of pouring my heart and soul into this game that I love, rather than watch you destroy it like this. It's sickening enough that you've done this to Streaks but at least I can avoid those. But polluting my entire spellbook across two schools with this drivel?

First, I think buffing is fine the way it is. If you want to cast spells, you pay for it in time. If you want instant spells, find them on items, collect spells in jewels, and craft gems. It's a tradeoff - that extra 5% on your Prot, in exchange for about 60 milliseconds of your time.

I understand that some people choose to cast hundreds of spells before they consider themselves fully buffed. But that is their CHOICE. Still, I will admit it could be a bit more user friendly, and I do have a few suggestions for changing that which don't completely destroy what little is left of magic's credibility on Dereth.

1. A modifier to reduce charging time for every spell cast, based on some combination of Mana Conversion and Arcane Lore.

2. A "storage" system, which builds up mana in a secondary "tank" every time a Mana Conversion skillcheck is successful. This can be displayed where the personal economy once was. It can have a toggle. When that toggle is on, you stop putting mana in. Every spell you cast with the toggle on consumes part of this stored mana to produce a reduction in casting time based on a combination of Mana Conversion and Arcane Lore. When it runs out, you return to normal casting times.

3. A special quest caster, which slightly reduces the power of a spell in exchange for removing or drastically shortening casting time, but also increases component burn. The effect should be based on the skill in the school being used, to the point where when you're close to max skill the degradation of power is practically 0. Those who DON'T use this caster should see a slight increase in the power of their spells, based on how many spells are currently being cast with that caster (IE, go back and use some of the old economy code). The ability to see this increase should be on a timer from the last time you used the new caster, so that people can't just use it then put it away and run off without paying. Note that this change might also make it possible for a mage to get the Gaerlan kill without involving half the server in obtaining special equipment for the task.



Treasure Changes, Phase 3

Sounds interesting. I have my reservations, but no real protests - my only advice would be to make sure that any Magic Defense modifier buffing/debuffing spell added works like Hermetic Link, with a percentage. That way, people can't add them to every caster.... which I'm SURE Darktide woud not like one bit.


Envoy Policy Changes

Uninscribing items is a GREAT idea - except for one concern. When someone hacks an account and sells off all the items, or simply gets their items stolen, alot of the time those are identified later and reaquired via an inscription. I would hope that Envoys would not be allowed to remove an inscription to that effect...

And, YES, PLEASE move the tradebots to their stalls! NOW! Get them out of there! They're so incredibly annoying! Thank you!

[Taker_AC]

Settlement Portals:
I thought your modifications to the game were supposed to make the game less tedious... This is tedium plus... How about making housing portal dungeons like Subway? Place them outside the cities so there is only one portal, that will solve your "beauty" issue. Making us have to pay for something else after making it hard to make money is a poor choice to say the least.

Content Revisions:
Can we PLEASE get a upgrade to a town that DOESN'T have a 10K cap for a sell rate???

Vendor Buy-Sell Rates:
Can we get a white paper on buy and sell rate changes? Don't assume that it would be cool to leave the information for us to find. The information will be out on the net in a matter of hours anyway, so having it on hand via your website will be much more friendly.

Dispel Revisions:

Dispel spells:
Please make the level 7 spells a quest or purchacable. Don't make me camp SIK chest for a month to find the spells. Can you make it to where Non-PKs can dispell Other Non-PKs?

Dispel potions:
Thank you.

Dispel gems:
Can't possibly get two good things without a nerf, can we? My opinion on this is... No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No and um... No!

Buffing Improvements:
Good for 3-Schoolers, bad for Item Only template... Oh, wait... The Item Only templates are already screwed because of the Spell Transfer changes... Never mind then.

House Purchase Timer:
Good!

Treasure Changes, Phase 3
Can we get Prismatic Tapers to start dropping on random mods to cut casting costs, since the pyreal value of loot has dropped so much... Perhaps we could get Plats to start dropping randomly too?

Fellowship Spells:
Again, quest or purchace related... Don't make me hunt SIK Chests.

Envoy Policy Changes:
You specifically speak of Trade Bots. What about Buff Bots? Does the same rules follow for them, or do you have other plans in mind.

[ApolloAce]

I believe I may be reading the subject of the settlement portals a bit differently than the rest.

As it stands now you may have to travel through several settlement portals to arrive at your desired location in april each settlement will recieve a vendor for a gem to that location you buy one portal summoning gem which takes you directly to that portal.

In other words instead of traveling through several portals you click one gem summon a portal directly to your final location(or close to it).

Before leaving the settlement you buy another gem.

Simply put you purchase one gem at your final location for each of the areas you frequent and you are basically set forever.

They mentioned the hubs would be removed in May not the vendors.

If anything this makes travel faster not slower.

Instead of traveling all over the landscape the prepared person can take everyone to the final location at the blink of an eye.

No more running all over creation and through several settlement portals in april buy a gem to the final portal and boom your there buy another gem before you leave and your set for life.

[Neku]

Please don't take away the Settlement Portals. I don't like to spend all my play time running. If others like a long run them they don't have to use portals. I don't think they look bad. It's not like the whole landscape is covered by them.

[RedSeptember_WE]

Please Make those settelment portal gems extra heavy so house macroers cant load up on them

[sylphia]

Apollo,
The month after they add in the gems, they are going to REMOVE the settelment portals form the landscape. This means that unless you already have the gem, you will have to run out to that settlement the hard way to get it. If you are using the portals as a convenience in the first place, it rather defeats the purpose. You can always keep your gems stocked AFTER that, but you have to make tha initial run--EACH time you decide to use a shortcut with one of the settlement ports. For a number of quests, settlement portals reduce the amount of time needed to get to the place. When you go to do a new quest, SOMEONE has to hotfoot it out to the appropriate settlement portal and buy a gem so everyone can port out there--or else EVERYONE has to run it. The only way to avoid ever being caught in this situation is to go out and buy one of every single settlement gem and store them all on a mule. I recently went through my ACExplorer and updated it with my list of portal settlements. Let me tell you, I would be hardpressed to find enough room on a completely empty mule with all 7 packs for all those gems. And in order to prevent having to make the run again, I would ALWAYS have to purchase a new gem to replace the one I just used.

No; leave the portals alone. If someone wants the "thrill" of "exploring" and running it the old fashioned way, let em; they can do that now if they really want to. Just because someone else wants to walk from Atlanta to Los Angeles, that doesnt mean I cant take the bus. I can take the bus; he can walk, and we can both be happy. Meanwhile, I will be done with my business while he is still in transit.

[Aaryna]

Originally posted by sylphia
Just because someone else wants to walk from Atlanta to Los Angeles, that doesnt mean I cant take the bus. I can take the bus; he can walk, and we can both be happy. Meanwhile, I will be done with my business while he is still in transit.

That's exactly the point, though. Leaving it that way tends to force people to solo quests, because chances are the people they would group with are going to leave them behind if they try to do it on foot. It's bad enough that quest groups always expect you to have read a walkthrough and know everything that's comming, and don't bother to wait for you to pick up texts along the way.

Forced soloing is no better than forced grouping.

Besides, this adds value to people who have memorised the actual portal routes, from before settlement hubs. It's really not so bad that you have to run from the nearest town all the way to the dungeon, usually.

[ApolloAce]

Yes Slphia but you dont have to buy every gem just the ones to locations you frequent for quests.

I know of one quest that requires you travel through four portals to get there ... in april I will travel those portals by the final portal gem.

So instead of trying to run 5 to 10 people(and keep them together) through 4 I will click a gem and take them no more than a minute or two from the dungeon we are headed to.

A good example is the att redidtribute dungeon run quite a distance travel through 1 town and 2 settlement portals to get there to run down the road down the hill and around the cliff to arrive at the face. After april I will simply click a gem bypassing the town and the two settlement portals completely, cutting my running time down quite a lot.

If a new quest comes up, send one person out to get the gem once and your set for that quest permanenantly. It's less running in the end not more.

One trip sets you for life. Instead of consistently having to run all over the landscape and through several portals every single time and keep in mind you generally travel through several portals to get where your going so you wont have to buy all the gems just the end result ones.

Edit: Heck I won't even have to bother with sub after I have the dozen gems I frequently use.

[The Darkness]

If you make Gems of Stillness dispell only a limited number of spells, you must first make it so that there is only one instance of each debuff tracked on each character.

^ have to say this is a nice idea - or keep it so that the Awakener removes ALL and not a random number. One of the two would be cool :)

[sylphia]

Aaryna,
If you are doing a quest, the majority of folks want to get to the quest itself as quickly as possible, not spend 30 minutes just runing to get there. Frankly, the guy that insists on running it the long way is being rude and inconsiderate of the other players. If he wants to do it that way, he is hanging out with the wrong folks anyway; he needs to find other players who share his idea of what constitutes a "good time" in AC. Taking 20-30 minutes to run somewhere that you COULD arrive at in 5-10 is not my idea of a good time. Waiting on someone who refuses to stay with the group is even less my idea of a good time, and I can assure you *I* would leave them behind and continue the quest.

Adds value to the....HUH? How does that add value??? For on-newbies, the "old" portal networks are common knowledge. There is far more value in knowing where all the CURRENT networks can take you. This includes all of the hubs (old, desert, shadow), the statues, all of the RQs, all of the settlements, the Nexus networks, the Qbar/Zaikhal/HebianTo/Cragstone one...all of them. After four years of play, I can usually plot in my head the fastest route to get somewhere; that is far more valuable than just knowing how to get from Rithwic to Shoushi and back. And when I cant, I can call up my ACE and plot the route on there. If a player wants to restrict themselves to JUST using the old ports, thats fine. But dont expect me to wait on them just because they want to be contrary.


Ace,
You have made my point, actually...for "locations you frequent", you will have the gems. But when you want to go to someplace new, you have to hotfoot it. Remember the settlement portals are tieable, so if for some reason you want to send one person out first he could just tie to the port and summon it. And sorry but I think you arent quite as efficient at pathing as I am if you go through that many hops to get to the attribute temples. If you refer to the Spec one, you hit hub, Qalabar, and the Landbridge portal, then run to the temple from there....takes about 10 minutes total run-time, tops. If you mean the unspec/untrain one, you hit hub, cragstone, Far Horizons portal and run to the dungeon (or if yo live in eastham like I do, just hit Midhill). Again, 10 minutes or less.

Now if they want to add the gems IN ADDITION to having the portals, THEN its a great idea. Then you could get your gems and save time on your next trip, and I could still run to wherever in Dereth I want to go, using my map of portal networks. Then when something new is added, I dont have to run for 20-30 minutes to find the nearest housing settlement just to get a gem, beacuse the dungeon is no recall and I dont want to spend ANOTHER 20-30 mins running if I die.

But thats not their plan; their plan is to remove the portals entirely, all because some folks think they are "ugly". Thats just bogus. You dont make the game "more fun to explore" by making it take longer to get wher eyou want to go. If someone wants to explore, they can do exactly what my wife does...buf up, pick a direction, and start running. It doesnt require limiting everyone else's mobility just to do that.

[ApolloAce]

My point exactly Sylphia three portals to get to the atts.

With the gem its one click. The 10 minutes just became 2.

As far as hot footing it, after April you only have to hot foot it once then your done for good.

Unlike now when you have to travel through all those portals every single time, sometimes with a group.

After April it's one run get gem, after that its click, buy, next trip click buy.

[Ryakki]

Wow!

I've never seen such a list of good ideas, at least not from the developers God forbid, lol.


Just afew small suggestions:

Those new racial armors, don't just limit them to loot tables, give them to us as Shadow Armor as well.

Also, most weapon classes *still* don't have quest weapons anywhere near worth their weild reqs. I'll bet good money that 90% of no-req imbued loot weapons beat 325 weild quest weapons. By the time you can get and/or weild most quest weapons they're of no use whatsoever. :(

Crafting bonuses on DT? Loot is useful for killing monsters I suppose, but the focus of DT is killing people, and loot items don't get used much for that... and things like arrows and potions are made by unmaned bots who, by nessesity, stay far away from any towns. I can't imagine how a crafting bonus would make a town attractive let alone something to fight over. Just my opinion.

Gem changes are good, but a timer still might be a useful idea.

[TTF]

I wanted to get my ideas together here...

The idea of having vendors to purchase our settlement gems is very nice, much more professional than the settlement rings; however....On the one hand, you're giving us more playing time by decreasing buff times, then you turn around and decrease our play times by increasing our run times to access gems.

I think the gems are a wonderful Idea, but I propose 3 vendors only- one in each capital. The vendor in Hebian-to for example, would sell gems to all of the sho towns. His dropdown vendor menu would be every sho town. Click on a town like 'Sawato' and you'd see the gems for all of the settlements accessed from Sawato. Decreased lag at each settlement from the vendors spread across the landscape. Increased play time from accessing the gems in central locations. Increased functionality from the gems themselves by letting us open a portal to 'x' location from a central meeting spot like a monarchy mansion to run a quest that starts from that location. All in all, that would be a win-win situation from a players perspective that remembers the 'run to the sun' to refine chorizite ore back in the day.

another option, is to move the settlement portals to inside the moldy old Meeting Halls that have collected dust since 'Insta-Og' became obsolete

Opinions?

Vendors in the capitals would:
1) reduce lag at settlement from adding vendors to every settlement / take less coding than individual vendors at all settlements.
2) Increase play time, as oppossed to decrease it w/ marathons.
3) Increase the functionality of the existing system (just having portal gems we can use at a meeting local for our friends)
4) appease 95% of the population that has grown accostumed to the system as it stands.

:confused: :confused:

[sylphia]

Ace,
When April hits, you will have to hotfoot it WITHOUT the benfit of the settlement portals to get you there. You will have to make the ridculously long overland trip to get to whatever settlement you are looking for to buy that first gem. And assuming you ever want to repeat this trip without having to run it again, you will from now on have to warehouse the gem on a mule. For EACH settlement you want a tie to. Compare that to the ten minutres it takes to get to the end of the trip, and I will take it any day over running miles and miles just to buy a silly gem. And once again, it is for EACH time you want to go to a new place; you have to run there to buy the gem; thats not my idea of fun, and I cant believe you dont see how much more inconvenient it would be to make those long runs. Settlement portals were an improvement to the transportation system. Taking them out is a step backwards.
Like I said if they want to add the gems AND leave the portals, thats fine. But taking out the portals just to replace them with gems is a bad plan.

The majority of players want to spend LESS time running someplace, not more. Adding in the gems facilitates that, but removing the portals does not; it simply makes no sense.


Edit: Correction, you will be able to run to the settlements as mormal in April. In MAY, the portals are scheduled to be removed, so unless you stocked up on all thegems you think you may ever need in April, you will have to hotfoot it in May.

[Jarella]

Perhaps the towns that are to become population centers could have a vendor that sells only the gems for the most used settlement portals...the ones used for quests most frequently. That might satisfy both sides....just have to figure out which gems those would be...

[Ryakki]

I thought the settlement portal change was the least important there but since no one will talk about anything important...

It did mess with the overall feel of the game when you no longer ran anywhere. Finally taking out those portals can only be a good thing. I don't see the need for a replacement even if temporary but what do I know?

[thejackcat]

I absolutely hate the plan to remove the settlement portals. They were one of my favorite additions to the game ever. When you have limited play time, and getting where you want to go takes up half of it, the fun is greatly reduced. I love being able to hop on over to a dungeon I've never tried to explore and check it out. I've probably visited 20x more places after settlement portals were introduced than I ever went to before they existed. I've probably been through every single settlement portal in the game, just to see where they went. I think the settlement portals encourage exploring, rather than discourage it.

I also see an issue with (always limited) pack space and having to haul around extra **** just to get where I want to go. And if the best resource for settlement gems becomes bots in the Marketplace, as I anticipate could be likely unless vendors become readily available and accessible, I can't imagine how that could possibly be more aesthetically pleasing than what we have now (and about which I have never heard the ugliness complaints). The Marketplace is no hub (now *those* were the glory days of player trades), that's for sure.

If the gems portal you directly instead of casting a portal, I will also dislike it. Currently, my vassal and I quest regularly with a monarchy we are friends with. My secondary portal tie is to the settlement portal closest to their mansion, where we usually gather to quest. It will make it a lot harder for us to join up and socialize with our friends.

To summarize: HATE the idea.

I also dislike monkeying with the vendor rates again, but that's just because I've surveyed them all for my website at least 4 times over the years and dread having to do it again! ;-)

Thanks for the improvements in communication. Love the game.

[Nauscicaa]

Very interesting and exciting ideas, although I like to know what is coming I surely hope this game will not turn into a democracy because that will kill it.

Removing the settlement portals is a good idea, people hardly see the land at all at the moment, travel is hitting an x number of portals, then run a click or two and voila. I have never liked the tendency to make things easier for us, so this is a welcome change :)

Crafting Confirmation
Very nice, it doesnt completely take away the necessity to to check Caerthalion's Tinkering Calculator but it is a very nice enhancement for my Tinker

Arm, Heart, Mind update, great! don't mess too much with the mechanics please, it's one of my favorite quests. Fixing the internal timers though is a good thing.

Dispell gems i have a feeling this is a present for the vocal DT minority which will not be very nice for the rest of us. The improvement of the spells and potions do compensate only a little.

new defense modifiers Very, very bad idea, :mad: this will only make playing a mage the only viable option and the game is too mage dependent as it is already. If I play a melee I expect to be hit by wars, and resist physical attacks, if I play a mage I resist wars and get hit physically. Giving my axer magic d bonus or my mage melee d bonus will dumb down the game and will eventually lead to only one viable character template where the only variation will be the type of damage output you choose

Rares :) Super idea! after messing up the whole trohpy business with the monster distribution and making the specials spawn like mad (how you could ever do that is still a mystery to me). This will make hunting and looting very exciting again. And as finding majors, tophies and rares is the best part of the game to me I am very happy you are planning to add this!

[Sanrin]

I love the fact that you folks are sharing so much more information with us. That's grrrrreat!

I'd like to echo the negative thoughts from Grayson, Sylphia and others about loosing the settelment portal hubs, and add some of my own. One of the greatest strengths of AC for me has been the ability to log on and accomplish something in a short period of time. Ease of travel is almost as important to me as the ability to play solo whenever I like. Currently, the housing portal rings allow me to travel almost everywhere quickly and easily, and they don't cost me pyreal or pack space. This is a wonderful thing that has enhanced my game experience a lot since the pre-housing days. I can travel with purpose for a quest or to run an errand, or I can travel at whim to explore various landscapes or maybe follow specific landmarks that I've come across in AC lore. Replacing the housing portal rings with portal gems as you've mentioned will limit me. It means I would have to deal with more consumables that will cost me pyreal and packspace... *shiver*... and since there's no way I can carry a gem for each neighborhood in Osteth, I wouldn't have nearly the range of freedom I do now, as far as the quick travel goes.

The pyreal doesn't seem all that important at first glance, so I want to expand. Now, I can move around casually. With gems, I'd have to worry much more than I do now about what I was doing every time I went somewhere. If I forgot something, or any reason came up to take that same route again immediately, it would cost me.

In response to those who are in favor of getting ride of the portal hubs so that everyone can run around more... I've been there and done that. The novelty was fine, but has since worn off. Nowadays, I'm enjoying the freedom and longer 'fun' time that the portals offer me. I still have the option to explore or run the landscape when the mood strikes me, as can anyone else. I'd be pleased if no one suggests that I be forced to play the way that someone else prefers. :)

Ok... pyreals, packspace, less 'fun' time... I haven't read anything yet that tells me why such sacrifices are necessary. I don't think that the portals are 'ugly'. They are a group of portals that look just like most other portals in Dereth. I would like to hear some detailed insight on what makes them so 'ugly' that you guys are considering using your limited resources to change them. That said... if they were put underground like some folks suggest and I still had access to them, then I'd still be happy as clam on patch day about the change. :)

-Sanrin

[Truth Seeker]

Just to throw in my 2 Pyreals I loath the idea of removing the settlement portals

You are not encouraging exploration, you are actively discouraging it as people aren't going to spend 30 minutes to run to a settlement just to see whats out there, when you can just hop in a portal now.

You made the system easy for people to get around with and now you want to cripple us all.

I lead a lot of quests and now I can see myself being expected to do all of the running in advance just so some people don't have to.

Housing...you have upgraded a lot of the mobs on the landscape since the settlemnent portals were put in the game. Before hand a lvl 20 could have managed the run from town to the cottage to purchase it, now I doubt that would be possible. To stand a chance at purchasing villas etc you currently need a pack with the housing items, writs, cash. Now you will need whole packs full of settlement gems just to stand a chance of getting there fast enough.

I have to agree with what someone else said previously. If it is simple a case of removing all the purple portals because they are ugly then leave the lamppost and make it portal us to a Res Quarters like hub

[Ryakki]

Actually the gem change doesn't fix much for us PKers, although in defense I must say it's an absolutely huge problem that seriously downgrades pk as it is.

And from the PvM point of view, I hate gems even worse. Player VS monster is plenty easy enough without being able to instantly remove vulns and inepts any time it strikes your fancy, ug.


To tell the truth in pk we cast one spell a gem has to deal with, a vuln... if gems change to only affect 1-2 spells, it still takes away the vuln... there might as well be no change at all for us. A timer is about the only real solution.

[MiracleMax]

I had to come here and register, because I was astounded and dismayed that you're thinking of removing the settlement portals. I think the settlement portals are one of the best things to happen to the game, along with tinking.

I must say I am impressed that you can take something so useful away and make it sound like you're doing me a favor :) Give those marketing guys a raise!

The portals *encorage* exploration, they don't discourage it. I've seen more of Dereth in the few months since I returned to the game with portals, than the years I ran Dereth without portals. I'm quite busy, and have to squeeze my playing into the odd hour or two - I don't have the 6 or 8 hours straight that it used to take us to get to some of the (what were then) really interesting places.

As it is now, I can get in the game, hear about some interesting place or quest - and *get* there. If I only have 2 or 3 hours to play, I'd rather spend the majority of that interacting with some place new, not running and dodging for an hour first.

If you think they're ugly - then make them less ugly. Put them underground as suggested, or build some fascinating building or sculpture to arrange them about.

The concept of removing the portals to encourage exploration is ludicrous!! You're going to force me to have fun? The local scenery is just as accessible with the portals as without them. Making it difficult to get to far places isn't going to increase my enjoyment of near places - it will just make life more difficult and give me less time to do stuff that's actually fun.

Please, please, please don't do this!!

Miracle Max
Charter member of HG-Elm clan, born the first day of Retail

[Dom on TD]

I like alot of the stuff you have planned, but the settlement portal NERF is not one. Put the vendors in towns, if you're going to take my means of transportation from me. BTW, who said they were ugly? Why were they standing that far from town to enjoy the view? I think Olthoi are ugly, But I DON'T want you wiping them off the face of Dereth. Have you ever looked a Lugian in the face? They look like my in laws, but they are necessary for us to gain xp and loot items. The same applies to the Settlement portals. We need them to reduce run times on quests. Have you thought about whom this will help? HOUSING MACROERS. They just fill up on gems for the villa portals, and BAM! Niro just made $120.
Dispells- I like the idea of the level 7 spell. There will be alot of outcry if you nerf gems, but since I rarely use them, it won't make much difference to me. Overall, I like the changes, ESPECIALLY the one where you told us in advance, rather than 2 weeks before it goes live. Heck, I may even change my signature if you keep this up.

[Julian's Touch]

Ibn will correct me if i am wrong, but i would like to explain a little about the gems, from how i understood it, and how you misunderstood it :)


In april, they will add NPC selling gems at each settlements. And settlement portal hubs will still be there. You will have the possibility to get a gem from each regulary used settlement.

In may, they will remove the portals, and let the NPC. So if you want to go to the settlement, you can use your gem to SUMMON the portal (someone talked about making line to buy a gem?), either ask someone if he has a gem, either log a mule with some gems on her, buy one from someone who lives their, or run 1 time there to buy a gem for later.

As soon as you used a gem, a portal will appear. For quest, you won't need to make meeting somewhere weird. Just 1 guy will have 1 gem, and use it at mansion or marketplace for everyone else. As soon as you took the portal, you will buy another one. Why do you want them to be stackable ? You need just one gem. If you use it, you buy a new. Like we all use to do for Invoker quest. Someone use a Celdish portal, and buy a new one.

If you want to go hunt with a friend around his house, he will /house recall, buy a gem, /marketplace, summon, so you can take the portal.


And the 2 best side, you can sell your settlements gems in trade (bots) in marketplace for more than it costed you, if it's an interesting spot. And the other point is : if you want to go to the skill sell back dungeon, before you had to : find / recall to hub, run down to cragstone, run to settlement, take far horizons. After this you will have to : double click on gem, double click on portal.


Even if you still complain, make a tradebots which sells only most of settlement portal gems !

Only the first run can be annoying, but the first will be in april, and the portals will still be there.

Please think about it again before complaining :)

[Dom on TD]

Originally posted by Julian's Touch

Only the first run can be annoying, but the first will be in april, and the portals will still be there.

Please think about it again before complaining :)

I didn't misunderstand, I realise they're giving us time to prepare. But what you fail to realise is I've ALWAYS hated running, I have 1 account and limited packspace, in doing this, they're making it totally impossible to buy a villa even if you catch it when it comes available. Macroers will sit in meeting halls now, or some obscure place with no monsters/players, and just portal in as soon as it comes available. At least at present, we have a chance of catching up because he's unbuffed and loaded with items. I just don't see any good that can come of it.

[Todoshi]

Please dont remove the portals in settlements, it never looked ugly and as you once had in mind for the portals in general, it improves the speed to get around (at least to major towns and dealers) and if I can play for an hour, I don't want to run around 30 mins, we know the land of Dereth by now.
And to hunt interesting areas, you don't use such portals anyway, so please leave it in and with limited packspace and all salvage, gems, now then different dispell items, Death items and weapons, we don't need more stuff crowding the packs, please!

[Solan]

Julian's Touch, the problem is that I have no clue in the world what all settlements gems I am going to want. Sure, I know which ones I use more than once NOW (for the most part) but I don't know which ones will be useful in the future. I don't have the pack space for ALL of them.

I have a noob that I am using to explore the lower level dungeons. This is something that never occured to me before. Some of those dungeons are simply two rooms. Run all that way for two rooms? No way. But I sure as heck don't know ahead of time which settlement portals I will be using for this. I am exploring more NOW than I did before the settlement portals were put in.


Speaking of exploring more, I thought the hubs were so important I went to EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE HUBS for three month running (after my third month, they quit putting new ones in) to discover which ones were new and where they went so I could load it into the AC Explorer database. That was NOT a trivial job. I went to Stonehold, Plateau Village and Kara for the first time because of that.

[Shelendil]

Settlement Portals
I dislike the idea of removing settlement portals unless the npc for selling gems will be located at the lamp post or in the towns. If you're trying to reduce ugliness, lag, or housing macros, there are far better options. Running somewhere once is fun, doing it the 10th time is not, and I dislike the idea of having to invest pack space to avoid this. If the vendors are close to towns, I can buy a gem as needed without a pack space on my main or mule.

New Defense Modifiers
This will affect game balance greatly, heh. I'm hoping to see only one defense modifier on each weapon/wand. They can spawn with melee d OR missle d OR magic d. This keeps my current weapons from being completely obsolete, allows for tailoring of weapons to specific situations, and keeps it from being too over-powering. Since it wasn't mentioned whether they'd be spawning with all three at once, I'd thought throw that out there. There's nothing I'd hate more than to trash all my current weapons and start over, especially as I'm not even finished gathering them yet.

[Ariella]

I like TTF's ideas on the housing portals. :)

[Hentaya]

Well, first of all, I'd like to just say that I'd *REALLY* rather spend my time PLAYING AC, than reading about it and posting about it. :) I'm sure that's one of the reasons that not everyone frequents the boards...they want to PLAY. There REALLY needs to be more information IN-GAME about things like this. Perhaps a 'Shoku Poll Taker' somewhere who can do simple polls in game? (buy a YES for 1 pyreal, a NO for 1 pyreal, and sell it back for 1 pyreal). Or 'kill Target Drudge YES' or 'kill Target Drudge NO', given your new tracking subroutines.

However, sometimes, you just have to speak up to be sure you get counted in. It's time for the first installment of 'Good Idea/Bad Idea' (add: I've just noticed that SOME people are replying to things in the 'Tell us what you think of the March Letter to the Players Follow-Up', even though Ibn tried to tell them not to. Sigh)

Settlement Portals: Bad Idea.

Well, first of all, I have to say that yes, it does look like it was DEFINITELY MS' idea to try and reduce DB size by making everything in storage be worthwhile to destroy/use/turn-in/stack. The bean counters there would be going CRAZY. Even though it does say they are 'portal summoning gems', not teleportation gems like, say the Aphus Lassel ones, I can see people stocking up a few hundred gems, one each, just in case. I guess I can clean out the Collective member that has nothing but Treated Healing kits, and make it a mondo super portal bot! *shudder*

I don't think they're ugly. I think the designs are pretty, actually, especially on Radar. Putting them indoors would certainly be a chore, but hey, use the opportunity to check out the new tech for hanging portals on Mansion walls. :) Even better, copy the bottom of the Subway|Hub|Abandoned Mines a couple of times, and add it to the landblock for the Adventurer's Haven! I'd LOVE to see that place revitalized. Or just put a vendor in there who has ALL the gems.

Amazingly, most of the comments I've read in favour of this have been 'Great! Those lazy people will have to run!" and "Great! I can explore again, instead of being lazy!". Well, the first is reducing MY choice (and my easy exploration options), and the second is personal choice. I thought AC Today was all about INCREASING player's (tactical) options, not limiting them.

Suggestion: Keep the portals, hide them in the meeting halls perhaps, like a previous poster said, if you need them off the landscape, AND add the gems. Obviously, it's not a matter of either/or, because both will be avaiable for a month. Move them first, even. :)

Content Revisions: Good Idea

Suggestion: Just keep us up tg date on trophy changes? At least as far as 'will be changed for new questers', 'will not be changed', 'will be changed retroactively for all occurances of the object'. as opposed to just 'quest rewards will be adjusted'.

Vendor Buy/Sell rates: Good idea AND Bad Idea

Why bad? Oh, because WTF does the area have to do AT ALL with vendor buy/sell rates, now that the universal price controls have set in? Besides, I just put everything on my crafter, have her LS recall and run into Candeth Keep...who in their right mind wants to sell at anything less than 100%? And I CAN'T inscribe trade notes with the buy-sell rate anymore! Sniff. I lost soo much data on all my I notes when all that got wiped from them.

Why good? Because information gathering is what I have ALWAYS liked most about AC, and it'll be fun to gather up the new rates. Might be nice to show the rates on the vendor himself, or her sign, though...helps those mathematically-challenged people who don't carry around test items with an even value. :)

Suggestion: Don't give us more than the townnames that have been 'revised'. Let the info seekers among us have some fun for a day. :)

Dispell Revisions: Good Idea

Nice to make it worthwhile to make potions. I don't think I've EVER bothered before. Shifting is a good idea too. I don't like the idea that there will be NOTHING to get rid of 'beneficial' spells, but I'm sure I'm in the minority there. I like to be able to 'reset' myself when I'm done being 'combatant', and press my green triangles KNOWING my bases, not guessing at them with math. :)
Does this mean that Virindi will stop dispelling my good spells, and just dispell my bad ones? :)

Suggestion: Perhaps even shift more? Make Level I and II potions (current slots) work on I-III and IV-V, Level III and IV potions work for levels VI and VII spells at (say) 1-6 spells, and level V and VI potions work for levels VI and VII spells at (say) 4-10 spells. Something like that, so that higher potions work for more, and the lesser potions work really well for lower characters. Oh, and like a few posters have commented, DON'T do this unless you code in 'For each (spell) selected to dispel, remove all instances of (spell)'; or otherwise get rid of the gawdawful stacking.

Buffing Improvements: Good Idea

I'd say BAD idea if this were an RPG, but, it's not (Sorry Aaryna). It's a graphical combat MUD. It always has been. There's no in-game benefit in any sort of Roleplay or character play, and in fact, you get very confused players when you start staying in-character, for the most part. So, any argument about such a change disrupting 'a law of the universe' is specious, at best. Speed up buffing, and let me get more time to reply here. :)

"We believe that training a skill yourself should always have some advantage over relying on others who have trained the
skill." Yeah, right. So what's my benefit in training all the crafting and tinking skills myself? Other than cooking on the fly to get back stam with food I find...oh, wait, I don't FIND food anymore.

Suggestion: None, really. If I cast my SELF spells faster, I can get around to buffing those I need to on a quest. So all is good.

House Purchase Timer: Bad Idea.

Not going to solve much for the hardcore 'I'm doing nothing at all but buying all the villas on any world I can' person, and it'll make it that much harder for me to pick up a villa or cottage for a friend, and transfer it to him, more than once a month. But, it's a step in the right direction, I guess.

Suggestion: Make it a CoC issue.

Treasure Changes, Phase 3 - Good Idea, no comments

“Second-class” Weapons Get Upgrades - Bad Idea

So, for instance, a Morningstar has max damage of 30, and a Kasrullah has max damage of 20 now, and 25 after the patch. There's still no reason to look at anything other than a Morningstar at high levels of skill. And melee's get to high levels of skill faster than mages (which I'm used to). Even a 28 is still 2 iron tinks.

Suggestion: If you're not going to make the max damages equal in a class, perhaps make the variances smaller? I'll definitely take a 22-28 Kasrullah over a 15-30 Morningstar, all other things equivalent. :)

Fellowship spells: Good Idea, no comments till we see them!

Envoy Policy Changes: Good Idea

My biggest problem with the marketplace is, quite frankly, I have NO idea WTF those stupid glyphs over the hallways mean. Okay, so I normally play at 1/8th graphics, but I've pushed everything to full, and still, they don't mean anything to me. Graphics usually don't. Can we have WORDS there, too? Or signs? Or something?
Perhaps then, the Envoy team might see people actually using the halls. Right now, I wouldn't know which of the four to go into, to find a tradebot, or a buffbot, or whatever.

As for 'offensive speech', well, this isn't a democracy; I find most spammers to be 'offensive' myself. I'm hoping your Envoys have very clear rules to follow, rather than just letting them all use their own interpretation of such terms as 'offensive'.

Suggestion: Let the envoys remove 'bandit' or 'imbues' on objects during their time, too. Not swap imbues, just remove them. I have this lovely spiked club with a bludgeon imbue that's just...sitting on the wall.

[Zero_Washu]

In Development Section


Settlement Portals being removed.


One word : AWESOME

Thank you, perhaps it will also reduce lag as even the portals cause some issues! Too many times portals are used as shortcuts.

Please make these gems RECALLs and not SUMMONS

Content Revisions

Please be careful when mucking around with the Vesayens. The biggest need there is better portals for getting to various parts of the Vesayens. Currently the portals are in areas that are actually more difficult than the Vesayen's themselves!!!!



Vendor Buy-Sell Rates

Why have any major differences at all? AC is a mature game. The major effect buy sell rates had was to invalidate the need for certain towns. If you remove this restriction it could bring life to many towns that no longer have it. Also allow all mages to sell the full range of tapers/scarabs. Essentially the flavor of the towns should not be determined by their buy/sell cost. I remember living in Zak but leaving after you made it too expensive to work there.


Buffing Improvements

Great change!

As for item spells, can you make it the change only for items in the characters possession? I know this might be tricky considering the tricks used by Cast-A-Away where it casts on GUID without regard to who is holding it.

House Purchase Timer

Wrong idea. A timer only inteferes with those who have access to two or less accounts. The people selling on ebay or using villas/houses to obtain great trades in game will not be highly affected. Simply put you cannot turn over that many villas in a given month.

You could remove a great need for villas and their associated out of game value by allowing for house_monarchy recalls to go to the monarchs HOUSE! It might also give reasons for people to visit some of these outlying housing communities. Most are empty forever.

Also, why not allow people to recall to allegiance halls? That would help monarchies that do not have mansions/villas.


Treasure Changes, Phase 3

Please note one major area of disgust with your changes to bow. No one wants a 125 mod bow with a 290 wield. I suggest that any bow/atlatl/xbow that is not maximum mod for the next existing wield requirement be forced down to the previous. This would give value to these sub 130 mod bows you now put out. A 125 270Wield would be OK... but as a 290Wield it is most always junk unless the melee mod is very high. Another option is that if the damage mod is reduced but the wield is kept high is to bump the melee mod (even beyond current sing maxxes)


Now as for putting melee mods on casting items. My issue here is that most mages don't have enough melee defense to matter. HOWEVER if you put this on casting items I suggest you give mages/melees a way to debuff a casting item to reduce the SKILL or DAMAGE delivered from spells cast as compensations. Mages still rule this game.

I do not like the idea of a magicD mod. Your catering to the macro'd characters too much if you go this direction.


The Marketplace.

How about portal storming the main room? Put them back into a town or such


“Second-class” Weapons Get Upgrades

I think not bringing up the maxes to equal will solve the issue. People will still go for the best mods. You could balance it out by providing tighter variances on these lower damage weapons. That would make them more useful.


Housing Barriers - Darktide

Be very careful here. If a person cannot have unfretted access to his chest then you void the reason for having a house. This goes double for multi-chest places like villas and mansions. What about the portals within villas/mansions? Will they be monarchy only protected?

[Ot Wintersebb]

I have played this game since beta.

Way back then, one of the biggest complaints was that the game wasn't fun due to the amount of running from place to place that was needed.

The addition of Housing Portals back when introduced was the single addition to the game that kept me in it. I was ready to quit because it was such a boring game. We had to spend 50% of our time just running.

Removing the Housing Portals would bring back the same tedium. This is not an improvement.

You say that we could plan ahead for a month to stock up (in what pack space?) on needed gems. Perhaps for the player who plays regularly. However, for some who don't already know their way around, they won't know what to stock up on.

This is claimed to be for "beauty" reasons. Sorry, but that doesn't compute.

If you take this away I predict the following:

1) Certain housing owners will become rich by selling gems to "their" location in the Marketplace.

2) New players will find it tedious to get around.

3) Existing players who play only rarely and couldn't be bothered to "stock up" will find it tedious to get around.

4) You will lose player base (think DOLLARS) due to this change.

_______________________________
.Suggestion

Take heed of the suggestions of many players. The one I like best is that the vendor for the gem to a particular location not be located at that location, but instead where the current Housing Portal Ring is located. It would solve the claimed "beauty" problem -- replacing the ring of portals with a single vendor. It would preserve existing precious pack space. It would allow the same convenience as today (with perhaps a small pyreal penalty since the gem would need to be purchased).

The proposed change would make drastic changes to the way players get around Dereth. Too drastic. Don't do it!

Respectfully submitted,

[Cuttler]

Portal settlement : I have played since beta and don't mind running places when I have to. But that doesn't mean I want to be forced to run more often than I currently have to. Pack space is limited (level 126 characters have to carry about 2 packs of DIs as it is) and there is simply no room to carry or store these gems. What are you really expecting us to do in phase one? Are you expecting us to go and purchase a gem from each settelment so we can have one on hand at all times, purchasing a new gem each time the only one is used? Are you going to give me another character slot to hold them all on a new mule? In essence this change does the opposite of what you are trying to accomplish with the casting changes...it increased the time spent on a mundane task. Is there some quota of boaring tasks we need to have in our daily AC lives? You speed up one process so you have to slow down another? Look at your country side as it is. The outside creature levels where increased over the years while portals to dungeons intended for lower levels of characters stated where they were. They very level of character intended for these dungeons coudnt get to them because of the impossible run. Not everyone who needs to get to and though a settlement portal can handle the run on the country side required to where they need to go after the change. And not everyone will be have access to a buddy to there. Finally, I don't trade, don't know how to use a trade bot, don't care to ever do so. I am not intrested in increasing my time in game by searching for a gem on a bot because some new quest you put into game now required a portal to though a housing settelment that no one ever anticipated would be needed. Please leave travel as it is.

By the way, you will make it easier for Niro to get to each villa settelment this way...did you think of that?

Content revision : Content is good to update but if you are truly trying to attact new customers my question is will there be any true content approprate for a brand new player to learn how to play this game by the time you are done upgrading all the starter towns?

Vendor : We went though this change once because Turbine didn't have the forsight to realize that vendors purchasing at more than value of the item was free money. Don't make the same mistake with the 125% of value sell back rate as before. You'll only have to change it again when everyone starts purchasing pyreal peas from one vendor and selling them at the one who gives the great rate.

Dispel : I dont mind the random number but plesae fuse the same spell so the random number is not taking off 4 "Slowness Other VI's". I.E. If Slowness other VI is cast on you 5 times straight, the first 4 are not recoginezed any longer and only the last one, with the most time to ware off, is recognized as being active and removable. Or in other words, everytime a spell that is currently acitve is recast on you, the timer for ware off is simply reset.

Buff improvement : I like the idea of speeding up the time it takes to cast 7 selfs. Would be nice to have spells that cast say all 4 elemental protections at once and all 3 physicals plus armor at once instead. I understand the idea of why you woudn't touch the "others" but speaking as a monarch who's followers help each other attain goals like getting high enough in levels to purchase the 3 necessary schools to survive, our VoD fellowships usually have at least 2 people who will require buffing all night long. It's how we help our fellow player, and family member, out.

House timer : Its sad that you have to penilize the entire player base becasue of ONE person. I can see this hurting the true player who didn't abuse the the housing situation for personal gain purchasing a cottage but wanting a villa and than loosing out on being able to trade for one because of a timer.

Treasure change : I play with what I get, rarely trading for anything. Heck I have 3 accounts and only own one major (which I did get myself). The only thing I really care about is making enough money to pay for my consumables without decreasing the xp i'm trying to make by salvaging everything just to make a profit. In actuallity, most of the new weapons with there nifty new stats that I've seen havn't been worth being picked up becasue the workmanship on them are 7 or higher. I'll tinker a 7 if I have to but I refuse to waste my time on 8+.

Second class weapon : I'm netural on this one.

Fellowship spells : I'n netural on this one as well. I have a font at my mansion for my followers but havn't even bothered to run the quest for any of my characters. +2 to an attrubute just isn't worth it. Add +20 and I might find the spell useful enough to bother with it.

Envoy policy : I feel the ability to remove an inscription is more upsetting than leaving the system as it is. I'll admit that there are times that it would be nice to have an item that I have cleaned of its inscription. But this will allow people who've stolen something to get away with using it (esp an IDable item like a weapon or shild). Is there something that we can put in our inscription that would tell the envoy not to uniscribe it? Like some universal statement like "proptery of the inscriber, stolen if not in my possession" If there isn't a way to prevent helping the unsavory, than leave the system as it is.

Oh, by the way, I still hate the new xp pass up system, and I'm still not a chainer.

[Digero]

I'm going to add my voice as another against removing settlement portals.

I agree with many of the other posts on this thread with that stance. Perhaps if you really need to get rid of the portals themselves, then put an NPC vendor in town with stock of gems to all of the settlements that the town was previously linked to.

As with others, I'd rather not spend my leisure time running across the vast, but in general not particularly exciting landscape. There are definatley exciting places to go, but why make us run across acres of regular landscape to get there? It'd be more likely that I would just not go since I didn't have the time or patience to run there.

And for the people arguing that settlement portals have made us lazy... In real life, yes someone who jogs places would be considered less lazy than someone who drives, but ingame running is simply downtime, like buffing (yay for the buffing changes!). The excitement is when you get to your destination and can actually play the game rather than sit back and watch your toon autorun.

[thejackcat]

Sorry, Julian, but having someone "get" the gem for me and gathering in the Marketplace (bleh) to quest doesn't sound like an improvement to me. There's no way I'm spending my limited play time next moth running around to gather up gems. Gee, how fun. I wouldn't have anywhere to put them anyway. And if I have to learn how to use a bot just to get around... well, definitely a step backwards.

[Roadkill]

Ok, I said on a different thread I wasn't gonna post to these forums anymore, but if I don't express my opinion, it definitely won't be heard...so here goes.

Coming In March

Hidden properties - good...I like.
Character options - good
Display options - good
Craft confirmation - good good good.

Development

Settlement portals - bad bad bad.
If you remove settlement portals, as far as i'm concerned you may as well also remove ore refinery and all quests that relate to it as well. That is only one example of many, I'm sure. If the portal arrays are unsightly, beautify them...put them in a building as mentioned by others or something. Again I seem to agree with Sylphia. Those who do not want to use them don't have to. But leave them for those of us who do want to.

Content Revisions - sounds good

Buy - Sell rates - bad.

I read at some point in the past about a decal plugin that would tell you what town had the best rate. Given that I don't use anything like that, I have a hard enough time finding out what town has a good rate without having to mess around going to the different vendors in that town. I view it as an unnecessary waste of time. I also tend to agree with whoever it was earlier that said the towns in the dires like Teth and AB should have higher rates not lower.

Dispell Revisions - no opinion

Maybe when my toons get to a higher level I'll have something to base an opinion on.

Buff Improvements - good

I'd also like to see a timer that shows how much time is left on armor banes.

House Timer - no opinion

I have a cottage, and it is doubtful I'll ever be able to afford anything more so this really doesn't affect me.

Treasure Changes p3 - sounds good

Second class weapon improvements - sounds good

Fellowship spells - sounds good

Inscriptions - bad

I think +Envoys could use there time more wisely than something as minor as this. In my opinion, a player should be able to change the inscription on anything in his inventory.
EDIT: wasn't thinking of the theives changing inscriptions. maybe my idea above isn't so good after all. ?

In Concept

Better weapons - good

New loot armor - good

Rares - sounds good

Further buff improvements - good

Missile attack - ?

I have only one crossbow toon which I don't play much anymore - he needs some improvements but not sure what his problem is, let alone the solution.

Town improvements - ?

Would the PK and PKL capture & hold feature have any affect on NPK's entering that town like normal?

Allegiance Improvements - good

Mansion Improvements - ?

I'll leave this to those who have a mansion.

PvP - ?

I've never PK'd or PKL'd, so again I'll leave this section alone.

Web Integration - sounds interesting.

[Ai Rashoku]

I'm really not to happy about the removal of the settlement portals either.

Sure, if you want to get rid of them, have a seller right at the portal drop of each town that has settlement portals in it.

That'd pwn.. No running, just buy a gem right away.

[Roadkill]

I'm right after Maggie! Woohoo!

heya maggie, love your site.

an honor to be right next to your post. :)

[Pigroast]

"well, definitely a step backwards."

I definitely agree. It is a big step backwards. Alot of us are
limited on time and we don't have the game time to spend running 300 clicks.

Alot of people say it is too easy to get around with the portals. Well, then run it the old way. Devs please dont mess with the portals..........it would seriously suck going to the skill sellback quest.

If you do remove the hubs, make the npcs who sell gems permanant.

[Strick]

I also registered on this board for the SOLE purpose of this crazy idea Turbine has come up with.

The reason stated is that the portals are 'Ugly', but this cannot possibly the the real reason, it just can't.

The 'Real' reason (IMHO) is that soon after the portals are removed they will abolish house barriers. Taking that into account the move becomes MUCH more understandable and necessary. But since the reason stated is 'Beautification' this is NOT understandable NOR necessary. Honesty is much better than some off the wall reason that anyone with half a mind can poke holes in.

If they would have said "Since we desire to remove house barriers, then the settlement portals must be removed" I could have been right there on the bandwagon with others thinking this is a good idea. I really don't like that I disagree with the changes contemplated by the Devs. I have been playing since Dec '99 and I have always trusted that the Devs have more knowledge of their game than I did, sorry but this time you dropped the ball.

Settlement portals encourages exploring, at least for me, when they were introduced I went to every housing portal I could find, and visited more places than I ever could have by running.

[LugianWarlord]

DOWN WITH PORTALS!!! :)

Thank goodness! For too long have the players had it too easy to get around Dereth...

[Roadkill]

I do hope that if they remove the house barriers, ( which by the way I would be against ) that they would at the very least provide a means of the house owner being able to lock the door in a manner that can't be lockpicked.

[Dews_Pistol]

Sorry, Julian, but having someone "get" the gem for me and gathering in the Marketplace (bleh) to quest doesn't sound like an improvement to me. There's no way I'm spending my limited play time next moth running around to gather up gems. Gee, how fun. I wouldn't have anywhere to put them anyway. And if I have to learn how to use a bot just to get around... well, definitely a step backwards. - Maggie the Jackcat

#1. Turbine you better listen to Maggie... she has a wonderful feel for the game and the players (btw LOVE the site Maggie :) )

#2. Gems would be nice to purchase in a home town and many of us are on limited time... perhaps something different?

One suggestion would be to set the portals in a "dungeon/building" type environment like Market Place or Sub.
One portal gets you access to the houseing portals in that town. Where the housing portals were once placed, is now one portal and in it, are the housing settlement portals.

I ALSO suffer from LIMITED TIME - and the game in my opinion has already suffered enough with the current recession YOU PEOPLE implimented this last patch (February) This month I find myself spending most of my time trying to rebuild my "savings account". I would be MORE unhappy if I eventually had to run from point A to B ... taking 20+ min, or worse even more than that, of my valuable time to get someplace like Sennon or Artifice for Garlean - or Yihn for Focusing Stone etc.
NOT TO MENTION that AC Exlporer and Dereth Navigator would need revamped by those good folks!

You seriously need to reconsider the CURRENT players' suggestions and thoughts and find a way to draw in new people.

The new client base you would like to have.... WHERE do you think it will come from?
I know... it won't be advertising. There are already other competitors out there IE: SWG, Horizons and even EQ.

Your new clients willl come by WORD OF MOUTH.....

OURS.....
Remember that when you keep going down these paths slowly killing this game...

[Drogo007]

Re: Settlement portal changes:

I'm in agreement with all the posters who have said that this change would only penalize the casual player by increasing their downtime. I don't have lots of time to play this game in one sitting - and making me spend 30 minutes running to a dungeon when I only have 45 minutes to play (when I can get there in 5 nowadays) would kill the fun factor of the game. Yeah, running around exploring can be fun to do - and there are times where I'll log in and do just that. But when I just want to go check out a location or dungeon, and spend my time there - making me waste most of my play time just getting there wouldn't help keep your game on my play list.

And for thsoe of you saying just grab the gems for where you want to go: Well, since I can't predict where turbine will put fun new quests, and I don't know where all the old quests are that I haven't done yet, you're effectively saying, go grab one or more of each portal gem. My inventory is crowded enough as it is - with 3 foci for buffing, DI's, multiple weapons, and bags of salvage, I don't have much space to spare to begin with.

Not to mention that you just made it that much harder for a casual player to buy a villa over the those who do it professionally (Niro, et al) Let's face it, they're not out for cottages to make money. So all they do is buy one of each villa settlement, and viola - they're there 15 seconds after it comes on the market buying it. And they no longer have to camp Sub to do it, then can do this from they safety of their own home (most likely owned by another account they have).

If you absolutely HAVE to get rid of the current portal groupings, then take one of the many suggestions offered in this thread:

Move them to the Meeting hall for that town

Move them to a dungeon (similar to how the tusker shrines used to work - double-click on lamppost, and *poof*, you in a dungeon surrounded by the portals.)

Put the new Gem vendors at the lamppost

Put the new Gem vendors in the town near where the portal group used to be

Put just a few generalized gem vendors in the capitals.

But please DON'T, whatever you do, make it more annoyance than it's woth, not to mention more time than I typically have to play, to get around to new places, do new quests, etc.

[Ever_Blades]

I haven't read the entire thread so apologies if this has been suggested.

I agree that removal of the settlement portals will make getting around Dereth MUCH more time consuming. I don't have as much time to play as I used to and the settlement portals are a great way to elimate the time wasted getting from point A to B. It would in my opinion be a bad thing to remove them if the only reason to do so is due to them being an eyesore. (Somehow I doubt the reason is just due to its an eyesore but I'll take that explanation at face value for the purposes of this discussion)

That being said, I do however agree that they can be somewhat of an eyesore. Many of the suggestions have been good ones but I'll throw one more out there....

Why not make use of the tech that allows you to put a below ground 'cave' without having to enter a 'portal' and put all the settlement portals in the cave below ground. The tunnel tech was nice and should be used more often. This is the tech that was used for both Xarabydun and Tusker Emporium dungeon.

[Anouk]

Everything I have read is great, I can't wait for the upcoming patches. I think the game has taken a turn for the better. These new changes will certainly breath some new life into this game, and make it more enjoyable then it already is.

[ferastu]

While I like the idea of getting the settlement portals off of the landscape, I don't think removing them entirely is best.

Running around the landscape is just drudgery the same as buffing or making potions. One of the best parts of AC right now is that I can quickly get almost anywhere I want. Since my playing time is only about an hour a night now, this is a great plus.

Since the gems have to be purchased at the settlement's themselves they aren't good for getting anywhere, just specific places.

I'd rather see the settlement portals moved to the meeting halls or the Residential Quarter hubs.

Also this is a potential boon for the housing macros. Since I'm running an actual character, I cannot afford to carry every possible settlement gem across my five characters. But someone's whose only purpose is to snag villas can. They can also spend the entire month of April visiting each settlement to get the gems.

[Julian's Touch]

I was trying to positive this settlement change ... :(

Maybe a mix could do it, remplace 'open air hubs' by 'dungeon hubs' accessible by a gem you would buy from the Major of the Town.

[X-Rae]

Settlement Portals!

This game is going backward not forwards.

Please don't mess with them. Running to get the Evis. pincer is boring enough.

1. How is a new character suppost to get around? Run?? yea right. How do you expect them to see everything Dereth has to offer. I remember when I first started playing just trying to run from Rithwic to Eastham and getting killed 8 times. I cancelled my subscription and I didn't play for another 6 months.

2. I only play for about 5-6 hrs a week. If I have to spend 45 minutes everytime I logon to run somewhere, I may as well quit. There is no fun in running for 30km. A few years ago, I ran from Mayoi to AB along the coast. Boring!! (It was the only way i knew to get there).


My uncle, aunt, 3 cousins, and brother already quit, because of all the changes. Geez, stop taking all the fun out of the game.


Thanks for listening (reading).

[Rastilin]

LOVE MOST THE CHANGES

NOT real fond of the settlement portal changes :(

[Pigroast]

"For too long have the players had it too easy to get around Dereth..."

If you don't like them, don't use them. that simple.

[Wing]

Settlement Portals - I agree with removing the portals. For one, I think it will reduce a large amount of lag in the game. Just my opinion and I don't know how it's coded. How about this as an alternative suggestion.

Here is why I don't like removing the portals. Quests. Gaerlan 80+, Gaerlan 40-59, Gaerlan 20-39, Temple of Enlightenment, Temple of Forgetfulness, Halls of Knorr etc...

Most of the major quest rely on the housing portals for quick acess. Nobody wants to spend hours running just to start a quest.

Instead of selling the gems only in the portal settlements how about selling them in the towns that portals that were orginally outside of the town. Or at least the ones that these quest rely on. Example.

Land Bridges Portal Gem - used for Temple of Forgetfulness
Sell the in town of Qualabar

Question - if we currently have these portals tied, will they remain tied? Will popping the gem allow us to tie to the portal?

Content Revisions Whoo Hoo - Sleeves of Inexhaustability Upgrade :D

Vendor Buy-Sell Rates hmmmm - could go either way

Dispel Revisions Go fight a couple spawns of jello in VOD before coming up with your random number of spells to dispell :p

Buffing Improvements I understand what's being said and done about speeding up bufftimers for those that gave up the skill credits to buff themselves, but please note that the largest amount of time spent on buffing are the banes.

House Purchase Timer I agree with the person that stated something about selling his villa or cottage for a mansion. Is there someway to have it test for the upgrade? Otherwise, awesome.

Treasure Changes, Phase 3 Great job so far, looking forward to the rest of it.

“Second-class” Weapons Get Upgrades To be honest, I doubt anyone realy cares about 2nd Class weapons. They will only pick up the top damage low work weapons anyway. Unless it's for salvage or sell, they won't be messing with these anyway.

Fellowship Spells Definatley looking forward to this. Quests will go much faster and much smoother inside of waiting on that one guy who insist on fizzling his way through his 7's.

Envoy Policy Changes Love the idea of uniscribing items. My lady rerolled her 126 not long ago and used the same name but can't change the inscription on some of her items. Also, this gets the envoys in the open so that people notices them and know they are there to help.

Will save the comments for the other items till later. Great job with the new communication. I have some ideas on that too that I will pass on to ya.

Wing.

[Tektek]

Most of the changes look good.

I don't like taking out settlement portals though. They are very important when you're running allegiance quests.. and you never know what settlement you're gonna need until you do the quest. I like the idea of making a vendor in the town that the settlement portals were in/near by previously that sells all the settlement gems for that town, rather than have to go to the settlement to buy the gem. It would just be way too much time wasted otherwise.

Removing inscriptions is awesome as well, especially for those of us that inscribed stuff with a deleted character, except there must be some way to tell if an item has been stolen or not before this is implemented. Someone steals your item and then goes to an envoy to have it uninscribed and you'll never find that item again.

Question here: Why would I use a dispel gem, spell, or potion that only removes a random 1-6 spells when I can just use an awakener and remove them all? Are you changing awakeners properties as well? (I hope not as it's a really useful item on a quest or in high war spamming areas :( )

[Grimbern]

I'd like to add my name to the list of folks unhappy with the proposed settlement portal changes.
If the goal is to remove the portals because some players aren't happy with their appearance, then please implement the previous suggestions of having the vendors in the towns rather than one per settlement. At least this preserves the functionality of the portals without the "eyesore."

[Silverwuf]

Since I am fundamentally opposed to anything having to do with losing more pack space (my character is a mage), I have a suggestion similar to Tehanu's regarding housing portals.

To satisfy both the people who like the uncluttered (unlagged) countryside and who love to explore, and those who use settlement portals as a quick way to buy housing or run to a quest, simply sell 'Settlement Recall scrolls' at the town Scrivener's.

A person would require the recall spell to recall to a 'hub' (room, dungeon, whatever is architecturally simpler) and use the portals stored in that 'hub'. You wouldn't have to put ALL the portals in one spot, just create a logical representation of what currently already exists. Potentially a single person would have to buy one or many scrolls depending on how many settlements he/she would require access to.

Please, please don't make me have to carry around a bunch of gems. Also consider those of us who do not have a 'trader' mentality. I shy away from trading and normally give my stuff to vassals or clanmates. I'd hate to have to start doing something I really hate to do and that is to trade with others.

Besides, I'm just the kind of idiot who would mistakenly double click on the gem and use it instead of trading it :(

Silver

[Bob_Jones_LC]

Removing settlement portals is a HORRIBLE idea. You want to encourage exploration by making exploration more difficult? Pheh. Does this make sense in your head??? Getting rid of Sub is a better idea, and you can probably see how bad an idea that one is...

Dont care much for the buy/sell rate tweakage either. You might as well just have vendors pay whatever they feel like paying for any particular piece of loot and have it be entirely random. At least then I wont have to keep a spreadsheet handy when I sell.

Second class weapons seems like more wasted time, as does secondary pathing options for arrows. I'd go into detail there, but I think others have covered it well enough. Same goes for Melee D mods on wands.

There is so much you COULD be doing to IMPROVE things for so many players, I find the recent flurry of nerfs just mind boggling...

[Grey Bow of FF]

Envoy - Marketplace
Re-design the current Park-It-Place so that the landing portal area is clear of client vendors.

Set up the Marketplace with a set of Doors:
Buff Bots - use Door #1
Trade Bots - use Door #2
Tinker Bots - use Door #3
Selling Bots - use Door #4

These would take you to the area of the Marketplace where all the bots for that function are located.


Housing Purchase
About Time...Pun Intended.

Vendor Buy/Sell
All NPC vendors would sell at the same price across Dereth. If the Lugian Gem Dealer sells for a higher price than the local NPC vendor...that is ok, but all racial Gem Dealers must sell at the same price across Dereth.

Archmages - Racial, should sell their wares at the same price as the town Archmages...tapers incluced.

[Birinair]

Some good feedback so far. I think it's awesome that you're putting this information out in advance so you can get this feedback. An awesome idea. Here are my comments:

Settlement Portals

I don't mind the idea of removing the settlement portals in favor of portal gems. I do think you need to look at some other options for distribution of the gems. The best suggestion so far is having vendors in towns that sell the gems. Whether you change where they are available or not, you do need to look into making them stackable as pack space already is at a premium.

Dispell Revisions

I really like the fact that we will now have options other than gems to dispell those level VII debuffs. I always used the dispell spells on my mage but they became pretty much useless when you started having critters cast level VII debuffs.

House Purchase Timer

All I can say is awesome idea. Glad you applied it account wide.

Fellowship Spells

This sounds great and I'm looking forward to seeing more on it.

Envoy Policy Changes - Bots

Please, please, please, move them back to the rooms provided. You made really nice stalls and I wish people would use them. And if you're going to move them, please move them out of the hallways too. There is no sense to having them clog up the hall when we have that huge room to use.

[Eric the Grey]

Settlement Portals

Please do not remove the portals. They make it very handy to get to hunting locations as they are now.

IF the only reason for removing these is because people are complaining they are ugly, then please simply move them into a dungeon. I like the idea of using the meeting halls, since they are seldom, if at all used as it is. Add a passageway off one side (the upper section, so that IF someone is using it for a meeting, it doesn't get disturbed) for the portals.

It would add a bit of time to actually get to said location, but it will solve the problems of having them all over the landscape.

Please do not listen to those who complain about other's using them as shortcuts. Let them make the runs, and let the rest of us take the shortcuts if we wish. Let us decide how to play the game.

Vendor Buy-Sell Rates
Is this going to cause more money runs? Please be careful.

Buffing Improvements
Some people seem to be thinking that 'self buffs' somehow include heals and transfers. I'd like to hear from Ibn to be certain, but I don't believe they would.

HOWEVER, it would be nice to have heals (both self and other) cast at level 1 speed. It would make the place of support mage a much easier and desirable place to be.


House Purchase Timer
Love it!

Envoy Policy Changes

I love the idea of them removing inscriptions. Having set times and places is nice, but hopefully they'll be willing to do this off-times as well, for those who are not around during their set times.

Marketplace changes, I had to laugh at this. I can imagine the look on a person's face, coming back to check on his bot, only to see he's been advertising to a tree and fountain. :P (I remember those rooms)

As other's have mentioned, not just the main room, but the hallways leading into them as well. On TD this is the biggest problem.

Well, those are my 2pyreals worth, and then some. :)


:cool: Eric the Grey

[Stabby]

I think you should leave the settlement portals alone.

You think its a great idea to have people sell their settlement gems in Marketplace!!

Come to Marketplace on Darktide, its just another good place to find fights.

I honestly can't believe that people complained of them being ugly. Make em rainbow colored or something, dont remove them.
You're gonna fix barriers on villas anyway, so just leave the portals alone.

-Beavis's Mom
Darktide

[Fleshly_Demon]

i think as well as placing the gem vendors in the individual settlements, put a vendor in each town with all the gems that that towns hub had access to, or put one vendor in each capital with ALL of that races settlement gems

if implemented as it is now, we will see a new rash of LAZY marketplace spammers...."ANY1 GOT A SONGVIEW HOUSE? I NEED TO GO TO CRATER!! GET ME A GEM PLZ!!"

or, ppl will run around and buy each settlement gem, a few of each and put them on a bot at a D-M note each depending on the original price

also, while visiting ppl is made easier, it makes it more difficult for questers....u hafta run 15? kliks out of qbar to get to 80+ gaerlan, as well as many other quest that r made more convenient by hopping settlement portals

we are already short on packspace as it is, due to salvaging....if any1 sez "then dont salvage" imma knock u outta orbit!! :rolleyes:

making this change will reduce questing as a whole bcuz of the extra runtime involved now, which i think is a bad thing

i understand that the hubs r ugly, so just add a vendor to each town or capital as well as settlement, makes it better for everyone

[Stabby]

I just wanna say this one more time.....

I can't believe people honestly think that a portal is 'ugly'
just run thru it with your eyes closed, and dont think about it once you're on the other side.

-Beavis's Mom
Darktide

[Grayson]

A good point was brought up on the ACVault LC board, and I've seen it mentioned here.

The change to settlement portals would make it utterly impossible for a regular player to buy a villa. Ever. The dedicated villa buyers would just sit there with all the settlement gems on their buying mule, and as soon as the villa came up, *pop* they're there and have bought the villa.

[LeifThorssonJr]

Originally posted by sylphia
Now if they want to add the gems IN ADDITION to having the portals, THEN its a great idea.

i agree. my earlier post, once i reread it, made it sound like i approved of getting rid of the portal rings... i don't....

why not make a compromise between some of the VERY good ideas here?

First, move the portal rings to the meeting halls. Maybe have to redesign them to fit all the ports in each one... This solves the "ugly" problem (not really a problem, since they are out of the way, but whatever....)

Then, have a vendor, parked outside of each town hall, that sells blank gems... Blank recall gems, and blank summon1, summon2, and summon3 gems... either make them high enough value to serve as decent DI's, or make them no-drop, so if i am hunting outside my favorite settlement area, and i die, i don't drop my only fast way back....

make the gems able to be imprinted on the spinning thingy in settlements, and make recall gems be able to imprint on either covenant stones, or the spinning thingy, to allow owners of remote homes/mansions/villas to give fast access to other people that may not be able to recall to their home...

perhaps even allow both types (recall and summon) of gems to be used on lifestones.... i know there is already code that allows a drop point near each lifestone, so the gems could be enabled to drop people at the same point as they would be if they had used the LS tie spell.... i can't tell you how many times i have wished i could summon my lifestone for someone else to use....

if you do put in the ability to use the blank gems on lifestones, it would be awesome to have a lifestone put in next to each town hall.... that way, i could get a gem for each town hall's LS... and it would actually improve the amount that i am willing to run around....

Originally posted by sylphia
Each of the nexus towns should have a portal to each of the other nexus towns. Since there are always going to be 8 portals, it even make sit possible to have a decorative layout for them :) A good place to put them would be around the LS that you place in the center of each town. One thing that shoudl be added to their functionality though is that they must be USED in order to activate (like summoned and housing portals) to prevent accidentally stumbling into them going to or from the LS. The way the LS is set up in Shoushi is again a perfect example; it has a nice bit of decoration, its set right in the middle of the town, and has plenty of room around it for such a ring. And have all portals leading into the town drop you at or near the LS. ALl of this would alleviate having to use 3PAs or lots and lots of notes to keep track of where each portal is in each town and where it drops you, and more importantly it would remove alot of the BLAH from traveling.

also a great idea.

looking at it from a newbie point-of view, would be a LOT less confusing... i remember when i was an00b, and would drop into shoushi from one port, i would run one way to get to town, or to another port, but if i came from a different port, i would run a different way... led to me getting lost quite a bit...

was also very frustrating when you told people to meet you at the drop for a town, and they wound up waiting for you on the other side of town.....

from an RP point-of-view, towns WOULD have sprung up around drop points, and LS's.... thats where the people are.... so thats where the vendors want to be. no one builds a theme park in wyoming, cuz there aren't any people there, and it is difficult to get to... same principle.

allowing for 8 ports in each nexus town would greatly improve the ability of n00bs to get around, and fend for themselves while their patron is not online, and allow patrons to help with the more important stuff, and not be ticked because his vassal sees him as a personal portal mule.... you could tell your vassal where to hunt to find lucky red and gold letters, and help him get his explorer armor and weapons by ADVISING him, thru /tells instead of walking him through it....


as an aside, since we are talking about recalling, summoning and the like, how about increasing the drop rate for ulgrim's scroll just a tad??? i have killed more devourers than i care to admit, and nothin'.... not a very productive way to spend my time....


*edit*
forgot a statement
*edit*

[DraconisUmbra]

Settlement Portal Changes

Removing the Settlement Portals is a horrible idea. Replacing them with gems only available in the settlements themselves is not going to help much if at all. Why should I spend my money and other resources to get some stupid gem? What will happen is that more people will waste their time running around and/or the few people who have multiple accounts will take advantage of the gems by setting up bots and reaping a big profit off those who are too lazy or too pressed for time to do a lot of running around. Probably be a lot of both. I don't know who's been complaining about the portals being "too ugly" but if you just give me their names I'll make sure you don't hear about it again. As far as I am concerned a much better alternative would be to put the settlement portals into their own little dungeons. Or if you insist on going ahead with the portal gems make them reasonably cheap and instead of putting the vendors in the settlements put one vendor in his or her own little cottage right where the settlement portals use to be and have that vendor sell gems for all of the portals.

I don't know about the rest of you but I sure as hell don't like spending my in game time running all over the place. I also don't like paying other people for something that I can get for free with some effort. But if this change happens I'll be forced to choose one of those two things. :mad:

Content Revisions

Sounds good

Buy-Sell Rates

Also sounds good

Dispell Changes

Sounds awful. What's wrong with how the gems work now? They are superior to both spells and potions why does that need to change? Sometimes when hunting you can get a lot of nasty debuffs on you and you need to remove them in a hurry. Having that ability is what makes carrying the stupid things worthwhile. Making them stack would help. Instead of 1-6 for all gems, potions and what not, 3-6 would be much, much better. A minimum of one could really suck if you're in a jam.

Buffing Improvements

Sounds pretty good. Might make pk a little more lopsided in favor of mages though since StM and StH are used both for buffing and for oh yeah quick health and mana restores during a pk fight, by mages. Course I personally have never seen an StM or StH spell take all that long anyway but I don't pk so you'll have to ask someone else about how that will affect the pk scene. Also, something like "prismatic banes" sounds real nice. How bout a spell that will do all 7 elemental banes in one go but costs twice as much as and has a difficulty that is 20-40 points higher than a regular bane? You could call the level 7 one Brogard's Rainbow :)

House Purchase Timer

Sounds good to me. I can't see this really affecting anyone negatively other than those who are constantly buying and selling houses.

Treasure Changes, Phase 3

Hmm some interesting ideas. But how will they work exactly? Will casters be able to spawn with all 3 mods? How bout missile weapons? All 3 or just one? And Melee weapons all 4 or just 2? I really don't like the idea of having to choose between a missile weap that has a Magic D bonus and one that has a Melee D bonus. Same for Melee weaps. Not so much for casters. Melee D bonus just plain won't be all that beneficial seeing as how so many mages don't have melee. +10% of squat is well, squat. Course adding a melee bonus might be an incentive for some mages to train melee. And a Missile D bonus. Ehh might be nice but Missile D seems pretty ineffectual and mostly useless to me.

"Second-class" Weapons Get Upgrades

Sounds cool. I always wondered why knives and such had to suck so bad.

Fellowship Spells
Sounds like a good idea. I'm just not sure how useful they will be especially if you are only going to add attribute buffs to start.

Envoy Policy Changes
Almost, but not quite. Moving annoying bots won't make them less annoying, some people like to use the outlying rooms to gather and pk. And inscription removal sounds good but that means you can UI anything including stolen items. One of the points of inscribing an item is to mark it as your own. And unfortunately some people are just easy marks for swindlers. But if their items are inscribed than a thief will have a harder time selling it or trading it. Not so if the thief can just get the item UI whenever the envoys are in game to do that. Might be nice for when a former owner no longer plays and the item was traded for legitimately but I think that it doesn't outweigh the "benefit" that thieves will get from this change.

[LeifThorssonJr]

Originally posted by Ryakki
To tell the truth in pk we cast one spell a gem has to deal with, a vuln... if gems change to only affect 1-2 spells, it still takes away the vuln... there might as well be no change at all for us. A timer is about the only real solution.

awesome! i don't pk, so i didn't know how the gem situation could be solved, but i think ryakki has hit it on the head... leave gems alone, and allow them to remove all instances of all negative spells... but, if you are PK, there is a 15-30 second timer before you can use another... this can be implemeted in the same way that a delayed PK logout or portal use occurs....

[Fleshly_Demon]

Originally posted by DraconisUmbra
Envoy Policy Changes
Almost, but not quite. Moving annoying bots won't make them less annoying, some people like to use the outlying rooms to gather and pk. And inscription removal sounds good but that means you can UI anything including stolen items. One of the points of inscribing an item is to mark it as your own. And unfortunately some people are just easy marks for swindlers. But if their items are inscribed than a thief will have a harder time selling it or trading it. Not so if the thief can just get the item UI whenever the envoys are in game to do that. Might be nice for when a former owner no longer plays and the item was traded for legitimately but I think that it doesn't outweigh the "benefit" that thieves will get from this change. [/B]

i doubt they will just b removing all inscribes, but....i have a few things inscribed by ppl w/ their stats, wud b nice to get that removed

cant see them removing a scribe that says "if anyone but me has this item it is stolen" lol

[TTF]

heh, can anyone fathom the Walking Boots / Alloy Machine quest w/o portal rings? *shiver*. I'd not ever do it again.

Devs...there are soo many good ideas on this regarding how to fix the 'ugly' (whateva) portal rings.

The point mentioning housing bots having instant access to everywhere is true as well. This will kill a casual player for getting housing. The one month timer is great- make it per acct, not character, and it's a done deal.

Please find another method that doesn't go contrary to your good improvements you're discussing (like reduced buff time). Don't do the catch 22.

[Lady Willow]

SETTLEMENT PORTALS

At the very least, the gem should be made available at the town associated with the hub or the capitol. Just having it at the the individual settlement destroys questing and makes exploration tedious and time-consuming event. The idea of making us have to use MP to purchase gems or spam for them is awful.

I see this as a huge step backwards. It makes me wonder why you could not see this horrible side-affect.

I already am having a hard time logging in... this would just be another nail in the coffin.

Again, PLEASE DON'T DO THIS~~!!~~

[beducky]

Gems for house settlements is a great idea. Because there seems to be some disagreement on where these are sold. I would REALLY like the gems to be sold at the location of the settlment hubs now. Instead of a mass of portals there around the big pole thing, you could just get rid of the portals and sell the gems there.

This would:

1) make the gems valuable because it would be easier to buy a gem from someone in the marketplace than to run to the settlement hub.

2) For those who use a certain portal to get closer to a quest destination can return to the hub where that portal once was and just buy a gem.

I like exploring Dearth, but taking away access to some of those destinations through the removal of the settlement hubs is not a good way. I hate running and spending 20 minutes to get somewhere to do a quest.

[DraconisUmbra]

But Fleshly, how will the envoys know the difference? Even some items with inscriptions like that have been traded legitimately. Myself I pretty much always forget to remove an inscription when I trade something.

[LeifThorssonJr]

Originally posted by DraconisUmbra
But Fleshly, how will the envoys know the difference? Even some items with inscriptions like that have been traded legitimately. Myself I pretty much always forget to remove an inscription when I trade something.

if the buyer was stupid enough to not look at the inscription and notice that it said STOLEN on it, then they deserve to not get it uninscribed...

however, from turbine's point-of-view, they don't consider in-game theft to be a violation of CoC, so maybe they will remove those inscriptions too... i hope not.

[Fleshly_Demon]

in my case, its simple, if it has an inscription like that i dont trade for it *shrug*

[D X Mage]

Over all ALL but TWO items I think so far are great changes.

NAMES yes!!!!

I LOVE account bans. We will be able to make immediate use of this to remove thieves and on DT spys =)

The two items.

One the removal of the settlement hubs. Keep them. Put them in the meeting halls if you want to get them out of sight.

And two Dispel gems should remain unchanged.
Hunting in VoD or on Sing Caul would become a massive pain in the butt and simply would no longer be any fun. When you have in excess of 30 debuffs on you its much better to use a gem than to cast spells trying to dispell all of them or simply wait for the debuffs to expire. That is just plain dumb. Making the proposed change to gems only helps PvP. If you want to do that then simply make the gems unusable to PKs and PKLs. Give them the new potions and the problem is solved.

[Chueh]

cant say i read the whole tread, so if this has been asked b4 my excuses

but i wonder w/ the new +% magic and missle defs possibly coming, would weapons have 4 +% moddifiers or a random pick out of those ?

if it is indeed 4 mods ill have to start saving up salvage lol

[Pigroast]

most in the feedback thread do not agree with these changes to the portals. and has it been stated by a dev if the availability of the portal gems is permanant?

Turbine, similar to the player viewable options liek chess rank where you made them optional. Why not give us a choice with the portal gems? I am sorry, this game is getting into the "taking candy away from a baby" mode. Chains should have gone but this other stuff is not needed.

The player base wanted this change for a long time and it was finally introduced. Now according to a few players feedback, they are wanting to change that.

Hopefully, they will change this as they did the communication channels to the players. The voice of the purist posters on this board is not the voice of the player base. If it was up to them, we would all be running around with sticks wearing loinclothes, smacking drudge prowlers around.

[Some weird guy]

This announcement made me cheer and cry at the same time.

Wand bonuses and the new modifiers = rock on!!!

New buff system = rock on!!!

Future PK Archer love = Wooohoo and ABOUT TIME!!!

I do think you guys are are doing to much, to fast, although I realize you want most of your vision in place before the new server opens. I am still dealing with lousy loot on the top levels of the loot gen, and it looks as if it's not going to be fixed anytime soon, but that is ok. Mainly because you realized the importance of getting that LTTP out to us, letting us know what is going to happen, rather than springing all this on us...I highly commend you for that :)

No settlement portals = The time restraints on this game are bad enough already, which is one of the biggest turn offs for me and a lot of people. If I have an hour free to play AC, about all I can do is log in, say hi to everyone, stock up to hunt, buff, get to the place I'm going to hunt, and log off.

Now its going to take forever to get places. I have already explored Dereth!!!!

Please consider putting the NPC in the town, and make each gem available for that towns portal hub. This would achieve your desired affect of beautifying Dereth, without removing the functionality of the portal transport system which you are about to completely and utterly nerf.

The idea of making us have to use MP to purchase gems or spam for them is awful. - Agreed, the only time I go to MP is to meet someone there, as anyone can get there regardless.

[DraconisUmbra]

I repeat, how are the envoys going to be able to tell the difference? Not all items with an inscription like this one "leik OMG this is min and if sum1 els has it it has ben $tolen!!!" are stolen. People forget and they overlook things. And on the reverse some item that are stolen might have something like "From your patron to a great vassal" or something else sappy. Or it might just simply be inscribed with the protects, or the color or whatever. The point is it's just too hard to tell the difference and I think that it may cause problems.

[Patty]

First off, I like the changes. :D I was excited when I read that Turbine took over AC, hoping for the best. Now I want to voice my gratitude. But I want to finally do some 'input' for a game I've stuck with for 3 years now.

I'm always anxious when I hear "changes are coming, go look and read". I have been playing AC for 3 years now and I get concerned with the changes to Mages over these 3 years. When I first started, I bought the Asheron's Call Strategies Secrets book. I poured over it, and finally decided that I would make a mage, even though it warned that mages were very weak defense and fighting... with low strength, weak spells and better have a good run skill. The book stated that first time players should try something easier like Swordman. But it did say, it will grow strong. So, ok I weather it out, bite the bullett and making a mage.

As the years roll, and updates occur, I read over the year the troubles with PvP. I only play PvM, but I learn to adjust with the changes, never really a positive change. The best was the Foci's... but with 4 schools of magic, sure cuts the looting space.

With this patch, I see that you are going to make "self" and "other" spells with different casting time difference. Yes! Thats great! I'm for it.... but now wondering if you can make differences with the balancing of PvP and PvM characters? When a character goes PK/PKL those certain issues that are always make a Mage slower, harder and less effective, just when PK?

My husband finally is developing a Mage, hes been Sword, then Archer, and now a Mage.... talks about "its work being a Mage" And sometimes gets his sword guy out instead, lol.

So, you spend more skill credits do more work in play and get nerfed because PvP option? I love AC, but soon I won't want to play it anymore, I feel somewhat cheated. Games arn't fun when you feel that way.

[Epim-MT]

I am fairly new to the game. I have never known an AC without foci bags, housing portals, or buff bots. I see many of these new changes as being very positive. I have some thoughts on a few of them, however.

Eliminating the housing portals will make for a miserable time. Even if the vendor who sells the gems is in the housing complex, it will still require running there to get a gem to take to to where you bought the gem. Even the idea of making an imprintable gem has this limitation. My suggestion would be to leave the pillars in place. To take a shortcut, the player would click on the pillar to get a menu of settlements. Once the settlement is selected transport begins. If the menu arranges the settlements in a random order, it should limit the effectiveness of automated plugins designed to get from A to B unattended.

Another option to do away with the housing portals but still have playability would be to increase the number of portal/lifestone tie options. Maybe have three lifestone ties and six portal ties. Quest runners will be able to prep the route in advance, and hunters will be able to have multiple areas.

I would also like to see portal spells and item enchantment spells divided into two schools. Keep the same foci bag for both, but have portal/lifestone spells be in the trasport school which costs three credits to train and three more to spec. All other item spells would be in the Item school which would be 5 to train and 5 more to spec. This way those of us who prefer to play melee or archer tank types can spend the points on things useful to us, rather than bank 8 points for a skill that will be of little use from level 20 to 115 (until we can cast level 7 banes).

As far as the mods on casting items goes I think this is a good idea, but it should be more item specific. A casting staff should have a high melee D, but an orb shold not. The argument has been made that a mage with a buffed, untrained, Melee D of 120 holding an item with a buffed +25% will see an effective Melee D of 150, whereas the dagger guy with a buffed Melee D of 425, will have an effective skill of 530. In this case, what is te real benefit to the mage? My suggestion would be to make casting tools with very high bonuses to Melee D but match them them with wield req's similar to covenant armor. If you get casting staff with a +45% base Melee D bonus that needs a life skill of 300, a war skill of 280, and a Mana C base of 260, it will only be usefull to real mages. As I do not play mages, not conventional ones anyway, I would not see this as putting melees and archers at a disadavantage. Certainly no more of a disadvantage than they are now. (I feel a naked buffed mage should have the same odds of survival as a naked unbuffed melee of the same level. with "other" buffs lasting only 5 to 10 minutes). The balance to this, would of course, be to make it possible to heal or drink potions without leaving combat stance.

On a related topic, I think the melee staff should be a two handed weapon with very good melee D bonuses. Any staff you can use with a shiled is really astick and covered by the mace skill.

Also, make mana charges, and dispels gems stackable.

The alternate trajectories for missile weapons should be a toggle on the combat pannel, not different ammunition. Missile toons operate too close to max burden now, especially with one weapon for each render.

Upping second class weapons is a good idea, and I like the suggestion made elsewhere that that damage stay the same, but the varriance improves.

Will

[Honest John]

Housing settlement gems

Great to add them to the game, but really bad to remove the housing portals. Maybe I misunderstoond a part of theis. Are yousayihg you wil lhave a gem for EACH settlement location for sell? That is a LOT of gems. Packspace is already tight. Now I have to keep a bunch of gems in them so I can travel? Not good :mad:

If appearace is the real issue, just add a meeting hall type building with a portal to a room with all the settlement portals for that location. E.G. A mini subway. Then, add poral gems for sell for each of the mini subways. That solves the appeariance issue and reduces the number of gems needed.

I go on many quests. Due to group dynamics, many times we have a very limited time to get it done before people have to leave. Use of the settlement porats greatly reduces the travel time, in many cases. This leaves more time for the main reason to be there- the quest. This change has the effect of increasing either the prep time or travel time, or both. Even with the best planed quest, people are only human and its not uncommom to get a last minute person or for someoento realize they are missing some needed item the last minute. It really effects spur of the moment quests because everyone may not have the correct gem.

Please, don't remove the portal groups. Feel free to clean up the country side, but quit taking things away.

[boneyard]

settlement portals gone is bad idea, i know some people want to force the exploring and running around back upon everyone but i dont want to. like said before it was fun in the past but now if i want to go on a quest or such i dont want to stock on gems before hand. if there ugly (weird argument, its just small spots compared to all the cottages for example), put them in a dungeon or such but dont remove them all together.

vendor buy-sell rates change is fine with me, though i wonder why they got changed in the past to change them back to there more original state now.

dispel revisions are very annoying if they mean you have to cast a spell say 5-6 times to remove 20 of the same debuff. i also kinda miss why we need gems and potions, just give potions where you gave gems if you want to make gems stackable. i do see an option for tradeskill on main character love here. maybe to comps for dispell potions can be pretty light and the end result a lot heavier so people with alchemy on the main char get some love.

the rest is fine with me

[Pixyears]

I like the idea of being able to get something uninscribed.

About the marketplace bots, if you make the bots stay in stalls, then you should also enforce no pkl in mp. Make it so people cannot enter mp if they are pink or red, and cannot change while in there. Its only fair. Marketplace is just that, a market. Why does it matter where the bots are? People complained when the bots were in the subway, so mp was made. If people want to stand around and bs, go back to sub. The bots do not cause as much lag in mp as the pkls do. I persaonlly like having all the bots in the main room, can just go from one to next one. if i have to spend all my time running from room to room looking for a certain one, then its not worth my time. Also being in the main room, you can check out the spam and see if anyone has something you might want. Marketplace is a market, get a clue people. The bots should be able to hang from the ceiling if they want.

[Eruditus]

I understand why you are wanting to do this but I have to disagree with the implementation you wish to follow, all you are doing is adding another pointless time sink.

For example if I want to complete the 80+ G-Man quest with my friends do you really think we should have to spend 20-25 mins running through the mountains of Qual before we even start... or even further for the frost prop dungeon which is a favorite for training newer players in communication?

Both of the above can be reached within 2 mins via the Arwic settlement, the same is true of many quests in Dearth, you say want people to explore well if thats the case give them something to explore for voluntarily all this change does is hurt the casual gamer who at most has 1 to 1.5 hours a day to play!

Another problem is that the portals helped to reduce the issues of players with lower run speeds, what fun it is to keep having to stop every 10 seconds for somone to catch up. All this will do is further segregate the playerbase, lets face it you want new players and when they arrive you'd like them to be made welcome... as opposed to being told to sling their hook because we dont have the time to take them questing? This would be mainly because as stated not all of us can play as long as we did 4 years ago when we were free of lifes burdens.

The next problem is I already have all of my packs pretty much full yet you feel I should now have to carry around a pack of portal gems as well, couple this with how many portals there are and you can guarantee telling one gem from another quickly will be a pain.

I use around 30 of the housing portals often enough to know them by name and location for quests and hunting. I know another 20 that I use pretty much bi-monthly when I need to get to somewhere thats a little out of the way... so thats 50 Gems before we start.

Of course taking into account the bug where summoned portals do not appear meaning we need 2 of each since running out to some settlements could take upto an hour and you are talking 100 gems. Is the idea that we should have a second account perhaps.

Maybe I just know the routes really well so lets take the example of an average player who needs 20-25 gems, thats a whole pack lost.

I personally feel that you will just plow straight ahead and remove the portals anyway since you want to make Dearth 'Bigger' but please proove me wrong and listen to what people are saying.

Oh and the excuse about them being ugly is a joke, they are simply portals which serve a function if all we wanted was pretty things do you really think we would be playing a game that is 4 years old and as graphically obselete as AC?

Okay constructive solutions?

1. If you insist on making another money sink thats fine, remove the portals but place an arcanum vendor at the drop where the lampost use to be. This way people can buy 'SUMMONING' gems which means you can beautify the landscape without adding the time sink.

2. New arcanum object in place of lampposts which ports you to a small dungeon with all the housing portals which were at that lamp-post inside.

3. Make the Gems hookable in Mansions and allow infinate use's for all guild members who double click on them (Worst solution but makes mansions the most valuable commodity in the game as they should be).

4. A bag within a bag, basically a small bag which stores upto 100 housing gems but takes up only one space the catch being you have to run out to the settlements to buy the gems (lol I know ya not going to do this one).

5. A pop up menu in a similar style to the component menu that lists all the gems you hold by name (with their quanity) double click on an item in the list to summon the portal/use the appropriate gem. This would solve the problem of having 50 near identical gems to sort through.

I believe that if you were to implement 4 & 5 most players would be happy and they would have to explore to get the gems so everybody wins!

Stick and Carrot Turbine, you are doing you use the former far too much and the latter far too little these days.

[shein_tao]

I thought everything i read LTtP update was fantastic, with 1 exception:

Inscriptions. While their primary responsibility would always to be handle calls that are in the Help or Abuse queues, Envoys could make themselves available to uninscribe items upon request. There would also be scheduled times and places on each world where you could find an Envoy to uninscribe your item. We’re still working on many of the details and are interested in your thoughts on this topic.


While I can see the appeal of this, I also see a downside. Players who've acquired an item through devious means should not be able to have the item's inscription removed. For example:

My major coord gaunts are inscribed "This item has not been sold or gifted. Anyone in possession of this item acquired it through devious means." (I do not PK)

If I was ever scammed by another player, or if I died while looting a corpse which contained it and someone else picked it up before i could return, I would at least rest easy that the jerk would be identified to anyone whom he attempted to sell the item to...

If someone attempted to sell me an item with such an inscription, I would not buy said item, and I would post a warning about the player on the public boards.

Giving these players the option to have those inscriptions removed bothers me.


However, i certainly see the upside to the idea. I, for one, have acquired inscribed items and not been able to contact the inscriber to have it removed. Removing inscriptions from items who's original owner no longer exists or plays would certainly be nice...

Perhaps these Envoys could be instructed not to remove inscriptions like the example I posted above?

[Sprawl]

One great thing about inscriptions is to protect yourself from thieves or to make items harder to resell. For instance, if I have a clan giveaway, I may place clan ads on all the items and ask them not to be resold. This is typically enough to keep the items out of normal circulation. However if Envoys can remove inscriptions, people would be more inclinded to resell these items.

Sprawl

[Frieze]

@ shein tao: I have bought and sold a lot of cottages (ingame, not ebay), and plenty of people who've quit and lapse on their maintenance leave inscribed items in their house and chest.

The result is, I have lots of "please return if found" and "to my vassal, you're the best" and even a few "this is stolen if I don't have it" - I'd happily return the items if I could. But they belong to people who no longer play.

Furthermore.. I have lots of inscribed items with "al 240" by people who no longer play.

One more example - tradebots. I often see bots with inscribed items, even ones like "this is stolen." MY tradebot accepts pack dolls (for instance), and there'd be no way for me to disallow inscribed pack dolls to be accepted. Anyway...

Inscriptions are outdated. They're really cool and I like them, but the ability to inscribe lost its usefulness when we all got 100% appraise skills.

[Chip Ali]

I welcome the new open communication practice. However, this:

"The second phase, currently planned for May, is the removal of the Settlement Portal Hubs entirely.

The goal of these changes is to remove the ugliness of the Hubs, as well as encourage exploration and travel through Dereth’s wilderness."

IS NOT OPEN COMMUNICATION. You are not removing a blight on the landscape, you are removing a valuable and widely used portal hub system. What are the real reasons behind this? I would like to know the true intentions behind this change, and what benefit it is supposed to affect upon the game. I would also like reassurance that you have considered all the negative effects of removing this transportation system, such as increasing the downtime on quests and making most housing inaccessable to casual players.

AC has a truly wonderful portal hub system right now. The subway branches into several towns, which are further multiplied by the settlement hubs into dozens upon dozens of locations that anybody who desires to can access in a reasonable amount of time. Why would you destroy this functionality?

Here are a list of quests that will be needlessly hindered off the top of my head:
Temple of Forgetfulness
Temple of Enlightenment
Gaerlan
Knorr
Olthoi Armor
Walking Boots (Nobody will ever do this again)
Chorizite Ore
Weeping Weapons

You are placing the gem vendors in the wrong places, Turbine.
The inscription on the monoliths in portal complexes is "This land is yours now." Please do not take the land back from the players.

[Honest John]

I have advocated the ability to remove inscriptions for a LONG time. Its my stuff, I should be able to have it say what I want, if anything. :-)

But, why tie this to the Envoys? I am just concerned that they will not be available enough and this will only result in more frustration because now I know I can get them removed, but I may not be on when an Envoy is available.

If its possible, why not just give us the abilty or create NPCs in towns that can do it for a small fee. Say a C note? That would get people back in town! :-) At least it would get me into a town. :D

[Focus]

I really like what you've done by giving us a look farther out into the development future. The game continues to be a lot of fun to play.

One of the early problems of the game was navigation. Players spent entirely too much time running around trying to get from one location to another. The settlement portals have greatly reduced the amount of mindless runs that brought boredome to the game early on. Please don't take them out. The Gem solution is too tedious and is an overall backward step for the game.

-Focus

[The Spectre]

Marketplace - Suggestion: Shrink the arrival room, that will force people into the outlying rooms.

Wand Changes - Thank you!

Housing Gems - This will actually make it easier to get to the places people go most, so I think it is a GREAT idea!

Speedy Self Buffs - This is also a VERY good thing, though I would speed up others a little, and I see no reason not to speed up banes to level 1 speed, as the majority of buffing time is spent there. Either that or a new Item Bane that does ALL of them, is Level VII only, and costs like 250-300 mana to cast.

Missle - I like the idea of some type of "seeker" arrow, or maybe an area-of-effect attack for BOTH mages and archers?

Oh yeah, and when are we going to see the graphics I designed for you guys? :)

[Eruditus]

Spectre how exactly will it make it easier for most people to get around? Please explain since Im sure we would all love to know. The majority of players in my guild have all posted on our board how much time will be wasted getting around as other than the quests there is nothing for us in the eastern half of Dearth now.

Im in favour of removing inscriptions from items since I have items acquired from bots with the bots name on, its statistics, its colours etc and because of Time zone differences will never be able to meet up with the bots owner in order to get this removed.

Even if I did trust and actually know the bots owner I would not be able to meet up with most of them because of time differences.

Added to this it would be very easy for a bot to set up a scam in order steal the items back.

The same is true of items bought back in the day when helpful people would Inscribe items with their stats so us dumb melees could read them. While I thank them for their altruism the stats are no longer needed and I would rather put a more personal message on were I to pass them to a friend or a vassal.

If said friend or vassal wanted to remove the inscription they should be able to since the item belongs to them.

[Eruditus]

This is a quote from Maggie the Jackcat who I think all would agree is one of the games most respected and dedicated players. She begins each month of her patch notes by saying "best patch ever" and genuinely loves the game:

(Orion) The portal hubs were never intended to make travel across Dereth too easy.

(Maggie) If you mean by "too easy" having fun playing and questing and exploring newly accessible places instead of spending half your available play time getting somewhere or spending your entire available play time trying to get back to your body before bedtime, then I guess that's what they accomplished. They certainly made my gaming more enjoyable and I think the upcoming changes bite. "

Congratulations Devs you have managed to make even the most positive person in Dearth say something negative about the game, something which is unheard of!

Also Orion stop comparing AC to other games, the main reason people I know returned to us from DOAC was the downtime in running places and how slow the game seemed in comparison to AC.

[AwatsAnew]

All sounds great except removal of the settlement portals. These provide huge leaps into the wilderness, saving long stretches of running. Making gems available isn't a viable substitute, because it will require planning ahead of time to purchase the proper gems, and will make exploration much less free-form. Don't encumber explorers -- there aren't enough of us around to increase the hassle factor.

AA

[Trekman]

Funny how some people welcome both the removal of Hubs *and* the addition of a new portal to Linvak Tukal........don't they want to "explore" the Tukal entrance tunnel ?

We all know that "being ugly" was a poor excuse to remove the Hubs by Ibn. Orion did post the real reason : to force people to run around in the landscape again.

Dear Orion : in that respect please remove Subway, Jungle Subway - those baaad collections of portals are sabotaging your new zeal for exploration as well as the Hubs.
And please remove the portals to Marae Lassel, Aphus Lassel, Vesayen Isles, and Caul - and force players to *swim* to those islands. I mean - your artists created all that beautiful water, and people are not exploring it because they simply use portals.....

Ibn, Orion - don't you realize by now how rediculous and hilarious that whole "remove the Hubs" idea is ? And especially the official excuses for doing it ? And how embarrassing the attempt is to calm players down with some Gems while apparently you do not even know for yourself by now how they should work (or you are unable to explain it so everyone understands it) ?

As I stated in some other thread I do not need the Hubs by all means. But the way Turbine treats them now lets me shake my head in disbelief once more - while I am looking forward to all the increased lag caused by toons running around again (multiple efforts for constant coordinate/landblock tracking, increased server-client communication,...,...,...).

[Rizzorian]

Dispell Gems - making them stackable is a great idea, but reducing the effects of them is a terrible idea. Very few use dispell spells as it is. chorzite is not easy enough to get and weighs to much.

Settlements portal - getting rid of the mess of portals is nice, but the place u've chosen to place the merchants to sell the gems will be annoying to reach. why not just replace the portals w/ a single merchant that sells a gem to each of the settlements? no-one htat I can think of is gonna want to run all over dereth just to purchase a gem for the settlement and then have pack space left. placing hte merchant at the portal will clear the mess up and allow players to purchase as needed. lastly, will the gems summon a portal or teleport the player upon use?

[Snorch]

If the settlement hubs must go and be replaced with gems, make the gems summon spells for the group quests. I'd like to be able to tie to them has well. I was using a couple of them to get to areas I liked to hunt/explore. Also, sell them in or near the towns. Change it later if it doesn't work out. No sence in being so extreme with something that will help people find new hunting grounds. (given the loot changes and all)
I like most of the other changes. But I'm not seeing anything to help out the Tinker/Trade mules. Some of us solo players need a way to get xp to ours. (my vassels quit playing a while ago) Make tinking and trades give xp when used. Or add quests or projects in towns to give some xp/skill increase. The ones in game now are not very helpfull.

[Grey Bow of FF]

Regarding the use of Gems for Housing portals:

If it is a positive thing and there is a client/server need for it...then do it.

Also make the Housing Markers tieable and summonable.

This would allow a guest leader to get a gem to the housing area, portal in, grab the tie and then cast a summon to move the entire group to the housing area to go on the quest nearby.

Also, add LS Summon to the list of spells....It is long over due. There are LS's all over Dereth that could be tied to and used if you could cast a summon. This could also be used by placing a LS near each dungeon on Dereth (short runs to them) and used instead of the "Ugly Housing Portal system" currently ineffect

:cool:

[Vitae Boy]

Could we get faster item buffs too? Maybe put a one hour timer on buffing armor at level one speed or something. I think making buffs faster for people who can buff themselves is a great idea:)

I don't really care for the removal of settlement portals though. They were very nice for getting places faster than the week it would normally take, especially with really slow mages like me.

[Mageling]

I disagree with the removal or the portal rings. If you do it then you do it.
What I find more disturbing is the way you say you want to 'Improve communications' and then throw in statements of:
"These Hubs provided fast transportation all across Dereth, but many players have complained that... well, they just look ugly."
WTH? I've *NEVER* heard them called ugly, I cannot find it atm but someone mentioned that Orion had posted that the real reason for this was to make it a bit harder to get places, an attempt to put a bit more exploration into the game.
*IF* that's the case, why not just SAY so?, you're not impressing folks by saying one thing then turning around and trying to use smoke and mirrors....

I'd like to have one question about the removal answered, IF you have an exsisting tie to a settlement portal, will that go away?

[Oya]

On Settlement portals
I did an experiment. I visited 6 different settlement portal locations and figured out how many went to Villas. I found anywhere from 1-3 sometimes more. Say there are only 15 towns with portals. Average that to 2 villa portals per town: that's 30 unique gems. I look up on most sites and find there are 10 housing items for villas. I need trade notes & writs so that is 12 total. I quest, so I have my armor, my DIs, comps, weapons and such. That leaves me with 2 pack spaces. I could stop salvaging while I hunt for a house, but I'm already only doing the things that are important to me in the near term. Great we have a limit of 30 days to buy a house. How many villas come available per month? 2? 4?
My conclusion: I'm still not going to get a house in the new system for a house that MIGHT come up when I'm logged in and be in one of the settlements I happen to have a gem for.
This doesn't even mention questing . . .

[Yusuki]

Settlement Portals being removed, to be replaced by gems maybe: Please do not do this. It does not/will not hinder the ebay sellers, if that was the intent. They do not create undue stress on the servers by being there. They do make the game much more navigable and enjoyable, because--surprise--running is not fun.

Before implementing this idea, I would request that anyone from Turbine do the Undead Mechanic quest without using any housing portals. If you do this, and you can honestly say afterwards that that was fun... yeah. It isn't. It's boring, tedious, monotonous, and 100% unenjoyable.

Please do not remove the settlement portals. I'm not sure I believe the "many players" part, but if that is the case: You have the tech to summon portals on events. Have the portals themselves spawn when the statue is double-clicked/used, and despawn 5 minutes later--if the aesthetics are really the issue.

Content Revisions: Thank you for revisiting the newb towns. Am waiting for the other six on the loop to be revitalized. I miss Yanshi.

Vendor Buy-Sell rates: Long time coming. I like it, but it's a bad idea. Nothing personal, but Turbine has been historically short-sighted when it comes to finding/assessing potential exploits, and variable buy/sell rates are one of the easiest. We'll see.

Dispel revisions: Horrifyingly bad idea. When mobs chain-cast vulns and debuffs, and the game counts every single one as a separate debuff, then I'll need to carry around hundreds of gems to hunt. Now, with that said, revised proposal:

A dispel gem will remove 1-6 debuffs, no matter how many times that specific debuff was cast.

So if Mister Banderling Enforcer hits me with eight Imperil VIs (as they're wont to do), the gem will remove all of those Imperil VIs and count those as one debuff--because it's keyed on that particular spell to remove.

Another suggestion: Each mob can only cast a particular debuff in their "spellbook" once per spawn/life. I know they all have lots of spells they can cast, but to have an Enforcer chain-casting Imperil VI is... well, retarded. Once is enough. Same with Golems and their War/Life inepts--once is enough. Having them cast it multiple times is dumb. And irritating.

Buffing improvements: No opinion either way. It'll speed up buffing in the field, which is nice.

Treasure changes: In my opinion, putting missile and melee defense modifiers on casting devices--and magic d defense modifiers on weapons--is retarded. And I have three mages. The key to a skills-based game is the differences between characters. What will be the difference between a mage with melee d and a melee with melee d if this is done? Nothing. Oh, the mage'll deal more damage, have more health, and survive a lot longer than a melee. Why not just give mages and archers shields, while you're at it? Seriously. Just hit the orb or bow with Impen VII and away we go. Then give thrown weapons characters rocket launchers, put an AL 5000 shield in for melees, and crank up the monsters' difficulty. Again. And again. And again.

Please stop the power spiral. Please.

Second class weapons: Reserving judgment until I see more specifics. It's a neat idea, but as long as these second-class weapons don't do max damage, they won't be used.

Envoy changes: I like the idea of removing inscriptions. With that said, there should be very strict rules and policies on the how and when and why. VERY strict rules. Time of possession would be a good factor, as would status of the character that inscribed it (deleted? cancelled/dormant account? hasn't logged into the game in a year?). Things like that.

Thanks for reading.

[BlackOrdun]

Mageling; PigRoast posted this link to the VN Boards in the Concept forum:

>the real reason for taking out the portals:

>http://vnboards.ign.com/AC_Developers_Board/b5142/65406919/p1

I do not know who Orion is, this is only my second post, I don't as a rule hang out on boards. The last disasterous patch brought me to these boards and the upcoming "Players be hanged - we know what's best for them" patches - well - that attitude is not what I remember from the days of Beta and early live game...

One of the biggest disappointments I had was not being able to be present when the meteor destroyed the beta world :(. LoL Yeah I know I don't have a life, I work far too much.

DEVS! I've played this game since beta 0, I went retail in November of 1999. Hades, I was so hooked that I dialed in to an internet connection that was long distance from the small town in which I lived at that time to play the game!

I have watched patiently while others have complained, but the changes I saw were usually positive! The elimination of Tedium Vitae from the game for those of us who are not uber players was phenomenol. I had long envied my EQ friends the ability to shift worlds with their portal spells.

The housing portals were introduced and suddenly I was visiting areas that I had never been to before. I was all over Dereth and it was to quote my daughter "way cool!" I was able to visit places that I had never been to before, Crater Village, Danby's Outpost, etc... Suddenly the whole surface of Dereth was open for me to explore!!! It was superb, probably one of the best ideas the Turbine folks ever had. No longer would I be limited in my ability to see the world. I left the drudgery of running from coast to coast behind me and let the Drudges do the drudging...

Orion (sp?) whoever he is claims that you desire to re-introduce drudgery for drudgery's sake back in the game. Ibn claims that it is being done to clear "ugliness" from the world.

LoL am I the only one that thinks portals look cool? Am I the only one who would rather get to a place quickly in order to spend more time exploring?

My wife and I are Archers - we hunt virtually always above ground. We always are "exploring."

I worked for Sierra Online for a while. At one point we had a dev that was working on a game based on Middle Earth, remember that one? He wanted to introduce a whole bunch of things that were aimed to please the 80 hours a week plus player, things like permanent death, and making Middle Earth magic poor, and too far too run across, etc.

Sierra no longer has that franchise.

Stephen didn't listen to the vast majority of potential players, only to a group of hard core gamers and he stubbed his toe. There are probably business reasons as well, but I think the point is, he didn't think of the "unwashed masses" that have jobs that only allow us a few hours of play time a week.

I started taking a few hours a week to skim these boards after the February patch. I see the same names over and over and over... I don't really have time to be here, but I am, simply to hope that you will think much more about what you do before you do it.

Remember guys and gals of Turbine, those of us with professional jobs who can only spend a few hours a week in the world are your customers as well as the more vocal few that come to the boards. Don't make changes to please a few, especially if those few are your fellow devs.

One of the phrases I tell my children and my employees is: "Don't fix it if it isn't broken..." I'd truly like you to reconsider what your definition of "broken" is.

Don't surround the meat of the game with 20 layers of Drudge Bread.

"And we'll have fun, fun, fun, 'till Orion takes our portals away..."

*edited for a couple spelling errors*
*edited for broken url*

Black Ordun

[AC-Vet]

After reading further into the LttP as well as this thread, Its clear that most have bad things to say about the Settlement portal issue....I agree and those portals are ugly and need to be changed....I did have a thought about them....instead of portals or even gems....why not consider something as a alternative such as creating with in each town a NPC or Monument that a player can select and choose a destination....this way....If a group is using the portals as short cuts to quest or dung's....they can give a leaving point as meet in Holtburg XXXX then from there....Select Forest Hill Developement and Poof everyone is on thier way having fun again.....Secondly If I wanted to visit friends or tour a settlement I would have to run there first to get a gem so I could then portal back? hmmm doesn't seem logical.....You mentioned about becomming a trade Item? Why do I want to pay for a ride which is now Free? Not to Mention the limited pack space and storage already, I really don't get the direction that your steering this.....One thing we do agree is there is need for a change...your approach doen't take the players considerations into mind.....You state you want players to Run and use the landscape? well what do you think we are doing by using the portals, we get close to our destination and run....some times killing.....some times looking for chests....some times just out for a run.

[Pigroast]

BlackOrdun has hit the nail on the proverbial head with a lugian hammer.

The Turbine concept of what the players want has been based on purist ideas and concepts that no less have to do with screwing other players rather than actually helping the game. Comments such as these and the one Orion made.

"they do make it just too easy to get around."

"and making people actually get off their lazy butts to travel."

and to quote one of the best known and popular people in AC, Maggie the Jackcat.

"I absolutely hate the plan to remove the settlement portals"

"To summarize: HATE the idea."

Finally, if you guys think this will help get new players and retain them, you are basically screwing the pooch.

[knopp]

For the people that are crying about the MagicD bonus on casting items, all I have to say is this.

For a mage to evade a melee, they have to spec meleed for 20 credits. then they have no modifier on their wand, and you have +15%a BASE on your weapon. Especially when you get magic d for free, spec for 10 credits.

HOW IS THAT FAIR?

They said wands AND WEAPONS will have magicd mods, so all you spec melee/sword/magicd toons can still godmode in PK(L).

And to be totally honest, why would a melee care about this anyways? Just use a rending weapon, you DONT NEED TO LAND ON MAGES AT ALL.

I am SICK of the mage hate that this game has shown over the last year. Mages are STILL the most expensive credit template, STILL the hardest to level at low levels (not everyone has buff bots). But you also want to make them the worst template against everything in this game. The logic totally escapes me.


How about getting rid of the slide cast nerf? Or the lost spells that take mana, but do NOTHING. Or how about fixing the lag so skill can once again be a part of the game? Maybe have an option on login of broadband/56k, so there is seperate optimization.

Now about the Expansion Pack.

Why would ANYONE want to play what is going to be an obsolete Xpack? You are planning on taking the graphics from SNES level to PS1 level. Guess what guys, you are STILL going to be 3 years obsolete. There will STILL be macros/bots ruining the gameplay and complexity of this game, because Turbine only has Kahones to change thigs that really dont matter, not things that are best for the gaming community.

The changes will not get me to reactivate my accounts. A fresh server that is UP TO DATE WITH TODAYS TECHNOLOGY, IE: 128 bit graphics, broadband optimization, SKILL BASED COMBAT, and interactive player crafting. Then I would play AC again, because it would then Move up the ladder instead of stalling at the bottom.

[eolorian]

I think maybe the devs should rethink the idea on removing the settlement hubs. If you think it encourages travel, you are only right for those that have the time to waste.

I do not get the time to waste running all over the world to do a quest. I have played this game since the beginning of beta 0. I have purposely made extremely long runs like going from Qual to the Southern Land Bridge and up to Teth just for the fun. Unfortunately, I rarely get the time for it now. I work too much and just want to relax and have fun with my friends in AC. I have seen so much of the land in AC, I can visualise areas in my sleep.

If you really think the portals are ugly, fire your art team and hire someone that can make a pretty lag free portal. I suspect though since the art team does such a good job that you are not telling the whole truth on this issue.

As well, you once again are not thinking of casual characters here. The hardcore gamer has the time to run all over creation like I used to do. Even after the settlement portals came in to being I would make long runs for the fun of it so i could explore. Now I cant enjoy that as often.

I will say one of the suggestions I saw would make more sense. Have 1 vendor in each town that the portal goes along with that sells all the gems. You could have them separated to villa gems and cottage gems. This wouldnt make removing the portals so bad.

What would loosen the blow a little more is an idea I was thinking of. How about a level 5 or 6 or 7 recall spell that recalls to Old Sub and New Sub. It would still only portal you to the entrance of the dungeon and the level is high enough to make people explore till then plus it is not summonable. Summonable would be nice but I think the hardcore people would then get upset that it is too easy now for casual players to get around. Non-summonable would be good so bots couldnt use it too.

Ultimately, please remember when you make the change to not forget those of us who do not have the luxury to run all over dereth. We still love to play and making the game more difficult is one thing, making it tedious though reduces the fun factor as well as replayability.

[Frieze]

Originally posted by knopp
Mages are STILL the most expensive credit template
Ok, Archer vs. Mage in credits:

Archer:
spec bow = 16
melee D = 10
healing = 6
item = 8
creature = 8
life = 12
mana c = 6
fletching = 4
Total: 70
Assuming spec Melee D? Total: 80
Assuming spec Life? Total: 78
Assuming Arcane Lore? +4 more
Assuming spec Life & Spec Melee D? Total: 88! all credits used (no lore)

Mage:
spec war = 28
item = 8
creature = 8
life = 12
mana c = 6
Total: 62
Assuming spec Life? Total: 70
Assuming spec Creature? Total: 70
Assuming spec Life & Creature? Total: 78
Assuming Arcane Lore? +4 more
Assuming spec Life & Magic D? Total: 82

I'd call that balanced.
There's not really a discrepancy. They both take a lot of credits not to be gimps. Simply put, a mage is not a gimp if he doesn't take melee D and healing. An archer is.

Originally posted by knopp
Just use a rending weapon, you DONT NEED TO LAND ON MAGES AT ALL.
Try a rend on a player sometime. A wand works too. There's a reason why you only ever see PK/PKLs with weepings. Rends suck. For example: a rending wand will hit a player with war for about 100-110. A weeping will hit for 170+ (big difference). It's even more of a difference when compared to melee weapons.

You'll hit for 1 on a baned person with a rend.

[knopp]

frieze, you are in no way close on that.

It should be:

Mage:
28 war
20 life


Archer:
16 bow
12 life


That is all you need to do max damage to a target. So why is it that I have 20 more credits involved, and I NEVER OUT KILL ARCHERS THAT ARE 25 LEVELS BELOW ME?!!?! Try killing Mowen when there is an archer in the room with a good bow. I am 0-13 on kills as a lvl 126+ mage and the archers are in their 80's.

Because people like you whined until they nerfed my character, and gave you 166% mod rending bows, that saved you ANOTHER 8 credits cause you dont need to spec life now.

so, I double your credits spent, and do less damage.

Oh, and lets not forget that while I have to spend ANOTHER 6 credits for missle d to evade you, you get magic D for free.

Still seem balanced to you?

Good call, bad logic.

[DSanai]

I would also like to offer a couple of suggestions as far as Housing Portals are concerned.

First off, I probably would admit they're ugly on the landscape in their current incarnation. That said, however, I would NEVER have complained about this, because their value so far exceeds any drawbacks to their looks. I don't like tachis, but I'll use one if it spawns with good enough stats. :P

Anyway, here are a couple different suggestion options I wanted to share, toward the end of alleviating some of the 'eyesore' you speak of, yet still maintaining their usefulness as much as possible:

1) It's been mentioned before, but I'll mention it again -- the housing summon gems could be sold by a special vendor in each town that currently has a portal hub. Alternately, this vendor could be located by the center spire in what used to be the portal hub. I don't know if you have discussed price yet, but please, do not make these so exceedingly expensive as to hinder younger players -- obviously, you probably don't want a new player with a level 5 being able to buy multiple gems, but making them as expensive as, say, a platinum scarab, wouldn't be the best route either, IMHO. Perhaps 10k or so would be about right.

2) You could make a special portal, sort of like the Residential Halls have, and inside that dungeon would be something akin to Subway.

3) You could put a special building on the landscape (probably out where the housing hubs currently stand) that is an above-ground structure with a basement -- you run down the stairs at the entrance to a basement area with arches set into the walls, and a portal set in each arch.

4) A combination of 2 and 3, where instead of a portal, use an above-ground building with stairs down to a single portal, that takes you to the housing hub 'dungeon'. You already have the art for these types of buildings. I would prefer to see some unique art for the building, something that stands out as much as the entrance to the ML plateau does, but using the existing building would obviously cut down a lot on the work required, while still maintaining the use of the housing hub sans gems.

5) Finally, maybe just making the hubs a little more 'stylish' instead of slapping a bunch of portals spinning into some kind of circle or horseshoe. I'm not sure if I can accurately portray my thoughts for this, but here goes:

Keeping the spire in the center, create a stone wall in a perfect circle around that spire (leaving some space between them). This wall should be only a few feet taller than the top of the portals. In this wall, put arches at regular intervals, set back into the arch a couple feet (the total width of the wall should be a few feet deeper than either edge of the portal, so it's completely within the archway). The wall could be simple stone, or even something really interesting looking, like the surfaces you use for Diamond golems, all sparkling in the sun. :)

I think this would add some interest to the look of the hubs, they would be laid out in a standard way, instead of all slapped around differently at each hub, and would still allow the ease of travel.

People could jump up onto the hub wall, if they wanted, or even jump down into the center, because people like having things they can interact with. A bunch of portals all over are just that. :D

It wouldn't be a bad idea to have the summon-portal gems sold at the housing areas themselves, either, for quests and the like.


Anyway, that's my 2 pyreals (though I think with inflation, that came out to more like a C note). :D


EDIT: Oh, I forgot the best part about option #5 -- the art would be reusable (you could cut the model of this hub system into a single archway, so if a hub has a few less portals than another, you don't have to put those arches in, and the wall will be a little smaller in diameter). Also allows you to add or remove segments as portals are added or removed.

Unlike a set-size dungeon, this would allow you more flexability without having 'empty' archways where portals would have been in other hubs.

[Frieze]

Originally posted by knopp
frieze, you are in no way close on that.
It should be:
Archer:
16 bow
12 life

What is your logic that an Archer can survive without Melee and healing trained? And no fletching makes for horrible side effects.

I play an archer (note that my mage has a 3 month IG time, so I'm not biased) and without spec Melee D I would be a wreck PvM, since I'm not 150+ ... but, even if I dropped it to trained, there's just no way around the fact that I have to have it or I'd be decimated on a regular basis PvM.

I have to have it for 10 credits, and I have to have healing for 6. I have to have fletching for 4. A mage doesn't need fletching or healing or melee D, and we all need the 3 non-war schools.

Look at it again:

Mage:
Spec War - 28
Spec Life - 20
Creature - 8
Item - 8
Mana C - 6
Total: 70

Archer:
Spec Bow - 16
Life - 12
Creature - 8
Item - 8
Mana C - 6
Healing - 6
Fletching - 4
Melee D - 10
Total: 70

[Patty]

Been reading over the replys and thinking about the housing settlement issue.

Would it be possible to put the housing portals inside the statue in each town? On the level where the Main town portal is for that statue? Put some bigger use for the statues! ;) The statues would be for traveling to local settlement. Characters can stop and visit town, recomp, meet others to continue the journey..... but getting people into the town and NOT having to go around collecting gems and using up packs to get certain gems stored for frequent travels. As a mage, 4 foci's, one pack partly filled with tapers and scarabs, the filled with imbued orbs/wands. One pack with DI's.... don't want to collect gems, sigh. :mad:


Soooo......
The portals won't "ugly" up the landscape, which I don't think looks that bad...... Brings people to the town..... Puts the statues to be more useful... and easy to find at each town. Just think about this please. :D

[Baby Bunny]

I have high level chars in TD, who are capable of running from place to place and hundreds of MMD notes to buy gems....but, PLEASE!!! don't take away the settlement portals! You are saying that it is because some players think they are ugly? SO what? WHAT about the new world planned????, gonna make the noobs who come in the world with NOTHING ,,, and 50 quickness...run across a world full of level 100 plus monsters, trying to do quests? Also a comment on your loot changes, I was leveling noobs in DT and making a living has become a full time job, now that bugs drop bread and JUNK as loot. Think hard about the difficulty of levelling on your planned new server, before you remove both our ability to travel and our abiltiy to make money as noobs. AND if you would like to HOOK some brand new players into playing AC in your new world, don't make it impossible to survive . I can picture it now , create a new char in the new world and hunt for an hour to buy 50 prismatic tapers. ;-( As an afterthought I can also imagine this happening.....your on your 20 click journey, and you die at 19 clicks and lose all your armor LOL

[Rauth]

I'm not sure if anyone has noticed this but IMO the trend this past couple of months has been: Turbine posts a LttP, players attach themselves to one upcoming feature, players pound arguments for, against, and otherwise about that feature into the ground, including beginning specialized threads that really could exist under Feedback for that LttP. "Debate" (for want of a better word that is noninflammatory) heats up and then the arguments change to "Why weren't we told sooner?!" then, and sometimes concurrent with that alteration, posts appear stating "I'm quitting AC!" Amazingly, once the much protested changes are made, adjusted, abandoned, or postponed, there is little to no ongoing debate about the issue so many felt so strongly about and the forum population has scurried off to pile-up over some other issue.

Now Turbine has posted a LttP with a new format, with lists of many many changes included, most only a speck on the horizon. Yet, players have fixated themselves to one upcoming feature (removal of settlement portals) and are pounding arguments for, against and otherwise about that feature into the ground, including beginning specialized threads that really could exist under Feedback for that LttP. The "Debate" has heated up and not only do we hear strains of "Why weren't we told sooner?!" but also demands as to "Why hasn't Turbine capitulated to us yet?!"

Given historical precedence, I think we can predict what type of thread and posts we will shortly begin seeing in the forum.

This trend isn't the greatest argument for Turbine to go through the extra effort of posting a wide array of information for changes in development, in concept, and on the verge of being implemented. Nor is the wild, all-over-the-board thread replication on a single issue a good argument for Turbine to sit calmly, listen, and seriously consider altering their plans.

In fact, Im beginning to see why information was not more forthcoming to begin with.

My suggestion to the players is that you pick and choose your fights instead of gung-ho piling up on a single issue. If you find you do not like an upcoming change, post your opinion in the appropriate feedback forum(s). I would not advise carrying the same arguments over to new threads unless you really really feel so strongly about it that you are willing to risk losing in the ensuing shuffle a chance to reinforce your opinion for/against another upcoming change that you may actually feel MORE strongly about.

To those that have posted your responses in Feedback threads and in threads/on boards the devs have chosen to give a response in, I thank you as a player for taking your arguments to the appropriate places and easing the number of replicated posts cluttering up the forums. Many of you have raised valid points and implications I did not originally consider in formulating my stance on the issue. I have now reconsidered, but find that my general position has not changed. I do understand your concerns however and since I do not find it incompatible with my stance, I strongly urge Turbine to read and acknowledge your posts and the myriad compromises and alterations that have been suggested and perhaps choose the one (or a combination of those) that best fit with their intentions. Regardless of the outcome, I would not mind seeing a few more lifestones sprinkled across the landscape to make things like corpse retrieval a little less traumatic. It might even assist transportation.

For those that have spawned multiple threads on this, believe me that I understand you do feel strongly about the issue - but not at all because of the number of threads you have created. I am concerned however that despite the fact that you have begun receiving feedback from devs on the issue, most of your arguments have not been altered or amended to seriously address the additional information.

Instead it appears that some of you might adhere to the belief that the way to win any debate is to ignore, bury, and/or flame any response that isn't a complete capitulation.

I strongly urge you to think seriously about the implications of behavior in a debate that seeks to drown out any opposing rationale rather than argue point by point against it. Realize then, that each time this tactic is used successfully it sets precedent and effectively reduces the shock impact the next time it is used.

Realize also that others who feel differently than you have and will continue to use the same tactic. So long as you expect it to work when you utilize it, it will no doubt also work for them as well. Eventually the community may well degrade into "shouting" matches which will hardly warrant anyone's serious consideration, much less Turbine's.

Take a step back and seriously examine the issues and the tactics you use to draw attention to them. Consider if it is something that you can reasonably predict will honestly, utterly and completely alter your gameplay from this point forward in a way that will justify the outrage, the rabid postings, demands for capitulation, threats of quitting, and calls for boycott.

edited for spelling

[Sabu]

Well put...

edit;
This change should put a nice dent in lag :). I hope the gems are put in towns or somewhere more accessible then straight running to the house.

[LeifThorssonJr]

Rauth,

you have made some excellent points...

however, i think that the reason people fixate on the "one" thing is because things that have gone into the game already are pretty much moot points... also, a large part of it, at least this time, is because people are generally pleased with the other things...

mind you, the xp change did lose turbine some accounts... prolly not as many as they were threatened with losing, but i know of several that left/cancelled as a result of it, for a fact.

another reason people have been making new threads, is to specifically talk about that one item, as turbine-generated threads were all about many things... they wanted to focus...

keep in mind, that the removal of housing settlement portals, whether you agree or disagree with the plan, is a VERY VERY large change in the dynamics of the game... as was the xp passup change... everyone has become accustomed to these things, and turbine changing is going to provoke some strong reactions... both strongly positive, and strongly negative....

[Yung Kin]

Most of the portal fields are cleverly hidden. Your beautification strategy doesn't make sense. However...

In the center of each housing area you have a housing "beacon" for lack of a better term. Make this beacon a portal as well. The portal, when used, portals you right back to the same housing area. Thus, you merely "move" the current portals to their destinations. A portal that goes nowhere, you ask? Indeed. But it's a destination that we /already/ have access to by being there, and allows us to "invite" others to the same place.

In this respect, people could keep their portal ties (which is already limited at 2) and for those of us who want to "invite" someone to our home, we just go home, walk to the housing portal, tie, recall to our friend @ marketplace, and summon away.

This keeps the areas around towns free from easy shortcuts to everywhere, while improving the ability for us to manipulate portals AT our own housing area to our benefit, such as hosting parties at some place other than the Mansion.

[Lycentia]

I can't believe what I am hearing about the housing settlment portals being taken out! This is a terrible idea! Housing settlment portals add so much enjoyment to many players of all differnt play times and levels for numerous reasons.

Housing settlement portals provided quick access to players for hunting and quests, giving them more time to play and enjoy the game instead of making tedious runs.

Housing settlment portals helped players run quests better, instead of having to wait on slow pokes or people with 56k modems lagging out and dying on runs.

Housing settlment portals provided a way to invite players to your home so that you could do things together, such as chat, decorate, or have PK battles.

I once had a PK battle at my housing settlment and me and some friends had a blast! Now this will no longer be someone people will want to do. Running all the way back to somones house to get you corpse will not be any fun. And with a big PK battle you're gonna have a lot of corpses. With the settlment portals the people could just portal recall back to grab their coprse and rejoin in the fun! Taking the settlment portals away will make this no longer possible. What are the dungeons in your villas for anyways? To invite people over to have fun!

Housing settlment portals also helped me take the characters on my second account to my villa. Nobody wants to run a level 1 heavily burdened mule on a differnt account to their house, excpecially if they live near a dangerous area. Nobody wants to run any of their own characters to their house. And I know many, many people own more than 1 account, and use their house to provide storage to both accounts.

Housing settlment portals provided a great way to explore as well. I have randomly taken settlment portals before just to have fun exploring a new area that I probably would have never ran out to because of the distance. I have used them to go try a new hunting area I was told might be good for one of my characters.

The settlment portals help the casual players that may play every day, and may be huge fans of AC, but only have an hr or two to play every day because of their jobs and real lives. You will hurt the casual players by taking away these portals.

The hard core gamers use these portals to level up multiple characters in differnt areas and run quests with big fellowships. You will hurt them by making them take long tedious runs with people on 56k connections that can't keep up and lag out. People will no longer want to take these gamers on quests with long runs because it will be too much of a hassle, so then you hurt both the quest leaders and the people with not so good of connections.

You will hurt the explorers, rare item hunters, and trade skill people by making them have to run a huge distance just so they can get some silly little item they were needing like a trunk for someones baudren, a red dye plant to dye a helmet, or some ingredient to cook some special food.

You will hurt the PK players or casual PKers that just like to PK with friends at their housing settlments by making it too much of a hassle and too tedious and annoying to have PK battles and tournaments at their Villa and cottage settlments. Just think of the corpse runs, nobody is going to want to do that.

All in all you hurt every type of player in the game by taking these settlment portals away. The only people you please are the very very few that think it's better to run a mile than to take a shortcut. Well I say they can run if they want to, but they shouldn't force us to have to!

I believe you developers are taking away too many freedoms from the players on AC. Things that most of us enjoy and love. To do what?

Stop a house macroing ebayer? There are better ways to solve this issue than to punish the vast majority of the player base. For one, go to ebay and stop all sales of in game items on AC. Ebay has a program to help you do this!

What other reasons would you have to take these portals away? To take away the enjoyment of casual players? To take away the ease of questing for people on slow connections? To add the tediousnessback in for the hard core player so they no longer want to play?

I honestly think there is no good reason at all to take away housing settlment portals. They do nothing to hurt any players, and provide lots of help to everyone in the game.



P.S. When you have your biggest fan Maggie the Jackcat, that has a whole site dedicated to your game, she spends tons of time and effort updating every month, come and post her unsatifaction on your boards then there is a problem. I have not ever seen her write negative comments about the game or the dev team, she has always been a loyal and happy fan even in the worst patches. It's obvious you are doing something wrong when this many players, and many of them hard core fans that have played for years, are posting their unhappiness on these boards over the past month.

[Taco Belle]

I'm the monarch of a clan on Leafcull, and brought up the removal of settlement portals in our meeting Sunday. Not one single person in attendance liked the idea of having the settlement portals removed; all thought it a horrible idea. Nobody could believe that people actually complained that they were ugly!

We are all very unhappy about the tedium of running for long distances when there's no necessity for it.

I think Sylphia Brightstarr has expressed my thoughts on the subject better then I could myself, and I sincerely hope that Turbine will use some of the excellent suggestions I've seen posted on this forum.

[Lycentia]

On a side note I would like to mention a few ideas I really do like mentioned in the Letter to the Players follow up.



1. The Marketplace. On some worlds, trade bots are not placed in the outlying rooms and instead cluster in the primary portal drop room. This can create graphical lag and issues for players who are portaling in to the Marketplace.

This was a much needed change. To many bots are cramming into those tiny halls just so they can be the first bot shopped at. Making them all go into one of the side rooms will be much better for shoppers, people portaling into the market, and sellers that run bots. Now being the first bot to be seen will no longer be an issue because we can all be in the same room.



2. In April, we plan to make all Creature and Life Self buffs cast at the same speed as a level I spell, no matter what their level. This should cut down on the amount of time spent preparing for battle for players who cast their own buffs.

Love this! Many players hate the time it takes to buff. THis I think will make many players happy. I also like that it only applys to self buffs. I hope that this will urge some extremely dependent players to learn to buff themselves rather than use a bot. Making it a lot easier and more fun to quest with them.



3. This is something that has been requested several times, and we’re happy to be able to provide it. Starting in March, there will be a new option in the Character Options panel under User Interface Display: “Crafting Chance of Success Dialog.”

This is a great idea. Now people won't have to run tinker calculators or alt tab to use one when they want to know their chances. Great idea!


4. Over the years, we’ve added several options to the Character Options panel. The grouping of these options was, well, counterintuitive at times. Starting in March, the options will be grouped under the following headers: User Interface Behavior, User Interface Display, Grouping, Other Players, Character Behavior, and Chat.

I am glad these are gonna be organized. Could we get these section headers in bold on the options panels before each grouping as well? I have a hard time finding what option I am looking for because there are so many now.


5. Mana Conversion modifiers will also appear more frequently on casters. At high levels of loot, you will no longer be able to find casters that don’t have a Mana Conversion modifier. In addition, the average Mana Conversion modifier will adjusted upwards.
Casting items will have the ability to generate with Defender due to the above change, and will also have the ability to generate with the Hermetic Link spell or cantrips for any of the spells that can be found on them.


YAY Mage love! These are nice changes. But what mages REALLY want is to be able to change those nasty, utterly stupid, major war gauntlets with a melee/missle req into something they can actually use! *HINT HINT* ;)


6. As we have hinted in the past, we are introducing spells that can be cast on all members of a fellowship simultaneously. The first of these spells are planned for April. We are taking it slow with these – they are only attribute buffs, and no more powerful than existing spells.


YAY more mage love and more easy buffing features!

[thejackcat]

P.S. When you have your biggest fan Maggie the Jackcat, that has a whole site dedicated to your game, she spends tons of time and effort updating every month, come and post her unsatifaction on your boards then there is a problem. I have not ever seen her write negative comments about the game or the dev team

You must not have ever seen my rants about the boobie dress or Zone Billing! ;-) I've had my criticisms of the game, like everyone, but I am rarely moved to post about them. I registered for these boards the day they were announced, and browse them several times a week and this was my first time ever to post here. Reading through the threads I saw numerous people registering for the sole purpose of voicing their dissatisfaction with the removal of the settlement portals. I'm also getting piles of mail from players, players I have never ever heard whine about the game before.

I can't but help feel that Turbine is using up a good deal of their "good will" capital with the addition of so many major changes that affect so many people's play styles.

I've had my Maggie the Jackcat account since day 1 of retail. She is now level 75! I have one long-term loyal vassal. I don't power-level. I don't use Decal (nothing against it, just don't really want to take the time to fool with it). I love to explore pretty much more than anything and I love to go on quests. I get offers from everyone to power-level me up, but I like to do and accomplish things on my own, plus, I tend towards solo play.

Believe it or not, even though I run a pretty big fan site site, I *am* the casual player. I log on a few evenings a week for an hour or so, and if I don't have to work on the weekend, I like to get a few hours in to run a quest or two. I work on my site in pretty much the same manner. An hour or two, here and there.

A huge fan, to be sure, but I've always felt somewhat left behind as a casual player. I look forward to one day being able to hunt in the big kids area, or to go in this or that dungeon when I get old enough, and just when I'm almost there, the devs "update" them, and I'm once again too little to survive. The Settlement portals really opened the game up for me. I remember what it was like before we had them. I'd spend one evening's play time getting *to* the quest location, then would actually have to *do* the quest the following night. And if we died on the way, well, it'd have to wait for the weekend. Don't make me go back to those days!!

Sure, theoretically, we can get to the locations even more quickly with the new gems, but it's the getting of the gems that concerns me. I'd either have to make the run (and spend half my play time, or all of it if I die a few times on the way), or stock up (I guess I'd have to sacrifice my sunflowers and explorer gear and quest trophies and sentimental purple armor and weapons to make room for them), or buy/trade for them. I am looking at the future and I see Maggie standing in the Marketplace full of frustration, poking through endless bot inventories wondering what the hell a "point" is. I don't know how to use them, nor do many other players, judging from how many requests I get each week in my Inbox asking me to explain to them how the Marketplace works and how to buy something from a bot. Players like me don't have piles of Sings and Plats and whatever else the currency of the day may be.

Again, nothing against Decal, but I hate trade bots and think they've really killed player interaction. My vassal used to spend tons of time in the hub trading with other players, and now he doesn't even bother to pick up trophies, because there's no market for them any more. It's either bot or the VNboards, or forget about trading.

Overall, I see the changes to the settlement portals really hurting the casual player. It's going back to the dark days when all the cool kids got to do all the fun quests and explore the out of the way places, and the less powerful players watched in envy saying to ourselves, "One day...."

[Elsinister]

I do not mind moving the tradebot to a stall as long as you also get rid of the real lag in market which is all the pkls casting spells across the market.

[Githyanki]

I have an idea for the Marketplace (mp). It is used as a meeting spot, and a trade center. I agree that logging into a room of 40 toons is asking a client to do a bit too much, but splitting the bots into 4 places is bad for the buyer and the seller. What if the mp had 3 areas. The first area is a small landing zone where you appear when you portal in. This will be a small room with 2 doors or 2 passages heading North and South. Run to the north and you open into a room that is designed for trading. This room will be full of the bots, and players who wish to buy/see will be here. Run to the South and you come into a room resembling the common areas in the residence halls. This will be where people can come and meet each other for trades, or whatnot.
If someone sets up a bot in the hallways or the landing area, the envoys log them off. As for bots in the meeting hall to the south, maybe portal and buff bots are allowed, but trader bots have to be in the room to the north. This will allow a guy to portal in to a small graphical load, the traders all get to be in one convienent place, and the "meet me in the mp" people all get their own room.

Also, I like the removal of the portals, and portal gems will work fine. Including Item magic we can recall to up to 3 portals, 2 houses, and 2 lifestones. Movement is easy, pyreals are almost free, so I see no problem with buying portal gems for settlements.

[Erius]

I really really like hearing about the changes in advance, so you can all hear our gripes and moans about them.

I also really like to hear about the new modifiers on all weapons and casting devices. About time =].

I have only one complaint to voice about the upcomming changes, and that has to do with the addition of different pathing abilities for missile characters.

I'm hoping the change will be in the attack panel rather than in ammunition. The attack panel for an archer is only really used to try to make the shooting delay for hitting the monster (raising/lowering the bow) faster by limiting the animation. (in bow/xbow anyway, ill voice opinion about tw a lil further down) Also, the DOT would be out of whack from trying to switch arrows because you have to drop out of combat to switch arrows. Also, if you're giving missile that ability because mages have that ability...mages dont have to drop out of combat and waste precious time just to path their spells differently, it wouldnt make sense to make an archer drop combat cause he wants an arrow to fly differently. (while yes in RL you'd have the arrow made differently which would mean fletching it differently in a game, it wouldnt make sense...it would become a useless fletching addition like spike darts -- and speaking of spike darts..)

Always changes to class (melee/mage/missile) and not to weapon classes. Will thrown weapons always be a joke? Can they ever have their place in the sun? There is so much to the class and yet every aspect is completely gimped.

DOT gimped...xbow beats tw to the punch and for same credits with not as much xp to spend in say "strength" cause all should know by know without str your tw char will only be accurate within melee range.

While the atlatl aspect is quite comparable to bow/xbow, healing and reload time is fubar cause you have to put dart back in the launcher even if you heal in combat mode (which is weird when you think about it...atlatl is the lightest AND fastest [base speed] weapon in the missile class and yet DOT is higher and healing is faster in the other weapons classes).

Shield aspect is not even worth trying. No melee bonus... even though you have the shield, at the same time getting hit more for less isnt always better. Spike darts may look like they do awesome damage when you look at the base, but there is no bonus for skill and no imbued ability to make it comparable damage to an atlatl which in the long run makes getting hit more often without the melee bonus from an atlatl for less while wearing the shield kind of useless because you dont hit for enough damage. You'd be better off training up your racial weapon cause you could get an imbued one and do more damage than with spikes which just makes having tw at all useless.

I wish changes to the thrown weapons class could someday be put into the letter to the players, people might actually start being something other than sword or archers...with all that is available to a thrown weapons character...they should really be gods in my opinion, but at every turn thrown weapons is a class that is a total joke.

[dirn]

I think Maggie has stated my feelings on the portal better than I could have ;) Thank you maggie and I hope Turbine listens.

[Aqua]

Originally posted by Githyanki
I have an idea for the Marketplace (mp). It is used as a meeting spot, and a trade center. I agree that logging into a room of 40 toons is asking a client to do a bit too much, but splitting the bots into 4 places is bad for the buyer and the seller. What if the mp had 3 areas. The first area is a small landing zone where you appear when you portal in. This will be a small room with 2 doors or 2 passages heading North and South. Run to the north and you open into a room that is designed for trading. This room will be full of the bots, and players who wish to buy/see will be here. Run to the South and you come into a room resembling the common areas in the residence halls. This will be where people can come and meet each other for trades, or whatnot.
If someone sets up a bot in the hallways or the landing area, the envoys log them off. As for bots in the meeting hall to the south, maybe portal and buff bots are allowed, but trader bots have to be in the room to the north. This will allow a guy to portal in to a small graphical load, the traders all get to be in one convienent place, and the "meet me in the mp" people all get their own room.

Also, I like the removal of the portals, and portal gems will work fine. Including Item magic we can recall to up to 3 portals, 2 houses, and 2 lifestones. Movement is easy, pyreals are almost free, so I see no problem with buying portal gems for settlements.


Asking the client to do a bit much?!? This is an MMORPG people!! Massivly multiplayer!! If A client cant handle alot of people then perhaps there is something wrong with the client, not the people!

[Tar Valon]

I like every idea here. Albeit some of them fall short of my extremist nature...:)

[Pigroast]

it is good to see you post Maggie. I think the casual player is not heard alot of times. Many in my clan do not read the patch notes or boards........but they read your site.

Instead of griping on the boards about changes they don't like, they just quietly stop playing.

thanks for all your hard work maggie! :D

[Dom on TD]

Originally posted by Githyanki
Also, I like the removal of the portals, and portal gems will work fine. Including Item magic we can recall to up to 3 portals, 2 houses, and 2 lifestones. Movement is easy, pyreals are almost free, so I see no problem with buying portal gems for settlements.

Umm, with all of my recalls, I can recall to 4 locations (Caul, Aerlinthe, sanctuary, and My Lethe), 3 portals(primary, secondary, and last), 2 lifestones, my house, the mansion, and the marketplace. Both of the last 2 have bots with a variety of portals for me to use. But none of these are settlement portals. Also, I have limited pack space. I don't want to have to run to a settlement to grab a gem, to run a quest. The portal hubs are convenient. My car is ugly, but I'm not going to get rid of it and walk everywhere. If you don't like the settlement portals, don't use them. Run everywhere you go, and post again in a month telling us how great this idea is. Alot of players have limited game time. We won't have the gems readily available, and therefore will just miss whatever quest is a long run from the towns. After a person misses so much content, they start to wonder is the $12.95 is really worth it. I'm NOT going to look for Julian's Touch's tradebot to get a Land Bridge Villa's portal gem everytime I want to go on Gaerlan 80+ or Spec something (Yes, I believe he has a villa there on TD, and it happens to be a very useful portal. No wonder he's in favor of this idea.) Taking away these portals will only cripple the casual players, and give the unemployed 19 hour/day players yet another edge. 1 last thing. I still want a Margul Pack Doll :D

[bcolebank]

If the problem is simply ugliness, replace the mass of portals with a single one that leads to a room with more tastefully arranged portals. Removes the problem you think is there and still allows people to travel easily.

If there's another problem related to the portals (Housing macroes anybody?), this isn't the way to do it. It hurts the casual player much more than any macro.

The gems might be a good alternative to housing portals, but don't make them the ONLY one.

[Lycentia]

Hehe Mordet, that is exactly what I told Piggy on the phone last night! Make a big building with all the settlment portals in it, if a few picky people think they are too ugly. They help the majority of players way to much to get rid of. :D

[Madness6699]

I vote to leave the settlement portals.

If you want to move them off the landscape and into a special room in the residential quarters that is fine.

I don't want to spend my limited playing time running. I do that for exercise and competition, I don't want to do it in a computer game.

[Dom on TD]

Actually, the gems will help the macros more than anyone else. Only a Housing macroer would have the available pack space to hold all of the villa settlement portal gems. Everyone else will have foci packs, weapons, armor, quest items, and nick nacks. With the gems housing macroers will be able to reach villas so quickly that they could actually steal a villa being traded. Those settlement portals may be ugly, but seeing ingame housing on Ebay is revolting.

[StunnedGrowth]

I agree that it is too easy to travel around right now. Take the settlement portals out, all of them. It will be nice to roam across the hills of dereth while on the way to do a quest or something. The only time they are handy is if I'm in a rush, but it does cheapen the experience of getting somewhere.

[Quell]

1.) Please place gem venders in the towns not settlements.

2.) Please do not allow inscripions to be wiped by +Envoys, or limit what can and cannot be UId. IE if something like, "if i dont have this, it is stolen" is on an item is shouldnt be UId, but if something has "tradebot" inscriptions allow it..I would hate to think that some of the items my friends inscribed over the years are going to get wiped.

3.) Everything else for the most part is pretty cool.

[knopp]

Originally posted by Frieze
What is your logic that an Archer can survive without Melee and healing trained? And no fletching makes for horrible side effects.

I play an archer (note that my mage has a 3 month IG time, so I'm not biased) and without spec Melee D I would be a wreck PvM, since I'm not 150+ ... but, even if I dropped it to trained, there's just no way around the fact that I have to have it or I'd be decimated on a regular basis PvM.

I have to have it for 10 credits, and I have to have healing for 6. I have to have fletching for 4. A mage doesn't need fletching or healing or melee D, and we all need the 3 non-war schools.

Look at it again:

Mage:
Spec War - 28
Spec Life - 20
Creature - 8
Item - 8
Mana C - 6
Total: 70

Archer:
Spec Bow - 16
Life - 12
Creature - 8
Item - 8
Mana C - 6
Healing - 6
Fletching - 4
Melee D - 10
Total: 70


Doesnt matter, we are talking about damage DEALING. For my 48 credits compared to your 28 credits. Everything else on that list is optional. you get Life Magic to buff, and Bow to kill with a rend weapon. I get life to debuff and war to kill, but you STILL doi more DoT than me.

I want a refund of 20 credits.

[Stoneheart]

Originally posted by StunnedGrowth
I agree that it is too easy to travel around right now. Take the settlement portals out, all of them. It will be nice to roam across the hills of dereth while on the way to do a quest or something. The only time they are handy is if I'm in a rush, but it does cheapen the experience of getting somewhere.

What is stopping you from "roaming across the hills" right now? Are you being forced to use settlement portals? Are you being forced to use subway too?

Go, run from one end of Dereth to the other, I don't think anyone is stopping you.

[Lycentia]

I agree with Stonehart...

There is nothing stopping people from traveling across Dereth the way it is now. I ran across the entire map, top to bottom, just the other day because I wanted to find plants to dye with. I can run all over any time I want to just fine with the portals there, and so can anyone else. Actually the settlment portal to up north helped me out so that I could start at the very top on my run acrosss Dereth. I did reach the very bottom too btw ;)

The portals are not hurting players that want to run across Dereth and explore. But taking them out would hurt the people that don't have the time to do that, can't because of their connection, or do not wish to do so.

We shouldn't take away everyone's freedoms just because a few people don't like it. This isn't like UCM and interfereing with other players enjoyments in the game, this is something that benefits many and others don't care to use but it doesn't hurt them in the least.

[Scrappydoo]

After playing this game for 4+ years and seeing what is has become-let's just say I can't wait for WoW to be released. I'm very disheartened. The severs used to average 1200-1400 players, now look at the numbers-they have been reduced by half. Keep making inane changes to this game like removing portals because they're "ugly", and pretty soon, you won't have any numbers.

[Batu Tenjin]

And I agree with Stoneheart and you, Lycentia.

I still run off in random directions when hunting, just to explore areas of Dereth I've yet to see. I'll jump into random wilderness portals and unknown dungeons, just to check out what is on the other side.

But that has nothing to do with the way I travel when on a quest. I explore on my time - questing with allegiance members is not my time, but theirs as well.

Wasting their time by being forced to run around to every settlement, or hunt down the right gem in the God-forsaken Marketplace, is not improving the playability of the game.

There have been hundreds of excellent suggestions about how to "prettify" the current look of the Settlement Portals, many of which would also correct the alleged lag issue. Turbine, you would do well to take some of those ideas to heart.

[StunnedGrowth]

Well Stoneheart, nothing stops me. I do roam now constantly unless I am tied down with other people, I havent used a settlement portal in quite some time nor the hub for that matter. I dont need to, from my lifestone decisions I can get anywhere I want without using them, sometimes faster.

But lets think about things for a few, a player can get to any part of the map in roughly 1-10min. From Hub/Jungle hub, 2 portal recall ties, 1 normal portal recall, 2 lifestones, and recall spells taking you to every major island in the game. And if they still cant get somewhere, odds are there is a portal bot in the marketplace that will get them close by (i.e. AB, Teth, OP). Not that AB Teth or op are hard to get to anyway, quite easy if you are familiar with the portal system.

Housing portals were put in for 2 reasons 1) because people complained enough that it was too hard to run mules out to houses and 2) because how are other people suppose to get to my house and see my l33t decorations. At the time only the home owner could recall to the house the month housing opened post-Dark Majesty release. A month after they introduced settlement portals, /house_recall was available for all characters the home owner had on that account.

It was not intended that the portals be used as a means of transportation into a specific area so you can go get your ore refined, shortcut to crater pathway/ohn, or the newer quest dungeons on olthoi north, spec/unspec quest/etc.

The fact that a person can do those things was an added benifit, nothing more. Settlement portals are something we just assumed was put in for travel reasons because we quickly forgot how hard it was to run our lvl 20 mules with 300 bu past a group of blood shreths.

I think the dev's are right, I complained when they put settlement portals in, and I'm glad they taking them out. This game tends to cater to the lazy player, I'm happy they are trying to restore some of what dereth use to be.....adventures to do things other than get to x persons house to see a pack doll. Or lets hurry up and do this because I have better things to do.

But, odds are it wont change things that much, we will just see 10x more portal bots now.

[Orion]

We want to thank everyone for their responses to the settlement portal changes. We're currently thinking about some minor changes that we can make to allow for accessibility while still achieving the goals that we had set. We should have an idea of what we'll be doing with the settlement gems by week's end.

Ibn or I will post the changes when we've hashed them out.

[-Six-]

I'm uneasy about the melee mods on casting items. Melee D is one of the most expensive skills to train, and I'd hate to see mages (who are the top of the food chain anyway) not have to invest in melee d to reap the benefits.

I can imagine wands with +9 def, +9x tinkered w/brass, + cragstone's will on them, and it doesn't seem fair.

[Yew Wan Sum]

I disagree, Six. Mages are not the only ones who benefit. My archer will benefit by not having his *** handed to him the second he pulls out a casting implement to recall or rebuff his bow. Hybrids will reap more benefit by not getting ripped up(as badly) when they go to debuff a creature. Even in the case of the mage, 10 credits is ten credits. If a mage wants to unspec war/life/magicd or whatever to take melee def, AND they somehow overcome the 10/10 C/Q start, then so what if they can get enough of a boost to make melee def somewhat useful. They still won't be getting in-combat and attack-height bonuses. Its a good change.

[Lycentia]

the melee mods arn't going to help average mages much unless they already have Melee Def trained.

I am interested in seeing if it makes a difference for my new melee war mage I created the other night though. She started with 55 quick and coord, not your average mage.

I believe these additions to wands will help the melees that need to pull out a wand to vuln more than anyone else though.

[Chiun]

I can only urge you guys (Ibn, Orion, and the rest of Turbine) to please consider the casual player when you make changes to the settlement portals.

Casual players just don't have all the time that the hardcore player base does. I also think that in general, we, the casual players, are very easy going. In general, it's not the casual player that is screaming over loot and xp pass-up changes.

As a casual player, I have always felt like the power-gamer crowd definitely draws the attention of Turbine more so than the casual crowd, which is funny, because I suspect that in terms of purchasing power, the casual gamer headcount far outnumbers the hard core count.

For those hard core gamers that want this change, no one is making you use settlement portals now. Feel free to stop using them. Or, just drop 5k in pyreals on the ground before you hit the portal and make sure you always have an empty pack space, too. Tell me how much 'fun' this is after you have done it for 2 weeks....for me, I KNOW it will stink. I don't need to experiment.

This settlement portal issue will be a serious impairment on the ability to have fun in Dereth. I like the changes to get rid of tediousness, but this adds tedium in my mind.

I don't give a flip about things like realism and game mechanics and making Dereth into a world and not a game. Asheron's Call IS a game. We play this to get away from the REAL world...some of us play for a few hours a week, and others play for a few hours a day.

If I was going to make an online game of my real world, I would leave out the 1.5 hour drive to and from work each day, because it's NOT fun.

Games are about having fun, not duplicating boredom.

I have played other online games; a major draw for me to AC1 is the travel. It's GREAT. No waiting on shuttles, no running for 45 minutes one way. You have given away a huge advantage you have if you whack the settlement portals.

And, I hear you about buying gems. That's a crock, though. We have the ability to travel now, and you are telling us we need to tie up pack space and pyreals to do so in the future. I fail to see how this is a good thing.

[Urtho]

Removing the settlement portals is yet another [insert choice of bad words here] nerf. Especially if the reason is aesthetics. If you don't like the look, put them in a dungeon. If you want to make them harder to use, add a few critters and a run to the dungeons. If you don't like them, don't use them!

BUT PLEASE DON'T REMOVE THEM!

The gems will be practically useless. Most people have virtually no space in their pack already. So, that means, no one is going to keep 10, 20, 30+ more new gems in their pack, "just in case" they're needed. Here is how they will be used, almost exclusively:

- people who want vistors to their home.
- quest leaders running out to settlement, and buying for quest.

How many times do you visit a particular settlement? You going to run all the way out and then buy portal gem? Why, your already there, and in most case you have o idea if you'll ever need to come back. Sure there are a few you will visit regularly, but most you don't visit all that often.

This is a nerf.
This is dumb.
This, like most changes as of late, is not thought through at all.
This [insert bad word(s) choice here] me off.

A) Running is boring. B) Hunting and exploring is fun. Using a settlement portal, doesn't mean A is any less boring or B is any more or less fun. Please rethink this....

EDIT: If you must do this, then I suggest 100+ more spaces in the main pack, or get rid of the stupid Foci!

[-Six-]

If removing settlement portals is mainly about beautifying the surface, put them in the lobby of apartment complexes.


[EDIT: re:def mods on orbs]


Lycentia: "the melee mods arn't going to help average mages much unless they already have Melee Def trained"

That's my main concern. I don't think anyone should reap huge benefits from from skills they don't have trained. If what you said is true then I'll be ok with it.

Yew: I think you missed my point. I'm not opposed to the idea for toons with melee d.

[Lycentia]

I don't think you will have to worry SIX ;) considering actually training melee doesn't even help mages much due to the low innate coord and quick. I once looked into training the skill on my main who is a mage and was told it is a complete waste of credits because you won't be able to evade anything worth hunting.


I doubt the new wand additions will even be noticble at all to a mage without melee trained, unless maybe your a 126 that's raised your coord and quick quite a bit and you are fighting a Drudge Slinker in noobville. ;)


This is taking into consideration the changes won't have some kind of uber exploit bug of course lol.

[Monteus]

Hot Bloody Damn Awesome!!!!

I really like this new information sharing. The chance to see more of whats gonna happen, of how they are trying to implement it, its great! These guys seem to be genuine in their efforts for a better and greater AC. To inlcude the player base like this is great and im extremely excited about the longhaul of ac!! :)

Im pretty proud of these guys. :-) Some of these changes really seem good and looks like ac is only getting better and better.
Hopefully a new player influx will be on the way sometime later this year.


:]

[therkyn]

Settlement portals were the best thing you ever did in minimizing the time it takes to get everywhere.

Its not eliminating running. It just shortens it from 30 minutes to 10 minutes. Dereth is a big place, with not much in it. Everyone used to go on long runs to get to Stonehold and the Pit. And they ignored all of the creatures during the run.

The result? MORE MACROS. MACROS TO RUN YOU TO WHERE YOU WANT TO GO.

Sure, today a small percentage of your userbase knows how to do this. I run one all the time to take care of the boring runs on AL & to the ML pincer dungeons. Eliminate your settlement portals and it'll be a plugin before the month's out.

YAY! More people getting used to not being at their computer while its doing stuff. That'll really teach them!

"Tradebots would sell them." Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find the right tradebot with the right item? Oh, yes, that's right, someone will create a plugin to go run around the marketplace finding the right tradebot. More Unattended Macros.

If you must remove the portals for "appearance" sake, place a vendor at the location of the old portals who sells the gems to each of the portals that used to be there.

-t

[Truth Seeker]

As an avid quest leader I am totally against gems at all, whether at the town or the settlement.

Lets assume a gem costs 10,000Py and are sold in towns now

I run to the town in advance (something I am loathe to do anyway) and buy 1 gem.

I recall to the mansion and open the portal for everyone (If you make it a recall then you must be determined to stop quests)

We arrive and start running to the dungeon

30 seconds later I get a tell that someone missed the portal

SO...I recall and travel to the town...buy another gem...recall to mansion...open portal and start the run again.

Someone dies on route to the dungeon now....

SO once again...I recall and travel to the town...buy another gem...recall to mansion...open portal and start the run again.

Total cost 30,000Py and a LOT of wasted time

Maybe I could have bought multiple gems in advance...but then how many do I need to buy?? I never know.

Maybe every time I pop a gem I should buy a new gem...but wait a sec...you actually half listened and moved the seller to the town so he isn't at the end of the portal for me to rebuy it..I have to travel BACK to the town again.


People are complaining enough they are having trouble making enough cash to restock their comps....don't make things even worse for them PLEASE


The ONLY way gems will work in my opinion is to have sellers at both the town and the settlement so now instead of 12 portals...we have 13 sellers plus a potentially infinite number of gems clogging up the database creating even MORE lag.


Please Turbine reconsider this decision...If you are determined to remove the settlement portals then either replace them with 1 portal leading to a lobby similar to the Res Quarters (although these spaces would probably increase lag as well), or replace them with a pop up list that can be selected when double clicking the Settlement Hub column.

[Roadkill]

We want to thank everyone for their responses to the settlement portal changes. We're currently thinking about some minor changes that we can make to allow for accessibility while still achieving the goals that we had set. We should have an idea of what we'll be doing with the settlement gems by week's end.


I just wanted to say thanks for replying and letting us know someone's paying attention.

I cannot stress enough how nice it is to be informed of changes in developement and concept stages. This is a far cry better than when MS was in charge.

I am against some of the changes, but the purpose of this post was not to gripe, complain, or flame. Just wanted to let y'all at Turbine know I (and probably most everyone else) appreciate being informed ahead of time.

[Ibn]

Thank you all for the comments you've left on this thread. I can't overemphasize how valuable it is to be able to discuss topics while they're still in development.

Regarding the real hot-button issue in this thread -- the settlement portals -- I expect to be able to provide more details or an alternate proposal later this week.

[HeXt]

One request I have, is that all portal SUMMON for the tied settlements be made UNSUMMONABLE upon removal of the portals, or there will be a dozen and 3 UGLY portal bots.


And if you place teh venders in settlements, make SURE They don't buy ANYTHING except tradenotes, or moneymacroing will start all over.

[_DOT_1_2_3_4_5_]

ughhhh posted my unhappiness with planned settlement portals in wrong place so will repeat... I do not like this idea at all.. remember playing without them and hating getting lost.. I solo most of the time it seems and I have explored more with the portals then I ever did before... great fun to pop into a place you have never been before and hunt a bit in your limited time to play. Also the settlement portals have allowed me to solo more quests than I would ever have before. If the reason is asthetics, just move them inside town halls - they are not utilized anymore. I am a pack rat and I have neither the space nor the inclination to BUY gems when the portals are sooo much more convenient.

The rest of the ideas are fine with me and I love the chance to express thought before it is too late i.e. loot change with it now almost impossible for lower lever to find good workmanship for tinkering

[Larytia]

Thank you Ibn for sharing all this great info, we appreciate all the hard work you do.

All of the proposed changes for March look great, I hope an added change that wasn't mentioned is a fix for the awful loot issue.

Development items:

Settlement Portals - Please don't do this!!! The gems and such are nice, but the portals make the game more enjoyable. It relieves the tedium of having to run for 20-30 minutes to some common areas. Some areas should be hard to get to, but this will make most remote areas unvisited once again.

Content Revisions, Vendor Buy-Sell Rates, House Purchase Timer, Treasure Changes, Phase 3, “Second-class” Weapons Get Upgrades, Fellowship Spells, Envoy Policy Changes (inscriptions w00t w00t) - Great ideas.

Dispel Revisions - Wow, this is the opposite direction it should go. There needs to be more functionality for people so that it's actually worthwhile to dispel negative spells in the wild. I know it's for PK issues, but PK issues shouldn't affect NPK chars.

Buffing Improvements - Bring them on, great ideas (funny how this sounds like what a lot of people have been requesting for years now :D )

Thanks for all the effort.

Larytia Al-Qaqa
TSC/Leafcull

[Bob Crumb]

In general, I'm very much in favor of these changes.

The one I'm concerned about is the removal of the settlement portals. Having settlement portals encourages exploration and removes bone-numbing drudgery from the game for most folks. I love to run around Dereth...but others do not.

I personally don't find the portals "ugly." However, if that is the concern there are several ways to avoid this:

-- make a multi-faceted stone with the name of a settlement on each facet. Double click on the facet, get portalled there
-- have stones inset into the ground. Each stone has the name of the settlement. Double click and you get portalled there
-- a stone or some cool doo-dad you click on and it portals you to a room with the portals in it

I like the concept of gems IN ADDITION to settlement portals. Whether these gems cast a portal to the settlement (my first choice) or teleport you (a distant second choice) gems allows a quest leader to plan ahead and make running a quest with a group very fast.

Why not have both "portals" (or an equivalent) and gems?

Bob Crumb

[ttusher]

I dont really like getting rid of the settlement portals...

How about letting monsters have a chance at dropping portal gems?

Are portal gems going to be stackable? Its gonna suck hard if they wont!

You need to track only the latest debuff, if you get 5 Str debuffs from chain casting mobs, I would suck to have to debuff umpteen times to get rid of it!!!

[Seighin]

whelp...hmmm....er..


come on, guys make us run around the landscape more? IT IS WHAT the flippin' portals are FOR.....so we can get from A to Z without even more running!!!!!

the settlement portals are great--they provide a way for all to get around dereth and especially for lower lvl toons (have YOU devs tried running a lower lvl toon "around the landscape"?

...PORTAL GEMS?????? My pack space is limited by the foci enough as it is....do us all a favor and make the foci smaller...give three schoolers and mages a chance at some loot er pack space.

Here is hoping y'all really listen to feedback...and hoping you are going to improve the loot.

Oh, ty so much for removing self from loyalty...this is an effort to improve the patron vassel relationship??? Y'all are nuts...gimme back my self times whatever (3? 6?) to loyalty.

I just have to stop...feel a HUGE rant coming on..

Oh, btw...thanks for your concerns about the language..thanks for dealing with the UCMers

Seighin

[Red Syke]

two things

Dispell gems:

I love the way dispell gems work right now. I think it's stupid to think of nerfing them. the people who are telling you to only allow one instance of a debuff are essentially telling you leave the dispell gems the way they are.

By limiting the # of debuffs that a gem can affect, AND by limiting the number of instances of a particular debuff (simply altering time duration) the end result is essentially keeping the current usefulness of dispell gems. So why WASTE developers time building a NEW dispell system of gems when there is nothing substantially wrong with how they work.

Improve the usefulness of the dispell potions. but don't nerf the dispell gems. I can't be bothered to go make dispell potions and I never use dispell potions .. the monsters I fight debuff me with VIs and VIIs. if you want, raise the usefulness of hand made potions but don't nerf the dispell gems.

if you're planning to nerf dispell gems to help PvP.. then most PvP magic users don't waste their precious mana in chain debuffing like the monsters do. the only thing nerfing the dispell gems will do is making it harder to recover from the chain debuffers like shadows, drudges, virindi, and sycophants.

lol! do you hate us that much? do you even REALLY play this game as you claim to? I'm finding that harder and harder to believe with every new nerf you propose.

ok now for what I really came to gripe about: your plans for the settlement portals .

HOW can getting rid of EASY access to settlement portals make the game more fun? fun for whom? not for me. . . it adds to the tedium

I keep forgetting that in Turbine's games, they are the gurus of fun and there is only one true path to fun -- turbine's way. Turbine knows all that is fun. And if I'm not doing it Turbine's way, I'm not doing it right.

what did Turbine do? sit down and have a day of reminiscing about the "good ol' days" where they said. "yeah it used to be fun to waste hours on end running all over dereth to get to where you want to go."

who has stopped anyone from running all over dereth being a TOURIST? Why are they targeting the housing portals because of a bogus claim that they are ugly? lol! insane. If aesthetics were a problem for me, I would not be playing this game, there are more beautiful games to play out there. I think the settlement portals are useful and great.

please don't remove the settlement portals.

It sounds like Turbine is planning on making this game shabbier and shabbier. and all for what? to create a trade economy? force interaction? force bonding with people? or simply to waste my time when I want to get to a destination? how is rummaging around on bots in a marketplace looking for gems going to help my human interactions? do you think there will be a new black market of prime housing portals created? and that trading frenzies will ensue on the trade boards? get real. . .

why does it matter to other players or to turbine if I spend 30 minutes of precious game time running from one location to another? WHY?

if I only have 2 hrs I can spend in game, and you FORCE me to spend 30 minutes of it getting a blasted gem when I used to be able to just find a settlement housing hub and go from there . . . where does the PROGRESS come in? how has this enhanced my game?

ugghhhhhhhh

why don't you do something useful like make the hookable portals like you promised back when AC: DM came out (how long ago was that anyway)? why take away a transportation system that we have come to rely on in our daily gaming? WHY?

I saw how well you listened to our feedback about the xp passup nerf. I don't see this getting any better. hopefully, you'll do a better job of listening than you have in the past. As it is .... you sound like you are too unyielding on how you want people to play their game. . . . . every letter to the players from turbine is a new insight on how inflexible you are to people playing the game in a way that is other than THE TURBINE WAY.


remember to change your office address to ONE TURBINE WAY =P

Red Syke

[Sabu]

mm back to a flame turbine thread. er psst psst loot pssst

[Toxeus]

Thanks for listening Ibn :)

[Havo]

Ok I like the idea of remote areas being remote. Now I am going to vote 100% against your idea. Gems do not solve the problems you are quoting. Either take the game back to pre-DM travel or leave it as it. The Gems idea is just a waste of resources. All that you are going to do is add a bunch of new bots to the marketplace, which BTW you are saying it too crowded now. Please be consistent.

There has not been any "exploration" in AC since AC Explorer came out and there never will be. The information supply for AC is so advanced that new quests take less than 24 hours to get complete write-ups with maps! Now removing portals will just lead to people hunting around established towns, easy to get to lifestones and dungeons, and a few portal hops.

And if they are ugly change them. Move them into the meeting halls. Make it so you have to talk to an “NPC” statue or something and have them summon the portal.

[The Spectre]

Eruditus - Sorry about that, I think maybe I left out a good portion of what I meant to say, and I think I might have misunderstood what they were saying exactly.

I think Housing Gems themselves are a GREAT idea. Having a gem to recall to any housing settlement you want is GOOD.

Now, the part I missed in the original letter was about not being able to get them unless you go to the actual settlement. I thought they meant a vendor would be where the portals USED to be. That would be cool.

After having read through all these posts, I like the idea of clicking on an item and it taking you into a mini-dungeon with portals, or hey, how about a simple ramp underground with the portals out of sight? You proved this tech with the Grievver and Tusker dungeons, so why not do it at the housing portals? That way people can easily get to them (without having to go through 2 portals) and they will be out of the way.

I would still like to see a vendor at the portal sites selling housing gems, as the most popular ones would be nice to get to quickly.

[cstanleytech]

Why not also add a special portal in the dungeons for mansions that is not tieable that leads to another dungeon that has no monsters that has portals to other dungeons with no monsters where the house portals are moved to.
It makes owning a mansion well worth the high cost.

[Chromium Golem]

I don't understand why you would change gems of stillness.
Making them stack is a great idea. However, changing their functioning is a bad idea. The gems of stillness are one of the best items in game for getting rid of tons of negative spells cast upon us in such places as VoD and Sing Caul. If you nerf the gems of stillness so they only get rid of a random number of spells you will ruin their effectiveness. IMHO, antother poor idea probably brought on by some PvP complainers. So, why punsish everyone who plays because of some snot-nose brats whining about gems of stillness being used in PvP? I don't even do any PvP, I fight monsters the really tough monsters who debuff me at a ridiculous rate. If you nerf the stillness gems you are runing the game for me.

[Dom on TD]

Envoys uninscribing.........LOVE IT. I have items inscribed by deleted toons, people I've never been able to catch online, tradebots, and dorks that inscribe everything they sell in the shops"Message me for UI", then they tell you it will cost you an M note. Almost all of my good helms are from the days when IDing an item wasn't guarenteed. So many are inscribed with the AL. WRONGLY inscribed now that they're tinkered. I think having envoys do it instead of an NPC will keep thieves from getting things uninscribed as much.

[kmgff]

Sugguested Solution to Settlement Portal Gems vs Professional Villa Buyers:

Whoever use the gem will have their house purchase timer added by one day. So when you use the gem/enter the portal created by gem if it is summon gem, you cannot buy any housing for the next 24 hours.

It should not be that hard to do.

[Jak Of All]

Who are these people that think that removing settlement portals are a good idea? You don't have to use settlement portals if you don't want to, why do you want to force this ridiculous idea on to the rest of AC? Have you people played this game for 4 years? I don't think so, before settlement portals I ran all over Dereth, do you think this game is more enjoyable running over the same landscape year after year? Do you guys even do quests? Do you understand the problems of questors? I am beginning to think the new server should be put in place so that these idiot ideas can be tested with people who possess the idiocy to suggest them in the first place.

[Zol]

removal of settlement portals only adds time to doing anything to the casual players out there.
I think it is opposite of smart to remove them.

[Ghorak]

"Inscriptions. While their primary responsibility would always to be handle calls that are in the Help or Abuse queues, Envoys could make themselves available to uninscribe items upon request. There would also be scheduled times and places on each world where you could find an Envoy to uninscribe your item. We’re still working on many of the details and are interested in your thoughts on this topic.
The Marketplace."



Just failing to see the point of this. Always thought that inscriptions were permanent to identify a stolen item, give to friend, etc. If a character can just simply request the item to be UIed and the envoy does it then it isn't permanent. If the inscription isn;t permanent, then instead of wasting an envoy's time, just let the character do it themselves.

[knopp]

Settlement portals? I dont use them, but then again I rarely even play AC anymore due to lack of decent content, coherent mechanics and teh fact that I play a game for FUN, not tedium.

Taking the portals out is a bad idea. You get people addicted to a drug then take it away. The addicts will just find a new dealer.

[Jak Of All]

Originally posted by knopp
Settlement portals? I dont use them, but then again I rarely even play AC anymore due to lack of decent content, coherent mechanics and teh fact that I play a game for FUN, not tedium.

Taking the portals out is a bad idea. You get people addicted to a drug then take it away. The addicts will just find a new dealer.

Thats just like posting on a board of a game that you longer play. I suggest you get treatment for your crackhead addiction now and stop posting here.

[Sing]

Settlement Portal Removal:

While I will not miss the ugly settlement portal locations, I think their removal, and replacement by gems (as proposed) is a bad idea.

I do not always have long to play at any one time. I am lucky if I have enough time to meet up with a few friends and complete a quest.

Removing the settlement portals will make it nearly impossible for me to complete a quest with my friends. With the added time of running to the quest, or going bot to bot in the Market Place looking for the correct gem, or even waiting for a fellow to make his way back to the settlement to buy a gem and meet me somewhere with it, will exceed the time I have available to play.

I am not against the removal of the settlement portals as they exist now, but I think there are better alternatives than the one you are proposing.

Why not create them within a dungeon. It could be arranged like the Hub. Also, since the portals would now be in their own dungeon(s), and effectively within their own land block, the portal to this settlement portal dungeon could be moved into the towns they are currently located near. Perhaps in the basement of the “housing people” (can’t think of their name), or in the middle of the town similar to the statue portals.

Towns are not the portal storming places they used to be. This could help facilitate the revival of towns by giving people yet another reason to visit them.

Or, if you are determined to go the gem route, why not have the gems sold by the “housing people” in each town, or a new NPC within these towns. This would essentially serve the same purpose as the settlement portal dungeon described above, it just isn’t as aesthetically pleasing. Although since I’m sure that the settlement portal gems have already been created, I would gladly take this solution over one or more months of your proposed changes, while waiting for the settlement portal dungeons to be created.


Having these gems sold at the settlements themselves is far to inhibiting to travel.

Please reconsider how you are planning to replace the settlement portals.

[nofeir]

One segment of the "house" owning population that's been left out of the travel capabilities provided by the settlement portals is the owners of solo dwellings. Most, if not all, mansions are solo, but owners and their vassals can recall to them using the allegiance recall. You can, however, own a solo cottage or villa to which no one else can recall. There are no settlement portals to these locations. It would be nice if... :)

[StunnedGrowth]

I think most arguments to keep portals are silly. What is the average usage of settlement portals a week per person? It cant be much. 1, maybe 2/per character a week if that. I only say that much if a person was doing spec/unspec/garelans.

Possible usage for a person only consists of a handful of quests that are run on a regular basis. And the only one that would be a pain for a group would be garelans. As if running from Qal is that difficult or long of a run. Yet everyone asking to keep them makes it sound like every moment of ac is going to be running forever. And if your getting a gem for a group of people, odds are you have that time blocked out anyway, you would just prep for it like any other quest that needs prep work, queen, focusing stone keys, etc.

Besides most people spend time in the dires/AL or buried in a olthoi dungeon. Dont fool yourselves, it wouldnt be that big of a change in your playstyles.

This is just another instance where people fear change because that one time a week where they could have used a portal, they have to spend a few minutes running now. Or go buy a gem because they dont want a group to get lost running from Qal to the garelans dungeon.

Why not just give everyone the ability to recall anywhere on the map if it takes so long to run somewhere. geez. suffering, time loss...lol...right.

[Rakulp]

Greetings,

The "average use" is determined by the individual themselves.

For you, it may only be that few, and only for a Gaerlan quest here and there.

For others, it's much more than that, and for many more quests.

Apparently, Turbine doesn't agree with you that it isn't much of a problem, if they're willing to make such a change.

[edwar368]

Firstly let me just say that the comment about removing them because they are "Ugly" is just plain stupid! Ugly is in the eye of the beholder. If you are saying you are removing them to make people explore more then I can see the principal but dont agree with the idea.

I simply read "Explore more" as "Run lots more" I believe you will be increasing the amount of "boring" time in the game and this will actually have a negative effect as those who perhaps only log on a few times a week or for limited periods simply will not be bothered to run from place to place. The Gems idea does not resolve this issue as pack space is limited for mst users as it is.

Bad idea, recind it please:(

[Baby Ogre]

Two pyreals from a casual gamer, one who isn't one of the OMG things are changing it must be bad, lets start flaming b4 it happens........... obviouly by my post count, I don't fit into that category.


As a casual player of AC for 4+ years, I don't log in for my hour or so of enjoyment to spend the better part of it running from point A to point B. Hitting the Q key and then watching my avatar run for 20 minutes is not why I play nor PAY.

If they are ugly, hide them underground or in a building, as far as unbalancing the game....... I don't think so.

[Pigroast]

let him post jak, who are you to tell who can post here and who can't?

[Truth Seeker]

One thing that seems to be missing from this change is justification.

1st we had : They are ugly....which got laughed at and changed.

2nd we got: We want you to explore more....although turbine are now obviously considering playing the gem sellers in towns (possibly as well as at settlements)...nullifying this argument

3rd.......well there is no 3rd......and currently I can see no justification for this change from Turbine.

Which leads me to 1 conclusion....the only thing left to justify this as is....A Moneysink

At a time when people all over seem to be complaining they they can't find enough cash to restock their comps Turbine wish to introduce another cash sink...WHY?

I saw an auction the other day where the guy valued Plats more than Sings...because he doesn't want to have to loot every corpse and grab every scrap of loot just to make ends meet. The last thing this game needs right now is another cash sink.

[Dom on TD]

Originally posted by Truth Seeker
I saw an auction the other day where the guy valued Plats more than Sings...because he doesn't want to have to loot every corpse and grab every scrap of loot just to make ends meet. The last thing this game needs right now is another cash sink.

Actually, since Turbine is nerfing Sing troves, Sing keys will be worthless anyways. Ibn already stated that Sing Keys are available to lower level characters, therefore they're not going to be top of the loot chain anymore. I would rather have seen them move all sing troves to VOD (the 100+ area on the map), rather than make my sings worthless...........

[Funky BM]

While I may not like some of the changes, I can see how they will better the game. Keep up the good work!!!

FBM

[Sho Nilrem]

I really dislike your solution to the setlement portals my mage has little enough space in his pack as it is......
But even worse is the case of my sword swinger who is also a 3school mage...... Comeon guys you can do better then portal gems I know that you can ........

Dispell gems......... leave them alone is tough enough to get thru some areas w/o having to track howmany gems u use to get shed of things

the new mods sound good and should help balance things

houseing timers hm ok i guess but do not c the problem

i like the concepts page and definately approve of the increased information concerning changes to the gaming economy


BUT I REALLY HATE THE SOLUTION TO THE HOUSING PORTALS

hm dispell gems revisted: WHY IS THERE NO THREAD TO ADDRESS this the appaerent number 2 issue? are we being set up again in that only the main issue is getting it's own respond to thread?

[Neue Regel]

Dom on TD

For the 1000th time, they are not nerfing the troves.

They said that they were CURRENTLY located in areas that were accessable by lower level players, as well as the location for obtaining the keys. In the future, both will be in 80+ areas of the map. Sing troves will be have the same loot they had before but they are introducing a higher level of loot never before in the game making the troves second in loot only becasue of this higher level loot.

So many people misunderstand this. Reread the explaination by Turbine.

The Troves have been nerfed like all other loot for Feb, but it was explained that they will be adjusted with March event. If you dont want yoru keys, my Trade Bot will take them.

[Count of MC]

I don't know why the settlement portals are such a big issue, personally I DON'T miss running 1 hour to get to a quest that takes 10 mins to get through. (Great example is the skill sell back or Focusing Stone) The gems are a good idea to balance this but are they going to be at a convinient location so if you don't want to run all the way there you can at least buy the gem and use it like the portals are mostly used now? ANd for the one's that like running all the way... SKIP THE PORTAL AND RUN.. no one is stoping you.:p

Great ideas about the uninscribes and the marketplace repositioning.

[Binky]

Portal settlement : Ok it will upset many people because they will have to run, but OMG i proposed this idea, except it was a command /house summon. Gems are a far better idea! it will value house's location, and dealing gems or running to get one for a group is nice.

Great Idea. It's way to easy to get from place to place on Dereth as it is with these settlement portals.


Dispel : well i am worried about the useless of Random number, and also the use of the Awakener (gonna be changed?) since, as i posted in a thread, if you walk 20 times on a tusker gift trap, debuffiing will requiere like 5-6 attemps, to dispell 1 spell ....

Another Great Idea. People abuse the heck out of dispell gems (even in pvm circumstances). The fact some people aren't even willin to go thru a dungeon/pvp with even just one debuff before they pop a gem is pathetic.

Buff improvement : Are healing and transfere going into the life self also ? The idea is AMAZING ! great yes, mostly i am a melee

One of the best things this game has done thusfar. And no Healin/Transfer aren't and shouldn't be included. If a mage could cast level 7 heal at the speed of a level 1 ..................


Treasure change : i want to say "Finaly ! missile and magic def mod!'

I agree 100% these were long overdue

Seconnd class weapon : not sure i understood it :d

Anything NOT sword or UA. Basically they are "Tweaking" weopons skills no one uses because they in no way compare to the two "top" weopon skills

Fellowship spells : go on, it will work in team with fellowship quest for amazing possibility i already see a buff : protect 100% from fire, and then in the quest, you have to get a fire bolt casted on you doing like 100.000 damage, even a pro VII + ward would kill you, but you have the 100% fellow spell quest !

It was stated in the notes these spells wouldn't be overpowered. They'd be normal buffs anyone could cast but they could affect the whole group. So like you could cast Armor Self VII on your entire group etc.

[Hal_E_Tosis]

why are the majority paying a penalty to make the minority happier?

nerfing the dispell gems makes how many happy vs how many unhappy?

the fact that they are currently not stackable makes them fair enough for everyone . leave them as they are. nerfing the dispell gem only benifits PKers . you want to level the PK playing field?? allow melee/archer types to cast spells without changing from weapon to wand. the criiters get to do it. why shouldn't we?


sound a bit harsh? sound a bit unbalancing? sounds as fair to me as the proposed dispell gem nerf.

[Ibn]

Originally posted by Binky
Anything NOT sword or UA. Basically they are "Tweaking" weopons skills no one uses because they in no way compare to the two "top" weopon skills

That's not actually the case. We are tweaking weapons within each weapon class. For example, the base damage of a Morningstar (the highest-damage Mace) is not being increased. However the base damage of a Tofun (which was considerably less) is being raised to the same base as the Morningstar.

[Ivy_Windchaser]

My biggest concern is the removal of settlement portals.

I'm one of those people who has explored nearly every inch of Dereth (long before the settlement portals were introduced) and continue to run around without provocation to find even more things I might have missed. But I must admit I had grown to enjoy the ease of travel brought about with the settlement portals and will miss them once removed.

I think that the removal of the portals will have an opposite effect. You'll find that people will explore less often when they have to run 40 clicks from the nearest town. The concept is flawed. You're not likely to attract people to a behavior by making it more difficult. You're going to find whole sections of the continent neglected and the quests based off of them ignored. Plus quests that all characters, even weak ones like mules and low-levels, would be nearly impossible, such as the skill spec/despec/detrain and attribute redistribution.

So I propose an alternative:

Since they are unattractive, why not revamp the poor, unused Town Meeting Halls and put the settlement portals in there? That way those concerned about the aesthetics of the portals will be satisfied, and you give people a reason to start using the antiquated meeting halls again. Or if you're insistant upon the vendor-gem idea, put the vendors with the portal gems inside the meeting halls.

Now for a big thank you!

Thank you, Ibn, for caring enough to recognize and to repair a communication problem. These broadcasts of proposed ideas are excellent for both Turbine's image and ability to provide a quality product and for garnering player feedback.

[Seishin_HG]

“Hidden” Properties No Longer Hidden - nice

Character Options - nice

Character Display Options - ok

Crafting Confirmation - THANKS!

Settlement Portals - If you really want to force running everywhere then remove ALL portals except into dungeons. Since that does not appear to be your reasoning why remove them? I frequently run but each night, USING PORTALS, I spend 30 to 90 minutes running just to buy, sell, turn in. Now, without housing portals my play time is decreased because I have to run around mountains? Uh, thanks?

Vendor Buy-Sell Rates - no problem. Sounds like pyreal runs will replace the current lack of pyreal generating loot. The question will be, who writes the first macro to do this? :(

Dispel Revisions - nice, since only negative spells will be removed but PLEASE make them stackable. When removing 30+ debuffs the number of gems needed will go up to the point of not using them. Good thing I rarely use them now! :)

Buffing Improvements - Hmmm, have you considered that Melee Types which already take longer just to bane than mages do to fully buff and bane will now take so long they may not be welcome on quests? The reason for other buffs is easy to understand, but why not Item. It sounds like the reason was "it is difficult to code for item spells."

House Purchase Timer - nice, too bad enforcing the EULA and CoC is too difficult even in the most obvious case.

Treasure Changes, Phase 3 - interesting.... with the reduced loot and salvage, has any thought been given to raising the rate on imbues? 17 wands and 17 bags of salvage and still no fire rending wand.

Fellowship Spells - waiting to see the effects

Inscriptions - YEAH!!!!! However, You might consider only removing some types of inscriptions... Offensive and useless (sell, junk, salvage, x, s, etc) inscriptions should be allowed but personal inscriptions (to my best friend, etc) should not. Others (DI, Mine, etc) are debatable, but I side with allowing their removal.

[Jak Of All]

Originally posted by Pigroast
let him post jak, who are you to tell who can post here and who can't?

Pig I really don't care who posts here, what I was responding to was this "Taking the portals out is a bad idea. You get people addicted to a drug then take it away. The addicts will just find a new dealer. " Maybe you didn't read this right but by my reading he is calling the people who object to the removal of portals drug addicts. Maybe you don't object to these implied insults. (that's enough)

[goldeelox]

Couldn't you just put 1 port with the rest within as you do for apartments ? This completely cut the north off their are no accesses without great distance running to the necessary clorizite exchanges and such.People are very burdened when they go to do this usually. You actually think a 25 that gets buffed for the skill sell back can find ways around the mountains to get to 88.8n ? I think their are more viable options. I run all over derith get tired of one area run in another. I think you wipe out alot of work in routing that has been done through the many settlement ports of derith. I use these more than I use these subway.