Let us know what you think of the June Letter to the Players! [Archive]

Yew Wan Sum

05-26-2004, 12:00 PM

I agree with the above poster.

Your fishing changes are (bad), but since I don't fish, I guess I shouldn't be uspet, right? Wrong. I was hoping for some new fishing holes in harder places, maybe in dungeons or locations with spawns about.

I was hoping you would spend your time EXPANDING fishing, rather than nerfing it.

Let me make my point clear:

You are embarked on a crusade designed to witch hunt macros which don't affect me, or anyone else, in the least and in the process you are destroying any remaining usefulness or pleasure inherent in any system to the person who actually wants to use it.

Oh sure, for crafting, you promise rewards down the road, but the nerf has to go in NOW! Why? I hope you don't expect me to buy that **** about destabalising the servers when I have lived through spike macros, plat bugs, old-school arwic, etc. I can't see how even 20 macros could make any affect, when you have 40+ of them in marketplace trading, buffing, summoning, etc with another half dozen PKL's running about and 20+ live people in addition. I don't like being lied to, and I don't want to even assume that you ever would, but this sounds like a 'manufactured excuse' or at the very least a 'gloss-over' of the real reasons you are spending time on this rather than on missle pathing and other upgrades.

Lastly, what about the ability of officers to do /allegiance info? The game specifically says they can, but they cannot, and I can see no reason not to at *least* let them do this. How is an officer supposed to judge the affect of booting someone prior to doing so if they can't even see who their vassals are? How is a person's patron supposed to be contacted to deal with an issue, if that person is offline and you don't know who their patron is? Its not like you have anything useful like an allegiance structure export. /allegiance info is all there is, and unless the monarch is on 24/7, you can't currently get this information. This defeats a part of the very purpose of having officers to begin with.

Please enable this functionality until you decide what else you want to do.

Edit: spelling and a missed 'not'

Maxymyllyn

05-26-2004, 12:19 PM

...but the 'In Concept' section seems really really bare.

Are we going back to the old days of 'guess what's coming to dinner'? Or are you guys focusing on the transfer of billing info to turbine?

Gouru

05-26-2004, 12:19 PM

A couple of questions on the Gaerlan quest. I applaud that you need to kill him now, when the globals were removed all reasons for killing him were removed so dungeons were rarely reset.

However, my wife and I enjoy doing this quest together. She has a lvl 37 bow and I a lvl 35 mage. We have not taken on Gaerlan because this combo has ZERO chance of killing him. With the changes is he being softened up to where we can?

Getting groups of low level toons together to do this quest is nigh on impossible. I'd hate to have to give it up.

Second questions, has the 1 hour spawn on the starting golem changed? That has to be the most common request for this quest.

And lastly, did the timers change so we can have regular scheduled weekly runs?

Silver

05-26-2004, 12:21 PM

I'm still very upset about sword getting nerfed and the other weapons tweeked, it's just unfair since sword costs 16 creds to spec and axe/mace 12 (and spear like 8)

evolutionoccurs

05-26-2004, 12:25 PM

Ok those guys are really nerdy. They just can't let things go all out good and easy for self buffing huh. Gotta increase mana useage 3 fold hence cast Stamina to Mana 5X which is still gonna be a longated boring spell no doubt. But still it'll be somewhat quicker. (no complaints truthfully,but it's just 'nerdy'...) Whichever I doubt i'll play again till they improve packspace anyways. Heh what's the use in playing when u only have 12-18 loot spaces with the 100 diferent kinds of salvage ingame(factoring in diferent workmanships)to pickup and salvage. That plus all the unsalvaged you pickup leaves you with alot of tedious salvage breaks you must endure. :( cya when they implement the 'the salvage pack which contains 100+ spaces or another 3 packs or so...

or they can make things easier and give us a 'master foci' which fullfills the needs of all types of magic......I mean magic is magic and the need for each type foci isn't really neccessary; even if the 'master foci' is a quest(hint) it'd make things a little better. Truthfully a 'master foci' plus a salvage 'Pack' which they'v stated will only hold partial bags are the two items which'd help tremedously. Long as the 'salvage pack' keeps burden of these 60+min. partials down to somewhat a minimum. I mean it's almost completely neccessary to build certain toons with 10 innate Strength and that combined with the need to carry mulitiple weapon imbues leaves alot of people with a starting strength closing in on being burdened....... Another 50-100 starting innate attribute points wouldnt hurt either.

And OMFG give us Prismatic Peas. LMAO I used to hunt for 4-6 days w/o needing to visit the silly master mage. Not to point out how many times my Weaker toons have ran outa comps and had to use a portal gem cause prismatic peas were never introduced.

Well cya on expansion date till than i'll keep my accounts unactive since these complaints will probably stay unanswered as they always have since salvaging and foci have been introduced.

Signalerror

05-26-2004, 12:26 PM

Originally posted by Silver
I'm still very upset about sword getting nerfed and the other weapons tweeked, it's just unfair since sword costs 16 creds to spec and axe/mace 12 (and spear like 8)

Sheesh you act like its the end of the world here. All they are doing is lowering it bring it back into line with other melee skills.

The Taken

05-26-2004, 12:35 PM

"I'm still very upset about sword getting nerfed and the other weapons tweeked, it's just unfair since sword costs 16 creds to spec and axe/mace 12 (and spear like 8)"

I guess you haven't ever tried to PK with axe/mace..Might as well use dagger, its about as useful

N B K

05-26-2004, 12:48 PM

Outstanding!

One question.

Will the item spells cast fast (like a level 1 spell)?

Silver

05-26-2004, 12:49 PM

The other changes are good tho, but oh my weeping sword :(

Maxymyllyn

05-26-2004, 12:49 PM

...it's the most expensive melee skill to have.

Therefore, by logic, it should be the best.

But IMHO, this 'nerf' doesn't take away from sword being the best melee skill :-D

Curfax_of_TD

05-26-2004, 12:50 PM

It really provides lots of good information, and truly makes me and my wife anticipate every patch.

Shaolin

05-26-2004, 01:03 PM

still no archery fix/tweak (one that is worthwhile),

useless fishing tweaking (remove it) it is beyond pointless,

loot gen missile aegis weapons, grrrrr....
let me guess 123% aegis effect no melee mod right?
may as well not bother if this is the case.

only good thing is item buffs, and mage damage increase,
however, you need to stick to things you say you are going to do and not keep switching when it suits you and not the players.

Paraduck

05-26-2004, 01:03 PM

Personally, I don't care if the item spells will cast as fast as level 1s. I'd assume no because of the possibility for multiple targets, but that's a good question (along with the increase in mana cost being before or after the Mana Conversion mana cost reduction.) Since I buff nine pieces of armor, I'm definitely fine with item spells maintaining the same casting time and I’m willing to bet most players are too. However, I still think the idea of a Prismatic/multi-bane spell is better. :p

Maxy, I'm not terribly happy about the Sword nerf either, but I understand it. I do think that many of these PK issues need to be resolved before/with the expansion though (Jump spin, etc.) It'll be fair then. Sword will still have the most damage of all the melee weapons -- it's damage is just reduced by 14%

Kestrel

05-26-2004, 01:22 PM

I think it's great the reward for the Eviscerator pincer is being reduced -- that was waaaaaaaaay too easy for the amount of XP given -- especially with 3 pincers dropping per spawn, as it has been for almost 2 years. And countering that with additional higher-level pincer quests is outstanding! I can't believe anyone would complain about that. (Well, yes, I can believe it. Some of those folks are secretly hoping for the "Level 126" button. ;))

The change to banes is outstanding! (What about 1-cast weapon buffs next? :))

Max Fox

05-26-2004, 01:27 PM

Potential...War...Magic...DoT...Improvements...

Excuse me, I need to go change my undies.:cool:

DarkMarcsun

05-26-2004, 01:29 PM

The Eviscerator Pincer nerf makes absolutely no sense to me. The quest is barely run as it is - why provide an even greater disincentive to do it? By the time you buff up and run to and through the dungeon you could make 2 million xp in half a dozen other spots. I don't see the need to nerf it further.

KPD157

05-26-2004, 01:31 PM

This time I am dissapointed at the people who Post on these boards :)

In the Crafting Changes we had the oppertunity to give alternatives that would offer a way for Crafters to keep their fun but remove the Macro advantage. I was one of the only posters maybe the only that offered an alternative that would still remove Macroes but not at the expense of the fun of Crafting and selling. I didn't even see anything about an alternative to what was being Nerfed in the LTTP and I beleive thats because we didn't band together for it and have support drawn to it. For all those who are "True" crafters you must feel as I do that We didn't cry out enough to Turbine or was too small a voice in asking for an alternative that would still remove the Problem.

As For Fishing :) If Fishing was like it will be next Patch and I just learned about it and tried it out I would be intriqued It was fun catching Fish and learning how to catch bigger fish. The Big Items and Salvage was a nice thing but Fishing is fishing Guys. Until I see how it works I don't really know how bad Fishing has been Nerfed I suspect that a Macroer still can make more from it than a Live Person though and that is the problem I see in all Nerfs that target the Live and Macro player.

The Best thing they could have done was make Fish 33% selled at the TackleMaster. Reduce the Salvage levels on all things found to 2. And Not only have things that couldn't be sold to the store due to no value but also maybe for a value of 100 Pyreals at the Tackle master or to keep for its uses leaving in level 1-5 spells on items. Also Reduce the Chances of non fish items to 1% of the things caught ;)

You know this is Why Gambling lost alot of Fun. Fishing was something that you wowed about when caught something and steadily the stuff comming out of the holes been getting worse. Maybe add some cost to Fishing if you really want to or some limitation that only live players can figure out and not Bots. I hope we all learned what happens when we try to protect things we love to do that aren't with Turbines plans. When we let a Cancer form on our Great Loves in the game they get cut out so we are the ones to blame for not doing enough on our side.

Even though I would rather see the cancer cut out without hurting the organ I still think Turbine has done a good thing just that we havn't done enough thats all.

Thank you for reading :)

Edit > Bah these Internet outages are playing havoc on my posting :)

Ryori

05-26-2004, 01:36 PM

Most things sound good. I hope MC works well with the item magic.

If you are going to fix fishing, then I agree, fix fishing. If you know how to hit R then you've mastered fishing. Seemed like there was some plan to modify it when it came out... After the first month it seemed to become a macro only thing. Crafting was changed for this so reducing the loot means fishing becomes near pointless after 30 minutes. Sorry - fishing is my pet peeve of tedium.

I hate to complain just yet about the change to the Evis Pincer given you said new ones are coming. But this does make me wonder if you understand how bad "Quest" XP is compared to camping.

I can blow away 2 million XP with a level 50. Most folks I know quit going unless they needed the GoS. So as an XP reward it wasn't really good before, now you're making it worse.

The Evis Dungeon is what we need more of, in my opinion. There are not enough bugs to make it worth camping to hunt. And the reward outshadows the XP if you did camp it.

Unlike the Silvers which I ran as part of my tusk run. I made 700K just getting to the tusk and another 200K on the way out for a 500K tusk.

I need to reserve complete judgement till the new pincers come out, but seems like you just added another point to camp over quest.

scarey mary

05-26-2004, 01:45 PM

actually 2 officers is a good amount

Brokin

05-26-2004, 01:46 PM

things look great going forward.

But I was really REALLY hoping to hear an update on the salvage skill for non-guar characters. Does it not being mentioned mean that it is pushed 2+ patches out?

Oh, I like the proposed solution for Item Magic improvements. Having additional pieces add to mana cost at least keeps some advantage to having a suit made of less peices without making higher number of peices as daunting as before. But what is the status on the multi-spell creature/life scrolls?

Zhen_Ebonfire

05-26-2004, 01:46 PM

Starting in June, if you target yourself with Impenetrability or a Bane spell, it will automatically cast itself on any piece of armor or clothing you are wearing. The mana cost of the spell will increase by 20% of the base spell cost for each enchanted piece of armor.

My item-only pure melee thanks you greatly for this change. My goal of being buff-bot independent is somewhat realistic now.

My biggest reservation is the spell cost for a char w/o Life magic. I really don't like having to invest 6 points in Mana Conversion just to make this viable. With a low innate Self, if I fizzle a few times w/o Mana Conversion I'm stuck trying to get back mana. It's not unworkable, but I'd certainly appreciate some attention to the virtual requirement for a non-mage to have Mana Conversion.

Aside from that... Thanks!

Stout

05-26-2004, 01:47 PM

I didn't see any mention of changing the timers on the Golem spawn for the Gaerlan quest.

Is there any chance of shortening those timers to 30mins or so? Our small group in the 80+ has gotten to where we can do the whole quest in less than 45 mins, and yes, that included killing him. So on average we are spending 50 mins waiting for the golem and less time to actually do the quest. Gaerlan himself respawns in like 5 mins anyways.

I hope changing the timers is part of the revamp and it just wasn't mentioned in the lttp.

- Stout, LC

Paco_Taco_TD

05-26-2004, 02:00 PM

like most of the changes, except the pvp changes, posted on that thread

Harzah

05-26-2004, 02:16 PM

Starting in June, if you target yourself with Impenetrability or a Bane spell, it will automatically cast itself on any piece of armor or clothing you are wearing. The mana cost of the spell will increase by 20% of the base spell cost for each enchanted piece of armor.

...

That's exactly how I DIDN'T want you to do item buffing. >: ( Grrrr. I don't want Impenatribility to cast on my Coat - it does it itself. I don't want Frost Bane to cast on my helm - it does that itself. Bleh.

I really hope this is the first generation version.

I note weapon buffs are entirely absent from your proposed changes.

Rhesus

05-26-2004, 02:22 PM

Question regarding the giveable Gaerlan rewards:

Will the existing ivoried Gaerlan wands be made un-ivoried so I can trade them around?

N B K

05-26-2004, 02:27 PM

"...That's exactly how I DIDN'T want you to do item buffing. >: ( Grrrr. I don't want Impenatribility to cast on my Coat - it does it itself. I don't want Frost Bane to cast on my helm - it does that itself. Bleh."

Your Coat casts Brogard's Defiance on itself already?:eek:

Shaolin

05-26-2004, 02:29 PM

nope nbk, it casts a higher lvl spell.

N B K

05-26-2004, 02:34 PM

Hmmm. Never heard of this Coat. Which one? What level spell?

Tethys_SC

05-26-2004, 02:44 PM

suh-weet!

T

Shaolin

05-26-2004, 02:46 PM

Ancient armoured vestment. (blackmire)

+225 impen spell

Sangria

05-26-2004, 02:51 PM

I like the new Item spell set up. It really makes being a mage more rewarding. I saw some concern over the mana cost to use item buffs and all I can say is - you would have used the mana anyway to buff things individually. So the amount of mana needed hasn't really changed that much.

I am looking forward to checking out the new patch and the new world.

The only other thing that would brighten my day would be if Turbine announced they were taking over the accounts and the Zone was gone from our lives forever.

N B K

05-26-2004, 03:04 PM

Sorry Shaolin, when you said "Coat" I was thinking, covers chest, upper and lower arms, and maybe girth.

Shultz

05-26-2004, 03:46 PM

In June, we will be making all player-craftable items unsellable.

I beg your pardon???

Player craftable items are any that you can lift off of monsters!! You're going to undermine the entire basis of the economy of AC. The main source of income for us is to sell loot.

When you say player-craftABLE items, you're talking about virtually any and all loot picked up off of monsters.

IS SOMEONE PAYING ATTENTION HERE?? This will REALLY hurt AC because lots of players will leave because of all player-craftable items being unsellable.

Also, the ratings (if you see my signature) may plummet down to "The Sims Online"'s level (~3.8)!!

Somebody, ANYBODY!!! Please take action.

Stout

05-26-2004, 03:46 PM

Going on the assumption that the timers for the Golems in the Gaerlan quest haven't changed...

I figure some kind of a digital reader-board in the dungeon letting us know how long till the golem will spawn is probably out of the question.

I also figure, as appropriate as it may be, putting a chess board in the spawn room is probably also out of the question.

But, how about some static quick spawn of golems in the last room there to keep us "entertained" while we wait for the big guys to spawn?

- Stout, LC

Edit for Shultz:
I think they ment Player craftED, not craftABLE. That may ease your worries.

-D-W-

05-26-2004, 03:56 PM

So despite all the negative feedback you will go ahead with this unnecessary overreaction of making all craftable items unsellable.

Despite all the reasoned arguments with alternatives to this drastic change you will ignore us and proceed.

Way to go.

We do appreciate your attention.

Dendin

05-26-2004, 03:57 PM

Schultz, player crafted/craftable items mean just that CRAFTED, not tinkered, not imbued, CRAFTED. They released a huge letter on this, you should read it.

http://ac.turbinegames.com/index.php?page_id=242

Lucrenda

05-26-2004, 03:59 PM

I have a question regarding the item magic change. I have a set of armor that I use solely for buffing, ie. major creature, major will and major item. I put them on and buff the other items. With the changes in item, how will this affect all of us who use buffing armor which we then take off and wield our battle armor. This seems like something that will affect mainly non-mage types who need all the help they can get to get there skills up.

I don't want to buff my buffing armor, I want to buff my battle armor.

Thank you for clarifying this for me.

Rogue Hunter

05-26-2004, 04:08 PM

WHY ON DERETH!!! Would you make the new bindstone recall command "@allegiance hometown"? Can you guys make your commands any MORE tedious to type? I mean are you guys trying to torture your customers?

The obvious choice for this command should have been:

@allegiance hometown -> @bindstone

Better yet just make quick commads for most of them:

@lifestone -> @ls
@bindstone -> @bs
@house mansion_recal -> @hmr
@house recall -> @hr
@marketplace -> @botland

Phoenix

05-26-2004, 04:08 PM

The changes look good to me.

Ibn

05-26-2004, 04:21 PM

Originally posted by Marius of FF
Just curious if this is going to be a "low to midlevel" place everywhere? Or if there will be some 80+ content in there.

I just posted a new Marae Lassel landscape spawn map on our Downloads (http://ac.turbinegames.com/index.php?page_id=172) page which should answer these questions.

The 60-80 area should, I think, be comparable to other 60-80 areas on Dereth.

Ibn

05-26-2004, 04:22 PM

Originally posted by Dom on TD
So the difficulty will NOT go up? I hope not. As for everything else, it looks good especially the recycling rewards and xp rewards for 126 players on gaerlan. Keep up the good work.

That is correct, the difficulty on the spell does not change.

Ibn

05-26-2004, 04:23 PM

Originally posted by Hephaestus
Got another question on the changes to "item" self spells, will they be sped up to level one speed also?

They were not sped up.

Ibn

05-26-2004, 04:25 PM

Originally posted by vellus
does the new way the item spells work have an all or nothing effect?

It cost an extra 20% mana per item being cast on, if I only have enough mana to cast on 5 of the 6 items will it fizzle and lose a larger chunk of mana? Will mana conversion be based on each 20% or on the big number for the mana needed?

It's all or nothing. If, after mana conversion, you have enough mana to enchant all of the items, the spell will cast on all of them. If you do not have enough mana to cast on all of them, it will fail and no items will be enchanted.

SegZavier

05-26-2004, 04:26 PM

Some of the changes look quite interesting, I think you might want to rethink the Bindstone recall command.

The item buff changes look really good. Hopefully you had some good testing done with it, otherwise we could be looking at some very annoying issues.

The addition of new pincer rewards is promising. Hopefully they are worth a fair amount otherwise they will be ignored by those who are only about the levels.

I look forward to seeing more info on the Salvage skill that was talked about in a previous letter to the players.

And some statement in regards to the Guardian Golems with the Gaerlan Quest would be greatly appreciated.

Ibn

05-26-2004, 04:27 PM

Originally posted by Yew Wan Sum
Lastly, what about the ability of officers to do /allegiance info?

This is being added for June.

Ibn

05-26-2004, 04:29 PM

Originally posted by Maxymyllyn
Are we going back to the old days of 'guess what's coming to dinner'? Or are you guys focusing on the transfer of billing info to turbine?

Well, we've already got a lot on our plate from previous In Concept articles that haven't made it into Development yet. Since many of those ideas require engineering time -- a good deal of which is dedicated to the billing transition -- we decided not to add anything more to that stack until we pulled a few more things off of it.

Dendin

05-26-2004, 04:33 PM

So the "In Concept" section only holds the new additions each month, not the entire list?

SegZavier

05-26-2004, 04:35 PM

Originally posted by Ibn
Well, we've already got a lot on our plate from previous In Concept articles that haven't made it into Development yet. Since many of those ideas require engineering time -- a good deal of which is dedicated to the billing transition -- we decided not to add anything more to that stack until we pulled a few more things off of it.

Something that might be appreciated is if you were to post things "In Concept" that you have posted previously. To let players know that you are still discussing it as a possibility.

This system of doing this is greatly appreciated, but sometimes if an item isn't mentioned some who are really looking forward to that item might be worried that it has been removed from the plate.

Or in place of mentioning specific items each month maybe a page with a list of "In Concept" items.

[edit: Dendin I believe that In Concept is something they brought up in a developer meeting but are not currently working on coding at this time. Or have started trying to figure out how to code it in.]

Gouru

05-26-2004, 04:39 PM

Question on the distribution map....QQ spawn some pretty heavy creatures on the landscape. Will Brood Nobles still be spawning in the 40-60 plateau areas? They don't feel much like a 40-60 critter...

Dendin

05-26-2004, 04:40 PM

Yeah, I mean that the things listed on the "In Concept" section each month, are only the new additions to the complete "In Concept" list that they have, as opposed to the whole list.

Jinnsman

05-26-2004, 04:58 PM

all i can say about the item enchantment changes... WAHOO!!!!

glad that fishing is being fixed.

very glad that the QQ and other quests are now independent (non-interconnected... lol).

hurray for bindstones, one more place to easily get to and hopefully revive towns!

june should be fun!!!

Hephaestus

05-26-2004, 05:05 PM

Thanks for your quick replies IBN!

Ibn

05-26-2004, 05:06 PM

Originally posted by Gouru
A couple of questions on the Gaerlan quest. I applaud that you need to kill him now, when the globals were removed all reasons for killing him were removed so dungeons were rarely reset.

However, my wife and I enjoy doing this quest together. She has a lvl 37 bow and I a lvl 35 mage. We have not taken on Gaerlan because this combo has ZERO chance of killing him. With the changes is he being softened up to where we can?

Getting groups of low level toons together to do this quest is nigh on impossible. I'd hate to have to give it up.

Second questions, has the 1 hour spawn on the starting golem changed? That has to be the most common request for this quest.

And lastly, did the timers change so we can have regular scheduled weekly runs?

Gaerlan is slightly easier to kill now, but I doubt that you and your wife will be able to kill him on your own. I know this must be disappointing for you but we felt that the rewards justify the difficulty.

The spawn on the Guardian Golems has been reduced to 15 minutes.

Your last question, this is the request to reduce the timer to 6 days 23 hours or such? No, this was not changed.

Ibn

05-26-2004, 05:12 PM

Originally posted by Rhesus
Question regarding the giveable Gaerlan rewards:

Will the existing ivoried Gaerlan wands be made un-ivoried so I can trade them around?

I do not believe so. I believe existing ivoried wands will retain their wielder requirements.

Ibn

05-26-2004, 05:14 PM

Originally posted by Shultz
Player craftable items are any that you can lift off of monsters!! You're going to undermine the entire basis of the economy of AC. The main source of income for us is to sell loot.

"Player craftable" items are items that can be created by players, such as potions, arrows, many foods, etc. This does not refer to items that can be TINKERED by players, such as most loot. The vast majority of loot from monsters will still be sellable.

Ibn

05-26-2004, 05:25 PM

Originally posted by SegZavier
Or in place of mentioning specific items each month maybe a page with a list of "In Concept" items.

My plan is to create a static page on the AC site that shows all current In Development and In Concept topics, haven't had the opportunity to do this yet unfortunately.

The LttP only mentions new topics and topics that have changed.

Tolliver

05-26-2004, 05:31 PM

Setolc

05-26-2004, 05:35 PM

Originally posted by Ibn
Gaerlan is slightly easier to kill now, but I doubt that you and your wife will be able to kill him on your own. I know this must be disappointing for you but we felt that the rewards justify the difficulty.

The spawn on the Guardian Golems has been reduced to 15 minutes.

Your last question, this is the request to reduce the timer to 6 days 23 hours or such? No, this was not changed.

I am sure this has been thought of, but I thought the reason for the 60 minute spawn timer on the entrance golem was to prevent groups from being trapped in the trials if Gaerlan is killed?

Will that mechanic also be changed?

_AbBaNdOn

05-26-2004, 05:48 PM

Absolutely freaking awesome!!!!

-Your proposed item buffs are PERFECT. You just made the game 10x better for me. yada yada yada gotta move on to next subject but thank you so much for an awesome job on item magic.

-What is happening with Usts?? anything? They were gonna start keeping salvage seperate as it melts stuff?? One of the threads in my sig has a suggestion for Usts.

-Evisc pincer.... I UNDERSTAND we will be getting a bigger fatter pincer and i am totally excited to see what i have to kill to get it. But you have to understand those pincers are already way under powered. If you stay in those dungeons and just hunt you will make the same or more than what the pincer is worth even if you can barely enter the portal because of your level. Maybe if they all got turned into % pincers so as you grow in level it still retains its usefulness.

The new pincer......new quest = tons of people trying to do it. I hope to god you guys are planning ahead and making alot of the bugs at the end drop the pincer.

-Please im begging make it so low level loot does not filter upwards through the loot system. There is no way i should find no req or 250 req weapons killing swarm mutilators. Or chain, scale, or studded leather. Shirts and pants clothing i guess has to drop because they can have spells but cloth gaunts and solls and hats should all be of some armored variety like cov or celdon or yoroi or whatever.

monsters level 80-125 need increased loot(4-5 pieces) and need to drop more gold and silver items.

-My biggest gripe right now is mage vendors... before when rithwic had the low price mage I could sell and restock whenever. Now it takes a 10-15 minute trek to restock and the problem with that is usually when coming back from a hunting trip i can not sell all of my loot at once because of limited space!!! So i gotta make two trips.

I think mage gems should be totally cheaper like 1-5k pyreals OR you should make pyreals stack to 100k OR totally do away with pyreals in our inventory and give us a purse that keeps track of our money which would consist of a little window someplace that says pyreals = ------------ whatever number. If you use the purse then we could still click and drag stacks of pyreals out of the purse to do whatever with. But you would have to figure out a way for usto pay rent and buy from vendors by only using our purse.

-future item magic:
#1. BD+HS+SK+Def = one spell, new spell
#2. imp+7banes = one spell with lv1 speed that is totally new(this is for people who use items to buff up and arent wearing their fighting armor while they do it, it will also be extremely useful to people with shields)
#3. Recall to corpse, recall corpse to you, recall to tied person, summon tied person to you, third/fourth/fifth portal ties and summons =P

-Dyeing additions and changes has GOT TO BE a priority now that you have totally opened up the way for new ways to wear armor!!!!!

-You have killed allegience chains, money macro's, now go for the gold and kill decal.

-One thing i think archers need love with.. crafting arrows is a long process and besides tradebots its the only other reason i use decal. Give archers a way to craft like 10 wrapped bundles of arrows at once. You could also make 25,50,75, and 100 wrapped bundles at a time possable. This would kill all need for a macro to make arrows.

You make infusions, then oils, then apply them to the heads, then maybe you could introduce a new step here where you use a mold pea or something to copy the ones u made which would require a fletching check. This would multiply the bundle of heads x the type of pea you used.

To make 100 of the most expensive bundles costs 384,000 pyreals(atleast the last time i made them). So start with that as the cost of the pea that will create 100 bundles.

Anyways awesome job on June. Anything players should HAVE to do in order to play should be as non tedious as possable so they can spend all that time playing the game. And thanx to your magic changes you have removed a HUGE obstacle from your players having fun. good job.

Gouru

05-26-2004, 05:59 PM

Originally posted by Ibn
Gaerlan is slightly easier to kill now, but I doubt that you and your wife will be able to kill him on your own. I know this must be disappointing for you but we felt that the rewards justify the difficulty.

The spawn on the Guardian Golems has been reduced to 15 minutes.

Your last question, this is the request to reduce the timer to 6 days 23 hours or such? No, this was not changed.

Oh...sorry. I misunderstood when you told us that Gaerlan was not being made into a fellowship quest. I sort of assumed this meant that you did not have to have a fellow to complete it.

What you meant was that you don't have to have a fellow, you just have to have enough people to form a fellow, but if they want they don't have to share experience while in the dungeon.

Silly me.

Now I'll have more time to go out and mindlessly kill tuskers.

Zero_Washu

05-26-2004, 06:37 PM

First,

Why didn't you make Item spells cast at the same speed as Creature and Life spells. You already have logic to determine if it is a self cast spell so this would help prevent the balance issue. (or is this because of some fixation on PK that you plan future item changes for pk?)

Now, the big bad side effect of your change is this, MANA CONVERSION IS NOW MANDATORY. Some of us have Item magic, use foods, and then bane... ALL WITHOUT MANA CONVERSION. Without mana conversion my mana tank must now be equal to the total requirement of all equipped pieces.

PLUS.

The number one problem. I don't want the banes on my underclothes! With this new system the people who don't want to waste the mana on them will have to remove their underclothes before casting banes or suffer the added mana expense.

Please make some consideration for item only melees and tanks. Its bad enough we have to HAVE Item Enchantment, now your shortsighted imrprovement actually makes our lives more difficult. Or should I just have 6 mages instead of the 2 I already have?

Yet another edit, shields! Put a new overlay on the paper doll so that we can put a shield there and it gets the benefit of the multi-cast banes.

As for the fishing nerf, your anti-macro crusade is ruining more than it is fixing.

Davidge

05-26-2004, 07:42 PM

Improved Allegiance Officers

This topic was previously mentioned in the In Development section of the May Letter to the Players. After initial development work on this, we have decided to hold off on implementing further Allegiance Officer ranks and tools until we have further data and feedback on how the existing Allegiance Officer tools are being used.

Please tell me that this does not mean you are leaving out the /allegiance info <charname> ability for existing officers. As I stated before here (http://forums.ac.turbinegames.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=86812#post86812), it makes NO sense to grant the officers the ability to boot or ban people if they cannot also look up the relationship that person has with their surrounding clanmates.

I do not think you should allow officers to boot people unless they have access to the /allegiance info command as well.

It leaves them blind to see what needs to be done to repair (swear around) vassals that the clan might want to retain or contact.

If you have one, you need the other.

As a monarch, when I used the boot command in the past, I NEVER used it before using the allegiance info command on that character to make sure I knew who was being affected. While this did not change the decision to boot that person, at least I and my council knew which vassals we should be prepared to chat with and discuss re-swearing into the clan if that was their desire.

EshuunDara

05-26-2004, 07:43 PM

First off: Evicerator Pincer nerf SUCKS. I fail to see a reason for it.

Secondly, the changes to the Gaerlan quest:
a) What is the point of the timer on the sword turn in?? Seems silly -- most of us don't have dozens of them to turn in, and if we did, so what?
b) With Gaerlan having to be killable, why *NOT* allow the door to be killed without archery? Why not allow the door to be killed via war magic??

Third, I think that war magic crits need love, as do CS & CB on casters. I don't understand why changes to CS/CB shouldn't propigate to PvP -- at this point, that makes the situation look like this: Weeping wand or nothing. If CS and CB were a bit more powerful, it would be a decision to be made as they would be more viable alternatives.

Fourth: Yippee on the item magic love. Thank you.

Fifth: Aegis effects on the bow -- nice, however tt seems to me that mages are those that specialize in magic. It logically seems to follow that mages should be those who would also be best at DEFENDING against magic (after all, melees are the best at defending against melee attacks, and archers in general are better at defending against missle attacks (more starting quick since strength isn't required so much)). That said, mages do typically have a small advantage over your typical melee/archer in terms of magic defense, but lets face it: as a mage, your best defense against nearly anything isn't in evading/resisting, but rather damage reduction. From that, it follows that a mage should be the best at reducing incoming damage from war magic -- and they are -- the only problem is that they can't actually *DO* anything if they have an Aegis equipped.

I suppose I see just one Yippee and a few nerfs (Gaerlan rewards, Gaerlan Sword turn ins, fishing nerf, crafting nerf, pincer nerf, and in a sense, the bindstones are a mansion nerf). You will continue the burun storyline, but all told I find it rather boring, invasions or no. There are no real world changes -- some minor invasions, but the burun aren't going to take over arwic and kill off all the vendors or anything nearly that interesting.

Zero_Washu

05-26-2004, 08:03 PM

Concering the remap to Marae Lassel.

What are the loot tiers?

As in, is it pointless to hunt there for majors or high end loot? If so, you have doomed the island to extinction.

Illusi

05-26-2004, 08:28 PM

Well I for one do not like the 'new' Item changes.

I am a tank crossbowman that now will have to spend millions of xp on mana conversion, self, and mana pool just to be able to continue casting my item buffs....

Not to mention that I am now forced to INCREASE my casting times because I will have to remove and re-equip my clothing to prevent wasted mana costs.

Not to mention that I will now be forced to carry way more mana potions to refill my mana pool when the mana conv. doesn't convert...

Gee Turbine - are you just trying to tell us that you are changing this game to become ONLY PK?? Why else would you possibly do things this way with out changing the casting times as you did for creature and life self buffs?? Why else would you just not make seperate spells for the 'other' item debuffs for those that wanted to PK or such???

I unfortunatly think that this is the last straw for me - waited 3 months for a loot fix and now this.....

And for the record - not all of us are 126+ macro/chain whores -- I for one played legal and I am continually reminded by your efforts that only those that cheated/exploited/xp whored/macro are the ones that are *constantly* rewarded.

Good luck - I probably won't be sticking with your continued attempts to 'sink' the game even lower than you already have....

Dereth Mozart

05-26-2004, 10:09 PM

I like the fact that the baby animals will be gone, that's been getting on my nerves with the radar lately. I like the fact that verd will have housing available right off, and the item magic changes are good too.
But when you changed the fishing you might as well have nerfed it because what's the point of doing something that used to be relaxing but not now, paying a C note but getting nothing out of it? It holds no value anymore, it's more work than it's worth bothering with.
The xp changes...why on earth do you think lowering xp for anything will make anyone happy? Most players care more for leveling than anything because there's nothing cool you can do until you reach level 50, and i'm not going to comment any more on that because every time I make a comment it seems that you nerf whatever it was I mentioned. (ex.; i mentioned when the loot drops were horrible that I used fishing as a way to be able to pay my house maintenance and other supplies and guess what, it's now a big waste of time because all the good things about it were nerfed).
Anyway, I just hope this type of thing doesn't go on in MEO when that comes out, because if so then we plan to cancel all our accounts and find another hobby because this one was enjoyable but now it's becoming more stressful and most of our friends from back in the beginning are gone anyway.
Other than that, it's good. Not great, not wonderful, but good. Do you think we could shoot for great next month for a change? :-p

losefast

05-26-2004, 10:12 PM

First:
Someting for crafters to help them out. I propose an item, say magic boots, which have a Moderate/Major for each of the four tinks or an individual amulet/ring for each tink seperatly. To earn the prize an item of appropiate skill reqirement would have to be crafted and turned into an npc.

Second:
From a post I saw earlier, a master Foci. This could be a four part quest ,one for each school, aimed at 80+ toons. Spreading out the locations of each quest to little used areas would also help the population visit new locals and make more use of the landmass we know and love as Dereth.

Thanks for your ear.............

Reydien

05-26-2004, 10:51 PM

Ok, let's look at some of the complaints Item-only characters have:

Casting Item spells on multiple pieces without Mana C will be prohibitively expensive! I'm gonna have to carry around tons more mana potions!
Preventing the Item spell from casting on a piece will require removing and re-equipping that piece
Doing this instead of lowering the Spell Speed means the devs must favor PKs
Obviously the Devs hate Item-Only characters since these changes favor full mages

Casting Item spells on multiple pieces without Mana C will be prohibitively expensive! I'm gonna have to carry around tons more mana potions!
Mana C has never been required and this change isn't making it required. I think the main thing people are seeing, and not getting past, is that in the new system they won't be able to cast 3+ banes between refills. True, without Mana C an Item-only character buffing say a 9-piece set (Celdon + 2 clothing pieces) will need 182 mana per spell, and this of course means that for all but the highest level Item-only characters you will need to refill your mana between each bane. However, lets compare this to the old way: 70 mana per bane per piece of armor @ 9 pieces = 630 mana. Assuming the character has say a 280 mana tank, they will have to refill twice, as opposed to still having 100 mana in the tank and no refills with the new system. The person using the new system actually saves 448 mana per lvl VII bane.

Preventing the Item spell from casting on a piece will require removing and re-equipping that piece
This is actually somewhat of a legitimate argument. From personal experience it is not too uncommon for item-only characters to have some items they are wearing that they need a brilliance/cantrips to activate, and simply cannot remove on a regular basis. However, again I think people fail to realize how much mana they will be saving, and how little each additional piece will cost.

Even with VII spells without Mana C, each additional item will only be 14 mana per bane. Even assuming you're wearing the max number of pieces (11) and each piece except the clothes has 2 banes on it that you would normally not cast in a fullbane scenario with VIIs, thats only 252 wasted mana. While that may seem like a large number, realize thats out of 1,680 mana total to, with only 8 spells, completely bane 11 pieces of equipment. Again, thats compared to the old system of 70 spells and 4,900 mana to achieve the same end results.

Doing this instead of lowering the Spell Speed means the devs must favor PKs
Quite a number of people have commented that it would have just been a whole lot simpler to make the spells cast at lvl 1 speed, with some mechanic to detect if the armor is in the casters posession. Since they didn't take this path, Clearly there was a PK concern that prevented them from doing this, and nothing else could have influenced their decision, right?

First thing I will say is I have never PKed, so I have no real sense of the system beyond what I've read. That being said, I can see how a mage being able to bane his/her armor at lvl 1 speed the moment the melee pulled out a weapon might be unbalancing. This could be what everyone is thinking of when they think that the change was influenced by PKing. However I think the main problem with making item spells lvl 1 speed is that they don't have a reliable system to tell who has the item being enchanted, and creating a system would take away dev time from whatever. And there may even be other concerns we as simple players can't see or comprehend. They're the ones looking at the big picture, don't assume they haven't thought out all the possibilities.

Obviously the Devs hate Item-Only characters since these changes favor full mages
I thought the idea behind Item-Only characters was to avoid needing all the magics, and instead using the skill credits on more combat-oriented skills. You knew when you made the character that you wouldn't be getting full lvl 7 buffs by yourself, and suddenly claiming now that these changes don't benefit you as much as full/hybrid mages is just hypocritical. Of course someone with 3-Schools and Mana C is gonna get more benefit out of a spell change than someone with just Item, they paid more Skill credits to get that benefit. While they're sitting there with 34 points spent in their magics, you're walking around with 26 extra credits to spend. You spend more you get more.

In the end, I find the shortsightedness of the complainers quite annoying. You claim you'll need so much more mana, when in fact you'll be saving at least 50% of your mana from item banes. You claim you're being forced to do extra work to avoid wasting mana, but it's your choice to do that extra 3 seconds of clicking to save that 14 mana. You claim you won't even be able to cast the spells your "pitifully low mana tanks," when even with the max of 11 items on each bane will only cost 210 mana, which costs a character with 10 starting self 5.3 million to reach from ground-zero. You claim that they created a terrible system instead of just reducing the speed solely because of PK concerns without knowing the full picture, something no one other than the devs can see. You claim you're being left in the dirt with these changes while the full mages relish in the change, when the only benefit they get, mana cost reduction, they pay for in skill credits to have Mana C.

The Biggest claim, though, that you make, which I truly hate, is that you're seemingly stuck with the new system. I have seen no comments whatsoever saying that you can no longer cast item spells on individual items. If you decide you don't like casting banes 6-10 times faster for 50-75% less mana, there is nothing stopping you from continuing to do it the old way.

Feel free to provide any Legitimate, Factual counterpoints for my arguments. I have no doubts that there's something I missed or incorrectly stated. Just remember, flames do nothing but reveal your level of maturity very quickly, very plainly to the people around you.

She-Nyyx

05-26-2004, 11:03 PM

For the most part I think it's looking good, Evis downgrade is kinda, hmmmm but ok, I'll kill the new bug.

The only other thing is "/allegiance hometown" is really long and have you seen how a lot of people spell? Couldn't you make it "/hometown"?

Sigma

05-26-2004, 11:13 PM

I hate the Evis nerf. I hate it, hate it, hate it hate it hate it.

The only people it's *truly* valuable for is a level 50-55, which a character gets pushed out of so fast it's not even funny, anyway.

So really, why bother nerfing it, honestly. It was a *TOTAL WASTE OF TIME* to change it at all if you were planning on nerfing it. Hell, the quest is for a level 50. At most, in most cases, it will benefit up to a level...(stretching) 70. If you wanted to do anything, how about upgrade the damn xp. You can get the same xp from a level 45 tusker dungeon, so why, on Dereth's green grass, would you nerf the bug dungeon, which is *A LONGER TRIP TO GET TO* and a *HIGHER LEVEL, LARGER DUNGEON* it makes NO sense!! None!!

*fury*

M-U-L-e

05-27-2004, 12:57 AM

I don't think any one goes on the 3mill pincer quest any ways.. so it don't make sence of lowing the exp because bout the time u get to the port u could make 2mill+ withen 20min and it takes about 40 min to get to the othoi..

Heideggar

05-27-2004, 01:16 AM

First, I'd like to see more of the changes you guys make be reflected in the storyarc, or lore, or however you wanna do it. I like how you say, "It's hard for the arcanum to battle against these new foes and keep up with town changes". It shows that you guys are not only trying to provide fun content to face, but also a dynamic and vast world to "live" in.

Crafting Changes:
If you guys are set on doing it, and I'd like ya to, this probably won't be the last time you'll need to do it. I hope you guys are prepared to make many stern decisions in the future not only on this, but other topics as well. What many may want at one minute, they won't the next. Ex.: Easily leveling and killing off all enemies, yay! Then, those same people get bored because they've accomplished their leveling, and killing off all enemies : /

PvP Weapon Changes:
I think the changes to Hollow, Deadly Hollow, and phantom weapons is LONG overdue, so I'm interested to see how these improvements work out. I play mainly mages, so while I really don't like taking more damage... there's at least a gain in the options and playability of those other templates.

I'll have to wait to see how much you improve some weeping weapons and alter/reduce others. While I'd like all templates to compete, some pay a lot more for their skills. They decide to do more damage at the expense of not have several magic schools, maybe magic D as well, spec'd. Something to keep in mind. Without diversity and tradeoff you'll have clones running around of the same weapon. Kinda like... sword. Maybe if different melee weeping weapons had different properties to fight certain types of people, or armor, or something, that may get someone to choose one melee skill over another. I _am_ glad you're trying to make everyone able to participate in AC's PvP though. It's not easy to do, and I don't think it ever will be, so keep doing what ya gotta do to bring life back into AC, which imo, is through PvP.

Bindstones:
As I've said before, it seems these are put in because of the limited allegiance housing, and that no one hangs out in towns because... ding ding!... There is allegiance housing to draw people away from towns to hang out at mansions/villas. Would be nice if more people hung out in towns like back in the day, but that would mean losing a lot of the reason for having allegiance housing in the first place. If you put in bindstones and other things to attract people to towns, you should weigh in the consequences to allegiance housing, which you devalue.

Buffing Improvements (Item Magic):
I've said before that faster buffs takes away from some of the harder quests, but it seems those types of quests don't make up for the majority of them. I knew you were going to do this anyways, and it's good to see that a suggestion I made regarding the tradeoff of having many, or few, pieces was put in. There _should_ be a reason someone uses 5 instead of 9 pieces of armor. I suggested an increased mana cost, and it's being put in. I'm not saying that it was me personally who brought this about. It could have been considered long before I suggested, but it's good to see you guys understand these tradeoffs.

Fishing:
Never done it, probably never will. No appeal to it, kinda like casinos.

Content Revision (Marae Lassel): Looks good, and should help liven things up as you continue to upgrade the island. However.... there are much older islands around that could use some content revision.

Content Revision (Gaerlan Quest): I'm kinda hoping this is a "You must be in Gaerlan's chamber when he's killed to get flagged" sorta thing. Fellowships are too small, Gaerlan's spawn is kinda long, etc. I'd appreciate it if you would get rid of that logoff stuff on that quest though. If someone loses connection, which has happened more times than I can count, it really ruins the whole experience for that person. It's one thing to die on a quest because you lost to a creature, a trap, or something, but to not participate because your ISP, or your servers, crapped out... it's not so fun. Hopefully you can remedy that situation.

Baby Animals: Growing up huh? scary. no really... You should tie in the White Rabbit (s)!? with someone killing a rabbit anywhere on dereth. Hunt down the white rabbit's enemies. Btw, I head the white rabbit is pretty weak these days, doesn't even smite like it used to. I wouldn't let Jesse know, he may get pretty ticked about his baby being weaker than an Oblit.

Verdantine: Eh, almost thought it'd be better to have this come out when the expansion hits. The amount of people logged in compared to long ago, is pretty low. Maybe 1/3 of what it used to be!? Dunno why ya had it come out so soon, maybe as a gift to the players? For old players to get new players into the game, so they don't feel like they have to level up to play with friends on an older server!? Seems like that's going to happen when the expansion hits, and that's kinda why I thought this server would open then.

In Development:

First, I see there is NOTHING on improving mansions. Disappointed Extremely.

Crafting Quests: Should have been put in when you changed up the allegiance xp passup. This was even suggested before the allegiance xp passup was changed, and 5+ months later, you put it in. Not too good imo, but at least it's finally getting done.

Improved War Magic Criticals: Hopefully this helps out in PvM, but we'll see. I'm too used to see near flat damage averages, so maybe this will be nice. Dunno.

Aegis Effecton on Missle weapons: I'd be more worried about how an archer actually hits someone instead of how _they_ get hit by a pretty easily dodgeable war spell. With and Aegis, it'd still end up as a stalemate, you'd just see more of em. If a missle person can't kill someone, how's an aegis suppose to help? Hope the mage's buffs go!?

Content Update:
Hopefully this will provide for more quests that one would consider repeating.

In Concept:

First, I see there is NOTHING on improving mansions. Again, disappointed.

Improved allegiance officer stuff: Whatever, never was important. I mean, it's nice, but really, it's not a big deal. I really hope that doing this allegiance stuff doesn't take up much time, because it's not a game breaking thing to help out allegiances imo.

I'm kinda sad that there isn't more content for the "In Concept" section this month. I had hoped for at least 4-5 things. One in particular, mansions, is not here.... *beats the horse into glue*.

Jet-eye-nite

05-27-2004, 01:31 AM

Item buffs are better , but I think you don't realize how many use the el tank trade window or maybe you do . I also saw nothing about loot ,I sure hope your not done there ( wonders if you have looked at Lacuna and the overage of majors flowing out of that place and no where else in comparison) . Fishing I could care less that was about a total waste of time in my book anyway . Someone posted about sword and the fact your trying to bring it in-line with other melee , I saw this is great as soon as you lower the cost to reflect their cost and if thats not the case then infact it should pound other melee just by way of its costs. I also wonder if you have found any reason for the 100% tinker problem as of yet ? In concept ideas how about having npc take all your items into a bank of sorts and then allow you to get TN's as apposed to pyreal and then having to convert , especially since our pack space is so limited. Or allow things to stack higher say like pyreal up to 50k per slot, HK and many other space hogs . Can you also start working on a sorting routine this have been old news for 4 years now and it seems so lame when so many 3rd party add-ons can do so much with so little code work envolved. I hope you have plans to revamp many more areas ,one that would be nice is an advandced potato,I took a noob in there the other day and that is one boring quest and the timer for the skelton to get the blank was sheer nuisance.Maybe the updated quest could have some terror,death and a chance to increase the potatoes abilities of a variety of different flavors . Lastly I sure hope you watch the new world closely for ucm so we don't see 126's the very first month there :D

tesla_ff

05-27-2004, 04:16 AM

as the battle weary sho warrior finished sifting through the remains of the strange new creature he killed he noticed on it a letter with what appeared to be ancient empyrean text.

Wipeing off his kater and placeing it in his pack he pulled out his wand and recalled . after giving it to a now puzzeld translater the translater left him with only a note saying thus :

it would appear that this is empyrean in nature but very old even for the empyrean age. what i can translate of it are at best guesses since it is so similar to the ancient empyrean text i do know.
diancyid windfyre,
remember your past for with it is the key to your survival. we came here and took the world from the argloth [authors note: (winged demons?)] and claimed it as our own. from these hieghts we leave and leave to be forgotten. the time will come when we must one day reawaken the keep of our fathers for the safty of our kind. this was the words of [ cannot translate this name] who being the seer has seen what will be. remember the fathers and the spirit in which we have come! [best guess at this sentance]
the lock will be left for your keeping until the time you must reopen it. to this end is your life and task in the unlife [or dead life , or life dead, yet not undead]
[not signed but instead appear to be coordinates] 90 70 70 90 55 0.1

puzzeld by the letter after transcription the skilled warrioir took the letter to a mage freind who began casting spells cussing and finally bringing out for him one set of coords from his muddled brain. the warrioir took to find these coords which were deep out in the sea. after alot of dog paddeling he was able to reach the coordinates at which he found a lartge stone. after much tapping and fighting he discerned there wasnt much he could do with the stone and returned to his mage friend who gave him a vail of olthoi secretions. panting his way back into the waters he disolved the rock and revealed that it was not a roick, but a chest!

...a locked chest..with some difficulty he took the chest to a very skilled theif who pried it open with ease. inside was a portal gem marked "windfyre" useing it greedily he found that he was falling from a height way up in the sky..and landed still in the clouds near a lifestone. sitting up and rubbing his head he was looking into the face of an empyrean with a very confused look on his face.

"hello" said the empyrean dryly. " asheron one of your ruffians have found our city" coming up behind the other empyrean was asheron himself! the stunned warrioir never managed a word as asheron aproached. looking down at the warriopir asheron frowned. "welcome to windfyre the city of our fathers. you are not marked as one of my house begone" and instantly the gruff sho warrioir found himself sitting upon the heights near shoushi surrounded by empty builkdings and lugians.

"....and then i made my way here!" as the warrior finished his tale all of the ppl in the bar applauded and laughed. " yeah and i heard theres dragons coming out of the bunnys if you try to cook there corpses!" snickered a slightly over potent patron. "..but..its true i mean i was there and ..and asheron.." giving it up the warrioir ordered another ale. makeing a silent vow that the next time he went into the deep of the dires that whe wasnt going to loot.
~end~

Norbert Beaver

05-27-2004, 06:37 AM

With the content revision to ML.

Are you doing anything about the random portals like the shallow hive and such that have a restriction on them?

According to the map there are content level areas.

Are we going to find a +40 random spawn portal in a level 1-20 area or even worse finding it in the 60-80 area.

Is it only going to spawn in the Appropriate area.

Or

Are they going to become static portals now.

Madgic

05-27-2004, 11:07 AM

Hiya me again.

Looking great.

I do however have a small comment about the additional mage Damage on crits.

I would have thought that more people would have noticed but there is an in house battle going on between mages and melees. Some of the developers are obviouly trying to get ballance for the melees in PvP and others are obviously not wanting it. My concearn is that with these additions to Critical hits, (when the New Imbues mentioned in the Article about PvP changes comes into effect) we will see PvP Critical hits from mages increase.

I know Turbine have said no but as you all know they have a great way of introducing something letting us get used to it then sneaking it into play it was never intended for.

With War Critical hits on PVP already exceeding 250 i think maybe before these new changes are made we should have a revision of the healing skill.

I am looking forward a long way I know but you have to admit its opening a door, Why else, after all this time, would Turbine start making weepings more ballenced?

Answer, So they can increase mages damage without melees being able to say a word. (Its on the Cards)

Kail_the_Shadow

05-27-2004, 11:50 AM

Like the changes, from what I read. But then again what happens in the game may prove that wrong. *shrug*

Item buff improvments :- Great plan, I used to had a item only melee and buffing was the main thing that aggrevated me. The increased mana cost is fair because it varies on the amount of peices it has to bane, and I'm sure ManaC will reduce that still. Will be no worse then casting a dispell 7.. The buffing of others I can see why there the same and unchanged, the reason probly being PK issuses. So I'll hold my tongue on that since I play that feild too often. Regarding Zero_Washus post. ManaC is not manditory. You can still cast on a single item. dont forget the casting stein can do you stam-mana purpose. Also I find the Item only melee has more xp to put in those combat skills. so raise your meleeD and wear a robe, some have AL now yah know. Verses Hallows, you got Cov, so no complaints. Item is the school that takes the longest so be glad they made these changes.

Pincer :- Cant say I like the evis nerf but then I read this--
"The reward on the Olthoi Eviscerator Pincer has been decreased to 2 million XP, but we’ve introduced higher-level Pincer quests." Now I see some people complaining. I'm sure they havent noticed what I've seen. The last word in that line is QUESTS plural form of quest meaning more then one quest. Besides it may even be a % reward, not like you went and told us what it was for the new ones.

Crafting Changes :- Alright I can make a alch/cook/fletch without having to consentrate on a combat build to go with it or rely on a vassel to make xp... Now theres been some complainte from the macro runners that made money off selling there goods. Well your getting xp instead so I'd say thats a bit better..

Bindstone :- We'll see what this does....

Gaerlan :- Bout time :p

Thats it from me for now.. Maybe more later..

KTV

05-27-2004, 12:08 PM

Hmm i dont know why are some people on thsi board whining about the mana cost.

I dont see any problem with buffing this without mana conv, actually i m going to drop mana conv on my character in june.

6 credits woot.

K.

Exodus

05-27-2004, 12:25 PM

Ibn, concerning Item Buffs: Does this change the Brogord Defiance Spell or is there a new spell released that will do it? If it were a new spell, people could buff other players armor still, without screwing it up.

Zephon__MT

05-27-2004, 12:29 PM

So what about the people who have to wear other armor to help them buff?
Will there process of baneing be the same as it always was? meaning they have to do each piece separately?

Winter

05-27-2004, 12:31 PM

Since ML is getting a facelift in june consider updating the siraluun dress and head dress. Not to beat my own drum, but I made a post about it here (http://forums.ac.turbinegames.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9281)

Bob_Jones_LC

05-27-2004, 12:34 PM

Please consider making Gaerlan a little easier to kill, especially for the lower levels.

Opti_Silmara

05-27-2004, 01:40 PM

I like changes that discourage people from macroing. Truly the game should be about interaction with other players and enjoying it at the computer!

It can be very hard to get events going in an allegiance when players spend most of their time trading or macroing. People will say.. "Oh but I only macro when I can't play".. but it's interesting how people find more time to play if they aren't able to macro. I seem to be lucky in that my allegiance members are seldom like this, but I am speaking for all allegiances here. Plus.. it sure adds a lag-factor to the game when people are just macroing.

If you want to make money while unable to play.. hunt and sell on a trade bot, or sell for others on commission. That's what I do. It helps you and others. Plus trading has that added exciting element of you're not sure what you'll make. It's more a game than just macroing arrows.

TREASURES - On the same note of getting events going - WE NEED MORE FUN TREASURES across many quests! I am excited about the idea of adding more treasures and I say DO IT! This will inspire more interest in quests, even old ones.

FISHING - Boring! :( It's sometimes relaxing.. but basically very boring! How about some new treasures for fishing and more likelihood of getting them? Also how about some new fishing holes and dangers with greater rewards? Hehe.. here's an idea.. if you want to prevent macroes.. How about man-eating fish that jump up and chew you alive that are geared to a hole {but move from hole to hole in swarms so you're never sure if they'll end up in your hole. ;)}.. So you have to be present at the keyboard, and move about if you want to stay alive {not possible with the current macroes}. I'd like to see some underground fishing holes too. :) Maybe they could be introduced without telling players.. so it's more exciting finding them? LOTS of them!.. that you go into behind waterfalls and through sides of mountains or holes in the ground.. not portals {unless theymove} .. because portals are too easy to find.

OFFICERS - I want to see the addition of officers. I have 6 {one is co-monarch} that are High Council in my alleg. It would be nice to be able to give them all some token power that states their position.

NEW IDEAS - Is it possible to add some new way for the monarch to ADD THE MONARCHY NAME ingame. The addition then would be up to the monarch. Say a place you input the monarchy name to be displayed with the monarch for every player? For instance, my monarchy is Solclaim Survivors. So if you did this... it would say:

Monarch: Opti Silmara
Monarchy: Solclaim Survivors

I am sure many would love to be able to display the name of their Monarchy ingame., as this is usually decided by members of the monarchy and it adds pride to the monarchy in it's name.

Also a way to display your officers? Say a place to input your officers to be displayed along with the MOTD, that works the same as the MOTD?

Opti :)

Ibn

05-27-2004, 02:00 PM

Originally posted by Illusi
I am a tank crossbowman that now will have to spend millions of xp on mana conversion, self, and mana pool just to be able to continue casting my item buffs....

Not to mention that I am now forced to INCREASE my casting times because I will have to remove and re-equip my clothing to prevent wasted mana costs.

Why not just keep doing what you are doing now? If you target the item, and not yourself, the item spells will cast the same way they always have.

Ibn

05-27-2004, 02:05 PM

Originally posted by Opti_Silmara
Also a way to display your officers? Say a place to input your officers to be displayed along with the MOTD, that works the same as the MOTD?

Any player in a monarchy can type "@allegiance officer" or "@allegiance officer list" to see who the allegiance officers are.

JJC

05-27-2004, 02:12 PM

> Any player in a monarchy can type "@allegiance officer"

Any chance it can be made to accept the plural too? I know there is more than one officer so I keep adding that S to it.

JJC

evolutionoccurs

05-27-2004, 02:18 PM

One single Master Foci (quest related is ok) , Salvage Pack (that holds up to 100 partials and weighs say 200 burden regardless of amount of items; which when any unsalvaged item is put into it it auto combines with salvage type and ws automatically(which you have settings tab beside spellbook/components tabs) and once a bag hits (100) it gets ejected into main pack if space available otherwise (you fail to add salvage).,

Prismatic peas. omg this is soooooooo overdue. thx.
edit: and make xp rewards for all lvl 126+ worthy of doing.
Turbines current status tells us all to just quit once we are
lvl 126(hence the % of 8 million to next level is plainly rediculous.
Not worthy of even being a quest......

Do the right thing for once. I'll reactivate my accounts. thx.

AC-Vet

05-27-2004, 02:36 PM

Everything looks good....

1 Question....Define Monarchs for the binding stones? are these that have a certian number of followers? a Mansion? a Villa/mansion?

Reason I asked is there are a number of char's that have a few close friends tied to them, they don't own villa or mansion and really don't represent what most view as a monarchy....but in reality because the highest toon represents as a monarch....I can't see these kind of clans taking ownership of a town....or even tieing to it.....

I'd have to read up more on this pkl fighting over town thing you had in mind.....and I didn't catch wether more than 1 clan can bind to a town or not...

Thx

Ryori

05-27-2004, 02:45 PM

Quest XP Math.

I'm still torked about quests so forgive me. Was talking with guild mates and I worked out some math.

Say the Evis pincer jumped UP to 10 million (too much for a 50+ dungeon, but work with me). It is on a three week timer.

So I buff up and run out to the dungeon - 10 minutes. I fight my way to the bottom and get the first pincer - 5 minutes. Every log in, fight for pincer, and log out takes 5 minutes. So I could get about 10 pincers under one buff this way. 100 million XP - whoa... too much you say?

3 Week Timer: That would be 10 pincers over 27 weeks. 189 days. 530,000 XP a day. Sure... if I had a toon I didn't want to play for 6 months, I could exploit 100 million XP. But given I'm making 5-10 million a hour hunting with my 50s why would I want to cut my earning rate by 1/10th to 1/20th. I just need to hunt 1 hour a week to beat this pincer camping scheme which is 5x the proposed new XP reward.

So, Turbine, I have no clue why you want to reduce the Evis pincer from 3 to 2.

The pincers AND the tusks came out before you upped the XP of all the critters. But you did NOT adjust the bigger quest XP items. A guard went from 12 to 21 (??) but the tusk stayed at 150K.

If you are going to keep 3 week timers on these items, then please make the XP rewards in the ballpark of what we can now do at a per hour XP hunting rate.

Silifi Of Death

05-27-2004, 02:52 PM

Why are you nerfing fishing? Why are you nerfing crafting skills? Because of Macros? Oh, wonderful idea. Now these things will be absolutely useless to everyone. Why not just remove xp from monsters? Don't let the Macros dictate your actions. Find a solution to them that doesn't involve nerfing real people.

kaminote

05-27-2004, 02:53 PM

I like all the changes listed except the dynamic of the new item buffs.

The only reason that I don't like these is that I enjoy the advantage I have now, after long months of hunting and searching, in my set of covenant armor. I realize that you increased the max al lvl to 500 on this to make it more competitive with tinkered armor and these new banes in mind. However, realistically, I can find a piece that is around 450al max. With this piece, it will have a built in imp 6 and possibly a few lvl6 item spells. I can then tink the protections up on the other damage types so that it is a decent piece of armor...lets say effective al of 1300 against 5 items and 1000+ to the rest. (This is a killer piece of armor). To give it that little extra boost, now I'll imp+bane my rainment.

Now, for me, finding this piece of armor and the salvage to tinker it is much harder than finding al 230 piece armor and the steel to tinker it to 430. Add an imp7 on that and the appropriate banes and you are looking at effective al of 1300 across everything + an imped robe, all for the same cast time as imping+baning my robe.

(i'm not worried about mana c...I use cov on all my characters).

so, now you have no real reason to create a suit of covenant armor, unless you like the way it looks. The fact that you will most likely be in an inferior set al wise and that there is no longer a time saved benefit to having it on, and definately not a resource benefit (unless you make the multi item banes burn tapers at the rate that casting 9 individual spells would).

Now, that out of the way, I'm really pleased to see how you guys continue to update the content and work to close loopholes used by macroers. My current project is a quest leveled item only tank, so maybe I'll have different opinions about the item changes as I work on him (he's level 9 now and doesn't cast anything yet).

xmanii

05-27-2004, 03:05 PM

Originally posted by Ibn
Any player in a monarchy can type "@allegiance officer" or "@allegiance officer list" to see who the allegiance officers are.

I'll ask again, any plans on changing the ban list, so everyone in the guild can see who is banned?

Megabyte

05-27-2004, 03:10 PM

I will be handing in my fishing pole on the day of the new event. Its now totally useless.....:(

Might as well remove it and save space...

SegZavier

05-27-2004, 04:15 PM

While people are telling Turbine to remove fishing I have a question about something else that is a virtual waste of space.

Does anyone play Chess anymore?

Paco_Taco_TD

05-27-2004, 05:19 PM

I hate to say this, but some people have no qualms selling gold-tinkered stuff in a pinch. Should be some way to do that =/

Jet-eye-nite

05-27-2004, 06:54 PM

I have now read most of your responses and I hope you still have the ability to cast single bane spells on single items,(or do I now need to un-weild anything I don't want baned ?)without the ability the I must also stand on :mad: side . Not to mention the speed not being altered, this is once again for high lvl mage/mc only types :rolleyes: . Can you guys/gals at turbine please take off your blinder and see this game encompasses far more than the new life on a new world ,since you nerfed the high lvl chainers , there is middle ground which must truly be your blind side :eek:

Reydien

05-27-2004, 07:57 PM

Jet, can you explain WHY this change is for "high lvl mage/mc only types"?

The maximum amount a lvl 7 "self" bane will cost is 224 mana (not 210 as I incorrectly stated earlier, sorry). For a character with 10 starting self to get to say 250 starting mana is 24.8 million, and keep in mind that's solely to get the required mana, that doesn't include all the experience you have to spend to get item up to where you'll be casting 7s in the first place. You won't be able to cast 2 self banes in a row, but you'll definately be able to cast 1.

In truth, this change may actually help the people without Mana C more than those with. Consider this: To bane say a 7 piece suit (IE Celdon) to a single damage type with VIIs currently costs you 490 mana. With the new system it will cost 168 mana. That is 322 mana saved, or almost 5 trade mana elixirs. You also finish casting those banes at least 7 times faster: the new way requires 1 spell, whereas the old way requires 7 spells, plus however long it takes you to drink those 5 mana elixirs. Even if you end up baning 2 pieces of underclothes along with the amor, thats only 28 mana more, or 196 mana, which is still 294 mana, or a little over 4 trade mana elixirs.

And once again, why can't you understand the fact that you are NOT being forced to use the new system? From the LttP, with some emphasis:
Starting in June, if you target yourself with Impenetrability or a Bane spell
also, as Ibn himself stated earlier
Why not just keep doing what you are doing now? If you target the item, and not yourself, the item spells will cast the same way they always have.

Crevanor

05-27-2004, 08:38 PM

Sounds nice so far.

Question about the change to war magic though;

By adding a % to the max. damage caused, you're essentially addding a different constant to each lv spell, right???

So all lv VII crits will be:

new system

normal damage + 180*(special mod) = critical damage

versus the old system, which was:

normal damage * insignificant mod which would sometimes be less than normal damage = critical damage

My question would be this: Will it still be possible for crits to hit lower than regular hits?? In order to avoid this, the crit. modifier would need to add at least 7/18 to damage (to bring a 110 up to 180). This would mean that the min. max damage caused by a crit, without a vuln, would be 250??

Am I interpreting the numbers right??

Ardham

05-27-2004, 09:50 PM

Originally posted by Ibn
My plan is to create a static page on the AC site that shows all current In Development and In Concept topics, haven't had the opportunity to do this yet unfortunately.

The LttP only mentions new topics and topics that have changed.

Ibn, you rock... this should be a priority task for a July roll out if you can pull it off :)

Even a simple webpage with a status of In Concept items and a page with In Development with ETA would rock.

Probably take you about an hr to type it all up and keep it... doesn't need to be database tied in or anything extravagent, just a simple html page editable in Frontpage :)

Ardham

05-27-2004, 10:01 PM

Suggestion about Item magic buffs...

Can you make it so we can select a person and ONLY cast beneficial spells on their items?

This will go a LONG way to improve vassal/patron relationships AND make a lot of buff bots VERY happy in that we select a person and cast a spell on them... poof they are buffed, next person...

Right now it's either crash the client opening tradewindows or use some serious programming tricks to cause the client to buff the item spells on unseen armor... not a great solution but at least we can make it work for buffbots.

I'd rather see the devs spend the time opening up OTHER buffs so buffbots can be efficient AND slowly become unnecessary as vassal/patron relationships grow or look at ways of improving other aspects of the game like graphics first.

Anaximander

05-27-2004, 10:12 PM

What about buffing weapons?

Either do a complete improvement to item magic or don't do it at all.

SpiritCat

05-27-2004, 11:40 PM

I like everything you are doing....except the having to kill Gman to get the rewards... Me and my friend do that quest weekly for fun...we alone cannot kill gman and do not wish to be burdened with bigger group. This would kill the fun of the whole quest. Why did you change that?

kaber5150

05-28-2004, 01:12 AM

will the chages effect a shield in your main pack? Be nice if they would so we don't have to recast all the spells again to do the shield. How about if they casted on the first shield in your main pack?

Illusi

05-28-2004, 01:15 AM

Originally posted by Ibn
Why not just keep doing what you are doing now? If you target the item, and not yourself, the item spells will cast the same way they always have.

While I understand that fact I still have to ask - why wasn't this simply handled as "reduce the casting times per spell" - that is - done exactly in the same manner as the changes done for Creature- and Life-self buffs?

The main point I'm getting at (and having a horrible time stating clearly) is that the change implemented still has a 'no improvement' issue for a subset of players similar to my described situation. We paid the cost for the Item skill at the same cost level as the mages have yet we are (at least until we spend additional xp/skill pts. to basically become mages) penalized such that we do not receive the benefits. Many posters seem to think I'm whining - and to a small degree I am - but in reality I am only saying that there was possibly a better way to handle this by making it the same as the first two improvements....

And for the record - if 'new spells' were required to implement an "Item-self" and "Item-other" scenario - couldn't you have placed all the level 1-6 versions of the "other" spells on the spell-sellers and allowed the level 7s to be found in some loot tables at a slightly higer rate for a month.... or put in a small quest to have them rewarded if you had the self versions, have a token appear in inventory if you have item trained and you can turn it in to town cryer to get the scrolls.....

All I'm trying to say is that a *SMALL* subset of the players that are not perfectly templated, or those that don't try to be everything are feeling "slighted".....

That's all - we just see the change as 'not optimal'.....

This is a feedback thread - and that's what I'm trying to do.....

evolutionoccurs

05-28-2004, 01:42 AM

And one other thing, make buffing less annoying by removing the hard req's, put in parameters like 250+ = 90% for lvl 6's X .2% increase per pt. up to 300, which starts lvl 7's at 90% , annoying try to play a melee who if your true to your character type, like mages are to theirs than you have 10 innate focus and self and in this game apparantly to buff truly fizzle free must have put a few billion xp into your schools.... I mean i'd like playing melee's alot more if it wasnt for the fizzle fizzle, cast, fizzle, fizzle, fizzle, fizzle, cast, cast, fizzle , fizzle, fizzle, cast, fizzle, cast, fizzle, fizzle, cast, fizzle, cast, fizzle, fizzle, fizzle, fizzle, fizzle, fizzle, etc etc etc.
Im not trying to resist my self buffs OK ! I understand that when using VULNS or INEPTS my chance of landing is rediculously low. but arg, having to buff with low mana conversion and mana reserves + tons of fizzle (till around lvl 140 anyways) is just a very silly thing...:(

KTV

05-28-2004, 04:21 AM

I m amazed of the amount of whining here.

Why shoudl Turbine always modifief the game so that the last of the stupidest wrong template stands a chance???

You have
- 6 character slots
- Ability to train / untrain / respec
- XP flow bigger and easier than ever

GET A DECENT CHARACTER.

If you think 10 self / 10 focus will be gimped DONT DO IT.

How hard is it?

One last reason i dont get why you guys whine, i m an extreme mele 10 focus / 10 self. I m god damn happy with those item buff changes. Those and the fast casting life critter spells will make buffing so FAST that i ll DROP mana conversion next month.

Why would i keep it when i ll need 1/3 the mana i needed before?

Last and not least you can still use the same buffing method you always had (the old one). So please learn to effing READ before complaining.

Damn 0.o

K.

tesla_ff

05-28-2004, 04:56 AM

ok . heres the bottom line.
well done.

buffing has been made extremly easier. the only other change i would beg for is that fizzing be only for spells that you do not have the skill for. ie : if at 170 you cast summon spells at 170 it casts no fizz under 170 no cast at all fizz fizz fizz . no chance of casting. if pk's wanna argue that fizzing is something they rely on it would only be because they have to complain about something.

item changes :

me and my wife have played this game for over 4 years. we BOTH LOVE the changes and feel that even tho were melee's that these changes are AWSOME!

currently there are alot of ppl that are content hungry from the months of balancing and major code bug fixes. this is probrobly were the majority of the complaining about what your doing is coming from. even tho your doing an excellent job, ppl are still so quik to look for things they dislike instead of realizing the things they like.

i think that youve been doing an excellent job since you took over and i still love and enjoy this game of asherons call that ive played for 4 years and will continue to play.

so since ive have no complaints on what your doing, i do have some aggrevations in game that i hope could change one day (but im obviosly not gonna throw my hands up and leave if you dont)

ill continue to add tidbits of ideas that you can use parts of for either lore or content at your discretion. its my love for this game that tweaks my imagination for the things i would enjoy in it.

minor aggrevations: to much no drop gear, useless untradeable ivoried quest items. too little pack space. storage space on mules due to salvage. cottage storage too small for muleing and holding very heavy collectables (tremendous manuga doll anyone?) fizzing too much.

major aggrevations: i dont understand why a chr that started out 100 focus can heal so much better with a heal skill oif 150 than a chr that started out 10 focus and has a heal skill of 300 and cant heal. it would appear that attributs affect skills in some form that makes tha actual skill number either work or not work no matter what the skill itself is. if this is a bug id LOVE for it to be fixed.

content hungry:
mount me. how about a pegesus critter or my own personal margul. i wanna fly!

morph spells anyone?

can i have a pet? a pack animal that walks around but cant be taken by anyone but me ?

if you can make a chest with a pack in it, can i get a pack for inside my packs to hold conponents or money?
foci= way to much space

i wanna walk on da moon. yeah i see the lights. what theres no lights? i dont think im crazy....am i?

underwater city mmmmmmmmm i wont hold my breath.

a loot gen weapon that when imbued actualy looks cool instead of looking the same in your hand as the lvl 1's with there awsome academy weps :/

well thanks for all the exciting new quests and buffing changes. since buffing and being buffed in lvl 7 spells is now a MUST pretty much, it makes the game alot funner.

one last tidbit: now that your squashing money macroes ppl will soon start to complain about plat prices when they cant just trade something for a couple hunnerd of them. please please please lower the price of the plat ;/

thanks for reading my post.
-tesla & tahonie-
~frostfell~

D X Mage

05-28-2004, 09:27 AM

Nerf fishing? You are spending time and effort to nerf fishing? That is just plain stupid. There are so many other things that could be improved to make the game better. This on top of killing the crafters.

I'm now down to one active account from a high of NINE just a few months ago. I guess you guys simply don't like my money. Nor that of others as the populations seem to be going down.

Markus

05-28-2004, 10:33 AM

I think the Fishing nerf stands as yet another example of how Turbine seems to be creating workarounds for Bot problems when they should be trying to eliminate the problem. And who gets the short end of the stick in this fix? Not the macroer, nope, the legitimate player has to put up with the nerfs.

This type of mentality is almost wholly American. You can't please everyone. It's time to realize you have no choice but to aggrivate the "cheating" populous by removing their Bots (or the usefelness of those Bots) and attracting your legitimate player base again. Legitimate players respect and enjoy the game for what it is. They are the ones most likely to stick around and continue playing the game for far longer then anyone else.

GuyDWong

05-28-2004, 12:45 PM

Good job all around Turbine. Getting rid of 2 sets of macro reasons has to be good for the long term life of AC. Buffing changes will rock(for both my melees and mage). Added pincer quests will cause new explorations of new dungeons. And a new server to start characters over on(the most fun time in character development).
Can't see anything bad about the June changes. Makes me glad I came back.

tesla_ff

05-28-2004, 01:15 PM

Originally posted by Markus
I think the Fishing nerf stands as yet another example of how Turbine seems to be creating workarounds for Bot problems when they should be trying to eliminate the problem. And who gets the short end of the stick in this fix? Not the macroer, nope, the legitimate player has to put up with the nerfs.

This type of mentality is almost wholly American. You can't please everyone. It's time to realize you have no choice but to aggrivate the "cheating" populous by removing their Bots (or the usefelness of those Bots) and attracting your legitimate player base again. Legitimate players respect and enjoy the game for what it is. They are the ones most likely to stick around and continue playing the game for far longer then anyone else.

the bot problem was a problem that microsoft ignored and turbine realized needed to be fixed. so they were faced with a few choices on how to do it.

1 : kill decal : not an option since so many of the player data base is dependant on it in some form or another.

2: kill the viability of the unwanted bots.

they chose method 2. and are finally taking the nessecary actions to effectivly do that. of course not everyone will like it. but its so that the ppl who actually play the game the way it is intented arnt left behind on money and plats any more than the next guy.

i know a friend who fishing macros for steel and has tinked several sets of armor with steel he got while sleeping.

i know several plat macroes and money macros that have several full suites of majors that they bought with money and plats they macroed. while im not HURTING for money or plats (i traded a couple majors like major focus solls) i certianly cant hunt enough to actually buy any majors from an individudual who is targeting the wealthy macroers.

i know that some of you might think its just a nerf and turbine hates you. but turbine is leveling the playing feild for us players. and thats a great thing.

cudos to turbine :)

Renswic

05-28-2004, 01:39 PM

This topic was previously mentioned in the In Development section of the May Letter to the Players. After initial development work on this, we have decided to hold off on implementing further Allegiance Officer ranks and tools until we have further data and feedback on how the existing Allegiance Officer tools are being used.

thats a joke right? we airnt getting the 3 lvls of officers this upcoming patch?

Ibn

05-28-2004, 04:05 PM

Originally posted by AC-Vet
1 Question....Define Monarchs for the binding stones? are these that have a certian number of followers? a Mansion? a Villa/mansion?

I'd have to read up more on this pkl fighting over town thing you had in mind.....and I didn't catch wether more than 1 clan can bind to a town or not...

Any monarch. There's no limit to the number of monarchs that can tie to any given binding stone.

I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say "pkl fighting over town thing". We haven't announced anything like that.

Ibn

05-28-2004, 04:07 PM

Originally posted by Paco_Taco_TD
I hate to say this, but some people have no qualms selling gold-tinkered stuff in a pinch. Should be some way to do that =/

Tinkered equipment sellable status is not changing.

Ibn

05-28-2004, 04:17 PM

Originally posted by Illusi
The main point I'm getting at (and having a horrible time stating clearly) is that the change implemented still has a 'no improvement' issue for a subset of players similar to my described situation.

We totally understand that this is not a perfect solution for all players, but we felt that this was the best way to decrease downtime for most players.

Additional improvements are on the way.

vellus

05-28-2004, 04:24 PM

How is a monarch defined for the bindstones? Is there a rank requirement like for a mansion, or if someone has two vassals and no patron, they are a monarch and the three people recall to that bindstone?

What about a single person? That character is essentially a monarch of an allegiance of 1?

Ibn

05-28-2004, 04:25 PM

A monarch is defined as a monarch in game. The easiest way to describe is this -- if you have vassals but no patron you are a monarch. You can thus use a bind stone and allow all of your followers to recall to that location. The game doesn't care whether you have 3000 followers or 1.

SegZavier

05-28-2004, 04:41 PM

Originally posted by Ibn
A monarch is defined as a monarch in game. The easiest way to describe is this -- if you have vassals but no patron you are a monarch. You can thus use a bind stone and allow all of your followers to recall to that location. The game doesn't care whether you have 3000 followers or 1.

Which is really the most fair way of doing things, thank you.

cstanleytech

05-28-2004, 05:11 PM

Originally posted by Illusi
The main point I'm getting at (and having a horrible time stating clearly) is that the change implemented still has a 'no improvement' issue for a subset of players similar to my described situation. We paid the cost for the Item skill at the same cost level as the mages have yet we are (at least until we spend additional xp/skill pts. to basically become mages) penalized such that we do not receive the benefits. Many posters seem to think I'm whining - and to a small degree I am - but in reality I am only saying that there was possibly a better way to handle this by making it the same as the first two improvements....

Illusi how do you think mages feel that for all these years players had full and complete access to all magical protections spells that the mages have ?
Yes you have to spend more xp then a mage to get the ability to cast them but a hybrid does not have anywhere near the liabilities a pure mages does.
I mean sure mages used to be overpowered but that really began to change 2 years ago roughly when tinkering was added. Not to mention recent mage nerfs of stam, healing , drain all of which have been beaten by the devs with a nerf bat until they are in a near comalike state.
Also a mage who is forced to return to town for tapers but if you have fletching on that xbower you can stay out in the field far longer then a mage can.

Dread_Prophecy

05-28-2004, 06:07 PM

My question for you sir, is about the dagger skill. Is dagger ever going to get love again? I know you have probably seen this a few hundred times by now, but I guess I missed the topic =D. The triple strike ability on a bandit was one of the best ideas. Why not make a triple strike capability on imbued loot weapons? Make it a tinker to be added. Oh well, thought I'd give it a shot. Thanks.

-Bad Dawg of Morningthaw

Jet-eye-nite

05-28-2004, 09:09 PM

Why I think its a high lvl mage/mc setup is they are the ones who will directly benefit in buffing time .And the response from I am dumping mc come the patch (granted 10/10 is not much of a start for mc anyway) ,I think once you see the results you will go running to re-train, as even 1 mc far out weighs un-trained mc.
As far as MC all I can compare is my own experiences of 1 a spec creature/life/mc turned to tinker and 2 an OgX dropping mc to take lp for key making . In both cases the drop of mc was terrible in respect to casting . And if I didn't read it wrong mc would be computed in the sucess of a cast on the new bane program. On the latter I surely don't plan to carry an extra 50 mana potions to complete my buffing routine as I now carry 50 . No MC is not un-like going out in the rain in a convertible with the top down , you get wet . I will roll with their punches ,but I don't like the way it reads . I am dropping x on one of my chars to spec mc,item so he can be my very own bb (wonders how much xp return from 340 base x ) :eek:

Opti_Silmara

05-28-2004, 09:53 PM

Originally posted by IBN
Any player in a monarchy can type "@allegiance officer" or "@allegiance officer list" to see who the allegiance officers are.

Eek.. I missed that factor.. thanks IBN. I'll let my alleg know. :)
Hmm.. all the more reason for more officer positions. :)

*slap myself*... "You missed something important Opti.. bad monarch-ing!"

Opti :cool:

Number-Sun

05-28-2004, 10:00 PM

I like the item spell changes

Reydien

05-29-2004, 01:44 AM

Originally posted by Jet-eye-nite
Why I think its a high lvl mage/mc setup is they are the ones who will directly benefit in buffing time .

Again, can you explain your reasoning? I don't see how only high level mages with MC will be able to cast the new banes faster. Unless you are once again trying to infer that they are the only ones who are going to be able to cast the new variation of baning, which is completely false. As I have stated before, the max a lvl 7 bane is going to cost is 224 mana for 9 pieces of armor + 2 pieces of clothing. Add say 25 mana for some fizzles between castings at minimum, and you're at 250 mana. Is that so unbelievably hard to reach, even starting from 10 self? And once again, lets compare that 224 mana to the equivalent of 11 castings of the old-style bane, which comes out to 770 mana. Gee, you seem to be saving 546 mana, is that bad?

I'm sorry if I'm starting to get cranky, but this is what, the third time you've gone no farther than to say "I don't like this change, it only benefits high lvl mage/mc setups, now I'm being forced to take Mana C, thanks a lot Turbine". Wild claims and complaints like that mean nothing if there are no points to back them up.

Sake

05-29-2004, 03:06 AM

people whining about having to train mana conversion to cast spells are like those archers who whine about having to have fletching...

Sax

05-29-2004, 05:21 AM

All sounds good. Your doing a great job to keep game a fun place.

When will Mana Stones be stackable?

or....

When can we use Foci to store comps?

Mithan

05-29-2004, 07:20 AM

These Item Magic changes are VERY good. Thanks IBN.

More playing time now, less buffing...

_AbBaNdOn

05-29-2004, 08:59 AM

Do not touch plat prices. in fact jack the price up to 100k per. In 4-5 hours of hunting i can go and buy 50-60 plats depending on how well i hunted. Cost to restock is never more than 20k pyreals for those trips.

If Turbine made it easy for everyone to buy plats they would become extremely worthless and then we would have to turn to sing keys, oak keys, marble keys. And those take to much effort to collect easily unless your a mage or chainer. So they would have it all, money, loot, equipment. How the heck would a melee guy trade for anything when his counterparts dont need anything from him.

po-dunk

05-29-2004, 04:37 PM

Please consider changing the rewards given for turning in pincers. With treated healing kits available in the loot system there is little need to get them as rewards now. For most mages the treated healing kits are useless anyways. how about changing the kits to plats or maybe a combination of healing kits and plats so that both melee/missle and mage chars get equal love. Sing keys: they are no longer the best craftable key in the game but they are by far the easiest to get and use. how about implementing an increase to the amount of critters that can drop the higher versions of craftable keys and also increase the locations of these chest to non VOD locations

Zero_Washu

05-29-2004, 10:20 PM

KTV,

I guess it comes down to the fact that a lot of people don't want to play el-tank mages. One reason AC lost a lot of players was because the game catered to mages, macros, and exploiters. For the most part it still caters to the first two. The number of el-tank characters/ucm in AC is still phenomenal.

Back to item changes.

Turbine should have just changed the casting time when the target is an equipped item. If they can't do that then they need to come out with new fast cast item spells that target single items so players like Illusi, who is by far not alone in his choice of character type, benefits.

AC is dieing and the developers are not doing much to stop it.

Too much support of macro mages and too little support for real players. They cater to experience whores and that is to the detriment of the game.

tesla_ff

05-30-2004, 02:38 AM

im just curios is there will ever be some hunt only type dungeons added like the ohn's were before there exp/hr got outmatched?
3 dungeons of the same type with crappy loot powerful good exp dungeons that ppl could fellow in for 12-15 million xp per hr? say 70+ ?

olthoi dungeons would be the mother of all exp if not for the loot being so good.

most tusker dungeons are now to difficult for the amount of xp made and only one or two on tusker island remain a "top choice for hunters.

when the expansion goes live the first thing the older players will tell the newcomers to do is level, if theres a good sized influx of players will there be enough good dungeons to accomodate?

just curios....

Garlic Breathe

05-31-2004, 03:03 AM

I'm amazed how well turbine is handling ac. They are taking it all the way. The changes are great. Hopefully I'm not the only one.

FmrSentFlatfoot

05-31-2004, 06:04 PM

Looks pretty decent so far!

I'm kinda surprised there was nothing done for weapon buffs, which is also item enchantment.

It's great that my UA can now buff his 7-piece outfit in 1/4 the time and for less overall mana cost, but he also carries 7 UA weapons which each require 4 spells = 28. Why didn't you add in the ability to buff all weapons that reside in the quick slots? I have 5 of my 7 there, and that would've saved me another 16 spells.

Oh well, better than nothing I suppose. Knock off another 2 minutes of bufftime, 1 minute with first upgrade. So now it'll take me 5 minutes as opposed to 8 for a full buff. If you changed things properly, you could knock it down to 3 minutes total.... so maybe in the future when the devs have had another couple months to ponder how (easy it would be) to implement it.

Why not remove fishing altogether from the game?

I agree. I fished about 30 minutes the first day it came out.. never since. Total waste of time, not to mention boring. Like Golf.. the (if you can even dare to call it a) sport for the Brain Dead. ;)

I'm still very upset about sword getting nerfed and the other weapons tweeked, it's just unfair since sword costs 16 creds to spec and axe/mace 12 (and spear like 8)

What, you don't favor giving other people a chance to have some fun also? That's pretty selfish. Who cares how many credits it costs.. it's a weapon of choice. Imagine how boring and faceless this game would be if everyone used the same weapon? It would be similar to watching all the PKLs in Ayan... a very, very small patch of land with a couple dozen of always the same players non-stop killing each other day in and day out.... about as interesting (minus the potty-mouths) as watching paint dry. :p

I think it's great the reward for the Eviscerator pincer is being reduced

How so? 3 million XP is a drop in the bucket. Meaningless except to maybe a level 50, which it was designed for, and even for a level 50 based on a 3 week timer is a drop in the bucket. Oh but wait.. a new uber pincer is gonna be the talk of the town soon... any bets they dropped it to 2 million, so the new better one could be worth a whopping 3 million? lol We shall see, I guess.

All in all.. looks better than MAY.

Now, this will depend entirely on IF we see an increased drop rate for Red/Black Garnet. Those two are more scarce than granite was when tinkering first started. Makes the desire for tinkering almost entirely cease.

lastard

06-01-2004, 04:14 AM

Will it only be bane spells that affect all armor pieces or will Impenetrability do likewise?

DreadLordGalaad

06-01-2004, 11:57 AM

About Item buff :
You are ruining the game !
Thats all, Now we will have some fully buffed/baned pk rdy to fight in less than 3Mins !
So we will have some fully buffed/baned/diupdated in less than 5MINS!

SO AS I POSTED BEFORE THE BATTLE WILL BE ENDLESS !!!!!!!!

Another point :
COVENANT ARMORS: Covenant armors used to be for people that wanted to SAVE time in banes.
Now why do you need a covenant armor ??? .... Try to find an answer :)
Ok its nicer, and maybe with the hollow update they will still be good. ButIm not sure we will see that after patch.

Ibn

06-01-2004, 04:13 PM

Originally posted by lastard
Will it only be bane spells that affect all armor pieces or will Impenetrability do likewise?

Impen will redirect to all worn armor as well.

kaber5150

06-01-2004, 04:54 PM

i see my post was over looked what about shields?

Ibn

06-01-2004, 04:56 PM

Originally posted by kaber5150
i see my post was over looked what about shields?

As we've said before, this will only affect worn armor, we don't have any way to make it redirect to a shield. So buffing your shield will not get easier with this update.

Do we want to add buffing improvements for shields (and weapons, for that matter) in the future? Yes, absolutely.

kaber5150

06-01-2004, 07:23 PM

boo & hiss make it land on first shield in main pack

_AbBaNdOn

06-01-2004, 09:40 PM

(ooops if redirecting is the problem than this idea probably isnt a very good solution)

Hmmmm Turbine would it be possable to make a new paperdoll somewhere maybe under the magic panel?? You could rip out all the jewelry slots because those have no need to get buffed.

You would add a wand slot, weapons slot(maybe 2-4), a shield slot, and all the armor and cloths slots would stay the same....

Now on that new paperdoll you would drag equipment into the slots but they would not necessarily equipped. In fact they would not be equiped by putting them on THAT paperdoll. What would happen is thats where the new item spells would target.

This would have the following affects:
-Gimps would be able to equip arcane junk to buff and still cast the multitarget item spells on their fighting armor
-You would be able to buff multiple weapons at once by making them behave like the armor buffing item spells
-your shield would be included in the multitarget item spells

While you were buffing you would not have to have that new second paperdoll open. After you finish buffing you equip everything the way you normally do with the 1st paperdoll. This would solve everyones concerns, and kill the need for additional new item spells.

essentially its just a new panel where item spells will be redirected to when you target yourself instead of an item. And you will be able to place items there without having to equip them.

FmrSentFlatfoot

06-02-2004, 01:55 PM

boo & hiss make it land on first shield in main pack

Define first shield in main pack! What if you pick up a shield or two during a run and forget to re-arrange your pack before buffing again? Does that looted shield get baned instead? I guess it would since it's now the first shield in main pack. :rolleyes:

Only one logical way to do this. All weapons/shield to be buffed/baned, need to be in Quickslots. Any others you carry should be up to you to look after.

The only other way would be for the spells to buff ALL weapons/shield in main or even all packs. Kind of dumb if most of the stuff is going to be salvaged/sold anyway.

Quickslots is the best route to go, IMO.

FmrSentFlatfoot

06-02-2004, 02:08 PM

Lv108+ UA Brawler

-Gimps would be able to equip arcane junk to buff and still cast the multitarget item spells on their fighting armor

Just curious what you classify as "Gimp", seeing as Lv 108 isn't even half of 126 in XP. :eek:

SegZavier

06-02-2004, 02:26 PM

Buffing the shield seperatly is fine, I can see myself throwing more specific buffs on my shield but the armor gets everything, reason being that when running through and area anything can get in a back shot but if I pick and choose my targets to kill only specific things will be hitting my front.

Cuttler

06-02-2004, 05:06 PM

Originally posted by FmrSentFlatfoot
boo & hiss make it land on first shield in main pack

Define first shield in main pack! What if you pick up a shield or two during a run and forget to re-arrange your pack before buffing again?

Acutally the shield a melee uses would always be in the first backpack slot because when you load your wand to start casting, your weapon and then your shield automatically unequip to the first two slots. This leaves your shield in slot 1 (and your weapon just used in slot 2). Sooooo, re-arranging would not be an issue. What is an issue is if the solution is codeable in the first place.

FmrSentFlatfoot

06-02-2004, 05:17 PM

This leaves your shield in slot 1 (and your weapon just used in slot 2

Technically, yes. But it has happened that before I buff (as would be the case for others) that you might re-arrange things after USTing stuff, which could leave another shield in first place. Or, you may be ready to portal out of the area and decide to pick a few last items from the corpses around you beforehand.

I still think the logical way is to target quickslots.

Lin XI-Shou

06-02-2004, 05:29 PM

"In June, we will be making player-craftable items unsellable."

Just what do you mean by this? Does it mean that no loot armor or weapons will be sellable to merchants? Does it mean that some loot armor and weapons will be sellable, but not craftable; and some will be craftable, and not sellable? Depending on the implementation, this could be an improvement or a disaster for the economy of the game.

My characters sell most craftable items to get funds for supplies. A melee character might be able to get along with the current balance of loot, though, healing kits and potions might be a problem. Mages and archers might have trouble buying supplies unless the balance of loot items is carefully thought out.

Have I missed something, or has this come out of the blue with no previous chance to comment?

FmrSentFlatfoot

06-02-2004, 06:47 PM

Does it mean that no loot armor or weapons will be sellable to merchants?

It means what Ibn already stated it meant, no more, no less.

Anything you pick off a dead critter, can be sold. Anything you imbue/tinker can be sold. Pretty much any type of generated monster loot can be sold.

Anything you can craft yourself, can't be sold anymore. This was done to prevent ways for people to macro for quick cash.

I think it's a bit overdone myself, but hey.. at least now no one can use 10+ accounts to make mass profits, which actually were the economical disasters of the game. *shrug*

Now people actually have to EARN what they possess.

tesla_ff

06-03-2004, 04:02 AM

turbine has says this is the first of the item changes. but making all new slots and coding paper doll changes seems a little complicated for a simple issue.

were used to casting TONS of banes. this first step simplifies that alot.

i can buff my sheild the way i always have. clicking to target an item isnt an issue.

now as for what is to come, i think a quest for a item spell that casts all the banes in one shot is a pretty easy fix for the sheild issue 1 spell. all banes.

also since melees do use multiple weapons a all-in-one spell would help there too.

what sucks is that with item, melees need this spell the most of all magics. what sucks mnore, melees have the least mana and magic skills and item costs quite a bit of mana all in all. even with simplified baneing , in wich melee hunters hunting melee critters dont always bane anything more than there shield for this reason (at least thats all i do unless in extreme melee areas)

mages benifit a VERY quik buff cycle from these first changes.
NO shield. NO weapons. and they arnt gonna wine about casting 1 spell per orb.

so lets look at this

melee: crappy magics cast 7's very late in lvlvs have little mana and fizz alot.

mage: great buffing power. quikly ready for battle. overall one of the most adept hunters and generally the most used in pk.

both: need to cast buffs to survive upper end content to gain better loot/lvls.

item magic is a melees best friend and i see why many ppl complain that the changes arnt enough. a crew goin to quest the mages will be ready very quikly and impatiently as the mnelees cast there spells many minutes later to finish.

but remeber that turbine has said this is the first of many more changes yet to come. so before we start shootin idea's down, lets see what they have in mind to address these issues >:)

ToroidTwist

06-03-2004, 02:08 PM

Just a quick question about the mana cost formula on the new banes.

If I am wearing exactly one piece of armor, and I target myself before casting Brogard's Defiance, then the mana cost is 70 + (1 * 14) = 84. But if I just target the armor alone, then the mana cost is just 70, right? Is this differential intended?

Brando

06-04-2004, 09:58 PM

What happened to the proposed salvaging changes so that aluvian and sho are not a disadvantage?
I thought this was mentioned earlier in a prior letter as a change possibly for June, but now it's not even mentioned as a July change.

Lloth

06-05-2004, 06:13 AM

Hopefully they dumped the new salvaging skill! Otherwise I got 5 Gharu characters that are wishing they were SHO. I picked Gharu esp. for the item tinkering so that I can get more salvage from items. Now your tellin me your gonna add a salvaging skill and leave me stuck with multiple high lvl toons with the gimpest of gimp racial weapons. My mage is Gharu... Crystal lord pops up and I'm gonna try to kill this thing with my stick? I've even tinkered one up for that job! If I happen to have enough THE's on me I might be able to bring it down. Now if I was SHO, and had an equally tinkered UA to run with, it'd be dead for sure.

SHO and Aluvian got better racial weapons, no free salvaging skills. Gharu got the lamest racial weapon and a free tinkering skill. If it's not broken don't fix it. If you think adding a Salvaging skill is going to take away from the desire for a Gharu character, whats gonna happen WITH a salvaging skill.... worlds full of nothing but SHO characters DUH =P

FmrSentFlatfoot

06-05-2004, 01:44 PM

I picked Gharu esp. for the item tinkering so that I can get more salvage from items. Now your tellin me your gonna add a salvaging skill and leave me stuck with multiple high lvl toons with the gimpest of gimp racial weapons.

I did the same with my new slots, and almost all toons on another server are all Gharu for same reason. But tell me, didn't you train/spec other weapons other than Staff? You make it sound like you created 5 Gharu characters and their main weapon is staff? lol Be realistic, you trained other weapons and only made them Gharu FOR the Item Tinkering advantage. People will do the same for all other races as well.

You think Dagger is so hot? Well, it isn't. It sucks almost as bad, if not worse than Staff... but my main Aluvian toon doesn't use Dagger (anymore). It's now a very efficient Archer, and yes... I have Item Tinkering also. It was worth the 2 credits.

SHO toons will invariably always be UA, that's a given. But not everyone is going to choose UA even with a salvaging skill. Some people like Aluvian for Assess Person, believe it or not.

I'll say this though, what Turbine SHOULD do is completely drop all racials from character creation and add the extra 6 skill credits to the total, and allow the player to CHOOSE what he/she wishes to do with them. There'd be a whole lot of very happy customers out there, and I bet the news of that going around would lure a LOT of people back to AC. Now, in saying this.. all the quest items meant for a specific race doesn't have to change. All that needs to be done is for people to be made aware that if they want whatever quest item, that they must be a specific race that trained the specific weapon. That fixes both sides of the coin then. The people who want the standard racial weapons, can train them themselves, and those who don't care can train whatever they want in its place. :)

Could then even make the salvaging skill a skill credit choice, and not free-for-all.

Brando

06-06-2004, 09:43 AM

I also have 5 Gharu toons, and not a single one of them is a staff character.
My point is that unless you want a UA toon or a dagger(why anyone would want that ???), it is pointless to pick Sho or Aluvian. So an end result is that you will have a world with UA's and Gharu toons, and zero variety. Then racial based loot is worthless and ebony becomes the hottest salvage.

Cuttler

06-06-2004, 01:22 PM

Simply put, all racial skills should be refunded and lore should become the standard "have to take" skill. Those individuals who wanted their racial skills could take them again. Everyone else would, in essence, receive 2 more skill credits to do with as they pleased since the total of free racial skills is 6 and lore is only 4. If someone wants a salvage skill, they'd need to decide to take item tink with their two new extra credits or come up with 2 more credits to take one of the other tinkers.

This solution gives everyone a choice to have, or not have, a usable salvage skill without having to put xp into a skill that will only help them squash junk, a waste of xp IMO.

FmrSentFlatfoot

06-06-2004, 07:30 PM

Simply put, all racial skills should be refunded and lore should become the standard "have to take" skill.

Why? All that does is create the same situation as having to take the current racial skills. You have NO choice.

I much prefer the "Let ME have the choice" to decide what I want to spend my extra 6 credits on.

I guess you're not aware that there are a great many mages out there who never trained Lore? Even my mage (lvl 109) doesn't have lore. What do I need it for, when Creature/Life/War are all spec'd? To wear a major? Nah.. it would be nice I suppose, but I do quite fine without the extra 15 points.

I may choose to take it later or I may choose a tinkering skill along with Lockpick after 125, but I do enjoy that it's MY choice to decide. The same goes if we got our racial skills refunded to us.

Seregil

06-07-2004, 12:42 AM

Once again Turbine knee jerks and screws up the loot system. Since armor makes up probably 75% of the sold loot by devalueing it because some players are too lazy to get a few suits of Cragstone's armor. By lowering the value of the armor, once again you have destroyed the loot system you have painstakenly created. Turbine, pull your head out and use some sense!

FmrSentFlatfoot

06-07-2004, 01:47 AM

By lowering the value of the armor, once again you have destroyed the loot system you have painstakenly created.

I disagree entirely. The last thing anyone wants is armor that's worth so much, you are forced to use 4-5 bags of Pine just to lower the value to an acceptable enough value so it doesn't drop everytime you die, thereby keeping it's AL low because you can't get enough Steel on it.

If it's cash you're after, there's plenty other items worth a small fortune, enough to make you rich beyond what you'll ever need in this game.

Low value, low/high AL armor is worth more than High value, low/high AL armor.

That's my opinion, for whatever you value it at.

Ibn

06-07-2004, 06:49 PM

Originally posted by Brando
What happened to the proposed salvaging changes so that aluvian and sho are not a disadvantage?
I thought this was mentioned earlier in a prior letter as a change possibly for June, but now it's not even mentioned as a July change.

We've only ever discussed this as being In Concept. There are no specific plans for moving it to Development currently.

Ibn

06-07-2004, 06:52 PM

You can still find very high-value jewelry, orbs and such. (Which in fact have less burden so you can carry more of them.)

Don't think we didn't consider the fact that the change to armor value might cause characters that use armor primarily to seel for pyreals to make less money. We did consider this, but we decided in the end that the improvement was still worth making as you can make pyreals just as easily on other items.

evolutionoccurs

06-08-2004, 04:59 AM

Bane Improvements are a few years late, but better now than never. Can you ever talk any sense into them and get them to possibly make one Master Foci and/or One Salvage Pack which will have an option panel on how to auto salvage your materials as you see fit.. ie. ; auto ws 4&5 into one, ws 6&7 into one, 8,9,10 by themselves, etc....... and omfg please smack them in the head(lightly) Prismatic Peas or sooooo long overdue. I mean wtf, out in the battlefield and boom , u cant even friggin recal. Try that on for size with 3 biaka's sniffin ur undies. Course yeah i found an always handy AL Gem but jeeze i'd much rather retreated for a sec and splitta good ole prismatic pea. pea = 100 btw.... lol. Can you please talk them people into some changes worth while, I mean all these worthless quests/updates that still Stink royally, Nobody likes the weapons, they get us all hyped up and bam, back on the ground. They came out with decent armor finally . That only a mage can wield... hah. whata joke. Oh wait there showing sympathy on the chainr's right ? lvl 240+ bowyers have 200 base str/end.. hahaha, whata bad joke. I could'v understood lvl 40+ to wield or even lvl 50+, but those base req's are plain rediculous. Smack em one more time. plz. I mean every quest items = mule material, tell them to plz go ig and look around
if they do not believe you.. ok thx... g/l..

Prismatic Peas, omg omg omg omg wtf ??????? /e smacks head
Auto Salvage Pack (100spaces)auto ejects full bags upon completion and setable to salvage as groups.
and or One Master Foci.....
And Tusk/pincers that give XP for lvl 126+ k thx bye.

/e rant off

And Maybe Even Quest Items Worth Using. I mean my poor mules
are filled with enuff uber loot to lack the taste for most of their crud...... Thx again. Though I know i'll just left here with myself to beat my head against a concrete wall. /e wonders wth turbines staff does all month long. They play golf till the last week of each month than decide to go work on this game ????
I mean seriously, update, "oh we're changing 4 or 5 things for you
(keep sending us your money fool) and we're working hard (a few days before patch ?) If they cant think of things to keep people happy why spend so much time creating (crud) ????
I mean jeeze, every darn one ig just mules it and than sets forth to get a loot pc and max tinker it. Why spend all this "time" building quests that literally a one time (one hour or three) for eternity quest. Literally... like DUH..... /e smacks head once more
When you could smack their heads and make em build things that
do help us function ingame....... /e prays. Look above for a few clues if you've read this far. Improve, dont improvise. And learn the Diference. k, thx.
Sorry just sick of seeing morons do nothing to this game.
Quicker buffs well that's a smart one. Pat on the back...... But as far as allll these Worthless quest improvements there 'focusing' on, lol it saddens me so to see that turbines staff lacks such knowledge than to know that improvising is not improvement and hence will not help a single thing other than killing more time between actuall improvements.....

Kachina

06-08-2004, 10:40 AM

"The reward on the Olthoi Eviscerator Pincer has been decreased to 2 million XP, but we’ve introduced higher-level Pincer quests."

I am really getting sick of the low and mid level character nerfs. Why don't you (Turbine) just make having a character under lvl 100 against CoC? Why break a good working quest? Because you can't think of anything new? I will be very surprised if I can do the new quest because all your new content is so lag ridden most dial up users can't go there. Why don't you do something constructive for a change? There is mansion lag, all manner of housing lag. Not to mention the mansion and villa shadow that makes seeing characters in the building perimeter very iffy if they don't move.

The Tekapuapuh quest is so laggy it is unbelievable. It is time you got off your turbine duffs and dealt with lag!!!!!

zathros

06-08-2004, 11:38 AM

Originally posted by Ibn
[Gaerlan stuff...]
Your last question, this is the request to reduce the timer to 6 days 23 hours or such? No, this was not changed.

Why wasn't this changed? Was it because of balance, time to code/test, wanting to change them all at once, etc., or was it just too low priority to make it into the patch?

Holey

06-08-2004, 11:53 AM

Re Tinkering, Ibn said:

"We've only ever discussed this as being In Concept. There are no specific plans for moving it to Development currently."

Please, please, please, please, please make specific plans. :D

I recently dropped item tinkering at 125 to spec something, at 350+ (untrained) I'm frequently losing 2-3 units of 7+ material trying to salvage in the field. It seems a shame that a Gharu can always get 100% just because they chose Gharu 4 years ago when it didn't matter nearly as much. (really, racials have never been super viable) It really does hurt, I think a lot of us were hoping for something here.

Would it help if I did *grovel* for a while?

nofeir

06-08-2004, 01:46 PM

A couple of thoughts:

If you're going to nerf the reward for the evis pincer, how about reducing the quest timer too? Make it two weeks?

Whatever happened to the multiple spell scrolls that were being talked about? Are they going to be available this patch?

Ibn

06-08-2004, 04:18 PM

Originally posted by nofeir
Whatever happened to the multiple spell scrolls that were being talked about? Are they going to be available this patch?

I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to.

nofeir

06-08-2004, 06:47 PM

Don't tell me I made this up! It seems to me that there was some discussion about adding scrolls that had more than one spell, like a combination of buffs for quickness and coordination, strength and endurance, and some that were to be triple combinations like strength, endurance and coordination. Did I just dream I read about this? Is it coming... sometime? Ever? You know we all wanna know when...

*hopes that Ibn can make dreams come true* :)

P.S. Any chance of my other wish coming true as well; shorter quest timer on evis?

kaber5150

06-09-2004, 02:09 AM

Originally posted by Ibn
I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to.

hey i also remember reading something about combo spells to....don't play it off :p

And here is the proof!

Further Buffing Improvements
In addition to accelerated self buffs and Fellowship spells, we are looking at introducing spells that buff multiple attributes simultaneously. These spells could be introduced for Life, Creature, and/or Item Magic. The exact details of these spells – how do you learn them, what is the cost, how many attributes do they buff simultaneously – are still in development.

More information on this topic will be in the upcoming Buffing Improvements article.

copy and pasted from a post called " Followup to the March Letter to the Players "

tesla_ff

06-09-2004, 02:37 AM

when initially there was disscussion about buffing improvements there was a letter with many in-concept ideas. one was possibly adding spells that would cast 3 spells in 1 cast. it was an in concept idea wich means it prob was just a "hey this sounds cool" at that time and now its a "lets try this approach instead" kinda thing *shrug*. but thats what they are referring to ibn. the original text about buffing improvements before any buffing improvements were added.

KPD157

06-09-2004, 02:38 AM

nofeir, Try this article

http://ac.turbinegames.com/index.php?page_id=220

It does however state that the proposals to make multi stat buffing with creature spells was in concept and they even talked about the Item changes that are going into effect this next update :)

Basically they have tables and stuff that might give you the idea that they actually had all the stuff ironed out but bellow the info is the fact that they are working on it and all and I doubt that they have made much headway with it :)

Multi-Stat spells will be most likely be added sometime this year. They will probably be created only for self spells first, with the possibility of other spells in the distant future. - Excerpt from Buffing Improvements Multi-Stat Spell Section

FmrSentFlatfoot

06-09-2004, 05:32 AM

Yes I know it was "Turbine"who made the multi-spell announcement, but with the speed-casting they've already given us, I don't see a need for for it. Level 7s in the time it takes to cast a level 1, and people are still complaining? sheesh! Why not just expect to be forever buffed... never wears off... only drawback being you're told what buffs you get (it's a random choice thing) at character creation, so you're forced to choose the weapon to go along with the buffs you'll get. Make it interesting! :eek:

Turbine gives an inch, you want a foot. They give you a foot, you want a mile... does it ever end? They can't keep revising the buffing system, or we're wasting so much time and resources on just that one thing, and the penalty is... no content.

Phooey, I want content... let's get down to the nitty-gritty and stop worrying about superficial things. It's so counter-productive.

Do any of you who are "demanding" neverending changes to buffing remember the old days? Probably not. Well, the top-line was level 6, and they lasted 15 minutes... that's right, 15 short minutes! We had to rebuff sometimes 3-4 times to complete quests. Hunting was tedious, but it was challenging.. you actually had to be very aware of timers (that you had to keep track of yourself!) Made this game more fun because you actually had to use your brain to THINK on looking after yourself so you didn't die. Now it's just too easy... They went through two (and possibly three) time limit changes since those days and level 7 was added. Now 7s are 60 minutes, not to mention all the various other special powerups via quest items like Joji's Font, Crystal Nodules, Destiny's Wind and the other one that gives 100 Stamina for 90 minutes. etc., etc.

It's time to stop whining about buffing and get busy on other aspects of this game. What's more important? Having FUN or BUFFING yourself nonstop? I choose having FUN!