RuadhTheRed
10-03-2005, 04:04 PM
There was a EQ Commnity Summit at SoE this weekend. Here is a round up of reports from various sources.
Highlights from Shaman board report: http://crucible.samanna.net/viewtopic.php?t=908
I asked [Maddoc] about solo mission content in DoD, and was reminded that EQ is a social, group-centric game. He also said that the overhead for instancing was the same for one toon or 50, and that it was impractical to use those resources on a single character.
Everyone pestered Zajeer about DoD mob difficulty versus itemization; he first explained his zone difficulty plan for non-raid content:
Corathus Creep similar to Nobles' Causeway
East Korlach similar to Wall of Slaughter
West Korlach similar to The Ruined City of Dranik
The Hive similar to MPG (non-trial content)
Illsalin similar to Riftseeker's Sanctum or Phase Three of Plane of Time
Dreadspire Keep similar to Quarm
- with 'hard' missions being one level higher (and Tipt/Vxed similar to upper Elementals for reference). SOE defined EQ events, generally, as: Raid (54 players, 5 loots), Large Event (30-36 players, 3-4 loots), or Small Events (18-24 players, 2 loots). Evolving Items could have up to eight levels, with a goal of approximately 10 hours of XP for each level, whereas Intelligent Items could have up to three levels, with slower levelling; he explained that only solo/group kill XP (not quest, not raid) went towards Intelligent item levels, and that class/race bonuses/penalties did not apply at all. Having said all that, he agreed to review the risk versus reward for DoD in general. Many players suggested that the difficulty was spot on, but the rewards were too low for those able to complete the missions.
I ambled over to Zajeer, and asked him about Detrimental Duration Extension Focus itemization and the possibility of augments of this nature. He stated that the current itemization was intended to require equipment choices and tradeoffs by the players, but that he would review the availability of seed effects.
I asked Oshran about BiC drops from GoD bosses, but he politely passed me to Prathun, explaining that BiC was not under his influence. Prathun confirmed that GoD bosses could drop zero to three BiC pieces per kill, and that they would be changed to force one per kill and allow up to three, but explained that the DoD release had stopped this fix from making it through QA. He could not give a go-live date, but assured me that it was ready for testing and would be pushed to live soonest.
Highlights from Cleric Board report: http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20678
GoM is indeed interacting improperly with Abundant Healing. Rashere is going to look into it this week. He thinks he has an idea of what's going on.
Mana and Endurance Regen
I mentioned the whole downtime issue in the DoD discussion (we were long since off the tracks) and there was a rather long discussion that boiled down to EQ not having an "in-combat" and "out-of-combat" state. They are working on it and I got the impression that none of the devs were pleased with where mana or endurance regen (Rashere actually stated he thought END regen was worse atm than mana) so there's hope that it will get a solution in the future.
Highlights from EQVault report: http://eqvault.ign.com/fullstory.php?id=11491 & http://eqvault.ign.com/fullstory.php?id=11494 & http://eqvault.ign.com/fullstory.php?id=11495
They are fixing the mission where when the spiders kill the gnome it does boot you out of the mission rather than letting you continue. This will be looked at right away.
If you don't get an AA when you finish a mission, zone back in and it should work.
Abundant Healing does block Gift of Mana and they are going to fix that.
They will check out the pet AA that causes the pet not to flurry in the middle and fix it.
The session then turned to loot in Depths of Darkhollow. Craig wanted feedback, and he got it. The community correspondents all felt that the loot was not worth the reward for the difficulty of the encounters because to defeat the encounters you had to have gear better than what dropped.
The gap between the casual player and the raider was discussed, and the dev team pointed out they designed the game so that raiders have 50% better gear than what drops for a casual player in single group encounters. That is their rule of thumb when designing raid-level drops.
The dev team also answered a tribute question. No-drop items will never be tributable, but any item that drops and has value is attributable.
They will seriously consider putting a banker in the guild lobby.
Class balancing is continuing and is an ongoing process. It is happening, according to Craig, they just have not posted anything.
I'll add more reports as I find them.
Highlights from Shaman board report: http://crucible.samanna.net/viewtopic.php?t=908
I asked [Maddoc] about solo mission content in DoD, and was reminded that EQ is a social, group-centric game. He also said that the overhead for instancing was the same for one toon or 50, and that it was impractical to use those resources on a single character.
Everyone pestered Zajeer about DoD mob difficulty versus itemization; he first explained his zone difficulty plan for non-raid content:
Corathus Creep similar to Nobles' Causeway
East Korlach similar to Wall of Slaughter
West Korlach similar to The Ruined City of Dranik
The Hive similar to MPG (non-trial content)
Illsalin similar to Riftseeker's Sanctum or Phase Three of Plane of Time
Dreadspire Keep similar to Quarm
- with 'hard' missions being one level higher (and Tipt/Vxed similar to upper Elementals for reference). SOE defined EQ events, generally, as: Raid (54 players, 5 loots), Large Event (30-36 players, 3-4 loots), or Small Events (18-24 players, 2 loots). Evolving Items could have up to eight levels, with a goal of approximately 10 hours of XP for each level, whereas Intelligent Items could have up to three levels, with slower levelling; he explained that only solo/group kill XP (not quest, not raid) went towards Intelligent item levels, and that class/race bonuses/penalties did not apply at all. Having said all that, he agreed to review the risk versus reward for DoD in general. Many players suggested that the difficulty was spot on, but the rewards were too low for those able to complete the missions.
I ambled over to Zajeer, and asked him about Detrimental Duration Extension Focus itemization and the possibility of augments of this nature. He stated that the current itemization was intended to require equipment choices and tradeoffs by the players, but that he would review the availability of seed effects.
I asked Oshran about BiC drops from GoD bosses, but he politely passed me to Prathun, explaining that BiC was not under his influence. Prathun confirmed that GoD bosses could drop zero to three BiC pieces per kill, and that they would be changed to force one per kill and allow up to three, but explained that the DoD release had stopped this fix from making it through QA. He could not give a go-live date, but assured me that it was ready for testing and would be pushed to live soonest.
Highlights from Cleric Board report: http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20678
GoM is indeed interacting improperly with Abundant Healing. Rashere is going to look into it this week. He thinks he has an idea of what's going on.
Mana and Endurance Regen
I mentioned the whole downtime issue in the DoD discussion (we were long since off the tracks) and there was a rather long discussion that boiled down to EQ not having an "in-combat" and "out-of-combat" state. They are working on it and I got the impression that none of the devs were pleased with where mana or endurance regen (Rashere actually stated he thought END regen was worse atm than mana) so there's hope that it will get a solution in the future.
Highlights from EQVault report: http://eqvault.ign.com/fullstory.php?id=11491 & http://eqvault.ign.com/fullstory.php?id=11494 & http://eqvault.ign.com/fullstory.php?id=11495
They are fixing the mission where when the spiders kill the gnome it does boot you out of the mission rather than letting you continue. This will be looked at right away.
If you don't get an AA when you finish a mission, zone back in and it should work.
Abundant Healing does block Gift of Mana and they are going to fix that.
They will check out the pet AA that causes the pet not to flurry in the middle and fix it.
The session then turned to loot in Depths of Darkhollow. Craig wanted feedback, and he got it. The community correspondents all felt that the loot was not worth the reward for the difficulty of the encounters because to defeat the encounters you had to have gear better than what dropped.
The gap between the casual player and the raider was discussed, and the dev team pointed out they designed the game so that raiders have 50% better gear than what drops for a casual player in single group encounters. That is their rule of thumb when designing raid-level drops.
The dev team also answered a tribute question. No-drop items will never be tributable, but any item that drops and has value is attributable.
They will seriously consider putting a banker in the guild lobby.
Class balancing is continuing and is an ongoing process. It is happening, according to Craig, they just have not posted anything.
I'll add more reports as I find them.