Producer Dialogue: DSO in 2015

Not just he is not completely right ... but you are both wrong.
I have always had 20-30K CoT's in my locker and another stack in my inventory.

Now I play the same amount of time ... yet I can't get even 100 gold per day.
CoT removal was done to make players spend more money. Before you could get CoT by farming (playing) ... and now you can get gold even without playing at all.
But it is fine ... there is nothing more to add with this irreversible change



Question for Rick

Are there any chances of reworking Dark Set like you did with the moon event sets?

 

First ... dont know anything about piratstorm... and dont care to.
Second... Never said ANYTHING about them making money ... If you have ever read any of my other posts you would know I support this BUSSINESS in its efforts to make money. NO MONEY = NO GAME ... DUH!

As for CoTs vs Gold.... Yes, there are more legs dropping now, but none are worth keeping... at least not for any of my toons at lvl 45. I got much better gear, both crafted and dropped, that I opened with CoTs .. than I have since they took CoTs away.
As for Crafting.... Same goes with the above post ... have crafted over 30 2hand swords for my DK .. not one was worth saving. And thats just on my DK.... and just swords! ... Crafting is a bigger gamble than giving your gold to the jesters ... who have never dropped jester stones or clovers for me ... Oh. Ive heard the stories of So-and-so who spent 100 gold and walked away with 60 clovers. But that just reinforces my point A few players get lots of great drops and the rest of us get nothing but junk ...

Lastly, Simply put, my post was eluding to the fact that nothing (imho) is "Fair and Balanced" in DSO ... so why would anyone think that Guild Battles would be any different. There is nothing in place to keep the strongest players from banding together into one super guild that will forever dominate the GB scene. Making it useless to even participate. Apropos for DSO.

 

(Sorry for being a bit off-topic, Mods can delete this if they must. But I feel i have to answer this one.)

The fact that you always had 20-30k CoTs says nothing about how many you ID´ed per day. Some had over 50k because thay didn´t ID anything. Just like there is people with 10k gold+ now because they don´t feel like spending it.

I don´t think CoT-removal had anything to do with getting players to spend more money, except by developing the game and make people keep playing.
At that time, people could buy 1,5k CoTs for 6k anders. That didn´t need any playing at all, just paying. Now some buys andermant, spends it all on Jesters and gets 20k+, but gold is also easily farmed, if you just sell all the loot.
When you say you can´t even farm 100 gold/day, it only has something to do with your farmingmethods.
100 gold as about as easily farmed as 100k glyphs. Which is easy. I don´t play that much, but I can still farm 100 gold/hour in Q6m2 by doing only knights.

If anyone could farm 1535 CoTs in 1 hour before, i would REALLY like to know! :-D

Have a nice day!

 

By reworking, do you mean the visuals or the stats?

 

Docwisky the comment about the money wasnt refering to you. Sry if you understand that.

As for questions for Rick:
1 Will there be a special button for using potions?
- i think we really need it because atm i have to open inventory in the middle of battle and use a potion, and because of that i never keep mana potions because it ll be to hard to use it,atleast for me.
-i only use potions in my action bar only when i know for sure i ll need it at some bosses

2 How many slots will you add for action bar, if you will add any at all?
-since there will be atleast a new skill for every class i would like to have the option to use them according to the situation (atm i have to keep spwaping golem-mind control depending the map, other characters in my group etc...and it s annoying, i could still bind keys like "r,q,t,ctrl,shift, mousewheel", even more with a gaming mouse, so u could add atleast 5 more buttons for us to use easyly)


For the guild battles u should have in mind that even though a guild has 50 members most likely there arent more than 20 players online at the same time(this is for most of the guilds). Probably with the new feature, active guild will kick out inactive players, and start to recruit only the dayly players, but as you said on twitch that the guild battle will consist of 5 teams and there will be 5 fights, well most likely there will be no guild that will have all the players online, i dont have any idea atm for a solution but you must take that in consideration.
The solution that if there arent enough players then lets say that team A will fight in the 2nd,3rd,4th,5th batlle it s not an option because you ll encourge then guilds to have only 10 strong players and i dont think thats what you want to achieve.

 

This. I melt every shield that includes crit, crit dam% and damage. I'm still using my level 43 shield upped to 46 with 2x block rate (~78% total), 1x block reduce (40%) and an armor line (+181), and expect that I will need to pour glyphs into it if the current trend of offensive stats continues.

My suggestion would be to increase the chance of defensive stat lines on shields.

If there is a need of offensive stats on the DK offhand, create a dual wield DK option wherein the 2nd weapon* essentially acts similar to that as a SW book or SM wrench. Put increased chances of offensive stats such as crit, dam, and crit dam% on there, maybe some kind of rage booster on the 2nd hand weapon. It should still take defensive gems like a SW book or SM wrench.

*this 2nd weapon would function as a booster, not for dual attacks. The visual animation could show dual attacks. Instead of having base armor it could add +25 rage, or even shift the rest point of rage up to 10 or 20)

 

Like Novadude suggested, a good idea would be to alter chances to get a given stat depending on equipment slot, for example :

• better chances at defensive stats for a shield/ball/absorber
• better chances at offensive stats for a quiver/book/tool

 

I am quite interested to see what some of these updates, in particular, alchemy, will look like.

However, I do have some misgivings about the whole guild battles thing. In a previous game I played, when a guild competition type feature was introduced, it divided a community that was otherwise quite friendly. On one server, a single mega guild formed and completely dominated the competition. On the other server, two mega guilds formed and a deep rivalry and suspicion formed between these two groups.

Either way, the fate for smaller guilds on both servers was the same: they would be regularly gutted of their "top" players to meet the demands of the mega guilds, and many players who weren't immediately accepted to a mega guild would use smaller guilds as a stepping stone for entry.

I don't like what happened to that game's community. I hope I never have to see it on DSO, which is why I have been happy that guilds have solely been a social network/chat room up until now.

 

I have my misgivings about guilds as well. perhaps guild sizes should be kept low (at50 members now), in order to minimize megaguilds.

 

I've also played games that followed this route with the same results.. Mega guilds were created to rule the battles and those who couldn't join the winners got frustrated and stopped playing.

What's to stop the highest ranked pvp players to team up to create an unbeatable team ??? especially if the rewards are enticing..

It is my hope that DSO would work a little more diligently to separate themselves from the other games instead of blindly following the same failed path.

 

Rick, thanks for what you do and the effort to improve the game.
Request: Please push the bug team to correct error below. I know it has been reported but does not seem to be much of a priority and it should be a simple variable change in the code. Items with all % lines as enchants have an upgrade cost that is 20-25 times higher than items with mixed enchants. The pic below shows the first upgrade costing 7.4 million GOP when the normal first upgrade is around 350k. The total to upgrade this one to 50 would be 87 Mil. It is an obvious error and has turned this otherwise decent bow into a gem holder.


As a reply to the enchants discussion and probability of getting what you want with any reasonable chance: adding some form of game mechanic that influences what enchants come out of crafted items would be a valuable element and add some depth. For example: completing some quest to give higher chances of getting block rate on the shield, or world drops of multiple types that would be a 5th Element(great movie) that improves chances of various enchants. We want to be able to have some control over the items we pursue to improve our characters which is why the exorbitant cost of crafting has negatively impacted the game for many.

 

Hi BigPapa,

I'll look into it first thing Monday. Thanks for reporting.

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Hi silverseas,

I share these concerns, as I've seen it happen on games I've worked on in the past. We will do our best to do something different that avoids this common pitfall.

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Hi -Steaua89-,

We have a design for potion slots, but it still needs to be refined. About your second point, we are not sure what we are going to do yet about slot count.

Regarding guild battles, the design as it stands now allows guilds to create up to 5 teams. Each team has 10 players in it. A guild's teams don't play together in the same battle and will also be ranked separately. I hope that sheds some light.

 

There are an excessive amount of people quitting pvp matches when its clear they are about to lose. The penalties for intentional quitting should be increased, including locking out all other characters on an account and honor point penalties for quitting.

 

I'm also concerned that we could end up with two or three dominate Guilds and a bunch of very frustrated smaller Guilds. If the Guild size is maintained at 50, I think the PVP Leaderboard will show that there is still plenty of opportunity to spread Field Marshals, Marshals and Flag Bearers all over the place. If the Guild size increases or if they allow Guild alliances, then the social aspect is doomed.

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6v6 is a perfect example where you can occasionally see a Blue Team group throw up there hands in the air in frustration. It happens but I think it is far from epidemic. It's a corner case. If your on the Blue Team, just grab your points and move on and hope for a better match next time.

 

That too, but my comments were actually directed towards 5v5.

There are certain players on agathon in 5v5 who basically expect to be supported in running every flag back in and wont support teammates who run flags back, and if a teammate grabs a flag they will quit the match.

 

Guild PvP sounds fantastic for a large, active server such as Heredur or Balor.
Tegan on the otherhand;10 players from the same guild online at the same time will be a feat in itself.
I can see perhaps 2 or 3 guilds able to do it occasionally and be competitive, but I just know it's going to be somewhat abandoned.

Please make an option for 5 player teams aswell as 10 player teams and reduce the honor pool respective, which will allow involvement of the smaller guilds in the smaller servers.

On the note of small servers,
I believe Greg mentioned in the latest Twitch something about server-switching/merging being somewhat realistic.
Is it at all possible in the near future to incorporate a function like this into the game?

 

Those characters is certainly very unbalanced, Dks got so much HP and they heals forever since its freee HP.
Going on in this way will take forever to kill a dk while all they can do is just spam their wild swing and immune system and not forgetting their smash does tremendous amounts of damage too.
Rangers already got buff skills and yet chances to score a crit is which i can say pretty easy, then that will be 1 shot 1 kiill or maybe 1 shot 3 kills.
Their eagles strike is even more deadly than lightning strike which i personally find rather funnny lol.
In fact spellweavers need buff skills but currently they got none, personally i think they need a complete set of reworked skills as they got low hp and armour.
Even with a high crit build spellweaver, those hits is almost like 50% or lesser.
Stop short changing those players which is using a spellweaver and gives us back what we paid for

 

More or less exactly what I have been asking for for a long time, in the creative corner of the German forum.

I understand you want us to farm for (random) drops (with largely bad random values) instead of crafting - but why then keep the crafting option at all?

I think a lot of the frustration with the current system stems from 2 facts:
1) We get to identify a lot of legendary items, but they are 99% useless, so it is usually like "oh, i found another 6k glyphs". This is especially true for 1-h weapons, from my p.o.v. (which drop very rarely anyway, I think).
2) If you collect 4 extraordinary items of 1 type to craft a legendary, now you actually get to see their stats for free as well. And you pay 100 gold for crafting, but even if you make sure all the input has only useful enchantments, the outcome is totally random - and again, mostly useless.

So the main problem is a psychological one - we get to see a lot more stats, and they are "all" bad. And if we decide to pay for crafting, it is mostly in vane, even if we use good ingredients on it.

Personally I think the enchantments of the input items should have a (still randomized) influence on the crafting result (i.e. increase the probability of a same enchantment in the outcome). That would give a sense to crafting, after farming for the needed Input items - and from my p.o.v. that could also justify an even increased cost.
Maybe a more targeted crafting could also be a skill for the knowledge tree.

I know people are afraid too many players could get OP items like that, but on the other hand people complain about the grinding and the "unfair" distribution of luck in drops... I would prefer a system that gives you an increased chance to get the item you are looking for, if only you farm long enough for the necessary inputs. And the system would be the same for everyone, reducing the random factor a bit, thus increasing "fairness".

 

Hi fab,

As part of the content update, we will be redesign our skill system. We need to achieve a better balance between the classes and also add more options to customize play-style. We are on it.

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Hi Armando,

I will discuss your idea of existing enchantments having an effect on the crafted item with the design team. At first glance, it sounds reasonable.

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lewcar,

It is, but it's difficult to get right. We have a crude script for moving characters between test servers, but this really is crude and not appropriate for running on the live servers. We first need to invest more time in this script, but as you can tell from the contents of the producer dialogue, it is not currently our focus.

 

From the hundreds of shields I've opened I haven't even found a single extraordinary shield without a junk value (I know this issue has already been discussed and noted in this thread but I want to stress it again in light of the above suggestion). Unless we'd actually have a reasonable chance at finding those 4 craft-worthy items, such a system would have very limited usefulness.