Announcement Ask the CMs in English

Money talks... I'm just wondering how much the bottom line needs to hurt before they actually admit it. One of two things will happen.

1. BP headquarters will see this as a failing game and stop putting major resources into it which will be a shame because the developers are the ones that are killing it, not the players.
2. They will make a last ditch effort to save the game and have to make a practical 180 to do so. They will simply have to hope that enough core players are still here to save the game. To put it honestly, I've gone from playing 20-40 hours a week to about 3-5 and the only reason I'm still here...

 

Wow, that is a lot of assumptions you got there!! We have mentioned it some times already: hotfixes were deployed to address very urgent issues and Rel156 is the moment where some extra balancing will come into play. I am not sure whether there will be another hotfix next week; it does not seem like it, tbh.

Is it? Rel157 brings a rework on PW. The internal stats and difficulty levels of monsters and general levels are being revised. We can talk about this after Rel157 and you can tell us what you think about this place in particular.

I am supposing here that you read what you wanted to read in my last answer and not what I actually wrote. I am referring to this part more specifically: --I will make sure they read your latest comments since the release and offer their view/official statements on latest changes and game features that are being discussed in here--. This includes DK, glyphs of power statement, andermant drops, crit issue, to mention but a few. Plus we will also pick some questions made in our future Facebook post. Sorry we cannot bring you real time debate. Sorry we cannot create a direct chat roulette with our dev team. If there is no point in our team commenting live on repeated issues that are brought to us in these forums and over other channels, you can choose not to watch it.

Personally I do believe is needed.

I hope you do not entirely believe that Greg or me are in charge of calculating anything inside the game. Lemme tell you: that would be terrible... That pertains to the realm of developers, from level designers, to game designers, programmers, QA managers... And it goes without saying: of course they test different environments and configurations before changing any in-game equation!!

The idea of a dev playing DSO and having directly all the information from you would be ideal but it would also be a waste of time. Do not jump on me yet. That kind of presence demands from the person some time and our team is quite packed with their daily duties. We prefer to compile all the major issues through reports on test server, forums, social media and customer tickets and send them to the teams directly to hear their answers/reactions. Like we just did with your comment of PW Halls of Fame being OP.

And again I can only but agree with you. Greg and me are discussing about this and it makes perfect sense, to create more straight-to-the-point Twitch sessions of 30 minutes. That would be quite ideal. It's hard to cut down the word waterfall of two Mediterranean talkative chaps... but we definitely want to do it.

If there are solutions to be applied, we will present them. If there are official statements to be made, we will give them. If we think that some feature in the game is good as it is for a reason, we will explain you why.

--About Gnob: if we could tease you already with the new items that Gnob has in the works, we would have done it already. There are improvements and new thingies coming with this big guy... but we do not have any official info to share at the moment.
--About those low level legendaries and crit rate: again, we will comment on crit rates during Twitch. And even if I am sounding already as a scratched vinyl disk already, balancing is ongoing and this also applied to items for normal mode plus PW.

I know I have not answered to all of you. Please forgive me that and see you next time*.
*Disclaimer: won't happen before Monday.

Cheers!

 

My thoughts regarding DKs. An endgame level 45 DK pre-R155 had up to 5 healing skills/talents in pve (20% MWS, dragon hide 30%, level 40 pvp talent, level 42 exp talent giving 10% for dragon hide and for furious battle cry which i'm counting twice, and 6th was only in pvp giving 25% HP back for killing an oppenent. They also had a decent amount of stun breaks and stun immunities. They key for me, though, was that all of was all of the heal skills and stun breaks were either passive or essentially mapped onto 3 skills (MWS, dragon hide, furious battle cry). The result was that the other 7 skill bar/mouse button slots were for attack, escape, or stunning other players, and in pvp, i built my character around the full range of heals, 2 stun breaks, and full range of stunning moves.

Post R155, if you are level 45~47, a PVE DK only has up to 3 heal skills and 2 stun breaks and 1 skill with stun immunity, with a 4th coming at level 48 if you select that talent for the new skill and a 5th if you take the pvp talent. However, now all your stun breaks and heal skills are mapped onto 5 skills. The result is that a post R155 DK has lost one or more heal skills and has to manipulate 2 extra key strokes and commit 2 more skill bar slots to activate the full range of heals and stun breaks and stun immunities in order to break through and attack any half way decent attack and stun spamming ranged character.

Basically, this separation of stun breaks from heal skills for furious battle cry and dragon hide makes pvp difficult skill-wise for me since my muscle memory was devoted tothe previous skill setup, and there's no way to replicate a good portion of that under the new system. I think it might be to the point where I think I will not bother w/ pvp except maybe 5v5. And I'm not sure I want to spend however long it takes to essentially learn a new game. Right now I think I'll just do the PVE game to level 50 and then reassess.

 

What about making the armour break stacking work again?

When chars belonging to different classes use armour break on the same group of mobs at the same time, it should do 4x dmg not only 2x. So the armour breaks don't stack. When are you going to fix this? Farming is much longer and boring without stacking, especially for huge hp mobs.

 

Hi Haruki,

I am just basing my statement on past experience. believe me, there is a lot I like about R155. I love the new maps, the range of new quests is great, and the "theory" of the new skill system is great.

The problem that we have seen and what people are complaining about is not the "theory" but the execution. you say hotfixes were deployed to address very urgent issues? who defines very urgent?

You say the new skill system is a basis to provide more for the future to help balance and improve? That's all well and good, but rather than starting from the point of slight imbalance, you have now made it massively imbalanced, so the job of getting back to where we were will take loads of time before we see any improvement. Dk who now cant tank, SW who can now kill anything with 1 shot, archers who will never be invited to a group again as why have an archer when you have SW, and SM who don't need to get anywhere near any monster to kill them all.

there wont be another hotfix next week, means that the devs to not think that there are still problems. when you refer to the developers you make out that they are these people on a pedestal who make the world work. if you look the majority of the points about the issues come from people who are developers, or work in a development environment. I have been a developer for 20+ years, and if I released code with the amount of bugs we see, (especially after being told of all these bugs from test server heroes) then I would be down the job centre looking for work elsewhere.

all code will have bugs, all change will be met with some level of resentment, but before you even implement this change, and you are informed of these issues, to do nothing about it is criminal.

I still play because I have invested too much time in this game to let this blip make me quit, but if things keep going the way they are, then I will join the other players who have already looked elsewhere. My premium is not renewed and like bargain my play time has reduced massively and will continue to do so until things change.

this years Christmas bonus should go to the environment designers as they have done a truly superb job. the game devs, i'd be looking to replace, or send on a training course where they play the game 10hrs a day for a week at least to actually learn what they have done to it.

andy

 

That is an example of a bug that benefits the players... in all honesty, I'm shocked that it took them so long to take this away from us... it's been around for over 3 years.

 

gotta correct u there, even with my full dmg mode... me being a player with high gems... can hardly kill rangers i a (SW) some one who should be high dmg and decent hp/armor dies 1-2 hit max... and it takes me 3-6 hits sometimes more to kill someone.... games totally imbalanced mods claim to do stuff for us but just put curtains end result is everyone is saying well i paid 1000$ usd+ for this game that gave nothing much in return it sucks people invested into it knowing its a great game and then all of a sudden its like what is this? i never paid for this game..? what happened to dso

 

I am only talking pve as I stopped playing pvp a long time ago when I realised how imbalanced it was, so any points I make are pve only

although, if it takes you 3-6 hits to kill someone then I suspect your high damage mode is not as high as you could be as my alt SW can easy out damage my ranger who a higher level

 

Stacking armor break is nice, but have you ever tested why a double break effectively multiplied your damage output? Revenge on Agathon got together and did a little intra-guild murdering to find out. Prior to this release, a single break would work as intended, reducing the target's armor value by 85%, however, the second armor break would launch that value into an unbelievably low negative number, we're talking roughly -1000 armor, and the damage formula DSO uses took full advantage of this to make some beautiful number float onto the screen. So... what did they do to fix this? They didn't remove double armor break, they capped it. After more testing, we determined that the lowest armor value possible is now what it should be, 0. This is why our favorite bug no longer works, however double armor breaking opponents is still an effective way to crush them like the tiny insects they are. Happy Hunting!

 

Yea, except that double armor break now just doubles your damage output as opposed to quadrupling it like it used too... Will all the stuff they are taking from us and all the new bugs that have been introduced, it would be nice of them to leave us with one of the few useful bugs.

 

I agree in full and would like to pick up the topic of class balance.

Dont worry, this is no rant from a (un)nerfed player. I like challenges.

But I also like math and from what I can tell there is no way to balance classes after R155.
After 4 to 5k dmg will be the standard, DSO will look like this:

All classes present in low levels. Nothing special here.

Endgame however will change. Just a few DKs who play solo PVE, because nobody needs them and PVP has become pointless. Some die hard rangers and dwarfs, who cant let go of the class, grinding PVE hoping to team up with good mages.
PVP will be entirely a mages game and they are also by far the easiest play in all events.

How to prevent it? You cannot anymore. Even if you give +100% HP to DKs and Dwarfs, their complicated damage delivery cost them seconds and with 10k non critical fireballs, those seconds are a hard wall. Shields or no shields, also soon irrelevant.

So I am looking forward how the CMs are going to handle this inequality and how BP will try to save things once they see their profit decline by already leaving new players, feeling cheated for picking the wrong class.

I dont envy you CMs for the work ahead, but I would like to know how you think about R155 and its implications?

 

doess 1900-2.1k dmg 1h help? and actually rangers are awesome to pve with

only suggestion/advice id give to dso is return the game how it was before it was MUCH better compared to it is now even though it wasnt "GREAT" it was better. just return it to how it was add ton of new maps/end game bosses new gear other wise all i can say is give it 1 - 2 more weeks and youll have no player base left

 

Talking about class balance right now is premature. The problem is not that one class does x dmg and another does y. Before any of that can be looked at we need to address the key problem: DAMAGE MITIGATION, no class has the ability to take the damage offered by another class no matter how many points you put into HP. I can get my HP to 13k now which makes little difference to an 8k lightning bolt, a 17k destruction or repeated 7k explosive bolts. This lack of damage reduction has effected some classes more than others and is what is making pvp, well, what pvp is right now. And it will continue to get worse as people build their knowledge points. This problem effects PVE also and when new parallel worlds fall if there is not a change we will continue to debate all the wrong elements of what needs to get fixed. For those saying one class is overrated compared to another is not seeing the forest through the trees.

 

Hi CM's just a quick one
Why can't you have a poll or vote on R155 ?
Seems to me you guys or someone is passing on to the developers that the majority of players are happy with this update and new system ?
When gauging by the reaction in the forums and in game, if any of the developers CM's or Moderators take the time to play will notice vast disappointment
Somehow somewhere something is a miss because if your client ie the players are not happy with the product ie Dragensang they leave and I am not sure if you have a means of seeing or testing but there are less people online now than before R155
The new maps are good the new quests are also ok except you do not get good Andermant or coin reward
I know I play less now because of this update sometimes it is a matter of logging in trying a map and leaving because nothing is being fixed and the bugs remain
Drakensang used to be a good fun game to play with friends online now those friends either don't play or spend less time online
Anyway thought I would put my 2 cents worth in

 

So much testing they do, so many titles...QA manager, means "Quality Assurance" The last point quality tester who can make or ruin the reputation of an organization? The devs do testing, QA does testing everyone tests everything yet a basic thing such as block amount which is one of the pillars of PVP was completely broken in live release. I hope they are interested enough to do quality assurance properly? or the designers and programmers are really interested in what product they release at the end of "work"? The more I observe BP mechanism, more it seems either you guys are just "working" and not enjoying what you do, or BP doesn't put all of the money it earns into the game for which the money is being payed. I pray I am wrong in both cases.

 

Really? They were so incompetent to leave a bug unfixed for 3 years? And now when the mobs are so much stronger, they fixed it. How convenient -.-
I want that "bug" double armour break bug or else I have no reason to play in a group anymore. I'll just put blue ess and farm the knights by myself.
That bug was the only reason farming in groups was fun

 

There is a vote going on. It is reflected by the number of hours being played, ander being purchased, number of PVP's and new players that start the game. It shows up in their reports after the fact. Nothing is more important than data when making decisions and that data will be scewed for a period of time as old players return to test the new release. It will settle down and then they will get data that they trust. Us saying were going to quit and play different games doesn't do much. They have been hearing that for years after every event peeps didnt like and big bugs that they took lengthy time to fix. Data is all that matters and it is our vote.

 

How are you going to be changing the crafting system in the next update? I just don't want to spend all of my gold crafting before the update if you are going to increase the chances of crafting a good item.

 

if i spent some money in dk before patch 155, because i like play style of dk and his skills wich you present to us ,can you now return me my money because this is not what I payed and what I like ,and this is considering like a fraud because this is not the same product like before!

 

4 seconds immunity needs to be returned back IMMEDIATELY!!
I wonder what these developers are testing. Or maybe it is on purpose that they gave one ultimate OP class that stuns all the others without chance to get recovery from chain stunning. It is the same for PVE ...

EDIT: 1. I have to comment on those new unique items and sets. Those items are crap.
Not a single player wants bonus ... like ... chance to slap the opponent in the face ... or ... chance to deal fire damage instead of physical ... those bonuses are stupid. therefore and the new items are.

2. Who the hell designed those new legendary items? They look so ugly that can't be even described ... powerful bow which is made out of one twig bounded up with other piece of twig .... what an ugliness.