Announcement Ask the CMs in English

Hello there everyone,

well, that was an interesting Tuesday - jumping in here and shed some commentary seems the best way to finish my working shift!!

Hey there mister,

as you know, we have created a feedback thread, HERE, where I kindly invite you to add your voice to the ones that are already tipping frantically there. This is a direct request from the game designers, by the way.

Hello there good sir,

exactly, opening any files or tampering in any way with any of our DSO files is not allowed and we do not endorse doing such a thing since, well, is forbidden by our general terms and conditions and you are accepting them the moment you download and keep on playing the game. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Navigating through this thread can make me overlook some of the posts - will try to sneak out some time and dig in for those pieces of info you are mentioning though.

Hello there,

yeah, I know - one of the perks of being a CM, you never know what the next day may bring. But anyway - trying to come here as much as I can, on top of my other daily duties. Regarding the QA observations that you are making, the New Year Resolutions of getting better at communication also applies to them, so they are working definitely to improve on their side as well!

Hey there,

well, I can totally tell you that fixing and exploit/urgent particular bug takes way less time and resources than tackling overall balancing systems. The majority of the latest exploits were due to specific game mechanics or map/monster situation and could be tackled very quickly - it´s a pity the other topic requires much more observation. But, on the other hand, it's also a good thing. If you have felt attacked in any way by the mod team or Support please send us over another ticket in which you explain clearly the situation /giving graphical proofs when needed) - we take improvement on that side also seriously.

Cheers!

Hello there mister,

ANSWER 1: No, we have no plan for this. We have a feature called "Mouse Cursor Overhaul" in the pipeline that will allow the cursor to become interactive based on what it is hovering over, allowing players to determine what their options are relating to that object and creature.
ANSWER 2: No clue about this, honestly. We are not getting complains about it... I can ask though and let you know in another CM answer.

Cheers!

I know I am late and you have probably read it, but please HEAD HERE. Thanks!

Hello there,

you will find more about the values of the sets for levels 50 and 55 for each of the classes soon on the forums (Greg and me sent some news to the admins to publish this information). The goods of Gnob are coming as they are coming - again, the mechanic behind Gnob is not that you guys purchase everything there is to purchase from the troll once and for all... And if some of the items are not of your liking for your hero, then this is perfectly normal (surely you have other items with an eye put on...). Plus Gnob going to keep on returning to Kingshill more often than in 2015 so you always have time to keep on obtaining Drakens and spend them there, if you wish. And he will keep on offering these sets plus new thingies.

Hello there,

you are completely right. This did not come from the minds of the CMs but from another department.
I will keep on digging tomorrow for the final list of winners, promise! And thanks for your patience!!

And we are.

Hey there,

that is completely right and a pain down there. Also putting up some pressure for them to get fixed as soon as possible!

Damn, you found that little dirty secret.

Your note of concern has been shared actively through different forums - and forwarded already to the team.

Hey there,

I am completely aware of the fact that it's b*llocks and a huge pain down there again. In this occasion, the farming of the Realm Fragments will be a little big harder if you compare retrospectively with the post-161 era. It would have been amazing to actually bring before that increase in the drop rate before but we simply cannot do it at the moment... Really sorry about that. On a more positive note and due to the limited duration of this event and the simplified mechanics of it, it's the desire of the team to bring this event more often to all of you, guys.

Hello there,

I will inquire the designers that are in charge of the crafting 2.0 because the appearance of a feedback thread it makes a lot of sense in some way (again, we'd also fall into the situation of encountering way too many suggestions for one single system and the overall negative impact of certain community members if some of the suggestions are not implemented the way they want...) - but we will approach them with this idea and see how loud they scream

Since I am running out of time, could you please reformulate the other questions I did not manage to answer?
That'd be awesome powesome!! And regards to you as well!!

I cannot disclose much information about the Stellar Gold since we are preparing an evil CM strategy and communication around it, video included, so I would just repeat myself and tell you: stay tuned! We will give you all the information you need BEFORE the actual start of the event so doncha worry.

No, I cannot tell you the exact date for Gnob, Defeat the Undefeatables, Stellar Gold and, most important of all, release 160 since,w ell, we do not have an ETA. The release will arrive next week for sure and the events in different dates immediately after that. I know it´s cr*p to remain in a nebula but I am in this sort of nebula myself..., watching everything unfolding in front of my teary and emotional CM eyes.

-----------------

Oki doki guys, keep on firing them. I will be on the other side gathering all comments and questions to answer.
See you another day and enjoy the evening!!

Haruki

 

Well, all I can tell you now is: Make up your mind.
I already suggested improvement and you disagree, I suggested nerf you disagree again. So you and others that like your post actualy don't know what you want and I tried bouth ways to solve the problem for PvP.

 

Why Gnob offers only the Heredur Doll? Where is the Gremlin from the last Dragan event?
One of Gnob purpose is to bring 'missed' items for drakens.

 

Before you start selling the Heredur Doll to people, could you please make sure it works again? Because it doesn't for now.

 

Haruki,

It's not that I think that you personally are not listening or are not forwarding any decent ideas to the dev team.

If the dev's would spend time on the forums viewing and responding to the feedback or using the test server properly to find what works and what doesn't and how that effects the players they would see for themselves instead of hearing it second hand.

What appears to happen is that the devs are in such a rush to interject new things that they never stop to find out if they should.

Use the CV system as an example of a poorly thought out idea, poorly implemented, and now we are all forced to deal with it.

Another example is the new regurgitated so called hard maps. No real thought was put into it. The monsters weren't given new skills, they just picked a random % base to increase dmg/hp.

The best example is the whole moon event redo. 16 months of feedback and 100% of the ideas were simply ignored, and why? All so the dev's could rush something onto the servers?

This and many other examples are why so many players simply believe DSO isn't listening.

Honestly, was mood lighting more requested than an extra ess slot?

To give credit, there have been some occasions that DSO did listen. The recent change to keep the cubes for premium only, the mount/teleport thing. There have been others, but these few times are certainly outweighed by the ideas ignored.

 

Hey Haruki

This is the new class?

 

This is an old video.

 

I'd always hoped that they would bring that class to us; they already did some work on the archetype obviously... time will tell.

 

hey hey what going one whit "LOCK" ability? any progress there ?? so how long we will die cozz we open by accident world map or in game shop and we get Special offer all over our monitor! What heppend whit ability for fast switching ess from geens to blue or stronger???

txy u Nori

 

Hi again and sorry about delayed reply, real life work keeps me busy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Before anything else I would like to say that every time before getting involved in balancing discussion, I think twice as I know, that my post might hurt other players' feelings and I feel their pain in anticipation of them reading anything negative or nerfing-bound posts in regards to their toons. I always keep this in mind and I never mean to offend or upset anyone, as I know first hand how it feels to have your class nerfed. I see a lot of attacks on Daywaker2 and his posts, and I feel embarrassed on behalf of everyone who attacks him. I have never met this guy and we play on different servers, but I know how passionate he is towards his toon. Maybe his English is not perfect (same goes for me as English is my 4th language), but I would like every one to try and find peace with each other and instead of attacking your fellow players, we need to fight the real problem and that is developers lacking understanding of their own game.

I perfectly understand that this is a commercial project and their marketing team gets more attention than designers team and until we start seeing this and get united, they will keep doing what they are doing to us all.

Regarding a "better adjective".... It is only natural that people use what gets better results, it is only natural that players seek a road that offers less expensive farming in resources and save a lot of time. If it was otherwise, it would only mean the absence of intelligence and degradation. It is 21st century and the speed of technological progress is at the extreme pace, it is too fast for our animal side transformation to keep up with it. We still follow our primal instincts of domination, desire for power and rule over others, they are our primal instincts in our fight for survival! And this is exactly what is being exploited by the gaming industry on the whole. Society and law enforcements put us in the strict boundaries of we can and cannot do in our daily life. But guess where we want our freedom? Yes, here we are free, we can kill and dominate, we can rule!

I would refrain from drawing parallels with the "size of our reproductive organs" in reference to PvP, nothing to do with it, I can guarantee you that. I am talking first hand..... I am very competitive in PvP, but in a good way. And please trust me on this, not many people would like to have an open completion with me in the "size of...." So, nothing to do with that and I think it is an old and worn out reference that somehow got spread out maybe by exactly those people that would not stand any competion in this regard. I get abuses in whispers from players I kill in PvP, but I never reply in the same manner. When I do lose a game to anyone, I always comment on their great skills and damage. Respect and politeness are the must haves for our guild members.

Peace V

 

Thankfully there is an easy fix. Bonuscode "WEMESSEDUP" - reward 300 Realm Fragments
(Preemptive: No, the bonuscode doesn't work - it was a suggestion)

 

I never said I am done
I said I am close to ending with my activities.
It is because of the player's selfishness ... everyone knows everything, everyone has tons of experience in day one, everyone is asking for more info ... but not willing to give any ......... and they come with lines like: oh dude you still have no info for those items ... why these items have "????" in the stats ... oh the wiki is to old not a reliable source. Well of course it has no info for all items ... because Wiki now has become one man show ... and it wasn't that way in the past.
The only thing keeping me "alive" are the devs. I am a bloodthirsty monster and will hold on until the last corrupted dev is being "re-educated". I have all the time and patience in this world.

As for the proposed changes ... well NO!
Rangers don't need 2H weapon ... because the rangers are the only class that is functioning quite opposite of the others. 2H weapon won't work for the rangers ... unless the whole class has been remade from start.
I am using a longbow from the very beginning ... and once I have said:

Now ... that my patience, strategy and development finally come to fruition ... they changed the whole system. (which is not bad for me ... it is in my favor)
The root of all evil is the new skill system ... the old one was better.

And of course they said

No they don't ... the marketing department have them in their pocket.
The plain example can be given ... once upon a time there was a Publisher called JoWood ... they were working with Piranha Bytes and forced them to release the Gothic 3 even if it was not yet ready ... what a bad move. The game was disaster ... infested with bugs and so unplayable. Then the parties split their ways ... and those money driven suckers JoWood thought they can do whatever they want with the Gothic franchise ... so they hired up another development team. What a mistake ... they were already in troubles and that was their last nail in the coffin. Meanwhile ... the Gothic community made a "community patch" and the game from bugged and unplayable has become one of the best games that I have ever played ... so far.
JoWood ceased to exist ... fortunately. They are history.
And there is one picky detail ... once upon a time JoWood was working with with Radon Labs ... the creator of the Nebula Engine and Drakensang ... before they "were bought" by BigPoint.
But of course those are just a urban legends ... but the point is : s**t happens when you are doing what the marketing department is telling you to do.

----------regarding the rangers again---------
The rangers were heavily nerfed with the R155 ... every single skill was nerfed ... and yet they are nerfing the new one.


POKEMON ONLINE!!!

 

Indeed it was more comfortable to say that there are some unimportant visual bugs around, isn't it?.
Forbidden lol.
DSO environment prevents you to do forbidden actions. True or False? Judge by yourself.
And think of it, past ban waves are a lose-lose solution. You lose incoming, we lose 'competitors' even if those are fraudolent ones.
Look instead for a win-win scenario, and work seriously on your whole environment.

For all the rest, i personally totally agree with people that think that yes, looking for feedback is very good, and also reacting quickly to rejected ideas is appreciated BUT ... really, devs and game designers should really understand more of this game.
Rush mode for what? To put a tick on "Silly idea 109: done" ?


I don't know what's worse: people who lie or people that think i'm stupid enough to believe their lies.

 

Thanks for the Answer Haruki you do an outstandigly good job. You try to answer us every day and answer the most of our questions. Thats very nice. I just want impart that And i hope the Patch comes really soon

 

Dear Haruki,

Oh, PLEASE! We do not need more "help" on object interaction depending on the context, that is all fine and self-explanatory enough.
But we DO really need to SEE our mouse pointer during combat!!! THIS is what the community has been begging for, for ages! If you have never lost track of your mouse pointer in a battle where some mages and dwarfs are enjoying a firework of skill effects, I don't think you are really playing this game...

Giving us an option to tweak the color may not be the one and only solution, but I'm sure it's a simple one that a skilled developer could implement in 1-2 hours. A simple user dialog/option in the menu, permanent application to the mouse pointer. No control variables, no context etc needed. PLEASE!

BTW, it's great that crafting 2.0 and glyphs removal are in your current pipeline. Also thanks for the added inventory space, the direct access to the locker for premium users and your continued pushing for specific storage solutions for mounts, costumes, pets and emotes!

Apart from these, other comfort features like hud locking, essence toggle and more storable presets (possibly including the skill bar and even equipment, but mainly and first of all for the wisdom and fame talents) would be more important to me than anything else. I am certainly waiting more eagerly for those than for new content, events, a new class, the alchemy system or guild battles!
I understand your design and development team may have different priorities, also with regard to what you think will help sales best. But what about giving us at least one "community feature" per release, out of that long list of often demanded comfort functions, and having us vote for that feature on facebook for every release?

There already exist at least 2 idea collection threads even in the English forum (here and here), not to mention other language forums. Not asking for ideas doesn't mean people won't post them...
Giving us some hints about your designers' current thoughts might eventually align the wild speculation and wishful thinking blossoming there to something more in concordance with what might actually be implemented... The "overall negative impact" would be a lot worse, I think, if once again BP implements something "out of the box", without disclosing any information in advance and listening to feedback in time. Learn from the "huge success" of the combat value system...
Of course, if in fact you intend to handle player feedback like with the moon events (e.g. ignoring the loud cry for less grinding), then don't even bother... More of THAT kind of listening to us, and I would be out of the forums AND the game, very soon...

Well yeah, the Lifekeeper issue:

As I am a bit worried that the same code causing this might also cause other set effects (you know you're having more and more of those "special effects" on new items lately) to "wear off", it would be really nice if the developer responsible for that lifekeeper HP regeneration could figure out WHY it stops after x blocked hits within the same map, and if you could officially announce if that is a bug or "by intention/design" (the latter being a shame, need I say it?). And well, once the developer knows why it happens, I suppose a fix would be seconds away...

For the other question, please refer to my posts here and here.
Basically, the effective attack speed seems to depend on the number of animation frames of the skill you're looking at. As the base attacks of DKs have a lot more frames than those of the other classes (21 and 22 as opposed to some 15), they get a lot less effective attack speed, which also affects reaction time etc.
Now I don't complain DK's are too slow! But maybe, along with those speed breakpoints, it would be wise to communicate that "attacks per second" from the character stats (I would actually rename that value...) is just a theoretical speed further depending on skill animations (not only skill-specific breakpoints), and also to publish how the effective speed is determined, and those animation frame counts per skill, so that interested people don't have to illegally read them from the DB...
Thanks again!

 

I fully agree about the BP Marketing Department. I will try to translate in ENG what I wrote concerning the Items in Bulgarian forum before you reading your posts here, what makes me happy that someone else also see the things in Drakensang in same way, sorry if my translation and English is not so good, but I am sure you Bulgarian is even worse:
“In theory the shoulder legendary item could have 4 times x 15% resist, but, as already user before me told you, it is impossible in practice, though in theory could. Because of that, in the green items more often you can see the values of the row close to the max for the object. Actually, to be honest, almost every green item, more than 90% of cases come with maximum values in row, almost 70% of blue items comes with maximum values on row, almost 50 percent of the purple items comes with maximum values in slot and unpleasant surprise is that legendary items following applies, in my observations:
- Almost 20% of legendary items are with an average value of slot% in terms of % (damage, speed, attack, attack speed) and equity (damage),
- Almost 40-50% of legendary items are of medium or maximum% value in terms of% (for critical damage, resist, armor)
- Almost 90% of legendary items are of medium or maximum% value in terms of pure value (Crit).
That BP really fulfill their threat that due to the fact that after patch 155 majority of players are oriented to build, based on the damage, so they will make sure that the items, mostly weapons, will now give much more and much more big values of critical and will greatly reduce the increment% damage. This can be seen by everyone.
People were oriented to dmg build because BP used the same strategy to make money from their users - in this game the Payers want to fill comfort everywhere and therefore they pay to become and end game players, and then when they get the maximum of what money can buy – they logically stop paying money anymore because now nothing more can be bought. This BP immediately responded with a change so that the Payers again feel weak or moderately advanced players and so to be able again to continue to pay. BP has a very important, the most important department in fact - that all day watching some printouts of some financial tables payment flows. There are using also some charts and see how the paying going month to month, week to week, day to day, hour to hour - and based on process make analyzes, forecasts, explanations for behavior of the Payers. BP actually doesn’t care about nothing else but financial flow. When financial flows begin to change up or down, they immediately tell the design and other departments to begin to develop an urgent change. Extensions of the continent, new levels, new skills, new events – so the Payers to start pay again. As a rule, BP always seek change that will make the Payers to fill weak again and to start paying for red essence, for glyphs, for jewels, and items holes again.
The idea is the Payers to be permanently taken out of their comfort zone. If the enter again you in their comfort zone, the will stop again to pay. So BP strategy is to bring again the elastic effect, bugs, lag, so that the Payers to start dying and need to pay for reviving again and again. It will be great if this happen on time of ongoing Event that is timely short ones, and interesting for all players, with great rewards, because if there is no Event, and Payers die, that he will start the from the beginning, he will lose nothing. But imagine if you entered the Event map with special access to enter to and you grinded around 40 minutes to get entrance frag for example? And premium revival does not work inside. Here then the Payers again will pay for revival. For red essence (remember how easily was to farm was in M2 during the chest bugs - then we all had insane amount of red ess, and yes, red ess really make the farming hundred times faster) for Life potions, for everything they begin to spend money .
So is the case with items and transmuting them in more prognosticating way, that is why in test server this function is bugged, so that this this will justify transmuting version 2.0 to not be ongoing again. Mark my words, when still they implement it, they will again find a way to screw all for us players – or the change will not apply to collected so far items , or they will find another original solutions to prevent this the Payers and all the other players to quickly transmute and assemble legendary items with maximum values . For this I am 100% sure.
We all know that currently legends are worthless, are stupid and are crappy. They are good for minor things – Crit line, life and armor, and are absolutely crappy for important things - % life, % damage, % faster movement and % attack speed and this will never change – remember my words.
Until BP does not come up with a solution to earn money by honest financial models - interesting and new content, really meaningful and inexpensive premium, new and nice events, new and working skills, new and meaningful sets and overall balanced game - until then nothing will change.
I think I have explained it a hundred times, but I have no problem to explain this to you

 

Aaaand ... look the funniest thing: in a couple of years Greg, Haruki and others guys will have to look for a new employment, thanks to their wise financial department strategy. While all of us are always free to migrate away towards competitors MMORPG, even if we all prefer to not be FORCED to choose this option in a near future.
They don't take care about building the brand loyalty. I agree with you, moving all the time towards a state of unsteadiness and uncomfortability works in a VERY short term, but can't carry on for so long. The only possible end-result is unique and defined, i hope that all can guess which will be.

If anyone works in HR ... Open job posting for those guys? XD

 

they did listened to us guys! After DK, finally as i expected, they are going to nerf RA EA (dmg + more delay) & SM turrets (range & dmg) ) Fatal Mobs really like these balancing i guess!

Well, I thought that they may implement sth to balance PVP and leave PVE alone, but in fact it does not happen!

It's really hard for me to believe in the team and paying money to build toons which will definitely being nerfed afterwards!

Enough is enough! Good luck you people!

 

The forums may be 1 way to get feedback to BigPoint. Support is another.

I've listened to complaints over the years, and done my share of ranting and raving. Today I was reminded of a Nature video I saw. Wolves pursued an elk to the point of exhaustion. One wolf kept the head of the moose busy, while another wolf started feeding on the other end. Yes, the elk bellowed and screamed, but the wolf in back kept on eating living flesh. Finally the elk keeled over and died; then the other wolf ate as well.
You might think the illustration is too cruel for human activity, but some cultures do harvest flesh from living animals. Poor, poor camels and goats.
Barbaric, you think?

How well does DSO listen?

 

It is always fun to put in so much time, effort and money to have it taken away.

The saddest part is that it will never stop all the so and so is still OP talk. My hope is that one day we'll learn this lesson and maybe suggest improvements instead of nerfing, but we'll see.