Q&A Development Team Letter

Hey guys,

please post all of your questions, suggestions and feedback regarding the newest letter in this thread!
And if there is anything else you want to know from us, this is the chance!

We will try to collect as much questions as possible and will answer them here!

We are looking forward to it!

Your Dev-Team

 

I want to continue to play a 1h build, longbow, Ranger. In recent months y'all have gone out of your way to make the increasingly difficult. The latest move being to nerf the base dps of a non-unique crafted longbow. Although my RA is my oldest existing toon (created Dec 2011) I have also played DK and SW as my main for a while in the old game. I also feel the situation is the same if I wanted o play a 1h build with these classes.

I just joined one of the oldest guilds on Tegan. I am concerned about this with my longbow build when playing in group. A 1h RA is primarily a team support player. Slowing, kiting mobs; basically crowd control. Ofc as a I can do some decent damage since I've been at this a while but not like the 2h glass cannon RA's that have been given preference in the new game.

I guess my question is do the devs really understand diversity of builds and why this is important. While many gamers happily go along with the cookie cutter concept I, and many I know, do not. There is plenty of means in this game already for the instant gratification gamer. How about a nod to those of us that prefer that path less traveled?

Luck be with ye,
Mikey,
Tegan

 

It is nice to see a dev deign us to give a partial recap and a teaser of what is to come. Sure it took years for us to get a currency bag and collector bag, but we have them now, so thanks is in order.

Will it take years for us to get an event bag?
We are given new events pretty frequently now, but with so many items to store, a bag is sorely needed.

Why the constant nerfing?
We know that players losing in pvp leads to rants about such and such class being OP, but nerfing is not balancing. Prior to R155, we were told that DSO would build upon what we had. Instead, we got a major nerf, lost the pvp rewards, etc. On top of that, the dev's created a vast jump in possible dmg without any thought about how this would affect pvp. Then if that weren't bad enough, new pw sets were created further expanding on the massive dmg outputs, directly leading to more cries of OP classes.

When if ever, besides nerfing will we see any attempt at balancing pvp?
It seems that dev's only know how to nerf, but this isn't balancing. We are given harder and harder modes of pve which requires more dmg, more hp, more resist, etc. and then nerfed because those same aspects make pvp worse. That repeats the constant cycle of nerfing. Which leads to more players quitting.

Will there ever be a separation of pvp from pve.
We all know that separating pvp from pve would solve the issue of nerfing. This is not a secret. Many of us have been asking, in fact begging for this for years now. The official response was that the dev team was unable to do that. If the dev's are going to boost pve only to further ruin pvp, then nerf us because of that, the system is flawed.

Why another expansion?
The last couple of expansions are to be completely honest, worthless. Players visit these new maps for a couple of days and then we go back to the pw to run the same old maps over and over again. The amount of time invested into a new expansion for something that players will only see for maybe a week doesn't seem to be the best use of time.

Will Tegan be merged with an active server?
Many of us on the ghost server have been asking/begging for this since R155 drove so many players from the game. There are less than a thousand characters in the pw on Tegan based on the reward system. Since most of us have more than one character, this would indicate that there are only a few hundred actual people on the server. My only guess is that no one at DSO cares, and that is why nothing has been done about this. DSO moved the servers to China, so moving us to Agathon can't be that difficult.

Can you please do something about wisdom?
Over the years the dev's have made it so much easier to level up fast, but gaining wisdom has not been improved to keep up pace. Even skipping mainline quests, it is possible to hit end cap level in about a month. However it takes up to six months to max out wisdom. This imbalance needs to be adjusted. Personally I think that wisdom should be tied to your level. Hitting level 55 with 20 wisdom is just ridiculous.

Will there ever be a new character?
I know that with things as bad as they are introducing a new character at this time seems a little less important, but we were told years ago that it would happen. Granted it is very common to be told something is going to happen and then waiting year after year with no results, but at the same time an official answer would be nice.

Will any of the long time bugs ever get fixed?
There are some very old bugs in this game that never seem to be fixed. I know, the dev's like to keep us on our toes and introduce new ones, but at some point it would be nice not to see "you can't use that here".

Can you please not ruin crafting any more than it already is?
Yes, there has been plenty of tweaking since crap 2.0 was brought to us, and plenty of new cores to go along with it. We are already to the point where cores take up too much space in the inventory and we're getting more. On top of that, these new tweaks further push the small % of OP players into way more dmg, then we hear the cries, then we get nerfed. Please think about this before rushing whatever new idea you think about into the game.

Why the rush to implement new releases every other week?
I get the desire to rush anything onto the live servers just to say that you did, but most of these releases are installed with known bugs, and very few contain more than just visual fluff. Plus we get the added benefit of getting a couple of hot fixes before the next rushed release is installed.

Why doesn't DSO use the test server better?
This goes hand in hand with rushing to implement something every other week. People test, report bugs, get ignored, rinse and repeat. Why?

Finally, why bother with "official" feedback threads?
For the most part, our feedback has been ignored. This forum is full of examples, but none highlights this more than the 18 months of the moon event feedback where everything offered was ignored. Of course this is not limited to events, the combat value was a complete failure from day one, proven time and time again, yet our feedback is ignored. I could go on and on but why?

 

Hi to all the staff, i have some questions for you.
With the latest releases you have greatly improved space in the inventory. Could you make a last and remarkable improvement? An inventory page has 7x4 slots in total 28, can you increase it by 7x5 (total 35 slots) or 8x5 (total 40 slots)?

Another question, do you really intend to improve the crafting system? The present is shameful and does not prepare us to deal with infernal 1 and 2. The amount of gold needed to create top-level items (4/4 golden lines) is 100 times higher than DSO offers (I have already spent 12,000 gold of Ammon quests for nothing and you are talking about new expansion ....
This is a game, a nice game, why you do not allow the craft of 4 legendary items for 25 gold? Could you allow us to save 3 items on 4 instead 2 on 4?.

A last question (request).
Playing at a famous Blizzard title I faced a very interesting boss inside a room full of poison. When I entered as a glass cannon all my team can do it but my chance of success was zero (my character's life went down quickly in time). I had to "learn to play and balance the character in all the statistics" to be able to kill him. Could you enter a superboss like this? Sorry for my eng.

 

Why the dev team does not use Forum Discussion Group(FGD) to test on every updates and gather first feedback from it?

I think it is always nice to have FGD on your updates. I believe there are quite a lot players who care about Drakensang development, and glad to help in term of testing, review & giving good feedback.

What will you get from FGD is obvious:
- Controlable & random testing sequences
- Better & more constructive feedback
- Cleaner releases
- More positive comments, thought, review & feedback in forum & social media.

FGD will be a good solid layer before the updates goes to public to be tested.

If the game able to have & manage players who act as moderators to take cares of forum. I'm sure the game also able to have & manage players who act as game tester.

These players can be assembled in a group along with QA team to test, discuss, argue, anything necessary to make sure the coming updates are solid to public.

 

I agree with most of them ideas excepting the new expansion and increase of the lvl cap.This is one of the lamest ideas ever.Havent you realised by now that 99 % of the players dont like starting from 0 again and again each year and that many quit because of this? Heres an idea for you.Work on the class balancing and when you finally got to a point where its good for all classes then never mess with the lvl cap and balance ever again.Otherwise all the rebalancing that you've been doing up till now and from now on will be nothing but wasted time because most likely when lvl 60 comes, the balance will be again messed up...it has happened in the past everytime the lvl cap was increased so it will definitely happen again.

So, no more lvl cap increase please...no one likes it when all their hard work goes to waste and he has to start from 0 again.You can add new content without increasing the lvl cap..its not like its a must to increase the lvl cap with each new map that you add in the game.You should make a pool and ask to see how many want a new lvl cap and based on those results you should chose if to raise it or not.

 

Why dont you make base transfer with Augment crafting?
This rank upgrade has no logic, if you get a yellow base weapon you can rank up that untill next level.It is easy to do that.
Also the cost of Augment core is to high in my opinion.A Daragan piece or Karabosa it will cost me half of his draken price just tu upgrade one rank higher.

https://s21.postimg.org/l74c6x37r/wer.jpg

 

I would like to see something added, similar to the "Currency Bag", where unused essences could go. i recently had to remove Potent Essences of Aggression (9999 x 5) because i needed the inventory slots. I have about 7 or 8 slots filled up with essences now and those could be used towards other items. Maybe something could be done the same way with the Gems. The only other thing i would like to see changed in the game is related to the Guilds. I would like to see something added where a leader of a Guild can see when the last time someone in the Guild played. I have 35-40 members of the Guild, and i only ever see 1 or 2 of them online. If someone hasn't played in 3 or 4 years, i would like to be able to remove them. For awhile, i was keeping track of their levels to see if any of them were leveling up, in which case i would know that they are active players. Thank you.

 

Then use soul core crafting

 

I competently agree.
I am playing 1H longbow ranger myself ... and as far as the things go we don't have proper gear we don't even have unique longbows worth considering.
All that is leading me and all the people who have chosen the same path (there are plenty of them) keeping and stashing their resources ... because they have nothing to spend them on. Those who are not having resources will never buy them with real money because they are stripped off the right to build their own build and play the game as they like. This should not be happening in any game.

I think that is not a good idea. They should keep both servers and start working on bringing new players ... colonization call it if you like.
That is only possible with a good marketing plan. You can't expect to make new content/product/game and let it go without proper promotion. I am offering you a product and here are the reasons why should you use/play it: " ... ... ... ". Just because I crated feature/product is not a valid reason others to start using it. I will mention one example: Dead Island 2 ... that game is long time postponed and no one knows whether it will be released soon or not ... or whether it will be the same game as announced or it will be drastically changed. BUT ... they already created a "killer" trailer long time ago ... people who watched it would buy the game even if the game sucks ... just because the company had right marketing and creative approach with the promotion. That is what promotion should be like ... not like releasing Sands of Malice and keeping it secret until the release date ... and releasing no information whatsoever even if the content has been released.
Same goes with promotion of the servers and bringing fresh new players ... it should be done in same way.

 

i have a request remove the q7 buff for all classes and you will go a long way to balanceing the classes people have payed big money over the years to see players 1 hit others with this buff and it has distroyed much of the gameplay

 

How about we make other sets just as appealing, instead of nerfing items that people are heavily invested in?


For the new crafting changes, I don't like them. It is many steps backwards. You should be improving the crafting experience, not making it more difficult and time consuming to accomplish. It's already torture trying to make 3/4 and 4/4 gold line items.

 

I personally think merging Tegan with Agathon is a good idea. Yes, there is a solution for the low population which is using effective marketing as Trakilaki stated, but if we go back to the game you can conclude it isn't easy to get to 55 quickly and be somewhat decent for you to get groups. Especially nowadays where even op classes don't get picked because well... we know why. My brother introduced me to this game and I very well remember asking him how he found out about this game and he responded with "I saw it in an ad". So marketing does indeed boost the popularity of this game. If server merge is not an option, at least allow server transfers. Which I know a lot of people wouldn't want, but something has to be done to increase activity in the American servers, especially Tegan.


Another thing mentioned was old bugs that still exist. I started playing this game years ago and I still do today. There is one bug which has existed ever since and it's the "Chat Unavailable" bug. This bug can occur when changing instances and it's incredibly annoying, especially when there's a guild chat going on.


And then there's PvP. I heard some people saying that this should be removed from the game to avoid nerfs which I completely disagree with. A lot of people enjoy PvP and removing it would be just giving up on the game. I just think PvP needs a complete rework. 3v3 used to be most popular back in the days and it was my favourite mode but now it's almost non existent on Agathon.. A complete overhaul is required and something that would also prevent people from complaining about other classes being too op. Such as specific pvp gear or things like that that would make pvp more skill based rather than stats based. Maybe add quests that would reward players with pvp gear too, along with the costumes and mounts. That could increase pvp activity and diversity rather than just 1v1 or 5v5.



Now about pve gear. Others have mentioned the fact that the game has built up to be in favour of those who use op 2h sets and it's true to be honest. As far as I remember, bearach weapon used to be 1h longbow for ranger's, why did that change? They also mentioned that some of us prefer other builds, but have very limited choices due to lack of options to choose from which is also true. We started with 1h shortbow/wands/swords and switched to 2h weapons. There is no inbetween, it's either this or that. Why? I also am one who likes to try different builds using shortbows or 1h long bows.


Lastly is something that has been discussed for years. And that is the fact that this game is a pay to win game. Some may disagree, but it's true. Put it this way, a highly experienced player creates a new character and gets to let's say level 10. Another guy creates a character of the same level but ends up spending tons of money for gems and whatnot. Who would perform better in pve and pvp? Now some peoplewould be saying, "yeah well he invested money into his character and deserves to be a little better." and I guess that's a somewhat valid argument IF this game was pay to play. But it's not. And there's new players who join this game expecting to enjoy it without spending money due to the fact that's it's free to play, when the truth is, they are in an enormous disadvantage. And actually paying is not the only disadvantage, it's the fact that old players have had opportunities to acquire legacy items which new players can no longer get. Yes, old players deserve what they worked for but I am not saying new players should be able to acquire those things easily, but they should at least be able to acquire them through hard work. I've noticed that the amount of Drakens you can obtain are higher than what it used to be, so maybe let Gnob offer some legacy items every once a while, for a very high price to be fair for those who have been around for a while. I know this has been done already, but it was only for Dragan items and witch hunter items I believe. What about runes, pets, costumes, mounts.. etc?



But looks like Sargon is coming back so that's a big thumbs up!!

 

How can you upgrade Dragan set now with soul core crafting?
I think the best way was to transfer base from a legendary item since legendary has lower base than unique and players will still farm for unique since they have better base stats than the one you can transfer.
Also crafting for a full yelow base was a nice ideea one line from one item second line from second one untill you get a legendary item with yelow base.
Why to use a legendary item if you dont use anything from that?

 

I also would very much like to see something done here. The only real technical issue is duplicate character names. I have played other games that handled this with a simple prefix/suffix to the names with the server of origin. While I am not totally opposed to this I would point out that in the other games the merge also cause some players to leave or worse yet eventually the server shutdown.

I feel that proper marketing/promotion is the better way to go with declining severs. Let's not forget that Agathon took a big hit also after r155 and is only marginally better off than Tegan. So a merge may not help at all in the long run.

Years ago there was a promotion to register accounts on the US servers (I guess because new registrations were slower than the EU servers.) I created a few of my alt accounts using this to get the freebies. As promotions went though it was one of the best kept secrets around. The only players that really knew about it already had accounts. There was no mention of it at all on the web page. So, yeah, it has to be done right.

Luck be with ye,
Mikey,
Tegan

 

Hello,

First, I would like to thank you for the last Development Team Letter, it was very interesting to read.

After reading it, I had a few questions and here is an opportunity to get them answered:

> Can you tell us more on how you are going to make Group play much more enjoyable in the future?

> Are spirit stones in the list of consumables that we will be able to craft?

> Is the monster holding a lamp (last picture) related to the future expansion or the little quiz?

 

I`bad in english writing but you telling all i reapet ALL correct...
And i also think that this feedbacks will be ignored like all rest....

 

The ghost must most probably be a reference to the future expansion,I don't remember such thing as a boss.I think they're refering to the shadow behind the drakensang logo,which seems like sargon.This might mean that sargon and "terrifying shadows" event will come back.That was totally unexpected to be honest.But, I'm really positive about that,it was one of the best events if not the best.

 

I hope that finally you want to listen us..The most important issue for me is pvp.So, what are your plans about it?When i was 45 lvl i was playing lots of pvp,but after rel 155 there is no point to play anymore.The only thing that you can do now is just farm all the time to...farm faster.I mean whats the point of this...Arena is one hit-KO now,with all these dmg, stupid bonus sets, stuns....Just make pvp as it was at 45 lvl....

 

Currency bag - is there a plan to accomodate essences (gree, blue, pink, etc) into it?

IS there a plan to implement a new feature like moving enchantments from a crafted unique item to another DIFFERENT unique item? Since this game is heading towards multiple item sets, one day this feature would be much appreciated.

Are there any plans for new pvp modes?

Runes for block strength are introduced for 2-handed weapons, which makes 0 sense since the block rate is so low on a 2-handed character that it is pretty much useless. Is this rune intended for some kind of a future change for 2-handed characters? Like maybe increased block rate via some new items?

As for the PVE experience, why do we still have higher difficulty of mobs when playing in groups? Still groups of 2 characters are better then groups with 3-5 characters. It discourages strong characters to play in groups. Maybe some kind of collaboration of pets would do wonders for at least the boss fights.

I have seen on the twitch channel when there were former community managers that you guys have a lot of cool looking DRAKENSANG stuff on the walls and desks etc., like t-shirts, mugs, posters. Why don't you consider making that kind of stuff available to us players?