Q&A Development Team Letter

First, let me give my feedback on the topics that you brought up in the Development News Letter.

Recent Updates

Currency Bag & Collector's Bag:
These are great additions to the game. Needless to say, I and most players love them. They save inventory space and reduce clutter.
Related to currencies, recently you have implemented auto collection of these currency items and some event items.
But, I and many players would prefer if you can extend this for us to auto-collect all event progress items.

Shrines
The weaker shrines (the shrines that does not consume any essences) are a great addition. I regularly use them and they gives a great buffer. However, the bigger shrines (the shrines that consumes blue essences, purple and red essences) does not yield an adequate buffer for the price that we have to pay. So, I think I and most players would just skip these shrines.

I would rather suggest that you have bigger shrines also not to consume any essences, but they would only appear if you do something special. For example:

• If you kill more than 80% of all the creatures in the map-1 and map-2 then when you enter the boss room, you will find a blue shrine.
• If you kill 100% of all the creatures in the map-1 and map-2, you will always (100% chance) find a purple shrine in boss room.
• If you kill 100% of all the creatures in the map-1 and map-2, you have a 10% chance to find a red shrine in boss room.

Currently in Development Topics

Character development and balancing
Without going into too much detail, I would like to say that currently one-handed builds are not considered by many because to build a viable one-hand build it takes a great deal of time compared to a 2H build.
In order to build a great 1H build (albeit at the end it would be more powerful than a 2H build), one needs to carefully construct a top of the line shield with up to 3 different attribute lines (1x increased block rate on this item, 2x increased block rate, 1x increased block strength). Doing such a complex shield is very time consuming compared to crafting a weapon which requires only one type of an attribute (4x increased damage on this item).

Suggested solution: Reduce the crafting complexity of the shield. Multiple ways to do this.
One would be to split the shield into four parts that you must combine in the workbench to build a shield. The drops are one of these four parts. Each having a name and its own set of possible values/attributes. For example:

• Part 1 - base stat only armor
  
• Part 2 - base stat only resistance
• Part 3 - base stat only block rate
• Part 4 - base stat only block strength

Attributes for each of the above four parts can be any of the current attributes but only 1/4th of the current values. For example, the maximum increased block rate on this item would be 16.5%
Each part will have four attribute lines similar to any gear.

Similar to regular equipment you can craft these individual parts into higher rarities.

When you combine the parts, they will always combine the four attribute lines from each part (no random) into the resulting shield.
It will also should be able to break a shield into the four source parts (for a minimal fee) for later upgrades.

Roadmap Snippets

Before you introduce any new crafting recipes and recipes to create essences, consumables, please add more inventory space options. We are already running out of inventory with all new event items, different types of cores, etc.

 

Yes you are wrong. The precision shot, EA, deadly blow, scatter shot and dance blade ALL do double damage if an opponent is marked. It's the way Ranger works, otherwise hunting arrows would be completely useless. BP did not remove the double damage from precision shot or any other skill. The "double damage" from precision shot that BP referred to was the one I explained above. If something solid was close behind someone or something, it would suffer the damage of TWO precision arrows, hence "double damage". And that got fixed. If you ever played a Ranger, you would know, but no you're just going to ask for a nerf simply because "we're too op". Please..

 

Well said! You can make more content without raising the level cap. Stop it at lv60 for idk... 3 years or more ?
You nerf our power every year! You talk about "new content with the level cap raise" but every strong old player will not be playing those maps after one week. Guess what, we play in paralel world. Yepp, it is that same dungeons as they were lv55. Oh right.... Those same maps were in level 50 and I guess those maps will be same in level 65 and level 70!

But the "fun" of the level cap raise is.... You can start building your toon and items again ! Just when you started running Infernal II
*BAM* comes the "new expansion" So you can start again from excruciating to reach that Infernal II..... in those same old refreshing maps that we have been playing for years....
Just to wait another "expansion" to start over again. Like the Hiro73 said: Who has time ?
Who has nerves ? Who has money ?
Give us old players NEW CONTENT IN THE END GAME. You will see, raise the level cap you will lose another hundreds of old players. I can put my money on it.
Thanks and have a great day.

 

To put It into simple terms that everyone would want is just add new events, new maps, and new classes, and NO new lvls where you have to get everything again. Events will come with new equipment to get anyways but making players build all over again that they have worked on for years or whatever really puts people off and many will give up and move on to another game that doesn't literally make you start all over again.

 

Have totally different opinion Once equip is maxed out as it is now Not much left to do other than events and help fellow guild members. Once a year or so on upping level is great and gives a challenge to improve some more

 

Don't get me wrong, I do like the currency bag. However:

It would be nice if there was a toggle selection for auto pickup:
a) currency picked up goes strait into currency bag, with little 3-5 second bubble by it that shows what was picked up.
b) currency picked up goes into inventory, where we can see what we got and then right click and put it into inventory bag.

Personally, I would go with option b. Which would allow me to know how many GoP I made from a run after doing 6-10 melts because I could see the total and then put them into the bag. Same thing for bone coins. It would be nice to know how many bone coins I got from a run in DoD.
To everyone else, were talking about temporary single space (or maybe a couple spaces) use while farming.

 

Boom...this is what i wanted to hear lol.So before, the precision shot did 2x dmg when your target had a solid object behind and BP considered that having this skill do 2x dmg was too op.Now we have EA doing 2x dmg without having a solid object behind (kinda what precision shot did in the past minus the solid object from behind)...doing 2x dmg simply by hitting its target and its considered ok.So one skill did 2x dmg when there was a solid object behind was nerfed cuz it was too op even according to BP...and now another skill which does exactly the same thing without having a solid object behind is cool.Its something like 2+2 = 4 and its cool, but 1+3 = 4 is not cool because we have 1 and 3 in the ecuation lol.

Here are the facts.There are 2 skills.Both did awesome dmg...one did 2x dmg but only when your target had something solid behind it and BP acnowledged that it was too OP and unfair for other classes(despite the fact that u had to move and position your char in order to do 2xdmg ), and now you have a different skill which does exactly the same thing, minus the solid object and you say its ok (and the funny thing is that u dont even have to move around and position yourself in a certain spot in order to 2x dmg).Why is that? Cuz theres no object behind it?I somehow doubt BP nerfed precision shot because of the solid object from behind that you keep talking about..and they nerfed it because it was too op.Kinda like whats happening now.To see a full lvl 60 royal tank die 1hit from a skill like that only proves that my theory is right.

BTW ...still waiting on trakilaki to show me how his uber awesome SW can beat a dwarf or warrior on bosses.The only way he could do this is by taking advantage of both q4 and q7 sets.But that would mean that the SW class needs to use 2 sets to do what other classes do with just 1 lol.Triggering the q7 effect then switching to q4 ..repeat...even so it will still be hard to match a warrior or dwarf.I agree with him that on PvP the SW class i good, but to come with such a statement that SW is the best class ingame even for PvE (bosses).....lol.I can only remind him that for the past year everyone was searching for dwarfs alone...no SWs..no rangers..nothing..You could say it was due to the effect of the tesla turret but then u would need max 1 dwarf in party not 4 like most were looking for.Why dwarfs if SW was the best ingame?Anyways..

 

Can we please not turn this thread into another such and such is too OP?

Yes, I can go onto youtube and find OP players, but that does NOT make the entire class OP.

I play a DK as a main, a SM and SW as alts. Not a single one of them can solo a boss in 12 seconds. I stopped pvp at R155, so stop trying to punish me by getting my class nerfed.

I do not care if some heavy cash player is god in pvp, that doesn't mean I deserve to be punished.

For every god OP player, there are thousands that aren't, and not a single one of them deserves to be punished. Stop being selfish and think about others for once in your lives.

 

Lol, this will be my last attempt. Let me restate the fact that Precision Shot, Explosive Arrow, Blade Dance, Scatter Shot and Deadly Blow all do double damage when an enemy is marked. Precision shot, a powerful arrow basically, had the bug of doing 4x damage, not 2x. Which was the solid object thing. They FIXED that, they didn't nerf it. Precision shot STILL does double damage when an enemy is marked.

However, explosive arrow works as intended. It's explosive, so it has IMPACT damage and EXPLOSION damage. IF an enemy is MARKED, he will suffer DOUBLE damage from the IMPACT damage of the explosive arrow. And once again, this is the nature of how rangers work, otherwise marking would be completely useless. PLAY the ranger before you even complain about it mate.



By the way, your "theory" is based on killing bosses which is irrelevant. You should compare classes to multiple factors not just defeating bosses or pvp and Spellweaver has the highest score for that. Each class has an advantage in something with spellweaver having the most as of now at least.

Why?

Spellweaver is basically a simple version of the Ranger. No need to mark enemies to deal maximum damage while having a way bigger and better crowd control.

 

hp regeneration runes are not a pot or a buff but more like a gem so part of the overall build of the toon

players have collected them for use in pvp not pve as they are not very useful in pve

so i don't understand why you've stopped them working in pvp?

 

I'll add a suggestion too, cancel the bloody mini map display on pvp, or make it with ranged values, too far away, can't see me, too close, I am coming for you. PvP modes now are just spam with ice missiles teleport, spam, teleport, spam teleport.

 

actually its good thing regen runes are pretty potent for high hp and arena should be about running away to regen and should stay disabled from same reason as potions

mesala: actually pvp is domain of dks that kill equal enemy by charge/jump + swing with massive heal and immunity to controls

please: yep rangers got simplified from meelee /range hybrid to mage with stronger defensive gems and higher damage coefficients than glass cannons

 

I apologise for that.Probably ive started this but i was a bit pissed when trakilaki stated that SWs were the top class for pvp and pve altough ingame things are way different.The party system which consisted mostly of 1warrior and rest dwarfs can prove my point.checking youtube and looking and fastest kills will prove that SWs cant match dwarfs/rangers/warriors either and to state that SW is the best is a lie...Anyways..my bad..sorry for making this thread turn into a class vs class one...wasnt my intention.

 

Will you change the daily rewards system? There are plenty of players who don't want to participate in the pvp, but are somehow forced to do so if they want to receive the gilded clover. Wouldn't it be better if there was a choice between only pve and only pvp tasks? Also the reward of red ess for the daily tasks would be much appreciated.

And please do pay attention the the feedback we provide... some of the ideas for game's improvement are really good.

We'd love to play together as a strong team not as a solo nerfed chars :/

 

Fyi, spellweavers fireballs only deals with just a 110% not 1100%, rangers explosive EA travels more further range and explode slightly a bigger radius.
I think spellweavers icesphere should travel the same like rangers EA and explodes when hit on target, then it should be fair enough.
Personally I think spellweavers singularity skills is lame with such a small hole and opponents easily get out from it, I think the skill must be change to anyone who caught inside the singularity all their skills should be disabled and slowing down opponents up to 70-75% ( since the radius is really small ).
There's a ranger who totally gave up his spellweaver and play a ranger instead told me that after spending so much on his spellweaver and the damage cant even compare to his almost F2p ranger ( except for his premium ).
Another issue is Dk stun charge can use it again and again and again doing as long as they got rage and rangers doing blade dance all the time to avoid damage and doing damage as well its just a bunch of OP escape skills for this 2 character.

 

Do you know how frustrating it is getting killed without even engaging in a fight?
Since the game is pretty much one shot on lvl 55, all it takes is just spam an area with ranger's arrows or mage's missiles, how is that gameplay? To focus your entire match on a 3x3 cm mini map and just spam an area where the dot appears. If thats pvp, should just be cancereled entirely.

Your sentence has validity if you are talking about average players trying to play the game, the moment you have someone OP on the other side and it belongs to we know what classes, expect spamming.

 

Hey all,
thanks for all your questions and suggestions! Here comes the first "answer round"!

@MikeyMetro
[...] 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?

Spoiler: Answer me

We know about the concerns you just described and understand, that you and others players are interested and willing to explore a much more diverse play style.
Coming along with the class balancing adjustments and the new content expansion, we will add more possibilities to expand your play style in a unique fashion.
That being said, I would like to give you some examples of things we want to do. Please note that all of these following topics are possibly about to change during the development. Nevertheless, we would like to share our current pool of ideas with you.
While we know that the current setup of available pieces of equipment is not overall well received (and we’re working on this, as well), we also want to explore different ways of individualizing your character.
To achieve that, we want to increase the amount of possible talents to give all DSO players more complexity at hand to create your very own build. This will also help many players that are already at the end of the wisdom tree. Adding more talents that can move into various directions will provide a much broader and less gaped power progression.

@Rhysingstar
[...]Will it take years for us to get an event bag?

Spoiler: Answer me

We’re happy that the Currency Bag was well received and that there is an general interest in additional bags that use the same concept. And as you know, we tried improve the situation of too packed inventories by moving all vanity items and pets to the Collector’s Bag. Nevertheless, we will definitely look into the possibility to add an Event Bag in the near future. Please bear with us in this regard, as we can’t promise any specific release date, yet.

Why the constant nerfing?

Spoiler: Answer me

We understand and share your concerns. Time changes the perception of the player base, it also does change the impression that the development team can have about certain areas of the game. And yes, at that time in development, we had a very strong opinion about where the future of DSO should go to. But with an evolving community such ours, it’s not always the best choice to “just stick to the plan”.
With the new content expansion planned in early 2018 and the changes that we will apply to the character classes in the near future, we’re confident to improve both the current power progression and – on a long term - PvP. We will release more information about the currently planned changes to the balancing very soon.

When if ever, besides nerfing will we see any attempt at balancing pvp?
[...] 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.

Spoiler: Answer me

With the additions to the wisdom tree, we will also consider to add more flexibility to your PvP builds. Next to that, we are currently exploring possibilities to separate PvE and PvP much more. As an example, we could imagine to offer specific PvP equipment and such, but – as mentioned above – please do not consider this as 100% sure. And obviously, we rely on your very feedback for all changes related to PvP and the overall balancing.

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.

Spoiler: Answer me

See above. We understand the desire for a separation and we will definitely look into that. Please bear with us, as this is not on our roadmap until end of 2017, but we’re confident to put this onto the roadmap for early 2018.

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.

Spoiler: Answer me

We understand that there are different opinions about content expansions and the way that the community perceives them. But, many players are interested in exploring new areas and the ongoing story of Dracania. And, additionally to that, with the new expansion we will not add another region in a traditional way. To go further with the details, the new expansion will wrap around the actual end game of DSO and add new mechanics and content to it. You want new things to explore in Parallel Worlds? You will get it.

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.

Spoiler: Answer me

We can’t promise anything for the near future, but this is going to be discussed very soon. It’s important for us that all of you can play DSO on a populated server with many different players and friends and we will definitely look into this!

Can you please do something about wisdom? [...]

Spoiler: Answer me

As mentioned above, we will reevaluate the current status of the wisdom tree in general and add more value to it by offering, for example, new talents or the possibility to add more points to certain talents. While doing this, we will also readjust the overall experience of wisdom.

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.

Spoiler: Answer me

We would love to release a new character class in the near future and definitely will look into this topic, once we’re confident about the overall balancing. There are several ideas floating around in both community and team and we’re looking forward to get in touch with you about future plans.

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".

Spoiler: Answer me

We’re currently evaluating and prioritizing the bug situation and will try our best to put out as many bug fixes as possible. We know that we have quite some legacy bugs and we’re working on solutions for that.

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.

Spoiler: Answer me

There is a workbench overhaul currently in development which will arrive soon in the live version of the game. It includes a recipe book for more guidance and the possibility to figure out which items are needed and so on. We hope that this major improvement will meet your expectations of a proper crafting system. We know that we did some huge mistakes with the last attempt and avoided these this time.

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.

Spoiler: Answer me

We absolutely agree with you. A rushed release is not helping both of us. That being said, it’s not always in our (the dev team’s) hands to decide if a release should go live or not. But, we already started to move feature from a release to another if we’re not confident to meet your expectations. We will continue to do so and also reevaluate on the current release cycle. Nevertheless, having smaller releases in a shorter fashion can help us to add improvements and bug fixes to the game.

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?

Spoiler: Answer me

As mentioned above, we will take ourselves more time iterare on major features before they go live. With this new approach in mind, the updated workbench will stay a bit longer on the test server (it actually already is) and will most likely come with the release after the next one.

Finally, why bother with "official" feedback threads? [...]

Spoiler: Answer me

Starting with the Development Team Letter, we will not repeat the mistakes of the past again. The setup of the team has changed and therefore also the philosophy of the current group of leads and management. As you can see with the answers above and below, we’re trying to be very transparent and honest with you. It’s important for us to include you not only in testing on the test server, but with your suggestions and feedback before releasing a feature.

@Hiro73
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)?

Spoiler: Answer me

As mentioned above, we recently did some changes to how the inventory is used by adding both Currency and Collector’s Bag to the game. And as you know, you can still play DSO in a much smaller window, embedded in a browser. This means that the current UI setup is already at its limit when it comes to the smallest window size possible. Even if this is just a small part of our player base, we’re always aiming for the best overview.

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?.

Spoiler: Answer me

We will indeed improve the workbench in one of the next releases with a major update to how the whole window works and how a player is guided through the crafting process. This update does not include a change in price, but, we will continue to add new crafting methods to the workbench and also iterate on the current pricing philosophy of the system. Please expect more details in the near future.

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?

Spoiler: Answer me

Indeed, Blizzard offers a vast amount of awesome boss fightsJ. By adding new areas to the Parallel Worlds and with a new content update in mind, we will also try to come up with challenging boss mechanics. Having the improvements of our future skill and talents additions in mind, we can think of a lot of different ways of how to reinforce the need of a good, mixed and well balanced group of heroes

@gun
[...]
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. [...]

Spoiler: Answer me

Thank you for your suggestion. We’re sure we can find a way to install a much clearer way of communication between the most dedicated players and the development team. Actually, the whole idea of the Development Team Letter and this Q&A thread is exactly that. If you have further suggestions of how to progress with such an group, feel free to reach out to our CM team!

@Fugnuts
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. [...]

Spoiler: Answer me

We definitely understand your concern, however, still believe in the new content expansion. We would like to give some more insights to – hopefully – make you feel more comfortable with that idea.
First of all, we’re willing to listen to all of you. If a level cap increase is simply not a thing for the majority of you, we will not do it. Period.
Next to that (as mentioned earlier), the next expansion is going to be wrapped around the existing end game content and will add more diversity to it. We will provide more information about this in the following weeks.

@Demon
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.

Spoiler: Answer me

How the current system works, it encourages players to go out and engage in dungeons and/or events to actually earn the pieces they need. We can understand your desire to let us enable the suggested ways of crafting, but it’s always a matter of Playtime VS Invest. We believe that actually playing is more interesting most of the players.

@blitzcragg
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.

Spoiler: Answer me

As mentioned above, we will look into the possibility to add other bags, similar to the Currency Bag. We will share information as soon as we have something definite in mind.

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. [...] Thank you.

Spoiler: Answer me

As you know from our Development Team Letter, our current focus is on improving the way all character classes work solely and interact with each other. Additionally to that, we will shape a roadmap for the next year very soon. A major aspect of DSO is the interaction with other players on a daily basis, which is in its current state not a smooth thing to do. Therefore we want to vastly improve how guilds are set up and what they can actually do together. But this is, just as PvP, a very big thing for early 2018.

@Please_enter_a_name
I personally think merging Tegan with Agathon is a good idea. [...] 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.

Spoiler: Answer me

As mentioned above, we will see what we can do to provide a populated server to all players. It’s important to us to not “break” the experience of any Tegan user by merging servers, so we will definitely dig into this topic to find out what to do with it. Please don’t expect news about this “tomorrow”, but anytime soon.

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.

Spoiler: Answer me

We know that there are quite some “legacy bugs” keeping specific players away from a better gaming experience. And even if it would be too much to say we’re going to fix them all soon, we will find a format to reduce the bug count in a steady manner.

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. [...] 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.

Spoiler: Answer me

Speaking of specific PvP equipment, this is just one of the options we’re currently putting on our list for early 2018. As mentioned above, the class balancing adjustments will also include talent and honor tree updates, so this will already help to move the current circumstances into the right direction. However, PvP is highly like to be one of our major topics in 2018.

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? [...]

Spoiler: Answer me

By rethinking the way the crafting is brought to the game and reevaluating the current setup of skills, wisdom and honor talents, we will definitely add ways to allow each and every one of you to create the build you might like. Open the doors for exploration in regards to skill setting and group play is an interesting path that we want to follow as soon as possible.

[...] And that is the fact that this game is a pay to win game. [...] 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. [...] 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?

Spoiler: Answer me

This is indeed an ongoing topic that we monitor with each new feature / content / event we put out. It’s not our intention to create the perception of an “Pay to Win”-game. And even if this is to some extent a possible point of frustration, we will continue to further improve the very open gameplay of DSO to everyone, regardless of the willingness to pay or not.

@TommyT0m
Can you tell us more on how you are going to make Group play much more enjoyable in the future?

Spoiler: Answer me

We will iterate on the current skill setup of each class. That being said, we will not change or remove any skills, but improve them further to be more precise and useful, in terms of target groups or values. This will help a lot to intensify the group dynamic already, but we will not stop at this point.
It’s too early to give 100% solid information here, but right now we exploring the possibilities of how to further improve the wisdom tree. To give you an example: It’s highly likely that all DSO players will have way more opportunities to invest wisdom into new talents, whether they improve the own skills, passive attributes or even add group bonuses.
We believe that these changes will help all classes to add value to the group.

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

Spoiler: Answer me

We will look into all different consumable categories, such as buffs, potions etc.. While doing this, we will also evaluate the possibilities regarding spirit stones and similar items. And even if they do not come with the first release of the feature, they might will come in a later iteration.

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

Spoiler: Answer me

This is one of our new monsters. We can go into the specifics here, as this would mean to spoiler the story, but this lad is going to be a very dangerous fellow

@Someone36

[...] The most important issue for me is pvp.So, what are your plans about it?[...]

Spoiler: Answer me

With the currently ongoing class balancing improvements and the planned wisdom and honor tree updates, we will have a first step in the right direction. Additional to that (as mentioned above), we will look into other ways of how to help PvP becoming the vital system it used to be in the very past. Furthermore, we will look into PvP in 2018 in more detail (beginning with the changes to wisdom and honor trees, anyways).

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

Spoiler: Answer me

There is no plan to move essences to the Currency Bag, as these items are no currencies, from a technical standpoint. But, as mentioned above regarding an event bag, we will look into the possibilities of adding an e.g. Essence Bag.

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.

Spoiler: Answer me

With workbench updates and new content coming the near future, this is definitely a possibility. We can’t give a positive or negative answer right now.

Are there any plans for new pvp modes?

Spoiler: Answer me

As discussed above, PvP has its battery of issues, currently. We will focus on reducing this, before we add 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?

Spoiler: Answer me

We will definitely look into the topic of runes in the future, add new runes or revise the ones that are not very beneficial for certain builds. We will not take away any power or iterate on runes that could possibly be well received by a lot of DSO players. So this is – as well as all future updates – a dialogue.

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.

Spoiler: Answer me

We will revise how the whole difficulty system is perceived when bringing updates to skills and talents. Group play in general is going to be a lot better with the next content expansion, which is also a milestone for major improvements in regards of class balancing and interaction.

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?

Spoiler: Answer me

If you’re referring to some sort of online shop; we used to sell these items in the past. But due to economical business decisions, we removed this shop later on. But maybe our new Community Manager will raffle some of the stuff to you soon!

@Nostradamus88
My first question is: How much do you test, calculate, plan the various skill, damage, hitpoint and everything? I am really interested and curious in this matter.

Spoiler: Answer me

This depends a bit on the current topic, but let’s use the example of monster values. Overall, we do have an balancing sheet which covers level 1-55 of each monster. With a load of formulas and automated excel magic, we can create an progression for each monster and the respective rank.
This is, obviously, not possible for all areas of the game, so we need to approach an e.g. event balancing in a different manner. This is a computation containing play time, cost of necessary items (such as keys or essences) etc., depending on the desired difficulty.

Second one: Why do you not bother anymore about pvp? Everything you do is to give us more challenges in pve but everything we earn from pw or events make pvp always worst.

Spoiler: Answer me

As mentioned above, we will cater for PvP once our class balancing is back in state where we want it to be. Early 2018 is definitely a good timeline for seeing first plans and results for PvP.

Third one: Well it is not really a question but... PLEASE! Do not make another expansion! This thing combined with the looooong way to craft items + drop unique + farm cores is ruining the game and our experience. [...]

Spoiler: Answer me

With the new expansion that we just teased in our Development Letter, we will go into a different direction and wrap the new content around something that is already well known by the more experienced players. This helps us to do both offer new content and stabilize the current balancing. We will share information about the new expansion very soon, so please bear with us until we reveal what this is all about. But please note, we will take the time that is needed for both the quality and the demand, until we release the expansion.

 

Thank you for taking the time to respond. It would have been nice to get specific answers instead of we're talking about it, looking into it, or we're listening, but it is what it is what it is. I guess we'll have to wait and see if any of our suggestions and concerns are taken into account.

One thing that I would like is that someone really put the Tegan issue at the top of the to do list. Scenes like this are far too common.

 

Our last CM, Clayton, has vanished with the wind apparently. Or if he is around, he is very, very, quiet. Do we have a new one? Is there a method or way to communicate with whoever that may be?

One other question that I believe was mentioned previously but not addressed: Is there any movement towards developing a better mouse cursor? The cursor that was used with Spirit Stones prior to the group window click option was much more visible when in battle than the curret one. It would go a long way to improving play to being able to figure out what you are shooting at/hitting.

Thanks for the answers to questions that you did give. It is encouraging to see communication coming from Drakensang.

 

Rhysingstar, that is not because no one is online in tegan. that is because you were brought to a different "instance" of PW. simply teleport back to pw again and you'll find everyone is back. it also happens if you sit in pw too long.

To the dev team, thanks for the responses. i understand you aren't allowed to say too much as so many things are likely to change with expansions and updates and there would be an uprising if you mentioned something and it didn't happen. lol.

To your response about "changing the experience of Tegan"...i'm pretty sure 99.999999% of both servers would get much more fun out of having more people their power levels. whether that is high power or low power, it's nice to have others to play with. i understand mixing servers can be difficult and many MANY players would try to fake losing gear to get free items, upgrades etc. it comes with the territory of liars and thieves, but a more populated server isn't going to come from anything but a merge. the problem and fear of everything is the lag issue. no one wants a merge if their ping goes from a tolerable 30-150ms to 500 and they can't play at all. a server merge would be a great thing to expand the amount of people we have the option to play with, and pvp wouldn't take 2 hours to complete for a simple clover.

regards,

Abra
Dolf
Linc
Ler