EQ2 Mechanically Speaking Panel (Fan Faire 2007)
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Mechanically Speaking Panel
SOE Fan Faire 2007
Mechanically Speaking
Developers Attending:
Scott "Gallenite" Hartsman, Senior Producer; Chris "Archonix" Junior, Mechanics Designer; Chris "Aeralik" Kozak, Coder & Spell and Achievement Designer; Jared "Lockeye" Sweatt, Spells, Combat Arts and Achievements; Emily "Domino" Taylor, Tradeskill Developer; Joshua "Autenil" Kriegshauser, Associate Technical Director; Don "Silverfrost" Neufeld, Technical Director,
Developer Presentations:
Chris "Archonix" Junior:
There are 24 Epics, one for each class. The quests will be similar in nature to the Sword of Destiny content. As mentioned in the Kunark Rising panel, there will be group version you must progress through to get the raid version. They will have some “absolutely crazy effects” on them.
In Kunark they are going for three basic armor sets: a legendary version just like Echoes; a “First Tier” raid set from the standard raid instances; and everyone will get a brand new “Second Tier” set from Veeshan's Peak. They are planning 24 armor sets for VP, each class will have their own unique appearance.
This time instead of having each designer itemize their own zones there are three people in charge of it. They are itemizing from the top down now so all the high-end loot is where they want it first. Chris addressed the past complaints that raiders are no better geared than non-raiders: instead of taking away from the low end they're actually adding new effects to the game that you'll only find on raid loot and will only benefit raiders. He hinted that these effects will give more use to wisdom and agility.
Chris "Aeralik" Kozak:
Chris addressed complaints about + spell damage and + heal power on items. Game Update 38 will change how those work by applying + spell damage to the initial tick instead of spreading it out. They will be adding a combat art version of the + spell damage that should eventually be added to items.
Also in GU 38 they are getting rid of the dual wield designation. This will simplify itemization. Dual wield weapons will upgrade damage automatically so they are comparable to similar one-handers already in game. To compensate for that with DW classes they will be reducing the delay on the weapons when dual wielding by 1.33. So there will be a small delay hit but you will do the same amount of damage as you do right now. They are also upgrading two-handers in GU 38 so they get a little more damage.
They are also looking at every class's spells: how their spells are designed and how the spells work together. Spells that are currently separate but are very similar will be merged into one spell. There will be no nerfs, but things like multiple group buffs and multiple debuffs may be made into one spell. You'll have more hotbar space. Right now there are classes with more abilities than they can possibly use in combat. Three hotbars by level 16 is a bit much, and this will bring current abilities a little closer to the current pacing of the game. This change will be on the Test server, and Chris welcomes suggestions posted on the forums. He emphasizes that they will be taking feedback, and things can change if it does not work as intended.
Jared "Lockeye" Sweatt:
In GU 38 the Bloodline Chronicles spells are being updated. You'll actually be able to get them at level 53; the goal is to make them more a part of your spell line rather than an oddball spell you'll rarely use.
Also in this update are changes to the fighter buffs, a project continued from GU 37 in an attempt to give fighters more raid slots. All fighter archetypes are having one buff changed to a raid-wide buff which should give them more utility and desirability in raids. With bards their resist buffs will become raid-wide and their solo buffs will do a lot more damage.
In regard to Kunark spell planning, there are a lot of concerns where certain spells don't upgrade regularly and you might have a whole expansion where you don't get an upgrade. The old progression was an upgrade every 14 levels. With Kunark the progression becomes every 10 levels. Any spell lines that were upgrading are guaranteed to see an upgrade in Kunark. For every single subclass there will be a unique spell granted at level 80.
Emily "Domino" Taylor:
Crating products will change so that in most cases you will only get a final product if you complete all four quality bars of the process. This will not affect things like ammo and potions where pristine just means more product. If you fail on a non-rare, you will get fuel back. If you fail on a mastercrafted or imbue you will get the primary component back but lose the fuel.
With Kunark crafters can expect a revamp of the tradeskill arts. Removing non-pristine products will cause problems in low levels; and tradeskill arts do not always upgrade. This change will address both issues. One part of the change includes the arts upgrading the same way combat arts do. For example, at level one you might get a Tailoring art called Nimble I; at level 20 instead of getting a new art you'll get Nimble II which would replace Nimble I as an upgrade. You will only have six Arts at any time. Exact details have not been finalized; please watch the tradeskill forums for more information.
Kunark will also see the addition of more crafting related quests; the Alchemist quest in GU 37 is an example, and another for level 20+ crafters should go live in GU 38. With Kunark we're planning to add class quests for crafters, aimed at high level crafters of any adventure level.
Joshua "Autenil" Kriegshauser:
Josh talked about the quest sharing system and how it works. They use the quest icon system to do quest sharing. It's gone through a number of refinements that players wouldn't see to make them more accurate. When you push the share button it actually creates the NPC hidden next to you and sees if they will offer whomever the quest. The NPCs have complicated dialog handlers to figure out what they are supposed to say; the quest sharing system goes through the same kind of queries the NPC's do to see if you can share a quest. Near the end of doing the quest sharing system they found that people can't share a quest because they haven't done the previous quest about 3 days before publish they decided to make completed quests sharable as well.
Don "Silverfrost" Neufeld:
One of engineering's goals over the last year and into Kunark has been to improve the tool chain to allow designers more flexibility. We have these challenges about the scale of the world that our old tools were just not working for. The people who built the spam filter are working on these tools. Historically one of the reasons they did not give players what they asked for was not because they didn't want to but because they didn't have the ability because of the time cost.
The spam filter has been catching a quarter million spams a day. Spammers are now banned same day, twice a day. All bans are reviewed by humans; you have to be egregious.
Q&A:
Note: At the beginning of the panel Scott requested no class vs. class questions because of the tendency for them to turn into arguments.
Some racial spell are largely never used because of a short duration and a long recast. Has there been any thought to changing that? It's on the short term list, but there are no specifics. Consolidation is first on the list.
There seems to be no benefit for high level crafters doing low level gray recipes. There's no speed increase, no XP, nothing but they may get Pristine easily. Will there ever be? They wouldn't want to make it one-click trivial, but there will probably be some improvement with the reaction arts revamp. Once they consistently improve with level so higher crafters have better Arts, the high levels should be more efficient. At this time Domino is not looking any further than the Arts revamp, but she may in the future.
With the buff/debuff consolidation, won't there be a negative effect to hate gain? There will probably be a small hate gain, but they will look into it and if it's really bad they will make adjustments for it.
Is anything being done about the huge lag caused by high population in Loping Plains? They have been actively working on this problem. The issue is that every time they try to get a repro case on a live server the developers show up, they're doing the analysis, and the lag doesn't happen. This has literally been going on for months now. They are having a hard time nailing down a case where this happens reliably. They can see quite clearly what's happening inside the servers if they can set up ahead of time Silverfrost solicited the questioner's assistance in setting up a live test.
Can we please have more fun spells? Unfortunately the fun spells have always been in the background behind issues like whether the game is playable. As they complete more of the player issues they'll be able to do more fun stuff.
Regarding fighter raidwide buffs: why not just make raids that require multiple fighters? They can do both, but the buffs are designed to make fighters more valued in every raid situation, not just in a couple of raids. They wish every encounter could include everybody, but it can't be done every time.
Will spell consolidation be just new spells or will it go all the way back to level 1? And how will this affect concentration slots? It will go all the way back. What it does is search out the spells to be combined and finds the highest spell; so if you have a Master I spell and an Apprentice I spell being combined the result will be a Master I spell. They didn't have the specifics of the effect on concentration slots, but it will be taken into consideration. This change will be heavily tested, probably using the PvP Test server again.
When the Dual Wield designation is removed will you just be changing the flag on it or will all the weapons be looked at individually? All the weapons have a damage modifier on them; on the servers the Dual Wield weapons will just pick up the one-hand modifier. They will naturally progress to what you see as a similar one-hander today.
Why is there no group version of Hearts or Shards? Lockeye: “Because I don't want enchanters to hate me any more than they already do!” In some cases, like at raids, a group version didn't make sense. Now that there will be raid-wide buffs who knows what will happen in the future. In the past a you could only cast the spell within your own group; it was either only effect your own group or effect any raid ally. Lockeye asked if the players would prefer a single raid-wide spell that would put a recharge of shard in everyone's inventory and received heavy applause. Lockeye says they will consider that - no promises. (note: there was a lot of cross-talk and noise during this part of the Q&A, and I've probably hopelessly muddled the spell names and such as I don't play the applicable classes. Send corrections to me! - Calthine)
Is there any plan to add rewards for all classes to quests? Not every quest in the game can have a useful item for everybody just because of the sheer number of items it would take. There are a lot of quests out there that only allow you to see the reward for your class.
Will there be any changes to the usefulness of power drains and their detrimental effects? There were a lot of changes between launch and LU 13 where we gave monsters huge power pools. Then there were all these abilities left that drain power and it's not useful anymore. Lockeye said he's never gotten to the point where he was able to review all the power-draining abilities and find something to do with them; they're kind of there as an artifact of what used to be. He'd like to look at them in the future but there are always more pressing things. They're not class-breaking so they aren't urgent.
Will Alcohol Tolerance ever be useful? At the moment it's just a fun thing.
Avoidance tanking: are we ever going to get that working? This is a tricky one. Mitigation is traditionally always more effective that avoidance and it's been hard to balance monks and bruisers without making them overpowered because in group and solo situations they're very powerful tanks. And to have them be more effective than the mitigation tanks group/solo and be as or more effective in a raid situation is really risky, especially when they can do as much DPS as they can. The minimum deflection chance is an attempt to bring more parity between brawlers and the mitigation tanks.
Will Ancient Teaching spells see upgrades with the expansion? Certain ones, yes. If they were percentage-based Ancient Teachings which are good at every level then you will not see an upgrade; but if they were fixed and because less effective as you leveled, they will be upgraded. Yes, Dispatch is getting an upgrade.
Exactly how does the mechanics of item creation work? Domino, with assistance from Don Neufield and the engineering department, described in detail the precise internal item creation process.
The process of checks actually starts at the end of the four-second crafting round, when you see the numbers float up. First the game checks to see if you are still crafting and are in range of the crafting station. It will then look in the past round: did any event happen that needed to be countered? If there was it checks to see if you countered successfully or not and applies the result (did you get a buff or did the forge eat you?). It checks the recipe to see what skill is required. It then checks for a reaction event that guarantees success or failure. If there was no such event it looks up your success chance based on your level in the required skill and the recipe level. Now it has your unmodified success chance, and it will modify that chance with any beneficial spells or items you might have. It makes a random roll and compares that number to your modified success chance and decides whether or not you succeeded. At this point we are still at the end of the previous round; the next four-second round has not even started yet! If you were successful it will check if it was a critical success; if not it checks for critical failure. Either way it now modifies your progress or durability by the base amount for whatever success or failure you had (crit success, normal success, normal failure, or crit failure). Then it modifies your progress and durability for any items or spells you may have had, and after that modifies for any arts you may have used. It adjusts the bars on the creation window according to your now-modified results and checks to see if you finished your item (or run out of durability, ending your round). If not it does a roll to determine if you will have an event to counter in the net round. The longer it's been since you had an event to counter the more likely you are to have one. If yes the event will pop up.
Now we start the next four-second round. At this point you'll be using your reaction arts. This is also the point at which you skill up, because when you use your reaction arts you have a chance at a skillup.
Scott asked: “Does that mean crafting naked is better or worse?” Domino replied: “Crafting naked is better.“
Domino gave me the flow chart from which she gave her presentation. I've had to reproduce it with some shareware because to get it on one sheet of paper she had to make it very very small. This is a very large graphic, so please click here to see the flow chart.
What other things do you have in the works to counteract the effects of twinking on the PvP servers? There are plans to make it easier for new people coming into the server to get faction faster and get PvP armor faster so they can get geared up faster. One player suggestion was to have PvP grant XP even when combat XP was disable to force level-lockers to level past the "ganking newbs" level. The dev team has discussed this; they don't really want to force people to level because there are legitimate reasons to level-lock. They want to try other approaches first and it is something they will continue to work on as they are aware it's a big problem. One of the things they have tried is capping the AA experience so low-level toons cannot get overpowered; players at the panel informed them that capping AA may not be working as well as intended.
Can you put Gems in the game again? Much laughter ensued.
Will the effects on the new Kunark armor actually effect Epic targets? They are adding insane effects to the raid mobs. The goal is to make the effects powerful and useful in those raids. So it's raid effects on raid armor that helps you beat raid encounters that would be insanely overpowering soling or grouping. A slight hint: they are looking at turning criticals back on; so in theory mobs will start critting again. So obviously players need a way to stop crits from happening; this goes back to what we will be using wisdom and agility for.
| Converted from Guides | |
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| Created: | 2007-08-12 21:49:32 |
| Last Changed: | 2007-08-13 14:57:32 |
| Author: | Calthine |
| Category: | Event Coverage |
| Last Edited | 190427 |
| Score: | 5.00 |
| Note: | None |
| Guide ID: | 1057 |
| Last Changed: | Unknown |
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