Grab Bag returns

Solicfire

Friday Grab Bag - 03/10/2017 

Thanks to everyone who sent in questions, keep 'em coming! You can send in your questions through our Grab Bag submission form.

Will we see additional PVE Campaigns that utilize underused zones such as SI?

Yes! As stated in the Producer’s Letter we are introducing our next PvE campaign with the launch of 1.122C to the Live servers. While this one won’t go into Shrouded Isles zones, another future campaign almost certainly will. This next campaign will last a bit longer than our previous ones and will focus on both the classic world and eventually another expansion area. If you’ve been reading the recent lore-posts so far for hints I’m sure you can figure out which areas are involved!

We’re especially excited to bring this next campaign to you because much of your recent feedback regarding PvE will be incorporated into it. First, we’ll be toning down the power of the rewards to coincide with the upcoming 1.123 item changes. This campaign’s rewards will still certainly be useful and coveted but they won’t shift the power of gear nearly as much as the Otherworlds campaign did.

Secondly, we want players to be able to complete *most* chapters at their own pace and not have to wait for a battlegroup to form up in order to continue. While most chapters will require just the help of a few friends to complete some will be able to be completed solo, and a select few will still require multiple groups. Regardless of the chapter’s difficulty, all steps will be battlegroup credit.

Finally, with the conclusion of this campaign we’ll be launching a comprehensive revamp of an entire expansion. Updated lore, enemies, dungeons and of course, loot! With this revamp, we’re most excited about introducing a new system for obtaining and potentially upgrading loot found elsewhere in the game; as a solo player.

More details about the upcoming campaign will be found in the 1.122C Live Patch notes (coming next week!) and as it unfolds we’ll be releasing more details on the revamp of the soon-to-be-revealed expansion content!

Would broadsword ever consider adding new terrain obstacles around high traffic areas, similar to the "towns" on the outer ring of EV, in order to offer a partial haven for solo and smallman action the way the ruined keeps and mazes have?

This is certainly something we’ve considered! There are many “high traffic” areas that have already been given some obstacles and features for smaller forces to use such as the milegates, the many standing and fallen towers, ruins, and staircases on Ellan Vannin, the removal of monsters from some of the Roman ruins in Hadrian’s Wall, new fallen trees and wooded areas in Emain Macha, and the new mountainous paths in Odin’s Gate.

That said, we’re absolutely open to adding some more so long as they don’t inhibit the larger forces too much from their objectives. Just send us some feedback on where you’d like to see them and we’ll absolutely take a look!

Will guild Bounty Points and Merit Points ever be able to be used for more than house rent and guild buffs?  Something that benefits the guild in a big way such as special bonuses for double XP for 12 hours, or being able to put up more than two guild buffs at a time?

We toyed with re-incorporating guild-bounty points into a more robust keep claiming and upgrading system but decided against it for now. Perhaps in the future we can add that in if desired. For the merit points, there are already some valuable bonuses that can be put up and many high realm rank guilds are actually seeing a lack of available merit points. We’d like to address that issue prior to giving any other bonuses to spend the merit points on.

Does your weapon skill affect whether or not your shield styles (like slam) penetrate defenses like it does for your weapon or is it solely based on your shield spec and your dex? For example could a thane spec 50 shield and no weapon, and still be able to penetrate defense trying to slam or brutalize?

In short, your shield specialization, dexterity stat, and +shield skills are the determining factors for landing shield styles. Your other weapon specializations do not affect your penetration chance when using shield styles. So yes – one could spec 50 shield, 0 weapon and land your shield styles just fine!

That said, “weaponskill” doesn’t really determine defense penetration for “normal” weapon specs either but is rather an index value that takes into account things like your spec, stats, +skills, and your class’ inherent ability with that weapon line to give you an idea of how well you might stack up against others.

Additionally, the weaponskill value displayed on your character’s attribute page is only for your “normal” or “main” weapon specialization. This means if a Thane adjusted their Sword, Hammer, or Axe specialization it would update its value but it wouldn’t if they adjusted their Shield spec. You can test this by fully respecializing and then training up your Shield spec. You will see that the displayed weaponskill value does not change.

For Shield spec, there is a hidden “shield weaponskill” value that gets adjusted based on your shield spec, +skills, and your dexterity stat but again, that weaponskill value doesn’t directly determine your defense penetration, anyway.

What are the angles (degrees) of the front, side, and back arcs for landing styles? Similarly, what is the angle (degrees) of the front arc for casting spells (having target in LOS)?

For landing melee styles, the front and rear arcs of a target are each 60 degrees wide and each of the side arcs are 120 degrees wide. Meaning if your target stood facing due north, you could land frontal positional styles on them if you are standing north of them, facing due south, and are within a 30 degree angle to the east or west of their position.

For spell casts, the frontal arc is 180 degrees – meaning if you are facing due north, you can cast on a target standing 90 degrees from you at due west AND on a target standing 90 degrees from you due east, without moving your character’s facing.

Additionally, the frontal arc for melee defenses like parry and (non-360/advanced) evade is 120 degrees; for block it is 180 degrees.

Bola and Patella Shot - What affects if these shots "Miss" or not. Is there a certain mechanic that makes it miss? I am not talking "resisted" but when it says the shot missed.

These shots’ miss rates should already be fixed in patch 1.122C which is currently on the Pendragon server. Please give them a test!

Is there any update on the player-base survey and its results?

http://darkageofcamelot.com/article/friday-grab-bag-03102017

Solicfire

Friday Grab Bag - 02/24/17

The Grab Bag doth return!

Below we have 5 questions collected from the community by our Knights to get us started. If you want to send in your questions for a future Grab Bag, you can do so through our Grab Bag submission form! 

Additionally, we have been blown away by the amount of responses to our playerbase survey. Thank you for the several thousand (OMG!) responses and for taking the time to give us such valuable feedback and insight. The survey is now CLOSED while we analyse and discuss the results internally. We will return with a follow up survey soon, so keep your eyes on the Herald!

Onto the questions!



Have you considered adding any color effects to say a players shoulders or somewhere to signify if they have certain abilities up? I'd love a small way to be able to read what my opponent may have up, even if its not super easy to tell. Purge, Moc, ML abilities and class defining seem like the most important for my solo and small man style of play. To add on to this would it be possible to show if a specific items abilities are active by making it more sparkly?

Many of these are good quality of life suggestions that fall under our over-arching goal of improving the UI/UX (user interface/user experience) of the game. While we haven’t gotten to the point with the game client or UI to specifically look at these suggestions yet, we’ll certainly keep them in mind when we do!

What is the internal process for the feedback forms?

Each feedback is read by myself, the Producer, and if warranted, shared with relevant members of the team. Topics from feedback are sometimes discussed on our internal boards as well if we want more insight on them.

The best types of feedback we receive are ones that highlight an issue, explain the context of how it affects their experience/play-style/realm/class directly in-game, and then offer some possible solutions.

We do *not* reply to feedback as it would be a severe resource drain and the topics that would merit a reply are worth replying to the whole player-base instead of just to one person.  If you do want a discussion about your idea(s), the best bet is to post the feedback on Postcount’s Dark Age of Camelot board or on the upcoming official forums when they launch. There, other players will be able to discuss and expand on your ideas and we may chime in as well!

Some new items have been added to the game since the introduction of Platinum Bound Chests. Can we expect their loot tables to be updated to reflect the additions?

Eventually. There are no immediate plans to add these new items to the chests. Our immediate focus is taking a hard look at item procs/uses and addressing the really powerful ones; as well as addressing the amount of /uses a player can have up at once. Once that re-balancing has been done (coming in patch 1.123!), we can take a look at which new items still deserve to go in these chests.

Can the ruined keeps be returned to their original state? Or return non home realm porting?

Good question! This is a great example of a popular feedback topic that warrants a broader response. We receive a lot of positive feedback about the Ruined Keeps from solo and small-man players. However, we also receive a good chunk of feedback from large-scale focused players who would like to see the Ruined Keeps made whole again. We’re going to take the slow approach here and will be allowing non-home realms to once again port to these ruined structures in 1.122C. Depending on how things look in RvR after that change, as well as your continued feedback, we’ll revisit the decision to leave them ruined.

What is Broadsword's opinion about the support classes in their current state, especially following patch 1.121 and the changes most of them got with it?

Overall, we feel that Bards and Shamans are in the best place out of all the support (including Healers, Druids, Clerics, Regrowth Wardens, and Rejuvenation Friars when using the term ‘support’) with the recent adjustments in 1.122. While Clerics are preforming better with the new mesmerize in Smite and Druids are faring better with their pet improvements, we still feel that the lesser-used lines are lacking (Nature, Cave, and Smite). However, given the lessons learned from the 1.121 and 1.122 updates, we are looking at only minor tweaks and adjustments focused around those lesser-used lines in the 1.123 update.

That's it for this week! Happy Friday all