Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Post your PTS 1.6 impressions here
Iselin
Member LegendaryPosts: 18,719
So far, I've been focusing on leveling a brand new sorcerer in an area I know best, the AD, for comparison purposes.
I had some character loading issues at first but that went away after a while and they all load fine now... so far, that has been the only bug
Some random quick thoughts...
They've either buffed low level damage or the twinking with Champion Points is noticeable - feels definitely more powerful
The tutorial area has been changed quite a bit... you now fight quite a bit more... there's at least one place where you have to lock pick... I got a level 2 health regen necklace as a drop, never had one of those drop there before... all in all feels a bit better
XP gain from kills seems greater... I'm leveling faster and so are the skill lines
Many containers are now "owned" and you steal by looting them... stolen items stack separately and this doesn't help your inventory if you go on a crime spree.
Most cities now have an underground "outlaws den" typically with 3 or more entrances. That's the only place to sell stolen goods. You can also "launder" items there so you can put them in your bank or use them without fear of them being confiscated by a guard.
I've lock picked several lock boxes - usually green and blue fenceable items in there worth quite a bit of gold
Guards are unkillable tough mofos
Mats now stack up to 200 per stack (up from 100)... helps with mats banking mostly
Provisioning has changed to use the same materials in recipes of all levels... this helps a lot with material management
The collections tab is account-wide. All your vanity pets and mounts go there and no longer take space
Animations have gotten a makeover - some are definitely better... some are just different.
Horses seem to have a faster regular non-sprint speed... they also seem to go into overdrive when you first press sprint (bug?) and are slower going up steps... fair enough I guess for horses climbing stairs 
Champion point interface is very well done... There's quite a variety of passives you can get there... some similar to what you've seen before and some unique (e.g. your next spell is guaranteed critical after blocking 3 spells)... CPs are refundable at a cost of gold.
Sorcerer pets no longer reduce your magicka... the damage they do is still nothing special but they do seem hardier... despite what it says in the patch notes, they do seem to grab and hold aggro... no longer totally useless
The new Overload light attacks are much, much faster... nice DPS boost
More later....
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Comments
Not yet. That was their original plan but now they want to introduce the player vigilante part later in a different update because that will mean, essentially, a limited form of open world PVP.
With the way things are now, even a stray random heal on someone fighting the guards will flag you and the guards will come after you too. With player involvement that could escalate pretty quickly since most heals in this game are "smart heals" that go to nearby people who need it.
A new skill line called Legerdemain is also part of this patch. It's a set of passives all related to sneaking, picking pockets, forcing locks, reducing your bounties and increasing the number of items you can fence per day.
The sneaking passive reduces the stamina cost of sneaking and that will be very useful in Cyrodiil as well.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Something that I didn't see in the patch notes...
As you know, or maybe you don't, a while back they started re-doing a lot of the delves (open world small dungeons) that had been rightly knocked at launch for being carbon copies of each other. They made them larger and unique.
In the lowbee area I'm playing now, Auridon, they had redone one - the one right next to Vulkhel Guard. I've now been inside 3 other ones and they have also been redone. Much larger and unique.
That deserves its own post
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I'll repost this here. It was initially in response to a person asking for feedback on the Justice System.
I messed around with justice system for about an hour in the daggerfall first city. I leveled the new skill line ledgerman to 2. Just about everything I picked up was considered stealing, from bread to armor. Anything close to an NPC which most things are seems to be theft. It was pretty easy to take the stuff undetected though.
Pickpocketing was tougher. You get a % chance to do it when you are sneaking behind an NPC. most seem to be in the 20%-50% range for me atm. The new skill line gives increase chance as it ranks up. I had a couple at 75% also. If you mess up you gain heat. I was accosted by guards several times. The majority of the time was because I walked up to them not thinking. A few times they chased me down because my heat was so high. For example a couple of the people I tried to pickpocket came after me, so naturally I killed them. My heat rose high because other NPCs saw me. Guards are unkillable, but you can run from them.
If you get away with the stuff you can take it to a fence and sell it or launder it. I was making pretty good money, but after the times I was stupid and got caught it ended up being a wash. I think if I do it better it will be a pretty good source of income.
All in all, it seems to be pretty cool. I'll probably get out a bit more tomorrow and check out some of the other places. I want to find locked houses and such.
A few more thoughts... just ask if you have specific questions...
The changes to class balance are not really noticeable until the higher levels. Up to level 30 or so, they mostly feel the same with just a few exceptions.
The first sorcerer pet has become a bit useful now. The 10% magicka reduction penalty is gone and that alone makes it worthwhile to have out while you're leveling that skill line. It still does glitch sometimes (especially after using Y + left click to send it to attack first) and just stands around not attacking or defending itself but strangely, whenever that happens, it still aggros one mob.
It still has the other basic most annoying problem of using pets after level 15: you have to slot it on both skill bars or it un-summons when you switch weapons. The better morph is unstable familiar because the explosion on death or when you deliberately un-summon it hits quite hard for a good AOE blast and summoning it back is an instant cast so it can be used as just another AOE.
The normal damage from the pet is still negligible though. The 2nd ranged pet does hit a bit harder but it dies if something looks at it wrong.
The one big nerf to Sorcs that everyone is screaming about is to the healing part of critical surge. On live it's a very viable self-heal based off critical hits. It has now been reduced to no more than once per second. On paper it seems reasonable but in actual practice it makes it almost useless for any build relying on a lot of little heals from DOTs. I think we'll see another change to this one before it goes live.
Being a 10-month old game, most of the focus and feedback is based on how the changes affect VR14 characters and specifically in PVP. Things like how damage shield stacking is too powerful, lower health makes you too quick to die and removal of soft caps on stats makes damage too powerful... PVP balance drama is an end-game hobby
At the lower levels the changes you'll notice are that you hit a bit harder, ultimate now generates off basic light and heavy weapon attacks so you actually need to use them and that mobs have received the same 5s CC immunity after the first CC that players have so you can no longer use strategies to keep them pinned down indefinitely until they're dead.
The one other thing you'll notice is that every single one of the delves (delves being the small solo public dungeons you can just walk into that typically have a skyshard in them) has been redone to be unique, larger, twistier, have more mobs and even some new mob mechanics like bats hanging upside down from the ceiling dropping down to attack you.
It's also relatively bug-free compared to the shape that previous updates have been in when they first go to the test server.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Ive seen some mention that the game runs better/smoother in 1.6
Is this also your impression?
Animations have gotten a pretty thorough make over and they do seem crisper. Also other things such as inventory management (selling, buying, banking etc.) also seems faster.
The animations of how you hold and attack with different types of weapons in particular, look a lot better now.
If you ignore the music, this is a good video showing the new weapon animations.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
That music is indeed atrocious. The animations though aren't bad for being hand-keyed. I can see they put more of a sense of weight to the weapons.
"If I offended you, you needed it" -Corey Taylor
I do not think it a good idea to launch the Justice system at the same time as you have a ton of new players turning up for B2P. Something like that is going to take time to bed in, meanwhile all the new players will be pointing out the exploits, bugs, it is "ruining" PvE atmosphere and so on.
The champion system on the other hand can but go quite smoothly and will be a great addition to the game.
Yes for now. They've said they're working on being able to use both.
Edit: scratch that. They don't occupy that inventory slot or any other, it's just enabled/disabled on the collections interface. The "costumes" slot on the inventory remains open. The PTS is down for maintenance. I'll see what happens when you use a disguise and I'll join a guild with Tabard in the PTS to see if they enabled that over costumes already.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Thx for the feedback Iselin, looking forward to more
Yeah. It does take some getting used to. The Destructive Clench with a fire staff in particular was great for doing that with bosses... now I use a Volatile Familiar pet for those: they tank the boss very effectively. But Destructive Touch and Clench's range was also increased to 17' and they made the "no stun" morph, "Reach" 28'... Sorcs in PVP are having a lot of fun with this 2nd morph knocking people off walls
Packs are a problem because you only get one use of Encase or its morphs... and Restraining Prison is now the better morph since it adds a slow at the end. It also affects archers who used Bombard to keep the packs pinned. There is a bit more running around required now.
In yesterday's patch they did two things to increase Sorc self-healing off damage dealt: They improved the previously nerfed Surge and all its morphs from once per second to 4 times per second and they tweaked up the passive heal from Blood Magic by an extra 2%.
They also increased the damage of Overload light attacks again by another 50%. It hits VERY hard now.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
There Is Always Hope!
I can see they made a lot of changes on abilities to scale on stamina but the root issue of stamina builds as far as I understand it, is stamina as a resource pool itself - used for movement, mitigation, avoidance, cc break, leaving little room for offensive use.
So what is the point of having those abilitites based on stamina when you won't have enough resource to use them anyway?
Also, it seems stamina still does very litle for light/heavy attacks so overall there isn't much of point in stamina as "offensive resource".
Am I missing something? Can someone explain please?
Nope. The "Diaper Run" was fixed
yee this is so true
and its not fixed
The improved delves is big news and boost immersion big time for me. Thanks for the info.
I dabbled a bit on the PTS but due to moving recently my play time is drastically reduced. Figured may as well leave most of it for release to keep it fresh.
What I am most curious for though is the direction of content once this console release is done. I suspect it will be driven by different opinions from likely a far larger console crowed. I am in no way saying this may be a bad thing. It may perhaps be good.
You stay sassy!