Developer Discussion: Big Changes in Delta 120

[Vahrokh]

I'm just kind of surprised that I see a dragon go, gather up an entire spawn, and kill them all without even a heal (or any danger whatsoever), while my Ranger/Healer/Druid is apparently deemed unbalanced for being able to take on less than one third that number of mobs. And unlike those uber dragons I occasionally even die while trying to do that.

Their use is a symptom of the overall gimpedness of the classes, and of people trying to adapt to that gimpedness in creative ways.

I don't know if on the US server it was different, but on Unity, the weak druids / <put here other 45 schools> used their gimpedness in VERY creative ways, 16 hours a day, to farm entire spawns with no stop.

At the same time, the "powerful dragons" (I'd say the small-ish minority who is spell specced) that gather the entire spawns and chain-and-downrank AoE, are getting *the same* spells linking you got. So, no reason to compare you after the "nerf" with them like they are not as affected.

I'd say it's quite the opposite. Feel gimped now that permastunning mobs require you to raise another school? Guess what, the dragons have no other school to counter the nerf and will eat it all.

PS. I wonder if we could have an event prior to this delta where we get to beat up Nadia

*hands an huge, spikey, heavily runed nerf bat*

Here, your event

Dragons can fly. I think it is reasonable that maybe they should be forbidden from using portals

As long as we can fly with cargo disks and fight while in the air, it's fair that we have to stay in air passing thru portals *evil grin*

just so everyone can tell from the first sigh if its an ancient or not.

Believe me, when you go afk before the bank entrance, they already exale a first sigh, or 3.

Though, I'm a bit concerned about the changes to linked spell timers. I'll concede that it's probably a good idea that they be linked, though I suspect that the recycle timers, cast delay, potency and/or techniques will need some tweaking. I'll have more to say on this once I get a chance to play with them

(not specifically aimed at Steelclaw, but to the several spell link posts)

I would not make too much of a fuss about spell linking. It's *a* delta, not *the* delta. There WILL come up issues with such a deep change, and other patches will close them up.

Now, I know that Horizons has been "crystallized" for so long that looked like a single player game, but it's a MMORPG, it's supposed to be tweaked during the months.

Passing the months, the developers, who are not out to get YOU, but try making a more diverse and, possibly, challenging game, will review the "reports" of people affected by this and rescale spells timers and effects accordingly.

That's semi-sorta-kinda not fair. I can't imagine sucha small Dev team being able to make a full round of changes on such a large scale (such as rebalancing monsters, or an Adventure School) in any short timeframe. If that were the case, it'd be months between updates, and even longer for testing

Why, 100 million-a-month Blizzard can't rebalance or fix years long standing game breaking issues in WoW, I'd concede a small Dev team their time to rebalance things around.

I think given the current scenario and state of HZ/Virtrium, expecting full scale changes to be released all at once is a setup for disappointment, and looking at individual changes and their effects as if they are isolated from any other changes as well as a permanent state is a skewed perspective, and one that's unfair for everyone involved - the observer, the playerbase, and the devs

If they don't apply changes now, they won't be able to apply them later.
If the game sucks, blame the former owners and their directors, not those who are here to fix things that had to be fixed in 2003.

EDIT: And for every second tier V/VI mob being immune to nature damage, how about a compromise? Keep the mobs the way they are, except make every mob that *isn't* immune to nature damage immune to tooth&claw. That seems fair to me:P.

I have seen this stuff a lot on the WoW forums. "I made a bad / weak choice, hence OTHERS must pay". No thanks. Fight for your situation to be improved / fixed, you gain no support nor sympathy from anyone else by asking nerfs on other people.

Still, unlike WoW, you don't even need to reroll from level 1 to max cap. You can level another class, if you put T&C immunity, what will they be able to level up to counter it?

Maybe it's about time that more players *gasp* start using Blight and reporting about what they find?

We in Europe could not even dream having a beta shard.

Yet myself alone, without Blight, stressing developers on poor IRC I achieved the bug fix of multiple dragon spells (healing, hoard based and more) that made dragons playable.

The developers can't see everything, players can, and should provide *constructive* feedback.
Sitting down and yelling "UNFAIR" is not the way to achieve what's needed at top priority: drastically change the game to make it live again and earn money.

Keeping everything as of now, past the first 2-3 months of "joy" at the new owners, it's indeed much comforable (even for the developers) but would just prolong the final decline of the game. Is that which you want? That Horizons dies so that you can raise your 116th school on necroflies?

[Krakkanoth]

The “Path of the Helian� and “Path of the Lunus� abilities will no longer stack. Well, that never made any sense to start with, IMO.

It was a bug i found that enabled a dragon player to create a dragon with i guess technically limitless killing ability.

Path of lunus gives +20 tnc and +40 flame res. Imagine having 300 x path of lunus. You just got yourself a bonus of 600 tnc and 1200 flame res.

Add to that you could get the path of the helian as well with this particular bug and you could be super dragon with spells and tnc. Its good it is being fixed.

[Antonath]

A delta! At last, a precious, precious delta!

If only Unity players could get to it

Reduced lairshaping requirements is welcome news. Having only one chamber in my lair so far, and that incomplete, I'd like to be able to make progress when I get back in to Istaria. This will most certainly help.

The timer-linking changes... Well, I can only hope that further changes appear soon that improve options for spellcasting dragons like me. This is supposed to be patch comments, so I won't start on the lack of primal spells, but I agree with what was said before - Gold Burst just became a necessity.

Antonath

[JDexter]

Still getting a decrease of 10% - 20% on Blight with a lot of stuttering. Blight directory and settings are identical to Live client.

Also, why were the Connies and Pawnbrokers removed from New B, New K, and New V? Can we know what the long term concept for these islands are?

With everyone who plays landing only in New Trismus to harvest and hang out (fat dragons all over anyone?) that leaves nothing for the new player. At least the smaller islands allowed new people to actually have a place to work.

[Justa Mirage]

Notice... the people that cry and whine about the spellcasting changes are ones that realize that it's going to take them from SuperMage to "Clark Dent" and they will have to learn a new way of getting the huge DPS they were getting using their mez bomb mez bomb attacks.

"Welcome to Ranger-hood" Where we have been nerfed since day 1 and keep getting nerfed.

/em is used to being the underdog (or in this case.... cat)

[Deth]

Still getting a decrease of 10% - 20% on Blight with a lot of stuttering. Blight directory and settings are identical to Live client.

Also, why were the Connies and Pawnbrokers removed from New B, New K, and New V? Can we know what the long term concept for these islands are?

With everyone who plays landing only in New Trismus to harvest and hang out (fat dragons all over anyone?) that leaves nothing for the new player. At least the smaller islands allowed new people to actually have a place to work.

Because they want 1 newbie island. Hopefully the lands will be reused for something else, but before the started moving everything to one island all 4 were very barren and new players might not get the aid they needed do to the fact they picked an island a lot of people did not work on.

[JDexter]

Well if that's the case Deth, then they need to remove the ability for people over a certain level from travelling to the newbie island.

As it is now, it is used by all the higher levels to the detriment of the new players.

[Shirewood]

I love the changes you are making. I understand why you are fixing the spell casting timers. They were broken before.. now you are fixing them.. and we'll have to adjust our play style to account for the change. No real big deal. If something comes out of it that is found to need fixing after that.. I am confident something will be implemented. I have a lot of faith in the new Development team and I know you'll make things right in the end. This is a lot more that we've seen in ages in game.. So, I welcome it..

I still would like to see something done about the barren towns. Either wipe them off from the face of Istaria and repopulate the area with mobs/resources or make the plot sizes bigger. like remove all the 25x25's and replace with 40x40's or a combination of the 2 ideas. Get rid of some towns completely and revamp some of the others. the small plots are pretty much useless. The structures you build for storage really aren't worth it. A tent can hold 10 items? big deal.. that really doesn't make owning a small plot worth it. A small house doesn't hold much either. Which ever direction you take.. I think you should consider making some sort of change in the future.

That's all.

I like what the new patch has.. keep up the good work!

[Deth]

Well if that's the case Deth, then they need to remove the ability for people over a certain level from travelling to the newbie island.

As it is now, it is used by all the higher levels to the detriment of the new players.

I agree. I never go back the the newbie islands I find it much easier to work LA, but then I never work the organics. But I hear a lot of higher level dragons also go back there. Why I can no figure out. From Per I can hit everything I need for T1 work.

Combining plots is harder then you think. They first have to make sure no one has either plot on both servers. They they have to take both plots out and re create them. Maybe in time some people will get lucky and they will look see one of the 2 plots is owned only on one server and figure a easy way to deconstruct combine the plots and rebuild or mostly likely just give the full novians to the player. and they get a surprise upgrade. But I do not see that happening soon.

[Durand]

So, does anyone know what the effects of the Taverns are, and is it possible to impliment the same system to the Existing Artifact structures?

[Deth]

Taverns double the effect of Food eaten in them. It is put in to help promote gather in Taverns to enjoy food and companionship.

Yes it could probably be done but the range would have to be worked out. AS what good would having say a bonus to magic in just a city? That and what kind of bonus should it be?

[Landowyn]

I just wish taverns looked like ... well, taverns. They have no personality, something Istaria is missing in spades: Wandering NPCs, little furry things in the forests, grumpy old men like me sitting on rocking chairs and muttering about the good old days ....

Taverns double the effect of Food eaten in them. It is put in to help promote gather in Taverns to enjoy food and companionship.

Yes it could probably be done but the range would have to be worked out. AS what good would having say a bonus to magic in just a city? That and what kind of bonus should it be?

[JDexter]

grumpy old men like me sitting on rocking chairs and muttering about the good old days ....

I thought that's what the forums were for

[Durand]

Well, it has been a while since I stopped to look at one of the Artifacts, but I recall there atleast being one of Metal and one of Magic?. The Artifacts could add a crafting bonus to any crafts involving metal, or in the creation of spells for Magic. I don't think anyone would want a huge bonus, but it would be nice to finally add an effect and purpose to the Artifacts that were restored.

[Frith-Rae]

Yes, the structures remember what was put into them even if the build reqs change. So once the new requirements go live, you will be able to deconstruct say a silo, and have enough novians for 3-4 of the same silo due to the new reqs. The other quirk is that if say a structure takes 400 total construction units and you completed 2 types of units totalling 190 units; when the new reqs are in place and the structure only needs 200 units total, you will only have to place 10 units of any of the remaining to complete the structure. It calculates completion % based on the total number of units placed on the structure, regardless of what kind of units they were.

Can we get a dev post clarifying this for us?? About the lesser requirements for storage/hallways etc. in dragon lairs and how that will effect both already completed structures and structures that aren't completed but you're still building??

This is of great concern to me because so far I'm still working on level 0 of my lair - made up almost entirely of storage units and hallways at this point (and a connie at the end for variety).

I've got at least 2-3 different structures still int he process of being built - but not finished.

So I'm wondering when these changes go live does that mean I"ll login and bam - a few structures that weren't finished before will be finished??

Will the excess craft items that I already applied (on the rooms not yet finished, but partially done) be "returned" like to my vault or will they just be lost unless I decon the whole thing??

Are we sure that decon thing would apply (i.e. if I went through and now deconned my entire level 0 and reapplied it I'd have stuff left over??)

Please I'd like a dev response explaining how this works - having never built anythign before this is all new to me and I'm wondering if I should hold building until the new requirements are applied or not...

[gopher65]

Well, it has been a while since I stopped to look at one of the Artifacts, but I recall there atleast being one of Metal and one of Magic?. The Artifacts could add a crafting bonus to any crafts involving metal, or in the creation of spells for Magic. I don't think anyone would want a huge bonus, but it would be nice to finally add an effect and purpose to the Artifacts that were restored.

You wouldn't want to do an Aura affect as that would increase the lag (of some type or another:P) in the area around the artifact. Maybe they could eventually do something with artifacts similar to what was done with player made craft machines? When you open up the craft window it could do a check to see how far away you are from the nearest artifact, and if you are within X distance you could get a bonus.

[Deth]

Frith Check the Blight boards some one has tested. From what I remember them saying. It remembers how much you put in. So if you completed a room and decon it you will get the old amount not the new amount. If it use to require 400 resources but now requires 200 and you have put in 190 then you just have to add the 10 to complete that type.

I think he also said if your over the amount it will complete that amount. I just need to check the blight section to link the thread. or maybe it was dragon.

[AA0]

The linked spell timers are just the first in what will most likely be a long line of class changes. I imagine some of the uber classes are going to get smacked around hard, and many will be redefined properly; it is absolutely vital that this happen so that new content isn't so horribled hosed like Daknor, and the rest.

I figured there would be a bunch of whining here though. Having that 170 rating does have a penalty, people never wanted to accept that, but you'll have to start doing it now. I'd love to see a good definition of classes again, it really is a shame seeing reavers spamming aoe nature spells.

[gopher65]

I'd love to see a good definition of classes again, it really is a shame seeing reavers spamming aoe nature spells.

If it were up to me to redesign classes, the only metal armour classes that would have *any* AoE damage spells at all (not including AoE debuffs/buffs) would be Dragon and Battlemage. No other metal armour class should have AoEs IMO.

I would also substantially decrease the armor of Helian's, but drastically increase their spell damage potential. Also, the intrinsic damage of dragon abilities and spells should be decreased, but the stats of each path should be customized so that the damage they do with their primary attack type is the same as it was before. Meaning that Lunas shouldn't be able to do much damage with spells but should do a lot of damage with physical attacks (very low focus/power, high dex/strength, and a large *current* T&C bonus (not base)), while Helian should be the opposite.

For the Armour thing I'd change helians so that Hoard, instead of giving an armour bonus, would give a spell damage bonus.

As it is right now there just doesn't seem to be enough definition in the dragon classes IMO.

[Firebrand]

I would also substantially decrease the armor of Helian's, but drastically increase their spell damage potential.

You can already sacrifice armor for damages by using Power Scales and Power crystals instead of an armor technique.

But I agree with the idea of much more differenciated paths even a Dragon is what you made of him/her by using customized equipement and training points.