Asherons Call: New In Development Follow-Up Posted

  
In Development Follow-Up
posted on 07-Apr-2004

In our April Letter to the Players, the In Development section listed a number of changes that we are working on for May. We'd like to take this time to provide further details as well as describe some additional changes that we're working on. We know you haven't even had a chance to see the April event yet, but we'd like to start getting feedback on these topics while we're still early in the May development cycle.

It's important to remember that these topics are currently in development and not guaranteed for the May event. It's quite possible that, based on your feedback or other factors, some or all of these topics could be delayed or removed altogether.

Allegiance Tools
We're planning to give allegiances a number of new tools in May. Most of these are intended to make managing an allegiance easier. Here's what we're working on:

• Allegiance account boot: A command to boot all characters on the same account from an allegiance. The player running this command would most likely be informed of the number of characters booted, but not their names.

• Allegiance account ban: A command to ban all characters on the same account from swearing into your allegiance. Note that this would only ban them from swearing in, not automatically boot them. To permanently remove all characters on an account from your allegiance, you would need to do an account boot and an account ban.

• Allegiance chat kick: A command to temporarily remove a character from the allegiance chat room. This wouldn't be a permanent removal - the character could get back in simply by toggling allegiance chat back on - but it would get across the point that the player's behavior isn't appropriate for your allegiance.

  We are currently working on general improvements to the chat system which, when implemented, will allow for better controls on the allegiance chat system. This is intended to provide some of that functionality until the larger changes go in.

• Allegiance officers: Allegiance officers would be initially designated by the monarch, and would have the power to run any existing monarch command: all of the broadcast and message of the day commands, @allegiance info, the ability to designate or remove other officers, and all of the boot, ban, and kick commands. They would not have the ability to change allegiance mansion or villa guest or storage lists. Allegiance officers also will not be able to boot the monarch.

  Allegiances would be able to have two allegiance officers. The allegiance officer position would replace the existing allegiance speaker position. For the sake of security, existing allegiance speakers would have their position removed during the May event.

• Allegiance house storage: All allegiance members would be able to open the storage in their personal homes to the members of their allegiance in one command, similar to the ability to add their entire allegiance to the house guest list.

This is part of the Allegiance improvements, but deserves its own topic. There's also a feedback thread focused specifically on this idea.

The idea is very straightforward: Allegiance monarchs would have the ability to tie to a stone in town in the same way that players tie to a Lifestone. Once the monarch has tied to the Bindstone, all members of that monarch's allegiance could recall to the town through a chat command. We currently plan to place these Bindstones in or near town Meeting Halls, and we are going to move several Meeting Halls closer to the center of town. We don't expect that all towns would initially have these Bindstones - most likely we will start with a small number of towns and increase them over time.

There are two goals driving this idea. We want to encourage players to gather in towns, and we want to provide monarchies that do not have a mansion or villa with a central meeting spot.

There's one aspect of this plan on which your feedback would be particularly valuable. We would like to gauge whether monarchies that currently gather at their mansions or villas would start spending more time in towns if they had an additional gathering spot. If this is not a feature that would encourage housing-owning allegiances to congregate in towns, then we are more inclined to limit this functionality to those allegiances that do not own mansions or villas.

To help us resolve this issue, we've opened up a feedback thread here. It would be most helpful if you could answer the following questions:

• How do you decide where to socialize with your fellow allegiance members?
• If you could choose between gathering at your mansion and gathering in town, and both were an equally easy recall, where would you gather?
• In your opinion, how valuable is the central recall location feature of allegiance housing, in comparison to the other features of allegiance housing?

As of this writing, it is quite possible that this feature will not be ready for May.

Treasure Revisions, Part IV

In the April Letter to the Players, we stated that the Treasure work for May would be back-end and not visible to players. This is no longer true - we've found ourselves with the opportunity to improve treasure selection in several places.

Art Items, Casters, and Coins

We're moving "art items" (mugs, plates, and the like) and casters into several loot tables where they previously did not exist. This will result in both being found in places where you could not find them before - for example, in May you'll be able to find casters in the casino golden chests. This will make casting items - as well as certain types of salvage - easier to find.

In addition, we are removing pyreal coins from several loot tables, and replacing them with other items from the tables.

"Mundane" Items

This category covers all the "other" things found in loot - spell components, mana stones, healing kits, lockpicks, and potions. These categories of items have not changed much since the early days of Asheron's Call, and the treasure revisions have only highlighted this.

To improve the situation, we will be adding new types of mana stones and potions, and low-level healing kits are being improved and renamed. Then we'll be redistributing all mundane items across different levels of treasure.

Just as an example, here's how the changes would affect the types of items you could find in wealth rating 5 treasure, intended for level 80+ characters.

In general, we've made existing items show up sooner and created new items to fill the gaps at the high end. You'll note that there are no new lockpicks yet - don't worry, we're working on some ideas for interesting high-end lockpicks.

Ranged Attack Changes

We have two proposed changes for ranged attack users. One of these was previously mentioned as In Concept in the March Letter to the Players Follow-Up, the second is an idea that has been discussed but never officially added to the development schedule.

Speed / Accuracy Slider

Currently, the Speed / Accuracy slider for Bow, Crossbow, and Thrown Weapons allows the player to decide whether to attack more quickly at the expense of accuracy, or more accurately at the expense of speed. At the far left of the slider, the attack is fastest but incurs a 50% penalty to the player's attack skill. At the far right, the attack is slowest but gives a 50% bonus to skill.

We would like to improve ranged attacks, particularly in PvP combat, by decreasing the penalty at the far left side of the slider. Our current plans are to lower the 50% penalty to only 40%. The entire slider would then scale evenly from -40% to +50%. Player feedback and further playtesting may cause this to change, watch for further details.

Projectile Physics

Another issue that we've seen for ranged weapon users is that their projectiles are quite narrow. For example, the size of the physics object on an arrow is currently about the circumference of the shaft. It is fairly easy for monsters or other players to dodge incoming attacks by moving a very small distance.

We are investigating increasing the size of projectile physics objects to make these attacks hit more frequently. We do not expect this change to be very large, but it should improve the ability of Bow, Crossbow, and Thrown Weapons users to physically hit their target. For example, we are considering increasing the size of the physics object on an arrow to be about the circumference of the base of the arrowhead. This would approximately double the width of the physics object. The calculations of evading due to Missile Defense will not be changed.Negative Spell Timers

Currently there is a disparity in the length of negative spells across different levels. Level VI negative spells last for 8 minutes, while level VII negative spells only last for 4 minutes. We'd like to change all negative spells to the following times:

We are considering using these times for Life and Item negative spells only, and making all negative Creature spells last exactly 2 minutes, regardless of level. Negative Creature spells can be particularly annoying when cast by creatures, and do not directly increase damage when cast by players. We'd like to hear your feedback on this topic.Healing Spells

Currently the Heal Self/Other and Revitalize Self/Other spells are in our opinion slightly weaker than they should be for their levels. We'd like to tweak them upwards slightly, as shown by the tables below:

Heal Other / Heal Self - Amount Restored

Revitalize Other / Revitalize Self - Amount Restored

Please note that these changes are only for these four spells, not for any other Life Magic spells.Town Revisions

In the April Letter to the Players, we mentioned that we would be moving Lifestones and Portal drops closer to the center of towns. We'll also be moving several Meeting Halls closer to town, as part of the Allegiance Bindstone content. In addition, we will be making the following changes to town vendors:

• Distribution of mundane items - see Treasure Revisions above - will be based on the level of the town's surrounding content. The greater the level of the town's surrounding content, the better the items that the vendors will sell.

• The scriveners in several towns will be changed such that the scroll levels that they sell are appropriate for the surrounding content.

Thanks for taking the time to read about some of our planned changes for May. As was already said, none of these changes are guaranteed for May. It's entirely possible that they could be altered or delayed.

Please note that there is a specific feedback thread for the Allegiance Bindstone questions here.

Give us your feedback on these topics.

April 2004: A New Threat[/b]