Asherons Call: A Huge, Massive Post Chock Full of Q & A (Part 2)

Question: Turn_Blade - Crytal Fragments. Granted, a minor bug but still, strive for perfection! (if you dont get it, go ID a small shard)
Answer: srand - Have *you* ID''d a small shard this month?

Question: Arz_ - Question for the devs regarding the PK recall timer. After a confusing 20 minutes of playing corpse-recovery in an acid pit, it appears that not only HARMFUL, but also BENEFICIAL spells flag the recall timer for PKs. After healing an allegiance member who was recovering a corpse, he could not recall for 20 seconds. He had not been "attacked." Is this intentional, or a bug?
Answer: srand - I''m told that this is intentional.

Question: -Zeed- - Srand, Ken is dancing around this question, can I get a comment from you? Originally when the idea for a ban against combat macros popped up, Ken stated he was going to be analyzing two things. First "Why" do people use combat macros. Second "What" can we (MS/Turbine) do to fix this situation. Ken has been very stern with his stance on banning combat macros, thats cool, I can respect that. However he has offered 0 detail to keep me and the rest of the macro crowd compelled to continue to play AC. How are you going to remedy the need/want to macro? Are we getting more static spawns all over dereth with monsters that are worth 75k each? Casual gamers on Darktide cannot compete without macroing, so is Microsoft basically writing off those players? Being a casual gamer myself, my hopes of being able to compete with higher level pvpers being that I can only play 2 hours a day are vastly going down the drain. I respectfully request details on the other side of this macro ban coin. There is another side, it just has been avoided and not talked about.
Answer: srand - The ACLive team has been meeting quite a bit lately to discuss why people macro, what this can tell us about our game in terms of where the gameplay is weak or tedious, and what we can do to fix the gameplay in those areas. You''ve seen the barest beginings of some of our ideas this month, in the proportional XP quest rewards. You''ll see even more next month, including -- among other things -- skill sellback and some exciting new quests. Unfortunately, we can''t just wave our hands and have our ideas spring fully formed into the live worlds. But we are focusing fully on these concerns, we have some great ideas, and we are working our butts off to get them to the players as soon as possible.

Question: Julesasner-DT - Hotfixes take 6 hours? The worlds are down a lot lately =/ but I feel sorry for people who got stuck in world on darktide.
Answer: srand - Hotfixing takes the same amount of time as a normal update, in that it requires us to take all the worlds down, distribute the new server executable and data to all of the servers, and bring the worlds back up. The only thing that isn''t required is setting up the new client for download. (Well, not for a server-only hotfix, which is what we are doing tonight. We have in the past, however, also hotfixed the client.) And it''s a damned good thing, too, because setting up the client for download can take days.

Question: Leah-Dara - I may be the only one still using Fenmalain weapons, but I''ve found a bug... None of my incarnations can equip both a Fenmalain bow or xbow and the bloodletter/fleshripper arrows or quarrels at the same time. I even tried having a character with the bow try to equip quarrels. The only thing that has worked (so far) was to use crystal arrows (made from a cracked shard) - but as those are so expensive to make, I''d really prefer it if the mnemosyne arrows would work again as they did before the update.
Answer: srand - *nod* This is indeed a bug. It will be fixed with the next update.

Question: Pyreal_Gnat - Could you please add a virtual chess set that two players can set up between themselves? Leave out the board with the drudges, thats for the people that have time for camping to get chess pieces. Just have the side board show up, and have it work like setting up secure trade. I''d really like to play without having to wait 8 hours for dozens of slow players to get done.
Answer: Todd_Berkebile - There has to be a static object in the world that coordinates the messaging and game state in order for Chess to work. That''s why we can''t have boards that could be carried around (things you can carry are dynamic objects) or direct client-to-client games (no message handling object at all). We could have games without the actual 3D pieces, but they are what add the AC flavor to the games (and those itsy-bitsy pawns are just so cute ). We certainly want to add additional boards to the world and I like a lot of the suggestions above, but as always we need to approach these things cautiously to ensure that the boards don''t cause server instability or performance issues. So far, other than the few known griefability issues, things are looking good though. Hopefully we''ll be able to keep rolling out new boards so that people will have a fairly easy time finding an open one.

Question: GatewayToHell - *****Chess Bug***** Last night I was playing (WE Server) and I was going to castle my king and my rook queen side, but instead of my king moving to the left two spaces, and the rook three spaces to the right, my king moved 2 spaces digonal up to the left, and the rook moved three spaces to the right. Not only is this not possible, my king also moved into check by a pawn of the other side (I was white, they were black) he then killed my king with a pawn. Please fix this .
Answer: Todd_Berkebile - Yes, this is a bug. Thanks for the report. This certainly creates some bizarre chess situations and can mess up the game state fairly badly, so please be sure to click on the correct destination square for your King when you are castling.

Question: Yodgandha - I noticed all the event-movies (great idea, by the way) seem to have the same background music. Could you make this music available for download? Is the background music for the movies ever going to change?
Answer: Tweak - The music from the movies is a piece called "Excalibur" from Network Music. I had explored trying to provide it for download, but I believe our license does not allow us to redistribute it beyond the movies. As for another piece of music, currently the AC1 team does not have anyone to write any new music for us, and I haven't had much success in finding another piece of music that would work with AC for us to license and use. So for the moment, the music for upcoming movies will remain the same.

Question: Chomu Sclavus - Why is the Singularity Caul perfectly round?
Answer: Tweak - Originally Dereth, in addition to serving as an outpost for magical research, served as a holiday spot for the Yalain nobility. Although not as skilled as some other Empyrean people, the Yalain had some experience with geomancy, the art of shaping the land around them with magic, and they used these spells to form the island into a sort of hedge maze for their enjoyment. To Bael''Zharon this island served as fitting symbol of the decadence of the Yalain and twisted it during the final days of his war against the Yalain. Thousands of years later when his Shadow generals returned to the land, they used the island to test the newcomers, the Isparians, using the maze-like valleys to see if they could be of use. After Bael''Zharon was defeated, the Virindi rebels overran the few remaining Shadows on the island and began constructing the facility where they hoped to summon their new Singularity. They began calling it the "Singularity Caul," where they hoped the New Singularity would be born. With the defeat of these Virindi rebels and the absorption of most of them back into the Singularity, the Singularity Caul came to be in the hands of the Virindi loyalists.

Hmm, got a bit away from the original question, but essentially, the Singularity Caul is round because was shaped that way by Empyrean spells.