Asherons Call: Ken Troop Continues to Answer

Ken Troop's Answers:

Comments that most quest items mismatch and are generally ugly.

Cuttler: As seen with this patch, what is one person's diamond is another person's cubic zirconium. Or something like that. We certainly rarely intentionally make quest armor/weapons, etc. ugly. I would hope, given the wide plethora of equipment choices, both quest and treasure generated, that you would be able to acquire an outfit that is both pleasing to the eye and conducive to in-game success.

A Dev Chat seemed to hint that even higher damage weapons might be coming. Should we be expecting weapons with even higher maximum damage values soon?

Mithan: I think that while no one should expect anything soon, I would see this weapon enhancement as an intermediate step. Both because of our desire to tweak things so that they are better balanced, and out of a desire to provide yet another level of reward for very high combat skills, I would expect that at some point down the road a third level of weapons might be introduced. This may take a very long time to happen. It may possibly never happen. But it is certainly something we will consider once all our currently planned changes are implemented.

Will we ever be able to exchange the original writ items for writs?

Camperman: I believe those items are now givable (something that I believe I forgot to mention in the Developer's Notes). So while they are no longer exchangeable for Writs, they can be given to people who might desire the item.

As for your second question, there is no plan right now to introduce filters to the command. DT is the only world which has such a surplus of available housing.

Could the new mana stone tech be changed so that it works on a pack in your inventory, charging items in that pack? Also, a suggestion, could the new foods come in the hearty healing/stamina/mana variety to make them more useful than simply novelty foods?

Edric: Currently there is no plan to make a mana stone work on a backpack or pack.

We will take your hearty advice under consideration.

Why are the tops and bottoms of the Shadow Hunter Armor different colors?

Stewart: While Sean Huxter (AC's Lead Artist) would be the best person to answer your question, I believe he was going for a slightly different look for these neo-gs* pieces.

I assembled the key for my Quiddity Ingot, but due to lag I was unable to get the item. Is there any possibility of resetting my timer?

Rabid: I'm sorry but we cannot reset quest timers. We will be looking at the trove for April to see if we can drastically reduce the chances of this happening to other players.

Mentions a login issue many players were facing on Harvestgain and the fact that no information was posted on the Zone about the issue.

Circeus: While the issue has long since been fixed that night, I apologize for the lack of any information about what was occurring.

A few players of extremely high levels are still able to recall to a few level restricted portals, far below their current level.

Camperman: (About being able to recall to a restricted portal, even though you are no longer eligible to use the portal) -- Let's see what happens in April :)

Why can't you simply modify the loot system so that it spawns racial weapons that require you to not be that race to use them?

Unarmed: Not only would it be a code headache to code different systems for gameplay depending on whether you were an aluvian unarmed player, or a sho staffer, but it would also make little sense in terms of the game for a sho staffer to be somehow better than a gharu'n staffer, considering the staff is the gharu'n's natural weapon. Third, I can just imagine the outcry (and mostly rightfully so, imo) of players who did spec their own racial skill just to find out that they are not nearly as effective of some of their skill brethren because they themselves made what would appear to be a logical choice.

We will continue to base our desired effectiveness of the racial weapons on the skill cost necessary for a specific race to specialize their own skill. There will be no refund.

I specialized my racial weapon so that I could take 3 schools of magic on my character, which are necessary for my character to survive.

Taze: You seem to be saying that you made exactly the right decision in deciding to forgo a higher damage weapon skill in return for being able to take staff and 3 schools of magic. I'm glad that was the right decision for you.

It seems like you're arguing my basic point for me.

The patches are really downloading quickly now, thanks!

Marac: Quite awhile ago, both MS and Turbine made some basic changes to the way that the Events were downloaded so as to speed up the download time for nearly everyone. We're glad you enjoy the quicker downloads.

Keth sits here in disbelief...Ophelea is a spec Aluvian staff character? Why do I have so many gimps on my staff? Oh, her argument is very well thought out though...

Ophelea: I understand the complaint, especially coming from your specific perspective as an Aluvian Staffer. Unfortunately, we are still not planning on making any significant upgrades to staff at this time.

While you are looking at the long term with regard to balance issues, we've seen the game change throughout its life, how will these balance issues work a year from now? What about characters who took on another racial weapon along with their main racial weapon? With your point about racial weapons not being the most effective way to kill things, the point behind racial weapons was to allow us to choose other skills to be effective. Finally, Staff players have had to sit patiently for any sort of new weapon, yet most seem varients of the Atlan Staff from almost two years ago.

Russano:

1) Of course things can change. Including the effectiveness of staff, as compared to dagger (the other 4 credit skill). I agree with you that things often change in AC.

(Just a side note -- A lot of people seem to be saying that they understand that staff is worth what's it worth, but that it is unfair because dagger is so much more effective. Would you really be happy if dagger was less effective? Is that really what this problem is?

Our goal is this: by no later than, say, July, staff and dagger will be fairly roughly equivalent in their melee effectiveness, and that both dagger and staff players should be truly very happy at their effectiveness at this time considering it is a free skill to train, and 4 points to specialize).

2) Yes, we have no plans to address those characters who feel not as worthy as their fellow characters because they added a secondary racial skill.

3) Actually, for quite awhile, UA was one of the most effective ways to kill things, even without life magic, at the higher levels. Dagger is incredibly effective, relative to the other weapons, at killing things, even without life magic. What I am saying is that with this Event, we first see the start of a new perspective on these issues.

4) I agree that there are certain aspects of staff which can be polished up, and should be polished up soon. I'm sorry that you feel that we did not handle this month with creativity and tact.

I'm a UK player and many ISPs here force you to log out after 2 hours. The new log out tech could really hamper my game play.

Xamacq: It is only a few dungeons (notably, some of the ones associated with the Queen's quest). Further, many of these dungeons were originally designed such that players should not be able to log in to these dungeons.

All that said, this is a dynamic that, as I have mentioned earlier, we will continue to monitor throughout this month, and we may make tweaks for April.

Comments about quest axes in light of new higher damage loot. Also a request for more missile weapon equipped monsters, to make Missile D more useful.

Wizz: As I mentioned in an earlier post, we will be looking at both old and new quest dynamics, to make sure quest items take into account the current state of Asheron's Call.

And as we add true new monsters or monster types into the game, I would imagine that some of them would use missile weapons.

Why do books still weigh so much?

Alenia: The simple reason that we will probably never reduce burden on a book is that a book is one of the largest (storage-wise) items a person can carry in their inventory. If everybody on Dereth filled their inventory with 60 page books full of writing, the game could get very very v e r y slow. The burden on books is unlikely to change.

Comments on the need for a higher percentage on bow gauntlets being dropped.

CWB: Thanks for the feedback. The percentage is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Disappointed that the Elariwood Bow requires you to be specialized, yet other "goals" in game can be attained by trained and spec'ed characters a like.

Royal: I'm sorry this spec issue is weighing so heavily on you. The Elari bows are most likely to retain their spec requirement. I hope that such dynamics as the deadly arrows eventually offer a source of fun for you.

Are the new color schemes for the armor some sort of balance to make them less desirable?

Mad Wolf: At some point, maybe Sean Huxter will write another one of his terrific articles about the joys and pains of being the AC Lead Artist. This one could be called, "The Curse of the Neo-GS* or Why I should have told Ken to go away when he mentioned, "Hey Sean, can you come up with nine new cool designs for the dyeable GS*".

Seriously, we truly don't try to "balance" cool gameplay items by making them ugly. Again, personally I feel, and a lot of the other feedback we've gotten on these pieces agrees, that they look great. Obviously your mileage (as well as other people's on this thread) varies.

I was unable to log into Harvestgain for several hours the other night.

Destinie: We needed to reboot a server on HG Wednesday night. I'm sorry your character was affected by the original problem, and I hope all is functioning correctly now.

Now that you've taken a look at Diamond Lords and Oak Golems, are Virindi Executors being considered? Any chance the level restrictions or difficulty of some older dungeons, such as the Singular Obsidian Repository, being changed?

Israfayl: At this time there is no plan on changing the Virindi Executors.

We've been talking about potentially revisiting some of these older dungeons, along with their level limits. No idea when or if this will happen.

The new arrows are fine, but still do little damage to a buffed and baned mage. Any chance of Hollow Arrows soon?

Meat: Hollow arrows are one of those ideas we occasionally talk about. They are not currently being planned, and I have no idea when or if this would happen.

General comments about other opinions in the thread and compliments on the additions to the game we've seen so far.

Gueron: Thanks for the feedback and suggestions.

Pointed statements regarding staff, how it "may" see some attention in the future, and how the bar of difficulty keeps being raised in game, yet staff will apparently remain the same.

Lisan: That is the correct inference to make: Staff may see some improvements.

Those improvements, if made in the next few months (before the general second stage of melee changes), would very likely be minor.

As to how one may make rational choices in a world in which things change often -- our goal is to eventually minimize the amount of truly earth shattering changes that we are making, so that we can focus more on content.

The game still needs some tweaking however.

Also, in almost all cases, we try to achieve this balance without reducing the direct effectiveness of a given weapon/dynamic, etc.

But we will not stop trying to make certain dynamics more powerful, just because some people may feel like their previous choices have been invalidated by the new power of the different dynamics. And if we do overstep in one direction, and we can change it within a certain timeframe (before it has become an accepted and widespread part of the game), we will not hesitate to reduce the effectiveness of it. We hope that by rolling some of these changes out slowly, we reduce the risk of us having to reduce the effectiveness of a given dynamic after it has been introduced.

I'm sorry you feel that our choices in this matter represent a lack of structural integrity. Our intent is always to make the game, and the options within it, be reasonable and fair and fun. I think March was a step in that direction.

The Shadow Hunter Armor (neoGSx) is ugly, please change it so that it at least matches itself.

Intangir: Thank you for the comments. We are still not planning on changing the look of the armor.

Complaint regarding the statues that continually buff a player within a very short period of time.

Alenia: This is something we want to make sure does not remain an annoyance for April.

The additional skill credits one can gain for using a racial weapon do nothing for the effectiveness of hollow weapons in PK.

Last Man: We may decide to revisit the racial hollow weapons. This is very unlikely to happen for April.

What is the maximum damage possible for a hammer now? Some spec'd skills provide almost no benefits, any possibility of refunding those specialization costs? Will we be seeing Singularity or Quiddity Atlatls soon?

Genghis X:

1) I know this has already been answered by others, but it should be 27.

2) While your analysis may be correct, we are not planning on refunding any more credits for any more skills in the future.

3) At some point in the future. I really can't commit to a specific or even general timeframe.

Is there anyway we can request the statue to buff us instead of it being random?

Sholan: See my response to Alenia.

Comments on the need for some mages to have access to Singularity loot, specifically for the scrolls that spawn there that do not spawn in SIK chests. Also, comments on the power of life magic.

Mindus: Thank you very much for the feedback. I agree with a lot of those concerns you express in your post. Life Magic is indeed a very versatile skill.

While I was finally able to get a cottage, what I really wanted was a Villa. Could we somehow upgrade our Cottage so that eventually it could become a Villa?

Niko: I understand the concerns, but the ratio of cottages released to villas released will remain likely the same from month to month. Also, while we would love to implement a system such as you described (the building up of a cottage's real estate to make it into a villa), such a dynamic is likely never to happen in AC1.

Our hope is that with the introduction of residential quarters, and continued addition of housing each month, that this housing shortage will eventually reside.

Why is a creature that is immune to magic ok, but a creature that is immune to melee isn't? As a mage I have difficulty finding a place to hunt for Singularity Keys or Singularity type loot.

Malice: It is ok to have a monster that is fairly completely melee immune: The Virindi Executor. The problem is not that some monsters are either unkillable or very unlikely to be killed by a given class. We will continue to periodically introduce such monsters into the game in the interests of a content or game system dynamic. The problem in AC had been the complete lack of effectiveness by most melees, including those with Life magic, but especially those without, against much of the higher level content of the last year or so.

This is being addressed both by retroactively changing some of that content, as well as other new content that better evens the playing field.

If you find yourself in an area in which you need a skill set other than your own to thrive.....I would hope that you'd find a suitable partner to both of your mutual advantages. If you wish not to group, then I know that there are hundreds of places for a character, regardless of level or skill set, to solo.

Many comments about many game issues. ed. - Really is a good post, if you have the chance, you may want to read it.

Ocean Rage: Thank you for the comments, and the thoughtful post.

Could you add more colors for the armor as a quest? I can't see how more colors would be unbalancing!

Blackloch: It's not unbalancing, it's just more work that would otherwise be spent doing quest art for a future month, etc. Sean is the ultimate arbiter of the art schedule, and he has monitored a lot of the feedback about this armor. At this time, I don't see any changes/additions being made.

Regarding the possibility of having 32 maximum damage Sifilis

Constantine: I already cleared this up on Game Issues board a couple nights ago, but I was right in the Dev Board post (+14, so silifis can max up to 32), and wrong when I wrote the Dev Notes. 32 damage Silifis were part of the original design, and will not be changing, although there may be further tweakage in the future, but more likely it would occur in a third stage of weapon improvements.

Comments on Staff.

Araman Kain: Thanks for the feedback.

Why not get rid of the green seeds dynamic and just make dye plants available for sale?

Dark Mood: Thanks for the praise and thanks for the green seeds suggestion.

The Shadow Hunter armor tops and bottoms never matched quite right, so this isn't a new thing. Just make an announcement about that and be done with it!

DeOS: While I appreciate the suggestion, I don't think I agree with that annoucement.

Thanks for the changes made and a list of concerns still to be addressed.

Chi'un: Thank you both for the praise and specific concerns.

Why not simply have all weapons cost the same to train and specialize, remove the "racial" from the racial weapons skills, and have the factors of damage and speed be the balance between weapons? Can you have a weapon ignore a certain value off the armor of a target? Finally, could some features, like squelching and friends lists, be moved to the client so the lists could be longer than they current are?

Abbandon: Thank you for the suggestions. We probably will not be able to act on any of them due to both technical reasons, and the stage at which AC is at right now.

Request for changes to the neoGS*. Your comments about Staff and Dagger seem to contradict. On one hand you admit Dagger is too powerful, especially compared to Staff isn't, and on the other you say that Staff is right where it needs to be, in regards to damage.

Malico: Thanks for the feedback on the GS*.

As for the dagger/staff comments I made earlier, I do not see them as contradictory. Yes, dagger is overpowered relative to its cost. Staff is not overpowered relative to its cost. It is almost right on, although I agree some tweaks need to be made.

Therefore, the problem that needs to be eventually addressed is with dagger, not with staff. Our challenge is to address this problem with dagger in such a way that the current dagger community doesn't feel like they have just

had their entire play styles ruined instantaneously. We think this next stage of weapons changes help to accomplish that.

I've noticed that 5's and 6's have the same duration, is this because the economy on 6's is worse than 5's?

Benton: 5's and 6's have had the same duration since that change was made last Spring in 2001. (Ahh, never mind, Rortie answered the question) (I'm keeping this in here though. Just because.)

Rortie's sig regarding housing, with a few Ken Troop quotes thrown in it.

Rortie: There should be a few more 'uuuuu's in the 'duuuuuhhhh' in your signature. It would scan better.

Apologizes for most of the comments they made earlier. Gives suggestions on hilting and new weapons.

Ros:

'Almost everything?' Sniff.

Thanks both for the positive feedback and the suggestion.

I'm really enjoying this patch, I give this month an A+, thanks!

Tex: Thank you very much for the praise. It is good to hear.

There was an ancient bug in which female Aluvian's could end up without dagger trained, any chance of these lost credits being refunded? I am crippled now that creatures like the Crystal Golem are in game and untouchable, since I have no trained melee skill.

Neilla: 1) There are current plans to address the Aluvian female untrain dagger bug.

2) I don't know how to respond to the idea that the Crystal Golem dynamic might be one which causes a player to throw out an entire character. While I recognize the value of "Singularity" quality loot, I would imagine that this content is the start of a certain dynamic, not the final result.

To clarify from an earlier answer, are we going to be seeing weapons that require 340 base skill to equip or 320 base skill required arrows?

D/E: While I have no idea if this will definitely happen, I would say that at some point in the future, there would likely be a third stage of the type of melee dynamic we saw this month.

Am I completely shut out from getting Singularity loot from creatures, since I have no usable melee skill?

Girelle: See my response to Neilla.

Again, I want to be clear: we will continue to occasionally create content that presents a lot of difficulty, even to the point of nigh-impossibility, for specific classes. From such content is teamwork born. Optional teamwork in this type of game is a good thing. I am not all suggesting that the current content implementation of any of these creatures fosters teamwork. But that might change in the future....

Thanks Ken for the direction AC seems to be going, and was especially shocked to see Endurance being addressed in future content.

Dargo: Thank you for the kind words.

Any shirt worn under the Sleeves of Inexhaustibility take on the color of the sleeves. Can this bug be fixed?

Guy: Unfortunately, the Sleeves of Inexhaustibility are unlikely to change in regards to their palette effects.

Posted links for more information about Staff issues.

Malico: Thank you for the additional feedback.

Reports a bug of seeing "ghosts" on his radar, dots of various colors, appear and then disappear as he hunted.

Thelonius: Thank you for the bug report. We have heard other reports of this. We will investigate this for April.

Comments about loot and how inaccessible high level loot is to mages.

Artemius: While (as I mentioned earlier), I do think Mages benefit less than Melees from access to high level loot , that did not play a part in determining these latest content dynamics. While the popular public board perception of many players is that "mages rule AC," the unfortunate truth is that this observation can many times be very accurate, due to the nature of the game systems in AC.

Of course, there are advantages/disadvantages to all of the "classes" in AC, but the advantage that most mages have at the higher to highest levels of content over the other classes is fairly well established.

Our goal is to bridge that gap in a number of different ways. The Crystal Golem was more a fun dynamic we wanted to play with rather than a specific snub to mages or pure gift to melees. Our intention certainly is not to just swing the pendulum the other way towards melees/archers (although there would still be quite a long ways to go before that occurred).

Finally, while I agree that the monster content of the last two months has presented a lot of difficulty for mages, I also think that a lot of it has presented a lot of difficulty for everyone.

That said, I don't think 400 Magic D Hollow creatures will be the new wave in Dereth.

Comments about how outdated most quests are now, in comparison to the creatures surround them, such as Diamond Golems around the Tumerok Fortress.

Xaenom: Good points. Thanks for the feedback.

Compliments on the patch, and concern about how the Login Tech in some dungeons will affect future quests.

I B Bad: Thanks for the comments.

My character on Darktide, a spec Unarmed Combat character, really needs his Hollow Katar addressed, as I'm as effective as I should be in combat right now.

Mr. Sinister: The hollow racial weapons may see an upgrade in a future month. We will evaluate this after the April patch.

You have offered us no real information on some of these issues, like the GS* colors, other than saying it was intentional. How about giving us the reasons?

Intangir: Hmm, I have two options here. (Well, actually, I have many many many options. But let's focus on two.)

Option A -- Sarcasm: We made the new dyed GS* the way it was to ensure that a number of players would be very unhappy with it and that they would voice their displeasure with it often and loudly. We believe that such demonstration of passion ultimately leads to a longer subscription duration, and each month we will attempt to add more items in the game that provoke such short-term destablizing, but long-term profitable responses.

Analysis of Option A -- Ultimately a fairly pointless exercise for me to engage in. Does not make upset player feel better. Does not make me feel better (at least not for a long period of time). Bad option.

Option B -- Sincere Empathy, touched with regret that we do not, and will continue to not, see eye to eye on this issue: We made the GS* look the way it did because we think it looks good and offers a wide variety of choices to players. I offered that it was intentional because indeed it was our intent. I'm sorry that you have such a negative reaction to it.

Analysis of Option B -- True reaction, and yet comes to seem strangely superficial (how many times can I write 'Thanks for the feedback' before your eyes start to roll and then eventually glaze over)

And yet, I mean every word. For each of you who takes the time to post here, to organize your thoughts and feelings and hatred and love about AC and post them here for me to read: Thank you. Thank you for taking the time to do this, thank you for caring enough about AC to do this. I can't and won't always agree with you. I can't and won't always recognize the genius of your ideas. But I value highly your desire to share those thoughts with the AC team.

So Intangir, I know this answer (and probably the meta-commentary as well) is wholly unsatisfactory to you. It is nonetheless the best answer I can offer.

Compliments about what he liked in the patch. Comments that he's still upset about the fact that dagger and staff will be receiving no attention, why didn't you give the players some future notice that this would be the case? You guys aren't Alan Greenspan, so who cares what that information does to the Ebay market.

Waking Giant: Thanks for the feedback. I'm now daydreaming about being Alan Greenspan.....

How about changing the current no-drop/no-give items over to givable, but only useable by the original character?

Nakita: We have always wanted to do this at some point. We have no current idea when.

Could you change the color of the "low mana" warning on items? Also, could something similar be done for item spells cast on weapons?

Sholan: Thanks for the suggestions...I will pass them on to the programmers.

The portal system in the Floating City has yet to be fixed. The portals don't always seem to link up the various parts.

Effect: Can you be more specific? Which portals are broken?

Editor's Note: If I could step in, that is part of the design of the Floating City. In my explorations of it, it appears it was designed to never quite have the same portals twice. That fits in with its story, it is a "city" in portal space that has slowly become destabilized as portal space around it destabilizes. You may not be able to get to every part of the city each time you visit it.