Asherons Call: Crystal Lord Buff and Other Answers

Lengthy Comments about Staff.

Fist of Heaven: I appreciate the comments. I don't have much more to say on the issue other than staff is unlikely to get a major boost anytime in the near future.

At times when the server is extremely laggy or I am losing packets I fizzle spells due to movement, although I have long since stopped moving.

Iomama: I haven't seen any complaints about people getting the movement fizzle message while standing (and having been standing) completely still. To the other players reading this forum: is this a problem you've experienced? We can look into it if it seems to be a major problem.

Why not add copies of the Abandoned Mines for trade to reduce the video and server lag that dungeon causes? Just make sure each copy is accessible to the other. Also, why not just add a Recall to Hub spell?

Suul: Thanks for the comments. I think this patch goes part of the way towards addressing some of what you're talking about here.

Are those 16-32 damage axes intended? Also if you update the Sifili of Crimson Stars quest would you be removing the one time only quest timer? How about doing something further with those Tumerok banners?

Eldred: As you should know by now, the 16-32 axes are intentional, and will not be changing. As for the SOCS quest, should we choose to update it, we would keep the one-time flag in mind. As for the tumerok banners, I hope we are able to do something for it at some point, but it is not one of our high priorities at the moment.

What was the thought behind making Sword hit harder than Axe? While Sword does cost more, it is a faster weapon than Axe.

Eeriest Elk: Sword and Axe currently share the max damage possible for a melee weapon.

Have you considered changing the Mana Charge prices, due to the new mana "tech" for recharging items? Will all those old no give quest items be switched to be usable only by the original character so we can mule them?

Eolorian: Thanks for the comments. We're not currently planning on changing the mana stone prices (although we have discussed it, it's just not an imminent change). The drop/give but usable only by original owner is also something not being planned at this time.

Are you considering "nerfing" dagger? Should I finally train lockpick or still play wait and see? How about allowing me to hook my Shadow Armor at my house?

Candy Angel: Thanks for the comments/suggestions. As for dagger, time will tell. As for lockpicking, I think the skill is still extremely useful. We'll take the GSA and hookable requests under consideration.

Zathros: Thanks for the feedback.

Multani: Thanks for the feedback.

Was it intended that Cantrips and the spells on the Mage Armor not stack but overlap? If so, why do the Focusing Stone's spell and Major/Minor Focus stack? Was the rubble the last element of the Queen's Quest or is there more to discover? The Crystal Golem can be "bugged" by casting some spells on it that it can't cast positive versions of that spell, leaving it more open to attack.

Xavior: Not all the cantrips interactions with other stackables were intentional. It might take awhile (if ever) for everything to be brought into line. Given our system we have in place to deal with such things, it is unfortunately not as easy as it should be to make all the various stackable spells interact consistently.

As for the queen quest, I would say the whole of the quest is known by players.

As for the Crystal Golem, we did address the fizzle thing, and I think we ultimately decided to leave its Melee D alone.

Extensive comments about the possible dangers of Endurance changes.

Watts: Thanks for the feedback. I want to take this time to address why the more powerful Endurance dynamics (Drain resistances, natural resistances) were made to be Str/End, as opposed to Endurance only. With a Str/End dynamic, we felt we had a dynamic that not only made sense in terms of the inherent nature of the attributes, but was also one in which mages would not benefit more than 100 Str, 10 Endurance melees (since most mages can only afford to pour in 90 points total to either str/end).

While we acknowledge that archers who had previously chosen to pour points into focus/self at the expense of str or end will not be quite as effective, we think that there are other advantages to such characters that outweigh the disadvantages of not necessarily getting full benefit from the Endurance changes.

All told, the idea behind these changes was to create viable alternatives for either very old characters who could not, prior to this Event, compete effectively, and for new templates who want to break from the mold, or players who prefers alternate gameplay choices. We didn't want the 100/100/100 melee to become the default new template, we just wanted players to have more choices in terms of how they want to play.

Chocoholic: Thanks for the feedback.

Any possibility of making the extremely hard Quiddity weapon quest more worth it, perhaps giving all Quiddity weapons "double strike".

Boney Jellyfish: There are no current plans to up the abilities of the quiddity weapons.

Since AC2 decided to not have item loss at death, are you planning to remove it from AC1?

Thalandas: It is a system we have discussed. We are not considering it at this time, and especially not for the pk environment. Were we ever to implement some type of formal dueling, it is likely that there would be no item loss in such a feature.

All the additions to the game, such as Health Elixirs that heal 70 points of damage, have eroded the value of Healing. Why not simply make it a free skill and let everyone use those 6 skill points somewhere else.

OmniTek: Thanks for the suggestion. Personally, I think Healing is a great skill at 6 credits. You make a valiant argument, though :) But I doubt healing's functionality will be changing/improving anytime soon.

It seems a paradox to add a class specific creature, the Crystal Golem, to help make up for introducing another class specific creature, the Diamond Lord.

Aguair: We feel that as long as there are ample solo opportunities (which AC has an abundance of), that having creatures be *very* difficult (yes, even to the point of near impossible), for a specific class to kill is good gameplay dynamic, and one we will continue to explore in the future. The reason why we changed the Diamond Lord was because we felt that given the Diamond Lord's trophy item, it made little sense to make him non-life-magic-melee-immune.

Do you intend to fix the fact that Axe can indeed match Sword in damage?

Dargo: Given the extreme time-lag between your question and my answer, I believe the mysteries of the 32 damage axe have all been solved now. :)

Lose the statues!

Chocoholic: Thanks for the feedback regarding the statues. Come April, they will not buff you anymore.

Mace and Axe cost the same amount, yet Mace has the additional burden and does less damage than Axe.

Bears Fan: Thanks for the feedback about the maces. We are trying to make sure that Mace and Axe remain unique yet roughly equivalent skills. We will continue to tweak matters in the future to ensure that this is the case.

Staff seems to get the "shaft" in all respects, worst drop rate of any item, least amount of damage types available, and least usable quest items.

Elder Tribunal: Just so you know, staff doesn't have the worst drop rate anymore (It shares the bottom with dagger)

I actually like the Shadow Hunter armor colors! Can you give us some higher charge mana stones to take advantage of this new mana tech? Also, can you give us more details on the new mage changes you have planned?

Paris: Well, I'm glad someone likes the GS colors ;) As for the mana stones, yes, we would like to make higher charge mana stones more available (what I mentioned in the earlier post was that we are probably not going to change the cost) -- as for the mage stuff, we'll start relating more about those changes next month.

The animation for piercing triple strike seems significantly slower than the other animations, is this intentional? Also, does the current Damage over Time analysis match what you were expecting, with Archers (armed with the Elariwood bow) doing the most damage?

Sol Chen: First, nice work on the DoT stuff. Even though Turbine factors its DoT tests slightly differently, it's nice to see other competent efforts. Second, I believe the way the dagger animations work are intentional. Third, I would definitely say that archers have some very nice advantages in the PvM arena that compensate evenly for the lack of shields. I certainly don't see many archers complaining recently, which I take to be a good sign. (And if they were complaining, then I know it would be time to nerf archery, because if March didn't make archers happy, then they're crazy, and I'd rather give them a real reason to complain. j/k (sort of)).

I want a bright red heaume, like we see in the ACDM ads!

Bears Fan: We'll see what we can do about bright red heaumes.

Can you bring some balancing to Brood Nobles? They seem to be a mage only creatures.

Smacx: We'll look into the brood nobles. Admittedly, they have fallen off our radar in terms of creatures needing to be tweaked.

Magic Rhino: Thanks for the suggestion.

Eshuun Dara: Thanks for the feedback.

Fong: We'll take a look at it, thanks.

Palum: Thanks for the feedback.

Thank you for the thrown weapons love, but I am still unable to fletch wrapped bundles of Darts.

Ben-Li: Thanks for the comments. We'll try to address that bug before too long.

Fian: Thanks for the comments.

Xinister: Thanks for the comments.

I bet this month was easier to answer than last month, mostly positive comments about this month's content! Are you going to be doing something with these four Atlans I'm carrying or should I sell them and look for some loot swords?

Ros: For your initial point, yes, I understand the gist, but looking back over the comments from Feb, I see a lot of positives in there, so it wasn't all negative :).

As for the question, yes, I think it would be a good idea to keep your old quest weapons around. While I can't guarantee they will become useful in all situations, I think a lot of the time we will build upon the existing quest weapons.

Kendawg: Thanks for the feedback.

Abbandon: Thanks for the feedback.

While your reasoning for not giving staff a buff may make sense for PvM, it doesn't hold true for PvP.

Last Man: Very true. However, even on DT, there are other advantages to, for example, saving the 12 credits not speccing sword, and spending them on trained life, specced staff.

I used my key in the Quiddity Quest dungeon, but unfortunately due to lag and concerns about getting rushed by monsters, it was destroyed. Can you change this quest?

Eshuun Dara: I apologize for the bugginess surrounding the quid chest. We hope to have this fixed soon.

Due to the cap on leadership, it doesn't seem that useful to train since the benefits can be had by someone without the skill. Any chance of enhancing this skill some?

Ankhentomen: Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately, at this time we are not planning anything new for Leadership.

Sao Le-Fut: Thank you.

Your inability to change the burden of books in the game is really hampering the roleplaying aspects for players in the game. Also, these changes should have been introduced long ago, they aren't that difficult to see.

Alenia: While I appreciate the sentiment behind the thought, I do dispute the notion that low-burden books would have transformed the community into a sizable force of roleplayers/lore hounds.

As for your comment that some of these things we have been introducing lately should have been introduced earlier -- I agree wholeheartedly. However, unlike some items such as housing, which we believe are not in the tech, but then we find we can, indeed, do, I have it on good authority that Turbine is running up against some hard limits when it comes to inventing time travel.

So our current efforts, however unfortunately late, will have to suffice.

The buffing Statues are really annoying, can you change or fix this dynamic?

Leafbeach: We hope to have this issue fixed in April. I apologize for the annoyance.

The Invoker seems rather pointless, it is extremely expensive to use and creatures, such as Executioners, resist its magic almost every time.

Girelle: Thank you for the feedback. At this time we're not planning any changes to the Invoker. We feel that the mana burn and spellcraft of the item are at appropriate levels.

How much longer do I have to enjoy the glory of being a dagger character?

Mortor: Thanks for the feedback. As in regards to dagger's glory -- dagger shall always be glorious. I don't want anyone to think that are plans are to make dagger less than glorious. It just might become glorious in a slightly different fashion, and have to share the limelight with the rest of its melee brethren.

If the Crystal Golem, being a melee only creature, drops Singularity quality loot, why doesn't the Executor, the mage only creature, do the same?

Girelle: There are currently a number of different ways that mages, even without lockpick, can get access to Singularity Quality Loot.

You are really ignorant of your game if you think that playing without three magic schools is an effective way to play. Characters need their racial melee skills if they are going to be able to actually play, so they need more powerful weapons as well.

Taze: I apologize in advance if I'm acting like a snot here. But you really do seem to keep on making my point for me.

By your own example, a BD 6 max damage sword against a baned and protted out foe (whether that foe be another player or monster) is going to do barely more damage than a 5 damage sword.

So, in those cases, having life magic (and being able to imperil and vuln) is a far more valuable resource cost than spending those 12 extra points on speccing sword. You obviously recognized this truth a long time ago, and created your character accordingly.

As you point out in the middle of your latest post, those parameters which made you take staff over other melee skills still exist. High-damage weapons aside, meleers still have lots of problems fighting high-armor/high-resist content, again, whether that content be other players or other monsters.

March's update was not intended to address that problem, it was meant to fill in some other gaps, which we think it has done quite well. We do hope to address this specific problem in a future update soon. And in that update, all melee weapons will benefit.

I feel as if I got "coal" from Santa's loot bag specifically because another racial skill, dagger, was far too powerful. It is of little comfort to a staff player to know that I'll be as effective as a dagger player in July, especially when you feel staff is where it should be right now. Finally, while I think some additions to the game have been great, some things, like cantrips and the weapon buffs, were very poorly done.

Russano: First, you didn't get coal because dagger is too powerful. Staff is truly about where it should be. Maybe it gets some slight tweaks in the next few months, but it really is at about the right effectiveness. Second, I agree that it would not be smart on our part to do nothing for staves for the next 4 months. Third, I'm interested in hearing more on how you felt the weapon changes/cantrips could have been done better.

The true problem with staff isn't so much the ammount of damage we can do, it is the fact that finding good weapons is impossible. The Atlan staff still remains our best weapon. As a side point, you've really hurt the Singularity Troves by adding Crystal Golems. It is just easier to hunt a Crystal Golem than hunt for keys.

ElderTribunal: I agree that there is not a lot for staffers to look for in the loot gen. We will try to address that problem sooner than later. I also hope that April restores a bit of the luster to the Singularity Trove.

Many mages spend an inordinate amount of time trying to support themselves, something should be done to address this.

Anjin: Thanks for the feedback. Given the general feedback we have received on mageplay, I'm not overly concerned about the mage situation in terms of being able to financially support one's self. That said, some of the changes we're looking at for June/July should help simplify the situation greatly.

Palum: Thanks for the feedback.

Lilkinsly: Thanks for the comments.

Gandelf: Thanks for the feedback.

I've put more "u"'s in the "duh" in my sig Ken, this better?

Rortie: Perfect.

Your points about racial skills and three school characters is only partially correct. Players have known of the advantages of having going with a racial weapon for some time, due to the fact the other weapons were left where they were for so long. Any changes that are made to the game should never make a player regret a design choice they made perhaps 2 years ago.

Forlorn: Excellent point, and one we think about often. Ultimately, though, we decided to try and continue to bring skills/dynamics (e.g. the endurance changes for April) to the point where we feel they should be, given 2+ years of experience and player feedback. While there might continue to be some short term pain as players adapt, we trust that the long term benefits outweigh those disadvantages.

The consensus at Turbine is that these changes ultimately make sense given the game's existing framework and serve to make the game a more fun and compelling experience, and we hope that consensus comes to be shared by our general player public.

Why not make monsters, such as the Executor, vulnerable to hollow damage, implying they use magical protections.

Annalena: It's a good thought, but one we currently have no plans of exploring.

Dragoon: Thanks for the feedback.

Ros: Thanks for the suggestion.

Many suggestions, including some about getting back to existing content, such as Tufa or Xarabydun.

Tariq: Thanks for the feedback. No specific plans for any of the things you mention, although I agree that it would be nice if Xarabydun was opened up to higher levels...but that probably won't be happening soon.

What staff needs isn't necessarily more powerful weapons, but things that are shiny and new to play with, like the other classes are getting. A slight buff and some new loot might be enough.

Cherry: I agree with the comments. We'll see what we can do.

Abbandon: Thanks for the suggestions.

With these new weapons, I can't see any reason to keep all these no drop/no give weapons. At least they could serve as wall decorations, reminding me of all the "old times".

Tarcha: Good points. We've been talking about a number of these options for awhile now. Time will tell what we ultimately decide to do to address both the usefulness and hooks questions.

Grumpy: Thanks for the positive feedback.

What is up with atlatls? I seem to get one off almost every kill, crowding out all the sollerets I'd like to get instead.

Tarcha: The atlatls truly don't spawn at that high of a rate...keep in mind that weapons only compete against other weapons....atlatls aren't crowding out sollerets, they can only be crowding out other weapons, and the atlatls truly don't spawn that much compared to other weapon *categories* (keep in mind atlatls represent nearly all of TW's weapons.)

Kaifang: Thanks for the feedback.

There was a bug back in the day that would rarely cause a monster to drop his weapon, which at the time was much better than a player weapon. Now that we have many weapons that are equivalent to monsters weapons, why not let them drop their weapons on death again?

Lao Zun Pei: Thanks for the feedback...and an interesting idea about letting more "monster weapons" sneak out into the treasure field....don't know if we'll ever do it, but it's a good idea.

Can we get the strength bonus factors/multipliers for damage? It is a big piece of the puzzle of comparing bandits to loot weapons.

Krell: I'm at home right now, and I don't remember the numbers offhand. Maybe ask it in the ACDM QA section, and we can answer it there.

Kile: Thanks for the feedback.

While the players have to play by a set of rules, Turbine decides at a whim that it can "cheat" to bring balance to the game world. How did a monster gain the ability to completely resist war magic or life magic? Why can a monster do things that a character can't?

Res Ipsa Loquitur: While I understand your perspective, I have to completely disagree with you. A lot of the pain that the AC1 content devs have to go through in order to create balanced and fun content is caused by the fact that players and monsters have to go through the exact same systems 95%+ of the time. It would be far easier to create and balance content were we able to easily create monsters that followed absolutely none of the laws that players have to follow.

I also refuse to accept that we should use none of the tools at our disposal to help continue to tweak the world in the face of certain indisputable facts. When certain skills are absolute "golden paths" to dealing with content, leaving other, semi-similar skills in the dust in comparison, people should expect that over time, either the skills or the content will change such that more diversity is encouraged.

If AC had suddenly become a game in which War magic was useless, or drain was useless, then I could accept players' anger and unrest over such changes. That would be a true example of us violating the players' trust in AC both as a world and a game.

But that is extraordinarily far from the situation we are actually dealing with. Life magic is still a near-must-have skill for playing, War magic is still a very powerful skill to have, the path of an ordinary mage is still one more prepared to take on the extremes of content that AC has to offer than the path of an ordinary warrior.

I would ask you to be more specific about what is it exactly that disgusts you.

Lots of suggestions...What is the point of the chests in the various towns? They seem to be able to hold quite a few things, but the chests in our homes can't hold nearly that many things?

Julian: Thanks for the suggestions, although we have no current plans on specific implementation of any of the things you are mentioning.

As for the chests, they do not have a specific intentional use. The reason the chest storage in one's house is so low is because we need to keep the storage manageable for server performance concerns.

Mithan: You're welcome.

You must make it so that we can stack more than 5,000 pyreals in a stack!!!

Abbandon: At this time the trade note/pyreal dynamic is unlikely to change.

Now that I know that staff isn't going to change much in the future, I want to train another weapon. Since I won't be specialized, am I going to be further gimped and not be able to use the new weapons coming out in future months?

Trailrix: while there may continue to be quest weapons in the future that require specialization, the all-purpose changes coming in the next few months are probably not going to require a gating factor of specialization (this ignores, as you concede, the fact that specializing a weapon will help you hit a skill requirement faster)

Kesrick: Thanks for the feedback.

RimDragonfly: Thanks for the feedback.

There appears to be a graphics glitch when you place a tree on a hook in a house, the top portion of it is chopped off if you look at it from certain angles. Any chance of further revisions to the hooks on villas or finding out what roof hooks are for?

Nelwyn: Thanks for the bug report, I will pass it along. Villas are not going to be getting new/tweaked hook placements. The purpose of the roof hooks will become clear soon.

Many suggestions on giving various skills new quests or tweaking them. Also a suggestion on making Arcane Lore worth training and raising above 215.

Eshuun: Thanks for the feedback. While I'm not going to comment specifically on any of your proposals, there are some good ideas in there, some that we've been talking about for awhile. As for the Arcane Lore feedback -- some of the dual spell jewelry approaches 300 difficulty. I'm not saying this completely addresses your concern, but it is one small example of new content that is geared towards more of a high lore audience.

Can you change the timer for negative spells to be red in color to make them stand out better?

Zuzax: I absolutely agree. I hope we can something like that in soon.

Editor's Note: Not going to summarize what Tehanu said, since I completely lost his meaning last time. You want to go read it, go digging through the thread to find it. Neener neener.

Tehanu: First, please keep in mind that, if my own experience is relevant to the time involved, Keth spent many many hours trying to make our conversations accessible to the wider CoD public. I can understand the annoyance if you feel he misrepresented you, but I also am appreciative of the time and effort he spent summarizing these pages, and can understand that occasionally mistakes are made.

As for the issues you bring up:

1) Point heard.

2) We're going to be addressing part of the trade macro situation in April, and we will continue to address it in the following months.

3) We will see what we can do to address your concerns in the next two months.

4) We'll be addressing this issue with some of magic changes in June/July.

5) I'll pass this on to the rest of the team.

Are you thinking about upgrading Atlan weapons?

Nakita: Yes.

I have a Villa located at about 1.4N, 21.7E that still doesn't have a portal to it. Any chance it will get one soon?

Dezran: We'll take a look at it.

Can you please change the color of the text of a spell being cast on you as opposed to one you cast on yourself?

Tehanu: If you don't cast spells, you shouldn't have a problem. Seriously, though, that's the first I've heard of such a request, do other people think it would be useful?

When will Turbine finally be addressing the Macro and Experience Chain situation? [Copy of a post from Ken Karl(?) on the Vault] The comments that "staff will not be arbitrarily as powerful as dagger" and the thought that damage is being related to skill cost seem to conflict.

Rortie:

1) MS will be publishing a survey on macros/xp chains soon. MS and Turbine will wait for the results of that survey before taking any action. We have received enough feedback on both sides of the issue such that we felt taking the survey was a good idea.

2) It's not clear who you are quoting here, so I'll assume it was Ken Karl. As for your ultimate question, yes, our goal is, at the end of all these changes, for staff and dagger to be roughly equivalent skills in terms of effectiveness.

Mohawk: Thanks for the feedback.

Why have they stopped "greying out" the Play buttons on the worlds when they are down? This was a problem during the database purge.

Aerys: I believe the not-greying out of the Play button was a mistake, and will be rectified in future downtimes.

I recently bought a villa at 33.1N, 22.6W, and while it has been in the game for a while, it still has no portal to it.

Green Elf: We'll take a look at it.

While I love these game additions, I was curious when we would get some more housing items in game. I would love to use the Arcanum crafters in the capital cities.

Beau Beau: After these next few months of updates (post July) we'll be able to spend some more time on housing issues.

Abbandon: Thanks for the feedback.

You've said in the past that you aren't doing any more refunds in the future, but you've also said you would allow people to opt out of the new "appraisal" skills. Isn't that conflicting?

Aerys: Both are true. We're not going to be refunding skill credits. Except for appraisals, which we will likely refund at some point in the near future once we have alternative skills for people to opt into.

Aerys: Thanks for the suggestion.

These Natural Resistance bonuses should require melee defense to get any benefit from them. Otherwise this is just going to be a detrimental to melees in PvP.

Dragoon: I'm sorry these changes have made you so upset. We took great care to design these changes such that no one skill set (mages vs. melees vs. missiles) benefited more than another from them. I hope that, given some distance from the situation, you are able to come back and enjoy AC again.

Abbandon: Thanks for the feedback.

My house is broken, the hooks still don't work, although the chest has finally stopped eating things.

Yrah-Caz: Please list the coordinates for the house.