Dark Age of Camelot Grab Bag October 25th 2013

Grab Bag questions and developer answers, October 25th, 2013.



Have you considered adding a currency to frontier mobs to give players an incentive to spread out more? This should help support small scale RvR.

John: We have several ideas cooking about what we can do to incentivize smaller-scale action, especially in areas that are seldom used currently. We’d love to hear more ideas though: what type of rewards you’d like to see, what type of things you’d like to kill, gather, capture, etc.

Currently there are lots of different dragon scales that all turn in for the same stuff. They take up a lot of bag space if you have all of the different versions. Would you consider changing them all to one dragon scale type to simplify things for new and old players?

Talal: We’re always looking for ways to make Larian happy by consolidating currencies and reducing the amount of extraneous inventory items. There are quite a few ‘varieties’ of dragon scales added for what was intended to be a different design. As of now, this design is no longer practical or necessary so we’ll homogenize the scales and make them stack to a very reasonable amount.

As the DAoC timeline extends, many people have made/acquired multiple accounts. Is there any possibility of re-implementing character transfers?

Talal: Yes. These were removed during our account center migration with the intention to have them re-instated. Let’s get a few things sorted first, including the Camelot Herald and a great Re-Enlistment campaign. We can then we can work on activating character transfers.

Does mastery of focus and/or focal myths affect style procs?

Marty: It does affect some snares, but not others. Unfortunately, the only definitive answer I can give is: it depends on the proc.

Is there any way to improve the /bind command to show where we are bound?

Talal: In its simplest form, an improved /bind command could display the raw coordinate data for where your character is bound. We’d need to translate that to display a zone name or a region for granularity. It’s possible, and I think it’d be a cool feature to have, but I wouldn’t expect it before some of the other things we’ve been talking about. Consider it added to the list for us to investigate.

Most everything in the game that is a fraction rounds down to the nearest whole number. Does this also apply to melee attack speed? For example if I have 20% haste, 10% celerity with 250 quickness and my attack speed (according to charplan) states I have a 1.51 - 1.53 swing speed, will it then be lowered to the cap of 1.5 or will it actually stay at 1.51-1.53?

Marty: No. Although it’s displayed as a fraction, the server tracks melee attack speed in milliseconds. So, in your example, it would persist as 1510-1530ms, not 1500ms.

Would it be possible to change the way relic credits are given? Currently it is awarded to just the group that places the captured relic. It takes a bg to capture a relic and it seems only fair to give the credit to the whole bg so long as they are in the keep for the relic placement.

Marty: It’s certainly possible and shouldn’t be too difficult. I’ll have to add this to my list of things to look into.

Talal: This can be done in a number of ways, but the basic choice for this (and many other features in Camelot) is between having an action performed in Code or with Content. Both are effective, but when it comes down to it - Code is more reliable.

I've heard rumors for months about Pictish camps leaving the game. Can you confirm or deny that they are here to stay?

John: We have some plans yet for the Picts that you should see some time around or just after the New Frontiers revamp. Long term, they’ll be staying around in a permanent form ala the Dragon Campaign but not to the capacity that they exist now.

In some other MMOs, they allow characters to have two different specs and are allowed to change between them when out of combat. Could DAoC get such a feature?

Marty: I’m not sure how useful a dual spec system for Camelot would be since it usually more useful for PVE archetypes and that’s not really what we’re about. We’d have to sit down and figure out the benefits first. But, even if we found it useful, it would be a ton of work and that would likely be a deal-breaker.

With new NPC Realm Enhancers placed at the border keeps the need for stat enhancements from potions has dropped to zero and the gold made from those has also vanished. What we need is some new types of potions; for example a stat percentage potion that would increase any enhancement received by potion or spell by 5%, or how about a horse speed enhancement of say 20%. Any rider of a horse will get an increase of speed above normal horse speed which is only a little faster than sprinting.

Talal: We had calculated the potential negative impact of Buff NPCs on Crafters, and we did our best to offset this by introducing increased charges on potions, Speed of the Hunt Gems, as well as the introduction of the Draught of Heroism. I understand the foundation of the question but we think it’s more appropriate to leave the + Stat Enhancement on items than to have them readily available at all times. With the advent of readily accessible realm speed, a horse speed enhancement would be moot. We would not implement a speed boost that would stack with Mount speed as that would allow mounted players move faster than speed 6.

The issue of "old world loot" being "crap" comes up on these boards from time to time and I'd like to throw a suggestion your way and see if it sticks. Could you create and special quest NPC that offers to turn old world loot into something valuable?
Example: You interact with the QLE (Quest Loot Exchange) NPC and he tells you that he is a collector of rare magical items and he is distressed that his collection is missing Askafroa's Chain Hauberk. If you are willing to retrieve it then he will give you something in exchange for it.
So you find and kill Askafroa (a non-trivial task even in this day) until you get Askafroa's Chain Hauberk. Turn it in and you get some sort of reward. Perhaps a powerful item appropriate to you race and class or just money or a non-tradable XP scroll... you get the idea.

Talal: To say that this would require a significant amount of work would be an understatement. The effort would be primarily in classifying and valuating basically all the ‘old loot’ in the game. Beyond that, simply giving plat or XP scrolls for what has now become 12 years of stockpiled and very easily accessible loot would be…a little bit devastating to our economy and player progression.
I absolutely understand the line of thinking, but I’m afraid that a solution implemented in this way would do more harm to the game as a whole than it would benefit any given player.
However, don’t give up! We appreciate the suggestion and would like to hear more. If you have additional suggestions about how we can make older items more viable, by all means submit them via feedback!

Thanks to Talal, John and Marty for giving their time and answering our questions!

If you have a question for the Mythic devs, please send your questions in using our submission form: http://www.postcount.net/forum/forms.php?do=form&fid=5.