An Arrow Into My Grab Bag

Ogrelin

Posted By: Sanya Thomas 2007-03-02 21:04:41

Q: (Insert archery question here.)

A: I know some of you don’t follow the boards, so let me catch you up to date. We try to share “coming soon” data with players that attend our real life gatherings. At the most recent one in New York, we posted this picture (go ahead, mouseover it and enlarge it so you can see the text): http://www.darkageofcamelot.com/roadtrip/2007/images/DAoC_NYC01.jpg

The archery revamp notes got a certain amount of attention on the message boards, and raised questions. Some of those questions raised questions. I cannot answer all of the (perfectly valid) questions and concerns tonight, however. The revamp has been broadly designed, yes, but we do not yet have any code completed for that design. Until there is code, we cannot test it, and until we test it, we cannot get user feedback, and without user feedback, we cannot go live.

But I am going to try to answer some of the more basic concerns here, based on a conversation I had with the live team producer and the lead designers.

Let me get two things out of the way now.

Item: We are planning to change the steps it takes to fire an arrow from three clicks to one click. This does remove the functionality whereby you could nock an arrow, and hold on the release to hit targets from maximum range. We are doing this because we desperately need to lower the barrier to archery faced by new and casual players, and because streamlining our interface in general is necessary to bring the game to modern standards.

Item: We are planning to remove the elevation bonus. We put this bonus in, back in oh, early 2001, because we wanted archery to have certain experiences you might find in real life. (“Agincourt, boy, Agincourt!”) However, in practice, it means an archer can hit targets that are way, way, way out of clipping range. It’s just not a good thing anymore.

Now, the benefits to the revamp probably need to be played to be appreciated. But let me try to explain some of them.

- We are introducing a much greater variety of arrow types to the game, and they will be automatic – no need to haul a pile of multiple arrow types around in your packs. Many of these arrows will have nifty graphical effects.

- What will happen to artifacts that summon arrows? That should be settled and in the patch notes when the other changes happen. I don’t know the details, other than the discussion is afoot.

- What will happen to fletching? The Trade Goddess has all kinds of stuff she’s considering, and she would like fletchers to know that she is open to suggestions. Three things among others that she is considering – craftable tents, recipes for tradeskill tools currently only available through quests, and a new type of tradeskill tool – for example, a tool that would minimize the percentage chance of failing an overcharge.

- The new system will be much easier to use. Even specials such as volley will be easier to use. As a result, archers will be more effective, overall.

- We want “50 spec” to mean something. In the new system, someone with 50 spec will consistently outperform someone with a 35 spec.

- Across the board, we are looking to see less variance in damage amounts, and damage in general to be more reliable. Once you figure out which types of shots are more effective versus specific targets, archers will find their results are more predictable “as opposed to the guessing game of current archery.”

One of the most important changes won’t even be visible to you, but I hope I can explain how tremendous the impact will be. Right now, for us to make the tiniest of changes to how much damage a particular arrow does, or to make the most minor of changes to bow performance, we have to make changes to the code. That’s right, the entire system is hard coded. Compare this with, say, spells, where if we want to change how long an effect lasts we just pop into a spreadsheet and change a setting. The new archery system changes all that. After the revamp is done, if we need to make a change due to player feedback, it’ll be a simple matter for the Redhead to flip open a spreadsheet and make it happen.

The extent of the behind-the-scenes changes is why you have not seen a single archery patch note yet, despite our best hopes. Another behind-the-scenes project requiring our programmers has just run a little longer than we had hoped.

I hope to see everyone on Pendragon, bows in hand, when the first changes are made to that server. And I will also do more archery questions once we’re in testing, but for now, what I’ve given you is all I’ve got.

Q: My ranger is level 24 and in his template I have a Peridas' Vigor (level 30 ring). When put on, it tells me that it fails to affect me, but there are lvl 40 items in his template that affect him. Is this a bug?

A: The Item Minion replies: “This is a common source of confusion among many players. The level of a jewelry item is not actually the determining factor in whether it will affect you or not. The level value you see is a number we manually assign, just to let you know the level player it is intended for as well as to determine how fast the item degrades relative to your own level.

“What determines whether the item affects you or not is a hidden value automatically assigned based on the stats on the item called the Bonus Level. If the Bonus Level is higher than your level, the item won't affect you.

“In the case of Peridas' Vigor, the Bonus Level is 28, so you have 4 more levels to go before it will affect you. The level 40 items you own have Bonus Levels of 24 or less.

“This is intended as part of the way we balance items. The only time you should be concerned is if an item fails to affect you, even when your level matches the level of the item. In that case, either the stats were accidentally made too powerful, causing the Bonus Level to be too high, or the level value was accidentally set misleadingly low. If you should find such an item, please submit a bug report noting its name, its level, and your level.”

Q: Prior to patch 1.87, I had gotten my SCer to LGM status and my Alchy to 400ish. When 1.87 went through, I received the "Perfect Crafter's Focus" item to make MP items. Since it did absolutely nothing for my SCing, I decided to level my Alchemy to LGM status as well.

I got LGM Alchemy and went to make some charges for my armor. So I could have the maximum amount of charges before I had to recharge the item, I used my Perfect Crafter's Focus item to get a MP Charge.

In the documentation on the herald, I have seen that it says a MP Charge should have 10 charges on it, while a 99% charge should have 7, 98% should have 6, etc. However, when I imbued the 100% Charge on my boots, I only had 7 charges.

Does the Perfect Crafter's Focus item not work with Alchemy charges?

A: The Bearded Guru (in charge of items) reviewed this question and said:

“I talked to the Trade Goddess about this. The issue is a misconception that the quality of the tincture affects the number of charges it receives.

From the site: http://apothecary.4t.com/

"Definition of charges: These are applied to weapons/shields/armor. They are activated by the /use command on the item they are imbued into and can only be accessed outside of combat. Charges can be used in both PvE and RvR. The number of charges available depends on the quality of the item being imbued:

100% quality = 10 charges

99% quality = 7 charges

98% quality = 6 charges

97% quality = 5 charges

96% quality = 4 charges"

So in this case, it sounds like the tincture the player placed was on a 99% quality item.”

Goddess?

“Yep, that's correct. For alchemy charge tinctures, it's not the quality of the tincture that is used to determine the number of charges. It's the quality of the ITEM to which the tincture is being applied.”

Q: Is there any plan on being able to switch servers in your cluster without having to log completely out of game?

A: I wish. “Log out to server select” has been on my wish list for so long that not even solvent will get the shape of the letters off my whiteboard.

It is, however, a code nightmare for us due to the way we set things up in 2001, and very low on the priority scale. Things like patches, pathing, and general fixes are all much higher.

Q: With the new changes to Block/Parry/Evade, what are the % caps on these abilities? It seems like parry and evade are going off 50% of the time, yet the Large Shield wearers now seem to be blocking 90-99% of all frontal attacks. If this is true, why wouldn't the % on the be brought down to 50% as well, considering using /stick will easily put an opponent in front of you at all times?

A: From the Redhead: “Evade caps at 50%, while block and parry have no cap. The reason for this is that evade is awarded for free, and you have to spend points to gain block and parry. We're closely monitoring the changes and its effects on RVR before we decide exactly what action to take regarding the cases where block rates can reach near 100% levels.”

Q: I currently have two mob remains from the Labyrinth and I can’t find what they need or who they go to and nobody seems to be able to help me. I have Cerberus and Muxos (sp?) and I can’t find who to give them to. Can you PLZ PLZ PLZ help me???

A: From the Bearded Guru: "To find the NPC that you seek, into your housing market you must peek."

The taxidermist NPC you want would be the one with an actual name and the title <apprentice taxidermist> below his name.

Here is a list, by realm, of the NPCs that should be able to assist you with your remains.

Albion - Caerwent - Elkyrd

Midgard - Erikstaad - Bruhdor

Hibernia - Meath – Urlaun

Q: I went onto PD today to check out those fancy new BP items (love em by the way). Turned on my chat log, delved all the items, closed my chat log, and went to check and make sure they were there for later use.

No changes had been made in my Labyrinth folder to the chat log, so I checked the new location.

No chat log there either.

Renamed my Labyrinth chat log, and added a new empty text file named chat.log in an effort to jump start the process.

Quit out of the client, went back in, re-delved the items, made sure to talk a little while logging was enabled in case it wasn't logging item delves.

Still nothing.

Where'd my chat log go?

A: I went back to the Flying Falcone, the fearless programmer who handled all the Vista happiness. He gave me this reply:

"In order to generate a chat log, a player has to actively start it. They start and stop logging using either keyboard commands or a slash command. It works like a toggle. It is done by pressing Ctl-L if you have the MMO default keyboard set up, or by pressing L in either the RPG or FPS default keyboard set up. The slash command is /chatlog and it takes an optional argument for the filename. For example, you can do "/chatlog MyChatLog" to generate the chat log file named MyChatLog.log. If you do not give the argument and just do "/chatlog" it will generate the file chat.log. Then typing /chatlog again, turns off logging.

"The chat log file will ALWAYS go to the user's personal directory, under My DocumentsElectronic ArtsDark Age of Camelot."

***

I did a few extra to make up for last week’s technology suckage.

I have been told by my overlords that I will be equipped with wifi the next time I hit the road, so… all of you who posted threads laughing at me, thanks! Next time, let’s start a lot of threads talking about how I need a slushie machine.

Maybe it’s just because it’s really late. Maybe it’s because that archery post took forever. But I got a bit of feedback a few minutes ago telling me that a certain patch note was “ludacris” and I LAUGHED. Someday, as a direct result of this feedback, I am going to make a YouTube of myself rapping the patch notes.

Maybe I just need a slushie. See you Monday.

Dowie

Please don't make them "overbuff" the archers





Hmm how much is it for one of these slushie-machines?