21 Mar 07 House of Stratics Dev Chat

[Samanna]

[otakuryoga]

no log of the chat yet? 8(

[Finori]

[Galelor]

I don't like going to the Sony boards either. Here is a cut and paste.
<Sprite> Welcome to another great Stratics house of commons with the developers of EverQuest! Tonight's topic general discussion, so all questions are welcome.
<Sprite> Please send your questions to [QT]Fylraen by using /msg [QT]Fylraen My question here. Questions sent to myself or the developers will NOT be answered so please do not send them to us. You only need to send your question one time and only to one QT. Sending it multiple times will not increase the likelihood of it being answered.
<Sprite> We'll begin with a brief introduction from our guests and then proceed with the chat. Now would be a good time to send those questions to [QT]Fylraen!

<Rashere> Good evening everyone. I'm Travis McGeathy, Lead Designer for EQ.
<Maddoc> Hey everyone, thanks for joining us for the chat! I'm Jason Mash, an Assistant Lead Designer for the EverQuest team.
<Vahlar> Hi there! I'm Holly Longdale, assistant lead on EQ Live!
<Nodyin> Hello everyone. My name is David Ford and I work on the AA system and various content.
<Ngreth> Hello and welcome. I am Adam "Ngreth" Bell, game designer specializing in tradeskills.
<Merloc> Hello, I'm Keith Turkowski, I work on items.
<Zatozia> Greetings Everyone! I'm Lydia "Zatozia" Pope, the Community Relations Torturess.
<Prathun> Thanks for joining us. I'm Jonathan Caraker. I work on the spell system and had a hand in many of today's raids.

<Sprite> *swampfunk* Is there a chance that the Beastlord spell line of "Ferocity" could be reviewed... seems that this buff has lost it's value over the past few expansions... most raid level beastlords completely ignore this buff, and they are right too! there is little to no gain for this buff line... would the dev team consider adding an additional benefit to this spell line?
<Prathun> Ferocity is a good example of a spell that's decayed in usefulness over time to do caps (both softcaps and hardcaps) on stats and effects. I would be interested in making upgrades to Ferocity more appealing in the future, but that will probably require at least a small amount of focused code and design work.

<Sprite> *Chanaluss* Would it be possible to change the duration of the shadowknight Lich spells to last one hour to save spell slots when soloing/grouping without an enchanter?
<Prathun> I'll double-check and make sure there's not a good reason that the Shadowknight Lich spells are such a short duration. On the surface I don't see any reason why that duration can't be increased.

<Sprite> *Jetfire* Any idea when the Ocean of Tears revamp will go live? It was supposed to happen before TBS launched.
<Vahlar> As soon as we perfect cyclopses boarding the boats in OOT . . . (not really)
<Maddoc> We're still in the process of working with Ocean of Tears -- There were a few art changes that I wanted in there, and then of course QA needed to check off on it, so it wound up not being quite ready to go out with TBS. We don't have an exact ETA, but rest assured that it will be coming soon™.

<Sprite> *Wonton_Povar* The duration of the 7th year veterans reward was recently reduced. With the shorter duration, the long cast time of the actual buff further reduces its effectiveness because we lose dps from casting it. Is it possible to make it instant cast given the shorter duration?
<Nodyin> In the past few days I've made a few tweaks to the 7th year veteran reward that will be on Live servers with our next Patch. I've made the spell insta-cast, reduced the reuse time to 4 hours and moved the buff to the short duration box to maximize the flexibility of the AA.

<Sprite> *Wycca* Currently the clickie on - Crimson Mask of Triumph is still not working. It's been that way since the launch of TSS. Can we expect a fix anytime soon?
<Merloc> We are aware of the issues with the Geomantra line of spells, and we're looking into fixing the problem... I expect that it will be fixed soon (tm).

<Sprite> *Nolrog* Now that Legends is gone, will you be opening up Marauder's Mire (and perhaps adding in other legends specific goodies) to the general servers?
<Rashere> The majority of content that originally went to Legends is already available on all live servers. We don't plan to release Marauder's Mire, though.

<Sprite> *Kyroskrane* Several of the fabled items this year had minor bugs, most notably augs that cannot be inserted into armors. When can we expect a patch to fix these errors?
<Merloc> The bugs with the fabled augments have been fixed, and they will go out with the next patch.

<Sprite> *Nattican* At the last stratics chat, it was mentioned the TSS shaman raid item would be going in within a week. As of yet, it is still unfound. What is the status of said item?
<Merloc> I'll double check with Zajeer to make sure, but I believe the shaman item should be dropping on servers since the last patch.

<Sprite> *Tharkis* Just because someone has to ask it. Was the nerf to what was already the worst event in EQ, The overseer of the crypt in FC2, to make all the giants AE mana drain 1000 per tic +5k mana pool debuff, and make the horribly bad event even worse... intentional? If anything all the trash should be removed from the event , as well as all the trash on the way to beltron, and the golems given their own lockout.. fc2 is all trash
<Maddoc> The spells you're seeing on those giants had always been there, however there was a bug in the actual spell data that prevented the giants from memming them -- A query I ran to fix a bunch of spells with the same problem suddenly made the giants start memming those spells.
<Maddoc> That said, I've also been working on that event all this week, to shorten it
<Maddoc> The fights will wind up being much shorter, but a lot more intense at the same time.
<Maddoc> I'm hoping to get my changes tested and pushed out early next week, so look for them. I'll try and post when I plan to send them out.

<Sprite> *QuartonerFV* Quick question, are the Fabled Aug's susposed to be Augable themselves? thus Making an Augable aug?
<Merloc> Quick answer: no!

<Sprite> *Wycca* There is a distinct lack of +Special Attack mods on TSS and TBS gear (Backstab, Flying Kick, Frenzy). It's quite possible to loose 80-90% of your mods in this simply by upgrading older gear. Can this be fixed?
<Merloc> Yes, increasing the number of skill mods on TBS and TSS items is on my list... I'm going to be looking into a lot of the older ones that haven't been around in a while, you might remember them when you find them on some of the Luclin Fabled items this month.

<Sprite> *QuartonerFV* Also relating to the Fabled month, is the xp potion quest susposed to be re-instated? or is this a mistake? i would hate to see people waste there time doing this quest to have the item removed later
<Rashere> We purposefully re-instated the old scavenger hunts (the original one will be back on in the next few days as well) so yes, they're meant to be there.

<Sprite> *Maitreya* A lot of people really liked the monster missions added with Depths of Darkhollow and Prophecy of Ro. Are there e any plans to add more next expansion?
<Nodyin> I really enjoy Monster Missions - I think as far as the content creation goes it's a really neat opportunity to tell a story from the "inside." I don't know exactly when we'll do more but I'm always keeping my eyes open for the chance to do another one (or more.)

<Sprite> *Kela-the-Gypsy* DoT damage - I think it would be incredibly beneficial for players to finally see DoT damage both done by player characters and by NPCs. This is currently the only type of damage that isn't parseable and I'm wondering if it would be possible to make this visible at last. It seems silly to have to run to outside websites to get information on npc DoTs
<Rashere> I agree. It's something we'd like to do, but I'm not sure of the technical feasibility of it right now so can't make any promises that it will happen. We're definitely looking into it, though.

<Sprite> *Ronda* Will we ever get an upgrade to the "Fleeting Quiver?"
<Ngreth> I do see the fleeting quiver as something that can get a minor upgrade, mainly making it ten slot. I will not be able to adjust the haste rate on it significantly. I have no particular ETA on this though as other projects I have are higher priority.

<Sprite> *Armarant* When will we see the old plane of mischief reintroduced into the game.
<Vahlar> We have no immediate plans to reintroduce the old Plane of Mischief into the game. We've seen and heard it asked for many times over the years and so it's on the radar. Ideally, we would put that on the list of zone revamps and recreate it in the spirit in which it was originally intended. No immediate plans though, like I said.

<Sprite> *Slacklikeme-DB-DRo* Will the third level of Advanced Pet Discipline (aka /pet no push) originally mentioned in the Omens of War manual ever get implemented?
<Rashere> Unfortunately, while we wanted to implement the pet no push ability, it just wasn't doable with how the physics of combat works in EQ. Unless we were to completely rewrite that system, I don't see that ability making it into the game.

<Sprite> *Hyleth* Is there a chance of the lower level yaulp spells ever being updated? For example most of these contain a stamina regen component which has been useless since endurance was introduced.
<Prathun> I could probably scale down the mana regeneration component from higher level yaulps onto the lower level spells.
<Prathun> There's no indication of stamina regeneration on those spells, in the data or the spell's descriptions. It only exists in our memories.

<Sprite> *Hyleth* Speaking of revamps, whatever happened to the planned Permafrost revamp? I believe Lady Vox was getting fed up with the goblins.
<Maddoc> The 'revamp' you mentioned was something that I worked on when I first joined the team several years ago and was in preparation for some expansion launch events and such -- The direction of that expansion changed, so that revamp was abandoned.

<Sprite> *Guest72* With the new bundle pick hitting stores soon and people growing tired of other games out there I think it would be a good time to draw some new people to the game. I think if there was a fresh start server (no new rulesets, just like Stromm) it would be a great success. Any plans to possibly implement this?
<Vahlar> We are always looking for new ways to draw new players (and older ones) back to EQ. In a recent chat, a player suggested a very similar idea as well. I can't say that we are definitely doing a new server, but I can say we've discussed it. Good idea though!

<Sprite> *Maitreya* Is there any chance the auto-adjusting reward system added with TBS could be added to the experience rewards on monster missions? Currently there are a couple that offer far more experience for the time it takes than others, making it nearly impossible to get a group interested in doing any monster missions outside of Icewell Keep.
<Nodyin> Monster Missions are implemented differently than other missions and because of how we give out the rewards we can't apply the Auto Balancing system to them right now. We can look at making the changes we would need to do that but I can't say when or if we could make that happen.

<Sprite> *Anon716* I'd like to ask if there are plans to make the game more solo friendly? Also the Death penalty, are there any plans in the future to make it less harsh? From my experiance with eq, I've found it harder to play casually than some other games on the market b/c of these reasons.
<Rashere> At its core, EverQuest is built to be a group-based game and that's not something that is really feasible to change even if we wanted to. We have been taking steps to make it easier for people to solo, and will continue to do so in the future, but groups will always be preferred.
<Rashere> As to death, in the high end game, death has a greatly reduced impact due to all the ways to counter its effects. I don't think we'd want to reduce that further, but we have been looking into ways to even things out a bit so that the penalties for death aren't significantly harsher for low level players than they are for high level ones.

<Sprite> *Swampfunk* Hybrid Melee classes like Ranger and Bstlord are complaining that they were shorted focus on their TSS raid armor, do you think you could take the time to look at this? Would it possbile to get Bene haste on the raiding gloves for hybrids?
<Merloc> I'll look into availability of Beneficial Haste for hybrids in TSS... I don't have a problem adding in more items with that focus if needed.
<Merloc> I've added focus effects to several items when deficiencies were pointed out to me... it helps a lot when people give me specific class / focus combinations that are lacking for different levels of gear.

<Sprite> *Crystilla* There is high interest for having the limit increased for the quest window from all types of players (tradeskillers, questors, groupers, raiders) - especially given how 'quest' oriented the last couple of expansions have become. Can this be looked into?
<Rashere> The limitation on number of quests is a technical one. I'll check into what would be involved with upping the limit, but I don't know how feasible it is right now.

<Sprite> *Wycca* Phantom Silhouette results from a raid rune turn-in for monks. This disc has a cap of lvl 75, and isn't even usable by most raiding monks in their daily grouping. Can this perchance be replaced by something that would be beneficial to them? Impenetrable or Echo of Misdirection Rk.III perhaps?
<Prathun> Well, unfortunately swapping one rank three spell for another is not an easy change. I can change which spells are returned via the quest trade-in, but that means that some people will have spells which are simply no longer available.
<Prathun> And have to expend *more* runes to get the new spells which are available. There are a number of swaps I'd like to make on the rank III spell lineup and it looks like the best solution is going to be simply adding them to the list.

<Sprite> *Gabool* are there plans to tone down the stats on fabled armor, or increase the difficulty of some of the raid mobs? TSS quality gear is dropping off some rather easy raid mobs as is
<Rashere> The Fabled NPCs have always dropped gear that was considered very nice for their difficulty. We do it on purpose as part of the event. It only happens once a year and the items are generally quite rare, particularly the raid ones where a raid mob might spawn 10 times total over the course of the event.
<Rashere> We keep an eye on things, though, and where appropriate will make changes, but there are no broad changes planned right now.

<Sprite> *Riverwinter* Any word on repairs to Skin to Vines, to allow it to be recast?
<Prathun> I've confirmed the Skin to Vines reapplication bug and forwarded it on to the coders.
<Prathun> Since this has been a sticky bug to fix, I'll put in a temporary design change to work around the problem until we get something more solid in place.

<Sprite> *maelin* When is the Charm of Lore quest going to get fixed? The charm still does not reach max stats with all items turned in.
<Vahlar> We were researching and working on the Charm quest recently and had it tested. I will look into it today to see what the hold up is.

<Sprite> *Swampfunk* 2handed weapons did not recieve any new upgrades in the past 4 expansions when comparing new weaponsand epic weapons with proper augments...what is the reason for this?
<Merloc> I'm looking at 2h weapons right now to make sure they are in line with with 1h weapons of the same tier... From what I've seen so far, they aren't quite up to par, and I'd like them to be. I'll be making some changes to rectify that.

<Sprite> *Wycca* Non-raiding weapons are barely around Despair (24/21) in ratio, despite 5-6 expansions passing since that weapon came out. Your recent 75% of the Average Raider stats on gear comments don't seem to hold true to weaponry. Is this something that will be remedied, or are weapons not applicable to the 75% rule?
<Merloc> The 75% comment was directed more at gear in general, and not damage specifically (which is what weapons are, basically). I don't know if 75% is accurate for DPS, but players should definately be finding the best weapons in newer content.
<Merloc> Armor and weapons are balanced somewhat differently... PC Offense is vs NPC Defense, while PC Defense is balanaced vs. NPC Offense.

<Sprite> That's it for this one folks! Thanks for joining us here on Stratics IRC, the logs will be up on http://www.stratics.com shortly. Feel free to join #everquest for open discussion. Be sure to come by next time!