Ask your Producer: Mayaween Edition

Tecton

It has been a few months since I've done a Q+A session, so I'm opening up a new thread to allow you all to post your burning questions!

Since this is the forums, I feel like I should probably post a "come at me bro" image - but in the interests of not making this a picture thread, I'll abstain!

Mishgul

Can we have an "Achaean Idol" competition where all the best up and coming vocalists come to New Thera and sing songs, in front of a panel of judges (Scarlatti, Valnurana and some other god that sounds appropriate), and the winner gets to sign a record album worth 1 million credits with Tecton, plus 20% royalties?

Triak

Tecton

Mishgul said:

Can we have an "Achaean Idol" competition where all the best up and coming vocalists come to New Thera and sing songs, in front of a panel of judges (Scarlatti, Valnurana and some other god that sounds appropriate), and the winner gets to sign a record album worth 1 million credits with Tecton, plus 20% royalties?

Only if Sartan can be Simon Cowell, and instead of just saying mean things, he tears you limb from limb.

Tecton

Triak said:

<annoyingly large image>

Multiclassing is still a fair way off (many RL months), we're splitting off tradeskills from classes first, which involves designing, coding, and testing 11 new skills to backfill, as well as modifying the tradeskills to make them more accessible. Once that is done though, the multiclassing changes should be relatively quick.

Carmell

How long until the new novice system comes in?

Penwize

I have two burning questions, really:

Talismans!  When are we going to see more of them, and how did you feel the current ones played out?  It's a system with a whole lot of potential and I'm pretty eager to see it expanded.

Server-side queueing! I gave you a couple of long posts about my thoughts on the host of problems it could solve and quality of life improvement it would be for all sorts of people, but your maybe response scared me.  Are you going to look into it more? Pretty please?

Triak

And to be serious...

New artifacts/SoW items.  I mean adding pet horns is great and all, but what gives here?  People want to throw money at IRE and instead of using Gorrilla Glue you're using Elmers.

Melodie

Can we expect any large, shiny, fun new things by the holidays? If so, slightly more obvious hints, pretty please?

Tecton

Carmell said:

How long until the new novice system comes in?

Very soon! We're putting the final touches on the new into/post-intro stuff now, after that, it's a simple matter of tying city novicehood in for the various cities!

Tecton

Penwize said:

I have two burning questions, really:

Talismans!  When are we going to see more of them, and how did you feel the current ones played out?  It's a system with a whole lot of potential and I'm pretty eager to see it expanded.

Server-side queueing! I gave you a couple of long posts about my thoughts on the host of problems it could solve and quality of life improvement it would be for all sorts of people, but your maybe response scared me.  Are you going to look into it more? Pretty please?

1) Apart from the drop rates being entirely too high, I think they are going well, something new to spice up bashing is always good.

2) As I said in my post, yep, I'm planning on taking a look at it when I get some time - will require a bit of reworking to handle things for multiple commands - in the meantime, just remove that "stand" from the front of your combo macro!

Tecton

Triak said:

And to be serious...

New artifacts/SoW items.  I mean adding pet horns is great and all, but what gives here?  People want to throw money at IRE and instead of using Gorrilla Glue you're using Elmers.

Shop of Wonders artefacts are actually quite difficult to come up with, there's a lot of "behind the scenes" considerations - like how much it is going to affect the in-game economy and combat balance, as well as things like "should be be a regular artefact so more people can enjoy it".

Penwize

Tecton said:

Penwize said:

I have two burning questions, really:

Talismans!  When are we going to see more of them, and how did you feel the current ones played out?  It's a system with a whole lot of potential and I'm pretty eager to see it expanded.

Server-side queueing! I gave you a couple of long posts about my thoughts on the host of problems it could solve and quality of life improvement it would be for all sorts of people, but your maybe response scared me.  Are you going to look into it more? Pretty please?

1) Apart from the drop rates being entirely too high, I think they are going well, something new to spice up bashing is always good.

2) As I said in my post, yep, I'm planning on taking a look at it when I get some time - will require a bit of reworking to handle things for multiple commands - in the meantime, just remove that "stand" from the front of your combo macro!

Awesome, makes me feel better to know you're going to look into it!  I can only take out stand sometimes though, lots of stuff prones with regularity!  ...and that still leaves me with transmuting all the time, grabbing gold and grabbing shards.  Apparently, I do too many things too often while bashing.

Tecton

Melodie said:

Can we expect any large, shiny, fun new things by the holidays? If so, slightly more obvious hints, pretty please?

Yep, we've actually got something new coming out in the next few days!

Iocun

Who is your favourite player?

Daklore

Monks? When are they getting nerfed into oblivion?

Also Bards. Yunodeletethem?

Penwize

Iocun said:

Who is your favourite player?

That's not a fair question, he can't answer Penwize without people thinking I paid him off!

Tecton

Iocun said:

Who is your favourite player?

Timux

Tecton

Daklore said:

Monks? When are they getting nerfed into oblivion?

Also Bards. Yunodeletethem?

We're actually going back and implementing the ranged changes for the earlier classes that we missed, they should be ready to go in the next day or so.

I haven't deleted bards because I like some nice melodic singing in the background when I drink in your tears.

Penwize

Tecton said:

Triak said:

And to be serious...

New artifacts/SoW items.  I mean adding pet horns is great and all, but what gives here?  People want to throw money at IRE and instead of using Gorrilla Glue you're using Elmers.

Shop of Wonders artefacts are actually quite difficult to come up with, there's a lot of "behind the scenes" considerations - like how much it is going to affect the in-game economy and combat balance, as well as things like "should be be a regular artefact so more people can enjoy it".

Can I make a suggestion in this regard?  A while back you held a short contest where people submitted ideas for this and you created the best one.  That was pretty successful I think, and the landstrider boots that came out of them are pretty nice.  Before this month's over, you should do that same thing for another one or two items.  Maybe put it up on the forums even?

Eld

Any chance we'll be seeing adjustments to the allotment of classes to houses (for example, allowing classes to be accepted by multiple houses within a city), either with the new novicehood stuff or independent of it?

Triak

@Penwize I sent like 10+ complete (name, prices, usage) artifact ideas over to @Sarapis

That was kind of the thrust of my question, only one actually had any combat effects.  (my preciousssss anklet of evading)

Tecton

Eld said:

Any chance we'll be seeing adjustments to the allotment of classes to houses (for example, allowing classes to be accepted by multiple houses within a city), either with the new novicehood stuff or independent of it?

Yes, Targossas houses will be like this, and we hope we can get other houses onboard with making the required changes to make it work in their cities.

Triak

Are there any future large scale (touching every person/faction/city) story lines sagas going on anymore?  Death's Heart, Vertani Invasion, Bal'met..(I'd settle for Slith at this point)


Hoping that I do not get this as an answer I'll go ahead and say that I do understand amount of time and effort that has to be expended for things like Bal'met.

Trevize

Tecton said:

Eld said:

Any chance we'll be seeing adjustments to the allotment of classes to houses (for example, allowing classes to be accepted by multiple houses within a city), either with the new novicehood stuff or independent of it?

Yes, Targossas houses will be like this, and we hope we can get other houses onboard with making the required changes to make it work in their cities.

If it requires sinking all the cities too, we're going to need to summon Estach back.

Tecton

Triak said:

Are there any future large scale (touching every person/faction/city) story lines sagas going on anymore?  Death's Heart, Vertani Invasion, Bal'met..(I'd settle for Slith at this point)


Hoping that I do not get this as an answer I'll go ahead and say that I do understand amount of time and effort that has to be expended for things like Bal'met.

Yes, the NextBigThing(tm) is in the brainstorming stages at the moment!

Tecton

Trevize said:

Tecton said:

Eld said:

Any chance we'll be seeing adjustments to the allotment of classes to houses (for example, allowing classes to be accepted by multiple houses within a city), either with the new novicehood stuff or independent of it?

Yes, Targossas houses will be like this, and we hope we can get other houses onboard with making the required changes to make it work in their cities.

If it requires sinking all the cities too, we're going to need to summon Estach back.

Sarapis needed some oil to try and kickstart the flame, so we had to melt the fat bugger down..

Antonius

I'm pretty sure they're decided at an IRE-wide level, but do you have any idea if there'll be another artefact discount sale any time soon? I have a whole load of credits that want to be spent on new toys, but I don't want to end up spending them right before a sale.

Following on from Serpents, are there any short term plans to make Dexterity more attractive either generally or for specific classes?

And finally, are there any specifics you can share about the Weaponry rework that's been mentioned?

Carmell

Tecton said:

Eld said:

Any chance we'll be seeing adjustments to the allotment of classes to houses (for example, allowing classes to be accepted by multiple houses within a city), either with the new novicehood stuff or independent of it?

Yes, Targossas houses will be like this, and we hope we can get other houses onboard with making the required changes to make it work in their cities.

I was right.  I was pretty sure that was how Targ houses were going to be set up good to know I was right.

Alcinae

Not exactly a serious question, but what would have to be your favorite class in the game? RP-wise, combat-wise, or both?

Tecton

Antonius said:

I'm pretty sure they're decided at an IRE-wide level, but do you have any idea if there'll be another artefact discount sale any time soon? I have a whole load of credits that want to be spent on new toys, but I don't want to end up spending them right before a sale.

Following on from Serpents, are there any short term plans to make Dexterity more attractive either generally or for specific classes?

And finally, are there any specifics you can share about the Weaponry rework that's been mentioned?

1) Not in the near future, no.

2) Potentially, yeah, classes like bards, jesters, and blademasters would be good to cut over to have a more defining primary stat.

3) I've got a page of ideas I'm working on at the moment (ties in with some of the ideas we have for the tradeskill split), the current front runner involves breaking down weapons into more defined classes and having the different classes offer different perks outside the "big three" stats that currently exist. They could be more armour penetration, more limb damage, more bleeding, higher chance of critical hits and things like that.