Ask Your Producer: Spring 2016

Tecton

Frederich said:

@Tecton Who's your favorite god BESIDES yourself and Sarapis.  We got three different categories for this one

Active
Dead/Missing
"Coolest Death"

Also, you're awesome.

Alive: Sartan
Dead: Matsuhama
Death: Hrrm, top three would be: Pentharian killing Apollyon, Pandemonium killing Indrani, and the Hermes bomb.

Thanks, you're not so bad yourself  

Frederich

Niceee.  I was researching some of the dead divine and Hermes was definitely on that list for me.

I think one of the "Stupidest" deaths was uh... Keresis.  It all could have been avoided.

Kayeil

Tecton said:

Tecton said:

Kayeil said:

Speaking of Aussie food, I've learned some interesting/weird ones from Nat and Seragorn.

Do you eat kangaroo or fairy bread? What kind of things do you like from Australia that might be "weird" or "different" to an American?

I have eaten both of those things, yes.

Oh, for the second part of your question... Vegemite, pavlova, lamingtons all fit the bill here! 

I've heard of vegemite and seen pictures, sounds gross. Haven't heard of the last two, or that meat pie you were talking about earlier. I'll poke at Seragorn later. 

Tolan

This reminds me of my old favourite childhood delicacy .. Marmite!

Penwize

Combat design related question I've always wondered about.  Why did you make the choice to hide both attack limb damage and limb health?  I could understand hiding one or the other, but hiding both makes the whole system require an exceptional amount of trial, testing and experimentation to discern proper use for.  That seems like a pretty big barrier to entry, and a pretty significant source of friction when making adjustments.  That's in pretty stark contrast to how well documented the entire affliction combat system is from top to bottom (even as far as AFFLICTION SHOW giving full detailed info about everything).

Tecton

Penwize said:

Combat design related question I've always wondered about.  Why did you make the choice to hide both attack limb damage and limb health?  I could understand hiding one or the other, but hiding both makes the whole system require an exceptional amount of trial, testing and experimentation to discern proper use for.  That seems like a pretty big barrier to entry, and a pretty significant source of friction when making adjustments.  That's in pretty stark contrast to how well documented the entire affliction combat system is from top to bottom (even as far as AFFLICTION SHOW giving full detailed info about everything).

Was a decision made before my time, I've retained it because mastering limb combat is a mark of a good knight, especially when it comes to things like vivisect and other finishers. Admittedly, this does have drawbacks, as its one of the last real bastions where client-side systems are needed, so it's something that we'd like to change, just without removing the skill component.

Tahquil

How many monster hunting zones are there? Is there more than one Of each type of zone? (I.e the only zone I know that spawns Shraymors etc is near Tapoa)

Penwize

Hmm, why not document the limb damage each attack does, then?  That would be functionally similar to documenting what each venom does, yet still leaving it up to the player to develop the skills necessary to actually use that information I think.

Tecton

Penwize said:

Hmm, why not document the limb damage each attack does, then?  That would be functionally similar to documenting what each venom does, yet still leaving it up to the player to develop the skills necessary to actually use that information I think.

Well, it's not a static value for one!

Penwize

It's not, but you can document non-static values pretty easily too! Something like:
Limb damage:  500 + 5%
For 500 base, plus 5% of the target's health.  Even if those formulas are a little convoluted, just having them documented at all would be a massive boon for limb classes.

Tecton

Tahquil said:

How many monster hunting zones are there? Is there more than one Of each type of zone? (I.e the only zone I know that spawns Shraymors etc is near Tapoa)

12 areas in total, currently. 3 different areas for each monster difficulty "group"

Tahquil

also, what are you thoughts on the sea monster systems now they're in place?

Tecton

Penwize said:

It's not, but you can document non-static values pretty easily too! Something like:
Limb damage:  500 + 5%
For 500 base, plus 5% of the target's health.  Even if those formulas are a little convoluted, just having them documented at all would be a massive boon for limb classes.

Not really feasible with things like different stances and weapon damages affecting limb damage, without turning everything into a numbers game, which we have 0 interest in doing.

Penwize

Well, for that, what about:
Limb damage: (120+37*d) + (1.25*log(d))%, where d = weapon damage stat?

Doesn't really matter how complex and how many variables the weapon damage formula is, documenting it is better than needing a third-party script or months of trial and error against a large range of target healths to make your own, I think.

Tecton

Tahquil said:

also, what are you thoughts on the sea monster systems now they're in place?

I love the system, it's a lot of fun!

Tecton

Penwize said:

Well, for that, what about:
Limb damage: (120+37*d) + (1.25*log(d))%, where d = weapon damage stat?

Doesn't really matter how complex and how many variables the weapon damage formula is, documenting it is better than needing a third-party script or months of trial and error against a large range of target healths to make your own, I think.

As mentioned above, we've got no interest in making things a numbers game, where every aspect of the game is mathed out and theorycrafted, sorry! I know this aspect of many games has an appeal to some players, but we want people to play the game how they want, and not feel forced into playing a class they dislike because it has a 0.423% higher efficiency.

Penwize

Wait, I'm confused by that response now.  How does documenting an otherwise extremely obfuscated feature that's core to many class's combat methods turn it into a numbers game?  And if it does, how would having that knowledge explicitly (rather than by trial or third party) be any different than how things are currently, and how would that differ than the already easily measurable numbers of affliction classes?

Tecton

Penwize said:

Wait, I'm confused by that response now.  How does documenting an otherwise extremely obfuscated feature that's core to many class's combat methods turn it into a numbers game?  And if it does, how would having that knowledge explicitly (rather than by trial or third party) be any different than how things are currently, and how would that differ than the already easily measurable numbers of affliction classes?

I'm happy to discuss this personally without cluttering the thread up, but to sum up: We're not going to give out formulae/damage numbers, sorry. We'll continue to ponder different solutions to the tediousness of breakpoint farming but none of them will involve distributing/publicising the internal workings.

Kayeil

Have ship purchases and people transing seafaring increased significantly or noticeably since the changes, especially with the addition of seamonster hunting?

Tecton

Kayeil said:

Have ship purchases and people transing seafaring increased significantly or noticeably since the changes, especially with the addition of seamonster hunting?

Yeah, ship usage (ships sailing etc.) is way up since we started on the changes. The number of new ships is mostly steady, but the average active time per vessel has increased.

Frederich

@Tecton  When can Monks get a nice form of movement?  I'd love if we could DASH/SPRINT like a Serpent can to make traveling a bit easier for our less-inclined legs.

I mean come on, we do leg day EVERYDAY

Ahmet

Frederich said:

@Tecton  When can Monks get a nice form of movement?  I'd love if we could DASH/SPRINT like a Serpent can to make traveling a bit easier for our less-inclined legs.

I mean come on, we do leg day EVERYDAY

Tbh monks have the best form of movement.

Mind command touch brazier frederich ftw.

Atalkez

Ahmet said:

Frederich said:

@Tecton  When can Monks get a nice form of movement?  I'd love if we could DASH/SPRINT like a Serpent can to make traveling a bit easier for our less-inclined legs.

I mean come on, we do leg day EVERYDAY

Tbh monks have the best form of movement.

Mind command touch brazier frederich ftw.

Requires undeaf.

Think you can mind travel tho.

Tahquil

How's Val and Bub? Picked a name yet?

Tecton

Tahquil said:

How's Val and Bub? Picked a name yet?

Doing great! Just over 24 weeks along now. We've got a shortlist of a couple of names, but we'll wait until we see her before deciding.

Rom

Any thoughts on cleaning up artefact prices for artefacts that are inherently coupled i.e. (Dual Cutting and Dual Blunt artefacts Classlead #21)? Due to the nature of speed stat averaging for their main abilities it feels like paying twice as much for the effectiveness others pay. I'd understand if this couldn't be done due to customer satisfaction, projected loss, or even disagreement on effectiveness. Not necessarily halving but perhaps a cheaper bundle alternative, which could potentially allow for bundle upgrades as well.


If you were to play Sentinel, would you choose spears or tridents?
If you were to play Bard, which instrument would you specialize in?

Jhui

Any chance you could make the hiding aspect of veil/hood be toggleable?  I think there are quite a few people that don't mind being found, but like to be able to find people without remove/wear on every sense ability.

Tecton

Rom said:

Any thoughts on cleaning up artefact prices for artefacts that are inherently coupled i.e. (Dual Cutting and Dual Blunt artefacts Classlead #21)? Due to the nature of speed stat averaging for their main abilities it feels like paying twice as much for the effectiveness others pay. I'd understand if this couldn't be done due to customer satisfaction, projected loss, or even disagreement on effectiveness.


If you were to play Sentinel, would you choose spears or tridents?
If you were to play Bard, which instrument would you specialize in?

1) We've pondered it previously, but nothing concrete was decided.
2) Spear
3) Mandolin

Tahquil

Ahhhh... My mandolin brother.

Josoul

1) is the new class (or part of it) taken from or hinted as profession in the mythos/seleucar lore or is it something completely new/'alien' to achaean lore? 2) is it likely we get to see the new class before summer or closer to Christmas?