Ask your Producer: Traits edition

Tecton

With the release of the new traits, I'm opening up this thread for questions you may have about the additions and changes. Feel free to ask your relevant questions, and I'll do my best to answer them! Non-relevant questions will be pruned.

Sena

Is there any chance we can get specific details on the effects of every new trait?

Full list of details requested, if so:

Expert Diagnoser: All the costs/restrictions, how much slower it makes tree.
Lethal Ink: Exactly how much faster/slower the balances are.
Sawbones: What the actual limb health ranges for the different messages are, any costs/restrictions/balance, how much slower restore is.
Limbcrusher: How much avoidance is reduced.
Health Inspector: How much the eq is reduced and mana cost is increased.
Mind Warden: How much the increased mana usage is.
Cheap Shot: How much the damage/bleeding is, and what influences it, if anything.
Sticky Stirrups: What exactly it does and doesn't work on.
Meticulous Care: How much the chance to fade is reduced (and possibly what the chance to fade is without the trait).
Island Trader: How much of a discount it gives.
Traveller: How much it reduces the delay.
Master Milker: How much the balance cost is reduced.
Braggart: How much the limit is increased.
Bottom of the Barrel: Is this increased alcohol tolerance, immunity to the effects of drunkenness up to a certain point, reduction in the severity of effects like slurring, something else? Exactly how much of a difference does it make?

Alternatively, can we have at least 48 hours of unlimited trait resets to thoroughly test the traits ourselves? This is too big a change for just one trait reset to be anywhere near enough without more information.

Edit: Is moss/potash intended to be 8% or 10% now that triage is gone?

Silvarien

I'd love to know what the balance bonus of Nimble is. I've heard conflicting stories. It seems to be the only thing for most people that gives Balance bonus, but I've heard that the bonus is very small, so considering it's a major trait is it worth it?

Uh... I hope this is relevant. Sorry if it's not.

Daslin

Simple question. WHY?

Tecton

Sena said:

Is there any chance we can get specific details on the effects of every new trait?

Expert Diagnoser: All the costs/restrictions, how much slower it makes tree.
Lethal Ink: Exactly how much faster/slower the balances are.
Sawbones: What the actual limb health ranges for the different messages are, any costs/restrictions/balance, how much slower restore is.
Limbcrusher: How much avoidance is reduced.
Health Inspector: How much the eq is reduced and mana cost is increased.
Mind Warden: How much the increased mana usage is.
Cheap Shot: How much the damage/bleeding is, and what influences it, if anything.
Sticky Stirrups: What exactly it does and doesn't work on.
Meticulous Care: How much the chance to fade is reduced (and possibly what the chance to fade is without the trait).
Island Trader: How much of a discount it gives.
Traveller: How much it reduces the delay.
Master Milker: How much the balance cost is reduced.
Braggart: How much the limit is increased.
Bottom of the Barrel: Is this increased alcohol tolerance, immunity to the effects of drunkenness up to a certain point, reduction in the severity of effects like slurring, something else? Exactly how much of a difference does it make?

Alternatively, can we have at least 48 hours of unlimited trait resets to thoroughly test the traits ourselves? This is too big a change for just one trait reset to be anywhere near enough without more information.

Edit: Is moss/potash intended to be 8% or 10% now that triage is gone?

Sheesh man, that's a whole wall of questions!

Expert diagnoser: No cost, no restrictions, can be used at any time. Has it's own cooldown, similar to tree tattoos.

Lethal ink: Currently ~half a second in each direction before modifiers.

Sawbones: Not giving out the percentages for the messages, sorry! This requires eq/balance/not prone, uses balance.

Limbcrusher: ~30% reduction in the mounted bonus to avoidance.

Health Inspector: 75% reduction in equilbrium cost, 100% mana cost.

Mind Warden: 100% mana cost

Cheap shot: Currently 40 - 60 bleed per hit, nothing influences the bleed amount up or down.

Sticky Stirrups: Off the top of my head: Angel/Demon beckon, adduction, gust, grove eject, beguile, yank, boomerang, and mind throw.

Meticulous Care: About ~20% higher chance of them not fading.

Island Trader: 25%

Traveller: About a second.

Master Milker: 30% before modifiers.

Braggart: 25%

Bottom of the Barrel: Reduced chance to slur/hiccup, and it varies based on drunkenness, but to ballpark it, a "stage" of drunkenness.

Tecton

Silvarien said:

I'd love to know what the balance bonus of Nimble is. I've heard conflicting stories. It seems to be the only thing for most people that gives Balance bonus, but I've heard that the bonus is very small, so considering it's a major trait is it worth it?

Uh... I hope this is relevant. Sorry if it's not.

10% reduction

Synbios

Sticky Stirrups: Off the top of my head: Angel/Demon beckon, adduction, gust, grove eject, beguile, yank, boomerang, and mind throw.

Just to be clear - this just means that the mounted person will still be dragged into the room, but will still remain mounted?

Tecton

Daslin said:

Simple question. WHY?

Couple of reasons, the main two being:

• The way they were setup didn't really lend itself to any real personalisation, about 95% of people had the same 5 traits.
• It skewed combat far too defensively, health pools were too high, especially on classes that could afford to stack huge amounts of health.

Tecton

Synbios said:

Sticky Stirrups: Off the top of my head: Angel/Demon beckon, adduction, gust, grove eject, beguile, yank, boomerang, and mind throw.

Just to be clear - this just means that the mounted person will still be dragged into the room, but will still remain mounted?

Correct.

Silvarien

Tecton said:

Silvarien said:

I'd love to know what the balance bonus of Nimble is. I've heard conflicting stories. It seems to be the only thing for most people that gives Balance bonus, but I've heard that the bonus is very small, so considering it's a major trait is it worth it?

Uh... I hope this is relevant. Sorry if it's not.

10% reduction

Thanks muchly!

Dragonknight

Sena said:

Edit: Is moss/potash intended to be 8% or 10% now that triage is gone?

Missed one.

Tecton

Dragonknight said:

Sena said:

Edit: Is moss/potash intended to be 8% or 10% now that triage is gone?

Missed one.

It was intended to go back to 10%, but it seems that didn't make it to the live server for some reason. I've been keeping a close eye on things since triage was removed though, and I'm not 100% convinced it's required now that I have a far greater sample size. I'll continue monitoring it over the next couple of days and adjust it if required.

Sena

Tecton said:

Bottom of the Barrel: Reduced chance to slur/hiccup, and it varies based on drunkenness, but to ballpark it, a "stage" of drunkenness.

Does this have any effect on the "natural slurring" from Life of the Party?

Tecton

Sena said:

Tecton said:

Bottom of the Barrel: Reduced chance to slur/hiccup, and it varies based on drunkenness, but to ballpark it, a "stage" of drunkenness.

Does this have any effect on the "natural slurring" from Life of the Party?

Yes, they should probably be conflicting traits, to be honest.

Tael

I'm actually feeling a little bit better seeing the rationale and exact figures. And I definitely like minor traits having very few combat implications so people can actually personalise characters.

I still don't like many of the new traits having such huge drawbacks though. There's already the drawback of not being able to select a different trait, which is rather large. Things like sawbones and expert diagnoser are interesting and potentially useful, especially to newbies, but spending a major trait on them and getting slower recovery/tree is really going to reduce the number of people who take them. I get the logic of it - make people more offensive and less defensive at the same time to help mitigate the turtling problem - but that doesn't work if people don't take them.

And I'm still not wild about across-the-board health lowering either. I think a system that dealt more with the problem cases of very high health while leaving lower health intact would have been better, but that's whatever.

Edit: Seeing as how they're very intertwined, it might be reasonable to unspecialise everyone's races too.

Drauka

After a while can you post a table of statistics of what traits people chose? For just those curious.

Cahin

First off, I like the update having had a chance to take a look at it.  I find myself conflicted with two setups I want to use an apostate so I'm probably gonna try both out.  I like how the removal of a lot of the commonly picked traits and restrictions of certain combinations allows me to guilt-free pick some more unique personalized minor traits.

The web tattoo speed increase is overpowered in my opinion.  With a diadem, people are web/biting and web/impale for blademaster becomes more of a reality even without a diadem.  This almost makes a buckawns a requirement to avoid getting lamed. 

Tecton

Tael said:

I'm actually feeling a little bit better seeing the rationale and exact figures. And I definitely like minor traits having very few combat implications so people can actually personalise characters.

I still don't like many of the new traits having such huge drawbacks though. There's already the drawback of not being able to select a different trait, which is rather large. Things like sawbones and expert diagnoser are interesting and potentially useful, especially to newbies, but spending a major trait on them and getting slower recovery/tree is really going to reduce the number of people who take them. I get the logic of it - make people more offensive and less defensive at the same time to help mitigate the turtling problem - but that doesn't work if people don't take them.

And I'm still not wild about across-the-board health lowering either. I think a system that dealt more with the problem cases of very high health while leaving lower health intact would have been better, but that's whatever.

Yep, I can see why the lower health pools would be a shock based on how high they've been for the past year. You have to remember though that before traits and racial specialisations came in, pretty much everyone had lower health pools than they have today (due to normalisation)

Tecton

Cahin said:

First off, I like the update having had a chance to take a look at it.  I find myself conflicted with two setups I want to use an apostate so I'm probably gonna try both out.  I like how the removal of a lot of the commonly picked traits and restrictions of certain combinations allows me to guilt-free pick some more unique personalized minor traits.

The web tattoo speed increase is overpowered in my opinion.  With a diadem, people are web/biting and web/impale for blademaster becomes more of a reality even without a diadem.  This almost makes a buckawns a requirement to avoid getting lamed. 

Web was one of the difficult decisions with putting lethal ink in, but we decided to not over-nerf it by balancing it too conservatively. Now that it is live, and we have a much larger sample size for data, we'll be keeping a close eye on it. If it's needed, we may have to trade it out for hourglass or something, but it's too early to tell.

Tecton

Drauka said:

After a while can you post a table of statistics of what traits people chose? For just those curious.

Potentially, yes. I don't have a handy reference like I do with race/classes, but I can probably whip something similar up when I have some free time (ha!)

Cahin

Can we know how Airborne compares to the Brooch of the Tempest?

Any chance at a percentage?

Tecton

Cahin said:

Can we know how Airborne compares to the Brooch of the Tempest?

Any chance at a percentage?

>50% of not getting blown in the wind.

Nellaundra

Wait, so basically Triage doesn't exist as a trait anymore but everyone has it?  Yessss.

Sena

If questions about old traits are okay:

What exactly does Aim to Kill do? Is it something like "x% damage bonus on all criticals"? Can you say how much the damage is increased? This is something that's pretty hard to test, since denizens that can show their damage are immune to criticals.

How does Light Stepper (also Feral Spirit) differ from increased dexterity, since dexterity is mostly just increased dodge chance already?

Veldrin

Nellaundra said:

Wait, so basically Triage doesn't exist as a trait anymore but everyone has it?  Yessss.

8% still, should have been 10% but now he isn't sure if it's needed so it'll stay at 8% for now while he monitors it.

Why make the Receptive body/mind major traits and make them conflict with stat boosts? I got nothing I want for minor traits now.

Tecton

Sena said:

If questions about old traits are okay:

What exactly does Aim to Kill do? Is it something like "x% damage bonus on all criticals"? Can you say how much the damage is increased? This is something that's pretty hard to test, since denizens that can show their damage are immune to criticals.

How does Light Stepper (also Feral Spirit) differ from increased dexterity, since dexterity is mostly just increased dodge chance already?

Aim to kill adds a small bonus to the damage before it is multiplied by the critical modifier, so it gets better the higher your critical strength.

Light Stepper / Feral Spirit are the equivalent to multiple points of dexterity in the calculations for avoidance.

Tecton

Veldrin said:

Nellaundra said:

Wait, so basically Triage doesn't exist as a trait anymore but everyone has it?  Yessss.

8% still, should have been 10% but now he isn't sure if it's needed so it'll stay at 8% for now while he monitors it.

Why make the Receptive body/mind major traits and make them conflict with stat boosts? I got nothing I want for minor traits now.

See my previous answer to Daslin's question for the reasoning.

Melodie

(Clan): Voc says, "Hrmm. So, the response to my issue says that the mounted avoidance bonus does work against denizens, as does the dodge trait."

What kind of bonus are we looking at with the dodging major trait vs. adventurers and denizens?

Tecton

Melodie said:

(Clan): Voc says, "Hrmm. So, the response to my issue says that the mounted avoidance bonus does work against denizens, as does the dodge trait." What kind of bonus are we looking at with the dodging major trait vs. adventurers and denizens?

Equivalent to a couple of points of dexterity.

Sena

I've always thought that dexterity (and any other dodging bonuses) were meaningless against denizens. Do they give physical damage reduction against denizens instead? Does that apply to all dodging increases (speed elixir, weaving, acrobatics, etc.)?

Veldrin

Delphinus said:

I'll echo the request for some more concrete facts. Also,

Limbcrusher
----------------------------------------------------------------------
About:
You're guaranteed to always break four limbs while TRAMPLING, but at the cost of reduced avoidance from being mounted.

Major Trait: Yes
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Necromancy buff.

^Was anything considered for that buff or was it an oversight?