Some info on 1.89 and further plans

[Tesla Monkor]

Hiya,

Thought I would start a topic for this, I didn't take notes, but some of what was mentioned might be interesting for those who were not able to attend.

With the understanding that some of this is "Penciled in" the highlights included such things as a revamp of the keeps in NF and how the levels of the keeps work. (Slated for 1.89 tentatively) Also new bridges that don't have the "High" Portcullis type of overhang and Ramps going up top (in fact, most ladders reduced in numbers and replaced by ramps).

Continuing efforts at class balances. (on-going effort)

Continuing efforts on the crafting front.

A new improved UI, that is less awkward to use. (Tentatively Fall)

"Bushes" around keeps and etc. (Think of Holly bushes outside a house.)

The Use of "Storylines" to introduce new things to existing lands with revised loot(s) and Revamping of the Dragon Models. (Mid one has a "Wolf Head", that he showed us, very cool looking. Head was about the size of a Mino Bull.)

There were likey other things, but those are the ones that I remember, off-hand.

After the presentation, he also took questions of those attending, and took notes of our concerns and in some cases said that certain answers might need to be researched and answered in the "Grab Bag" or such. Some of our concerns, such as the incredible amount of room that a SCer needs to have empty to complete a comnplete set of Armor/weapons to "do an order" and etc, he took a note of for discussion with those who are concerned with that. (Also that a SCer has little that he can just "Stick on a CM" and similar.)

While I just gave a few things which stuck in my mind about the presentation and etc., I hope it may give a begining point of what was said. With any luck, others may remember points that I have neglected to mention. This should be viewed as a starting point to what they seemed to indicate the direction they wish to go in. I will note that While they hope to make these improvements, they may or may not have time and etc to achieve these goals in the time specified, that is why I said penciled in.

IMO, I think when one goes to these things, we should share with everyone what was said, that way we feel less like Mushrooms.

I found these ideas interesting, but some might be appalled by some of the changes (or disinterested). Time for the discussion to begin. LOL

Source: http://vnboards.ign.com/daoc_general_board/b5176/101189017/p1/?6

 

[Gamah]

"Bushes" around keeps and etc. (Think of Holly bushes outside a house.)

Great something to get stuck in while a caster nukes you to death.

 

[Ctuchik]

Great something to get stuck in while a caster nukes you to death.

and great, more things to get the casters stuck while u stomp them down the ground....

 

[Gamah]

and great, more things to get the casters stuck while u stomp them down the ground....

Aye because when they are standing on a keep wall they are easly meleeable

 

[Bugz]

There will be a lot of content updates both graphically and storyline introduced this year. He commented that there will be more content added this year than what is normally added in a typical expansion...but all updates will be free.

Bridges will be redone to remove the ladders. There will be ramps going up to the top and only level of the bridge. This level is low enough to be hit from the bridge also. Will make it harder to hold the top level of the bridge if that is what you are doing.

Central Keeps and Towers are also undergoing some graphical updates to include the removal of the ladders and replacement with ramps. The revamp is designed to reduce pc demands as well. There will be a standard format for each ck and tower. As the ck/tower goes up in level, it doesn't shift you around, and get so tall that only a scout can shoot you, but you can't attack him. The height will allow the concept of 'if they can hit you, you can hit them'. Each realm of course have a different look to them.

A brush system will be introduced in NF. There will be varying heights of the shrubbery that can be used for tactics.

The clip plane will have an option to increase your distance (optional choices based on your needs)

Removal of the too steep to climb points. There may be an alternative introduced to affect movement, but would not stop you in your tracks.

Continued enhancements to the crafting sytem.

New UI. Likely by last part of the year, but working to improve a lot of functions, interfacing, and possibly even a mail system or other ways of transfering stuff.

Class stuff:

Ok, I'll go ahead and start off with this one. Don't think anyone can disagree with this. The animist pets are going to have a second line of sight check introduced. This sounds like a continued effort to address pets in total.
Animists will also be the next class looked at as well in the March patch.

Mentalist... I guess most anything is a plus. They will be getting a permanent charm in addition to the pulsing one. No details on the specifics.

Archers... the point here was 'a complete revamp'. There will no longer be arrows. The interactive combat system for archers are is being changed. One key point is "one click, one shot".


Music classes are going to be looked at in upcoming patches. Maybe not in March, but likely in next one. Looking at how their 'stuff' is cast, and utility.

Content quests are being continued, and will have some nice drops.
Mobs will be updates as well... graphically for sure. The drop revamp will likely be key mobs at first.

All updates this year, including the graphics and the content updates are going to be free.

Open questions indicated that they were looking at CC duration all together.
Pathing issues were being adjusted for in the NF towers/ CKs.
Oil hitting people in the keep is something they are working on.

Likely giving a horse at level 10 to lowbies. Price may be free or very cheap.

There was a discussion about the recent poll. Indications are that there was a desire to work on that, and they will be working on those options for us, including a server move option. They have not set a price.

Current block rates were asked about. This is something they want to address carefully.

This is all that I can remember. There were lots more discussed. Great discussions. The attitude of the room (and there were LOTS there), was good. The updates look to be nice, and some important, good fixes coming up. Obviously, still a long term committment from Mythic.

Some more...

 

[Kagato]

All sounds good, its just a shame its taken them so long to address things that have been blatently obvious to the rest of us since the begining (like the bridges).

 

[Basic_X]

Music class luve, Gamah will go crazy

 

[Gamah]

Music class luve, Gamah will go crazy

woooooooo!

 

[Tesla Monkor]

The archery changes are interesting. No more arrow use and one-click one-shot would be sweet. Although the removal of arrows is a potential nerf to archers, since the arrows used dictate the type of damage done.

 

[Ctuchik]

woooooooo!

see, they DO care or, atleast they pretend to

time for a comeback then gamah?

 

[Gamah]

see, they DO care or, atleast they pretend to

time for a comeback then gamah?

Depends! You know they will give us some shit fluff love instead of addressing real issues.

 

[kivik]

Agree with kagato, those things should've been fixed atleast a year ago...

 

[old.Whoodoo]

Lets hope this isnt just EA fluffling us, often in the past the hand giveth and the hand taketh away.

Good news on camping points tho, and the tower thing, I hope the replacements give more fun in taking towers / keeps and less camping options.

Bow users need some love, sniper specs have been poor for a long time in favour of melee, lets hope these changes are for the good of the 3 classes.

 

[Rhana]

The archery changes are interesting. No more arrow use and one-click one-shot would be sweet. Although the removal of arrows is a potential nerf to archers, since the arrows used dictate the type of damage done.

I would gues they will have a look at that as well when removing the arrows... prolly in the same way as you switch weapon setting on pets.

 

[Awarkle]

im sure they have tried to do the los check on animists before and its failed every time it just ended up gutting the class.

Weather or not they put it in i dont know but if they do i would like my bombers to go through doors

 

[Andrilyn]

Although the 2nd LoS check was needed (not only on Animist pets but on all pets) I do agree that Animists need alot of love(8v8, open area combat etc not siege) because at the already current state nobody is going to pick an Animist over an Eld or even a Chanter and with further nerfs it will just be the end of the class.

 

[Aiteal]

The archery changes are interesting. No more arrow use and one-click one-shot would be sweet. Although the removal of arrows is a potential nerf to archers, since the arrows used dictate the type of damage done.

at the end of the day
you only get 5% bonus or 10% penalty these days depending on arrow choice

if the changes boost accuracy by 5%
its a good trade off

i kinda liked the release system
at least for critshotting from stealth

but beyond that first attack it was unweildy

 

[Rhana]

Although the 2nd LoS check was needed (not only on Animist pets but on all pets) I do agree that Animists need alot of love(8v8, open area combat etc not siege) because at the already current state nobody is going to pick an Animist over an Eld or even a Chanter and with further nerfs it will just be the end of the class.

I dont have a 50 Animist. the one I have is mid-40 I think and onely played RvR once with it. Met some animist when playing against them dough. I dont discards an Animist as a lesser oponent. 3-4 stacked up bombers is very hard to heal or counter. besides, Animist has a rather good lifetap if I remember it corect (I might be wrong here), as as I remeber it, they hit hard but I remember them as a bit slow casters but that can be that I was unbuffed with no-good geers. What I do have seen when playing on Glaston is that Animists dont seems to use all of the arsenal they have in spells and pets. Ok, I havent looked that closely, so can have missed it.

 

[Shike]

nice sweet changes there, way too late as usual with Mythic but.. better late than never I guess.

I actually think that if they had done these changes 2 years ago, alot of ppl woulda stayed and still played.

 

[Awarkle]

animists dont have access to a high dex class like luri or elf they are stuck with syvlan furby (woot) and celt.

Also thier spec lines are either very strong or very weak. Creeping has been the worse line since release the abs debuff is a percentage of a percentage. Its still fun but no where near as good as the necromacers af debuff.

AS for bombers the arboreal line is very good in on the move rvr although the lifetap will hit for about 400 to 500 but you must spec at least mastery of focus 1 if not 2 to get rid of variance and resists.

verdant just has 0 offensive abilities in rvr your pboae is confined to a pet that you have to cast first and noone is going to run at you with a mushroom at your feet. Also the pet taunts and thats it good at interupting.

But we will see what they do to animist bearing in mind that what ever they do they cant risk screwing up pve for hibernia else they will have to give call of a thousand storms to us and nerf theugs

 

[Rhana]

Sylvian starts with 55 in Dex but 70 in Int, that makes a slightly better then the Celts 60-60 in thise attribute, as you get a slightly better punch and if you use bombers, they will stack up nicely anyway so the speed inbetween will not count for mutch in the way of healing... But as I write this I realise that you can see this from the other way around aswell. If you are fast at casting, the damage will meen less as you cant heal inbetween. So I say that Celts must be the better of thise 2, as if you target a hibbie and gets "Celt", it can be what ever class there is.. If you get "Sylvian", its 9 times out of 10, an Animist and therefor a "soft" target.

Firbys I leave out compleatly.. I think they are put in there for same stupid reason (what ever that is) that Halfogres can be wizards and thergs. It must be some strange Joke, made by mythic

 

[Ctuchik]

im sure they have tried to do the los check on animists before and its failed every time it just ended up gutting the class.

if "gutting" is the same as preventing them from casting through walls, floors and roofs. then yeah i guess it is.

u remember how it was when SI came out with the new pet classes? necro pets casting through walls as long as the shade had los, animist turrets doing about the same, just that the caster didnt have to have los. BD healers starting to heal the instant u got damage taken etc etc etc.

if u cant say they have improved all that since then, then u need to look again.

 

[Tesla Monkor]

Well, Mythic has 'gutted' classes before. It doesn't generally stop them when they want to change something.

 

[Ctuchik]

Well, Mythic has 'gutted' classes before. It doesn't generally stop them when they want to change something.

i'm not saying they havent destroyed classes. but not *everything* they have done have been bad for animists.

 

[RS|Phil]

Been hit by a million shrooms after you're inside and when you try pour oil, go inside, sit down to rest and die from even more shroom nukes is just broken, there's no grey area on this.

 

[Huntingtons]

Although the 2nd LoS check was needed (not only on Animist pets but on all pets) I do agree that Animists need alot of love(8v8, open area combat etc not siege) because at the already current state nobody is going to pick an Animist over an Eld or even a Chanter and with further nerfs it will just be the end of the class.

rather play with an ani in some setups, snare shroom, body debuff + bombers/lifetap insta kills people, di or instas wont kick in which is quite nice - they're quite fun/good in 8v8 - ran quite alot with 1 ani in grp while back

 

[Yeke]

Although the removal of arrows is a potential nerf to archers, since the arrows used dictate the type of damage done.

Could be way off here but I took that to mean that the bow used would determine the dmg type done thus opening up ranged elemental damage.

disclamer> I havn't played for ages so excuse my thinking if archers got that fix already.

 

[Ballard]

AS for bombers the arboreal line is very good in on the move rvr although the lifetap will hit for about 400 to 500 but you must spec at least mastery of focus 1 if not 2 to get rid of variance and resists.

Just for your future reference, mastery of focus has no affect on variance.

 

[psyco]

good stuff there

 

[Andrilyn]

rather play with an ani in some setups, snare shroom, body debuff + bombers/lifetap insta kills people, di or instas wont kick in which is quite nice - they're quite fun/good in 8v8 - ran quite alot with 1 ani in grp while back

Problem with them is though they have a less dex race(60 base max) and a higher cast time on bombers(3.0 sec) than most other casters have on their spec nuke, you can outrun their bombers, bombers are useless near certain area's like Keeps/Bridges/Towers and area's where it looks like 2 pieces of land are "glued" together as they will spaz out.
The LT is nice yes mainly due to it being energy damage and not alot of people cap that damage type in their temps but it's still the weakest LT out of all LT's and you have to spec for it unlike sorc/cabby one which is baseline and higher delve + HP return.

Also Animist dont have any reliable CC, tanglers and once again the spaz bomber roots which make them not viable to use 50% of the time.
I know the extreme damage they can produce with Bombers + LT together but against any decent group the main healer will see them comming the person that has bombers cast on him will see them comming and theres no way you wouldn't be able to heal all that damage with pre healing those slow bombers or even kite away from them(possible with caster speed+sprint), shrooms are generally pointless in 8v8 as you can only demez the main pet(has a small AoE effect) so you need to stack them up with the main pet to demez them and you will highly likely lose them to 1 AoE caster or spread them out and lose them to mez.

It doesn't mean a decent Animist can't cause havoc and be quite nice in 8v8 but imo they still under-par with other hib casters, they also have no RA's that help the group out, no abilities that help the group (resists shrooms are pointless).
Like I said it's all fair they nerf Animist in siege (well not really a nerf but a pet fix) but they need to boost them in open combat and looking at the post made by the designer that's not going to happen, quite the opposit.