Letter to the Players Follow-Up
posted on 05-Mar-2004

In listening to the feedback received since posting the Letter to the Players, we've realized that there are some gaps in our communication process. One of the largest of these is that frequently players are not advised of changes included in an upcoming month until the Letter to the Players for that month is posted. Because of our schedule, this means that by the time we are seeing your reaction to planned changes, we are already in a freeze state in which altering or reverting those changes are very difficult.

I'd like to apologize for not taking further steps to prevent all of you from being blindsided by some of our upcoming changes. More to the point, we're making some big changes to the way we release information about upcoming updates. We'll be releasing information farther ahead of time, which will allow us to listen to your feedback and discuss these concepts and ideas with you long before we begin development on them.

In addition to this article, we plan to provide in-depth articles regarding several large-scale systems and our visions for them. The first of these, regarding PvP combat, should be posted early next week. The second will be regarding the Treasure changes and will follow a week or so later. The third will talk about our plans to improve the buffing process and will probably follow a week after the Treasure article.

Each Letter to the Players will now have three sections. The first section is going to contain information about the upcoming month. The second section, "In Development," will contain information about what we are working on for the next month. The third section, "In Concept," is going to contain information about changes that we are working on for later updates. This will give you more information about future changes and more opportunity to provide feedback on these changes before we even write a single line of code. Only changes to existing game systems will be included in these updates; in general we will not release information about upcoming content.

It is important to stress that nothing in the "In Development" or "In Concept" is final. These are all works in progress. Nothing in either section is guaranteed to go into the game in the form described, or even at all. The purpose of these sections is to find out how you feel about these topics before they are final.

Rather than explain in further detail, you can see exactly what I mean below. We wanted to get this information about April and beyond up as soon as possible, as many of the changes you'll see below directly impact many of the concerns that were raised regarding the March Letter to the Players.

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Coming in March

(These are items that are coming in the March event. In the past, we would have saved this information for the March Rollout Article. Under the new communication system, they are appropriate for the Letter to the Players.)
"Hidden" Properties No Longer Hidden

There are several quest weapons, such as the Quadruple-Bladed Axe, that have what we've referred to in the past as a "hidden property". Starting in March, these properties will appear when you ID such an item.

An item that is described as having the Biting Strike property has a greater chance of a critical hit in combat. An item that is described as having the Crushing Blow property has a greater than normal critical multiplier - it is likely to do more damage in a critical hit.

Unlike imbues, these properties do not scale with your skill; they are set to a specific level.

Character Options

Over the years, we've added several options to the Character Options panel. The grouping of these options was, well, counterintuitive at times. Starting in March, the options will be grouped under the following headers: User Interface Behavior, User Interface Display, Grouping, Other Players, Character Behavior, and Chat.

In addition, we're adding several new options - Character Display Options, and Crafting Confirmation.
Character Display Options

These options will be found under Other Players and control what other players can see if they successfully assess you. The different pieces of information that you can toggle on or off are:

• Your real-time date of birth.
• Your in-game age.
• Your chess rank.
• Your fishing skill.
• Your number of deaths.

All of these options are toggled off by default.
Crafting Confirmation

This is something that has been requested several times, and we're happy to be able to provide it. Starting in March, there will be a new option in the Character Options panel under User Interface Display: "Crafting Chance of Success Dialog."

This option is unchecked by default. If you leave it unchecked, all crafting interactions, including Tinkering, behave as they have in the past. Most interactions simply either succeed or fail, while some interactions - mostly Tinkering - have a warning in advance.

If you check this option, any existing warnings will not be shown. Instead, you will make the "clapping" motion and the following will occur:

• If you have a 100% chance of success in this craft interaction, it will succeed.

• If you have a 0% chance of success in this craft interaction, it will automatically abort and you will receive the message, "You cannot possibly succeed" in the upper-left.

• If your odds of success are somewhere between 0% and 100%, you will receive a dialog box stating your odds and asking you if you want to continue. If you choose to continue, the interaction will either succeed or fail as it has in the past. If you choose not to continue, the craft interaction will abort and you will receive the message, "You chicken out" in the upper-left.

Obviously, few crafters will leave the option permanently checked or unchecked. If you're making flour and your odds are, say, 95%, you probably want to leave it unchecked. On the other hand, if you're tinkering your best weapon with Black Garnet, you probably want to check the option so you have an idea what your odds are.
Ulgrim

We want to warn you in advance that Ulgrim won't be found in his house immediately after the March event. Don't worry, he's not gone for good! He's just run into a bit of trouble - see the teaser. You'll be seeing more of Ulgrim later in the month, and you'll be able to complete the quest in his house again before the month is over.

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In Development

(These are the game changes that we are working on for the April event. None of these items are guaranteed to be added for April, as scheduling and priorities can change. Once the process has matured over the next two months or so, In Development will contain items from the In Concept section that we've discussed with you and decided to put in the development pipeline. There is no set schedule for In Development items to go into an episode; this section only notes that they are being worked on.

As this is the first month for this section, it contains the work for April and your feedback on these topics would be particularly valuable.)
Settlement Portals

For some time, the Settlement Portal Hubs have been found outside almost all of the towns and cities of Dereth. These Hubs provided fast transportation all across Dereth, but many players have complained that... well, they just look ugly.

In April, we are planning to introduce the first phase of a two-phase process to remove the Settlement Portals. The first phase is the creation of portal summoning gems for all of the Settlements that are currently linked to the Hubs. Each Settlement will have a vendor who will sell that Settlement's gem.

The second phase, currently planned for May, is the removal of the Settlement Portal Hubs entirely.

The goal of these changes is to remove the ugliness of the Hubs, as well as encourage exploration and travel through Dereth's wilderness. If there are several Settlements that you visit regularly, you have the opportunity to purchase gems for these Settlements in the month of April, before the Hubs are removed. If you wish to visit your friend's home, you can ask you friend to purchase that Settlement's gem for you. We would not be surprised to see gems for particularly popular Settlement destinations being traded in the Marketplace!
Content Revisions

We plan to revise two towns and two quests in April. Holtburg will be revised in the same way that Shoushi was in January and Yaraq will be in March. The portal drops and Lifestone locations will be made more convenient, and the surrounding content will be adjusted for balance.

The second town that we are planning to revise is the Lugian fortress of Linvak Tukal. It will be getting a Lifestone and direct portal access, without the need to fight through the entryway.

Along with Linvak Tukal, we plan to revise the Arm, Heart, Mind quest. Confusing aspects of the quest timing will be fixed, and the quest rewards will be adjusted.

The second quest to be revised is the Little Green Seeds quest. Terese's interactions and the Swamp Garden will be revised, and new types of seeds for higher-level creatures will be introduced. This doesn't mean new colors of dye, however.
Vendor Buy-Sell Rates

Ever since the creature spawn changes, there have been some disparities between the difficult of hunting around certain towns and the buy-sell rates of the vendors inside those towns. In April, we plan to adjust the vendor buy-sell rates in several towns to better reflect the surrounding area.

In addition, to give each town some unique flavor, each town will have one or two vendors who have better buy/sell rates than the rest of the town.
Dispel Revisions

For some time, the dispel gems have been considerably better than any of the dispel spells or dispel potions. Dispel gems could remove all of your debuffs in one shot, they only removed negative spells, and they could remove level VII spells.

To improve the situation and create more versatility and usefulness for dispels, we are planning to add level VIIs to spells and potions, and decrease the power of gems:

• Dispel spells: There will be level VII versions of Item, Creature, and Life dispels, both Self and Other. These spells will remove a random number of negative spells from the target when successfully cast, and will not remove positive spells.

• Dispel potions: There will be level VI and VII player-craftable dispel potions, which will be created in a process similar to the existing dispel potions. One option we are considering is the removal of the two lowest levels of dispel potions and shifting the entire crafting process "down" two steps. For example, the process that currently results in a level V dispel potion would now create a level VII dispel potion.

  These potions will remove a random number of negative spells from the user, and will not remove positive spells.

• Dispel gems: These gems will have their power reduced. They will no longer remove all negative spells from the user, they will instead remove a random number. We are also looking at the possibility of making them stackable.

In general, when I write, "a random number" above, the final random range has not yet been finalized. We're looking at a range of or near 1-6 spells for each dispel.
Buffing Improvements

The Buffing Changes article that will be following will provide information on all of our planned buffing improvements and how they fit together. The first of these, faster self-buffs, is planned for April.

In April, we plan to make all Creature and Life Self buffs cast at the same speed as a level I spell, no matter what their level. This should cut down on the amount of time spent preparing for battle for players who cast their own buffs.

Why the Self spells and not Others? We believe that training a skill yourself should always have some advantage over relying on others who have trained the skill.

What about Banes? As there are no "Self" or "Other" versions of these spells, we need to be a bit more careful about our changes to them. You'll see some information regarding our plans for Banes in the In Concept section below, as well as in the coming Buffing Changes article.
House Purchase Timer

An issue that has resulted in a great deal of feedback is that of players camping houses solely for the purpose of resale and a profit.

After receiving all of your feedback, we've come at this issue from a different angle. If we can prevent these players from being able to quickly unload these houses and purchase new ones, it will impede their ability to tie up the entire housing market.

To that end, we would like to introduce a one month timer on purchasing cottages, villas, and mansions. Residential Quarters will be exempt from this timer. This timer is per account, not per character. The timer would not extend across worlds.

What does this mean? All players, whether they own a house or not, would have a field in their housing panel stating the last time that they purchased a house (for these purposes a "house" is a cottage, villa, or mansion) and when they can purchase another one. You cannot purchase a house until 30 days after the last time that you purchased a house.

It is important to note that this has nothing to do with when you lose a house, either through @house abandon or failure to pay maintenance. If you have owned a house for several months and abandon it, you will be able to purchase another house immediately. What you cannot do is purchase a house, abandon it less than 30 days later, and then purchase another house immediately.

Purchasing an apartment in the Residential Quarters does not change this at all. You could buy a house, immediately abandon it, and then immediately purchase an apartment. However you would still have to wait the 30 days before you could purchase another house.

There is a feedback thread on this specific proposal here.
Treasure Changes, Phase 3

We've already mentioned several of the ongoing Treasure changes coming in April in the March Letter to the Players, such as adjustments to border creatures. In addition, we plan to make the following changes:

• Attack and Defense modifiers will appear more frequently on weapons. In March, we're adjusting the minimum, maximum, and average modifiers that are found - in April, you will find these modifiers more frequently in general.

• Mana Conversion modifiers will also appear more frequently on casters. At high levels of loot, you will no longer be able to find casters that don't have a Mana Conversion modifier. In addition, the average Mana Conversion modifier will adjusted upwards.

• New Defense Modifiers. In April, you will be able to find Melee Defense modifiers on casting items, and Missile Defense and Magic Defense modifiers on all weapons and casting items. Casters will now be able to have Defender cast on them, as well as be tinkered with Brass. At some point in the future we may create equivalent spells and tinkers for Missile Defense and Magic Defense modifiers on weapons and casters.

• Casting items will have the ability to generate with Defender due to the above change, and will also have the ability to generate with the Hermetic Link spell or cantrips for any of the spells that can be found on them.

"Second-class" Weapons Get Upgrades

In the past, some weapons within a weapon class were just plain undesirable. For example, if you were a Mace user and you wanted maximum damage, there was no reason to look at anything other than a Morningstar. You turned up your nose at a Kasrullah.

In April, we'll be making changes to bring the low-end damage weapons closer to par with the maximum damage weapons in each class. This is similar to the changes we made to bows and crossbows last year; however we are not necessarily giving all weapons within a class the same maximum damage. In many weapon classes there will still be weapons that have a lower maximum than others, but the difference will be much smaller.

No weapon class is having its maximum damage increased, and some classes are being changed more than others. For example, all three types of Unarmed Combat weapons had the same maximum damage, so they will not be touched. Weapons that are considered to be a "secondary damage type" - Rapiers, Spiked Clubs, Naginatas, and Warhammers - are not being changed, and we are taking into account the differences between hiltable and non-hiltable Swords and Daggers.
Fellowship Spells

As we have hinted in the past, we are introducing spells that can be cast on all members of a fellowship simultaneously. The first of these spells are planned for April. We are taking it slow with these - they are only attribute buffs, and no more powerful than existing spells.
Envoy Policy Changes

Katahdin is working with the Dev Team to help the Envoy team better assist you, our players. Here are two of the ideas that we are currently considering:

• Inscriptions. While their primary responsibility would always to be handle calls that are in the Help or Abuse queues, Envoys could make themselves available to uninscribe items upon request. There would also be scheduled times and places on each world where you could find an Envoy to uninscribe your item. We're still working on many of the details and are interested in your thoughts on this topic.

• The Marketplace. On some worlds, trade bots are not placed in the outlying rooms and instead cluster in the primary portal drop room. This can create graphical lag and issues for players who are portaling in to the Marketplace.

The Envoy team would like to encourage players to move their bots into the outer rooms of the Marketplace. In addition, players need to ensure that the speech that they are having their trade bots use is not offensive. We are considering removing offensive or badly-placed trade bots from the Marketplace. These bots would not be banned or booted, but would be removed to isolated rooms until their owners return.

Tell us what you think of the ideas In Development!

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In Concept

(These are the game additions and changes that we are thinking about for May and beyond. We cannot guarantee that any of these additions and changes will be added to the game. The whole purpose of this section is to let you know what we're thinking about doing, give you a chance to comment and to have a dialogue with us about them.

I can't stress strongly enough - it is entirely possible that none of the changes listed below will ever make it into the game. We are going to be carefully watching what you post about these concepts.)
Content Revisions

In the future, we would like to revisit all towns in the same fashion that Shoushi has been revisited, and Yaraq and Holtburg will be revised in March and April respectively.

We also would like to revise the difficulty and rewards of Marae Lassel, Aerlinthe, and the Vesayens in the same way that we revised the Singularity Caul. In each case the island and associated quests would be revised for new (not necessarily higher) target levels.

We would like to revise the following quests: Palenqual's Living Weapons, Singularity Weapons, the "Three Crystals Quests" (aka the Fenmalain, Caulnalain, and Shendolain Vaults), the Quiddity Weapons, and the Composite Bow and Crossbow.
Better Weapons

In discussing the Treasure changes, we've mentioned that one of the reasons that the changes were necessary was to allow us to add cool new loot at the top end. What are we thinking of? We're thinking of higher wield-req melee and missile weapons and wield-req casting items. To prevent these new items from throwing off existing damage-over-time balance, as well as PvP balance, we are looking at possibilities other than simply increased damage. One possibility is new, special imbue effects that cannot be added through tinkering, or - for the missile weapons and casters - special bonuses to specific types of elemental damage.
New Loot Armor

Right now the loot system has some rather obvious flaws when it comes to armor, such as when a high-level creature drops AL20 leather. We have held off on adjusting the armor drop system as we are looking at a complete revamp of it including new types of armor. We're looking at adding a new class of armor for each of the three races. These new types would not be considerably better than existing armor, but would mix up the existing racial armor stereotypes. For example, perhaps the new Aluvian armor has metal protections like Celdon, but is a two-piece set like Amuli? These questions are still being investigated.

If it appears that we will have to delay the introduction of the new armor, we can look at adjusting the armor drop tables without them. We would prefer not to, but we understand that you would prefer to stop finding AL20 armor in non-low-level loot as soon as possible.
Rares

Rares would be an entirely new type of loot drop, separate from existing loot and trophies. Rares would have an extremely small chance of dropping from any creature, at any time - you would be just as likely to find a Rare on a Drudge Prowler as you would on a Virindi Profatrix.

Rares would be designed to be useful to almost any character, but not better in way that could be unbalancing. For example, we are considering a Rare form of healing kit that has interesting properties with regards to chances of healing and the amount healed. We would probably not consider a Rare sword that has a base damage triple existing swords.

Rares are intended to be exciting and interesting semi-unique items. When you find a Rare, we want your reaction to immediately be, "Cool!" no matter which Rare it is.

One interesting note - to help us determine what the drop rate on Rares might be, we decided to find out exactly how many creatures are killed by our players in a given month. We added code to the game that would count this for us! In the time between the January and February events, here are how many creatures each world killed:

Darktide: 13.5 million
Harvestgain: 10.4 million
Frostfell: 10.1 million
Wintersebb: 9.2 million
Leafcull: 8.9 million
Solclaim: 8.8 million
Thistledown: 8.8 million
Morningthaw: 8.4 million

We won't be doing these counts every month, but it's some interesting information to think about!

More information on the above three Treasure topics may be found in the upcoming Treasure article.
Further Buffing Improvements

In addition to accelerated self buffs and Fellowship spells, we are looking at introducing spells that buff multiple attributes simultaneously. These spells could be introduced for Life, Creature, and/or Item Magic. The exact details of these spells - how do you learn them, what is the cost, how many attributes do they buff simultaneously - are still in development.

More information on this topic will be in the upcoming Buffing Improvements article.
Missile Attack Improvements

We are investigating two improvements for Bow, Crossbow, and Thrown Weapons characters:

• Recalibrating the accuracy/speed slider. Currently setting the slider to the far left allows you to fire at maximum speed, but penalizes your skill by 50%. Likewise, setting the slider to the far right gives you a 50% bonus to your skill, but fires at the slowest rate.

  We are investigating the possibility of adjusting this slider to allow for fastest speed with a smaller penalty - or no penalty - without changing the bonus given at slowest speed.

• A new pathing type for missile attacks. War Mages have the ability to choose between Bolts and Arcs for the purposes of targeting, whereas missile users have only one option. We are investigating the possibility of giving archers a pathing option. This would likely be either through some sort of option in the attack bar, or through a new form of ammunition.

Town Improvements

We are investigating several ideas to increase the appeal of towns and increase the number of players that can be found in towns at any given time. Some of these ideas include some form of crafting bonus that can only be found in towns, or some form of capture-and-hold dynamic to appeal to PK and PKL players.
Allegiance Improvements

We're investigating a number of improvements to Allegiances in general. Some of these include allegiance officers with titles, more controls on who can and cannot enter an allegiance (such as account bans), better chat functions and controls, and the ability to name your Allegiance.
Mansion Improvements

We're well aware that many players feel that Mansions are not worth their maintenance cost, and we are working on several ideas to make Mansions more valuable. Most of these are special hookable objects similar to Jojii's Font.
PvP Changes

A number of the above topics touch on PvP combat, but there are other topics that are specifically focused on PvP:

• Adjustments to the damage-over-time of the PvP weapon suites: Hollow weapons, Phantom weapons, and Weeping weapons. These adjustments would be intended to improve the viability of non-sword melee classes, as well as improve balance overall.

• A resolution to the Jumpspin issue. There should be a way for skilled players to, in some way, get away from a melee that is "stuck" to them. However the ability to indefinitely jump and spin, throwing off the melee's client prediction, is not the answer. The final solution on this issue should also resolve the PvP jumping stamina penalty issues.

• Housing barriers on Darktide. We are investigating possibilities regarding this issue. Some of these include removing all housing barriers, removing only mansion and villa barriers, or applying the PK timer to the house barrier in some way. Other suggestions, such as allowing the barrier to be temporarily destroyed in some way, appear to be too difficult to implement in the foreseeable future.

• Points, areas, locations, or the like to fight over. The first attempt at this was found in the February event, and we are watching the feedback carefully. This may also be tied to town improvements, as mentioned above.

More information on our vision and goals for PvP will be found in the PvP article early next week.
Web Integration

Once we finish the billing transition, currently scheduled for this summer, we can begin looking at tying the Asheron's Call website more tightly to the game. Some of the features we are considering include a single login to both the game and the forums, the ability to view your character or allegiance statistics on the web, and ranking or ladder systems.

Tell us what you think of the ideas In Concept!

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Conclusion

Wow! That's a lot of information to throw at you all at once. Again, it's important to remember that these are all things we are working on (In Development) or thinking about (In Concept). Only the Coming in March items are going to be in the game. But now you have almost as much information as we do about our goals for the game in the coming year and beyond.

In addition, I should note that just because something isn't on the current list of In Development and In Concept items, that doesn't mean we won't do it. There are always bug fixes and changes that can come up late in the development cycle. We'll work hard to let you know of these changes as soon as we know they're coming.

Your feedback on all of these topics will be extremely valuable, as will your feedback on this new level of communication. Tell us what you think![/div]