Game Director's Letter - September 2013

[ViolentLeonidas]

When are you going to update the current PVP gear accessories and especially weapons!

you are the guy joel with all the stats you must know that pvp weapons lvl5 lvl8 lvl10 are so far behind PVE tire weapons

Its quit along road to reach pvp8 and reaching the pvp10 goal from Player vs player is massive! yet the base DPS on these weapons are so low next to PVE weapons

There is so many posts on forums about this! but you guys just dont want to reply on the topic! are you even awear of how low the base DPS is on these pvp weapons next to pve ones?????

Quick example
PVP 8 (2HE) Warlords Greatsword 136.0 DPS
BRC tire 2 pve (2HE) Greataxe of the grimson sea 135.4 DPS

AND THATS A PVE TIRE 2 weapon almost the same dps as PVP8!!!! (the other stats on that PVE tire 2 weapon are better than PVP8
so a pve tire 2 weapon is better than PVP8 (does that really make sense to you guys)

Then we have PVE tire 3 3.5 and 4 weapons making all pvp8 and lvl10 weapons look like chop sticks
The base DPS on PVE tire 4 weapons are SO MUCH higher than PVP10 weapons

Like i said after all the posts on this subject (over the years) and still noone from funcom has ever replyed on this topic!
WHY are PVE weapons MUCH better than PVP weapons while being used in PVP mode?

[Bibik]

Oh, i've thought, regarding to the old letters, that crafting revamp system was finished and the compatibility issues were the only thing that prevent TL testing. Seems there is still lot of works to do.

[Evitq]

That's what Craig said, and immediately after Joel took over, his letter (or a post I can't remember) mentioned that there were quite a few things in the way that the old team had not considered. If you go and find that and read it you'll realize the bullet we all dodged.

[Bibik]

Oh okay, thanks for clarifying

[xiulo88]

... Thanks for the update on the crafting revamp. If I understood you right It is more advanced than I thought. I have hope that we'll see it in the TL before next summer.

Unchained Dungeons

Three new Unchained Dungeons have made their way to Testlive - Halls of Eternal Frost, The Scorpion Caves and The Caravan Raiders Hideout.

We hope to bring these dungeons to the live serves during October, but we need your help to get as much testing as possible on the dungeons. Help us out by jumping onto the Testlive servers and letting us know what we can improve and tweak.

If you want people testing in the TL you have to let us transfer our actual chars there. I'm not going to test things with a char that doesn't have my actual gear.

[-tomhet-]

However, there is nothing cooler than rolling a critical when crafting your own custom two-hander and being able to give it any visual you want! Or creating a set of armor with gem stats stacked for overcoming precisely that encounter.

there is nothing cool about having a crafting sytem wich relies on crits.
it only makes up for inequalities especialy if items to craft weapons are hard to get and end up being expensive.
one of the few good things about current crafting system is that it is reliable and predictable.
any luck based system will lead to unsatisfaction in results.

[Caudilloo]

From the sound of it the whole crafting revamp will be superb. Never thought it would be realized but you did it so thumbs up for that!

Looking forward to the stuff to come!

About Testlive: The new dungeons have only been tested by 3-5 groups.

This is for several reasons:
Char copy does not work. Hence people run around with outdated gear (if you coppied in the past) or with T3.5 gear (if you make a new char and pull it through tortage). The issue with this is that additional gear is needed for some classes. A guardian for example is now the only class that can claim gear with protection besides amra's pride.

- Enable char copy and/or
- Make T4 gear claimable
- Offer some incentive; anything will do

I managed to get a couple of groups for Testlive and we tested all 3 dungeons. We will go back if you fix stuff (bugging lockout on boss in scorp cave) or if you add loot. Without one of those things there is no chance to find 5 other motivated people.

[Nusquam]

It's a stupidly busy week this week, but I'll try to answer some of the questions in the thread.

.will you finaly make the shrines of bori sacrifice material body parts droped by players?

We haven't looked at it yet...

.what exactly will be the pvp crafted items you are planing and where could they be used given your planing on making unchained minigames only type of minigame?

You craft items and choose the stats (via gem slotting) you want the item to have. Thus the items are not PvP or PvE - you decide if you want to spend the budget on more PvP oriented stats.

I have no idea why you think we are making Unchained the only type. I've never said that.

.will the current quest based w3&t3 crafted encounters be ingame with adjustment to items needed to start quest and correspondent quest reward weapons?

We are trying to keep the crafting encounters. We might need to update the materials, but the crafted items themselves won't go anywhere. And then, as mentioned, we will offer an exchange if we can't use the materials.

.what happens to battlekeeps given you need current ingame materials to reconstruct them?

Nothing really. A lot of the ingame materials will still exist.

.any plans to revamp the whole battlekeep/border kingdoms due to tradeskill revamp?

No, that is a bigger task.

Joel, you probably know this question has popped us elsewhere, but given that some GUI work has to be done, will you also be making any changes to the trader window, so we can search for crafted items (e.g. search by item stat or by crafter etc.)?

It's not the GUI work I was referring to, but it *is* a good idea. I'll see if we can fit it in.

Anything about dates for any features...

Not giving out dates, sorry.

Is the new tradeskill system based on luck?

There is a chance of rolling a critical when crafting. Higher your skill, higher your crit chance e.t.c There are a lot of gameplay opportunities created by this as well (e.g. crit chance buff for 15mins after killing a raid boss, improved crit chance in guild city forge locations e.t.c)

I thought this had been communicated in the past, as this has been in the design since I returned to AoC.

I think that covers most of it for now.

[Nusquam]

WHY are PVE weapons MUCH better than PVP weapons while being used in PVP mode?

I didn't do the budgets and I didn't have anything to do with setting up the weapons, but I will give you the reply that comes to me from my experience on AoC in the past and TSW:

Because PvP is a lot easier to exploit for gear than PvE.

Now don't get me wrong, this is a general assumption. If I remember, when PvP gear was first implemented there was a lot of fight clubbing, then there was Bori e.t.c They probably made it both a huge grind and a bit weaker because they saw how people exploited for it.

We can look at updating it to be more meaningful.

[Slith]

Thanks, very informative Q&A

BTW if you don't like the idea of buffing pvp weapons then there is a need to making PVE ones less effective in PVP (no idea how). Buffing pvp seems like easier solution.