The Dev Q&A Thread - 6.2.09

[Kiara]

Greetings!

Welcome to the Monthly Dev Question Thread!! 

Rules refresher:

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[Spyderbite]

What is going to happen to Guild Halls and Status invested/deposited in to Guild Halls when Venekor is merged with Nagafen. These are things we need more than a few days to plan for if they're not going to transfer over to Nagafen.

Be nice to get an official word either way... "Yah.. you're gonna have to start over cause we've never done a merge with Guild Halls before" or "No worries.. everything.. including your Harvest Depots will be in tact when the merge is complete".

Thanks.

[ArivenGemini]

Is there any way we can have the gender bias in clothing to be removed?  if someone wants to wear a male outfit on a female toon, or vice versa, the option should be there for them.

[Deson]

Are there plans to redo the writ system? Between the multiple expansions, work arounds ,factions and writ standard changes I can only imagine the difficulties this has created when looking at writ givers, amenity or otherwise. Even in Kunark the difference between Freeport writs and Neriak/Gorowyn writs is glaring and annoying. Is that on the list of needlessly confusing/ complex "features" to fix?

[SaberShadowKat]

Will Smart Loot be implemented in old zones?

[Evandirse]

To add on to the city writ theme, could the high level city writs (50+) be a list of choices like the low level ones, as opposed to random?  Writs can't be shared easily because of this, as it gives a random writ to the sharee and not the same one that the sharer is on.  The share-delete-repeat gets old after the first time around.

[Lodrelhai]

Repeating every month from the first:

Question:  Are there any plans to put some consistency in who can get writs and the benefits they receive?

Explanation: Here's some of the inconsistencies -

• Below T8, Qeynos and Freeport will give adventure writs to anyone, regardless of alignment.  Kelethin will give writs to goods and exiles, but not evils.  Neriak and Gorowyn will give writs to evils only.
• Tradeskill writs are only ever for your home city, regardless of where you get it - some of us would like to buy the faction rewards from ally cities without having to switch citizenships to earn the faction (like we can with adventurer writs).
• Exiles get faction with no one for TS writs, even though tradeskills are the ONLY writs offered in Haven itself.
• Exiles also get no status for TS writs, although they do for adventure writs.
• Exiles who raise their faction with a city to the point where they can buy/sell/bank there cannot do business with the adventure faction merchants in that city, except in Kelethin - faction merchants there are happy to deal with an exile who's city faction is appropriate.
• Tradeskill faction merchants will happily sell to anyone with enough city faction to do business in the city, but it doesn't matter because you can't earn faction with any TS society but your home city's.
• Exiles cannot get T8 writs from ANY city.

It'd be nice if all the cities dealt with writs and factions the same across all levels.  At the very least, there is NO reason why an exile should not get status for crafting writs - it's not like status is city-specific., unlike faction.

[TygerMeow]

 

Can you make it possible to re-arrange people in a group the same way you can in a raid, maybe by dragging and dropping?

It would be really great to be able to re-arrange the people in your group, or at least be able to re-assign the hotkeys. Probably 1/3 of the time, the tank creates the group, so you hit F2 to target through the tank and life is good. However, if someone aside from the tank creates the group, or the tanks re-joins the group because of a LD or something now life becomes more difficult. This is even more true for healers and CC that have to target multiple group members or leave the tank as a target and come back.

Ideally what would be nice is if you could just click on a name in the group window and drag that person to the right spot. So if Biff the tank gets invited 5th and Rip the ranger gets invited last, as the healer I can drag them to the second and third spots and know that I will be hitting F2 and F3 a lot to target these two people.

As an alternate option, if that's too much UI/coding work, you could just click a person, then press the hotkey you want assigned to them (along with a modifier like CTRL or right-click first and choose an option to re-assing hotkey).

The end result is that you can survive group re-orderings and keep the same hotkey setup. This is something that can help in raid situations as well and I think cut down on the number of hotkeys that are necessary.

Even if it's only possible for the group leader to rearrange the group - as it is with a raid - I think this would be acceptable because people generally want the same layout: tank, healer, utility, DPS.

Thanks!

[CuCullain]

Going to try this again:

In TSO beta the Templar had a casting spead bonus in their healing stance. Shortly before public release it was removed from this stance with no reason given for it. Now the Templar is the ONLY healing class w/o a third bonus in their healing stance. Given that the two benefits of the templar healing stance are on par with all the other classes, why do they not ALSO have a third benefit like ALL other healing classes in their stance?

[kelvmor]

Are there any plans to increase the duration of the indescernable murky solutions from the shady dervish merchant in the Sinking Sands to something, per say, like two to four hours, maybe get rid of the benefits and just leave the illusion?

[Wullail]

Would it be possible to allow transmuters of the appropriate level to USE tinkered items.

[Hirofortis]

Would it be possible to allow people to choose any class they want to when they complete the betrayal quest.  Yourt already forgetting all your old knowledge after all.

[Alienor]

Summoner Dps and utility are commonly believed to be sub par, are these assumed problems being reviewed and if so are there plans to change that (ie. is there reason to hope)?

[Ritten]

When are dumbfire pets (e.g. Grave Disturbance, Pack of Imps, Undead Horde) going to be fixed? Currently they are neither dots using spell enhancements nor pets using pet buffs, and they get killed mostly in a second after being cast.

[Keepem]

Is it intentional that you really need a 3rd party tool that sees only half the data? Currently some of the more challenging encounters are almost totally dependant on a 3rd party log file analyzer (advanced combat tracker). Additionally not all data is available in the logs for that parser (cures, debuffs, buffs), leading to strange perceptions of class balance in some cases.

[Methriln]

Are there any plans for larger player housing than the 5 room manors?

[MrWolfie]

When will the cast timer on world objects be corrected so that it does not break invis and stealth -- or is the development consensus that it is currently working as intended, even though the last word on this from development stated that the cast timer would not affect stealth/invis abilities?

[Enola]

For level 80 guilds, is it possible to have any guild status earned to go towards escrow for the guild halls?

[Fatuus]

As it stands right now, bards are the only scout class not to have a defensive/offensive stance. Bards have various songs they can play, but their effects are often based solely on how the player is speced. For instance, the group defensive buff can have group mitigation IF speced for it.

My Question: Would it be possible to have a defensive stance and offensive stance added to the bards abilities to make it easier to solo or better for grouping?

We are losing a lot with the upcoming proc changes in GU52. Noone can say a bard is anywhere close to overpowered for soloing.

[Powers]

Why were the crafted throwing weapons (pouch, satchel, sheath, bandolier) changed to all have the same stats, instead of providing a selection of stats to choose from?

Powers  &8^]

[Torgier]

Is there anyway that on the Dirge TSO end line ability, Disease Mastery, instead of having it affect spells, (wich it only effects 3) and does 15% dmg increase to affect ALL disease attacks but with a 2.5% - 5% increase. Because you really cant call it a Mastery if it only affect 3 attacks and only 2 of them that are used in every battle. Thank you.

Sry troubies I dont know if you guys get someting like that or not, if I knew you did I would ask the same thing for you guys. It's a hard life being a bard.

[DerFunkBlaster]

What do the hardcore raiders have to look forward to with all of the upcoming nerfs and talk about the gap between raiders and casual players?

[Beghauns]

Any chance since part 2 of the fighter changes will be a long time coming, that in the mean time you could scale taunt values for fighters.  As a raiding guardian its getting harder and harder to keep aggro even with transfers and hate gain.  Meanwhile the sk or paladin picks up aggro without the transfers or hate gain without a problem, Thanks.

[einar4]

 Is there any consideration of making the "Imperceptible Beauty" appearance items that were sold during the world events before TSO release available again to new characters created after TSO release?  Either craftable, merchant, status merchant, etc?

[Rahatmattata]

Do you plan to make any more shared/contested dungeons?

[Malacha]

Will TSO Raid mounts be getting an upgraded apperance? As it stands now, they are near identical to the melee stat shard mount, with the only discernable difference is a very slight color variation in the armor the warbear wears. Other expansion's dropped mounts all had unique apperances which make them even more desirable for players. I love my mount and would use it either way, but I think it looks boring and no one can tell its a fancier variety!

[Asif]

Will we ever beable to make shard armor for our alts instead of having to get someone to make it for an alt ?

[Sprin]

Can make and post a ruleset for the pulling of contested epic mobs on a PVP server?

You deleted my explanation from last set of questions.  But there is no rule for the pulling and killing of contested mobs on a PVP server.  The current rules dont and cant apply to PVP servers as there are no way to "talk" with the opposite faction and come to some agreement, and even if an agreement was made, it wouldnt be upheld, as it is the name of the game to kill the opposite alignment.

[RingleToo]

What about trying again a raid zone(s) more intermediate in nature (with corresponding appropriate loot tables of course)? Oh, and that is not a contested raid zone.

[Kiara]

perm wrote:

Why are raid mobs always so broken? For example, you still have to /soga_models 0/1 everytime you wipe on trakanon. What's the deal with broken mobs forcing progression to stop? Nothing gets killed until it's fixed. And don't tell me that it's because nobody plays on Test. I'm not paying you for me to QA your game.

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