coming next ...

[allerie]

Folks,

Well, considering how well we did with the last patch I would expect a certain amount of skepticism from you but here's a few highlights from next week's patch (not counting hot fixes or hot pockets):

1) Another round of CTD, general memory usage improvements and lag improvements.

2) A foray into the whole "AFKers in scenarios suck!" issue with some changes to the scenario code.

3) Introduction of exp. bonuses to people who create toons on population-challenged servers. This is the first of many steps to help keep the populations more balanced. As always, baby steps.

4) Another round of anti-spammer code going in. This should greatly limit their ability to bother you, that's my job.

5) We're looking at changing how the need/greed looting options work in scenarios only. We are thinking about disallowing the need option for people who can't use the item. Again, this is for scenarios only and I already know the argument "I need it for my alt" etc. and we are still thinking about it.

6) Correct the bug that prevent the correct number of guilds from joining an alliance.

Those are *some* of the highlights from next week's patch. If it goes as badly as the last one, feel free to say hi to me as I run screaming into the woods. happy

Mark

http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/108865100/p1/?145

[allerie]

The European WAR Realm pages are en route. They've been somewhat postponed and I don't have a proper ETA right now, but we'll hopefully see them this week. To start with, we'll feature Character Search, Guild Search and Leader Boards. Server Status will follow.


-Magnus

[allerie]

Folks,

Sorry for the delay in posting here about this but I wanted to make sure I had all the facts before jumping into this issue.

1) Regarding the Fortress Lords and Guards - Unfortunately, they weren't set up with their proper abilities in the current build and as such, were a lot easier to kill than they should have been. That error has already been corrected. These guys were supposed to be difficult to kill in their own right but in the last version, they were able to knocked out with a weak left. happy

2) Banker/AH missing in the refugee camp - Losing a city is not supposed to be fun. It is intended to hurt but not give players a reason not to log in while their city is contested/sacked. Both of these guys were supposed to immediately spawn and stay in place in the camp when a city is in the contested/sacked state. Obviously they didn't (or they did and then they vanished) and this will be corrected. Again, keep in mind that we want people to defend their city and we will provide incentives (more on this later) and disincentives for doing so or failing to do so.

3) I want to help defend the city but I'm too low! Yeap, unfortunately that's correct. Cities were meant to be defended by players above level 30. If we allow all players to defend their cities in the instances, they might be taking a spot from a higher level player who has a better chance to succeed. We will talk about this more in the office next week but right now, we don't see the need to change this.

4) As to the 48x48 instances, we will look at upping the size of the instances as we make more improvements/tweaks to the engine. We want these battles to be fun and while we could easily make them 200x200 code/design wise, the strain that it would put on a large percentage of machines would make it a lot less fun for those people.

5) Apparently a banker, AH, etc. found their way to the War Quarters. They were not supposed to be there in the first place and we will correct that.

6) Altdorf was level 5 after the attack - It should be, the city was defended successfully.

7) The notion that the overpopulated side wins every time - This is simply not true under most conditions. If your realm refuses to defend its own city, well, yes, you will lose as you should. This is an RvR game and if your side won't defend their own realm, they deserve to lose. Based on the realm ratios we have seen on all our servers, any imbalance on the servers so far would not come close to guaranteeing success for that realm.

I saw lots of destruction teams running through undefended instances and they were scoring like crazy! - Not according to our numbers. Players can run these instances if there are no defenders because that is one of the points of being there. How boring would it be to work your way up there and have to sit around and do nothing because the other side isn't there? So, we let them run instances and contribute to the Victory Points but their contribution is very small. We'll recheck those numbers again this week but from what we've seen so far, the contribution was as small as it should have been.

9) Late night/early morning raids suck - Yeap, but that's part of this type of game. We either say no city capture during certain hours or leave it up to the players. Since players get organized at different times of the day, we're going to leave it as it is especially since your side can do the same things to them. OTOH, we have tweaked the mechanics for zone capture so that it will be even harder to pull off the early a.m. attacks. This will be part of the next patch.

10) Altdorf was never captured but merely contested. The defenders did a great job and held them off. Also, we will be making some changes in the coming weeks so that the defenders will get new goodies for successfully defending their city. This should serve as more encouragement for doing your civic duty.

11) The city was contested for 24 hours, is that working as intended? - No, it was a bug. An attack/defense was never supposed to last that long. It will be fixed in the next version of the game. As to what the time is, we'll still talking about it. It was supposed to be 1/2 of that time but even that may be too long, we'll see.

12) Why are PQs part of the city sieges? - We talked about this in beta but once a city is captured the attackers will participate in PQs that will help determine how long the city will be theirs to enjoy. If they do those PQs well, they will get to hold the city for a longer period of time.

13) Reikland was taken very quickly - We're looking into this, it certainly sounds like a bug, that is not how it is supposed to work.

Okay, so that's my wall of text on the siege of Altdorf. What it boils down to is that this is an RvR-centric game and people will have to come to the defense of their city if they want to keep it. We're constantly tweaking the numbers and the mechanics so that it doesn't boil down to a pure numbers game (3-1 advantage = auto win!) but if people want to participate in an RvR game then they have to expect to lose their city if their realm won't defend it. Cities are intended to be taken but not as quickly as Altdorf was contested (not captured) this time and they are not intended to be lost during a quick early morning zerg we'll continue to tweak the mechanics so it isn't. As we've said before, taking a city is supposed to be a complicated undertaking and even though Altdorf entered a contested state, it wasn't lost.

Mark

[allerie]

The reason for the avoiding class balance changes right now is simply that we want to avoid the "knee jerk" reaction stuff that some people (even in this thread) say we did with DAoC, simple as that. happy Fixing bugs, adding some functionality, etc. is the right way to improve an MMORPG right after launch. Jumping in and making lots of changes to class mechanics/abilities/etc. is the wrong way. We learned that lesson with DAoC and we aren't going to repeat it.

Mark

[allerie]

Folks,

This was a small patch (1.0.3) and I'll be talking about a much bigger patch (1.1) within the next 2 days as part of my State of the Game. As I've said before, these weekly patches are not intended to be major overhauls but rather bug fixes and some small additions. We couldn't do them on a weekly basis otherwise especially given the necessary testing time for a LIVE game versus a Beta game. I think that if you take all the weekly patches and hot fixes and added them up, the amount of things we are doing would be a little more apparent and impressive.

As I've also said before, we had a choice, go with monthly updates which would seem much bigger and more impressive but I'd have to endure a month of "When is Mythic going to fix ANYTHING!!!" here or weekly patches where I'd have to endure "Is this all you are doing? What about MY ISSUE!?!?!"

Considering this patch does indeed have some highly requested and necessary fixes/improvements, I'm really happy with it especially the additional of region chat and the one button spammer report since we are putting those in now precisely *because* of the feedback we got here.

Mark

[allerie]

The data that we have on how healers were getting way too much renown is why we did it. However, as I've said before, if the data post-change shows that we over-corrected we'll be happy to adjust again.

Mark

[allerie]

You really think that cutting scenario exp/renown gain right now and forcing people to open RvR would be a good business decision?  Sorry, got to really disagree here.  I prefer buffing up open RvR (which will still be met with cries of NERF) versus changing the way the vast majority of people play the game overnight by cutting things away from them. 

Mark

[allerie]

I don't know what the number is right now.  Here's one damn thing I would change, I would make this game have 70 levels and keep dinging all the way, all the time.  I do think that some of the problem is the fact that people think 40 < 60 when it comes to levels and that the grinding seems worse because you have only 40 levels to go to max out.  I'm not saying you guys feel that way but I do think, at some level, it is having an effect on some people.  I've played a ton of MMOs and, at least according to the spreadsheet the time to solo most toons is faster here (on paper, I know) than EQ, DAoC, WoW when they launched.  Again, I'm not, not saying working as intended (I hate that phrase) but when we set out the number originally it was still less than those games and I cut that number down even more about 6 months ago.

Mark

[allerie]

Folks,

Some good news as the weekend approaches:

1) We hope to have the PTS up and running this weekend. Right now we are shooting for sometime tomorrow. The Herald will have all the latest information.

2) As promised, our C&C team has combed through this thread (and pertinent links) and here's what they have found in regards to bugs. Unfortunately, there were a number of both unreported bugs and reported bugs that didn't make it up to the C&C team in time for this patch (initially). I am in total agreement with player sentiment that these bugs need to be fixed along with 1.0.5 and as such, the team is already working on doing that today and over the weekend. The current plan is to fix the vast majority of them in time for the patch but some, because of the coding involved or if they are minor bugs (display) will not be fixed for 1.0.5 but will be fixed as soon as practical. The update to the 1.0.5 patch will be updated to reflect these fixes once these changes are incorporated into 1.0.5.

3) We are also going to look at making some additional changes to some of the classes/archetypes. As I've said before, 1.0.5. is not yet up on the patcher and we expect to continue to make more tweaks/adjustments until the patch goes live. Among the changes currently going into 1.0.5 are:

a) BW/Sorcs will have their crit chance lowered for combustion.

b) Sorcs will also see Word of Pain’s debuff changes from a willpower debuff to a resist debuff to match BWs and it will no longer stack Word of Pain and be a single application that deals damage at the end. Stricken Voices will have its cast time removed to match Bright wizard Choking Smoke.

c) For IBs, we are going to make some changes that will allow the IB to get to low grudge more quickly than initially proposed by increasing Oath friend grudge thresholds from 5/3/1 grudge generated to 10/5/3. Also, we are lowering the grudge required (and making a couple other changes) in the following abilities:

Shield Sweep: Cost reduction from 30 Grudge to 25 Grudge.
Oath bound: Cost reduction from 30 Grudge to 15 Grudge.
Avenging The Debt: Increase heal value.
Away With Ye: Reduce cost from 30 Grudge to 25 Grudge. Increase damage. (Also requires cool down from 0s to 10s)
Watch An' Learn: Reduce cost from 30 Grudge to 15 Grudge. (Also requires cool down from 0s to 20s)
Grumble An' Mutter: Increase heal value.

The combination of better contribution from OF and lowering the grudge cost of some abilities should help alleviate some, if not all, of the IB's concern. We will continue, of course, to look at the IB as a whole to determine if additional changes are still necessary.

d) For our healers, we are looking at making the following changes:

Ranged Healers

Long Cast Big heals go from 3s cast to 2.5s cast
Interrupt / setback value on long heals is reduced by 50%

Melee Healers
Divine Strike and Rend soul will now heal for 350% damage dealt instead of 250%

Like the IBs, this is just part of an ongoing process. As I said yesterday, the team will continue to look very carefully at the healers on the PTS and if more changes need to be made, we'll make them.


e) The Chosen seemed to have a higher number of potential (we haven't confirmed them all yet) bugs but in the meantime, we will make the following changes:

Convert Blast Wave, Bane Shield and Quake to magic attacks that use STR instead of INT for bonus damage
Push Aura code fix up that makes twisting easier

f) The Marauders have a similar bug to the Chosen (using INT not STR) so we are making the following change:

Mouth of Tzeentch will use STR instead of INT for bonus damage

g) For the Black Orc the biggest bug appears to losing their place in the combo chain randomly. The team has been trying to duplicate this all day and so far, no luck. If we can duplicate it, it will be fixed.

So, a few things:

1) Let me once again express my thanks to those great people here on the Vault (and elsewhere) who spent time and energy posting helpful (critical, insightful, positive, etc.) messages. You have helped us quite a bit by doing so. The 1.0.5 thread was, at its best, a great example of how developer<->community interaction can work very well at times when you have motivated players and interested developers who are actually paying attention. So again, you have my thanks.

2) The changes here are still part of an ongoing process of evaluation and reevaluation of 1.0.5. Nothing is final and until the PTS is up and running and 1.0.5 goes through the ringer, will it even be close to final. So please, when the PTS goes up let us know what you think through feedback here and in the game.

3) Some of the bugs/changes that I'm listing here will not be fixed/up by tomorrow of course but they will be during the time that the PTS is running and *before* 1.0.5 goes LIVE. We will keep you informed about the changes through the patcher.

4) A number of people have commented that this patch seems more chock full of ranged DPS changes and while the team believes that a lot of the changes we made to the the rDPS group will have a significant positive impact on our tanks and mDPS folks, they will turn their attention to those careers again after the 1.0.5 version. Again, please keep in mind that bugs for the mDPS/Tanks will be fixed for this version as well.

Again, my thanks to the many members of the WAR community for their efforts in regards to our game.

Mark

[allerie]

Good morning,
there's alot of questions and critique here and I'll do my best to meet the most vital issues. I'll begin with the fun stuff!


The Webpage (gasp!)
Contrary to popular belief we're not oblivious to the public perception of our webpage; myself and my collegues and many GOA seniors spend lots of time on these and other forums and the feelings are hard to miss. Whereas we've (actually) implemented lots of under-the-hoove improvements on the website such as decreasing it's 'weight', we're keenly aware that this is not the level of change our players are looking for. We've got webpage feedback to fill a medium size library and we've taken it to our hearts. I know this isn't what you're looking for but it's what I can offer at the moment.


Server population and character transfers
As noted on war-europe, character transfers are on their way. We've laid out a program following the model employed by Mythic, where we'll offer free character transfers from low populated servers to medium populated servers.

In particular, the players who valiantly decided to move from overpopulated mother servers to their clone servers have not been enjoying a full WAR experience due to the low population on their servers. We've previously attempted to combat this by recommending these servers to new players and by implementing server-wide experience and renown bonus. Alas, these efforts have been insufficient and we're very glad to be able to offer an overall richer WAR experience to these players. Whereas I have no date for you, we're looking at a timeframe of a couple of weeks before we launch this service.


Public test server
The purpose of a public test server is two-fold, where both sides are interrelated. There's the primary cause of testing whether a patch is good to go and provide Mythic with critical information, and there's the secondary purpose of bringing the players along for the ride and participate in the evolution of WAR. From our experiences during closed beta, we know that European players have much to contribute to WAR in many ways and we feel strongly for European test servers. There are certainly difficulties which need to be overcome though. To start with, chances are that there may be a relatively small time window to test a patch before it goes live. These are challenges to overcome though and we're all in agreement that this is something we want. Whereas this is something important, it is second after Realm WAR and character transfers so it's a medium-term project and we won't see European testing for 1.0.5. We're in this for the long run though and we'll get this rolling one way or another.


Patching
The timing of patching blossom up every now and then. I see two aspects of the dismay regarding this; delayed implementation of patches and hotfixes, and delayed notification that said changes are implemented.

There's a few aspects to take into consideration when looking at the delayed patch/hotfix process. To start with, there's obviously the time difference. If Mythic introduce a hotfix during American morning, we'll get it during European afternoon and QA run the changes on our servers (unless there's content which need to be translated of course). Other times, hotfixes and patches will be implemented on US servers later during the day or the evening. If these changes are sent to us, say midnight our time, we'll run the files the following morning. This is unless the changes are deemed critical, in which case our heroes at QA will and often have gone byond the call of duty and implemented said files. The same goes for weekends; whereas they don't operate on a 24/7 sheme, QA are often found on our premises when circumstances demand.

And then there's the delays. As we all know, there's been cases where even important changes haven't been implemented. There's been different reasons for this, most of which could have been avoided and were related to miscommunication between us and Mythic. These things happen in any relationship and the more people involved, the higher the probability. There are ways to reduce the chance for these mishaps to occur - most revolving around improved routines and routes of communication - and it's a work in progress. In other cases we have chosen to delay patch implementation in Europe for security reasons. Mark has spoken about this before, and whereas I can't find the link now, the essense of what he was saying was that he'd rather hold a EU patch implementation until we know for a fact that it's safe. Do note that this is only relavant to minor patches and hotfixes - major patches will obviously have been extensively tested and before they're put live, be that in the US or EU.

On to the publishing of hotfixes and the concern that we're often late in doing so. Whereas we actually do post hotfixes when they're run many times, it's certainly not always the case. The primary reason for this is that we're operating in five languages and we want to provide these notifications to our players in their native tongue. Although we've got good tools and databases for items, quest names etc, translating this technical language is quite ardous. There's other aspects to this related to the flow of information and as always there's room for improvement in these and other areas.


Realm WAR
The EU Realm WAR pages are now in internal testing and things are looking good - I've had a go with them myself. We're obviously not happy with the time it's taken to develop this system - we ran into technical difficulties which proved more challenging than we initially thought - but these are now resolved and we hope to be able to put out a live version soon. We're aiming to bring you definite word on this next week.



I hope this meet some of your questioins!


Blessings,
Magnus

[allerie]

Folks,

A few quick things then I'm off to dinner.

1) The changes to 1.0.5 are not a direct result of the Vault, WHA or any one source of feedback. As I've said from the beginning, we are taking feedback from a lot of different sources. Listening to the Vault as our exclusive source of "What do we do next?" would be as foolish as ignoring it totally.

2) As to our EU players, I know I've been rather quiet regarding Europe lately and I apologize for that but know that it isn't because we aren't paying attention or don't care what is going on there. When we signed the deal with GOA we were assured that our European customers would be treated in the same way as our North American customers. We are aware of the issues that have been raised here and in other places. And that's all I can say on that subject for now.

3) As to 1.0.5 and 1.0.6, I wish I could say that 1.0.5 had a lot of the good stuff from 1.0.6 but it is going to take a little longer to get the C&C stuff LIVE. It has become such a huge patch that separating even just the bug fixes from 1.0.6 and putting them back into a new 1.0.5 would mean that the "Heavy Metal" event would have to be delayed. And since the HM event is the key to getting the Blackguard and the Knight of the Blazing Sun in the game, we don't want to delay it. We'll get 1.0.6. LIVE as quickly as possible but again, since it's the C&C patch, it needs to be done right the first time.

4) As to things like itemization, oRvR, etc., those are big priorities as well and I plan on talking about what we are doing already and what we are planning on doing down the road soon. I had hoped to do it this week but it will probably happen next week due to me being at EA meetings this week in LA.

Mark

[allerie]

Folks,

Yesterday I talked about the two major issues regarding the taking of a fortress. Here's a quick update:

1) Some (hopefully all) of the causes of the crashes/performance issues that have occurred during some sieges have been identified. Both are linked to the number of people who are involved in the events. Last night for example we had about 800 people descend on one fortress at the same time. The results of that were indeed a crash unfortunately. Of course, an 800 person battle is certainly large-scale and epic RvR and shows that lots of people are out on the servers engaging in oRvR.

2) The team is working on a server-side fix to solve the crashing issue(s) while we are also looking at whether a 800+ person fortress battle is doable even under the best of conditions.

3) As I expected, some of the performance issues were indeed client-side and the team is readying a patch which we hope will fix a bug which was the major cause of unusually low framerate/lag in large-scale RvR. We hope the patch will go up today and if it does what we expect it to do, it should help in all RvR and not just large scale RvR.

So, that's the quick update.

Mark

[allerie]

I'm working on the latest draft of the patch notes for 1.1 right now. I think it has more than a few interesting things in it along with lots and lots of fixes. happy As of now the notes are at 14 pages.

As always, I'll do a highlight topic right before 1.1 goes up on the PTS.

Mark

---------------------------------------

Keep in mind that 1.1 was ready to go to the PTS before 1.0.6 went LIVE so in terms of major C&C changes, there aren't a lot in it. There is however a lot of other new stuff and a ton of fixes. We'll continue to hotfix changes to 1.0.6 in terms of C&C as necessary and/or put things into 1.1 that are high-priority fixes but we would like to get 1.1 out before the holiday/New Year for obvious reasons.

In terms of our numbers dipping, all I can say is yesterday we had the highest peak concurrent users we've had on a weekday for a number of weeks so that made me smile. As always, we're in this for the long-term and patches 1.1 -> ? will certainly show that committment.

Mark

[allerie]

Folks,

At the risk of derailing the interpersonal hate, I've been reviewing the renown points that will be awarded with the fix. Here's some basic details and a couple of examples:

1) The system is intended to function in a similar DAoC's level and RR differential worked for solo kills.

2) If a level 40, 10+RR kills a level 1, the level 40 will receive 11 RPs. This *should* be the lowest amount awarded for any 1 on 1 kills (subjectthough it should also unlock a ToK "Shame on you!" (but it doesn't)

3) If level 40 RR1 player kills a level 18 RR1 player, the level 40 gets 70 Renown. This is just a wee bit more than the 1 RP you would get awarded under the current system.

Keep in mind that in order to make it less rewarding for player to try to "game" the system, if a player is killed repeatedly in a short amount of time, he will be worth less each time.

That's where it stands right now. Further tweaking is possible (and likely) going forward but I think it represents a major improvement from where the system is now. We will post more details when the change is ready to go but with this change, killing players for renown gain should be more rewarding than ever. Enjoy!

Mark