Update 1.5 Design Notes - Part 2

[Romain]

Thanks Lord_Venan for the additional information. Those are interesting changes and I'm eager to try them. Good to know potions will finally be useful at high levels.

It will also partially block spell damage.

You've always done a good job at balance changes so I'm not overly worried, but this is the one strength of the mage taken away . Will block be as effective on melee and magic attacks or will it have different probabilities or efficiencies?
Also, what will happen to attacks with effect (stun, pushback...)? If such an attack is partially blocked, will the effect be partially absorbed (e.g. stun for 2 sec instead of 3) or will the effect simply have a lower probability to be applied (e.g. 66% instead of 100%)? Is there any ability (spell, attack, whatever you call it) that will work for sure? What about runes?

Regarding Guilds and Mercs ...

Currently, many people join the game with a lot of motivation, play a few hours, join a guild and… create their own. What about making it even harder to create your own guild so that those people will help grow existing guilds rather than create yet another one and dilute the player base? You could make it more expensive, force people to have raided with a few guilds before, wait till they achieved level 15 or 20, etc...

That may not help immediately at high levels but more consolidation starting from lower levels would mean less need for mercs.

[japster]

Regarding 1 vs. 2 handers
Regarding Guilds and Mercs

Well, I don't have a definite answer here yet, other than that we want to see less mercing, so making mercing easier is not necessarily going to be something we allocate a lot of resources to. We see mercing as a user solution to some design problems with raids and guilds, and the best way to fix this is through some design/rule changes so that people who want to merc are definitely making a tradeoff of some sort versus those who want to stay in one guild. Currently it is just the defacto best way to get valor, and that is a bit broken.

I'm so glad you see it that way too. Hopefully more content changes will help make people stay in their guilds. While penalizing mercing is definitely not the right thing to do, any incentives given to loyal members to "up" the benefits will always be seen as "penalizing" mercs. It's gonna be a fine balance to make but I hope you guys do it right. On the other hand to meet the social needs, perhaps you could make social guilds that people can gather to chat (besides global).

[SkyHero20]

An item share with your other toons will be great too. How about putting it in 1.5?

[Esstyle]

How about allowing guilds to form "Alliances" with other guilds?

Alliances would open up some new possibilities for both game mechanics as well as social mechanics.
My rough (very rough) idea:
Allow each guild to form 3-5 alliances.
Add a new Alliance chat channel.
Alliance members can participate in eachother's raids without changing guilds.
New Alliance Raids could be added in the future.
Alliance Raids could open up new styles of raids such as each guild being assigned simultaneous but different phases. Something like battle tactics in a war where the battle is being fought on multiple fronts.

Anyway, alliances would still give guilds autonomy while allowing multi-guild cooperation. Again, it's just a rough idea.

[NikoNarf_1]

I would hate to be in a position where I must sacrifice some bonus to help a friend in a neighboring guild. The cooperative nature of this community (helping each other complete difficult raids) makes the game fun for me. Some mercs choose that style to build more quickly, but others are loyal to a single guild, but seek to help others at times when the primary guild is inactive. Making these raid rescuers give up a benefit to help others might reduce the cooperative feel of the community.

[Grnm]

RE: HOARDING

I hope Venan takes into account the fact that many of us (I mean seasoned players) are sitting on huge stockpiles of kv, ht, silver, etc. (and we have at least a week to increase our stash even further). I am not even speaking of gazillions of squire/soldier valor, which many do not even bother to sell. Deep down I'm against being retentive, but spending any of these resources now seems to be counterproductive.

So on the one hand, I'll be happy to be able to go for a shopping spree involving something much better than "yet another t4 gem" once 1.5 gets out - equipment, new expendables, ingredients for crafting, etc. But.. but on the other hand, I would appreciate not being able to buy too many of these in one go, and then get bored again..

Could you please shed some light on how you plan to deal with this aspect? Will there be new valor & thus new gear & new raids? Will there be anything worth squire/soldier valor for end game toons? Will ht be good for anything else than just training? Medals, any plans as to how to redeem them? etc. ty

[Bbbb]

First, I want to thank many of the above posters. Many good suggestions.

Will there be anything worth squire/soldier valor for end game toons?

Can the squire/soldier be sold for enhancement indigents? That would give me a reason to do SqV and SV raids again. I love me some Crypt of Corruption but the payout is useless to me currently so it is hard for me to do one.

[Lord_Venan]

My apologies for the double post.


In your broadcast letter you state that 1.5 is an update yet here you call it a patch... Reading through the notes it is very clear that 1.5 is no update and at best it is a patch that really only offers the long grind of redoing zones in order to obtain minimalistic enchantments. With all due respect, there are many x WOW and other gamers who are well aware of the enhancement farce. Basically it involves doing repetitive tasks in known areas for mind numbing simple upgrades to already obtained gear or I am sure there will be an option to bypass the grind by paying real money.

Update/Patch. Potato/PoTahTo, it's all the same really. An update is just a really big patch I s'pose. To us it's basically the same thing.

In any event, we haven't disclosed everything about the update. So you'll need to reserve final judgment until you actually play it. At which point, if you aren't happy, by all means, let us know.

In my opinion it's not new content, it's a reboot that really only serves to give the illusion of new content much as the Naxx reboot in WOW. While I appreciate the "foundation" discussion of pvp i just don't buy that either. While I do enjoy the unique gameplay of this card game, I does appear that the developers are a bit overwhelmed and that 1.5 is an attempt to stem the exodus of veteran players ... Which as demonstrated in other games, has a high probability of failure. I am not one for offering up criticism without solutions... So here are a few

I dunno Macsrule - this seems like an exceedingly negative outlook on things. First, I'm not sure what there is to "buy" about PvP. I mean, how is that a stretch? Why wouldn't we want PvP as soon as possible? I think it's in our best interest to be sure, if nothing else that should reassure you that it is coming soon. Believe me, I wanted more than anything for this to be the PvP patch, and it was with great reluctance that I had to let that go.

As for stemming the exodus - sure, we don't want players leaving our game. But we don't design to that specifically and we certainly aren't panicking. We have a long, long list of things we want to do in the game and try to get them done as quickly (and efficiently) as possible. Things take time. I wish they didn't, but they do. Hopefully some people come back, but we're doing the best we can in any case.

Finally, "it's not new content" is really just "we haven't discussed new content yet". What we've talked about are some new features. There is new content, as well as features we haven't mentioned yet. We just don't talk about it all ahead of time. I like surprises.

[Lord_Venan]

RE: HOARDING

I hope Venan takes into account the fact that many of us (I mean seasoned players) are sitting on huge stockpiles of kv, ht, silver, etc. (and we have at least a week to increase our stash even further). I am not even speaking of gazillions of squire/soldier valor, which many do not even bother to sell. Deep down I'm against being retentive, but spending any of these resources now seems to be counterproductive.

Yes, we are well aware, and you guys are a huge PAIN IN THE BUTT! I hate end-game economy!

Anyhow, there will be stuff to do and stuff to get. New stuff. No worries. Purposefully infuriatingly vague

[Grnm]

RE: HOARDING

Anyhow, there will be stuff to do and stuff to get. New stuff. No worries. Purposefully infuriatingly vague

Aah, thanks... Back to hoarding then