Update 1.6.1 - May 23, 2013

[Darkhorse]

:/ sigh. I just recently became able to do FS, but we weren't doing it as a guild, so I never got a chance to fight in FS. Does this mean I won't be able to see the Sentinel again unless I start a new character? Because I remember him having really amazing artwork and it would be a waste for it to only be used once...

We may bring him back at some point... you'll just have to wait and see!

[Talizorah]

After playing quite a number of raids in 1.6.1, and trying my hand at mercing, there is still a lot left to do in terms of balancing this game.

1. Mercs are a liability, not an asset. While this is not always true, only allowing a maximum of 10 mercs in any given raid is not quite right. It is even quoted on page 18, that merc caps were to be half the number of expected raiders, but this is not the case.

2. Mercing is dying. Raids either fill up too fast or guilds lock mercs out from joining. There needs to be more room and more bonuses for mercing. The reward for not having mercs, and the lesser rewards for having mercs is causing the competitive guilds where mercs thrived in 1.5 to close their boarders to keep their spots on the leaderboards. The penalty for having mercs needs to be removed an only keep the bonus for not having any mercs. This reward system was good in theory, but it is killing mercing.

3. Raid times for gold are still unreasonable for casual guilds, and in some cases, for guilds completing high level raids. For the middle tier guilds, where most are, our members may be near max, but participation in raids is generally saved for the few (about 20) members who make up the core of the guild. The rest join in when it is convenient, but are more interested in completing the storyline than doing raids. The times for gold in 1.5 were timed to be a bit of a challenge, but not unreasonable for the middle tier guilds. Now, the waves have been adjusted to accommodate more members, and the times have overly been adjusted. Keep the new wave numbers but restore the gold times from 1.5. Aonther possible solution would be to increase the raid rewards, expecting that causal guilds will generally be finishing bronze, without some heroics.

4. Ninja buffs to enemies. It seems every game I play, stunlock and stagger are GMs favorite tools to use against players. All the timer knockbacks that suddenly appeared in 1.6 & 1.6.1 were unexpected. It seems that no matter where a player goes, they are faced with multiple enemies that affect a players timer. I believe it has been added to too many enemies.

5. Portals. We all hate them, we all need them. I do question why the first energy a player spends getting into a portal is met with Level 3 or 4 portal mobs? I would think it maybe by chance they appear, but it has consistently been found across multiple toons, that the first mob we face is supposed to show up in a higher level. Also it seems that the player is "surprised" a lot more in general. Being surprised + all the timer knockback = being dealt over 4,000 damage before the player even has a chance to select their first move. This needs to be scaled back a bit, or the cooldown timers on health potions needs to be halved.

This is an incredibly fun game, but it is losing a bit of its fun aspect and is becoming quite a grind. Not only does it seem raids are considerably longer, with less time to complete for gold, but the enemies are appearing stronger, and the player seeming weaker. I know 1.6.1 was the beginning of preparing the game for PvP, but I believe more consideration needs to be taken to maximize the "fun" aspect for causal players that may never get to 10,000 might, or who only participate in their guilds "big raid" of the night. It is a fair trade off to allow those players who put 10+ hours into raiding every day an easier time at the game, by tailoring it to the casual player. The more fun it is for them, the longer they will play.

[RH_Alanna]

Ps, I think you think this game will be balanced after all guild members reach Lvl 5 guild loyalty. But I am going to have to politely disagree. While you might get better raid metrics this way, I assure you, many, including me, will most likely be upset with you.

The issue here is that casual gamers may not ever achieve level 5 loyalty. I am fairly active and though I was really annoyed with losing bonuses only to have to "re-earn" them, getting to level three on most of my characters was a major issue though it took a good deal of play (which was greatly dependent on how much your guild raids and weather there are blue bags available for questing). Based on some guilds that I have seen who only raid once or twice a day, this loyalty would be impossible to regain in a reasonable enough time to make a casual game successfully compete. Add to this that to really benefit from the loyalty you need to gain to additional 2 levels and it just seams a bit unreasonable. It was been about 7 days since the release, we have done at least 28 raids, and in my guild (70+ people) we have 1 at level 5 loyalty.

[RH_Alanna]

Oh I made a beautiful rant on this same topic in "Did Venan get it right this time" page 4. Too long to retype it here. Too sum it up.....1…quit whining Venan is trying to appease such a large variety of players that they are bound to make errors. 2…Gold was too easy to start with, it is supposed to be achieved by busting your arse. 3…Yes raids are longer but if committing for 3-4 hrs is your problem then you must love watching paint dry also. Energy regens whether you are watching it or not. Dump your e, come back in an hour an do the same. 4 hr long raid ~30 mins of RL commitment unless you want to burn shields. 4…Chat is dead?…not even close. Thank you Venan for a great game. Mini rant over

1. yes they have a wide audience. And if they want to make money this is necessary.
2. Gold was easy, and I am okay with it being harder, but it should be reasonably possible with some planning and participation and without burning. Even large guilds don't have every member on and participating in every raid, and expecting people to change their life around to accommodate a change in the game isn't going to work. The bigger issue was raids that could not even be completed in bronze because the time ran out. I see no point in a timer... let the guild finish the raid no matter how long it takes and give a discounted amount valor based on the additional time needed.
3. the way that it was timed you needed to dump your energy as you got it to get gold. Since I don't like watching paint dry or 3-4 hour raids, the raids should be reasonable in length. Lets not even talk about timing, server delays, and missing gold by a second after having server problems....
4.raids can be so tight in terms of time that the guild has practically stopped talking to each other during the gold phase... chat isn't dead, but isn't as lively as it used to be, because you can't take the time to switch views when seconds matter.

[NikoNarf_1]

The problem is not merc penalties... guilds that like to compete on leaderboards will not choose mercs and will not need mercs. Guilds who are not competing on leaderboards would likely welcome larger merc populations, but low merc caps are a double whammy... not only are there fewer slots available to mercs, the low merc cap means that a guild that might otherwise run a raid may choose not to, since no more than 10 mercs can join.

I can see Venan's concern about having guilds carried by merc populations, but setting the same merc cap for Skar and VG seems imbalanced. Raising merc caps on the harder raids would not only increase the number of slots available to mercs, but would also increase the number of raids attempted by smaller and more casual guilds. My concern is that the stats Venan are examining consider only the raids that are run, not the raids that would have been run if merc caps were increased.

[Spartanmerc]

They will be adjusting the Merc cap in a while. They said they only set it so low so they could get better numbers on raids and completion times, member participation, etc. It won't be set at 10 forever. In my opinion, 5 mercs for squire raids, 10 for soldier raids, 15 for knight raids, and 20 for captain raids would work just fine. If your guild needs more than 5 mercs for Overseer, its not ready for the jump to Kraken, farm more squire for might, gain more members, etc. And the same would go for each tier leap. 20 Mercs in a 40 man VG or Karnak should be more than is needed for high end guilds, but lower population guilds that want to complete it might need that many, not unreasonable in my eyes.

[Contingency]

If each raid had two run options, that could help. Normal (or battle) mode and light (or skirmish) mode. Skirmish having half the waves and less than half the rewards/power/prestige. Something like that -- just a thought.

[Keffie]

Hate hate hate the merc cap at 10. This is going to limit raiding in my opinion. 15 allows for help for guilds that are truly international like ours. Half Europe. Half North America We seldom can get most of the guild on a single raid. It also helps when we get lookers ( that hit once and leave) Did I mention I hate the 10 cap.

Raise it back to 15!!!!!!

[Finnius]

Thank you keffie for replying on this thread. 30 months inactivity does NOT mean a thread is dead...

[DiMoSauR]

There will be a server maintenance on Thursday, May 23 at 11 AM EST/3 PM GMT. This maintenance is expected to last approximately 3 hours. This maintenance will be used to deploy game update 1.6.1!

Shadow Walker

• Riposte now has a 20/40/60% chance to complete your current action after dodging (up from 20/35%/50%)
• Critical Eye now also grants +10/20/30% physical crit power along with the +10/15/20% increase in physical crit chance
• Runes will no longer proc corrosive blades

Justicar

• Bleeds will now do 100% weapon damage over 5 seconds (up from 75%)
• Frenzy now grants +10/20/30% physical damage to targets affected by Bleeding (up from +5/10/15%)
• All ranks of Stagger will now increase the damage bonus of your next attack by 75% (up from 50%)
• Each stack of Vengeance now increases damage by 10% (up from 5%)
• Runes will no longer proc Rend

War Mage

• Snap cast can no longer be procced by instant cast abilities (ex: Runes, Any snap casted spell)
• The ability text for Deep Freeze 2 and 3 has been fixed. Originally, they mistakenly stated that they increased slows by 10% and 15%. However, all ranks of Deep Freeze only ever increased slows by 5%. The ability text has been fixed to reflect this.

Guilds

• Added a guild objective for defeating Karnak 100 times
• Added a guild objective for unlocking Karnak's Final Stand (You must defeat War of Fellmarsh 10 times)
• Some guild objectives have been deprecated (see raids)
• Players will now lose 50% of their guild loyalty when joining a new guild (lowered from 100%)

Raids

• The raid cap for all raids has been raised to 100 members!
• With the change to all raid caps, some raids have had their number of waves adjusted. Here is the approximate number of raiders we have balanced each raid around (regardless of the targeted balance number, the raid cap will still be 100 guild members for each raid):
  
  • 10 Raiders: Gobblin' Goblins
  • 20 Raiders: The Plaguerider, Lockbolt's Reign
  • 25 Raiders: Wrath of the Overseer
  • 30 Raiders: Risen from the Depths, Crypt of Corruption, Attack at Dawn, Dark Lord Helion
  • 35 Raiders: Cursed Keep, Vale of the Ice Dragon, War of Fellmarsh
  • 40 Raiders: Horde of the Goblin King, Karnak's Final Stand, Battle of the Vile Gate
• All raids have had the number of mercenaries capped at 10 (with the exception of Gobblin' Goblins which is set to 5)
• The Shadow Comes and Forgotten Sentinels have been removed from the game!
• The might requirement for War of Fellmarsh has been lowered to 9150 might to accomodate the might gap left by the removal of Forgotten Sentinels
• Phase 3 of War of Fellmarsh has been changed to include everyone's favorite queen...
• Raid finder will now display all raids, not just those with open mercenary slots. However, only raids with mercenary slots open will be joinable
• The valor and hero token reward pool for Karnak's Final Stand has been raised
• Raids will now show up on the raid finder 3 minutes after the raid has started (down from 10 minutes)
• The raid introduction quest line has been redone

Dungeons

• The icon for Karnak's dungeon is now correct

Items

• Karnak's Ring and the Broken Ring have updated graphics

Feats

• A feat for killing Karnak in his dungeon 5 times has been added

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug in the particle engine that would cause an application crash
• Fixed a bug that caused haste to affect knockback
• Fixed a bug that would cause the casting bar to behave incorrectly when your casting time gets knocked back
• Fixed a bug that would cause the first tick of combat in onslaught to improperly decrement cooldowns
• Fixed a bug that would prevent crit resistance from working on periodic damage
• Fixed a bug with the featured offer that would cause an application crash
• Fixed some bugs that would cause other guilds' chat channels to not disappear from their list after mercing
• Fixed a bug affecting whispers from the guild member list
• Fixed a bug that would not allow you to inspect or whisper someone by tapping on their name
• Fixed a bug that caused the energy popup to close unexpectedly
• Fixed a bug that would cause guild objectives to not sort properly
• Fixed a bug that would cause the game to become locked up after accessing Game Center from the leaderboard
• Fixed a bug that would prevent the raid cooldown from being immediately displayed after cancelling a raid
• Fixed a bug that would cause the chat screen to not refresh properly if too many messages were sent to a channel within a short time period
• Fixed a bug that would cause spacing issues with certain special text characters
• Fixed a bug that would cause the Smithy's Forge and Old Library to overlap
• Major Frost Rune now applies an 18% reduction of haste and dodge via Chilled

Remember this Venan???? It's called an UPDATE ...... JUST a reminder incase you have forgot being to busy with Space Miners..... it's been over a year,give us something ,any kind of news so we know what to expect and we know u haven't forgotten this game