January 3rd; what's new?

[Undone]

What's new?
Welcome to 2023! Everyone on the team is slowly getting back into the groove of things and we can't wait to continue pumping out content. This week brings a number of updates to DOTs/Debuff applications, resist adjustments, ability improvements, combat log improvements, camera collision fixes, and a new high level outdoor dungeon for you to explore. We expect a number of new quests to come online in the coming weeks along with improvements to active defenses and maybe a few new creatures.

Bug fixes / improvements:

• Tech
  • Fixed: DOTs/Debuffs that are partially resisted now correctly reduce their durations.
  • Fixed: combat stance no longer resets your out of combat regen bonus timer (the timer is wholly based on your "in combat state" determined by the sword icon fill under your nameplate)
  • Fixed nav mesh issues inside a Redshore Ridge rock causing mobs to spawn inside of it.
  • Internal camera scripts updated to the latest version. This includes a number of collision bug fixes that were plaguing our game and should hopefully result in a much more fluid experience. These fixes remove the need for the recently added checkbox (Disable camera collision smoothing) - please uncheck this option if you are using it and let me know if the camera issues are less problematic. I would like to remove this checkbox within the next few weeks.
  • Scene loading tech rewritten to accommodate upcoming changes (see "Patch Size" in the WIP section below for more details).
• Environment / Art
  • Fixed missing wall collider in The Aquifer: Undercroft.
  • Fixed water issues in Undercroft level 1 entrance room.
  • Fixed misc prop placement and env bugs in Newhaven Valley & Redshore Ridge.
• UI:
  • Fixed: additional item linking fixes.
  • Added "Disables Auto Attack on execution" to the tooltip of abilities which disable auto attack on their usage (CC)
• Design:
  • DOTs now gain a damage bonus when their initial strike scores a heavy or critical hit
  • DOTs/Debuffs can now be applied to red mobs that you can hit (+3 & +4). Durations of these lasting effects will be reduced appropriately.
  • Added additional uncommon drops to Redshore Ridge.
  • Cleaned up Droslc pathing in Dryfoot to not walk through Structures
  • Increased group bonus range from 40m to 50m.
  • Increased Armor Augment duration for higher level augments.
  • Reduced Ravenrock Weapon required level from 15 to 12 to better match the quest level.
  • Renamed "Spider's Silk" to "Silk". Increased chances of it dropping.
  • Updated Ant Hill loot tables from lvl 33-40.
  • Updated rares in level 36 chests
  • Fixed: consistently set Elm to material level 38
  • Fixed generic mushroom oil material category so it can properly be used for ground torches.
  • Fixed skinning level on More Bare
  • Fixed issue in Undercroft where named mobs or placeholders may spawn outside of player accessible areas
  • Fixed issue where rare spawn Stalactite was using the wrong loot table.
  • Fixed Ravenrock Shortbow having 2H damage instead of Ranged Damage.
  • Fixed a few hoods/masks with Armor Weight which should have none.
  • Fixed dense resource spawns in Redshore and Redshore Ridge
  • Ability adjustments:
    • From the Shadows should now always Crit.
    • Provoke range increased from 8m to 10m.
    • Serration can no longer stack multiple times on the same character.
    • Stim updated to give Stamina to the target directly.
    • Disengage increased threat reduction amount at higher levels.
    • Hemorrhaging strike chance to proc first stages of damage increased.
    • Stifle haste reduction increased.
    • Energizing Battle Chant updated to give an extra stamina tick on tiers that were stopping at 28s. Note that the buff will now last 32s at these level ranges.

New stuff:
Resist Adjustments
This patch brings improvements to how resists work for lasting effects (DOTs/Debuffs). Much of the feedback we have gotten thus far is that resists are a worthless stat because it's not really "felt". When resisting an effect the duration is reduced based on your resist values. However, shaving 2s off of a 10s daze probably isn't even something players notice. One of the design reasons for only reducing the duration is that we felt that if a player's ability was resisted they would feel as though their stamina was wasted. But, we are also depriving players of the rewarding feeling of straight up resisting an incoming effect.

We are adding a full resist dice roll to combat calculations hoping that it will inject a bit more life into these stats. It will also allow us to do some more interesting things with them in the future. To avoid any drastic changes to the core combat loop (having to rebalance +resist values or obsoleting gear) we are simply setting the chance of fully resisting an effect's application to 20% of your resist value. For example: a character with +40 daze resist will have an 8% chance to fully resist the daze application; if the effect is not fully resisted the duration will still be reduced by 40% as it is now. Note that this additional check will be in place for players applying effects to NPCs as well.

Updates to Combat Text
To improve the visibility of resist and other events we have made some improvements to the combat log. This will be on ongoing iterative process with the goal of delivering more data while maintaining readability and brevity.

• Other combat text is now 20% smaller to help differentiate it from your own.
• Updated the rounding of combat log display values. Previously, all values were rounded down regardless of the decimal value. Values will now be rounded down if the decimal value is less than 0.5 and rounded up if they are greater than or equal to 0.5.
• Additional information has been added to the parenthesis after combat text. These abbreviations also now have tooltips in which you can hover for a reminder.
  • ADV: the attack had an advantage
  • DIS: the attack had a disadvantage
  • ADV: the attack had an advantage that was cancelled by a disadvantage
  • RES: the application was resisted
  • PRES: the application was partially resisted
  • DIM: the application was impacted by diminishing retuns
  • ABS: the value absorbed by armor
  • THR: the threat value
  • OT: the value done by over-time effects (DOTs/HOTs)

Redshore Ridge: Exile Freehold
A new outdoor dungeon is now available in Redshore called the Exile Freehold. This higher level zone shares the same server executable as Redshore Ridge but is not physically connected to it in any way.

Works in progress:
To see a full list of what is currently in progress head on over to this thread. I will do my best to update this list on a weekly basis and highlight the differences from the previous week with bold font. Below I will highlight some of the upcoming changes in more detail.

Active Defense Revamp (1-3 weeks)
Current active defenses (Avoid, Block, & Parry) are all functionally "the same". This poses a few design issues as players could potentially stack these values to completely mitigate incoming damage while not providing any interesting decisions along the way. We have always wanted to swing back around to update these but things got lost in the shuffle at launch. To rectify this we have started modifying the design of how active defenses differ from one another and what benefits they could provide to the player. The current thought process is as follows:

• Avoid: remains relatively unchanged. This stat will be found mostly on low-AC gear and/or jewelry. We very well may add threat reduction on a successful avoid.
• Block: will move from its current state to a mitigation % dependent on your shield and/or 2H weapon. Given that the initial design intent of this stat was to be more tank focused we wanted to add some options here that (hopefully) make things a bit more interesting. Our current thought is to add a "Block Rating" range to 2H Weapons & Shields. Upon successfully blocking an incoming attack a dice will be rolled based on the values of your weapon/shield to determine how much damage you essentially resist (NOT absorb). Having a range on the items will allow us to provide an additional layer of progression. For example: maybe a low level shield has a 15-30% block rating, whereas a higher level shield has 25-30% block rating giving you more consistent results. In addition to the above, we are also considering adding additional threat to successful blocks.
• Parry: this stat is a bit tricky as it lies somewhere in between a defensive and offensive stat (offensive because you get the chance to riposte). When a player successfully parries an attack the incoming attack will suffer a disadvantage along with a fixed damage % mitigation (similar to block, except it will be independent of weapon). In addition, we would beef up riposte to make it a lot more powerful than an additional auto attack.

None of this is set in stone yet as we are still iterating so we would love to hear your thoughts on these proposed changes. There were a number of other design proposals that didn't make the cut as we found them to be less interesting and/or obfuscated too much information happening on the back end. We hope that the above proposed changes will give us a decent amount of flexibility for interesting encounters and itemizations (imagine a "Chaos Shield" with a 1-100% block rating).

Patch Size (ongoing)
We are working on migrating our scenes to a new loading system that will reduce the overall size of patches. At the moment all scenes are lumped together into a large ~3gb file. Any time data within this file changes it must be redownloaded - even if those changes are small. By breaking our data up into smaller chunks those downloads will ideally be minimized to smaller individual files moving forward. The end result will be saving us bandwidth (money), and saving you download time on patch day. The tech required to do this loading has been implemented. The work remaining is breaking the scenes up into individual files along with creating the shared bundles that contain assets used by multiple scenes.

This work is taking much longer than initially anticipated due to the large dependency trees within scenes (we are packing resources into shared "bundles" which requires us to identify what goes in each to prevent duplicates). The scene loading tech was rewritten over the break to accommodate this future change and will be active in this patch.

Known Issues:

• Resource nodes may occasionally tell you "invalid target". This means that your client thinks a resource node is there but the server does not. We are still investigating the cause of this.
• Occasionally a loot roll may be skipped entirely and a carcass will be given. When this happens please provide any relevant details as we are still trying to track this one down.
• Deconstructing crafted items returns junk 100% of the time.
• Not all clothing/armor has visuals
• Dragging a group-nameplate in the group window will set the wrong pivot point for the group window and the whole thing will drag a bit weird.
• Typing chat text may occasionally become invisible. Unfocus your chat window and trying again a few times typically resolves this.
• Sometimes when you respawn you don't end up at the proper Hallow --> if this happens please report the position where you died via the "/report" command or "/debugposition" (if using debugposition you'll need to paste the value here)
• MacOS:
  • Zooming the camera while holding the right mouse button can cause your chat window to scroll. This is not intended behavior.
  • At some camera angles the sun may go dark. This should not happen frequently but is readily reproducible at some locations. Investigating a fix.

 

[Pelirow]

New stuff:
Resist Adjustments
This patch brings improvements to how resists work for lasting effects (DOTs/Debuffs). Much of the feedback we have gotten thus far is that resists are a worthless stat because it's not really "felt". When resisting an effect the duration is reduced based on your resist values. However, shaving 2s off of a 10s daze probably isn't even something players notice. One of the design reasons for only reducing the duration is that we felt that if a player's ability was resisted they would feel as though their stamina was wasted. But, we are also depriving players of the rewarding feeling of straight up resisting an incoming effect.

We are adding a full resist dice roll to combat calculations hoping that it will inject a bit more life into these stats. It will also allow us to do some more interesting things with them in the future. To avoid any drastic changes to the core combat loop (having to rebalance +resist values or obsoleting gear) we are simply setting the chance of fully resisting an effect's application to 20% of your resist value. For example: a character with +40 daze resist will have an 8% chance to fully resist the daze application; if the effect is not fully resisted the duration will still be reduced by 40% as it is now. Note that this additional check will be in place for players applying effects to NPCs as well.

Updates to Combat Text
To improve the visibility of resist and other events we have made some improvements to the combat log. This will be on ongoing iterative process with the goal of delivering more data while maintaining readability and brevity.

• Other combat text is now 20% smaller to help differentiate it from your own.
• Updated the rounding of combat log display values. Previously, all values were rounded down regardless of the decimal value. Values will now be rounded down if the decimal value is less than 0.5 and rounded up if they are greater than or equal to 0.5.
• Additional information has been added to the parenthesis after combat text. These abbreviations also now have tooltips in which you can hover for a reminder.
  • ADV: the attack had an advantage
  • DIS: the attack had a disadvantage
  • ADV: the attack had an advantage that was cancelled by a disadvantage
  • RES: the application was resisted
  • PRES: the application was partially resisted
  • DIM: the application was impacted by diminishing retuns
  • ABS: the value absorbed by armor
  • THR: the threat value
  • OT: the value done by over-time effects (DOTs/HOTs)

Looks great! I think the resist change is a good one and provides more clarity as well as incentives to either generally stack resists or try to tailor towards one or two types with higher resists.

I think the additional info in combat text will allow players to further test and assess abilities and weapons, while still maintaining some obfuscation so it can't be easily meta'ed.

Works in progress:
To see a full list of what is currently in progress head on over to this thread. I will do my best to update this list on a weekly basis and highlight the differences from the previous week with bold font. Below I will highlight some of the upcoming changes in more detail.

Active Defense Revamp (1-3 weeks)
Current active defenses (Avoid, Block, & Parry) are all functionally "the same". This poses a few design issues as players could potentially stack these values to completely mitigate incoming damage while not providing any interesting decisions along the way. We have always wanted to swing back around to update these but things got lost in the shuffle at launch. To rectify this we have started modifying the design of how active defenses differ from one another and what benefits they could provide to the player. The current thought process is as follows:

• Avoid: remains relatively unchanged. This stat will be found mostly on low-AC gear and/or jewelry. We very well may add threat reduction on a successful avoid.
• Block: will move from its current state to a mitigation % dependent on your shield and/or 2H weapon. Given that the initial design intent of this stat was to be more tank focused we wanted to add some options here that (hopefully) make things a bit more interesting. Our current thought is to add a "Block Rating" range to 2H Weapons & Shields. Upon successfully blocking an incoming attack a dice will be rolled based on the values of your weapon/shield to determine how much damage you essentially resist (NOT absorb). Having a range on the items will allow us to provide an additional layer of progression. For example: maybe a low level shield has a 15-30% block rating, whereas a higher level shield has 25-30% block rating giving you more consistent results. In addition to the above, we are also considering adding additional threat to successful blocks.
• Parry: this stat is a bit tricky as it lies somewhere in between a defensive and offensive stat (offensive because you get the chance to riposte). When a player successfully parries an attack the incoming attack will suffer a disadvantage along with a fixed damage % mitigation (similar to block, except it will be independent of weapon). In addition, we would beef up riposte to make it a lot more powerful than an additional auto attack.

None of this is set in stone yet as we are still iterating so we would love to hear your thoughts on these proposed changes. There were a number of other design proposals that didn't make the cut as we found them to be less interesting and/or obfuscated too much information happening on the back end. We hope that the above proposed changes will give us a decent amount of flexibility for interesting encounters and itemizations (imagine a "Chaos Shield" with a 1-100% block rating).

I think this is great continued iteration of the three defensive stats. Depending on how your testing goes, it may be better that Avoid provides a stack of advantage as opposed to threat reduction as to keep it more tank thematic. I think Block moving to more of mitigation and potentially additional threat makes sense if the current AC softcap is unchanged, because I found myself and other tanks simply using shields only when we weren't seeing 50/50 dmg and abs numbers, making it more a secondary rather than a primary desired tank item as AC numbers increased thru other gear.

I've been MIA through the holidays but looking forward to jumping in soon. Keep up the good work!

 

[Undone]

it may be better that Avoid provides a stack of advantage as opposed to threat reduction as to keep it more tank thematic.

We considered similar ideas but in order to do this we would need to apply an additional effect to the player (a buff) that provides said advantage. Throwing in extra effects is something I would like to avoid if possible just to reduce the chance of weird problems and performance considerations.

 

[Pelirow]

We considered similar ideas but in order to do this we would need to apply an additional effect to the player (a buff) that provides said advantage. Throwing in extra effects is something I would like to avoid if possible just to reduce the chance of weird problems and performance considerations.

Gotcha. Is avoid still going to be a complete "negation" of the attack that was avoided? If parry is now a disadvantage + mitigation as opposed to complete negation of the attack like it used to, and block is a resist % and maybe threat gen, perhaps complete avoidance as the distinctive nature of avoid stat is good enough. I just think threat reduction is counterintuitive to a defensive stat but the only other "extra perk" I can think of that might fit within your desire to avoid weird problems is that avoid could reduce active cooldowns by a second or two on each successful avoid, like a mini haste.

 

[Undone]

Gotcha. Is avoid still going to be a complete "negation" of the attack that was avoided? If parry is now a disadvantage + mitigation as opposed to complete negation of the attack like it used to, and block is a resist % and maybe threat gen, perhaps complete avoidance as the distinctive nature of avoid stat is good enough. I just think threat reduction is counterintuitive to a defensive stat but the only other "extra perk" I can think of that might fit within your desire to avoid weird problems is that avoid could reduce active cooldowns by a second or two on each successful avoid, like a mini haste.

Yes, avoid would remain a complete negation of incoming damage. It was intended to be geared toward Strikers and maybe a bit of support. I feel like adding threat reduction to avoid makes the decision of what stats to go with a bit more interesting for a tank. Without it there is no reason for tanks to not just stack all 3; instead they would have to balance their loadout to account for a potential loss of threat.

Basically with the above proposal (disregarding any threat changes) the order of "usefulness" to a tank would still be Avoid --> Block --> Parry. Whereas if we start tinkering with the threat it's no longer a clear cut ordering and becomes more interesting.

 

[csthao]

Any chance of giving collateral damage more than 2 targets? Or having perforate aoe based like the other juggernaut rip ability?

Them being the class that generates the least amount of threat out of the 3 tanks make them really underwhelming. Their dps doesn't make up for all the threat mods that the other 2 tanks have. It should be more balanced, aggro should be able to bounce between the tanks. Even the striker classes will generate more threat than the juggernaut.

 

[AdricLives]

Any chance of giving collateral damage more than 2 targets? Or having perforate aoe based like the other juggernaut rip ability?

Them being the class that generates the least amount of threat out of the 3 tanks make them really underwhelming. Their dps doesn't make up for all the threat mods that the other 2 tanks have. It should be more balanced, aggro should be able to bounce between the tanks. Even the striker classes will generate more threat than the juggernaut.

I'll certainly be taking a look, skills are one of the next major focuses for me. I've been taking in a lot of the spec feedback and appreciate it.

 

[Nin]

Any chance of giving collateral damage more than 2 targets? Or having perforate aoe based like the other juggernaut rip ability?

Them being the class that generates the least amount of threat out of the 3 tanks make them really underwhelming. Their dps doesn't make up for all the threat mods that the other 2 tanks have. It should be more balanced, aggro should be able to bounce between the tanks. Even the striker classes will generate more threat than the juggernaut.

So, you are suggesting making the Jugg just as much of an aggro tank while still putting out much more damage?

I frame the question that way because I've seen other MMO "metas" slip into "just throw more dps at it". If we don't keep the less damage-dealing defenders and supporters having very specialized roles and abilities, they will fall in relevance over time as people figure out the game mechanics and become more heavily geared.

 

[csthao]

So, you are suggesting making the Jugg just as much of an aggro tank while still putting out much more damage?

"Much more damage" that's funny. I don't see their damage pulling aggro from a Marshal or Knight so obviously the damage part isn't working.

Their damage doesn't hold as good of the aggro against striker classes as well. So I don't know what you're getting upset about.

 

[Nin]

"Much more damage" that's funny. I don't see their damage pulling aggro from a Marshal or Knight so obviously the damage part isn't working.

Their damage doesn't hold as good of the aggro against striker classes as well. So I don't know what you're getting upset about.

Hi csthao! I'm new here so I apologize if I don't have all the numbers handy. I was just making a generic statement about the difference in classes and how Jugg is obviously meant as more of a damage-dealing off tank. I'm not upset in the least and I hope you have a great day.

 

[csthao]

Hi csthao! I'm new here so I apologize if I don't have all the numbers handy. I was just making a generic statement about the difference in classes and how Jugg is obviously meant as more of a damage-dealing off tank. I'm not upset in the least and I hope you have a great day.

No offense taken

 

[Archer]

Other combat text is now 20% smaller to help differentiate it from your own.

This will cause additional problems with visually impaired players, forcing them to increase the base size to compensate. I would prefer to see either a different font-face used or font-style (italic, bold, etc)

 

[Archer]

Updated the rounding of combat log display values. Previously, all values were rounded down regardless of the decimal value. Values will now be rounded down if the decimal value is less than 0.5 and rounded up if they are greater than or equal to 0.5.

Please no. Don't drop information, unless it is ignore behind the scenes also. Just show us the values to one or two decimal places.

 

[Undone]

This will cause additional problems with visually impaired players, forcing them to increase the base size to compensate. I would prefer to see either a different font-face used or font-style (italic, bold, etc)

Are you speculating that this will happen or are you saying that it is currently happening? The point here is to essentially de-emphasizes the (arguably) least important data in the combat window. Happy to adjust the shrinkage if that is the feedback we receive but we use bold/italics for other emphasis so it would not be feasible to use either on the entire line. And we do our best to use a very limited font set for consistency.

Please, no. Just show us the values to one or two decimal places.

The decimal places are superfluous to display. They would take up additional room on an already cramped text line and I would argue that it doesn't provide any meaningful information; especially given that health bars do not show decimal places either. Values will be rounded so pick your poison: round everything down as it previously was, or round up based on the decimal value.

At the end of the day I am not convinced that a +/-0.5 error bar on displayed combat values would change the outcome of any situation or have any lasting impact on a player's game experience.

 

[Quoetzl]

Hello,

Great patch to start off the New Year with!

Active Defense Revamp

I hope that when this revamp goes in that the itemization of items with Parry, Avoid and Block are examined too.

Right now, there's plenty of items with avoid, some items with parry and few items with block.

Hopefully, we will have options to mix and match these statistics for our playstyle and continue to remain 'tanky' in the defender role.

Q

 

[AdricLives]

Hello,

Great patch to start off the New Year with!

Active Defense Revamp

I hope that when this revamp goes in that the itemization of items with Parry, Avoid and Block are examined too.

Right now, there's plenty of items with avoid, some items with parry and few items with block.

Hopefully, we will have options to mix and match these statistics for our playstyle and continue to remain 'tanky' in the defender role.

Q

Absolutely! With more of a mitigation focus these stats can be a lot more prevalent where 100% avoidance has to be more strict in its application.

 

[MeatLasagna]

Something seems to be up with the Spell "Stim". It used to give me 30 - 38% all the time(1/3 or 1/4 chance usually). Now it rarely happens. I usually get something measly like 20 - 25%. It also costs 5% to cast so a 22% stim is actually only 17%. That's only enough to cast our big heal 1 time and then have a 2 minute cooldown. Seams so underwhelming at times, especially since you have to grind hundreds of hours to attain a Level 30 skill.