Friday's Grab Bag with Sanya

Sanya gives long answers this week with a lot of information for haste and the gaming coders. Also a little help for those that are upset over the archer nerf. More fun than a cat at a fish fry: Q: How do haste spells work? A: You swing more often. Bear in mind that everyone has a melee damage range, and that the number of points of inflicted damage can vary anywhere in that range. (Your range depends on factors such as specialization points, other stat buffs, enhancing items, your natural stats, etc.) I have had a lot of questions on this recently, because we recently nerfed it (it used to make you swing almost twice as fast as normal even if the person who hasted you was low level). However – we have run EXTENSIVE tests on this spell. Because that potential damage range can be wide, and some fights can be short (short defined as less than five swings), it is possible to have a situation where you do less damage with haste up than otherwise. However, those situations are not common, and have zero to do with the haste spell. All but one of our test runs showed the hasted character doing more damage overall as opposed to the non-hasted character. And the effect gets better the higher level the haste spell. Now, I’ve been doing these grab bags long enough to know some of y’all will disagree with me violently. If you’re going to, please send the following information with HASTE as your subject header (BTW, when I ask for a header, it’s so I can sort through my seven billion emails and pull out the ones that are relevant): Class, race, level, weapon spec points, dual wield/left axe spec (if applicable), and weapon speed. Q: How do you set priorities at Mythic in terms of what the coders do each day? A: Our number one priority is anything that would stop the game for a player. This isn’t just crash bugs, this includes anything that would keep you from playing the game – targeting bugs keeping you from initiating combat, a spell line not working at all, and so on. Our second priority involve exploitative scenarios, behavior that falls outside parameters we have set – damage either far above or far below what we consider appropriate, gold machines (meaning an effortless means of acquiring cash), etc. From there we try to strike a balance between old stuff and new. For old stuff, we have four dedicated employees who do nothing but go through player appeals and reports. Their job is to read, verify, duplicate, isolate, and report. One of the people is solely devoted to gathering class feedback, and getting that information to the developers. I help with that, as there is sometimes a disconnect between the relatively small population on Pendragon and popular opinion as seen through email and the boards. And of course, the rest of the dev team has their own niche they look out for – the spell guy, the item guy, the item girl, the tradeskill guy, the pathing guy, the quest horde, etc. They do cruise the web, but mostly I forward them emails and links. I also follow up in a persistent fashion. I may not win each debate, but I don’t go away =) It’s hard, I think. It’s hard for ME, and I know what’s going on behind the scenes! For one thing, there’s a delay from when YOU say something to when a decision is made on the topic and it appears in game. The stuff that’s been coming in lately – higher crit strikes for assassins, new spells, etc – is all based on feedback we collected two months ago. For another thing, our programmers are looking at the game as a whole. They might have to drop working on a spell or style that doesn’t work exactly right in favor of solving a crash bug, because that crash bug affects ALL the players, not just the player of class X. It doesn’t mean that class X, or any other subset of players, is not very important. Q: I am missing (insert style here). When can I expect it? A: Go right click your trainer, and check your style list. Don’t forget to scroll up or down. If it did not appear, please email me your name, your class, your server, and the name of the style. Put a subject header that reads STYLE MISSING for me, please! From what I have been told, no one should be missing their styles – but they do need to right click their trainer to get it if it had been missing before. Q: When are you going to fix /stick? A: Well, technically, it’s not broken. It’s just like /follow, but with a smaller radius. It still doesn’t get you close enough to actually melee the person you are stuck to. At this point, I have been told that this is to prevent automatic combat, where you just pick, click, and stick. What’s it good for then? Well, if you’re stuck to someone, and they stop to cast a spell, you’re RIGHT there to whack them. I understand that a number of you do not like the way this works, and have passed on that feedback. Q: Can you comment on the BSI lawsuit? A: Not and keep my job at the same time, no. And I really like this job. You’ll have to wait for the tell-all book after Mythic fires me. Thanks for the supportive emails, though! Q: Why have archers been whacked with the nerf bat so hard? A: Well, three things – one, barring the unforeseen that’s the last of the major adjustments, and two, some of that nerf pain was NOT on purpose, it was a bug (category two, by the definition of our priorities mentioned above) – see that patch note marked 1.45C posted by Matt Firor early this morning. I’m really sorry about that. So is everyone here – that’s why we took the servers down this morning to fix it. And three, here’s a sample of my email: “Can you tell me how I am lvl 42 and totally buffed (I am an enh spec cleric) and ONE Archer does over 1100 points of damage to me before I can take 10 steps? The guy did a crit on me for 599 points and then two hits for approx 300 each. How in the world can Mythic justify that AND give them the speed to get away as well?” Well, I really can’t say I blame the guy for being a little traumatized. If you disagree with the disgruntled gentleman posted above, please send me your class (and if you aren’t an archer I’ll delete it, FYI, I have tons more emails like our poor cleric’s, I don’t need any more ;)), race, level, and spec point distribution, and a **concise** list of reasons why Mythic is wrong. Use the header DISGRUNTLED ARCHER. I’ll be camping the boards this weekend, as we are collecting feedback about our proposed “hardcore” PVP server. Please don’t email me with your ideas, use the boards – Vault or any one of the terrific fan-run forums, I lurk at nearly a dozen boards. Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

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