EQ2 Panel #5 — Mechanics

Starting the EverQuest II: Itemization, Class Balance, Mechanics panel…

Salim “Silius“, Carlos “Gninja” Mora, Greg “Rothgar” Spence, Paul “Frizznik” Carrico, Mike “Xelgad” Ganz

G61: Stat Adjustments

Problem
* The variety of stats available to classes is imbalanced
* This causes some archetypes to rely on procs and effects for item diversity

Solution
* Define a consistent number of stats for each archetype
* Offer all archetypes a healthy growth through a variety of itemization options

GU61: Stat Derivation

Problem
– Years of change have resulted in little headroom
– Stat caps too low
– Older stats have become irrelevant

Solution
– Uncap some of our stats, define staggered growth
– Derive some of our stats from others
– Introduce new stats to derive from older stats

Examples

– DPS cap removed
– Haste will convert to flurry
– Weapon skills will adjust the low end variance of your CAs
– Focus skill will allow you to move while casting

GU61: Spell Auto Attack

Problem
– Casters and some healers have the least amount of stat variety
– Because of this their headroom is almost all used up. Casting speed and reuse speed are almost capped.

Solution
– Provide those archetypes with more options for growth.
– Allow those archetypes to supplement their damage potential in a way that others can
Will NOT have to time autoattacks

Uses a wand that goes in your ranged slot
There will be spell autoattack versions of the following stats
* DPS
* Flurry
* Multi Attack
* Haste
* AE Autoattack

GU61: Reitemization of 20-90

Problem
– Mechanics change have reduced the relevancy of a majority of items
Solution
– Update previous items for ne mechanics standards.
– Design items so that they can be adjusted again later to match new mechanics changes automatically.

GU61: Class Foci
Problem
– Many of the current class foci are not desirable
Solution
– Modify old class foci
– Add new class foci

GU61: AA Revamp

Problem
– Some AAs have become useless over time
– The subclass tree is inconsistent with the rest of the trees
– the ‘Webbing’ is annoying and not intuitive

Solution
– Fix AAs that have been identified as undesreiable
– Modify the subclass tree to be more consistent with others

Example screenshot of new subclass tree
– Webbing has been removed
– Total amount being standardized across all classes
– Selection is now based on total points spent
– Choose new endline every 20 points

Team Xelgad approves this presentation.

Q&A Start

Q: What about clerics and Steadfast AA line?
A: Steadfast you’ll probably still have to stand still for the immunity.

Q: Do mages have spell and melee autoattack at the same time?
A: No.

Q: Will Priests be able to decide on Spell or Melee autoattack?
A: You’ll have both options.

Q: Some classes are absolutely necessary to complete raid zones. Can you make it so that at least one of the encounters in each raid zone requires certain classes?
Audience: No!
A: Class Balance is ongoing. Designers make content to be fun. They don’t consider the Dirge or Troub in their designs. If a zone requires a certain class, we can look at that.

Q: 3D Stereoscopic question. The ocean and lighting have some problems.
A: We saw this problem at E3 and have found a workaround for the ocean. There’s a glitch between game client and nVidia driver. Their next driver should fix it. The problem is the filename was EverQuest2.exe. Once you renamed EQ2 to another name it fixed the problem. So the driver is profiling the game incorrectly.

Q: Item Reforging will that work on PvP for PvP stats?
A: Yes. PvP stats will be available for reforging.

Q: Moving while casting does that apply to rangers or just mages?
A: If you’re not over your stat cap and don’t have the focus for moving while casting you won’t get it.

Leko: Has PvP combat been considered with mages and priests being able to move while casting.
A: Anything we implement we have to consider all the angles. We will evaluate that.

Q: DoT per-tick cap can be raised?
A: We recently doubled the cap. No further changes planned.

Q: Autoattack DPS.
A: DPS cap is being removed. That’s big for autoattack. While mages are getting a damage increase, melee is also getting an increase across the board. We’re not just upping casters we’re upping everyone.

Q: Can we get an in-game tutorial for AA setups? Right now I have to go different websites or ask friends.
A: We’d like to have suggested AA builds in-game as a reference. We’ve talked about it. We want it to be intuitive. One of the reasons Velious was itemized the way it was to be easier to understand. That said, it made some things boring. We need to offer something for number crunchers to push for.

Q: In Guild Halls it takes a while for items to spawn, or hail druid NPC and it takes a long time for the portal to spawn.
A: Wasn’t aware this was stil happening (audience reaction). We’ll take a look at it. Client issue?

Q: Leapers and Gliders are affecting PvP. Players are using these mounts to get away from PvP. Snared players are still able to get away with the 200% flying speed.
A: When you hit a player with something it should put them into combat. Maybe snare should apply to air speed. We’ll take care of that.

Q: Will Illusions ever have a real function other than just appearance.
A: Nothing we’re talking about right now as far as affecting factions, etc. It’s not something we have talked about in a while.

Q: Free AA respec in GU61?
A: Yes, it will force a reset. We may put in a free respec too.

Q: Adding other ways other than the AA mirror?
A: Portable Mirror is something we want to do. We want to integrate it into the knowledge book. Not planned yet, just talked about. We’d make it so you buy a mirror from a crafter, and it unlocks the feature in your Knowledge book. This has to be discussed and worked out.

Q: Can we get a way to remove AA points rather than resetting whenever we make a mistake?
A: We really want to update the interface so you can add and remove freely and then Save it. We already removed the Confirmation window. (audience applause)

Q: Any plans to bring back interesting, cool, rare items?
A: With GU60, as far as raiders, Sullon, Tallon, and Vallon all drop extremely rare [Mythical] weapons. They’re the greatest weapons in the game. We’re adding some unique Fabled items in group zones with cool procs in the future. Clearly the draconic way of removing procs didn’t go over well. We’ve explained why we did that. Going that far, maybe wasn’t the best idea. 🙂 We’re taking feedback and will take care of that.

Q: Call of Veteran fails ALL THE TIME.
A: We know why it’s a pain. It’s incredibly complicated. We’ve been trying to make it better. It sounds like it has a little way to go.

Q: Warden de-agro roots area mobs. Can we get that removed?
A: No plans to change priest de-agros. If it’s a systematic problem we can take a look at it.

Q: Hotbar spam when we respec AAs. Hotbars get filled with abilities.
A: One thing we really need to do (it’s an idea) for hotbar settings to be linked to your AA spec. If you change to your heal spec, it would change your hotbars.

Q: Mercenaries question. Based on stats of players armor? How do they perform in raid zones?
A: Mercenaries are dumb pets there to help you. If you are trying to substitute them in a raid force, it’s probably not going to work well. As far as stat sharing, if we make them a real pet, then we will look at shared stats, but we’re still discussing how exactly how they’ll be done.

Q: Scout Evade de-agro does so little.
A: Taunts and Detaunts are on our plate, but we don’t know when.

Q: Tracking doesn’t work well. I can see a mob before it shows up on Tracking.
A: This sounds like a bug. We can see if we can reproduce this.

Q: Can you make lower level heroics more powerful since solo players are so powerful now?
A: We are not adjusting the balance of difficulty of enemies based on player power. But if that backfired, it would be really bad. We think players want to jump in and play the game and if the lower level game is easy, there’s nothing wrong with that.

Q: Will Mercenaries mentor down with you if you mentor, or do they poof?
A: We haven’t talked about that yet. We haven’t decided if you can ‘store’ mercenaries.

Q: Charm bug: When you charm a mob and send it into fight and every enemy that can see it joins the fight. This happens in Spire.
A: We’ll make a note of that.

Q: Repurposing the AA kill tracker? Because you keep track of all the names you’ve killed, can you auto-update quests that ask you to kill a named if you already killed that mob?
A: Making that change would probably throw off the balance if you ran through dungeons, killed all the names, and then got updated on a bunch of quests at once.

Q: With the shared bank system, can we share status between characters?
A: We’d have to discuss that.

Q: Raid forces are dropping Templars in favor of Inquisitors because of the DPS they offer. Templars don’t get to raise the tank’s health much anymore. Inquisitors have better cures on the run.
Smoke: The funny thing about templars, they’re defensive healers. At the beginning of an expansion, Templars are relevant because they have blessings, stoneskins. Then as your tank gets geared, they become less important. We keep adding more difficult content so that does help keep Templars relevant. We could look into some solutions.

Q: Defense and Parry stats
A: These stats will be derived [and do other things once over the old cap].

Q: In heroic zones, new players have no idea what they’re doing because they haven’t learned.
Rothgar: It’s your job to train them (applause).
Silius: We really want players to learn their classes. We’re making other changes to AAs to dial some things back so you don’t have 4 million buttons all at once. You get abilities over time so you have time to learn them. Players should work with other people, help them learn the game.

Q: Group buff for Rangers so we are more desirable?
Silius: Rangers are not desirable?
Audience: Assassins have hate transfer and the same DPS.
Silius: Rangers can parse just as well as Assassins. (groan!)

Q: Can we fix poisons for all scouts?
A: Revamping poison is something we want to do, but it’s not on our schedule. As far as Rangers and Assassins, class balance is ongoing.

Q: During the AA revamp, some buffs give 700 pts of resist or +1000 health which is a drop in the bucket.
A: AA Revamp will be on Test soon. Send us your feedback!

Q: Tinkerers can make mender kits. Can each tradeskill class be able to repair their items on the fly? Like a tailor repairing cloth armor?
A: It’s something we can look at.

Q: Can we get 10% of the money off the mender bot?
A: We need plat sinks in the game.

Q: Why are there doors in raid zones? Kraytok, etc. This was so buggy for the first month. Doors hinder guilds from progressing.
A: I talked to Roger about this. Going forward we don’t like doors in raid zones either. This was an art issue. This was a matter of rendering so that you aren’t rendering both rooms simultaneously. We’ve used hallways with a 90 degree turn, or teleporters in the past. We’re going to get rid of locked doors going forward.

Q: Status Relics for leveling your guild. A new player can’t help level a guild except writs.
A: We can look into it.

Q: Every one of my girlfriend’s toons is a ratonga. In the AA revamp, will the character traits and racial traits get some revamp?
A: Character Development window we want to revamp it, we just haven’t had time to do that. Either in AA revamp or after GU61.

Q: Furies have a lot of raid abilities that Wardens only have a group version.
A: We’re not going to answer class vs. class issues. No plan to change Warden abilities at this time.

Q: I like access quests to dungeons. But once we’re in, and someone goes linkdead, I have to run out and summon them. Once a player is locked to a zone, can they just zone in?
A: We have to look at potential exploits on this. Once someone is locked to a raid, it does make sense they can zone in.

Q: Conjuror pet appearances can we get them back?
A: We would like to add a way to choose the appearance of the Conjurors, Shamans, etc. of their pet.

Q: On my SK, can I turn off FDing other players?
Smoke: I’m tired of accidentally FDing groupmates.

Q: Shared stats with a Conjy, I have 40k HP. My mage pet has 18k HP. Is this working as intended or can conjuror AoE immunity be applied to the pet?
A: Summoner pet health is where we want it. We may add some AAs for pet survivability or getting your pet back if it dies. Pet survivability is something we are looking at.

Q: New raid rally banner (guild hall amenity) appearances?
A: We have talked about it We have to talk about whether it’s feasible.

Q: What about the older content for us progression guilds? Older content gets broken with the changes to high level content. Emerald Halls was broken for a long time.
A: We don’t intend to neglect anything. We look at these things as much as humanly possible.
Smoke: Dungeon Finder is going to show us all the errors with old zones.

Q: Personal Harvest Depot can it hold all the same items as Guild Harvest Depot?
A: The Guild Depot has this advantage on purpose.

Q: Druid desirability on raids?
A: Class balance is ongoing.

Q: What is the point of NO TRADE at this point? Any plans to change it?
A: The issue of Selling Loot Rights is a sore subject. We have to deal with money entering the game, buying items for 4-5k and selling them for real money. We’ve discussed making some zones not allow Selling Loot Rights. We’ve talked about them but we have to consider the backlash. We don’t want to stomp on players without having a very good reason for it.

END PANEL

This was a Live Blog by EQ2Wire.com from SOE Fan Faire 2011 at Bally’s in Las Vegas, NV.