Today’s Update Notes for March 31, 2011 bring those Itemization changes we’ve been hearing about, a redesign of the Storm Gorge Public Quest, and the Aether Races flying event has now been folded into City Festivals, starting with Antonica. From SmokeJumper:

There will be a new track for each city until we start looping around again. Each city’s track will only be available during the City Festival and you can earn festival coins and titles when you race.

We might trot them all out at once at Tinkerfest or something, but they’ll usually be linked individually to the City Festivals now.

The full update notes after the jump…

So, you’ve heard all the hullabaloo about Itemization changes. Well ‘big deal’ you think to yourself. There will always be adjustments and shuffling around of things missed in Beta. The last 2 years have seen big changes to itemization after the expansion comes out. Why is this news?

Well never mind the confusion and inconvenience for players, but there’s the feeling that players have wasted their time defeating a much more difficult mob only to receive an item that is only a minor upgrade or in many cases with Velious, a downgrade in quality. Quite a few players have told me that they now bank ALL of their gear for the first 60 days after an expansion, just in case we see sweeping changes.

However, with Velious’ astounding dependence upon Adornments to provide any uniqueness whatsoever to gear from the Othmir quest gear all the way up to Hardmode Raid gear, Adornments matter now more than ever.

If you thought the Itemization threads on the EQ2 Forums have been harsh, they really took a turn for the worse after players took Silius‘ advice and checked out the changes on Test and Test Copy, only to find that several items had lost upwards of 75% of their MultiAttack, 4.0 weapons received additional boosts (leaving out 6.0 weapons), and most of the ‘boosts’ were upwards of 0.6% increases on just a handful of stats.

SmokeJumper came to Silius‘ defense:

Silius has made huge strides into setting things up so that the completely haphazard systems of yore, where half a dozen designers just made stuff up on their own without checking anything against each other, is eliminated. Systems have been created, and like with any new systems, there were hitches in a few assumptions here.

We’re fixing those assumptions (thanks in large part to some of the feedback provided here) and the systems will keep improving. We hope to avoid the typical “expansion item debacle” in the future by providing reasoned methods to make items in the future.

So yes, there were a few glitches here, but it’s all in the interest of progress.

Silius is doing an excellent job. If you think he’s doing his job in a vacuum, then you’re incorrect. Half the design team is working with him to make things better. Please feel free to continue to hate him, because that’s your prerogative, but he’s not going anywhere.

Players have expressed concerns that the changes in the difficulty of dungeons this week will make Kael Drakkel far too easy. However SmokeJumper seems to be backing up the designers on wanting to keep the contested Kael Drakkel sufficiently difficult:

(Making the zone super easy is) not our intent at all. And I’m glad that your group is able to play through those areas. But it must have been verrry lonely in Kael, because we know how many people were playing it…and it’s not many.

Players logged in yesterday morning to find that their Ranged items, including bows and thrown weapons, had rejected their adornments. Those adornments ended up back in the Overflow slot.

Rothgar responded:

This appears to be a bug related to some item changes.  Our QA department is working on it now and we will have the items fixes asap.

If you just can’t wait for Thursday to see what (if any) changes you’ll see to your gear, you may be interested in these additional Test Update Notes (beyond the notes already posted on Tuesday):

ITEMS

• Dungeon dropped loot has had its power increased.
• Dungeon shard armor has had its power increased.
• Raid items have had their power increased.
• The gap in power between easy and challenge mode raid items has been increased.
• The power of a few War Runes has been increased.

Silius brought this to our attention:

Just a heads up that test server should have the biggest chunk of the item increase on it now. If you want to test copy and check it out your feedback is appreciated.

After posting a promising thread on Friday entitled “Upcoming Itemization Changes (No Nerfs)“, it seems SmokeJumper has gotten egg on his face today. Players logged in after today’s Tuesday Game Update to find sweeping nerfs and huge reductions in the effectiveness of Velious gear across the line, especially Fighter items.

In a cantankerous discussion on the EQ2 forums, players linked numerous items which underwent substantial losses in stats and desirability. SmokeJumper initially tried to defend the changes with:

Please go back and take a look at my original post. I did say that we were being “intentionally conservative” with these changes and that this we’re likely to do a second pass after judging the impact of the first changes. Hang in there.

When cornered about why today’s update included all nerfs and no buffs:

I’m the wrong guy to try to answer your questions, but I’ve forwarded this thread to those in charge of itemization and they’ll write a response soon. There weren’t supposed to be nerfs, so I’m trying to find out why that occurred.

The full explanation, and our commentary about EQ2 Itemization after the jump…

From SmokeJumper the EQ2 Forums:

These itemization changes did *not* happen today, on Tuesday.

Instead, they will happen on Thursday morning’s hotfix. Sorry for the delay. Soon!

All U.S. servers will come down for an update at 7am PDT on Tuesday, March 29, 2011. The expected downtime is one hour. The U.K. worlds will have their update at 5am London Time on Wednesday, March 30, 2011. Estimated downtime is 2 hours.

The full reformatted patch notes are available after the jump….

If you have run a few Destiny of Velious dungeons (and raids), compared the loot/gear to Public Quests, and said aloud “no me comprende”, this should be a good week.

From SmokeJumper on the EQ2 Forums:

We are bumping up the power of Velious dungeon and raid items. We’re doing this to make those items more competitive when compared with Public Quest items, because instances are tougher than the PQs and deserve better rewards. This does include shard armors.

We are also going to bump up the power of hard-mode raid loot so hard modes are even more rewarding, as they require significant time and effort to beat. NOTE: This doesn’t include war runes since they are already quite powerful.

The net result of these changes makes dungeons and raids a bit more rewarding and also balances things out so that people with a full public quest set will be able to find solid item upgrades in dungeons.

These changes will occur next week sometime. If they happen sooner than that, we’ll let you know.

Let’s Be Honest…

Public Quests completed even at the highest “x4 raid” level demand neither the coordination nor the discipline of any of the raid content in the last 3 expansions. Storm Gorge requires a little more focus than Ring War, but generally speaking, 24-40 players standing in the right place, killing the right mobs, in the right order, stand to inherit a wagonload of Legendary gear with Yellow adornment slots, all without such challenges as timing AOEs, switching to an Off-Tank, agro-juggling, or any complex strategy. The biggest enemy encountered is usually Server Lag.

Public Quests offer a speedy alternate route to gearing up for players who largely skipped Sentinel’s Fate, are gearing up alts, or just aren’t interested in more solo questing (although as we found, the Othmir questline writing, structure, and payoff are all above average and keep the obvious time sinks to a minimum).

So what’s to stop players from logging in alts, parking them near the scene of a Public Quest, and going to get a coffee while their toon “earns” amazing gear? Apparently not enough. While we have taken issue with certain players who spend an awful lot of time critiquing how others play the game and all the ways in which those methods are unfair or unbalancing, even we would be foolish to defend standing around AFK in a Public Quest all while earning Legendary or Fabled gear. We believe its in everyone’s interest that your favored MMO have a long-term plan besides “More dungeons and more lootz in the next Game Update!” Gameplay that allows leapfrogging most of the content progression is disruptive for the game. Velious has got to last us the next year, and as robust as the Game Updates may end up being, the end of the treadmill should never be visible.

Your updates notes for today, March 24, 2011, include several crash fixes, problems linking items in chat, Auction channel spam, and also some substantial nerfs to Critical Mitigation on Destiny of Velious gear.

As we first discovered in our Critical Oversight in Public Quests Gear? article, the progression from solo quest gear, to Public Quest gear, to Group Instance gear, and on to Raid gear, has not made a whole lot of sense. In particular, Critical Mitigation has been all over the map.

Silius has announced some upcoming changes in the Critical Mitigation numbers of various gear throughout the Velious itemization range.

After the jump, your Update Notes for today, Tuesday, March 22nd 2011 include the addition (for real this time) of loot to trash mobs in Kael Drakkel, and the removal of Yellow Adornments from some items.

You may have noticed this little tidbit in today’s patch notes:

Kael Drakkel

• Base Population in the contested dungeon now has legendary and fabled drops.

With this information you may be thinking of heading in there and trying your hand at killing some of the level 92 mobs to see what kind of trash drops you can get.  Not so fast!  Raviel on Guk apparently had the same idea and didn’t have the best of luck

Raviel@Guk wrote:

so ive been in here for about 2 hours now. wheres the trash gear we were promised?

Kander responded with this:

The hotfix said it was added, however it was not. We will try to have that corrected as soon as possible.

I am extremely disapointed myself.

Sorry about that all.

Guess we’ll have to wait a bit longer before seeing those trash drops.

From Windslasher on the EQ2 Forums

Okay, I have it on pretty good authority that a solo shard quest is on the way. Probably GU 60. It will not have anything whatsoever to do with public quests, however.

Public Quests have been keeping Windslasher rather busy and he had posted some detailed answers about just how Public Quests difficulty are set. The Ring War seems fairly straightforward, but the Storm Gorge PQ (which will possibly see some changes in the next few days) has sufficient complexity to worth a more in-depth analysis.

From Windslasher on the EQ2 Forums:

Loot is not totally and completely random. It is only partially random. I posted a complete breakdown of the baseline loot at this link:

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=30&topic_id=495127#5512456

Whether you get a humming, pulsating etc. cache is not random, but whether you get exquisite is. In addition, the fabled items have a fixed rare drop rate, but only for players who qualify to get a humming cache.

The player base has started a very interesting discussion thread on how long the Public Quests will remain popular.  Currently, everyone is scrambling to get gear — raiders, non-raiders, casual players.  The PQs are packed, players are complaining no one wants to group or do anything else, and for most people who are participating, they are getting most of their gear slots filled with the best upgrades. Being nearby a successful raid seems all that is necessary.  But how long will the gearfest last?  Once everyone gets what they need, why would they continue to join the PQs?  The AA gain for choosing the AA reward is only 6-10%, and currently, the lag is bothering a lot of people, with the end result being an attitude of “get my gear and get out,” not a great formula for longevity.

Here are your Update Notes for today, March 9th. Of note, Frost Gryphons acquired by crafters are now usable without being a Guide, and a mysterious note that Critical Mitigation values are being reduced on some items.

Looks like the contested Kael Drakkel group dungeon just got some more reasons for people to go back! From Kander on the EQ2 Forums:

Due to the hotfix schedule, we should have everything listed in by Tuesday March 15th. The stuff in bold is in now and the rest will be in next Tuesday.

• PoI Quests have been made repeatable once a day (6 quests) and grant faction and shards
• Trash drops, including rare fabled drops are being added to the zone tables.
• Bosses now have a chance to drop shards.
• Trash now has a chance to drop shards.
• The experience has been raised significantly.
• Most if not everything loot oriented is tradeable.

Also all named in Kael Drakkel are now flagged to give AA experience every time you kill them. That went in this morning I believe.

When Velious was announced, lots of folks asked for Faction to matter. Wish granted! 🙂

Faction must be acquired with the Othmir, Snowfang Gnolls, Thurgadin, and Ry’Gorr to buy their adornments (unique to each faction) and gear, and it can be rather slow-going!

The Othmir, Snowfang Gnolls, and Ry’Gorr all have daily (18 hour repeatable) quests to kill overland mobs and gain faction. Crabs for the Othmir quests occasionally drop an item which provides an additional faction boost. Alas, Thurgadin faction must be gained by running dungeons.

A variety of rewards become available once faction milestones of 10,000, 20,000, and 40,000 are reached. After completing all of the solo quests in Velious, most folks will end up with at or above 7,000 faction with each so the first items should be available in just a few days, with the better rewards taking a couple of weeks to earn.

Public Quests drop Cloudy Velium Jewels which can be sold to any of the 4 factions for +500 faction. Also, mobs inside the contested Kael Drakkel can be killed for a small amount of faction gain as well. If you’ve only done the Othmir quests at the arrival point in Velious (Great Divide), you’ve only gotten half the story (and are missing a good chunk of faction). Head to the Eastern Wastes once you’re done.

Thurgadin also has their own crafting faction, the Forgemasters of Thurgadin and you’ll want to befriend them if you are interested in acquiring the Coldain Prayer Shawl. And there are plenty of opportunities to work on Far Seas Supply Division faction, as well as Order of Rime faction if you are one of those people. 😉

UPDATE: This article has received a substantial rewrite since its original publication and is now part of a series of articles about Faction in Velious.

After the jump, we talk more about what else you can get for your hard-earned faction in Velious…

Two weeks after the release of Destiny of Velious we see a rather hefty patch that tackles many of the issues we’ve seen on the EQ2 Forums with dungeon and quest progression.

After the jump, your March 8, 2011 Update Notes…

The rewards from public quests have been a hot topic on the community forums lately, with a few players wondering if just healing or playing a support role results in a lesser chest than all out DPS.   As the rumor that only good dps’ers would get the best loot swept the community, some support classes have resorted to dealing out pure dps and not healing, which doesn’t make for a very successful raid.

We may yet hear from the Devs on this issue, but until then, the only information available is from the core design of public quests. Our understanding of the dynamics of public quests is that rewards are awarded to stop players from hitting the bad guys a couple of times and then going AFK,  and to reward those people who participate fully.  Instead of the normal loot drop system, public quests use “participation scoring” to determine what reward each player gets at the end of the encounter.   The game keeps track of everything a player does during the encounter, which includes contributing to a kill, spells cast, and noncombat interactions.  The players with the most activity get the best loot.  It’s not competitive, either, so if everyone contributed equally, everyone gets a good individual reward.

Kael Drakkel is making Contested Dungeons in EQ2 sexy again. With 15 names, and the largest zone ever added to EQ2 (it’s larger than Solusek’s Eye), there is a lot to live up to here. The zone is intended to be difficult, with loot somewhere between the hardest Velious instances and beginning raids. It’s a new way of approaching contested dungeons compared to The Hole, Karnor’s Castle, Sebilis, and Chardok which all struggled to keep our attention after a few weeks.

Players have been looking for an old school dungeon crawl and Kael Drakkel seems to deliver. It shows a new commitment to creating dungeons that aren’t irrelevant or abandoned after the first week of the expansion. This is the kind of danger and contested experience we haven’t really seen since Castle Mistmoore and Sanctum of Scaleborn and feedback both during Beta and since launch has been surprisingly positive, even from the most jaded raiders.

Kander took a leading role in designing Kael Drakkel, and seems cautious about making any major changes to it. This seems wise, as subtle changes may be all that is warranted here.

It’s one week since the launch of Destiny of Velious and there are always bugs and issues that make it through from the Beta. Today’s update tackles many of them. With today’s update, many of these issues are fixed.

Tradeskillers can now equip their Boreal or Frost Gryphon as a flying mount at level 85 tradeskill. Freebloods who have completed their Cloud of Bats quests can now use it. And the Collector’s Edition (still available as a $25 upgrade today until 10am PST [18:00 GMT] ) Stormfeather Brood Guardian is now usable by 85 tradeskill and 85 adventurer.

The Coldain Ring War and Storm Gorge Public Quests were a lot of fun this weekend, however several issues plagued both, making it difficult or impossible, even with a full raid of 24 players, to reach difficulty #4 or #5 to get the better rewards (including Legendary armor with yellow adornment slots). The Ring War PQ kept scaling down to solo difficulty, and the Storm Gorge PQ seemed to start at maximum difficulty, steamrolling everyone present, rather than ramping up.

We also see bug fixes in various quests, including both the group and raid versions of the Tower of Frozen Shadow.