End of the week with Major Malphunktion 9.23.11

[Philibusta]

what Was So Bad About Having The Items Bta. Not Everyone Wants To Run Making A Dozen Or More Of The Same Items For Different Characters For It To Become Obsolete A Few Levels Or Or Game Updates Later. The Items Were Not Even That Powerful.

Was Looking Forward To Crystal Cove Now Ill Pass, Its Guild Xp And Character Xp.

^this.

[walkingwolfmike]

Is Mabar going to be checked over before being turned on?

[Talias006]

12345

That's amazing! I've got the same combination on my luggage!
~Spaceballs The Obscure Movie Reference~

On a semi-related note about BTA-BTC items, are you going to force the lower level trinkets to turn BTC once upgraded?
These are not direly in need of containment, they're at max level 4 items.
Pretty good trinkets no doubt, but not insanely powerful by any measure.

The primary offender that *might* deserve this treatment is just a tweaked copy of Charged Gauntlets from Chronoscope, and the Gauntlets are only a single level above the trinket.

[izzyboy]

I agree with many others in this thread that the change from BTA to BTC is frustrating. I still understand the change though. The items in question are pretty powerful in the right hands, like many others in game, and the fact that they are bound provides more balance in game. I'd certainly like to add more power to all of my characters, but I understand the reason why the more rare objects are BTC. I play PnP too, but it wouldn't be nearly as fun if the DM just dumped a bunch of powerful magic items on us.

Yes, yes, I know many folks don't give an f and just wanna slide around gear for lvling, epic, and otherwise, but still, stop and smell the roses sometime. If you didn't have to work for it, you wouldn't enjoy it so much.

[karl_k0ch]

• Mabar Handwraps will no longer be horribly OP.

Can you elaborate further on this? Since when are they that?

[Xioden]

At the very least, they should at least have the Cove items be Bound to character on equip. At least then we could make some stuff and move it around or save it until someone needs it at some point.

[TekkenDevil]

Not a single Artificer fix listed? Really?

There's only like a dozen that I can name off the top of my head, most important being Modules and Docents that can't be equipped.

[smatt]

Can you elaborate further on this? Since when are they that?

Here's what Eladrin said a while back on this issue:

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php...abar+handwraps

"Shaking Torc upside-down, I get the answer "signs point to yes".

The wraps were intentionally a little bit on the far side of the balance curve against undead when they were originally implemented, with disruption mostly on them for flavor (while useful on the lower tiers of the wraps, eventually most undead were saving against Old-Disruption on anything but a 1) - the changes made to the disruption effect ended up giving them three powerful anti-undead damage effects, which was considered a little excessive."


I'm pretty sure he said more sometime last month on the issue, but since I don't even have a set... I don't really care to spend time searching.. But it's out there if you want to look for it.

[Urist]

So here's a Crystal Cove question I don't think has been asked/answered yet:

If I have a Tier 3 Level 4 item, what would I end up with if I then upgrade that to a base (tier 1) Level 8 item? Will it be BtA due to it being a tier 1 item, or will it be BtC due to it having been upgraded to that state?
Does/should it make a difference whether the original Tier3 item was a classic BtA, or an all-new BtC?

I loves me some edge cases.

--

And FWIW, at low levels the tier 1 items being BtA is enough for me in most cases (spyglass int bonus, why do you forsake me?). IMO tiers 2 and 3 can be fairly safely ignored for most of the items, and may not be used on a character for all that long anyway.
Though I'm sure glad that I banked one each of the trinkets the last time around (except Nimble :/).

[morrok73]

Why bother with CC?,please dont give us items we love,then take them away,the only reason to farm that horrible cc event was to get nice items to pass to alts,without that,whats the point?The amount of time and effort to get enough mats to get the gear for all of our toons just is not worth it.I have 17 toons,in various stages of completion,these items would help a great deal towards getting them to a level where they can use "good" gear .Making them btc is just stupid,but what does my opinion matter,im just 1 of XXXXXX subscribers,.This is the straw that broke the camels back,I know losing 2 accounts doesn't mean much,but if you as a company keep treating us the community as if we dont matter,it wont be long be long before a large part of your customer base leaves,then what?Maybe those f2p favor farmers will throw you a bone every now and then.

[Cashiry]

What is the status on getting all the Alchemical shields from the Master Artificer raid getting fixed. They all have mixed up stats. The tower shield is listed as a small shield for example.

[Fixitosis]

Quite a few of my guild (myself included) as well as other friends have items that were crafted early on in the Cannith crafting which have large guild slots.

Nice items. Hard to come by items.

They have lost the ability to be used as in the large slots cannot be utilized, thier craftable levels cannot be increased and they cannot be returned to thier base item to restart the crafting process.

The "craftable +X" text is missing on these items. They were crafted higher than thier level before the ability to increase the craftable level was increased.

Is there any way these items can be fixed? Any patch/hot fix to look forward to in regards to this problem?

We thank you in advance for looking into this matter.

Fixer and friends.

[Hendrik]

Anyone have the urge to /hug Maj Mal?



Thank you for these updates! They are no WDA, but they are VERY welcome and informative posts! Hope the power that be allow for you to keep this up!

[y0himba.net]

Can someone tell me if they are fixing the Quivering Quiver Xoriat arrows bug in this patch?

I didn't see it in the OP and don't really feel like separating trolls from actual intelligence in 12 pages of replies.

[raneeta]

Now,I have some good news and some bad news. Go ahead get your torches and pitchforks…I’ll wait.

Ok I have my pitchfork and my torch so.....



First the bad: Crystal Cove items are going to become Bound to Character (BtC) when the items are updated. This is how it is supposed to be. We noticed this issue back during the event, and decided at the time to leave it alone, it was our birthday at the time and bigger prizes the better for the celebration.

---> REALLY DEVS????? This is like buying a kid a toy for his birthday then taking it back a week later and telling him "Well, we knew youd be mad that we were going to take it back BUT we figured youd have a better birtday if we let you have it". -HUMBUGGARY!


We are still looking at lag- it is a tricky one, but we have a band-aid that may help that is going out with the hot fix.

---> PLEASE - DO NOT GIVE THE GAME MORE THINGS TO PROCESS AND THE TELL US THAT IT WILL MAKE LAG BETTER! MORE PROCESS = MORE LAG PERIOD!


Handwraps! No really:

• Lawful/Chaotic/Evil Outsider Bane is now working on crafted or named handwraps.
• Byeshk Weapons artificer spell now works on handwraps
• Bodyfeeder on crafted handwraps now procs! Feed away.
• competence and an enhancement bonus to attack can now stack on crafted handwraps
• Crafting: Handwraps are now useable in recipes that require the target weapon to be bludgeoning. For example, you can now put the "Stunning" effects on handwraps.
• Mabar Handwraps will no longer be horribly OP.
• Crafting: Enhancement bonus effects can now be deconstructed from handwraps to produce Enhancement Spirit. Before this fix, the enhancement bonus deconstruction option just wouldn't appear at the crafting device for handwraps.
• Added the new handwrap enhancement bonus deconstruction recipes to the item deconstruction device.

---> /CHEER finally craftend handwraps that work!


Hirelings!
• Arcane hirelings have learned that ranged spells serve them best when they stay out of melee range, and will no longer charge into close-quarters combat.
• Display cool down timers for Pet and Hireling active abilities on the control shortcut bar
• Cleric hirelings have realized that they have weapons, and will now be a little more willing to use them - but only when they don't need to heal anyone
• Some improvements in the AI system to make your hirelings and pets more responsive to player command. Please note that the hireling or pet will not stop in midcast to listen to your order, but will perform the requested action once it is legal for him to do so.
• Players can now zone into raid enabled adventure areas with their hireling(s). Please note hirelings continue to be barred from raid dungeons.

---> /CHEER Now can you make bards toss heals instead of sing at me while i die a slow painful death??? :P

A comment too about the mabar handwraps the only decent epic wraps in the game are getting nerfed this makes me

so a couple positives but all in all this makes me

[jamesp1234567]

Why?
If it's a quest, when I make a new toon, I can go get the item, use it a few levels, then sell it off.
But now for these limited time events, I am to spend a time building items I will not be able to sell and not need in a few weeks.
Yes, there are some items I could use for a long time on a character, but most are not needed by the time you get to level 20 (nice that I can build the level 20 items and ignore the stuff between).

So - waste time getting items you can't sell or use ..... or quest.

Questing wins. Even crafting wins in this case.

I WANT BTA.
I still want BTA for bags too.

[Produktion_Malphunktion]

Can someone tell me if they are fixing the Quivering Quiver Xoriat arrows bug in this patch?

I didn't see it in the OP and don't really feel like separating trolls from actual intelligence in 12 pages of replies.

It will be in patch.

[Agarwaen]

I understand the reasoning for making the Lev 20 items BtC, but I think it is a mistake to make the trinkets and the level 16 and below items BtC. The only reason I had for crafting them was so they would be available for new characters and TRs. I won't be making any of them now that they are bound.

[Solmage]

If it was so overpowered that it needed a nerf (cough, min level 1 Epic Robe of Dissonance), then it needs a retroactive nerf.

If it's not so overpowered (and IMO the Cove items fit this category), then leave them alone.

If they deem the items overpowered to have in unlimited quantities (which is what essentially BtA does, those items will forever stay in the game as long as that player plays if a new character could benefit from them, they'll have the items waiting for them) but not too overpowered to have in the current quantities, then the solution which creates the least grief to the player base is to grandfather existing items.

As I mention before, as bad as it currently is, it doesn't begin to compare to how unfair and teeth-gnashing it would be to change an item we already worked to make.

I also suspect is their way to try to keep the cove relevant. If they made all items btA again, next year when it returns nobody but a handful of new players would give a ****, because we would all be set item-wise for the forseeable future, so in essence they'd be loosing one event OR be forced to update/make new items. So from their pov wasted effort either way.

[Example: For this cove, my only goal was to make a mana trinket for leveling purposes. BtA only affects them marginally, I'll need 2 instead of 1. I also could have benefited from a couple of lower level BtA items for twinking. And that's it! Now, if I've gotten these items done, the next cove I would need.. absolutely nothing at all]

You are disregarding one part of the issue so you can just focus on this, to try to drum up support for changing the cove items back to unbound, and that is the fairness and player impact of changing existing items.

But if you maintain your position of 'nerf them all' I'm afraid you'll only turn people who would have supported your stance towards supporting Turbine's.

[Ravoc-DDO]

To make up for the 2 lost weeks, items should remain BTA this event period!