Menace of the Underdark, Update 14 Patch 2 is Online

[Quarterling]

Just to anger you, no, I won't leave yet.

Aw shucks, I'm flattered.

OT: Unfortunately, I don't see anything reported as a "known bug" about being able to take ISA twice. As far as I know, you can still only take Improved Sneak Attack once.

[arkonas]

Easier? Maybe. More annoying? Yes, by about a hundred times. I could go run any epic now. If I am willing to:

chug a pot every 21 seconds (or cast a spell for a minutes protection)

know that my freedom of movement spell is.... well..... working for two spells?

know that spell wards are solely for annoyances.

Gameplay, from level 1-25 is now so annoying - the game is built on annoyances. It's working. Annoying me right out of the game.

Doesn't matter if those 'epic levels' are easier. They are just plain annoying to play.

All of the people *I* saw coming back have already left again - too buggy for them. They'll try again after a few more patches. Barring... I think 2 people off the top of my head.

I'd still like to see the post about how to cure ddo's memory leak from switching characters though...

i really wish for one time you would say something positive, but that is like purple hippos flying. reason i say that is your posts just are always so negative. I guess its so hard for me to really take it seriously if all i see is a rant all the time whining or crying.

epic difficulties were the best thing they could ever do. most of the people i talk to are happy. if normal is too easy they do hard if not elite. it appeals to all. powergamers get their challenge of elite casual get normal maybe hard.

Just because you dont like it for whatever reason. this game isnt about you either. its for Everyone. casual moderate and power gamers. We all win. sure there are some bugs some tweaks and a few other things that need to be done. But your seriously demanding instant action. its not going to happen just like no one will take you serious.

[Tid12]

We'll be updating the notes in the coming week(s), and will have more concrete information then. At this point, it's simply too early for me to even hint at what else will make it into the patch. I'm sure you can imagine that there's a bunch of work being done, and too many things are in an undefined state in terms of their yes/no/in-patch-ness to really get into at this time.

I definitely know your interest in this, though, and we'll do our best to keep you up to date when we can.

Thanks Cordovan, I will keep hoping you will look A LOT to the Shadowdancer Destiny as it is broken much more than any other destiny.

[Dragaer]

Just taking a wild guess:

* The spell deathward has been reduced in duration to 3 seconds per caster level, and instead of providing immunity to death effects, provides a +6 bonus to saves.

* Healing amplification has been changed into a spell power bonus. For example, 30% heal amp provides +30 spell power to incoming cures, and +15 spellpower to incoming heal and mass heal.

* The casting time for mass heal has been doubled, and the spell can no longer be quickened.

* Divine punishment now requires a spell penetration check every damage tick. A single tick resisted clears the stack.

* Holy aura has been changed yet again, and now does absolutely nothing whatsoever when cast. However, its spell point cost has been reduced by 10sp, so this is actually a buff.

Lol

[katz]

Just to anger you, no, I won't leave yet.

Thanks for telling Turbine Customers to stop being customers though! I'm sure they LOVE that.

if YOU go away, it will be worth it

you've filled up the forums with bitterness posting it everywhere. some of us are tired of you


oh, and about Avast? suck it up and deal. i have Avast too. it gives me false positives on plenty of stuff i like to use. gave me a false positive on Ron's character planner the other day. add it to your whitelist and move on. thanks for the heads up, tho. i suppose i owe you for that at least

[Ertay]

Thanks Cordovan, I will keep hoping you will look A LOT to the Shadowdancer Destiny as it is broken much more than any other destiny.

this. all of the more interesting active abilities are broken currently, as well as rogues' assassinate which together really hurts them atm.

[axebender]

just wondering if the devs know about hardened not working and ward of evil not working also. ive bug reported but not in the known issues..very happy with the changes with the unyielding epic moment even though i have yet to even be able to use it since it isnt working at all at the momment

[gphysalis]

Murder By Night
The correct werewolves will spawn on elite difficulty.

I'm a little puzzled by this one?
Could you provide some clarification?
Is this related to things getting stuck in the doorway?

[Wraith_Sarevok]

We'll be updating the notes in the coming week(s), and will have more concrete information then. At this point, it's simply too early for me to even hint at what else will make it into the patch. I'm sure you can imagine that there's a bunch of work being done, and too many things are in an undefined state in terms of their yes/no/in-patch-ness to really get into at this time.

I definitely know your interest in this, though, and we'll do our best to keep you up to date when we can.

You guys just keep fixing obscure and unimportant things... like quest typos? Nobody reads those more than once. They're flavor material.

A spider in Tangleroot Explorer Zone? I'm not going to fight that thing more than once during my entire character's lifetime.

Cosmetic gear of pets? Hello? Like that's the most major bug in the game right now.

How about fixing something I use every day... like Epic Destinies. Madstone Boots being completely broken for an entire class. Or Warforged not getting their Healer's Friend amplification. How about granting classes their +5% melee haste for having a temporary BAB of +25 with buffs? Or fixing the broken Protection From Evil effect on ship buffs, mournelode armor, and Silver Flame Talisman? Or fixing the Fire Shield spell?

Even today, they teach us in school that the most major problems should be fixed BEFORE the minor unimportant ones.

[Ertay]

You guys just keep fixing obscure and unimportant things... like quest typos? Nobody reads those more than once. They're flavor material.

A spider in Tangleroot Explorer Zone? I'm not going to fight that thing more than once during my entire character's lifetime.

Cosmetic gear of pets? Hello? Like that's the most major bug in the game right now.

How about fixing something I use every day... like Epic Destinies. Madstone Boots being completely broken for an entire class. Or Warforged not getting their Healer's Friend amplification. How about granting classes their +5% melee haste for having a temporary BAB of +25 with buffs? Or fixing the broken Protection From Evil effect on ship buffs, mournelode armor, and Silver Flame Talisman? Or fixing the Fire Shield spell?

Even today, they teach us in school that the most major problems should be fixed BEFORE the minor unimportant ones.

I understand that ususally in projects like this, you have the "level designer guys" and you have the "technical guys" (among others, and with much more obscure designations of course), each doing their respective stuff. Currently, the technical guys are probably busy fixing bugs till their hands bleed, while the level designer guys are just polishing here and there, before they go off to do completely new stuff we'll get to see months ahead.

Of course now, with the state of the game in mind, the technical bugs *are* crippling in some cases, and as a whole they are much more important, but that does not mean you could put a level designer in front of a computer screen and reasonably expect him to fix them when even the programmers who coded them have not managed to do it yet.


I'm not trying to blindly defend their course here, and I think we can't deny Q&A for the expansion was lacking some, but I don't think prioritizing is the issue here.




edit: I just read over this again, and I found it might get across too negative. If a dev reads this, what I meant to say was: You did some awesome work with that expansion. The setting and overall feeling are great, the gameplay feels fresh, new and promising, epic destinies fit in perfectly and some are very well thought out gameplay wise; overall a great addition to the game. But what I'm sad to see is that currently, much of that is plagued by bugs and unfinished parts.

When I look at a destiny tree, I'd really like to think "wow, this ability is awesome and will fit my character perfectly if I build around it." Instead I got used to thinking "wow, this ability sounds awesome on paper. But the underlying mechanics are quite different from what I've seen so far, so it might not be working after all currently. I'll have to search for it on the forums or test it myself to see if it actually does what it says before I get into it too much." To me this is overshadowing what might have been an even greater experience, some of the content is not in the state that does the work that went into it justice, and I sincerely hope it gets to that in due time.

[wax_on_wax_off]

Just taking a wild guess:

* The spell deathward has been reduced in duration to 3 seconds per caster level, and instead of providing immunity to death effects, provides a +6 bonus to saves.

* Healing amplification has been changed into a spell power bonus. For example, 30% heal amp provides +30 spell power to incoming cures, and +15 spellpower to incoming heal and mass heal.

* The casting time for mass heal has been doubled, and the spell can no longer be quickened.

* Divine punishment now requires a spell penetration check every damage tick. A single tick resisted clears the stack.

* Holy aura has been changed yet again, and now does absolutely nothing whatsoever when cast. However, its spell point cost has been reduced by 10sp, so this is actually a buff.

Lol! That's worth a +1 if there was a "good joke" bar. Oh well, maybe they'll introduce one.

[sephiroth1084]

I don't see anything in there regarding some quests not registering completion of objectives and being unable to advance.

I see no mention of the numerous bugs with any Destiny other than Unyielding Sentinel.

I see no mention of the problems being causes by Madstone Boots (preventing Barbarian Rage, the sneak action, the search action, swapping of monk stances, activating some Destiny abilities, etc...).

So far, those patch notes look almost worthless.

[samthedagger]

You guys just keep fixing obscure and unimportant things... like quest typos? Nobody reads those more than once. They're flavor material.

A spider in Tangleroot Explorer Zone? I'm not going to fight that thing more than once during my entire character's lifetime.

Cosmetic gear of pets? Hello? Like that's the most major bug in the game right now.

How about fixing something I use every day... like Epic Destinies. Madstone Boots being completely broken for an entire class. Or Warforged not getting their Healer's Friend amplification. How about granting classes their +5% melee haste for having a temporary BAB of +25 with buffs? Or fixing the broken Protection From Evil effect on ship buffs, mournelode armor, and Silver Flame Talisman? Or fixing the Fire Shield spell?

Even today, they teach us in school that the most major problems should be fixed BEFORE the minor unimportant ones.

The mini bugs are the ones that take less than one developer hour to fix I imagine. I doubt the major bugs are being ignored, but instead are works in progress that require a small team of developers working on them at once. Just a guess, based on what I know about programming development.

Text typos take a few minutes to fix and don't really detract significantly from developer time taken to work on other bugs.

[fullpozzy]

Was a character wipe done??? If not then there is no use to even bother testing. Let the devs bork more stuff so we can figure them out on the live server.

[Superspeed_Hi5]

I still dont see mention of characters that leveled up to 25 and used the free LR getting a way to get their missing stat point at level 24. Some mention of this would be appreciated. Even a simple - We will reset the one time free LR in order for you to get your stat point.

Please answer this.

[Snarglefrump]

Cordovan, can you please tell us on what you are working or a hint at least? Most curious about Shadowdancer destiny (completely broken), Assassinate and WF heal amp.

What's broken with Shadowdancer? I only took it to level 3, but everything I tried worked great.

And about Epic hirelings, can you give them Heal too?

And Mass Death Ward! They don't even need it on their bar. Just make them cast Death Ward on any party member who lacks it.

[IdyllShade]

The Lamannia Release Notes for this initial push of Update 14 Patch 2 are now available. Please note that these notes are in a particularly early state, even for Lamannia, so it is very likely that there are omissions and/or changes that will be made to them.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=376774

A minor quibble... the topic of the post you linked is "Lamannia Release Notes (Last Updated 7-6-2012)", however they have actually been updated today (7-13-2012). Would it be possible to get the thread title updated correctly, or rather than editing a previous post get new release notes posted in a new thread?

[Shoemaker]

We'll be updating the notes in the coming week(s), and will have more concrete information then. At this point, it's simply too early for me to even hint at what else will make it into the patch. I'm sure you can imagine that there's a bunch of work being done, and too many things are in an undefined state in terms of their yes/no/in-patch-ness to really get into at this time.

I definitely know your interest in this, though, and we'll do our best to keep you up to date when we can.

Please tell me one of the things you are working on is to make the barbarian rage feat work again... If you aren't aware of what I am talking about, then the bug reporting system isn't WAI and I would be happy to enlighten you in pm or on this forum...

[Tid12]

What's broken with Shadowdancer? I only took it to level 3, but everything I tried worked great.

- Shrouding Strike/Shot not WAI. You gain charges only with Assassinate. If you mark the target and kill it normally, you won't gain charges.
- Consume is broken, not doing anything.
- Executioner Strike broken also.


Basically, the main features of this destiny are broken.

[Listance]

Are they going to do anything about the Madstone rage and Barbarian rage? It's preventing alotta things which can destroy a whole dps class.