Dear Feather of Sun...

[Qhualor]

That's up to ProducerGlin.

Ah ha! He posted earlier. I know he's around here somewhere.

[PermaBanned]

That's up to the planners and decision-makers.

May I suggest lighting a fire beneath their respective hindquarters? Or at least pestering them for a prospective "we're targetting Update 387ish?"

[Zibowskij]

The original plan for random treasure
...

• (and more!)

...

Please give us back effects like convalescence and parrying aswell

[Feather_of_Sun]

In all seriousness, I'm good at putting my foot in my mouth and bluntly saying things I shouldn't.
So here's one more:
Turning Ghostbane into a meme is, in my book, the best thing to happen to DDO in awhile.

It's gotten attention to this issue.
Previously, the rest of the treasure work was a cut feature. It's been gathering dust on my hard disk.
It has not been worked on recently.

During Shadowfell Conspiracy's development cycle, high-level decisions were made about priorities, and they had decided that the enhancement system needed a lot of work poured into it. The rest of the treasure work was cut, and I was moved on to enhancements.

In all fairness, the enhancement system revamp sorely needed it.

Here's where we let you all down:
After Update 19 was out the door and things started cooling off, we failed to adequately determine what our next priorities should be, and divert the right resources back on to those issues.

Now that everything's been ghostbaned, indications are that we might be able to get a treasure system update out for the first major patch after Update 20.

I'm not sure what, if any of my original plan it will contain. That won't be my call to make.
Once I'm given something concrete to work on though, I'll let the community know as soon as possible.

[Clatterfist]

That sounds very cool. I had a feeling the loot we were seeing now was part of an unfinished overhaul. It's good to know that the plans for the final version will have more of the entertainment value that made MoTU loot so much fun.

Oh, and you guys will be adding all of this stuff to Cannith Crafting once you're done... right?

[Scraap]

In all seriousness, I'm good at putting my foot in my mouth and bluntly saying things I shouldn't.
So here's one more:
Turning Ghostbane into a meme is, in my book, the best thing to happen to DDO in awhile.

It's gotten attention to this issue.
Previously, the rest of the treasure work was a cut feature. It's been gathering dust on my hard disk.
It has not been worked on recently.

During Shadowfell Conspiracy's development cycle, high-level decisions were made about priorities, and they had decided that the enhancement system needed a lot of work poured into it. The rest of the treasure work was cut, and I was moved on to enhancements.

In all fairness, the enhancement system revamp sorely needed it.

Here's where we let you all down:
After Update 19 was out the door and things started cooling off, we failed to adequately determine what our next priorities should be, and divert the right resources back on to those issues.

Now that everything's been ghostbaned, indications are that we might be able to get a treasure system update out for the first major patch after Update 20.

I'm not sure what, if any of my original plan it will contain. That won't be my call to make.
Once I'm given something concrete to work on though, I'll let the community know as soon as possible.

This isn't intended to be overly personal, but I can't find a better phrasing, so: Pretty clear at this point that you look at yourself less as a loot designer, and more as a loot-systems designer. I truly do hope one of the takeaways from the meme has been the need to approach systems revisions as interlocking systems revisions, and not one out of several systems that just serves to skew things badly one way or the other. (Now whether that needs hammering into you, your successor, or your boss is guesswork. I'll give you enough rope to say 'could just be the lack of enough hands to pull it off in a reasonable amount of time.')

[Roland_D'Arabel]

This isn't intended to be overly personal, but I can't find a better phrasing, so: Pretty clear at this point that you look at yourself less as a loot designer, and more as a loot-systems designer. I truly do hope one of the takeaways from the meme has been the need to approach systems revisions as interlocking systems revisions, and not one out of several systems that just serves to skew things badly one way or the other. (Now whether that needs hammering into you, your successor, or your boss is guesswork. I'll give you enough rope to say 'could just be the lack of enough hands to pull it off in a reasonable amount of time.')

Huh? What does this even mean?

I'll be the first to admit I'm pretty critical of choices made and the Dev's communication efforts lately but Feather's responses in this thread are pure win. We need more back and forth interaction like this, a lot more. Weird cryptic responses like the quote above only work against this.

[Scraap]

Huh? What does this even mean?

I'll be the first to admit I'm pretty critical of choices made and the Dev's communication efforts lately but Feather's responses in this thread are pure win. We need more back and forth interaction like this, a lot more. Weird cryptic responses like the quote above only work against this.

Nothing cryptic about seeing mass changes over and over again to the core random loot-generation mechanics and interpreting that as systems design, not tailored loot design. No judgement in it one way or the other, but it does determine what kind of talk needs to be had for meaningful progress.

Nor is there anything particularly cryptic about pointing out that playing only with the values of random loot constantly sends named and crafted counterparts into a state of massive flux, and an incorporation of those systems in design and implementation needs to occur.

edit: If it seems weird, well, turning a bunch of 1s and 0s into an evocative enough pattern to elicit emotion is it's self a fairly weird job, when you get right down to it. (If that still doesn't make sense, I reserve the right to blame all the normal-tangent reconstruction math I've been dealing with all week for impacting my use of the English language. :P)

[PermaBanned]

In all seriousness...

Feather, you've just usurped Maj Mal as my favorite Turbine communicator.

[nibel]

Turning Ghostbane into a meme is, in my book, the best thing to happen to DDO in awhile.

I don't like the ghostbane meme, but this is totally sig-worthy.

[kmoustakas]

I complained as much as the next guy about ghostbane but this discussion makes me feel a lot better. Thanks for answering and letting me get all excited about loot being good again.

[AtomicMew]

The original plan for random treasure is what you see in game now, plus the following:

Items would rarely, in addition to the normal damage-dealing prefix they have, generate with a different prefix name and an additional special effect.
These would include some of the following:

• Meteoric
• Tempestous
• Infernal
• Glacial
• Erosive
• (and more!)

They're related to the damage type on the weapon. So a weapon with Flaming could sometimes instead appear as either Meteoric or Infernal.
Either a Shock or Screaming weapon could be Tempestous. There's enough rare prefixes to cover all of the prefixes that can appear on weapons.

The new versions of these effects are "procs", an effect that has a chance to occur on attack. They do things like, in the example of Meteoric, make a meteor fly in from the sky and smash into your enemies for AoE damage, dealing damage dice based on the level of your weapon, and forcing affected enemies to make a Reflex save of DC 20+Item Level or be knocked down.

There's also a lot of additional prefixes and suffixes for weapons, armor, and accessories that haven't been put into the treasure system.
Some of these include Humanoid Bane (combination of Elf, Dwarf, Human, Halfling and so on...), a new version of Bodyfeeder that deals a negative level to your target in addition to giving you temporary hit points, and adding some more staple effects like Blurry into accessories.
Many of the MotU multi-affix mutations have updated versions so they would be able to appear throughout more levels of gameplay.

Thanks for the headsup! While were discussing loot, can we discuss caster weapons?

It would be nice if the lore type on caster weapons matched up with one of the spellpower types (for thaumaturgy). Combustion of ice lore is not a useful weapon to anyone.

[EllisDee37]

Very nice!

[Drwaz99]

In all seriousness, I'm good at putting my foot in my mouth and bluntly saying things I shouldn't.
So here's one more:
Turning Ghostbane into a meme is, in my book, the best thing to happen to DDO in awhile.

It's gotten attention to this issue.
Previously, the rest of the treasure work was a cut feature. It's been gathering dust on my hard disk.
It has not been worked on recently.

During Shadowfell Conspiracy's development cycle, high-level decisions were made about priorities, and they had decided that the enhancement system needed a lot of work poured into it. The rest of the treasure work was cut, and I was moved on to enhancements.

In all fairness, the enhancement system revamp sorely needed it.

Here's where we let you all down:
After Update 19 was out the door and things started cooling off, we failed to adequately determine what our next priorities should be, and divert the right resources back on to those issues.

Now that everything's been ghostbaned, indications are that we might be able to get a treasure system update out for the first major patch after Update 20.

I'm not sure what, if any of my original plan it will contain. That won't be my call to make.
Once I'm given something concrete to work on though, I'll let the community know as soon as possible.

****! Thank you so much! (seriously)

Something like (and your other replies to this thread) this just a couple times a week if needed would makes inroads into the general feeling of disconnect and discontent within the forum going players. We might not always agree but with a logical explanation we can understand.

[DrakHar]

In all seriousness, I'm good at putting my foot in my mouth and bluntly saying things I shouldn't.
So here's one more:
Turning Ghostbane into a meme is, in my book, the best thing to happen to DDO in awhile.

It's gotten attention to this issue.
Previously, the rest of the treasure work was a cut feature. It's been gathering dust on my hard disk.
It has not been worked on recently.

During Shadowfell Conspiracy's development cycle, high-level decisions were made about priorities, and they had decided that the enhancement system needed a lot of work poured into it. The rest of the treasure work was cut, and I was moved on to enhancements.

In all fairness, the enhancement system revamp sorely needed it.

Here's where we let you all down:
After Update 19 was out the door and things started cooling off, we failed to adequately determine what our next priorities should be, and divert the right resources back on to those issues.

Now that everything's been ghostbaned, indications are that we might be able to get a treasure system update out for the first major patch after Update 20.

I'm not sure what, if any of my original plan it will contain. That won't be my call to make.
Once I'm given something concrete to work on though, I'll let the community know as soon as possible.

I did something worthwhile

[jakeelala]

he still hasn't answered about convalescent

[Singular]

In all seriousness, I'm good at putting my foot in my mouth and bluntly saying things I shouldn't.
So here's one more:
Turning Ghostbane into a meme is, in my book, the best thing to happen to DDO in awhile.

It's gotten attention to this issue.
Previously, the rest of the treasure work was a cut feature. It's been gathering dust on my hard disk.
It has not been worked on recently.

During Shadowfell Conspiracy's development cycle, high-level decisions were made about priorities, and they had decided that the enhancement system needed a lot of work poured into it. The rest of the treasure work was cut, and I was moved on to enhancements.

In all fairness, the enhancement system revamp sorely needed it.

Here's where we let you all down:
After Update 19 was out the door and things started cooling off, we failed to adequately determine what our next priorities should be, and divert the right resources back on to those issues.

Now that everything's been ghostbaned, indications are that we might be able to get a treasure system update out for the first major patch after Update 20.

I'm not sure what, if any of my original plan it will contain. That won't be my call to make.
Once I'm given something concrete to work on though, I'll let the community know as soon as possible.

Yaaaaaaaaay!

Well tell them that your input is valuable to us - I'd like you to make that call. Based on your above posts, it sounds like you had the new loot mixed in with the old loot, but weren't able to implement that b/c of resource/time constraints.

I sincerely hope that you will be able to do just that for update 20 patch 1. I miss the exotic, fantasy loot - especially Pandemonium - and am looking forward to seeing it again.

Thank you, Feather.

[brian14]

he still hasn't answered about convalescent

Or about lower-level affixes.

[darksol23]

Turning Ghostbane into a meme is, in my book, the best thing to happen to DDO in awhile.

I <3 GHOSTBANE sooooooo much I created a new guild on Cannith to celebrate and commemorate this high point in DDO's history. Funny enough this new guilds name is GHOSTBANE. The GHOSTBANE guild is now fully operational with a mission of supplying GHOSTBANE weapons to Stormreach's citizens. We don't have a ship yet, but as soon as we do we'll be dropping GHOSTBANE from the sky baby!

[Huthor]

****! Thank you so much! (seriously)

Something like (and your other replies to this thread) this just a couple times a week if needed would makes inroads into the general feeling of disconnect and discontent within the forum going players. We might not always agree but with a logical explanation we can understand.

Agree with this 100%

Silence I can deal with.
Things getting borked or unfinished I can deal with.
Both in combination though is terrible.

Starting to feel a little better about a number of game issues after reading this thread.
Personally, I don't really care if things are said by dev's, then for some reason, it can't go ahead. **** happens.

It's just good to know that things are getting read and the feelings of players are known.

Edit: Ghostbane!