Producer's Letter

[Grailhawk]

Players have asked about class passes, and the next two classes to be looked at will likely be Monk and Favored Soul. We are currently looking into the core code behind unarmed attacks and hand wraps to see if that needs to be revamped.

If we, behind the scenes, classified them as a type of weapon this wouldn't be the case.

If handwraps are classified as weapons does that mean you would now need to equip 2 in order to TWF with handwraps?

Either way IMO turn them in to weapons better to make them work like every thing else now then leave them as a special case that down the road causes a new issue.

[JOTMON]

excellent info

a few things I would love to see

visable cloak, at least as a cosmetic slot item

a combat pet, similar to iron defender/druid pet awarded for full use of the racial enhancement tree
It should not replace those pets and be slightly less powerful, the type should be based on the race human-dog pet drow- spider ect.

the ability to purchase hard and elete dungeon opening rights, not just keys...will be pricey though

Still spell as a regular spell feat (casting cost +50% of regular casting SP)

Feat to use short bow as a club in melee and longbow as a staff in melee

monkey grip feat

feat to raise the level of your summoned pets and combat pets to your character level vs casting level or class level (will require a couple of feat prereq)


hmm ok, am good

DDO store combat pet..
I like it..
usable by any character.
Use same as template as artificer pet..
Summons in quest and does not take up a player spot...
Cosmetic skin slot..Insert pet cosmetic into Combat pet cosmetic slot and voila. different animal choices..
Various animal skins cosmetics for things like that .. Drow Ranger who wants a colored panther skin on their DDO store combat pet...
Uses your personal questing XP to level the pet, does not gain XP on its own..

Would be a good DDO store item..

[Eldried]

Players have also been asking that the random loot system -- widely recognized as a total system F A I L -- be completely overhauled. As much as I look forward to an expanded Cannith Crafting system, I shudder at the thought of it being grafted onto the utterly atrocious "new" random loot system.

Any comments?

My comment to your comment is that what you are saying is complete and utter nonsense.


I fail to understand where you got the impression that the random loot overhaul is widely recognized as a total system F A I L

The new random loot is the best that has happened to DDO in a while. Before, people didnt even LOOK at the loot they got out of chests and rewards because you just couldnt get anything useful. Sure some things could be better like weapons could be more powerful, but thats hard when they have to compete with Thunderforged and Shroud.

Im acctually running the endgame raids(Shroud, TS sometimes HOX) mostly in the hope of getting some nice random loot(On loot weekends you can acctually get +17 stat items).

I think this just had to be said so people dont get the wrong impression.

Back on topic.

I have been waiting for the Cannith update for a while and can't wait to use it. Being able to custom make my own items is awesome. It was great when Cannith crafting came out the first time, and shoudl be again. Now with being able to put 3 abilities on the items it will be powerful. As far as I understand it, random loot will still have its place since you can't craft higher then what loot level 33 gives you(Not sure if that would be +14 or +15 on a stat)

For endgame its a balance between Random, named and crafted loot and in my book its heading into that direction.

[ice584]

If we, behind the scenes, classified them as a type of weapon this wouldn't be the case. The other option is to do an entire handwrap enhancement pass and do the special implementation on everything that isn't working.

My gosh, I struggle to see how this is even a choice. Think about all the development time, support time, and player frustration over handwrap specific issues over the years. I'd wager 90% of that could've been avoided if they were originally written as weapons. Get them in line with everything else and that HAS to make your lives easier in the long run, and our lives as players by proxy. Hindsight is always 20/20 I know and I'm sure there are some details I don't know, but if you guys can set it up so that all I have to do is take my wraps to a Stone of Change...that just seems like a no-brainer to me, from a player perspective.

That all being said, it's good to see these issues getting put onto the schedule and getting discussed. Looking forward to it.

[azrael4h]

My comment to your comment is that what you are saying is complete and utter nonsense.


I fail to understand where you got the impression that the random loot overhaul is widely recognized as a total system F A I L

The new random loot is the best that has happened to DDO in a while. Before, people didnt even LOOK at the loot they got out of chests and rewards because you just couldnt get anything useful. Sure some things could be better like weapons could be more powerful, but thats hard when they have to compete with Thunderforged and Shroud.

Im acctually running the endgame raids(Shroud, TS sometimes HOX) mostly in the hope of getting some nice random loot(On loot weekends you can acctually get +17 stat items).

I think this just had to be said so people dont get the wrong impression.

Back on topic.

I have been waiting for the Cannith update for a while and can't wait to use it. Being able to custom make my own items is awesome. It was great when Cannith crafting came out the first time, and shoudl be again. Now with being able to put 3 abilities on the items it will be powerful. As far as I understand it, random loot will still have its place since you can't craft higher then what loot level 33 gives you(Not sure if that would be +14 or +15 on a stat)

For endgame its a balance between Random, named and crafted loot and in my book its heading into that direction.

For accessories, the new loot gen is actually well done, IMO. While I get chaff, I also get very nice items for most every non-weapon/armor slot. So much that I end up vendoring or giving away a lot of really good items. This is because there are a large number of effects for these slots, and some (CON, Insightful CON, False Life, etc) are needed for every class. Even some which aren't, I usually keep things like CHA items for UMD purposes, at least until upper epics. The only real complaint is the lack of deadly and speed on accessories.

For Armor, it's not terrible. But there are comparatively few effects possible, and many are now spell power. So it tends to look like a casters paradise. Fortification is also nerfed to drop in lower values than before, meaning it's worthless for that. My low-resources group character is still, at L16, waiting for a decent fort item (we haven't farmed a Minos, and the rest of the group seems resistant for some reason. Maybe because as first lifers we'll likely hit 20 before getting everyone 20 taps).

For weapons, it's a total failure. DR breakers no longer drop. Many desirable effects no longer drop. Due to the stripping out of most melee effects, and the sheer number of caster effects, and the lack of controls on what effects land on what weapon type and in combination with other effects, the vast majority of weapons are either bad melee/caster combinations that no one ever uses, or caster only. All lootgen weapons are pretty much vendor trash. In the rare instance you get a melee weapon with actual melee effects, you're likely to get speed (should never be on weapons) or deadly (same, having them here is bad design), but no real dps boost. The only true benefit is being able to get a really low level Vorpal. But since really low levels go by quickly anyway (just grab Carnifex!) that's not a benefit. It's so bad, that my guild has started using the E-star challenge weapons to fill in gaps, as you still get good melee effects there. Even on a bad roll, a E-star weapon is simply better than any lootgen weapon out today.

Weapons need a lot of melee-specific effects added back in, speed and deadly removed to accessories where they belong, and controls preventing caster and melee effects from spawning together. Until then, it's all going to be vendor trash.

[Highdracolich79]

Dear DDO Developers,

How about some new hair and facial features for elf, that would be really sweet after ten years of the same five faces and ten hairs. UPDATE 30 BROKE THE GRAPHIC EFFECT ON SHROUD OF THE VAMPIRE FOR PALE MASTER WIZARDS, EVERY TIME I GO THROUGH A DOOR, ENTER OR LEAVE A QUEST, OR ENTER OR LEAVE MY GUILD SHIP, THE GRAPHIC EFFECT OF SHROUD OF THE VAMPIRE DISAPPEARS, IT IS STILL LISTED AT THE TOP WITH ALL THE OTHER BUFFS AS BEING ON AND DEATH AURA HEALS NORMALLY, BUT THE GRAPHICS ARE BROKE this bug happened a while back, was fixed, then update 30 broke it again and the update 31 patch did not fix it, you fixed that darn memoirs of an illusionary larcener quest that was causing extra hours of downtime while you were trying to fix it so it was playable (which should have been done before putting the quest into the game, never have the developers been so lazy about the content they released as that.)! ...and something else is broke but i forgot right now I'll remember later. What you guys should work on to bring players back to the community since they have all abandoned DDO for other games with better graphics is you should make visible cloaks fang it all! Neverwinter may not be Dungeons and Dragons but at least they have visible cloaks and it makes their game look so much cooler. If you guys could skip the tiefling (really? popular?? my arse!! no one ever plays tiefling! you guys are smoking crack!!) and instead focus on visible cloaks, you might improve the quality of the DDO game community by a hair.

Sincerely, DDO player for ten years.

p.s. How about a half dragon race with lots of claw attacks, breath weapon, and MRR

p.p.s - It's ok if the Greensteel cloaks look cooler than any other cloaks in the game hehe ;p Something like super dark metallic forest green outlined by a shaded silver with bright silver trees growing up the back (maybe a nekkid elf chick riding a dragon? yes yes yes [takes some visual inspiration from Frank Frazetta], also god bless Robert E. Howard {who was also from Texas by the way} and Conan!{Check out back issues of The Savage Sword of Conan first 50 issues}) and a holy aura shimmering off the whole thing yeah that would be sick.

[JOTMON]

Would like to see Dev's spend some time on diversified party value..

There is a growing trend of gear trumps class... Ranger barkskin.. or Natrual armor item.. Paladin protection.. or Protection augment..., owls,bears,bulls,foxes,etc.. or any stat item... SR items trump Drow class and racial enhancement investment points.
There is a declining value to diversified party and a growing migration to Solo'ists grouping together.. we don't need party diversity because it has no augmenting value to the group... just bring moar DPS...[/QUOTE]

Bring back unique bonuses to classes that stack with gear and other classes while restricting the bonuses that come exclusively from gear.

Let Cleric Aura improve healing amp to party members.. which benefits the spells from druids for the entire party.. and more stuff like that...
Have ranger/Paladin buffs be a % boost to party gear and other buffs. not just a static trivial number that gets trumped by augments and random gear.
break it down to DEstiny Spheres, whatever... there needs to be better bonuses to bolster the group to encourage diversified parties.

[Zistra]

My gosh, I struggle to see how this is even a choice. Think about all the development time, support time, and player frustration over handwrap specific issues over the years. I'd wager 90% of that could've been avoided if they were originally written as weapons. Get them in line with everything else and that HAS to make your lives easier in the long run, and our lives as players by proxy. Hindsight is always 20/20 I know and I'm sure there are some details I don't know, but if you guys can set it up so that all I have to do is take my wraps to a Stone of Change...that just seems like a no-brainer to me, from a player perspective.

That all being said, it's good to see these issues getting put onto the schedule and getting discussed. Looking forward to it.

I'm not on top of all the handwrap issues there've been over the years, but.. if you recoded them as weapons and automatically equipped them as a pair of the same weapon (one on each hand), would that simplify things? Or the opposite?

[Highdracolich79]

Just a quick note about the new random loot generation. I love monks and my main toon did three lifes in a row as a pure monk. Some people call them weak some people call them overpowered, sometimes they are both in my opinion it depends on how you build it and play it both light and dark monk have their strengths and weaknesses.

Anyhow, what I want to point out here about the new loot generation is that nearly all of the monk handwrap weapons i have been pulling from chests for the last several months at least 80% of them are all caster specific handwraps with some kind of boost to spellcasting, usually spellpower and some element like acid or some such and I feel like you are going on the assumption as many players do that most people only ever use two levels of monk for the evasion added to some caster build that doesn't die in the traps (as long as they have a decent reflex save, since the evasion feat IS dependent on a successful roll vs reflex save.) and can punch rats in the face. There have been less and less reward choices for a handwrap weapon that is purely for a MELEE MONK! You know, Monk, listed in the classes section under warriors...? My many monks (I have monks on all 8 servers by the way, most of them at level 20 or above and some with multiple lifes) have really felt betrayed and stabbed in the freaking back by the developers where the new random loot is concerned. There needs to be a stronger roll for strictly melee type handwrap at least 50 chance and the spellcaster ones look cool but really i swear you're never gonna use em you're gonna use all that epic gear that is so awesome and never touch the randomly generated **** they have been putting in chests for months now for monks thanks for listening I'm done with my rant now please fix it.

A pure level 20 monk has no negative energy spells, no acid spells, no glaciation what the heck is going on...you guys crazy?

[Zistra]

For accessories, the new loot gen is actually well done, IMO. While I get chaff, I also get very nice items for most every non-weapon/armor slot. So much that I end up vendoring or giving away a lot of really good items. This is because there are a large number of effects for these slots, and some (CON, Insightful CON, False Life, etc) are needed for every class. Even some which aren't, I usually keep things like CHA items for UMD purposes, at least until upper epics. The only real complaint is the lack of deadly and speed on accessories.

For Armor, it's not terrible. But there are comparatively few effects possible, and many are now spell power. So it tends to look like a casters paradise. Fortification is also nerfed to drop in lower values than before, meaning it's worthless for that. My low-resources group character is still, at L16, waiting for a decent fort item (we haven't farmed a Minos, and the rest of the group seems resistant for some reason. Maybe because as first lifers we'll likely hit 20 before getting everyone 20 taps).

For weapons, it's a total failure. DR breakers no longer drop. Many desirable effects no longer drop. Due to the stripping out of most melee effects, and the sheer number of caster effects, and the lack of controls on what effects land on what weapon type and in combination with other effects, the vast majority of weapons are either bad melee/caster combinations that no one ever uses, or caster only. All lootgen weapons are pretty much vendor trash. In the rare instance you get a melee weapon with actual melee effects, you're likely to get speed (should never be on weapons) or deadly (same, having them here is bad design), but no real dps boost. The only true benefit is being able to get a really low level Vorpal. But since really low levels go by quickly anyway (just grab Carnifex!) that's not a benefit. It's so bad, that my guild has started using the E-star challenge weapons to fill in gaps, as you still get good melee effects there. Even on a bad roll, a E-star weapon is simply better than any lootgen weapon out today.

Weapons need a lot of melee-specific effects added back in, speed and deadly removed to accessories where they belong, and controls preventing caster and melee effects from spawning together. Until then, it's all going to be vendor trash.

^^ This, in a nutshell.

Neither Holy nor Pure Good drop on random loot anymore. Do you have any idea how hard that makes Delera's for new players who can't break the Ghostly Skeleton DR?

Armor effects are mostly near-useless. Guards and Con are the only really useful effects. Iirc, there's tons of spellpower bonuses even on Heavy armor. ??

Weapons almost always drop with some kind of caster effects. I'm good with a higher percentage than there used to be and even having caster effects more common on non-Simple weapons, but on 95% of khopeshes? Really? Add to that the fact that you almost never see the spellpower/spell crit combination for the same element drop on the same weapon anymore, and it's not even an improvement for casters. And the new spell crits that ARE available start way below the old Lore I of 11%, too.

The good? Things drop at a level where they're actually usable instead of L3 gear dropping out of L5 quests. Clothing and Jewelry effects are pretty good. I wish they'd added them to the existing ones instead of mostly replacing them though. I'm hoarding my Shield clickies, because I haven't seen one drop since the new pass. And while I love Vorpal on a L1 weapon, it does seem a bit OP. Shouldn't it be like Paralyzing, Disruption & Smiting and show up at L10 (L8 with Masterful Craftsmanship)? And do Paralyzing, Disruption & Smiting still drop?

No. The last random loot pass wasn't fine. Not even close. At best it fixed a few things and broke at least as many others.

[Highdracolich79]

I would really love to see one day the ability for my monks to use two shurikens at one time, equipping a different one in each hand and throwing them one at a time, left, right, left, right, alternating, then i click on 10,000 stars with shuriken expertise in ultimate wind stance. Give it a small chance to throw even more shuriken, like 3-4 per second with a chance to double that amount (let's say % chance is half of dexterity score). Limit it to ten seconds and have a 45 second cool down. Otherwise it's never going to compete against Manyshot. ever. This is what i want to see thanks. I really would go full on shuriken build if you could dual wield two of them. Throw on some elfen arcane archer on top of that. Maybe even add some artificer buffs on top of that...ninjas. For my shuriken ultimate build, i get elfen arcane archer with manyshot and alternate using Manyshot and 10,000 Stars they both work with shuriken, they both have a shared cool down for about 30 seconds but it still takes manyshot 120 seconds to cool down and 10,000 stars has a 60 seconds cooldown, after waiting 30 seconds you can use the other one and stagger and alternate them for maximum effect. Lately the extra required feats for manyshot I have been switching over to the prerequisute feats for Whirlwind Attack, the monk's unarmed Whirlwind Attack +4 [W] 360 degrees adds another graphic attack effect to the monk graphical moves, a spinning whirlwind kick, like the paladin's feat Smite Evil in the unarmed monk's hands also gives another graphical effect of a backflip kick for those who want to see more ninja moves from their monk xD my 3rd toon slot right now has a 3rd lifer that is 18 monk with 2 paladin and Smite Evil and Whirlwind Attack and Ninja Dummy, elf dragonmark of displacement with improved evasion, 23 base WIS with vorpal strikes epic fists at lvl 21, yeah the ninja dummy can take epic boss aggro away from completionist dudes and the whole party haha but you have to have 18 levels of monk, it's the 4th core enhancement in the Ninja Spy tree. I love how I can randomly pop the Ninja dummy in taverns and airships wherever I please (as long as uses of meditation are remaining)


I wish I could still cast disco ball in public place and that my fvs would still have his shoulder lantern archon create an effect that lights up the world and the darkened evil corridors of the subterranne hehe was real sad when you took that away. Also I really really really miss my Frostmarrow Mage with my Pale Master, the new skeleton warrior that gets epic strong is cool and all but will never be as awesome as my spellcaster mage pet from before I miss my frostmarrow mage bring it back!

[Severlin]

Some replies:

~ We generally don't talk about content further out than one update. We certainly intend, as an example, to do additional raids in the future.

~ Everyone has a favorite class, and whenever we talk about class updates players of other classes want theirs next. On the topic of cleric specifically, they will get a boost when we do a pass on War Priest since they would also get those changes. In the future we'd also like to do domains for clerics to help differentiate them from FvS.

~ Bound to character space is serialized with the character when the character is sent off to the database, and as we look into lag it is clear that's expensive. We don't have plans, for performance reasons, of increasing that. And yes, we would love it if that wasn't the case because we would *all* like more BtC space. It isn't worth more lag though.

~ A4 involves the players being captured, and we did not think that players would find playing an area with no gear as particularly fun, especially when we looked into the cost of the new tech required to make something like that work. As an aside, I also liked the fight on the docks and understand the desire to see it in DDO.

~ When we talk about augments, we don't mean that they would be crafted like LGS. We mean that we would make slotted items display a better description and use the slotting UI for augments. We know that the effects on already slotted LGS don't show enough information and we will be looking to change that before we moved regular augments to use that system.

~ We were concerned that an Anauroch landscape would have too little to offer that wasn't seen in the desert content we already have. I am not saying it would never happen if we saw enough player interest; just that desert areas can be tough when we are looking to offer variety in landscape.

Sev~

PS: As an aside, I also did/do enjoy Jeff Dee's artwork. I played a *lot* of V&V and enjoyed it there as well.

[AnEvenNewerNoob]

snip
No. The last random loot pass wasn't fine. Not even close. At best it fixed a few things and broke at least as many others.

This pretty much sums it up.

Your new random loot is effed. FIX IT before you base a crafting sytem around your current effed up loot.

We NEED weapons good effect to BREAK GOOD DR. (Novel concept I know!)

You broke it. Now fix it.

[Thrudh]

My family and I have been in the game since beta release. I have seen all kinds of changes and heard many things to change. In this time, I have spoke to hundreds of players on 3 different servers. It seems that a huge number of us just want BASIC things fixed... Ladder lag, cgi bugs, player lag conflictions and things that have been here since day 1 and still continue. Most agree these are things that would make many of us happy BEFORE adding new stuff.

New is great and exciting, but if these basic things still exist, it isn't fun at all. When you cant even complete because lag is so bad in a raid? What fun is that - even if it is new?

The occasional ladder bug has zero effect on my enjoyment of the game. Zero. I would far rather play A1-A3 than have a developer waste a single second looking at ladder bugs.

Lag, they have reduced significantly, and the producer's letter says they will continue to work on it. So I'm confused by your post.

Producer: We've spent many developer hours the past two months reducing lag, and we plan to continue to work on lag-related issues going forward.

Player: New content? What? Why aren't you guys working on lag?

[JOTMON]

~ Bound to character space is serialized with the character when the character is sent off to the database, and as we look into lag it is clear that's expensive. We don't have plans, for performance reasons, of increasing that. And yes, we would love it if that wasn't the case because we would *all* like more BtC space. It isn't worth more lag though.

makes sense, the increasing Bound items over time is causing lag as tag data overloads the system..
Sounds like a good solution is to get rid of BTC... we don't need it anyway..

[Nuclear_Elvis]

~ Bound to character space is serialized with the character when the character is sent off to the database, and as we look into lag it is clear that's expensive. We don't have plans, for performance reasons, of increasing that. And yes, we would love it if that wasn't the case because we would *all* like more BtC space. It isn't worth more lag though.

Sev, is there a potential solution that may involve a total revamp of Banking that makes it an Instanced/separate area, where we may need to have Banking in a room behind a portal door where entering it incurs the "load" of said items? If we had a firewalled off area for storage, even if it meant that all banking had to change to "behind the door" instead of at the current NPCs/tellers, then that may be a necessary trade-off. Seems like the loading/data grab should be isolated away from the at-large game world/server, which - who knows - may even free up resources and lessen lag or latency/loading issues. If we then choose to "pay the price" of potential loading delays in our huge/separate/instanced bank area, the onus is on the individual to risk that latency while an enormous personal vault is opened in the data stream.

[bsquishwizzy]

For accessories, the new loot gen is actually well done, IMO. While I get chaff, I also get very nice items for most every non-weapon/armor slot. So much that I end up vendoring or giving away a lot of really good items. This is because there are a large number of effects for these slots, and some (CON, Insightful CON, False Life, etc) are needed for every class. Even some which aren't, I usually keep things like CHA items for UMD purposes, at least until upper epics. The only real complaint is the lack of deadly and speed on accessories.

For Armor, it's not terrible. But there are comparatively few effects possible, and many are now spell power. So it tends to look like a casters paradise. Fortification is also nerfed to drop in lower values than before, meaning it's worthless for that. My low-resources group character is still, at L16, waiting for a decent fort item (we haven't farmed a Minos, and the rest of the group seems resistant for some reason. Maybe because as first lifers we'll likely hit 20 before getting everyone 20 taps).

For weapons, it's a total failure. DR breakers no longer drop. Many desirable effects no longer drop. Due to the stripping out of most melee effects, and the sheer number of caster effects, and the lack of controls on what effects land on what weapon type and in combination with other effects, the vast majority of weapons are either bad melee/caster combinations that no one ever uses, or caster only. All lootgen weapons are pretty much vendor trash. In the rare instance you get a melee weapon with actual melee effects, you're likely to get speed (should never be on weapons) or deadly (same, having them here is bad design), but no real dps boost. The only true benefit is being able to get a really low level Vorpal. But since really low levels go by quickly anyway (just grab Carnifex!) that's not a benefit. It's so bad, that my guild has started using the E-star challenge weapons to fill in gaps, as you still get good melee effects there. Even on a bad roll, a E-star weapon is simply better than any lootgen weapon out today.

Weapons need a lot of melee-specific effects added back in, speed and deadly removed to accessories where they belong, and controls preventing caster and melee effects from spawning together. Until then, it's all going to be vendor trash.

Yep. Pretty much sums it up.

I like the new loot system, comparatively speaking. But the weapons effects and combinations totally suck eggs. No DR breakers, no disruptors / banishers / etc.



Now as to the OP: very psyched. A little disappointed that ToEE is left without the Village of Hommlet, but the Slave Lords quests being added is very cool. And I find it surprising that they are mining Greyhawk material overall. Then again, they are classics for a very good reason.

[Thar]

This pretty much sums it up.

Your new random loot is effed. FIX IT before you base a crafting sytem around your current effed up loot.

We NEED weapons good effect to BREAK GOOD DR. (Novel concept I know!)

You broke it. Now fix it.

Weapon effects... too MANY caster/melee combinations. Some are fine. 90% are too much.

What happened to the double effects on two handers? Casters are forced back into twf for best spell effects again. A staff caster is much more... realistic than a khopesh and kama wielding for effect caster...

Otherwise, the power creep... whatever. it helped casters and while making the 40% of named items still viable after the LAST random loot pass less effective or desired it's better to have more choices.

The insightful additions were nice again to help casters although everyone benefited.

overall the problem with the loot pass is what can i craft at that level just as good, what do i have to throw out now, and what to still keep for TR. I don't expect a retro fix (poor desert items are soo useless heroic and epic that what's the point in farming seal/shard/scrolls... make them a 3 for 1 turn in for all... at least then i can finally say i made a khopesh of chaos, marilith chain, etc...)

[Natashaelle]

~ A4 involves the players being captured, and we did not think that players would find playing an area with no gear as particularly fun, especially when we looked into the cost of the new tech required to make something like that work. As an aside, I also liked the fight on the docks and understand the desire to see it in DDO.

IIRC, when we played it, we pwned our would-be-capturers, and learned enough clues to basically wade into A4 in reverse -- kill the slavers, free the prisoners, escape the volcano.

It worked really well.

[SisAmethyst]

My gosh, I struggle to see how this is even a choice. Think about all the development time, support time, and player frustration over handwrap specific issues over the years. I'd wager 90% of that could've been avoided if they were originally written as weapons. Get them in line with everything else and that HAS to make your lives easier in the long run, and our lives as players by proxy. Hindsight is always 20/20 I know and I'm sure there are some details I don't know, but if you guys can set it up so that all I have to do is take my wraps to a Stone of Change...that just seems like a no-brainer to me, from a player perspective.

That all being said, it's good to see these issues getting put onto the schedule and getting discussed. Looking forward to it.

I guess the tricky part is that if they code it as a 'Weapon', then it would be either a 'one hand weapon' or 'two hand weapon'. In the first case you would need two of them to qualify for TWF in the other they would count as THF, so all the TWF feats would not apply. Additionally there are most likely checks in the code that verify that you are centered if you wear anything else then a Staff as 'THF' weapon that would put you uncentered. Likewise for the damage calculation, off-hand procs and damage reduction bypass is different from fighting with weapons as with handwraps. All those special cases are probably cluttered all over their codebase and different place.

In other words, it would not just be the work to type them as 'Weapons' but to address all the code that was specially written. Changing all those code pieces without the risk to break something else that was introduced as a fix of a fix is probably quite a hot iron...