Summarized transcript of November 2021 chat with Severlin

[LeoLionxxx]

Happy November!
Find below a rough outline of the topics and information given in the Twitch interview with Severlin (November 17th 2021)

Discussion of topics is encouraged. However before writing criticism of something or entering into a civilized debate, please visit the link below to watch the relevant segment(s) of the interview, so that your feedback if well informed; time codes are included for convenience. That being said, it was also stressed that a lot of future system updates talked about are still in early planning stages, and some may not happen at all.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1208164886

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3:20: More Gold seal hirelings?

• Don't want to disparage current sources of hirelings.
  
• Long term TENATIVE hireling update: training hirelings, which lv with you and you can gear. The tech allows some of this already!
  
• Thus, don't want to ruin the design space for when/if that actually happens.

5:30: Isle of Dred?

• Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! Expansion for Spring of 2022 (or maybe summer).
  
• Will be an expansion
  
• Artists and animators are very happy to work on dinosaurs.
  
• Full expansion, with a LV cap increase
  
• (44:30): Should have a new race and new iconic!
  
  • Concept art is cool, but secret.
    
  • (56:00) Revealing Iconic Class would spoil the race
    

6:30: Before Isle of Dread:

• U52: Quest of some kind in December
  
• U53: Adventure pack with a raid

7:15: VIP benefits

• Can't give specifics, since might be seen as a promise.
  
• Long term wish: would like to revamp adventure journal to allow teleport to quest givers
  
• VIPs could get Single-player housing benefits? Far off to the future.
  
• Loot & named item loot bonus might be nice, there are implications.
  
• It is on the commerce team's mind.

12:00: Lag

• Lag is bad
  
• U51.1 will fix a lot of ED issues, and fix one big source of lag (important: not all lag will be fixed by it)

14:45: Value for people who have maxed out Reaper points?

• Existing players are much more powerful than new players
  
• MIGHT replace with a "reaper rating" system, instead of a tree system, to grant automatically. Would then be able to help weaker players with some % of your reaper rank. Thus, new players are more able to contribute to the group. (emphasized that this is very not set in stone); Hardest part might be the UI.

17:30: LothRO cosmetics are easier to use?

• Yes, because they're vastly different projects at this point.

21:15: Expansion teleports tab in UI, like the mount system?

• Might do that. Has been suggested by the dev team.
  
• Might be able to prioritize QoL things like that now that EDs are out the door.

22:30: ED T5s at lv 30?

• Players haven't seen the LV increase yet - will make more sense when LV cap increase.
  
• LV 30 then becomes more of a Milestone in the 31+ levelling process

24:30: In-game support:

• New CS manager and agents are coming up to speed. Moving tickets to a new portal to make ticket tracking easier. New tools are now in place to help agents help players. Stating to work though backlog of tickets.

26:15: UI updates to handle 2K & 4K

• Engineering resources are looking into Lag. When lag is better, can start looking into that type of thing.
  
• UI scaling is hard!
  
• Might hopefully start on that next year?

29:00: New Producer:

• Starting start of year. Sev will still be a part of the team.

29:45: R10 is now easier:

• Yes. New EDs are powerful. Should do a reaper pass to help shake it up and be harder.
  
• Maybe turn it up to R11?
  
• maybe add a challenge mode checkbox?

31:00: Get rid of TR cache?

• Nobody likes it.
  
• Where would items go then?
  
• Wouldn't want to increase load on mail system.

32:00: Increase Platinum cap?

• Not sure they want to; not ready to talk about it.
  
• Acknowledged that there is a wide disparity of wealth among levels
  
• A platinum economy would be nice to have again.

33:30: Megaservers?

• Might revisit after more lag fixes

35:00: Next Hardcore season. Why re-offer rewards?

• Will have a new cloak
  
• In some respects, exclusivity will be only for a time (executive produced decisions; it is know some players have strong opinions)

38:15: Psionics?

• Not in the near future.
• Creating new unique spells is expensive, so will need good lead-up time.

40:00: Balance post U-51?

• Balance is an ongoing thing.
• U51.1 patch has some ED balance changes
• Will let players sit with the Epic destinies to see how things shake out, so likely won't do ED balance changes for a while (unless something is obviously broken)

43:30: Point codes in DDO Market?

• It's know that it's desired. Might re-offer once tech is available again
• It does make account theft more appealing though

45:15: New ED trees? Maybe next year; the devs are tired.

46:15: New feature - Roll back a level?

• No, that would be hard. Lesser reincarnate instead.

49:15: Level cap increase - what should players know?

• LV 30 content is technically higher, so will be relevant for endgame.
• ETR is still LV 30
• Possible feature: After ETR, Legendary XP is retained, and reapplied when you hit LV 30.

51:45: Monk pass?

• Would still like to do that - dev team does want to.
• It's known that some Monks are struggling to find good ED load-outs.

53:00 Winter event:

• Will swap cookies, may add new prizes. Time is limited though (devs are tired).

53:30: Undead iconic?

• Would need to attach it to an undead race.
• May do a "Revenant" universal tree, so any player can be undead.
• Might do more Ravenloft after Isle of dread, since new 5th edition source material has been released.

55:15: Missing Tomes post U51?

• Can't reproduce internally and no smoking gun.
• Customer service is working though the backlog of tickets.

56:15: Streamline Epic reincarnation (save 1-20 options):

• VERY likely hard.

[Oxarhamar]

Thanks for this I can now watch bits that are relevant without sitting thru the entire slog

I prefer to read information than listen/watch others talk about it

Skipping to a bit I want to hear is better

still think that information released in videos should be transcribed by the devs to the forum

[Mindos]

Happy November!

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to LeoLionxxx again.

Very cool, thank you for this!

[Oxarhamar]

31:00: Get rid of TR cache?
[LIST]
[*]Nobody likes it.
[*]Where would items go then?
[*]Wouldn't want to increase load on mail system.

This to me they already have the solution

ETR does not create a TR cashe

Just let Favor unlocked Inventory & Bank space persist thru TR done

[Oxarhamar]

31:00: Get rid of TR cache?
[LIST]
[*]Nobody likes it.
[*]Where would items go then?
[*]Wouldn't want to increase load on mail system.

This to me they already have the solution

ETR does not create a TR cashe

Just let Favor unlocked Inventory & Bank space persist thru TR Done

[magaiti]

Just being able to access bank independently from TR cache would solve most of the TR-cache associated lag.

You only really need to open TR cache 2-3 times per life:
1) at level 1 to fetch bags & BTC leveling gear;
2) at level 28-ish to fetch endgame gear
3) before reincarnation to clear the cache

99 times out of 100 I just want to access personal/shared/crafting storage. Yet I have to wait for my 200+ BTC items TR cache to load EVERY SINGLE TIME.

[Firebreed]

Welp, given that a) the devs are clearly tired (which is very understandable), b) they actually plan to release an update with new content in December (which is downright offensive), and c) they fixed only a smidge of bugs in 51.1 (which is fine as long as they did their best), I think it's safe to say there's no hope for the majority of bugs in the list to ever get fixed.

I don't know if y'all are ok with that, cause I'm not.

Edit: Credit where credit's due, this post is a good start. But we're still a long way from reaching an acceptable percentage of solved issues.

[Oliphant]

Just a note. When I read this transcript I get a certain tone compared to the stream. Consider watching the stream too if you can. Overall, I got good vibes from the stream.

[Oxarhamar]

Just being able to access bank independently from TR cache would solve most of the TR-cache associated lag.

You only really need to open TR cache 2-3 times per life:
1) at level 1 to fetch bags & BTC leveling gear;
2) at level 28-ish to fetch endgame gear
3) before reincarnation to clear the cache

99 times out of 100 I just want to access personal/shared/crafting storage. Yet I have to wait for my 200+ BTC items TR cache to load EVERY SINGLE TIME.

This

Also shared bank adds much of the lag could have separate bank buttons to open shared or cashe

I had TRed numerous times before I ever got the shared bank and my TR cashe never caused as much lag as the shared bank caused problem being once you get the shared bank there is no turning back if it was a purchase

I’d leave them be opened at the same time just put buttons in the bank so they don’t auto open every time

[Wahnsinnig]

Happy November!
Find below a rough outline of the topics and information given in the Twitch interview with Severlin (November 17th 2021)



24:30: In-game support:

• New CS manager and agents are coming up to speed. Moving tickets to a new portal to make ticket tracking easier. New tools are now in place to help agents help players. Stating to work though backlog of tickets.

This point is really getting ridiculous now. They have been talking about new CS staff in training and improvements should be seen soon for more than a year now, but noone has seen any results.

On the contrary, people that for example loose their tomes has to wait 3-4 weeks before it gets fixed.

SSG should be ashamed of this. It is simply not good enough.

[Aelonwy]

Hubby was confused by this one, I confess to being mystified too.

42:20 to 43:30
Cordovan Q: What about getting a secondary use for Filigree? People get a lot of filigree if you play a bunch. Could we ever feed it to our sentient gems? Even a couple of XP a pop?
Severlin A: Probably not. We want to keep filigree as cosmetics. If I was going to do a filigree thing I would have a vendor sell specialty cosmetics for a high amount of filigree.
Cordovan: You do get a lot of filigree at this point. A lot of us have quite a bit of it.
Severlin: Yeah, and that's the issue, you'll put out new filigree and put new stuff on the vendor and everyone will just spend their filigree and buy it. I would love to come up with a way that constantly fills(?) filigree. We're not going to allow, we want to keep filigree separate from things that increase power. So that filigree is about cosmetics we don't want it to be able to be fed for XP.

Bolding mine, because that's where the language is most bewildering. I think Severlin knows what he's talking about... but at the same time it almost sounds like he might be thinking of a different collectible or ingredient because filigree have never been about cosmetics they ARE THE POWER OF SENTIENT ITEMS so how do you then "keep filigree as cosmetics"? How to separate them from things that increase power when they are the things that increase the power of sentient items.

It sounded like gibberish toward the end.

Yes we get a lot of them but how is that any different than getting 1000 sentient xp gems? I mean if a filigree is only worth 1 or 2 sentient XP... it would still be far more worthwhile to farm sentient xp gems and cap named items than to actively seek to stockpile filigree for that purpose.

And I love cosmetics. There is no denying that... but they're not very good about creating vendors for cosmetics and keeping them updated with new things to get. Look at the Mysterious Remnant vendor... no new cosmetics there since what? Shortly after White Plume Mountain I think. Snow Peaks new event last year? Old cosmetics mostly made available a new way. Glamerdust Vendor? I don't think they've added anything new since it was created. Night Revels, still gets love though.

I love cosmetics but a lot of other people are already complaining we have too many and no space for them because no cosmetic wardrobe feature.

Perhaps allowing us to trade a certain number of filigree for our choice of Rare filigree would be more preferable by the player base. Cut down a little on the RNG torture, maybe?

[Oxarhamar]

Hubby was confused by this one, I confess to being mystified too.

42:20 to 43:30
Cordovan Q: What about getting a secondary use for Filigree? People get a lot of filigree if you play a bunch. Could we ever feed it to our sentient gems? Even a couple of XP a pop?
Severlin A: Probably not. We want to keep filigree as cosmetics. If I was going to do a filigree thing I would have a vendor sell specialty cosmetics for a high amount of filigree.
Cordovan: You do get a lot of filigree at this point. A lot of us have quite a bit of it.
Severlin: Yeah, and that's the issue, you'll put out new filigree and put new stuff on the vendor and everyone will just spend their filigree and buy it. I would love to come up with a way that constantly fills(?) filigree. We're not going to allow, we want to keep filigree separate from things that increase power. So that filigree is about cosmetics we don't want it to be able to be fed for XP.

Bolding mine, because that's where the language is most bewildering. I think Severlin knows what he's talking about... but at the same time it almost sounds like he might be thinking of a different collectible or ingredient because filigree have never been about cosmetics they ARE THE POWER OF SENTIENT ITEMS so how do you then "keep filigree as cosmetics"? How to separate them from things that increase power when they are the things that increase the power of sentient items.

It sounded like gibberish toward the end.

Yes we get a lot of them but how is that any different than getting 1000 sentient xp gems? I mean if a filigree is only worth 1 or 2 sentient XP... it would still be far more worthwhile to farm sentient xp gems and cap named items than to actively seek to stockpile filigree for that purpose.

And I love cosmetics. There is no denying that... but they're not very good about creating vendors for cosmetics and keeping them updated with new things to get. Look at the Mysterious Remnant vendor... no new cosmetics there since what? Shortly after White Plume Mountain I think. Snow Peaks new event last year? Old cosmetics mostly made available a new way. Glamerdust Vendor? I don't think they've added anything new since it was created. Night Revels, still gets love though.

I love cosmetics but a lot of other people are already complaining we have too many and no space for them because no cosmetic wardrobe feature.

Perhaps allowing us to trade a certain number of filigree for our choice of Rare filigree would be more preferable by the player base. Cut down a little on the RNG torture, maybe?

Yes 100%

Trade filigree for filigree is a solid idea

I don't really want another cosmetic they already roo many with nowhere to put them

It's solving a storage problem with another problem to trade filigree for cosmetic

[LeoLionxxx]

Just a note. When I read this transcript I get a certain tone compared to the stream. Consider watching the stream too if you can. Overall, I got good vibes from the stream.

What tone did you get from my transcript? Any particular examples to point to?

I think I was going for somewhere between neutral-matter-of-factly and hyperbolic-happy-simpification-of-info. I certainly don't like contributing to the doom and gloom that sometimes pervades the forums.

[Oliphant]

What tone did you get from my transcript? Any particular examples to point to?

I think I was going for somewhere between neutral-matter-of-factly and hyperbolic-happy-simpification-of-info. I certainly don't like contributing to the doom and gloom that sometimes pervades the forums.

Not critiquing the transcript so much as suggesting folks listen to the stream for the tone.

[Kielbasa]

I listened to the chat mostly a rehash of things we've heard hinted at before. Nothing groundbreaking or knowledge the player need to build around for the future. The bit about a new producer coming is nice. Maybe now we'll get a bit more communication and a roadmap for the future laid out for us to comment on or influence. Odds are ssg will do their own thing and the players will adjust to the changes and do their own thing as well. All in all it was a nice little chat between jerry and sev.

Yes 100%

Trade filigree for filigree is a solid idea

I don't really want another cosmetic they already roo many with nowhere to put them

It's solving a storage problem with another problem to trade filigree for cosmetic

A trade in of 5 basic for a specific rare would be nice and then a 3 to 1 for a random rare something like that. I am swimming in certain sets while others still seem to be less common. Its another system that could use a balance pass for the less useful sets to get a boost so people might consider using them.