Weekly Developer Update - November 9-15, 2013 - Feather of Sun

[Feather_of_Sun]

Hello!
I'm Feather of Sun, one of the System Designers for DDO.
Rather than posting all over the place, I thought it'd be helpful to use one thread to give updates about some of the cool things I'm working on for future releases.

The things I mention in this thread have been put into our internal development build.
This is the build that will become Update 21.



November 9th, 2013:
Updates to the random treasure generation system for weapons!

The Burst prefixes will come back. I've seen a lot of people asking for them. While they're not as powerful as the "Flaming II" you could get instead of Flaming Burst, but they are very close and not everything needs to be exactly equal... it does help to have some variety.

• Flaming Burst
• Shocking Burst
• Icy Burst
• Acid Burst

New weapon AoE damage prefixes have been made that can appear on Epic-level loot.
The below list of prefixes appear rarely in addition to one of the normal things you'd get as a prefix on your item. They match roughly in theme- as an example, Tempestuous could come with either Shocking or Shrieking paired with it.
Some of these are old names, but they do new things.

• Infernal - 2% Chance On Hit: A blast of flame ignites your target, dealing 4 to 16 damage per Minimum Level of this item to all nearby enemies.
• Meteoric (Can only be found in the highest level treasure) - 2% Chance On Hit: A falling star strikes your target, dealing 3 to 18 Fire Damage and 1 to 6 Bludgeoning Damage per Minimum Level of this item to all nearby enemies. Affected foes must also make a DC (20+Item Level) Reflex Saving Throw or be knocked prone.
• Glacial - 2% Chance On Hit: A burst of glacial frost chills your target, dealing 7 to 14 Cold Damage per Minimum Level of this item to all nearby enemies.
• Erosive - 2% Chance On Hit: A blast of acid corrodes your target, dealing 3 to 18 Acid Damage per Minimum Level of this item to all nearby enemies.
• Tempestuous - 2% Chance On Hit: A bolt of lightning strikes your target, dealing 1 to 20 Electric Damage per Minimum Level of this item to all nearby enemies.
• Righteous - 2% Chance On Hit: A blast of holy energy strikes your target, dealing 3 to 12 Good Damage per Minimum Level of this item to all nearby non-good enemies.
• Kinetic - 2% Chance On Hit: A burst of magical force strikes your target, dealing 3 to 12 Force Damage per Minimum Level of this item to all nearby enemies.

4 new weapon suffixes: (Bringing the amount of suffixes at each given Enhancement Value to between 12 and 14)

• Humanoid Bane (Combination of Human Bane, Elf Bane, Dwarf Bane, Halfling Bane, Orc Bane, Goblinoid Bane, Monstrous Humanoid Bane, Reptillian Humanoid Bane, and Giant Bane.)
• Natural Bane (Combination of Animal Bane, Vermin Bane, Plant Bane, Magical Beast Bane, and Fey Bane)
• Feeding (On Vorpal Hit: Target incurs 1 negative level, you gain Temporary HP)
• Draining (On Vorpal Hit: Target incurs 1 negative level, you gain Temporary Spell Points)

This is just a start. There's a lot more I'd like to do.
Armor, shield, and accessories will get new things as well, as will spellcasting weapons.



November 10th, 2013
Augment updates, and new Red augments.

• Spell Focus augments have been changed to stack with other Spell Focus equipment.
• Augments are now conceptually divided into four categories: Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Named.
• All the augments that currently drop in random treasure are "Common".
• Uncommon and Rare augments will appear in treasure, but less often than Common augments.
• An augment's rarity will be denoted by the word "Common", "Uncommon", "Rare", or "Named" appearing in text in the top right of the Augment's tooltip.
• Six new Uncommon Red Augments are being put into random treasure drops in all epic level content.
• One new Rare Red Augment is being put into random treasure drops in all epic level content.
• These are the Meteoric Star Ruby, Ruby Eye of the Inferno, Ruby Eye of the Glacier, Ruby Eye of Erosion, Ruby Eye of the Tempest, Ruby Eye of Righteousness, and the Kinetic Ruby Eye.
• They work as the effects described in the November 9th Update earlier in this post.
• These new augments have no minimum level to use, and do not affect the level of any item you slot them in.

November 11th, 2013

• Set up some cool new cosmetics!

The “Noble” cosmetic set has both Crimson and Dark varieties, for a total of 20 individual cosmetic items.
Here's a screenshot that will give you an idea of what the "Crimson Noble with Golden Pauldrons" cosmetics will look like:



November 12th, 2013

• Polish work has been done on the particle effects that will be used by the weapon procs from the Uncommon/Rare Augments. (The meteor looks pretty awesome!)

November 13-15th, 2013

• Bug fixing!

We’re making a concentrated effort to clean up as many enhancement system bugs as is possible for Update 20, Patch 1.
Keep an eye out in the future for patch notes that will list everything that’s been fixed.



Thanks for reading! This was a glimpse into what a developer’s week can look like.
In the future, other developers will take their own turn giving similar updates.

As mentioned at the start of this post, most of the things mentioned here as new features are works in progress that are underway in our internal development branch. They haven’t been tested by our Quality Assurance team yet, and changes often happen before features are released.

[Vellrad]

You can develop any augments you want, but with no barter mechanics for them (like the aurum traders, great idea BTW) and with current droprate no one will ever see them.

[StoptheRock]

This kind of communication is the way to go. Keep it up Feather!

[jakeelala]

Please make a non-random Collector Turn in vendor for these or something. Random loot is too random.

In 5 Months I've never looted any blues augments for instance, except for one +25 Vitality, in what must hbe 100's if not 1000's chests of all levels.

[maddong]

Can we get convalescent and superior parrying back on bracers?

And thanks for the communication!

[UurlockYgmeov]

+1 for the information - keep up the communication!

[Ovrad]

The news about augment sounds good, but there's 2 problems with augments that need to be addressed as soon as possible:

• Due to the low drop rates and high number of augments (We currently have what, ~500 of them?), it's near impossible to get the specific augment we want. Also, too few are available through the barter system.
• Storage for the extra augments is still completely unreasonable. Even the biggest bag available in the the store isn't nearly big enough for current augments, without even taking into account the new ones incoming.

Because of those two issues a lot of players still ignore the augment system, even power players. Finding an augments that's viable for your character is excessively difficult, and finding the perfect one is pretty much impossible. Adding more of them will only exacerbate the problem. Please address these issues before continuing to pile on some more.

[Jasparion]

I love finding awesome random loot as much as the next guy, but what I cant stand is that the more random loot gets buffed and fiddled with, the more useless my raid items and named items become, and the less inclined I am to bother raiding or running specific dungeons for named items.

As it is now, I can kit out a toon from the Auction House which is nearly as good as someone who spent months and months farming for specific items. Sure, there are individual items which are still fantastic, but I bet I could find 30 rubbish named items for every 1 great named item. I dont care that random loot may have the same ratio - because when I hit the AH I can get exactly what I want.

So my request would be to please lay off the random loot for a while, and take a look at the dozens and dozens of once great named items which now have to rely on my strong sense of loyalty to avoid being trashed every life when I struggle to clear my TR cache.

My preference would be back-dated changes so that previously earned items get buffed (certainly the nerfs always seem to be back-dated), but at least if new items got buffed it would have me wanting to run things again, for more than just XP.

[Silverleafeon]

Holy Ghostbane!

[Tocawe]

I suppose all those changes are "subject to change"?

AoE effects on weapons seems interesting.
I could see some characters would prefer an AoE effects on their weapons, but another character would prefer the same weapon without the AoE effect due to aggro management, or characters prefering AoE effects on EH but not on EE.

About the impossibility to loot the augments you want/need: What about a system that let us upgrade vendor-less augments to higher tiers?

[Dandonk]

I'm happy that we'll be seeing some more variation in random gen loot. This is good.

That being said:

1) I would really like to see the non-straight DPS affixes back, as in CC/debuff effects. These are cool, and they add power that isn't just "I can now kill this boss mob .01 seconds faster because I went from VI to VII on my affix". It adds more variation, and more fun, without necessarily adding more "power" as such.

2) I would really like to see the armor/jewelry/clothing affixes that are missing back, too. Heal amp, for one.

3) I would like to have the affixes searchable. There's currently no way to distinguish Speed I from Speed X - and while one is very useful, the other is very useless. With everything being called the same, it's a ngihtmare to use AH - and I mostly don't bother anymore.

4) Power of random gen loot seem to be all over the place. I have deadly of accuracy goggles that have better combat bonuses than EE Dream Visors... and the random gen version is ML 17 (masterful + cursed, yes, but still). While some of the weapons are bland, boring and underpowered. I feel this needs to be looked at, leading to...

5) Power vs. named/raid loot. Some random gen loot is so powerful that it totally eclipses raid/named loot of the same, or even higher level. This is absurd.

6) Crafting. There are some grandfathered affixes that are really nice to be able to craft, but there are also a lot of back-log of affixes that are simply not craftable. Crafting has been neglected for a long time, which is sad for a system that has great potential - and demands such a large investment to get to high levels.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love that you're talking to us now. I like that there are plans for bringing more variation in random gen loot out. But there's a long way to go yet.

Regards,
Dan

[Wizza]

Nice post.

Couple of suggestions:

1) Upgrade the drop rate of Augments. Ml28 ones are ULTRA rare on live at the moment.
2) Put back CC random prefixes and suffixes.
3) Put back healing amp on random loot.
4) Give us an Assassinate +DC Augment or make Assassinate use Sunder +DC items like Quivering Palm.
5) The Rare named Augments are a good opportunity to make people run EE. Make them drop just in EE quests, maybe behind some optionals to make people run those too (NOT behind Locked doors/Secret doors).
6) Don't forget about Named items. These are really important and should not be forgotten. Please no more U20 fail loot.

[FestusHood]

I do have one problem with the old convalescent of superior parrying bracers. They're too good. They are so good that pretty much all of my characters wear them, which means that all other bracers in the game might as well not exist. A shame, since there are a lot of other nice bracers.

So if convalescent comes back, make it spawn on multiple items, not just bracers.

Even better, make it a rare augment. Maybe even a named one. Yellow is probably the best color. It fits thematically, and i personally find that currently, yellow slots outnumber desirable yellow augments in most of my gear layouts.

Put the new convalescent yellow augment into some new piece of named gear, the way vitality augments appear in the minos legens. This will make even tightwads like myself buy jewelers tool kits to get the augment out.

I was thinking 10% could be ml 16, 20% ml 20, 30% ml 24, and then maybe a brand new 40% version that is ml 28. Human monks can already get crazy high heal amp, maybe let some other character types in on the fun too.

[Rakuda13]

Thanks for the update,very cool idea to update when things are changing. You will get less people wanting a bastille day doing this.

Thanks again.

[Teh_Troll]

HEALING AMP AS YELLOW!!!!!

Please.

[EllisDee37]

[*]Spell Focus augments have been changed to stack with other Spell Focus equipment.

Please do the same with spell focus mastery items. (orbs, dragon cloak, tablecloth, magewright's set bonus) Make mastery & augments give enhancement, DC item effects and cannith crafting equipment.

[Vellrad]

HEALING AMP AS YELLOW!!!!!

Please.

Yes, listen 2 trol, i must finally get rid of pdk gloves but 30% amp is 2 good 2 pass.

[sirgog]

So-called 'common' augments are already too rare.

I could be wrong on this issue, but I believe that in level 27 treasure, you have a higher chance to loot a +3 to +4 Dexterity upgrade tome than you do to loot a 14 PRR sapphire.

On Convalescent: It needs to be back in loot, and this should be the highest priority as unlike other MOTU affixes, it's best in slot for a lot of builds. Like other powerful effects (such as +11 Con), it is strong enough to merit using an item slot, not just an augment slot.

I do think Convalescent should be on gloves and bracers and nothing else. Gloves because there's several high-profile named items in the slot with the effect, bracers because in MOTU that's where it was in random lootgen.

[BOgre]

LOVING the "per minimum level". Finally a weapon effect that scales with level. Very much Kudos for this.

LOVING the melee AoE. Thank you.

Now please consider the requests made here regarding Aug Traders, Yellow Heal Amp, and Storage.

Also, thank you for the thread. Please oh Please don't abandon it.

[Braegan]

I truly appreciate your open communication.

Please keep it up!

And, also seconded on wanting heal amp back on items and in an augment would be nice.