Telethon of the Avatar/Release 47 Postmortem



Transcript
Transcript provided by Rosemourne

Areas of importance:
(3:42) Russian version ‘launched.’ Start of a 35% off three-part sale in celebration. (8:03) Perfect record broken, release was 9 MINUTES LATE!! (23:11) Community member lost: Holt memorial service is to be held on the 5th of November. (25:10) Halloween Contest Winners (29:25) Chris sucks at growing a mustache, but is proud of it. (1:35:52) World Builders’ Tour

Funding:
(15:40) $2,500 (16:55) $5,000 (24:14) $5,000 (Devs catching up) (27:12) $7,500 (32:19) $10,000 (Snowflake Pattern Cloak achieved) (48:55) $15,000 (53:35) $17,500 (59:48) $17,500 (Devs catching up) (1:02:18) $20,000 (1:06:51) $22,500 (1:14:20) $25,000 (Big Silver Fur Hat achieved) (1:24:31) $27,500 (1:56:04) $32,500 (2:16:44) $35,000 (Winter Pattern Stained Glass Oil Table Lamp (3 Pack) achieved) (2:39:30) $37,500 (2:47:15) $40,000 (2:51:15) $42,500 (2:54:05) $45,000 (3:09:16) $47,500 (3:25:45) $50,000 (Ice Staff & Ice Bow achieved) (3:40:28) $57,500 (Lord British Original Shroud Cloth Map Prototype #1 Bundle sold) (3:57:49) $60,000

Questions (Started at 28:15)
(28:15) Oplek: Do you see people using a large friends list to teleport as a problem? Chris: We got a couple questions on that one, and it is a little bit of a problem. We may change how it works at a later date. My guess is the first thing that will be changing is that we make it so you can’t teleport to some scenes. We may limit it in some way, but not actually remove the teleport. Getting rid of that may be one part of it, or make it so you can only teleport to friends in adventure scenes, but I think that’s probably too much. There probably will be some changes is the short version, but for right now we’re trying to keep the game fairly convenient. Don’t wanna be too punishing on that front, but we will at some point.

'''(29:40) Browncoat Jayson: Our list of friends ingame has been subsumed by its use as a teleport target selector. Would it be possible to change teleport so that it targets a member of your party, rather than someone on your friends list, so we can return the friends list to its intended purpose?''' Darkstarr: For us, it felt like a natural extension of the friends list, because if you wanted to go do something social, like someone’s having an event, that felt like a natural extension of that: Go attend an event with your friends and you could use that as a function, to go to them. So… Chris: I don’t know if that’s the actual fix. That’ll just make it more inconvenient, ‘Now I gotta find somebody who’ll invite me in that town. Hey So-and-so, invite me into your party so I can teleport.’ Like I said, I expect there will be more changes, but I expect it will be more scene-side, preventing you from using teleports to get deep into scenes to bypass content. Darkstarr: For me, this seems like a, ‘a not a problem, not a problem’ like, I dunno, it doesn’t feel like that big of a problem to solve right now. Chris: And just a reminder, you can’t teleport when you’re overloaded, so it’s not like people are moving thousands of tons of rock across the map or something like that. And again, it’s really the, ‘you pay X amount of gold, 200 gold or whatever, to avoid the walking on the overland map. So it’s a little of a time convenience that you’re paying the gold for. But again, I think using it to bypass the content is the part I don’t like about it. That part may change.

(31:34) Rufus D`Asperdi: Will we be staying with a single denomination currency, or moving to a multi-denomination (Copper/Silver/Gold) monetary system? Chris: It’s on my wishlist, but I don’t see that happening before launch, that will probably be something that goes to Episode 2, or moves to a later time. But it is something that we can seamlessly move to that system whenever it comes out. It’ll just be one of those things that you log in for a release and all of a sudden you had 4,700 gold and now you have 47 gold and X copper and silver. But again, not in the short term, it’s not a high priority.

(33:15) Melange: It would be great if the Seedinvest folks could share their golden magic emotes to new players. Darkstarr: We actually meant for those emotes to be teachable. Not Re-Teachable, but teachable, so that’s going to be fixed in R48.

(34:35) Warrior B'Patrick: Will the data currently entered by individuals be retained? Darkstarr: Anything that was entered as of a month ago was included in the snapshot that we received from Jacob [Author’s note: Jacob White is the previous owner of sotamap.com]. Any updates you have made since then were not. So don’t do any updates to sotamap right now, ‘cause we’re not taking live updates. Chris: Do we have an ETA for our hosting? Darkstarr: No. Definitely by the end of the year. [...] Some time at the beginning of the year we hope to reopen everyone’s ability to edit their own POTs, but we don’t have firm dates for anything. Chris: And also, so you know, one of the big things we’re working on is getting the performance of it up. The current one works, but it’s kind of slow to pull up.

(36:50) Warrior B'Patrick: Are you going to expand the number of icons for buildings and Points of Interest? Darkstarr: Yes, probably eventually.

(37:03) Warrior B'Patrick: On the opt-out for automatic entry of lot ownership, is that a Governor setting ot a lot owner setting? Darkstarr: Our current planning was that this would be a per-owner thing, so the person that owns the lot was going to be able to choose that. But if you guys have strong feelings about that, feel free to post about that on the forums.

(37:37) Baron Drocis Fondorlatos: Could we please get an option to lock down the UI so that it’s not accidentally moved during combat? Chris: [...] I’ve been bitten by this multiple times too, you move stuff around and it’s not where you want it. [...] Darkstarr: Yes, we should do that.

(38:35) Baron Drocis Fondorlatos: Can we please have decoration mode time out after a small period of time so that we’re not accidentally moving fences, walls, chests, etc? Darkstarr: Sure.

(39:12) Baron Drocis Fondorlatos: Can we please have an option to NOT SHOW or TRAIN other players in our party? Darkstarr: Yeah, low priority but sure.

'''(40:04) Vladamir Begemot: Streamers, event creators, machinima creators, we could all use a “drone” or ability to place our camera for filming. How about a Hacked Oracle Eye that we can fly around and see through? Make it bright and shiny to alleviate PvP concerns, and let the movie making begin!''' Darkstarr: We know that we need some interesting or better camera controls, so it’s on the backlog.

(40:41) jack102367: Can we have multiple non-combat bars like combat bars? Darkstarr: Yep, been brought up before. In the backlog.

(40:44) jack102367: Can you increase the size of music file to 50k? Chris: That’s data we have to send over the network, is why it hasn’t been made bigger. Our current size is 32k, or something like that. We start running into some issues when we get bigger than that. We have to break it up into different packets. Darkstarr: It would have performance implications, so unlikely.

(41:41) jack102367: Can you make a toggle so that we can hide the quests that show up on the desktop? Darkstarr: Sure.

(41:53) jack102367: One thing I would love to see is to have the UI completely modifiable by us players meaning being able to move anything to any location on the screen. Darkstarr: In the backlog.

(43:05) ShurTugal: During npc conversations I would love to have the ability to zoom out and in and pan around left and right, can we have this? Chris: It’s already a little of a pain in the butt, or a lot of a pain in the butt, making sure the area around the NPC is designed such that when you talk to them you have a good place to put the camera already. Darkstarr: [...]Just toggle the ability to go into convo mode and you would have control of your camera, right? Lum: [...] Which would then break a lot of things. Darkstarr: Probably not, ShurTugal. Maybe eventually.

(44:12) Lace: Can we get a Jira in to allow for color and fonts on bulletin board flyers and ‘blank sheet of paper’ like we have currently from books? Darkstarr: Eventually, sure.

(44:25) Mischievous Dragon: Why footsteps sounds on grass/stone/wood aren’t working in any scene? Darkstarr: Because we haven’t finished all of that work. Chris: And actually there was a bug that was blocking that.

(44:48) Uther: Do you see in the near – mid term future Unity using several cores of CPUs and thus improving game performance several times, or will it stick to use of only one core? Chris: They’re working on it. Every release they hope to get it a little better. Right now every time we turn on the feature, it’s made it a giant, crashing pile of garbage, so we have not turned it on. But those are only the multithreading parts for the rendering side of things. That should be a big chunk of our CPU time that would be helped by that. Right now we still have other bigger problems that we’re sorting out. BUT, we’re at that time in the project that we’re sorting them out.[...] We hope to make similar improvements next few releases on the CPU time so you can start complaining that it’s your GPU that’s slowing your frame rate.

(45:53) Uther: It would be nice to have a toggle that displays in the corner of the screen your xp adventuring and production pool. Chris: It would be nice.

(46:05) Sean Silverfoot: How is the performance with the new lighting adjustments and what does that mean for the possibility of increasing lights on lots and POTs? Chris: We’re still working on performance. Right now I don’t think it’s good enough and lighting is one of our big key things we’re going to be working on improving the performance of. Lord British: Unless it gets unbelievably better we can’t do that because we’re going to try to make the game not suffer for lights. It seems incredibly unlikely that we get it so good that we’re willing to add more lights. Chris: [...] In the near-term I don’t want to turn up lights until we have other problems solved. As always, we want to make sure we have good performance. [...] Sorry, but not yet. We do hope to get there, though.

(47:53) FrostII: I can double click A,S,or D and “flip” in the respective direction, why can’t I “flip” forward with the W key? Chris: Because it sprints.

'''(49:54) DUKELEETO: I bought a battle banner from the store for 30 bucks. Can we increase the distance it is visible from?''' Chris: We probably can. I remember that’s one of those things we had from R15 or so that had performance implications back then. I don’t think it has as much now, probably should turn that up. Darkstarr: Yeah, we could look at that one.

(50:28) Vallo Frostbane: Will Sieges ever be meaningful and have a consequence if not cleared? Darkstarr: The fact that you can’t access your town directly feels pretty meaningful. Chris: That’s one of those things that you can help out other players, because there’s a lot of players who can’t get through a siege.

(51:25) Vallo Frostbane: Will the virtues matter in PvP? Lord British: That’s a good question. They could, but I’ll have to see what we currently have in the loops. We’ll work on it.

(51:47) Oremanger: Instead of nerfing heavy armor, can you consider the followings for both armor type: Make benefits from armor active skills proportional to the number of pieces worn, or make passive skill bonuses applied only when 3 pieces are worn. Chris: This is something I’ve talked about and I think I might have put this in my blog, but I think that’s one of the next steps, maybe, that we move to a, ‘you have to have at least three pieces on’ or whichever armour you have the most type on is the type that is used. [...] It’s not going to happen for R48, but that is something we hope to have.

(53:45) Unknown: Can we get stacked buffs again, please? Chris: Nope.

(55:48) Cypher Black: Is there a plan to increase the incentive to party? Chris: Yes. There’s a couple of plans in there. The easy one would be to adjust the experience bonus for parties, that increases the reward that is actually given to you, but that doesn’t really increase the experience much. [...] The second option is to, which I will probably try out this release, which is to put a soft experience cap per hour on players which would be about 10,000 experience times your level, so if you’re level 50 you could earn up to 500,000 experience per hour. [...] So that one requires some content change so that you would actually get more spawns. I forget what number three is. It wasn’t that good. One and two probably will happen. It may not be tied to an experience level, it might just be a cap of 1 million per hour. [...] Yes, we are well aware of it.

(58:57) Grape-Ape: Does pugilism affect flame fist, stone fist, ice fist; or is it only for bare-fist auto and charged attacks? Chris: Well, Pugilism is just supposed to be for fun. I see players trying to make Pugilism your main mode of attack; you guys are nuts. But it does not affect [the fist spells] because those are not really punching you with my fist on fire, but actually I cast a short flaming fist. Just a short ranged attack of whatever type. Not planning on it, but that is an interesting idea.

(1:03:29) chrisjwhite: Can we have the ability to command our pets / summons to defend another player/ party member? Chris: I would love to get more AI stuff in for the pets. [...] But as much as I would love to get pet stuff in, I really, really would love to get more performance improvements to AI and more features to boss mobs in. Lord British: I’ll put a Jira in for Episode One Chris: We want to get that stuff in, it’s just a matter of when.

'''(1:05:57) chrisjwhite: Can we get mobs that change when killed? Like Thugs turn into zombies, zombies turn to skeletons.''' Chris: Yes [...] and now we can do more things like something dies, and something else spawns in its place. Yes, that is something you can look forward to, but it’s not on our shortlist.

'''(1:07:49) Gairloch: Since smoking was included in the game when will you be able to use or equip a pipe without having to disarm yourself or remove armor? Can it maybe be equipped like a tool? Or be placed in the instrument slot if you're not using one?''' Darkstarr: Yeah, eventually. Somewhere down the road.

(1:08:11) Omegaflux: Imagining how cool an Ice bow would look prompts me to ask if we can get a flame themed Staff and Bow or patterns in the future? Darkstarr: When we roll around to summer telethons, absolutely. Or sooner, maybe. (1:08:27) Sean Silverfoot: Is it possible to get a cloak version Exodus by Helen Garriott, in the Make A Difference area? Lord British: Interesting idea. I’m not sure what it would look like on a cloak. I’ll ponder it. Darkstarr: I’m not sure there would be enough pixels. We can look at it.

(1:09:02) Browncoat Jayson: Could we get a version of the Puzzle Tree Cloak – Autism Awareness Charity that uses the new cloak technology, like Arabella’s? Darkstarr: We can consider it.

(1:09:15) Hawkwind: I really love the new ornate scythe, are there any plans to do other weapons? Darkstarr: Yes.

(1:09:22) Kabalyero: Can we have a Lance type Polearm Darkstarr: Yes, eventually. Chris: I just want to point out that we could have a lance polearm pretty easily, but it wouldn’t match the animations very well. We would need to have a separate set of animations, so that makes it a lot more challenging.

(1:09:28) Raven Swiftbow: Can players wear mage robes? Darkstarr: Yeah, eventually, although cloth physics are problematic.

'''(1:10:48) Astor Cerberus: Almost every item in your inventory has a value. Vendors never give you this value. What is the relationship between the value they give you and the ‘full’ value? ''' Darkstarr: We basically have the ability to give items a gold value and a value that a merchant will pay. That is so we can control exploits of people being able to buy from a merchant and basically buying world items from merchants and restarting scenes to have an infinite gold farm. [...] Just like the real world, if you go to sell a car to a dealer the dealer isn’t going to pay you what he’s going to sell it for. He’s going to pay you something less than that, so when he sells it he can make a buck.

(1:13:07) Paladin Michael: Can we have the possibility for snow surfing on our shield, like Legolas showed how much fun this could be? Lord British: Wait until we add vehicles Chris: Yeah, then we’ll add in the barrels as well, so you go down the barrels and fight the orcs on the barrels.

(1:14:03) Melange: Could a tile of “Magician” be added for anyone who has magic emotes? Darkstarr: That’s an interesting suggestion. We’ll consider it.

(1:15:37) Rowell: If I use the agriculture skill to area of effect harvest, is the Meticulous skill factored in there for a chance to gain more cotton for each plant in the area? Darkstarr: No.

'''(1:15:48) Browncoat Jayson: With the changes to components coming (per the R47 document), how much variation in crafting do you anticipate there will be? Will the rare components be a “chase” item for crafters (so only T8+)?''' Chris: I think it did change a little bit. [...] They did get a little more rare, I think.

'''(1:16:50) MFWalter: Why don’t you have to skin a player corpse to get the body parts? I have to skin a bear to get the bear carcass.''' Lord British: Har Har Har Har. Darkstarr: *stunned silence* Chris: The body part is whatever you knocked out of them with the killing blow, so if you get a jawbone, it’s because you knocked their jawbone off with the killing blow.

'''(1:17:23) Doctorface (Or is it Dr. Face? Doctor face?): For higher level smelters I think it would be cool for a chance at extra ingots while crafting. Would this be a possibility?''' Darkstarr: Yes, eventually. We don’t have any refining skills yet in the game. When those come in [that will be it].

(1:18:59) Doctorface: Hi, Chris! Chris: I don’t know.

(1:19:19) Brass Knuckles: Any chance we will see ways players can earn their lot deeds or possibly find them as loot drops? Darkstarr: It would be unlikely. Chris: We already have a way that they could earn… It’s the raffle! Darkstarr: Probably not by killing stuff, no.

'''(1:20:05) oplek: Pets on lots are limited by performance. Do those performance limitations apply to basements?''' Darkstarr: Basements have their own limits, so I’m not sure what the question is.

(1:21:14) Stundorn: Are winter versions of fences or other outdoor decorations still planned? Darkstarr: They are not planned because eventually we would like to have the weather be able to do that. We would like to have seasons. [...] We purposefully don’t want to have winter versions of things because we would like to have seasons in the game. Chris: We have the ability in shaders to make it look like snow is piling up on things.

'''(1:22:14) Vladamir Begemot: Many players can’t get mail because their sales have overwhelmed their mailbox. Could sales be split to a second tab, or we get a “dump all the sale records in one flush” button?''' Chris: There’s a number of options we need. [...] We would love to get more improvements in and that sounds like a good one. Yes, not any time soon. But yes, we will get that type stuff on the schedule. '''(1:23:38) that_shawn_guy: Can we get logs on player vendors? This would be like the log we already have on containers, but would have the details of add/remove/buy/sell event?''' Darkstarr: Yeah, if we don’t have that, we should totally have that. Chris: That’s one of those things where Devs like me and Starr, we don’t notice some of these things [...] because we don’t get to use vendors that much.

(1:25:08) that_shawn_guy: When will the player vendor interface get an update? Darkstarr: We have it on the backlog, including having much better permissions, much finer granularity in the permissions systems for owners and vendors, just don’t have an ETA.

'''(1:25:31) that_shawn_guy: Can we get a list of vendors on the town criers? ''' Darkstarr: Same thing, it’s in the backlog. Just don’t have an ETA.

(1:25:38) Bioxide: We could use other brit alley like npc towns (mall style), is there any way to modify the vacant or nearly vacant towns to have less empty city lots and give them more town lots / Is there a plan to sell more place anywhere lots, currently you can’t get them via purchase and there are 100s + unclaimed and non productive? Darkstarr: You have to remember that there are a lot of players who have bought property either through pledges or lots on the store who are waiting for [release]. It appears that there are lots of “available” unclaimed land, most of, if not all of that land, is accounted for by people who have pledges or a purchase. So it’s not just lots sitting idle. Those are lots accounted for, purchased.

(1:27:04) Omegaflux: Would you consider adding Doctor, Nurse and/or Patient NPCs for PoT owners? Darkstarr: We’ll consider it.

(1:27:21) Rosemourne: Would you please consider making opposing elemental statues face opposite directions, such as the Ice Elemental statue facing right, to compliment the current Fire Elemental statue, which faces left. Darkstarr: Good idea.

'''(1:27:39) Rosemourne: Could we get Magic Movers to store multiple layouts with a single house deed? ''' Darkstarr: Highly unlikely. Chris: It’s a good idea, I just don’t see that making our shortlist. [...] As we hammer out the big stuff that we have to get done, more of these little features and quality of life features will bubble to the top.

(1:28:42) Raven Swiftbow: Could we get a lava lamp to go along with the glowing mushrooms? Lord British: I’ll Jira it.

(1:29:08) Valkaryie: When can we expect to see some type of mailing/payment/reminder system for tenants who rent houses/rooms? Darkstarr: It’s in the backlog, we just don’t have an ETA for it. Chris: And a reminder: You can go into their room and leave them a reminder. Some kind of dead animal, or something.

(1:29:27) Sean Silverfoot: Can we get some status info on the POT “lawn mower” and other POT tools? Darkstarr: I would love to be able to do that, but unfortunately I don’t have an ETA on that, either.

(1:29:42) twofoldsilence: When will quest phasing be added to SotA? Darkstarr: Probably not episode one, but definitely something we want to get happening, so maybe, definitely something for episode two.

'''(1:30:52) twofoldsilence: I remember at one point random encounters such as hidden treasure/resource caches, caves, etc. we’re going to pop up on Novia. When will this happen?''' Darkstarr: We do have roving encounters and we do plan to improve those over time, including things mentioned here. No ETA on that, but those are going to come.

(2:41:03) twofoldsilence: When will game mechanics that allow players to conveniently find other players to meet up with for creature slaying, resource gathering, boss killing, etc. be added to SotA? Darkstarr: You’re talking about Looking for Group? It’s on the backlog, we just don’t have an ETA on it. Chris: That one is very high priority.

(2:41:45) Stevie Mac: When are you going to implement Recall Runes and Marking? Darkstarr: I don’t think we are going to do Mark and Recall. That basically just turns the entire game into a series of subways. If we did implement something like that, it would have to have much higher limitations than it has had in the past.

(2:42:39) Browncoat Jayson: Could we get a frog animal model, which would greatly enhance the swampy areas of the game? Darkstarr: It’s in the backlog, just haven’t gotten to it.

'''(2:42:51) Vladamir Begemot: Braemar are has lots of low level quests, but it seems there is nothing pointing low level players to go there, and by the time they finish the outskirts, they are too level to bother with. Any plans to alleviate this?''' Lum: The reason why Braemar has low level quests is because it was, like, the third scene we put in the game back in 2013/2014. [...] We need to go through pretty much all the content, story and quest related content in Hidden Vale, and when we do that I will throw it back to you. Darkstarr: Hidden Vale is very, very low on our priority list, but we will eventually get to it.

(2:44:12) Cypher Black: Please create champ areas in Crag Foothills and other 5 skull areas that have not yet been updated. (Did not get answered due to sale distraction)

(2:47:55) Aartemis: I know there is a lot of focus right now on the Truth and Courage areas, but could you make a short pass on the T4/T5 areas in the Perennial Cost and add some interest/POI/T5+ Humanoid Camps? Darkstarr: Yes, we can look at that. Lord British: Jira incoming

(2:48:18) Grape-Ape: Does moon and sun worship (which effects sun/lunar hours) cancel each other out? Chris: Nope.

'''(2:48:37) Grape-Ape: Can their be a loot update in K’rul? The Kobolds there are very strong, however their loot is weak. also, The highest tier bosses in the Rise. the mimic chest, boss lich, as well as the named Dragon could all use a little love.''' Chris: They actually got a little love this release. [...] They will continue to get more love.

(2:49:32) Echondas: Can we get a type of guild influence system / Can a guild’s virtue be collectively calculated for all members, and then members of that guild receive a slight bonus from the corresponding shrine? Lord British: Interesting idea. I’ll put it in for consideration for Episode 2.

(2:50:11) mystarr: Will cabalist boss items (weapons, hoods, robes, boots) be included in the artifact changes? Darkstarr: I guess we could.

(2:51:51) mystarr: Will the changes to artifacts allow us to socket gems? Chris: Probably. We haven’t decided how much of that we’re going to put in there, but I plan on tackling that quickly.

(2:52:29) mystarr: The new agriculture skills are nice, but can we get something to help with collecting water? Darkstarr: Eventually, yes.

(2:52:40) Sway: Can we get gem enchants on Bows please? Darkstarr: Yes, eventually.

(2:52:50) Sway: When can we expect to see enchantments and such for staffs to make them comparable to wands? Chris: The wands I added this release are right hand only. [...] I’m starting with wands being only one hand. Just making the wands one-hand instead of one in each hand / dual wield will make staves more appealing. (2:54:49) Sway: Can we get a trident for polearms please? Darkstarr: Yes, we should totally put in a trident! Lord British: I’ll put in a Jira.

'''(2:55:04) Tamsen: Is it possible to make the compass points (N,S,E,W, etc.) glow brighter, or to overlay the various POI icons? The more POIs you acquire, the more they obscure the compass points.''' Darkstarr: Yes, I’ve noticed this too. We need to fix that. Yes. We will fix that.

(2:55:50) Roxanne: Why can’t we summon non-combat deco pets on the world map? [Lord British entered a Jira for this and the compass question above]

'''(2:56:17) Sean Silverfoot: Having just finished the banner quests, I have noted that few NPCs noticed or cared as I passed by at a later date. When can we expect NPCs to remember prior interaction.''' Lum: We have the capability to. One of my tasks that I hope to get to this release, for example, is to have a lot of the people on the courage quest respond if you go back and talk to them later they actually know. [...] It’s not so much a limitation in *can* the NPC recognize it, but it’s more that someone has to go back in write that recognition in.

'''(2:57:32) SmokerKGB: What happened to all the recipes? We used to be able to travel around to all the NPCs and pick them up, but now they’re pretty scarce. Could you explain?''' Darkstarr: This wasn’t a recent change. This happened many releases ago where we moved recipes for the second tier and higher specialized components and gear off of merchants and into the loot tables. The reason for that was to add more discovery elements and more loot to the world.

'''(2:58:57) SmokerKGB: The 10,000 exp bonus doesn’t seem to be high enough. Why is it taking so much experience to kill critter’s now? Or are we not receiving enough experience for doing so?''' Chris: [Experience] varies a lot by level to balance some things. I think that 10,000 experience points is plenty. It gets people coming back and keeps people at a neutral level in terms of experience. It will keep you in a neutral state up to about level 70. I do think that’s a good level. [...] The experience this release has been a little higher than past releases, which surprised me ‘cause we actually nerfed a few areas. [...] Honestly, I feel it’s pretty good right now.

'''(3:00:58) SmokerKGB: We have granite nodes, so why do we get granite while mining other nodes? I get plenty of granite and don’t find any reason to mine granite nodes.''' Darkstarr: Basically, the way our resource nodes work is every node has a percent chance it will yield a variety of different types of ore. [...] It’ll be higher or lower, depending. If it’s a copper node, obviously it’s highest yield will be copper, and if it’s a granite node it’s highest yield will be granite, so that’s why. If you truly are looking to get granite, you will mine a granite node.

(3:04:11) Lightiger8: Will there ever be a way to set bounties on players heads? Darkstarr: Yeah, we do want the ability to do that, so yes.

'''(3:04:27) Uncle Ben: It appears the bludgeon weapon from mob drop (i.e. Morningstar, Lich Axe and etc) has higher Strength Bonus and Parry value when compared to the craftable ones. Will the Bonuses for the craftable bludgeon weapon ever be as good as the drop only ones?''' Darkstarr: While that might be true for that particular bonus, the overall bonuses you get for a crafted piece of gear are still greater. The idea is dropped gear will have spikes in them I.E. a particular attribute might peak higher than you can get in some crafting, but it will never have a set of stats that are greater than a piece of crafted gear.

'''(3:05:34) Chris: Why is it when someone crafts a sword trivial to crafting; anyone can do it, it doesn’t take many resources. They craft the sword, they get the maker's mark instead of the guy who makes it.''' Darkstarr: ‘Cause that’s the way the code was written [Shots fired!]. Should we change that? Chris: [...] There were some people screaming bloody murder, ‘You’re killing the crafters!’ But really, the only difference is where the initial piece came from. [...] That’s one of the things we need to reevaluate going forward.

(3:10:41) Uncle Ben: Are there any plans to further improve Bludgeon School to make it somewhat matching the all powerful Blade school? Chris: I do agree that Bludgeon is a little behind blades. Blades is the best PvE and generally best PvP school in terms of overall DPS, but bludgeon does have the advantage of more stuns in the school and that’s when we set them up, we tried to set up attributes. [...] Blades’ main thing is DPS. Bludgeon’s main thing is supposed to be stuns. Polearms’ main thing was supposed to be, ‘they can move you around!’ but we discovered that was kind of a lame thing for polearms, so that’s kind of been adjusted. Right now I think that’s kind of crappy since you can get easily get stun resistance, but in probably R50 I will be reworking some of the stun stuff so that will be more effective. So rather than changing the bludgeon school to beeing more powerful now and having to nerf it later, I will probably wait until we get the resistance work done.

(3:12:21) Uncle Ben: Are there any plans to make Potion Flask reusable and the introduction of Potion Kegs to the game? Darkstarr: No, the flask we consider is basically fuel to the crafting process. Lord British: I like the old tradition where you take your plates and throw them in the fireplace when you’re done with them. Chris: [...] I think that’s good, Richard. We need to add to the potion drink emote after that they throw it down and have a little shatter effect. Lord British: I’m Jira’ing that!

'''(3:13:24) Ajumma: Is there an ETA for when we can craft more of our own house’s in game? the range is rather limiting currently.''' Darkstarr: Yes, eventually we will add more. One of the reasons they’re currently limited is we wanted to make the houses you craft very traditional and styling and make the ones that are purchased, the more exotic ones, so that the bulk of the houses you see in the game look more traditional medieval fantasy. [...] We’ll add more, we’ll periodically add more.

(3:14:31) Ajumma: Could we have a “fully” open plan home 1-4 level story high, so we can mod the interior ourselves? Darkstarr: That’s getting into some player made home kind of stuff, which with the number of bugs we have with the deco system as it is, allowing players to build their own homes or modify their own homes, that would exponentially increase the number of bugs we have to address. So unlikely. Maybe eventually.

(3:15:21) Ajumma: is there any plans to allow us to craft our own ships? Darkstarr: Maybe.

'''(3:15:27) Xee: Can we have it so Summoned Magic Pets change based on level. ie. Level 1 they look weak, level 100 They are a lot stronger looking etc.''' Chris: That is a lot of content. We can do something like scaling their size or turning on the effects or something. We’ve talked about before because you can’t tell how tough it is just by looking at it. Darkstarr: If there was some way to not exponentially increase the art associated with it, yes maybe. But creating multiple models would be a serious content and performance issue.

'''(3:16:25) Xee: When can we expect ability to customize our Vendors looks? Could we not implement a paper doll for them and drag cloths to them?''' Darkstarr: It’s on the backlog, we just don’t have an ETA on it.

'''(3:16:35) Xee: POT Scripting tools and Event Triggers. Will we ever see these types of tools so POT owners could bring to life their cities?''' Darkstarr: Yeah, we want to have something like that eventually, just don’t have an ETA on it. It’s definitely something we want to do. We’ve talked about player made dungeons and decorative spawners. Chris: [...] And probably what we’d do for POTs is not make it POT scripting as that would exclude a large chunk of our audience. It would probably be interactable things that you can combine in different ways to make it do different stuff. Darkstarr: I mean this would be a player property thing, not a player owned town thing, so somebody could do this in their house or basement.

(3:17:52) Falcon Rainfeather: Can we get an ice sword and shield? Darkstarr: Well, maybe next telethon.

(3:17:01) Falcon Rainfeather: Can we have a way to change the fonts on the UI and not just the windows? Darkstarr: Fonts is pretty hard because you have to license fonts. Chris: They may be talking about how you can resize fonts in some windows, but not all windows. Not talk about changing the font as in taking a different font [...] rather changing the font size. ‘Cause right now some windows let you change it and others not. It would be great to be able to change it in others because playing on a 4k monitor vs playing on 2k or 1080p monitor can be problematic.

'''(3:19:24) Falcon Rainfeather: Can we get a color change for potions? Like different shades of red for the different tiers of health potions and etc.''' Darkstarr: We actually have different icons for these now, so I don’t know what that means.

(3:20:26) Dartan Obscuro: Are there plans to distribute recipes to vendors in a story driven way e.g. a famed clock maker in Brittany sells the clock recipes? Darkstarr: Yeah, I mean ideally yes. It’s just a bandwidth thing. It would just take time. Yes, that would be awesome, we just don’t have the bandwidth. Chris: I think that’s something else people will see post-launch.

(3:21:42) Dartan Obscuro: Since more potions are dropping can we get alchemy recipes to concentrate lesser potions into greater ones? Darkstarr: This has been suggested before. That would be a great way to cycle those out. Lord British: Want me to write a Jira? [...] Got it.

(3:22:22) Dartan Obscuro: Have you considered balancing more PVE loot by having death cost gold? Chris: Kinda does ‘cause it damages your gear. Darkstarr: Yeah and I don’t think we need to be adding more penalties to death right now. I don’t think players want more death penalties.

(3:23:02) Mischievous Dragon: Would you add page turn animations to the in-game books? Darkstarr: Just a performance thing… and the amount of memory we want to take up on that. Chris: I think the bigger blocker on that is the million things we want to do and we have to prioritize them and I know it’s something Richard would love to see, but we have to figure out when is a good time. Is that more important than looking for group? I don’t think so.

'''(3:23:53) Punkte: What is the progress on redesigning the current movement and/or combat swing movements? When do you believe these will receive some attention and be released?''' Darkstarr: We actually have been polishing those over the last release. We’ve done some more this release. We are working on this.

'''(3:24:24) amarious: What music are you currently listening to? Bands, groups, artists so on so forth.''' Chris: Shooter Jennings 110% of the time. [...] In addition to Shooter Jennings, San Fermin. That’s my pick for the band you’ve never heard of, but you should go listen to. Darkstarr: LCD sound system, Run the Jewels Lord British: I still listen to Space Bards, also.

(3:25:06) amarious: Favorite movie of all time? Chris: Shawshank Redemption, probably. Darkstarr: I would say 2001. Lord British: 2001 would be way up there, but I actually think Aliens the second movie.

(3:26:17) amarious: Favorite RPG of all time? Chris: I’m going to go with two, and neither one is sucking up to Richard. I will skip the Ultimas. I will go for old school, just ‘cause I give Richard crap about this all the time. I would go with Wizardry because I played it first before Ultima. For, uh, MMO I consider MMOs a different category. I will not suck up to Starr and say Ultima Online and will instead say Everquest. Then again, a lot of times these things you find when it’s your favourite computer game, as I look back at my life [...] so much of it has to do with when you found it in life. Darkstarr: I’m going to also have to go with Wizardry to not suck up with Richard, but Ultima 4 would be in there too. And Fallout, the first one. Lord British: It’s interesting. To be perfectly honest, on the a true role-playing game, World of Warcraft I played for a bit of. Most of those things like Wizardry, Might and Magic, Bard’s Tale, which I admired, I never really played any of them to the end. I was never a real hard core player. The first game I was a hard core player of, which wasn’t a roleplaying game was Myst. And most of the games I’ve completed weren’t role-playing games. To be perfectly honest, if I had to pick one, I’d probably put in WoW, but my point is I would pick something that’s not a role-playing game if I’m not allowed to pick Ultimas. If I’m allowed to pick Ultimas, I would pick 4, 7, and UO, which I think are better than other role-playing games.

(3:31:14) Antrax Artek: Can ships be unclickable during combat to avoid “pvp abusing” of them? Chris: It’s the teleport thing. Same things as ladder. Same reason, when we did Blood Bay, I was like, ‘we have to have platform technology. I can’t have players using the ladder to teleport miles away.’ [...] It should be if you’re in combat mode you can’t use a ladder. Richard, Jira that for me? It’s another thing that should take me 5 minutes to do.

(3:32:20) Antrax Artek: Can you make unflagged players not able to loot ransom if a flagged party member kill someone? Darkstarr: Wait, how would you be able to? That sounds like a bug. You shouldn’t be able to loot a corpse of somebody you didn’t kill. Especially if you’re not flagged for PvP. I mean, that’s a bug. That’s totally bugged. Can you Jira that too, Richard?

'''(3:33:34) Antrax Artek: The Spawn of the dragon in casual encounters following the killing of squirrels, rabbits and stag is somewhat senseless. Can, please, the dragon spawn after a certain number of resources gathered in the scene (animals, cotton, wood etc)?''' Darkstarr: It doesn’t spawn from killing the squirrels and rabbits. It’s just a random chance that the dragon will “smell the blood” of fresh carcasses and happens.

'''(3:36:30) Chris: What is louder? Chris coughing, Chris eating pork rinds, or Chris mumbling?''' Jack: Pork rinds Lum: You’re doing it in my ear. It’s definitely pork rinds. Lord British: Pork rinds are the loudest.

(3:37:35) Paladin Michael: Could we receive ingrediends from failed masterwork, please? Darkstarr: [...] Uh, No.

(3:38:17) Paladin Michael: What about a Crafting and Skill tree COMBO possibility? Chris: We don’t have runes for any of the crafting skills right now, so that would be impossible. I do like the idea of having some crafting overlap so there’s some things you could get or you get bonuses in combat based on your crafting skill.

(3:39:00) Grimbone: Will the Taming tree get another pass before release as well as Tamed pets? Darkstarr: We will do our best.

(3:39:10) Grimbone: Can we get some Hay and Hay Bales as deco? Darkstarr: Cool idea. Chris: I did improve undead pets this release. Quietly snuck that in.

(3:39:30) Elrond: You mentioned you intend to increase ore collection in the future..can you explain a bit how will that happen…through skills or by looting ore? Darkstarr: I think that was a misunderstanding. What we said we were going to be doing is increasing the amount of ore in the world and the amount of ore yields out of nodes. Basically the same thing. We do intend to slowly increase the amount of ore coming out of nodes, but at a very, very, very careful pace because we don’t want to crash the economy.

(3:41:09) Lord Ulysses: Will we ever see something similar to champ spawns in UO? Darkstarr: Yes. Sort of.

(3:41:18) Paulie Walnuts: Are there any plans to not allow monsters to perma heal? Chris: [...] We may have to change up at least the rate of which, or how often they heal. It was added in that they do that, but I think it was too much.

(3:42:30) Paulie Walnuts: What is the plan with nameplates? Darkstarr: I don’t know what this means.

(3:42:43) Dhanas: Will we ever see an improvement in the air shield or an alternative to getting bonus attunement with air (like the other schools) without losing focus? Chris: No, the attunement does factor into that. Unlike some shields that stop a little damage on each hit, the shield of air actually turns what would have been health loss into focus loss. A higher attunement improves the conversion rate. So before 50 health might turn into 70 focus and with a higher air attunement might turn into 40 focus. So it does factor into it, just in a different way.

(3:43:59) Dhanas: Can we have an elemental’s resistance skill like Celestial Blessing? Chris: Yes, and I think I mentioned earlier in the show that it will probably be R50 when I do some of the resistance refactoring. Until then I’m kind of focused on performance stuff. When we get there I will probably add a few more spells and skills to go along with that.

(3:44:36) Dhanas: Can we have slots for decoration npc separated from npc-vendors? Darkstarr: Unfortunately all NPCs, pets, e.t.c. all take up the same AI routine.

(3:45:09) sotauox: Can you add some penalty while stealthing with a full heavy plate/mail set? Chris: Yes, I would love to add some and that actually is another one of the things as I have continued to push the differences to make moon magic stealth and subterfuge stealth different. [...] Moon magic would not be affected by armour, it would be affected much less vs. the normal stealth which would be affected heavily by armour. That is on the list, I’m not sure when I will get to that.

(3:45:53) sotauox: Can we have the possibility to hide/show the helm from video setting? Darkstarr: This is an often requested feature. We have talked about it. We wouldn’t allow it in PvP, but in PvE it would be possible. It’s in the backlog, we just haven’t gotten to it. If it weren’t for the PvP issue we would have implemented it already.

(3:46:39) sotauox: Can we have weakest monsters with lowest exp rewards but many more of them? Chris: This is one of those things where it’s really satisfying to wade through a herd of weak creatures, but that is one of those things that hopefully with the spawning changes and AI optimization that we can do more of is have lots of little creatures vs. lots of little creatures. My real hope is that we get lots of bigger creatures too. [...]

(3:47:31) Monkeysmack: When will we have gold piles? Darkstarr: Eventually

(3:47:51) Monkeysmack: Why is there no portrait of Greyfox available at the paintings vendor in Ardoris? Chris: Because I don’t know that Greyfox has sent me an image. Greyfox if you have had an image done; a professional image, feel free to contact me, email me, send me a link. [...] I kind of made it the rule that if someone pays Denis Loubet for one of his higher quality paintings where you also get rights to it, that I’ll also put it in game for them.

(3:47:51) Monkeysmack: When is ranged going to be nerfed? Chris: Ranged is fun right now. I played ranged off and on today. I still don’t think it is as powerful as some of the others. It does have some significant advantages in that you don’t have to stand and get smacked by the creature while you do it. [...] I don’t think it’s higher on the DPS list as the other guys, which means you can actually kill faster with a sword or polearms than a with a bow. Maybe not against a single target, obviously rapid shot is pretty powerful against a single target. Right now I’m not planning on nerfing ranged since it’s also the other one that has a cost per shot you take, which kind of puts it as a middle ground between magic and normal weapons. [...] Right now no plan to nerf ranged, but I will keep an eye on it.

(3:52:36) Rat: Can vendors with recipes get a filter added that will block recipes that we already know. Darkstarr: Yes, it’s in the backlog. Lord British: I put that Jira in, myself a while ago.

(3:52:47) Solazur: Is Atos ever going to get the procs on the Indignant Halberd? Chris: Yeah, I keep forgetting to do that. I should probably do that sometime soon.

(3:53:19) Solazur: When are we going to get the effing lawnmower POT tool? Chris: The person who was supposed to be doing that, who did all of the tech behind the POT stuff, he’s been swamped in various things including build stuff and support for helping Black Sun getting their stuff and build up so they could launch today and getting them on Steam. And just a smattering of other things including a ton of other bug fixes and that stuff. It’s been on him and we probably need to move it off or stop making him do hundreds of other little things that are distracting him, because I don’t think it’s that big of a task.

(3:54:18) Solazur: Since Merrik Dragon lost his, can we get an English Translation of the Virtue this? Lord British: [...] If you can’t read it, too bad! Learn it.

(3:55:01) a Lacedaemonian: Could Eagle Eye be made to increase lowest damage dealt? Chris: That’s another one; Giving Eagle Eye some love. [...] That is not one that has been high on my priority list because people are screaming that archery should be nerfed. But yes, I need to fix up Eagle Eye, but I have not decided what I will replace that with.

'''(3:55:50) a Lacedaemonian: Can we have a settings toggle that would control the auto power? I would like to set my auto attack interval to be equivalent to a fully charged shot, for example. You could allow us to set it to fast, medium, and slow for variable power. ''' Chris: [...] That would remove some of that skill mechanic to [free attack]. I do think it’s not that crazy to think we could do a fast, medium, slow type attack where it is. We probably would just not give the exact same bonus, but it would be pretty close. Good idea.

(4:00:10) Rada Torment: Any plans to improve and expand the harvesting skills and mechanics to make them more fun and rewarding, like adding big mining nodes for group mining, more specialized skills, more love to survey skills, e.t.c. Darkstarr: Yes, eventually. All those things. Definitely.

(4:01:07) Bella Bones: Can we have dagger patterns? Darkstarr: There is actually one dagger pattern in the store, and there’s actually a dagger pattern in the loot tables too, we just need more.

(4:01:39) Echondas: Can the dance emote please be extended to summoned creatures. Darkstarr: Right now the dance emote only works with the non-combat pets. We’ll consider it. It’s a lot of work.

(4:02:16) Echondas: Can we get the low ammo indicator to be a more realistic level, say less than 500 arrows? Darkstarr: [...] We should Jira that. I will Jira that.