Friday with Means - April 3rd, 2009

[Doctorhyde]

Hia Means, maybe this is just a rant with my disappointment but:

How about some quest/missions/area that require different team members other then the normal doc, enf, crat? As a keeper I add great buffs and damage to the team yet only time I’m desirable is in panda. As for the new content I haven’t been able to get a team scents b4 DB, let alone Xan.

Funny to hear a keeper say that since keepers are what make fixers irrelevant in the new Xan instance Team fear removal trumps individual fear removal every day. Not to mention I won't be at all surprised to see the fixer's fear resistance go away when they "fix" the new 12man instance, making our ability to remove others' fears irrelevant.

It took me 2 weeks to get Mitaar done on my fixer. Why? No one needs a fixer in there at all. I'm sure I could have connived friends into taking me through it but I have this thing against "pity raids". And there is absolutely -zero- incentive to team a fixer in the new Xan instance. No incentive for a fixer in Vortexx either, heck, we made things worse in there if we had runspeed aura up.

Sure, we occasionally get teams if we've pimped out for damage, but really that's it. No one needs NCU to raid and even a Keeper outheals us for the team quite easily. And in most of the new instances we can't evade tank like we used to because of the simply massive AR on these bosses combined with insane nukes.

I'm not saying that Keepers don't have a hard time ... just saying it is all relative ... you're actually needed more in there than some. Eng and Fixer probably got it the worst for "being needed" in -all- current content. The last raid that seemed to want a fixer was DB1, for a few seconds at the very beginning, and that was iffy if you had an advy.

I've got a doc, but I don't feel like being -forced- to play it every time I want to do a raid. Especially when that is -all- that people want docs for. And only for a few specific ones. I know plenty of people who don't team docs for Mitaar either. It's all or nothing it seems.

AO professions and raids are simply way too polarized. Personally I think the problem is both tanks and docs ended up way OP for a very long time (since SL) and the AO devs feel the need to make content that challenges those capabilities and that pretty much locks the raid roles. When 1 profession can literally get 4 times the HP of almost any other and another profession can heal -more- than 4 times as much as the next highest healing profession there just isn't a good way to balance things.

[Sonikeep]

Keeper can tank all bosses (Xan, right/left hand, sinuh, vortexx) one by one easier than enf coz they miss much especially if u have crat or advy in team. But only enf can tank all 3 bosses in 12 ppl inst at same time.
and yes its possible to do it with keeper + crat + doc team, just way too long.

[gimpmasta]

Hmm....didn't see anything about the part where advy hhab is actually NOT just a single calm with 10 min recharge.....

[egadsrk2]

If you guys have the capacity to make odd bits of gear go 100% OE on zoning, not due to requirements but for some other reason, could you make QL300 Yuttos mems go 100% oe on all toons from TL4 and below?

Thanks.

[Kaylinne]

No mentioning where did changes to Firewalled Sync Compressor come from.
Can we get some answer please?

[usersoul]

No it doesn't.

Try Tier. Or fred sleeves. Or testing before trying to contradict.

[ArienSky]

I am soo glad to hear you are working on it
/voice stepping up folders just suddenly did not work, I had to restructure two voice packs, one taking 4 min, the other taking 2 hours..

With last FWM in mind I had suspected it had something to do with MacroSuns gui adventures bugging up other things.

Kind Regards
Ariensky

[IHaveHugeNick]

Swapping sides while wearing an item with a sided requirement will make the item go 0% , and you lose all stats from it , including what does not normally go OE. Whether it's the normal effect of 0% items effectiveness or something else , it is very doable to nullify all bonuses from an equipped item.

No it doesn't. At least not on all items slots.

Or Means & Co could simply not know the first thing about AO mechanics and are offering a fix that is not really a fix.

Oh i wouldn't dare to suggest that, not like they accidentally released huge completely unprepared patch on Live instead of Test lately , or something like that.

Mistakes happen, there is nothing wrong in pointing out possible mistakes and trying to prevent one, so stop cooking yourself over people asking simple question or your brain might boil.

[Tazalanche]

Synch Issues:
We have for some time been working on a more permanent solution to the "synch/lag" issues that seems to be randomly affecting players for some time. Within the next month we should have test dimensions up and running at another provider that will hopefully perform better during peak hours. Setting the game up itself isn't difficult, as we publish new servers etc all the time, it is the arcane art of monitoring/error reporting/billing/support tools for AO that is difficult. Either way I am very much looking forward to examining results from this new server/network environment. If all looks well we will move to the new environment as soon as humanly possible. Of course I will let you know when.

Please provide some updates on this. Lag is the number one reason why anyone I know that has left game did it.

[glitterdust]

How is this 2 seperate rings?
You add the Inf & Pen ring together to get an Inf/Pen ring which protects you in both areas, then you add the HHaB & it takes away the Inf/Pen protection...

This surely can't be intended can it?

Weird my De'Valos protection ring (pen+inf, result+hhab) protects me fine in pen, inf and pande. Or am I misunderstanding?

[Ruffixx]

Did FC ever announce it was for sure going to offer a new full IPR this week? Not going to lie, I didn't check almost anything AO related for the past week since I was so busy with work and college, but if it wasn't announced then that's somewhat disappointing. I would've gladly taken the hassle to unequip my Fixer to use the full IPR I've been saving on him (which he desperately needs). Would've been nice to use that one and have another one to sit on.

Oh well, my loss I guess.

[torakx]

sorry to he the latest patch didnt work out too well.
i wont be ingame much at all so im not miffed in the slightest pvp is all i want out of ao.
waiting eagerly for the profession balancing before i even think of the new pf's.

i hope this will be done in the right way and not just copy paste items and nanos.

a note to means and co.
i just ask that you rememeber the profession descriptions for all the profs and try your best to make them more like that.

my agent no longer feels like an assasin unless i go gimp him out with a piercing evil and a full auto weapon.i think in agents case lowering perk execution and recharge times along with making there other perks like shadowbullet worth while to have.

best of luck on the next patch.

[Kaylinne]

a note to means and co.
i just ask that you rememeber the profession descriptions for all the profs and try your best to make them more like that.

I second that.
I wont be playing my TL7 much before instanced Pande at least, probably will wait for "rebalancing" too.

[Uaintseenme]

I was quite suprised to see any patch uploaded to live when we only recieved a fresh patch (with "fixed" 12 man instance) on thursday afternoon, so not like we on test actualy had time to check the patch anyway.

[Tazalanche]

While I am appreciative of the change from a 1-50 shopping channel to a 11-50 shopping channel to make an attempt at reducing the cred spammers, was this all that was done?

If so, it was severely lacking in its efforts because OOC is still suffering from cred spammers.

The worst part is that now they are doing it in the newbie OOC too, causing you to lose potential customers right after they have created their first character & before they know how to ignore, /petition or anything else in game.

[Mastablasta]

Please provide some updates on this. Lag is the number one reason why anyone I know that has left game did it.

And by lag they mean client performance?

[Reids]

Try Tier. Or fred sleeves. Or testing before trying to contradict.

How about the fact i have an arbalest on my OMNI trader?



That certainly isn't OE.

[Solsssss]

To make an omeltte you must break some eggs

[Hacre]

What about the removal of pen/inf protection when upgrading the hhab to the final version? Is this intended or will it be changed?

ps: besides the mostly obvious uninteded 'features' and unfinished encounter balance I really like the 12ish Instance! great Job imo!

Fixed on test.

Weird my De'Valos protection ring (pen+inf, result+hhab) protects me fine in pen, inf and pande. Or am I misunderstanding?

It's the prof specific HHAB that loses the protection, currently.

Did FC ever announce it was for sure going to offer a new full IPR this week? Not going to lie, I didn't check almost anything AO related for the past week since I was so busy with work and college, but if it wasn't announced then that's somewhat disappointing. I would've gladly taken the hassle to unequip my Fixer to use the full IPR I've been saving on him (which he desperately needs). Would've been nice to use that one and have another one to sit on.

Oh well, my loss I guess.

You haven't lost anything. You still have a full IPR. If you needed it, you obviously should have used it. If you didn't use it, obviously you didn't need it -that- badly.

Also Means said there will be another one in the not too distant future.

[lugoman]

The Instance:
The instance is meant to be on a four hour lock (when completed successfully). When the correct amount of loot (what is there is not remotely correct) is actually on the boss (and the boss is working correctly) we will see how it is going and work from there. This is not supposed to be farmed back to back for hours on end....and at 4 hours is available more than any other raid boss in the game.
Very little in here is working as it should...I'm looking forward to seeing the functional instance in the next update.

You really need to consider adding something to the loot table that will entice docs to do the instance once they have everything. Maybe some kind of bounty item they can turn in for creds or a doc only stim that will temporary increase their DoT damage or a temp increase in mc to help land the DoTs in the first place.

It is already hard to get docs now. Once the instance is set to it's final form there wont be many docs left needing it. It will be even harder to find one that isnt locked when you are free to do it.

Also add to the mix that this instance can be done by 4 (probably can do with 2 if you have a lot of patience) people of the right prof, many 'unneeded' profs will have an even harder time getting their loot.