Friday with Means - March 5th, 2010 - It isn't a sprint.
Important message****************************
Let me start by saying "LOG IN YOUR ALTS!!!" Remember that on Monday-ish there will be a wipe of characters below level5 that have not been logged in for more than a year. Level 173 and below characters that have not been in game for 18 months will lose their names. Anything 174 and above that has not logged in for four years will also lose their name. I think we have been pretty good with holding on to ancient artifacts...but it is time for a little spring cleaning.
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It isn't a sprint. It is a marathon...of sprints.
Did we ever tell you that the person hired before Macrosun to manage the resource database and world-building in house tool "Tide" broke down crying on his third day, ran out of the office and never came back? There was a betting pool going as to how long Macrosun would stay. I think he should have gotten that money.
WARNING - PERSONAL ************************************
Today started out with me waiting for the "fire inspector" for my house for 5 hours. The guy who told me at 8:15am he would be there in "30 minutes" showed up at noon...and still expected me to laugh at his "fire safety" stories. Yes this kind of thing happens to me too. I have just paid off some of the bad karma from the terrible things I did when I was younger...1 million more days like that and I should be even. I want to give you all his mobile number so you can all send him "Noob!" smses this weekend. Oops that is exactly the kind of thing that got me nasty Karma debt in the first place. I thank my good fortune every day that I finished University before YouTube existed. Those who don't read this section won't know the photo I've attached to this post is a shot of my tractor. My bad.
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The AO team has been working stupid hours this week trying to smooth out any issues with the transfer while at the same time working on fine-tuning the daily missions with a side-dish of balance discussions smothered in new-engine art specification sauce. Mmmmm...Sauce.
We had hoped to have a version on TestLive today with more tweaks to the Daily Missions and adjustments to Borrow Reflect. Unfortunately this would have involved an external department working past 6pm...due to us getting them the latest build "late". Up till now they have been great with getting our builds made at crazy hours to the Test environment. I imagine a "mature" person would choose to be grateful for all the times when they had helped us before. As a 36 year-old man that makes video games for a living I am having a hard time with this one...but I am doing my best. THIS...IS..AO!!!! oops...
At any rate I'll try to "describe" the BR changes we have made based on feedback from here:
This is a great idea in that it makes the buff dependent on the target's level of Reflect. Couldn't agree more. Though these are not the numbers we used...but they are close:Originally Posted by Mikenche
Target Reflect% Buff Debuffs
1-5% 3% -2%
6-10% 6% -4%
11-15% 9% -6%
16-20% 12% -8%
21-25% 15% -10%
26-30% 18% -12%
31-40% 20% -13%
41-50% 22% -14%
51-60% 24% -16%
61-WTF 30% -20%
The beneficial buff has a duration of 10 minutes. The debuff on the target has a duration of 10 seconds. This nano has a cooldown of 65 seconds (after casting it..you can't cast it again for 65 seconds...effectively running on the target 10 seconds and a possibility to recast on the target 55 seconds later.). This will work on player and npc targets. The buff component of this debuff will overwrite any reflects the Trader has running at the time. It will also not be possible to cast this on yourself for the longer reflect benefit. Not that a mistake like that would ever be in game for any length of time...sigh.
These numbers represent a basic "shift" in the way drains have worked in the past. There was always the concept that you would have to "Take more to get less". This has resulted long term in making sure that in gaining a reasonable amount of benefit from a target resulted in completely invalidating your opponent in every way possible. Someone in last week's thread mentioned "the gap" that exists between the Trader and their victim...it was very well put and I am sorry I have not dug to find it again. Allowing Traders to run with the maximum reflect they can receive (ostensibly RRFE) and then debuff their opponent's reflect in addition would not be managing this gap..but maximizing it. Traders will have to consider carefully when to use this nano...at times it will be easily worth using...at others..not so much...but choice and strategy are not a bad thing.
At any rate, Traders being able to gain bonus of significance without long-term inconvenience to others is a step in the right direction. With a rescaling of the Trader's offensive capabilities I can easily see this as the way we might move forward. I imagine this will be on Test early next week (Monday). I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts on the subject as last weeks heated (but constructive) debate was very helpful in getting some "out of the box" approaches into implementation. We did not have time with the 1000's of characters transferring this week to give GTH the same attention but it will get another make-over early next week (we have been reading the feeback and agree that the current TestLive implementation doesn't cut it.).
BACK TO FORMULA!!!!
Either we'll get this done or I'll have an episode of some kind. Last year at this time it was vertigo...I wonder what will happen this time!
Have a great weekend!
ps. A German translation of this by Waldgeist should not be coming until Monday in an attempt to not ruin his Friday after an entire week of him working 24/7 trying to help with any transfer concerns. Anyone who was helped when anything went wrong has Waldgeist to thank for his tireless efforts on behalf of the DNW community. Again..my apologies for this being so late...I never seem to get a minute to do this until my children fall asleep recently.
