Announcements - 2010/03 - Lay of the Land
March 2010 - Patch Page
Original Link - http://ac.turbinegames.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=548-lay-of-the-land&catid=81-2010&Itemid=68
Lay of the Land
Admiring his clothing in the mirror, he dismissed the tailor with a simple flick of his wrist before beckoning his steward to come closer.
“How are the preparations moving along?”
“They are going well; in fact, other races of Dereth have joined in preparing the wedding. Also, Isparians from all over Dereth are traveling to Yanshi just to lend a hand. It is bound to be a wonderful ceremony.” replied the steward.
“And my bride to be, how is she doing?”
“She is also doing well, and is most pleased with the lotus flowers you had added to the fountains. They are her favorites and remind her of her childhood” remarked the steward.
“Excellent.” He stood staring off out of the window for a moment before speaking again. ”Have there been any more rumors of a plot to ruin the peace and joy this occasion could bring?”
The steward paused for a moment, considering his words carefully. “There have been a few whispers, but it is nothing I would worry about. We have yet to confirm any of them or to even hear of who would be behind such a thing.”
Running his hand along the expensive threads of the wedding attire, his mind was clearly troubled. This wedding was supposed to mark a turning point in this troubled world. A world forever wracked with war and conflict. He wanted nothing more than to bring peace and understanding, but feared that it could not be possible in such a land.
No sooner had rumors of the wedding began to circulate, than rumors of a plot to destroy the couple had also surfaced. In Dereth it seemed no positive could ever be mentioned without the immediate rise of a negative to counter it.
These rumors would not stop the wedding, however. He was determined to go forth and bring happiness to the people of these lands, all people and all races who wished to be a part of such peace. If the rumors grew then he was ready to face the issue head on. He accepted that sometimes peace could only be achieved through violence itself.
“In the coming months we will need to keep a close eye on those around us, good sir. I will need you to be my eyes and ears among the people, and to inform me of any further details on this matter immediately. Do you understand?”
The steward bowed slightly “Of course my lordship. I shall always be your humble servant, and I shall not let you down.”
Release Notes
Original Link - http://ac.turbinegames.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=546-march-release-notes&catid=81-2010&Itemid=68
March Release Notes
Greetings and welcome to the Release Notes for the March Event, Lay of the Land. As we get closer to Spring, preparations are beginning for a monumental and joyous event in the history of Dereth. With the feel of Spring in the air, let’s see what else is happening in Dereth this month!
Updated Content and Functionality
- The level 8 spells added last month should now show up in the level 8 tab.
- They now use Mana Scarabs and have a spell power of 350.
- Several typos have been fixed.
- The snow has finally melted as we approach Spring.
- The Colosseum blunt arrowheads now work the same way as the Olthoi vendor arrowheads.
- The Colosseum chest has had its loot upgraded.
- The Monthly Kill Task has been updated.
- Make sure you speak to Cara the Apprentice in Xarabydun.
- Peerless Atlan Two Handed Spear of Black Fire now casts two handed mastery instead of spear mastery.
- Ultimate Singularity Greatsword has had its damage increased.
- Four new NPC’s have appeared near Yanshi in preparation for a great occasion. Make sure you stop by and help them with their tasks.
- The Gold Gear Primus Atamarr is now active and has some tasks for the people of Dereth to complete.
Developer Comments
March 9th to April 12th, 2010
Aetheria
Q: Will Aetheria have cooldown timers? That is, if I get a surge on the 225, would it be possible for me to get another Surge on the same 225 Aetheria before the current Surge expires? If there is anything like a cooldown timer, would it be possible to switch out Aetheria to get around cooldown timers if they're tied to the Sigil itself and not the toon?
A: There is no cooldown timer, but the spells don't stack. So if you surge the 8 second damage boost and you happen to get another surge of the same type (even if it comes from an Aetheria of a different color) then the only effect is that the time is slightly extended.
Different types of surges will stack however. You could have all three colors surge on the same hit (very unlikely, I've never seen it in testing) and have the 8 second damage boost, the 20 second heal over time, and the 20 second damage over time on the opponent all active at the same time.
(Incidentally the surge happens *after* the hit that causes it.)
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
Another example of Diminishing Returns in Asheron's Call is Skill Credits/Level. The return of skill credits per level goes down as you level up. The return of bonus per level of aetheria goes down as the total aetheria level of that type goes up.
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Django Turbine Staff |
Character Creation Issue
Q: I can not create a Viamontian character. I reported the problem in November 2009 and I'm still waiting for an answer or a fix. If I create any of the other races it works fine. If I create a Viamontian I get "the server cannot create your character at this time", no matter how many times I try it.
A: Your account probably doesn't have the ToD tag set correctly. Sometimes for new/returning accounts the systems set it incorrectly. Tech support can fix this.
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
Features Pushed Off
While we have talked about some of the features that will appear in our big April patch, I have the unpleasant task of talking about the features that have been pushed off and will not make it into the April patch. Sadly some features had to be pushed off due to time constraints. These features include:
- Anti-aliasing
- The ability to see base armor levels when you examine another player
- Animation fixes and tweaks
Although there are other features we have talked about when discussing future plans, these three are features we specifically mentioned for April. We will be working in the coming patches to reschedule these features and will keep you posted when we know more.
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
Q: I read somewhere that you were considering pyreals stacks being expanded beyond 25K per slot, perhaps 100K or 250K stackables. Is this something that is still being considered?
A: It *would* be in if some previous dev hadn't hacked the upper bits of the stack size variable and inserted versioning information at some ancient date.
As it is stacks will have a maximum size of 32k until some future date where I can basically rewrite the entire stacking code base to undo the damage.
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
Q: What is anti-aliasing?
A: Having run the game with Anti-Aliasing enabled, you can see the difference. It is not a huge difference by any stretch, but you can notice things look a bit smoother.
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Frelorn AC Community Relations |
Q: Being able to see other peoples AL would take out the fun on DT. Thats the point is to make the meeles and archers search for that weak spot on your armor. Not just be able to ID me and know where to aim for. If you wanna see my armor go to MP and open Trade. I do not like this idea. At least have a feature that we can turn on that disables people from seeing the base AL of our suits just like our fishing stats or age.
A: Deception will block the examination panel from showing AL.
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
Loot
Q: Maybe it isnt bad for everyone but if someone got time maybe actually log in a char and try killing a few spawns on hg or something and look at it see if their some merit to this.
A: All creatures that drop top tier loot use the same table and it hasn't changed.
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
Menhir Rings
Q: So, devs, have you considered posting a few clues?
A: Currently the plan is to try to put a clue in game during the April update if all 20 have not been located by then.
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Severlin Producer |
Network Connection
Q: I'd rather they fix the connection issues people have with certain routers and ISPs.
A: It's on my list.
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
The hold up is that if it's a problem with the UDP observer thread I will have to do significant work on our network stack. Doing so basically threatens the stability of our server infrastructure since 10 years of network code becomes essentially untested. To do that I need NetOps on board, and to be ready with back end changes and support. I am hoping it is a smaller issue; some kind of small scale bug with the networking code.
It's kind of a big deal and I have to be careful with it.
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
Q: Apparently I prioritize differently than many players here and Turbine. I think making technical fixes ultimately have a greater impact on the game than new quests and items, which are often forgotten after a few months.
A: While I agree, sometimes I have to schedule (and thus put off) fixes that require significant work from other departments, especially if IT has to acquire specific hardware to test those changes.
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
New Races
Q: So it's Shadows huh
A: Some replies:
~ Yes, as reported the new race is Shadows, or rather Umbraens and Penumbraens which are a special type of shadow.
~ We are preparing an official introduction / lore piece. It will be ready soon.
~ For those of you counting the number of races we are releasing, Umbraens and Penumbraens count as one race for those purposes. Basically April counts as race 1 even though we technically have 2 racial options.
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
Q: Darn, I want shadows with legs......
A: Those are the Penumbraens. The Umbraens don't have legs. (That's the difference. We figured the player base would be split about legs or no legs.)
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
Q: One thing I'd like to do is take an existing character and change them into a new race. Is that a possibility?
A: We have no plans at this time to implement race changes.
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
Q: Why dont you guys send out a mass email about it again? I cant even tell you how many people resubbed because of your last mass email.
A: It's already in the works.
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Frelorn AC Community Relations |
Q: If racial req is getting removed, than will there be a free tink to remove race req from already existing items? Along the same lines as rank req items?
A: We have no plans to change existing items.
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
Q: Extra toon slot?
A: Probably with race introduction #3 or 4.
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Severlin Producer |
Q: 1. What is the racial skill(s) of shadows
2. What is the racial augmentation(s) of shadows
3. What changes are being made to current races (that is, what precisely is considered the "human aug" and what precisely remains preorder/TOD)
A: Sorry I didn't get a chance to answer this before.
1. Deception
2. +1% Chance to Crit
3. None
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
Actually we had [Deception] trained on the test forum but you are correct, it should be spec'd and we are changing it.
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
Q: Every new race gets Quick Learner. It's already been announced.
A: The new races do not receive quick learner. You can however get the pathwarden trinket.
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Django Turbine Staff |
Q: Wow, sorry about that :S Not sure where I heard that then. I guess I saw another poster say it and assumed they'd heard from a Dev. Kind of like my post :P Anyways, my mistake! What's a Pathwarden Trinket?
A: There's a lot of information flying around . It'd be very strange to give away a 4% xp boost to every new character seeing at that rate we might as well just increase the xp in the game by 4%.
When you make a new character you receive a Pathwarden token that you can exchange for a key in any of the starter towns. That key is then used on a nearby chest to get a variety of Pathwarden items (mostly armor). However when we added trinkets we also added a trinket to this chest that has the middle level of the experience boost spell that you can tinker onto other trinkets. In this way every new character already has an experience bonus but other existing players can get it without an xp cost, unlike the augment.
Trinkets and their experience bonus are balanced to give players the option of offensive effectiveness vs. defensive effectiveness vs. experience gain vs. secondary attribute (health, etc.) stat increases.
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Django Turbine Staff |
Q: it would only be for the shadows... not all characters. shadows are ALL going to be brand new...
A: All new characters start at the same level. We have no plans of making any heritage group or race that levels up faster than all others.
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Django Turbine Staff |
Q: Turbine - any chance we can get more info on races?
A: I sympathize with the desire to pre-plan because slots are tight. I talked to marketing, but they really want to do some stuff around the suspense of the new races, and to be honest there is still a chance that we want to shuffle the order or even swap out a race based on our schedule just in case we find something we planned is not technically feasible.
Since it seems to me that a lot of this desire is fueled by stress over how to deal with limited slots I will try to get an additional slot approved for a total of two; one for the next race introduction and one for the big October update. It doesn't exactly solve the issue, but hopefully it will make it less stressful for everyone involved without hamstringing marketing.
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
Q: "Some Lugians show Tusker as their race when examined. Additionally Empyreans may show up as Phyntos Wasps and Tumeroks could show as Mites when ID'd."
I wonder what the next three playable races will be!
A: Just a coincidence that the AC2 Races were impacted by this little bug. Or is it....
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Frelorn AC Community Relations |
Preorder Health Gem
At some point an item or items will come out that make both gems obsolete. At that point the people with the pre-order gem can keep it as a trophy or turn it in for a special reward that is cool but doesn't provide a statistical advantage. This won't happen for April; we are already working weekends to finish up all the stuff going in. It will happen... someday.
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
Q: Can I ask what will happen, then, for the people who are spending 2 billion on the 8% aug? I'm on the verge for buying it on one of my chars -- should I be holding off?
A: I suspect it will involve a turn in (or an inquiry for the possession of) the older gems.
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
Rares Update
Q: Any change that lets players actually aquire the high tier rares?
A: Maybe.
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
There Sev goes again, telling people crazy random things that may or may not be true for the upcoming spring update. I mean, unless we had already completed such work and it was in testing, it would make no sense to even comment here.
Next he will be say that more information about this will be forthcoming, and that he added flying cows to the game. This of course is all just crazy talk.
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Frelorn AC Community Relations |
Q: 1) Can I safely assume that how one acquires rares has gone completely unchanged?
2) Would already existing higher tier rares (weapons/armor/jewelry) be automatically changed to these new stats?
3) Can you give us an example or explanation as to what the increased chance for a higher tier rare drop will now be?
4) Will these be obtainable in any way via MFKs? (Doubt it, but I figured I'd ask)
5) Is there any concern that while you just added an entire system to help people look unique, they will all look the same once there's enough Rare armor to go around?
A: 1) Yes
2) Yes
3) Using Frostfell as an example: There is a solid chance of there being 1 top tier rare per month on the server as opposed to before where there was likely to be 1 top tier rare per never. The tier with armor in it drops twice as often.
4) No
5) See #3, that would take a long long time for everyone to look the same via rares.
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NoWorries AC Quality Assurance |
Q: Is the Rare Exchanger still only limited to rare tiers 1-3?
A: No changes were made to the Rare Exchanger and we don't plan on including any higher tier rares with the exchangers.
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NoWorries AC Quality Assurance |
Q: This REALLY sucks. I own the tier 7 spear (Star of Gharu'n) on Solclaim and you're telling me that as of tomorrow, it will effectively be the same as a common tinkered weapon? I was all for the changes to the chance of rares dropping, but this is horrible. They didn't need to be changed stat-wise.
I'm really happy that I played around with Javit al-Thirim when I first got the spear, because now, apparently, his tie to lore is going to be completely severed or nerfed.
A: All of the rares are better than any common tinkered weapon. They have a slightly higher damage total, rending, an additonal effect as well as Blood Drinker 8 and Epic Bloodthirst 8.
Rares are also now more epic. When you obtain a rare it's at level 0. You can level up your rare many times and other players can see how much work you've done to level up your rare. As your rare goes up in level it'll increase your Damage Reduction Rating (armor) or Damage Rating (weapon). This means that a rare that's been leveled up not only does more damage than the best tinkered weapon but it also has a percentage damage increase on top of that.
It'll also no longer always drop on death, it will simply have a value of 50k pyreal.
These changes were made to support their rarity coming down quite a bit. All of the rares items were broken when it came to actual effect, some more than others (armor wasn't at all useful, weapons had up to 90% critical or 10x critical multipliers as well as Armor Rending and/or Resistance Rending on the same item, jewelry wasn't very useful). In this case we'd simply need to bring the rest of the game up to the power of the rares if we didn't bring the rare's power down, otherwise the additional rares would create a great difference between players and what they could do. As +250 skill rares have caused us to do, weapon rares would have forced important fights to be statted higher, thus causing them to be more difficult for groups who didn't happen to have rares.
There have been no appearance changes to the rares.
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Django Turbine Staff |
Q: Are they still all no-wield requirement, no lore to activate spells?
A: The requirements on the items did not change.
The spear in specific has the increased critical multiplier (its critical multiplier was increased more than its critical rate on the original). The additional changes (other than the rending effects) are set values like quest items and not the same as imbues.
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Django Turbine Staff |
Spring Special Events
...when someone forgets that during this time of year green cows rain from the skys and seem to take their anger out on buff bots. I would expect to see such cows in an hour, and then stop seeing them in 25 hours.
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NoWorries AC Quality Assurance |
The Mad Cows have left the towns of Dereth.
THOP and Hulking Bunnies will be around until the 15th.
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NoWorries AC Quality Assurance |
Sticky Melee and Death Throes
Q: Sometimes things need an extra few whacks to make sure they're good n dead, and stay that way!
A: Rule #2. Double Tap.
Sev~
(As stated, the key is to swap targets when you see the death message. I can look into sticky melee, but with the April update coming and other things we are doing it won't bubble up on my list for a few months.)
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Severlin Producer |
Tailoring
Q: Ok say my amuli legs (grey trim)have 10 tinks on them can I tailor them onto amuli leggs (bright red trim) and then do the muilt slot to single slot on top of that?
A: You will be able to obtain a Slot Reduction Tool and use the tool on your tinkered Amuli Leggings to reduce them to single slot yes. They will retain their tinks.
You may then obtain an Armor Appearance Extractor. When you use it on your bright red trim Amuli leggings it destroys them and turns into an Armor Appearance Applier that remembers what they looked like. You then use that Armor Appearance Applier on your grey legs to turn their appearance stored on the Armor Appearance Applier; in this case giving them the bright red trim you want.
We also have something called the Armor Layering Tool. If you apply that to armor then that piece will visually lay over other pieces of armor that might overlap. In other words you are putting that armor on top. This allows you to make sure your Amuli Coat's sleeves will always show over other arm pieces you happen to be wearing.
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
Q: so it doesn't have to be a similar peice? I could take epic willpower amuli leggings and switch the stats and spells for something like Pauldrons?
A: No. Tailoring will only work on pieces that cover (or covered) the same slots.
To be clear. Tailoring does *not* move around stats. It steals the appearance of one item that looks good and puts that appearance on another item worn in the same slots. Think of it this way; changing Epic Willpower Amuli Leggings to look like Pauldrons makes no sense since it wouldn't change where the item is worn.
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
Q: Just out of curiosity. When you tailor say Amuli Leggings. They have 3 possible slots. How would you determine which slot they go to if you reduce the number of slots it covers. Would it always be a girth? Or do we get to choose?
A: In short, there's a list of objects by their base file name. Coat Amuli, Coat Chiran, Coat Alduressa, as examples of some coats. Only objects in the coat list can be added to coats no matter how many slots they fill. A Breastplate or Hauberk object can't be added to a Coat or the other way around even if they are all reduced to being a Breastplate in coverage.
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Django Turbine Staff |
Coat = Breastplate
Hauberk = Breastplate
Cuirass = Breastplate
Shirt = Breastplate
Sleeves = Pauldrons
Pants = Abdomen
Leggings = Tassets
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Django Turbine Staff |
Q: So does this have any practical value? I never once cared about looks. If I have adept sleeves with an epic on them, can I turn those into pauldrons? Or is this just carebear stuff?
A: The issue is we are talking about three different functions.
Tailoring is the ability to take the appearance off one item and add it to another. This is purely cosmetic, or totally "care bear" if you will.
Multi-slot to single slot is the ability to change a multi-slot piece to only take up a single slot. This is wildly power gaming since it has no visual impact; it just makes cool multi-slot pieces into competitive single slot suit pieces. This is purely power gaming.
Changing something to always appear on top of other pieces is purely visual, and it is there to control how reduced multi-slot pieces overlap with other equipment. The is purely cosmetic and only even matters if you have changed a multi slot to a single slot. This is "care bear" as you say.
This patch has a lot of "care bear" stuff. Besides tailoring and the new race, new hairstyles and the barber and show helm are all aimed squarely at people who care about looks.
Now, if you are looking for power gaming stuff let me lead you over to our power gamer aisle. You have the ability to reduce multi-slot pieces to single slot pieces. You also have an entire new magic system with Aetheria that not only has new item slots and new protective spells, but the items level up and they provide surges of power.
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
Q: If I see people running around looking like they have no helm on I'm aiming for that slot, now if they actually have a helm on and it's just invisible then that is just plain stupid.
A: That is how it works, yes. Tailoring and Show Helm take away the ability to recognize armor levels visually. That is why we want to add at some future date the ability to see base armor levels on examination of another player.
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |
Q: Would loot drop robes be to much to ask?
A: Tairloring certainly alleviates many of the issues we had with adding robes to loot (slot coverage vs. spell count would have rendered them useless). We'll look into the viability of this next time we're adding something to loot (it's not a simple process).
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Django Turbine Staff |
We have intentional added the ability to allow your, for instance, coat to continue to cover all the slots it initially visually covered. This is for players who like the appearance of coats but wanted to have the best possible gear (aka single slots).
We've also added the ability to raise and lower the layer your armor is on. This means you can have your sleeves show over your coat for example or your coat show over your sleeves.
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Django Turbine Staff |
Q: I think it's far more likely you just didn't want to make new armor designs (e.g. Amuli breastplates, Koujia tassets, etc.).
A: The way our game works we need a separate object for each piece that can move. This means we already have those art pieces and wouldn't of had to make anything.
When we say intentionally it means exactly that, it was intentional. This approach allows much more flexibility and option for the players.
They can still show the whole multi-slot piece or they can cover up parts of it with how the pieces stack along with the ability to bring a certain piece of armor to the top of the stack or set another piece to the back of the stack. There are now a lot of options on how the players can look.
Most of those options would not be available with the system you are suggesting.
Shen-Mara simplified this description with the following: "If you reduce an amuli coat to a bp and then set the celdon sleeves to 'on top', you WILL be showing an amuli bp."
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NoWorries AC Quality Assurance |
Q: Usually we've gotten them the week before the patch. If the patch is still on pace for Tuesday of this upcoming week, can we expect these soon?
A: All the information will be released on Monday. As far as the teaser images go, we informed the fansites of our new policy regarding teasers yesterday. From now on rather than sending one or two images to each fansite, we will be posting all the teaser images on our website in a gallery connected to each event. The fansites will then be able to post all the images for each event. This allows us to not only make sure all the teasers are seen, but it also brings us in line with the other Turbine franchises.
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Frelorn AC Community Relations |
Test Server
We have picked the new set of testers and sent out e-mails to all who got chosen.
We do appreciate the large number of people who applied, unfortunatly not everyone that apllies gets in. If you did not receive an e-mail then you did not get in this time around.
There are always far more players that want to get in then we need at the time, which is why it takes a while to sort through them all and make our decisions.
It is likely that this opportunity will come around again in the future and everyone is welcome to apply again when that time comes.
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NoWorries AC Quality Assurance |
Q: Well then there are a few people that have broken that rule then. They know who they are too.
A: You'd be surprised how many PMs we receive when someone is getting "information" from someone they think is on the test server and that information is not even close to what we are actually working on implementing.
There's a lot of pretend testers out there.
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NoWorries AC Quality Assurance |
UI Improvements
Q: And can we fix the scroll bar for the extra pack aug, I find it quite annoying to have to scroll down for just 1 pack when I have my settings set for stretch gui and there's plenty of black space to show that pack?
A: Already finished and up on the test server for April.
Sev~
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Severlin Producer |