Executive Producer's Letter - Part 3

[Garthilk]

From the From the Dev Team category we have: Executive Producer's Letter - Part 3. Here's an excerpt - click the source link for more.

Everyone,

It is a time of change and progress here at Mythic. As we move forward,I want you all to know that our love of MMOs, our passion for thegames we create, and our commitment to our fans is stronger than ever. Our studio’s strength has always come from its talented and dedicated team; Mythic is full of passionate, committed people who love MMOs and the games they make. I, personally, have been with Mythic for almost 10 years and look forward to what the studio will build and offer fansover the next 10 years!

We are committed to Warhammer, Ultima Online, and Dark Age of Camelot,and have solid plans for each game. I look forward to discussing our plans for of all of these games with you in the near future. This month, as promised, I’d like to start by sharing some more details from our plans for Warhammer’s continued development over the upcoming months.

Over the past few weeks, we've reached out to many individuals andguilds to share their thoughts, and we’ve been digging down into all of the feedback we have received. As I stated last week, these discussions led us to five key goals which will act as our compass in the months ahead. Our five key goals for Warhammer are:

1. Addressing concerns related to crowd control and area-of-effect abilities.
2. Continuing to improve client and server stability and performance.
3. Strengthening and improving the Tier 4 experience.
4. Improving server population distribution, both in terms of overall population and Realm balance.
5. Improving itemization and the overall distribution of “carrots” (fun rewards) throughout the game.

We're still working out the specifics, and as always the details are subject to change, but we'll share several examples of what we're planning and will continue to do so as more details for upcoming features come together in the coming weeks. There's a lot to cover, so let's get started!

Source

UPDATE

We have a bullet point summary of the specifics addressed in the five areas indicated, just below this post! However, be sure to read the whole letter for full details.

Andy Belford from Mythic has made a post in this thread responding to initial reaction.

[PhoenixRed]

Here's the summary of Part 3, which goes into a little detail into the 5 areas Jeff had referred to in part 2:

1.Addressing concerns related to crowd control and area-of-effect abilities.

• Reducing the radius of these abilities to account for the "buffer distance" we introduced in Game Update 1.2.
• Standardizing these abilities to regular distance and coverage, based on the type of ability, and tweaking them so they don't get out of control.
• Tweaking all Immunity timers to persist through death, increasing their durations, and merging Root Immunity and Knockback Immunity together into a single effect.
• Introduction of a new ability available to all careers (which you can purchase as a Renown reward) that will make you briefly immune to all crowd control.

2. Continuing to improve client and server stability and performance.

• Server crashes have been reduced by 85% since release.
• Engineers will be working on three primary areas in the next couple months: improving client performance and decreasing hitching, continued investigation into server lag during periods of high activity, and improving server performance during large-scale open RvR combat.

3. Strengthening and improving the Tier 4 experience.

• City siege improvements have two goals - bringing RvR to all stages, and making city assault more engaging and enjoyable
• Stage 2 of the City-wide PQ is changing - instead of killing the PQ bosses, two additional objectives will spawn. To win this stage of the PQ, you can either kill the PQ boss as normal, or hold the two objectives plus one from Stage 1.
• Defenders can still defend the city if the city goes past the Contested Phase, and the city-wide PQ will continue, allowing people to get needed gear for Warlord encounters.
• Warlord encounters will now be instanced.
• The final phase of the City Siege will include loot improvements and still being able to participate in previous stage encounters/PQs
• Defenders can now force back a City Siege by repeated City-Wide PQ wins.
• All Keeps will have two ramps.
• Fortresses will be evaluated - either to make them great or "remove the pain" from the campaign. More details to follow.

4.Improving server population distribution, both in terms of overall population and Realm balance.

• "Radical ideas" are on the table to fix population distribution issues, but ensuring that imbalances are not created overnight, as before, need to be taken into account. Feedback is welcome.

5. Improving itemization and the overall distribution of “carrots” (fun rewards) throughout the game.

• Medallions, Achievements, and Renown Rank earnings will be examined in detail to ensure reward for effort.
• Improvements to renown rank advancement, and specifically the highest ranks, will be looked at to make them "rewarding and challenging".

Other points:

Preview of some Combat and Career Changes:

• Next phase of the Archmage and Shaman changes are coming in the near future, including the new and improved Path of Da Green and Path of Vaul layouts, the new Energy of Vaul and Fury of Da Green abilities, and a handful of new and adjusted Tactics.
• For Runepriests and Zealots - re-introducing the ability for Oath Runes and Marks of Chaos to stack on allies. All players will be able to have one of each type of Mark or Rune on them at a time, and higher-effectiveness versions will simply overwrite lower-effectiveness ones.

[radishlaw]

The third part of the executive letter sounds...vague in terms of timeline. I guess that is because they don't actually have a schedule for some of the changes yet. I am not feeling very hopeful or pessimistic here, maybe because most of the changes Jeff talked about has been discussed to death.

[Epiny]

I'm usually a big pessimist when it comes to Mythic... but this letter is what I have been asking for. They have said what they intend to do to improve the game. If we can get something like this, maybe even not as much detail, every month I'm going to be a happy customer.

I know changes don't happen instantly and that's why keeping us informed is important. Mythic just bought themselves 3 more months from me.

[Endroys]

So they are finally addressing the same crap we've been telling them needed fixing since Beta (CC) and that they said they were working on since like 1.1 (the second ramp)?

[Lolarendil]

Skills should be balanced in a case per case basis, standarizing aoe skills is pretty silly in my opinion. Also reducing some stun durations (the 7second ones come to mind) and improving WL/Marauders/SW should be done. Beyond that some pretty good ideas if a bit vague, I specially like the city sieges improvement, but they should also change a bit the layout of IC, since monolith and temple are a pain to attack and altdorf doesn't have anything like that

[Weezheat]

Point I;d like to make:

• Some very specific info together with some very vague info
• They clearly have no idea what to do with Fortresses
• Clearly not sure what to do in terms of population
• What did he say about AoE? Just decreasing the radius? Im confused

the other points are all good points. but 1 thing is for sure:

- The remaining 4 capitals will NOT come until a formal expansion or something. Not even talked about in the next few months. Forget about capitals boys and girls

[orangerascal]

I learned nothing new with this. Jeff Hickman said the exact same things 2 weeks ago

[Vegetta]

Basically he didn't say much about t4 aside from city changes and that they might remove forts....
And a lot of what he said they have been saying for a while.......

I guess its a start but I was looking for a bit more actually. After reading this I don't really see anything that makes me want to play more.

[Rer]

Alright, now we know what they are working on... what we want them to work on! Though the letter is somewhat vague (not really surprising) it is nice to see that Mythic does have a few set plans in action and is very serious about fixing some of the core parts of this game.

A few things that stuck out for me were:

• City Siege Changes: It's All RvR Baby! I'm really liking that proposed viewpoint.

• New Renown Rewards: Sure, they won't be out for some time, but its a good idea to keep high renown ranked players interested in playing, while also giving them a sense of accomplishment.

• 2nd Ramp: Nothing else need be said...

[kingbarbarossa]

I like the idea of crowd control immunity, but i think it should be passive, like 15% chance to ignore crowd control or something like that. Honestly, I'm fine with knockback though. I think it's fun. But they really should tone down roots. Roots are irritating. Knockback is funny. Especially when it involves cliffs or lava.

[Satia]

I really hope the patch that was canceled regarding the careers doesn't get lost.

[Sincore]

I'm hoping that all of these changes get implemented, looks like a fun few months ahead of us!

Also I'm concerned about one thing they mentioned in the news letter. "And for those wondering about Fortresses, our goal is simple. Make them great, or remove the pain from the campaign." I hope they don't remove them 0_o.

[Saggypoo]

The city sieges really stuck out for me too. I'll believe it when I see it though. As it has been said many times so far, these are all changes that have been asked for time and time again. I really do like what I see, but I'll reserve judgment for when something actually comes around.

[Reaver330]

I don't understand the need to hold back some of the healing career changes.

Firstly the runepriest and zealot buffs can be applied with ease I'm sure, they have the code...just put it in.

Shamans and Archmage still require tweaking but for the most part shamans were enjoyable in the 1.3 PTS.

Id prefer them to put the smaller changes in more frequently rather than as a bulk in an attempt to impress people when it comes to large PTS notes.