Fan Faire - Underfoot Announced

[Andorrabell]

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http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts ... _id=152691" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

CLERIC SPECIFIC:

1) A cleric raised the issue of a stacking problem within ranks of promised reknit and promised recuperation. I did some digging (to save devs time) and gave them where I saw the "potential" issue. (I say potential since sometimes the data we see on alla/lucy might be incorrect.). I did see an issue but didn't know if the values I saw were correct - so I let both the new spell dev Raramor and Prathun (who fielded the question) know where to look to confirm/determine if there is an issue.

2) Can vie be turned so it can be mass group buffed - answer: no. It is intended to be cast on each group. They considered it to have design balance issues if it could be massed.

3) Question came out of a panel about multiplicative mods (and spec mods were considered part of this). Because as the skill caps increases, these become so incredibly more powerful, they do not want to continue with this type of mod. Instead they are working with the skill cap increases themselves to give the type of effect.

- As a side note, prior to FF I had submitted a proposal on having +spec: alteration mod put back on our gear. It sounds like this is dead in the water, but I will check for an actual confirmation. If so, the LDoN raid is the one that clerics will need to do to get the best spec mod out there.

General Info:

1) This summer there will be 36 capped SoD raids (hard mode basically). Same exact events with the 54 cap, but only allowing 36 inside. Both to give folks who are done with the expansion something to do and for folks with smaller raid forces another opportunity as well.

- Lockouts do NOT conflict with the 54 person raids

- There are some new loot added to these raids (tier 4.5 non visibles).

- The SoD essences have been reordered into the raids to even out the two slots that previously were not not dropping as often.

- This could continue in the future for Underfoot+ if it is received well in SoD.

- Key point to these is, keeping the raid the exact same, there is much less development time to creating the raid so this was a way to streamline dev involvement to get more content available without pushing something else down the priority list.

2) Question asked about raid window - can we get zone player is in added to the raid window. Answer: It can be looked into (was actually an idea with the prior raid window revamp but due to time constraints wasn't able to do it). There are some issues they had with doing it that would have to be overcome.

3) Question (again) on when a player deguilds, can a message be sent to anyone with the L or O tags in guild. Answer: they like the idea and will look into it.

4) Question came out with random number generator (pertaining to weapon drop rates) - answer: it's random. Coders have looked into it several times in the past couple of years and ... it's random.

5) Question asked about which tradeskill will be increased/improved next - Ngreth's answer: baking and brewing need some modifications internally for stat food stuff before they can be revamped. Fletching worries him because of archery. Pottery is the only one he could do but he's not sure where to take it - and indicated if you have any ideas, please let him know.

6) Question came up with augs and can Anguish be made slot 7/8 - answer: no, that's a design on purpose. Additional dev comments did indicate that they believe the group augs are finally catching up with the old raid augs (in most circumstances) and since group augs are slot 7/8, these will be sufficing.

7) Added bank space - Ngreth said he's still not convinced this will be needed.

8 ) Question asked if dzkick all and taskkickall could be added - answer: devs will look into it but sounds like a great idea

9) Leadership AA question on will it continue - answer: they have no current plans to do so, because every time they come up with something good, they decide to release it to the public so everyone can enjoy. Also, devs indicated that system is coded differently and is not easily adaptable to today's systems they use (if I have that technical stuff right)

10) Question asked about items stacking higher that have low stacking caps - answer: no, it is intended

11) Bannings - just as a general note 275,000 accounts were banned across all games (think I have that figure)

12) As a side note - India (customer service) got fired this year so if you call customer service, you will be talking to someone in San Diego
13) Potion belt additions - devs are adding these on an individual basis. Please put together a case if you have a clicky (That can be clicked without being worn) and submit it to a community leader or to the dev yourself. Aristo and Ngreth are working on items together.

- Items that need to be worn will pretty much not be potion belt usable.

Mayong 51/50 server Info:

1) Mayong (lvl 51/50 aa server)

- You can keep the AA's banked until you're high enough level to use them.

- It will launch for everyone on Tuesday June 30.

- Titles already taken will still be gone, however all first kills as of Tuesday's launch will still get a different title.

2) Mayong 51/50 server - they did indicate you could die and go under 51 if you died enough.

Class Specific Issues:

1) Ranger question for flight of eagles (can they get it) - answer: No. Devs drew a line to not water down more class features and that is a specific one they decided not to hand out.

2) Question was brought up with zerker dps in groups (the zerker in question gets beaten by a warrior - though gearing/weapon ratios was not discussed). Devs indicated while they are doing ongoing parsing for all classes currently, with the two recent additions, they felt zerkers were right about where they should be.

3) Shaman healing question came up - shaman (without a spell haste focii) was concerned over mending not being quick enough. Answer given - he needs his focii to get the 3.75 seconds down to the ~2.1 second cast depending on his raid situation.

4) Shaman group healing/dps question - it was brought up by a shaman that their role has significantly changed in the last few years. They used to have much higher dps and now they are very low. Answer: devs indicated that they did force all 3 priest classes more toward a healing role for interchangability, and while they increased things like Unity, etc. and healing for the shaman, purposefully they did not bring the dps level up because of balancing issues.

5) One guild did state their druids dps and their shaman are main healers, another guild mentioned their druids are solely healing and nothing else.

6) Druid all-in-one debuff question - druid asked for something similar to unity (multiple debuffs in one spell). Answer: it would have game balance issues and too powerful to have them all in one. (I wondered if a proposal could be made to combine two of them then to limit it to half).

7) Paladin asked about dps increases - answer: there are proposals being kicked around that have been presented to the devs, but because slay is a multiplicative thing, any boost in base dps expontentially increases slay dps so changes to the system would have to be made to accomodate this.

8 ) Paladin asked about ae aggro abilities (crowd chanted group heal) - answer: that will still remain as a sk/warrior ability and not given to paladins. BUT ...

9) Devs did mention there had been internal discussion of some type of 'panic button' (not pally specific but I think was tank specific) that when used would act in that manner, but nothing formalized.

10) Enchanter asked about charm aura and the AA, indicating there was a bug that it was not increasing her charms. Answer: devs would consider looking into it but according to what they saw (they had laptops there), the data was showing it should be working.

11) Question came up on new epics - answer: no current plans to add new epics. Time constraints versus reward issues. Also there is a concern over 'chaser' issues where someone holds onto an item longer than they should be, because it was made 'too powerful' to begin win.

12) Question came up with caster weapons in the prior fabled - answer: if it wasn't there in the original expansion, it's not really "fabled" if they make new ones for you for fabled events.

13) Druid question if their pet can be made stronger: dev (think Prathun but could be wrong) answered those were really made as a toy and won't be made stronger. Question came up again in the next day's panel and 'no' is the answer.

14) Necros and their epics - there are no current plans to produce that same focus on other gear.

15) Druids and their epic reduction with the hard coded # of casts - devs said they would consider look into removing that # of casts if a good case could be made but that it was intentional and they felt it was still appropriate. (I think I have this right)

New Expansion Items:

1) There is a new spell type (no details released) that may be available with Underfoot.

2) More details with the multiple targetting window (you can set players you want to monitor their health so regardless of who you have targetted, you'll always see these folks). While they did not state you would also be able to put NPC's in here, I would assume it is possible as well).

- Tanks, healers, crowd control and anyone calling out balance mobs will be happy with this feature.

3) Tradeskilled armor - Ngreth said yes on visible, no on weapons (for the new expansion).

4) Tradeskill increase - Evidentally there is a hard coded cap of 327 (think that was the #) that skills can't go above, and Ngreth didn't really think it right to boost us up to 325 so these will have to stay at 300. (No discussion if they will look into modifying that sometime in the future).

5) Mercs - when asked if there will be new mercs with the Expansion release. Answer: no. They would like to do other mercs in the future but that would be a separate live release and not part of the expansion.

6) There will be 2-3 new spells (number is approximate still) for each class with the new expansion. These will be new/different types and not standard upgrades of existing spells. The intent is for these to be "cool".

7) Raid gear tiers versus group gear tiers - similar setup to SOD ... however there will be NO split tiers (no ordained versus balanced versus concordant, etc.). That has been done away with.

8 ) Raid gear tiers versus group gear tiers - there will be more group tiers of armor than raid tiers (I can't recall if it was 1 more tier or if that was said at all). This was intentional to help close the gap a bit more between top tiers of both groups.

9) AA's - these will be with the new expansion and there will be plenty of them. Elidroth was not prepared to announce the # of actual AA's at the time of the fan faire.

10) Beta - anyone at fan faire gets into beta (and they anticipated beta would start in August).

11) Anyone at the fan faire gets the new expansion Underfoot for free.

12) More spell gems (potentially 1 or 2 more) will be in the new expansion.

13) More buff slots (amount not stated).

14) Underfoot - planning on 13 zones available at launch (other content coming out later in the expansion year).

15) Upgraded Coldain Shawl quest - when asked if there would be an extension to this incredibly desired (at the time) quest. Answer: Ngreth said 'make him give me time' (referring to the "boss").

16) Question about hard group content like Ashengate at launch - answer: since there are already raids reserved for raiders, also doing group zones that are incredibly set aside for only the top folks isn't appropriate. However, ideas that were brought up were having a zone where at the entrance is lesser hard mobs and as you get to the back of the zone it becomes more and more difficult is something they liked and would consider for Underfoot.

17) Paladin asked if there will be undead in Underfoot - answer: yes, there will be a few zones with pockets of undead

18 ) The amount of weapon models in Underfoot will be doubled from SoD (if I have that correct)

19) Raid tiered content - there will be 3 tiers of raids, starting at the current high end. (No exact raid specifics were mentioned other than a dev stated, harder than any of the SoD raids would be the lowest difficulty)

20) Expansion will be tiered for those in the 80+ range.

21) Question asked if there will be level restricted zones in Underfoot - answer: there are no current plans to force level restrictions, however, that doesn't mean there wouldn't be but no current plans.

22) Question asked about keying in Underfoot - there would still be maybe 1 or 2 group end zones locked behind a flagging system, but the other zones would be open for immediate access.

23) Question asked about faction in the new expansion - there will be some factioning. (No discussion on the amount or how it compares to SoF or SoD).

24) Researching old spells - with Underfoot's release, TBS spells will become researchable.

25) General expansion info - Rytan mentioned the purpose of this is to have things to do for everyone (solo tasks, group tasks, grouping, raiding) and not to cater to any one specific portion of the population.

26) Raids will be instanced, there currently is no plans for any raids to be in open zones.

27) Question of holding more drops for Underfoot quests - Elidroth mentioned they are working to try and get away from the 'hold this drop' type of quest in many circumstances and instead get virtual updates that indicate 'you pick this item up' as an emote and your quest task gets updated directly without you having to hold onto something.

28 ) Another 'tavid' type NPC for Underfoot quests - Rytan (think it was him) mentioned they liked how that NPC worked out so it's definitely possible to have something similar for Underfoot.

29) Question on weapon graphics being crappy - answer: Over 140 new weapon art ornamentations have been requested and will be available for Underfoot (they aren't back pedaling). Some will be from station cash but the rest will be from raids. Not every weapon and not every high end weapon but many new graphics will be available.

More new expansion info:

30) There will be an advanced tracking (for progression, not sure on quests) system where you can look and see exactly where you are and what to do next. (So you don't have to use a 3rd party system for it).

- That was brought up at Smed's address, however in one of the panels it was elaborated on that it also might be backtracked to every progression that used the current type of system (I think Rytan mentioned things further back than possibly PoP would not be used). Still some vagueness on this for prior expansions but sounded good.

31) Access to Underfoot - there will be several access points. One of them will be at the bottom of the hole (and they will not be revamping the hole to increase levels/difficulty).

32) There is a new 'internal game' inside EQ. Basically a new zone you can go to and compete against NPC's and other players (have to have at least 3 total players to get into this new game). Winners of it will earn that new currency that had appeared onto test server a while ago.

- Nodyin showed the demo of this and it looked kind of cool. Sort of a monster mission/cross mix with laser tag (but used boomerangs instead of lasers).

33) Some comment was made on current keying procedures and a question was asking if Underfoot would follow the same model as SoD - answer: Rytan, Nodyin and possibly one other talked about the setup and know that flagging is not fun. 1 person needing to do the entire SoD lineup for raid request and others just needing to flagged for 1 zone was intended to be that easy. It was also intended that the themes weren't linked and you could skip any of them you wanted to.

- They did mention the same format would be used for Underfoot (if I have that correct; LOT of info I'm putting out here but believe that is correct).

34) When asked if they would release the hp/mana amounts of the gearing levels for the new expansion - Ngreth said he's not prepared to do that yet.

35) Monk asked if there will be new robe graphics - answer: yes

36) No new races will be introduced (I can't recall if they also said no new classes)

37) New expansion will be wider, open and while sort of underground (encapsulated in a bubble world off of Planes of Power) it will have a feeling of wide open spaces as much as possible.

38 ) Several zones will be flagged as outdoors and mounts will be usable

[Ivocare]

I am going to remain optimistic about our pet situation. Mobs may be improved and we may have the same pets, but our pets are extremely powerful atm. We will also most likely get 2 new pet focus effects, new passive pet mitigation, avoidance, flurry, and crit AAs (none of these really help fire pet, but they will help the other 4). So it may not be as bad as it seems. Until beta all we can do is speculate.

I am also hoping for more ranks in fort, blessing, FBO, FBO extensions, host, etc. all the typical activated tank/DPS AAs.

[Finglas]

This is not Underfoot specific, but interesting information.

When I asked for them to modify the mage cauldron item not poof on death, they said that that would be possible.

They said they would look into adding more buff block slots.

[Dorrigar]

[Darkenr]

I am going to remain optimistic about our pet situation. Mobs may be improved and we may have the same pets, but our pets are extremely powerful atm. We will also most likely get 2 new pet focus effects, new passive pet mitigation, avoidance, flurry, and crit AAs (none of these really help fire pet, but they will help the other 4). So it may not be as bad as it seems. Until beta all we can do is speculate.

I am also hoping for more ranks in fort, blessing, FBO, FBO extensions, host, etc. all the typical activated tank/DPS AAs.

If pet power at current end-game in comparison to player power is any indication, even 3 more ranks of agility and mitigation will not be enough to bring us to where we should be, even with a raid level pet focus.

Yes our pets can currently tank group mobs, and named, but with FAR more healing support than is needed for even a group geared non fully defensive AAd tank when the pet is focused with a raid focus and full pet defensives. I truly hope you're right, but until beta (which I'm hoping I get into), you're right, it's all speculation. Maybe they'll add more than 3 ranks of agility and mitigation to help us catch up to player defensives a bit. If that's the case, than we might actually get enough increase in defensive power to our pets to be able to function where we should be.

[Darkenr]

There's a discussion on the official eq forums right now about pets atm and their usefulness in underfoot started by Tulisin. (Well he had other stuff he talked about originally, but it turned into a discussion about pets lol).

Should go check it out..

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts ... _id=152942

[Vaddok]

I have to ask this question.

On what basis do we assume a raid focused pet should out tank a tier 5 fully defensive AA group warrior ? In my opinion that seems a little out of line.

[Tweelis]

I have to ask this question.

On what basis do we assume a raid focused pet should out tank a tier 5 fully defensive AA group warrior ? In my opinion that seems a little out of line.

This question has soo many holes in it it's nearly impossible to put a definitive answer to your question. I liken it to saying "how could a Corvette out perform a Ferrari?" or "Is an Olympic sprinter faster than somebody on a bicycle?"

Some raid focused pets will out mitigate a tier 5 defensive AA warrior. Granted said mage will probably have spent 2k+ aa's on their pets and there's even a good chance that mage will also have their pet in some pretty nice armor but it's possible.

I'm going to hazard a guess but you probably have a warrior/paladin/sk toon at a pretty high level right? Did a mage pet out perform you in mitigation at some point?

[Vaddok]

Actually no, my main is a 85 monk. I do have an 82 mage alt that I really enjoy and is why I visit these boards. I just do not believe a pet should be able to out mitigate a real tank when they are similiar in aa and gear level. I would have the same problem if tier 5 mercs could really out tank a real player.

[Firen Fury]

my main is actually my cleric but i love my mage to death... i have T5 mercs and the highest pet focus, and my pet doesnt come anywhere near my merc's tanking ability. (tho i may not be all that great at using a pet to tank i admit... mercs were out before my mage got high enough to worry about it).

on my low lvl toons tho, mercs ALWAYS out tank anything else... in the mid 50s, my bard can keep a merc tank healed in almost all xp situations. theres no way i could do that with a player, and theres absolutely no way a mage pet at that lvl could keep up (i think?).