R37 Post Mortem Missed Questions (mostly)

Here are the questions that we did not have time to get to. I tried my best to answer these but some we just don't have details yet to provide. I will try my best to follow up but please understand I probably won't have time to do any follow ups to these.

Arc: Q1: When will we have new ranks and options for guilds permissions?
Q2 2017 but hopefully sooner

Arc: Q2: When are bard skills coming?
Not currently planned for Episode 1 commercial launch but we hope to have them in an update shortly after or definitely Episode 2

Arc: Q3: Will we have any raid with cool bosses in the future?
Yes

Sir_Michael: Because of a mistake I didn’t used my Alienware Starter Pledge. Is it possible to transfer not used pledges to Shop Credits?
That was a limited time offer to be used in conjunction with pledges unfortunately. We do however plan to do another promotion with them soon.

Sir_Michael: Are there plans for a functional overlandmap with “Markers” on it, giving further information about the game (progress).
I'm not entirely clear what this question is asking for but we do plan to add more information to the Overworld over time. Recently we added the status indicators to POTs that indicate number of settlers and if players are online/offline in that town and it will expand to PRTs and NPC towns soon. Sieges are indicated on the overworld as of R37. Other similar information will be conveyed soon as well.

Sir_Michael: What would you think about (more) Skills/Spells of Peace (May be the path of peace too?) Spells like Stun or Mesmerize …
We plan to steadily add more spells, skills, and combos. Some of these will include non-lethal options.

Govenor Ruin: Please talk about the state of high end content currently or will be in the game soon, The control points, The rise, new stuff. Anything new on the way for higher level players like t6 zones?
This is too broad a topic to try to cover here but we do plan to steadily expand the game with more high end content but our focus currently is finishing the story, finishing our feature list as promised during kickstarter, enhancing performance and stability, balancing combat and economy, polishing UI, and uncloning scenes.

Eflenwahn: Will you adjust the (currently very high) difficulty of the vauban pass to the difficulty of all other control points during the uncloning?
Yes


Roycestein Kaelstrom: Is there anyway we can get our POT renamed without having wiped everything? I am willing to pay $25 to unlock or pay the amount to upgrade next time if I can do the rename seamlessly.
Unfortunately we have to do a full wipe to make sure the back end data matches the front end display name. If we don't do that then discrepancies between those two data sets can create bugs like access to the scene not working properly, lot markers not being placeable, etc.

Tetsu: Why are there so many items like Armor/Weapons and Weapon Racks in game placed but we can't place them as Deko?
Being able to place something in the game using the Unity editor is completely different than being able to place something using our decoration system. We do plan to turn armor and weapons into decoration items but they have to be modified and extra data added to make that work.

Rufus D’ Asperdi: Could a Watermill be added to the list of Upcoming Water Homes?
Yes

Rednought: Currently, water lots cannot be placed on the dock of forest, desert swamp 1, 1a template. Is there a timeline to correct this?
We hope to have this fixed in R38 but it is quite a complex problem to solve.

Zell Bificurus: Will there be a way to place any kind of container in our houses in the future? Like Small bags and such.
Yes

Crumpets: I would like to see smaller scale versions of items like light fixtures and fountains. Many of the ones we have are beautiful – but too large in scale for smaller houses and lots.
Ok

Datendrache: Will nested POTs count toward the hosting POT Blessing bonus for population when the Blessing go live?
That is not part of the current design but it is an interesting suggestion.

Datendrache: How many people do you expect a POT to have before it receives full blessings?
The current design is for that to be relative calculation between the size of the POT and the number of settled users, not an absolute number

Njord: Would it be possible to increase that overlap allowance to say 15 – 20%?
Not planning on doing that as it would lead to lots of bugs and unintended visuals.

Njord: How about a pair of hotkeys that we could toggle to lock either the X or Y axis when re-positioning placed deco items?
Good suggestion

Knightguy: Can you talk about any new fun mechanics you might be adding down the road? I for one would love to see repeatable quests added for crafters to random locations to craft items for npc’s for rewards, etc.
We do plan to add Crafting based quests

Infernal: Can you please make it so we can remove entries in the quest journal?
Sure

Twofoldsilence: When do you think new creatures will come online, and will there be Ultima-ish creatures such as Ettins, Headlesses, Cyclops, Reapers, etc.?
Two new clockwork creatures will be coming in R38. More to follow.

Vladamir Begemot: Can we see some concepts/early versions of the new Quest UI?
Think of it as a mash up of Ultima 7 and Skyrim. Hides compass, hotbar UI and all other chat channels. Has a keyword panel. UI elements (borders, scrollbars, etc.) go away when not directly interacting with the UI. PLEASE NOTE: We have not started work on this so its likely to change. DO NOT hold us to any details shown here. It WILL change.





Vladamir Begemot: What are your plans for uncloning player vendors?
Step 1 will be to provide more preset options based on skin tone, hair style, and clothing style. So instead of an old white haired white skinned male in merchant robe you might also get a dark skinned female in Viking merchant robes. Step 2 will be to hopefully give you the option to define exact wearables but that might not make launch of Episode 1.

Vladamir Begemot: Please put the short spiky hair back in. Why remove good content?
Not sure which hairstyle this refers to. Mohawk? That is still and option.

Baron Drocis Fondorlatos: Since control points appear to be highly susceptible to farming exploits, will you please consider making them more about travel and less about XP and Loot?
Yes

Neiro: Will all cloned scenes look and feel similar to the original template, or are you doing a lot to make them feel entirely unique? (question reworded…)
Cloned scenes that have player housing have to retain the same base terrain and the same positions of entraces, player houses, and NPC buildings so therefore the layout must stay roughly the same when we unclone them. However even with those constraints the scenes do look very different. Elad's lighthouse looks VERY different from Harvest. Adventure scenes can and will get very different terrain treatments when we unclone them and so therefore will and have gotten very different layouts. Superstition Canyon is a good recent example as well as Midras Ruins.

Acred: Will traveling through the fog or the pretty flower patches on the Overland Map cause any effect to our Avatar?
Perhaps eventually

Govenor Ruin: Can we have localized PoT teleporters? Would be nice to be able to set a few of these up, make finding events and get togethers easier to find.
maybe

Govenor Ruin: When is the underground biome going to get a revamp? Scene is too dark, no indicators, etc.
Hopefully in Q1 but on the "too dark" part it is underground....

Twofoldsilence: Will enterable things other than towns and adventure maps ever appear on the world map? E.g. towers, light houses (with the cool light house effect from Ultima 5), castles, dungeons, caves, etc.
There already are dungeons and caves

Daxxe Diggler- Question: Will POT's be available in Offline mode for those who bought them?
Yes but might not be until Q2 2017

Ancev-How about a newly claimed item indicator for the bank so when you claim the items, the new items are highlighted in green or there's a"new" indicator so it's easy to figure out which items have been added
Good suggestion

 

@DarkStarr, when will see some of those new water homes (especially the Pirate Galleon )?

 

@DarkStarr, Can we get an item limit increase on the vendors so we can put more than 100 items on? A quantity selector UI would be nice also.

 

@DarkStarr: I just pondered, how will having Island PoT affect town sieges ?

 

Naval Blockade!

 

Wow! $300 for the obsidian tower village water home? Isn't that a bit extreme?

 

@DarkStarr Mines MPO only? True/bias?

 

@DarkStarr Oh and when will we get back the payment plans?

 

@Chris discussed using Metal API on Macs in the future, any plans to make Vulkan an option on Linux and Windows?

 

The hairstyles I was talking about. The one on the left has been replaced by the one on the right. I feel like they are both good and should be in the game.

 

Considering the small target audience of a small target of water lot owners, then it is probably the thinking on its pricing (as the village tower is street priced at $200)

Edit: What dallas says below!

 

Actually, the $300 price was a mistake on my part. I erroneously entered the price for the Obsidian Tower Town Water Home instead of the Village Water Home. My apologies!

It is now set to the sale price of $250 (marked down from full price of $315).

 

Maybe what he means (if not sorry at least I want to know), if there could be short cuts to directly access certain places inside towns, like sewers, PvP arena or crypts. Or for PoT the guild tavern basement or your own basement? I think it would be a way to inspire some social content..

 

So if it's something like that top image.. basically the Morrowind dialog system with a chat bar? Which would be great!

 

@DarkStarr, will the Obsidian Sarcophagus be available through the add-on store or will it be for bundles only? Will we see any other kind of sarcophagus as craftable or in the add-on store?

 

That's the plan (although without the minigame, I hated that ) More details (DLMB*, subject to change, etc)

- you can still freeform chat with NPCs if you want, the text parser will still exist and occasionally give off-the-wall answers. There may also be easter eggs/rewards for discovering unhighlighted entries and of course you can lie about your name to NPCs and *most* will accept what you tell them. (try lying to the Oracle sometime)
- you can "unlock" keywords through the flow of a conversation, by being on a quest (so if you are asking about black arrows in Ardoris, that keyword will display but only for NPCs who have something to say on the topic), or for a given region (most people in Ardoris have something to say about love, for example)
- keywords will be marked/highlighted/bold/something if you haven't asked the NPC about that yet or if they have something new to say on the subject since you last asked

There is a LOT of story content in the game already; the goal here is to make it more accessible so it's less frustrating to experience.

* don't lawyer me, bro

 

The upcoming new NPC dialog system is the most interesting topic for me. Thank you for your information @Lum the Mad

 

Will the text in the new dialogue window be formated differently to avoid walls of text and make it easier to read it?

 

@Lum the Mad - if the dialogue is going to complety take over the screen, please keep in mind those situations where conversations occur in dangerous areas (like Veimar surrounded by wolves North of Braemar). I remember trying to talk with him as a newbie in the early game and getting constantly attacked by the wolves - causing stressful keyboard/mouse issues while I tried to break it off and defend myself...

so maybe something like autoclosing the npc chats when a player is attacked could be an option?

 

Could you PLEASE make these lights in the Add-on Store and Craftable??