R10 Postmortem rough transcript & minutes

0:01 Greetings from FireLotus.

0:38 Lord British. Thanks to the testers. There was a significant uptick in the amount of people who played this cycle. Acknowledges Dallas' existence. This was largely due to the fancy hat quest.

1:22 Chris. They know there were many crashes; they're working hard on it and talking directly with Unity and other people to try to get those problems dealt with.

2:03 Starr. This was supposed to just be a polish release, but put in a lot of fun new content, because they were excited by it, and also because they felt that the amount of testers was declining and they had to attract people in to do the testing.

3:56 Chris. For everything they show you, there are two to three things in the background they're working on.

4:21 Starr. This includes changes they're continuing to make on the server side to increase security and the level of oversight on transactions between players.

4:42 Richard. Introduces Finn, Abe and Bill. They're in the "world building pit", creating the spaces we run around in. Finn also works on the special effects.

5:28 Chris. Insisted they clean up the plains map and the plains road maps, so they couldn't be used as an example of the "horrible graphics" in the game. That was Abe's work, as was Vertas Pass.

5:59 Lord British. Bill built the challenge dungeon. Personally went with the Order of Vengeance folks through the challenge dungeon and had a great time.

6:20 Chris. The directive to Bill was to make it so hard that it can't be beat, and then after that, make five more rooms that are even harder.

6:47 Lord British. Was with the Order of Vengeance, but wasn't helpful even though he didn't die.

7:00 FireLotus goes to questions. What was your favorite thing added to R10? Lord British. Favorite thing in R10 was the Oracle and the beginnings of virtue tests, quests, and modifiers -- which is just a taste of what they're going to put in future releases.

7:28 Chris. Its hard to pick, because he forgot what things were added, since he plays every day and everything blurs together. He has tons of stuff to come on combat focus, improvements on combat that will make people happy. They didn't do as much as he wanted to that release, but promises tons more of it. Anything combat is usually him.

8:12 Starr. Favorite thing was highlighting of the cards for combos, because he wasn't doing very many combos before that. But there's a bunch of stuff they want to do in R11 to address the combat and behaviors and what it feels like to fight, including for both PvP and PvE. For PvE they're going to be working on more interesting behavior patterns for the AI. For fighting liches, they're going to experiment with patterns, such as: summon some skeletons, then stun or root everybody around them, then do an AoE fire or death spell around them, and then repeat randomly select from that series of skills. Give the AI more than one skill to use, and also a logical pattern in which they use those abilities. It'll create more interesting combat against AI. On the PvP side, they've been talking a lot about movement during combat. The pattern they're seeing is a lot of constant run and jump, making it hard to be targeted, without a penalty. In a shooter, there's a penalty associating with moving and looting, so they're experimenting with some patterns that will turn movement into a choice with consequences to it. Ranged and magic will have a cost if you move when you do that.

10:33 Chris interjects. Accuracy, fizzle rate type things, or casting time. If you're a tank, and you're fighting against a good ranged person or caster and are wearing plate mail, its really hard. They're also going to experiment with sprint, where you can double tap, move forward and use focus as you charge forward. But light armor should also be allowed to do that. Archers would be able move while they shoot, but if you did move it would impact your accuracy.

11:41 Starr. Stability will be a priority. Hoping to get out a quarterly schedule update this week, along with R10 impressions, which he'll also hope to make longer than he usually does. Stability will also be more important because of the Steam Early Access backers. Its even more imperative that the game will perform, when they offer pre-release content like the hat.

12:54 Chris. User feedback is important in helping the game be stable, because a lot of the disconnects and other problems they never saw in internal testing. This helps them track problems down.

13:50 Starr. Chaos magic is currently not on the schedule until early next year.

14:35 Chris. They'll probably be introducing other synergies, skills and combos. Backers will get Steam keys; they're trying to figure out how to make it happen in the most reasonable way, and working through the issues.

15:40 Starr. Hoping to give a preview of their quarterly schedule soon. Hope to get game on Steam Early Access by early December. They still have to figure out some of the issues on how steam backers are recognized by their system and whether they'll be able to upgrade or not. R11, they'll do a Dev+ only test for steam, and then R12 open it up to all of the current backers for larger scale test. And then early December, open it up to everyone backing over Steam.

17:06 Chris interjects. Non-Dev+ people have nothing to be jealous about for not experiencing earlier releases because the game is much less stable before its passed to them. They put them up front because are the most loyal backers and are patient.

17:48 Starr. Also on the short list, is to have a first pass of some starting experience and also a way to ease people into the deck system. They'll be starting people in locked mode, and give them the ability to go to an advanced play only if they've played the game for a little while. Also, Steam Early Access would imply persistence, possibly 24/7. There would still be wipes, but they'd try to keep it to a minimum.

19:02 Chris asks Starr to cover his ears. Ultima Online screwed up in a lot of ways in their beta early access because there were too many wipes, not giving them a chance for the economy to develop. They're paying attention to that and make sure that there will be long enough gaps before wiping so these things can be tested.

19:53 Starr. Housing controls will be implemented at R13 in time for Steam.

20:16 Chris. Zoning has been kept in so you can zone out of a stuck area, it will will be in for at least another release, but eventually taken out.

20:38 Lord British. The first release where the downside of zoning was apparent. Its days are numbered. Some people are using it to do griefing.

21:10 Chris. Load time optimizations were done this release in some zones. Two places were a problem though; the first was the challenge dungeon. Doors and lights were a problem, they had to change how they sent the information. Towns, houses and items in houses are serialized in less than efficient way, and they'll try get that sorted out. But a plains map or forest map had a quick load time. But in cities, you'll see a big improvement once they optimize the code.

23:12 Starr. The crash data that Unity spits out is useful for Unity, but not the dev team, because its engine level data.

23:53 Chris. The crash info that is helpful for them are already tracked in their logs. They hear from a player that crashed and look up the information the logs.

24:34 Starr. Its not necessary to send the crash data. In future, launcher might log things locally and then
send the information on the next update. It'll be figured out.

25:00 Starr. They're thinking about more deck interactions, like blockers and stealers, for instance in Chaos magic. Also talking about itemization and enchantments lately, enchanted items adding ability to combat.

25:36 Chris. There were hardly any new skills this release, though they tuned up focus cost and cool down timers. Once they get one more release, they'll start find more synergy between skills for blockers. Definitely be more active blockers and paying attention to interrupts cast times and those types of elements.They'll also turn down the penalty for locked cards, to let people choose, instead of pushing people one direction or the other.

27:17 Lord British. As soon as they go closer to persistent access, then server status will be available on website.

27:55 Chris. They have to do it honestly as a defensive mechanism, because people otherwise hammer the server until its up, which isn't good for them. It'll probably be up by the R13 release.

28:28 Starr uses his scheduling powers to move it to this release.

28:36 Starr. The goal is December for an always-on server. ETA on player owned towns is early next year.

29:40 Chris. There were 820 issues , tasks and bugs for next release. Decoration bugs are considered things to fix, but non-painful things are not priorities. They still try to deal with trivial bugs. Low priority bugs from last release bumped up for medium priority for next.

30:45 Starr. If its really only a cosmetic issue that only happens when people use the object in non-standard ways, for entirely creative purposes, it probably might not even be fixed.

31:38 FireLotus redirects to questions on the forum about min/maxing. Starr. What everyone is experiencing now not what a normal gameplay experience will be like. Not every skill is in the game, only about 40% is done.. so this leads to current best builds. At its highest end, only a couple of trees currently have elemental summons. The other thing that needs to be kept in mind is that its easier to min/max because there's no character advancement, and skill points can be spent and unspent, and you have more points that you can spend than you'll have in the beginning of the game. They're debating the idea that at the start you won't have any skill points to spend. They want to have answer the gypsy questions that determine three starting builds. Then, a lot of skills will require trainers to unlock, you have to physically go there to train that skill, which is a more methodical roll out of the abilities. Thinks min/maxing is a temporary aberration.

34:37 Chris. They're asking testers to drink from the firehouse and some are getting drowned. people are dropped into a mid-game experience and there's a lot of negativity over that. You won't just have to go to a trainer, but there'll also be time involved, you won't be able to rapidly change skills. It'll be a slow methodical progression. There'll still be some min/maxing going on since some people will want to do that, but right now the rock-paper-scissor stuff they planned just doesn't show. They'll hopefully be some counter-force if someone's trying to min/max in a very extreme direction. One of the big focuses of the team is to get a lot of skill into combat. They'll work to improve it.

36:05 Starr. The best build will change constantly every time the game is updated. Buffing and nerfing natural thing, will slow down by launch, but during development is something that rapidly changes.

36:53 Lord British. When play is done internally, they find out employees are never the best combatants. Starr made the comment that he felt an archer would always win, but this was proven wrong in PvP battles. A final battle was between an archer and a sword user, sword user won 2/3. Maybe in certain situations in one-and-one a certain player should always win, but in group situations it becomes more complex.

38:26 FireLotus. Its not nerfing until after we launch, right? Starr. Ok, sure, it's testing and balancing.

38:39 FireLotus redirects to questions about harvesting and crafting. Lord British. Nothing changed with crafting in R10, but did a lot of paperwork for crafing for R11 and beyond, worked on it a lot personally. In the process of migrating data to final form to put it in the game. You should see at least one more big push of it in R11. Each release will push pieces forward in skips and hops.

39:58 Chris. There are five or six things going on behind the scenes we don't hear about. A lot of crafting written up by Richard for two releases already, but they haven't had someone put them in the game yet. Starr interjects. More crafting and economy stuff in R11.

40:32 FireLotus redirects to concerns over mouse control on the overland map. Chris. Mouse control might be turned back on, they talked about doing it. Until they move everyone over to the mainland the map system is really proof of concept and prototyping. They're trying to develop the right system so its go for the mainland. Right now, they're trying not to block people and keep them away from content.

42:17 FireLotus redirects to concerns about harvesting. Nodes were sparse in new areas and the change in amount they produced made things harder to get. Chris. As we get closer to getting up 24/7 efforts will be made to get the economy straightened out. Some resources will be consistent, but there'll also be a lottery element where sometimes you'll get lucky. They don't want min/max behavior in harvesting either, where people always go to the same map. It'll be rule based.

44:04 FireLotus redirects to questions about R11. Starr. A release schedule update will be put out. Plan consists of a variety of things... crafting and economic design, including new resources like reagents that can be gathered, new maps, kobold battle camps, bridge.. control points will hopefully be implemented. The control points either be controlled by NPCs or players, and if the players control them, ever increasing difficulty waves of NPCs will come to retake the control point. You capture a flag in the tower, wave it, and enemies try to take it from you.

46:07 Chris. There'll be more repeatable content once everything is persistent. Control points are like the challenge dungeon in reverse.

46:46 Starr. It works both ways. You first eliminate the enemy defenders, then take flag, then it goes back to defense mode. This is the groundwork for castle defense scenarios for PvP. R11 will have a new release quest with an exclusive hat as a reward. They chose hats because every player can use a hat, so its useful to everybody. Chris points to Starr's bald head. Starr. And it has to cover their baldness. They have to work on the hair, to create two versions, or hair broken up into two pieces, so everyone can wear hats and it will display properly. We'll be able to have hair and a hat next release.

48:50 Chris. Its an important thing to take care of. Starr. There'll be another world tour for the hat. They'll also try to get scene templates working. With that, the scene can be different when you go into it, based on a quest, or on timer. One example is the Clink; a scene template could be made so there's a random chance there'll be a prison riot when you enter.

50:07 Chris. Its tech they've had for a while, just the first time taken to a full scene and used. Sure something will break.

50:15 Starr. There'll be a first basic pass of character advancement, earning XP points, going up levels, allocating skill points.

50:35 Chris. Also a gear variation pass, so different armors will feel different.

50:50 Starr. Basements. Housing will expand to include basements. Also players will be able to use wearables on a dummy, or have weapon racks or other devices to hang weapons. Encumbrance. Durability and repair. There are internal discussions about repair and how much repair should be required from an active person or whether repair packs could be made for selling and buying. One of the issues with requiring an active person means you have to give over your sword to a random blacksmith, trade expanded to include repair. Another issue is a person needs to be there, or maybe vendors can do repairs. One thing they were discussing is as a crafter make a repair kit, such as a armor patch kit or sharpening stones for swords. One idea is that maybe it only has limited effectiveness, and its better to find actual person to repair. They'll also try to add death magic in, including changes like summon skeleton and summon lich. This is to match the summon elementals in the other spell schools. Lich is the pinnacle being of death.

50:57 Lord British calls for a wrap-up. Thanks again. Had more fun than in previous releases.

56:28 Chris. If they knew how instable it would be they would have spent more time on that. Will put up his post early next week.

58:17 Starr. Thanks to the testers and the team, who worked hard to make this happen. Chris drinks from a Red Bull.

58:57 FireLotus talks about the great community events that happened.

1:00:18 Starr interjects. Meant to say, one of his favorite things that was added was the radio. It shows what the devs and community can create together. Lord British. The radio would be simulcast into the game while people were performing actions in the game. Chris smiles.

1:01:24 Finn. Shout out to general awesomeness of backers, who were role-playing to help others out and get accustomed to the world.

Thanks & goodbyes.

 

Most excellent transcript! Thank you for this service, Redfish.. er blackfish..

 

Many thanks redfish!

 

Thank you redfish!!

 

Thank you @Redfish !!

 

Thank you for your good work redfish

 

This part got me excited.

Because my concern is that repairing items will reduce the need of crafters. But if a crafted 'repair kit' that consumes crafted components that only a skilled crater can make, then resources will need to be gathered (job for people to gather resources), resources need to be combined by skilled crafter, and the kits to then be sold/consumed.

Also a means to promote crafters to do the repair 'in person' should be rewarded.

Scenario A)
Original weapon stats 100/100 durability, after use down to 0/100 durability = can't use.
Player buys repair kit, weapon max durability drops by 10% from total 100, to total 90; then is repaired to 50% = 45/90 durability
Weapon repair kit requires 50% of crafted components to craft weapon-repair-kit (i.e. 1 ingot instead of 2)
(Repeat same math for each repair kit used)

Scenario B)
Original weapon stats 100/100 durability, after used down to 0/100 durability = can't use.
Player brings to weapon smith, weapon smith uses 50% of components used to craft same type of weapon; weapon takes 1% durability from 100 max to 99max, weapon restored to 99/99 durability.

So in a pinch, players can buy repair kits. But ideally they want a master smith to repair the weapon as best as they can.
But, no item will last forever. Each item will suffer long term use eventually.

***Bonus Item***
Once a weapon has been repaired and it's total durability is reduced to 1/1 make it into a decoration item, to be proudly mounted on a home wall.
"This weapon has seen more battles then most have daydreamed of."

 

Thanks! Ill include this info in an article.

 

Thanks redfish!
Your transcription is very useful for non-native English speaker like me!

 

Nice job buddy.

 

Thanks for the transcript....

It is concerning though that we seem to be very far away from anything that resembles a game....I guess we will see some more with the next release....I am very curious about how they will make it so hexes don't all feel the same, also how they will make the storyline relevant with the ability for people to go anywhere they want and do what they want...I could see there not being much of a challenge there.

 

I don't really agree... personally think people get carried away with the idea of a player-driven economy, and see no reason why NPC blacksmiths shouldn't be able to repair things for players, for instance, just because players want the gold.

Crafting is a good element of the online game, but ultimately the game shouldn't be structured around the needs of making money (gold). Even if there were NPC blacksmiths, working with a player would have a lot of advantages. You could have discounts, better locations, repairs for free from friends, and friends who are willing to do field repairs for you. As for player-run shops, I would hope they would offer something more interesting, something of role-playing value.

Ultimately, though, the point of the game isn't to make as much money as possible.

 

Everybody has a different way to "win" a game like this. It's money, or property, or status, or networks, or PvP prowess, or leveling, or relationships with the devs, or rares.

For me, the ultimate win is being here four years from now as excited as I am now.