R11 Postmortem rough transcript & minutes

0:01 Greetings from FireLotus. Welcomes everyone to this months release post-mortem. She might be able to talk, but she's out of coffee, so that's something to be seen. This is an unusual post-mortem since R11 is still up.

0:28 Lord British. R11 will stay up as long as they think it shouldn't stay up. R11 showcased power of the community better than any other release so far. He's blown away by the quality of player contributions into the life of New Britannia. He was able to attend Bear Tavern brawl, which was also simulcast on Avatar Radio. He went through all the mazes, which have improved in their design. They were well structured, beautiful, and taxing enough to give players challenging without being impossible. Player shops and homes were great. It was a great joy to see what players are bringing to life.

3:00 Starr. R10 was supposed to be polish release, but R11 was actually a more polished experience. More content was in than in the previous release while still showing more polish. A lot was accomplished in three weeks of development time. He was playing during the live stream for MMORPG. He didn't get much time in before that, because had to spend time with his family. But was able to see everything players built. The most powerful expression of what players have been doing is that you can instantly tell what a space was intended for. A bookshop loos like a bookshop, a bakery like a bakery, and a radio station like a radio station. It was incredible to see, and thanks the players for that, as well as the bug reports and critiques.

5:47 Chris. He did not get to see that much stuff, because spent most of his time was spent focusing on combat and following players around from place to place to monitor that. Did see those things in the forums in screenshots. Also the screenshots uploaded on Steam will be used. Interrupts himself. Richard's getting a drink — better stock the fridge! Continues. It was an amazing release, ended up being very polished.

7:10 Lord British. Other than the crashes, which went up significantly.

7:13 Chris. The crashes were down significantly, the play was up significantly. It made it seem like the crashes were up.

7:30 Starr. Play session time was way up this release, as was the number of users and log-ins. Because people were playing longer, they were running out of memory more. Plus, as people were driven into more spaces, because of, for example, the grand tour, they experienced more memory usage, as loading scenes takes a bit of memory.

8:37 Lord British asks for player questions.

8:40 FireLotus. Questions were collected from the forums and in chat. Riya wants to know where her hedges and shrubberies are.

9:13 Lord British. He personally asked for it a long time ago, and filed a bug report for this specifically.

9:28 Chriss and Starr cross-talk. Starr. Its my fault. Chris. Decides to blame Starr. We have the art for the hedges. The issue is how you explain it going in your pocket, and how you craft it.

9:59 Lord British. Don't worry about that.

10:03 Starr. It's a production priority thing. They wanted to focus on assets related to the new maps. There were also other assets coming in. Making art asset shortest amount of time in production. Putting in all the data and placement and stacking rules is the most time consuming part.

10:57 Lord British puts on screen the bug report requesting hedges and shrubberies. The art exists, needs to be put in the game.

11:26 Starr. It's medium priority right now, hopefully it will get in soon.

11:36 FireLotus. Players also asked about basements.

11:50 Chris. Technical challenges that weren't foreseen caused them to be deferred to future releases. The system in which housing decorations were visible across instances wasn't compatible with basements. There were also a lot of edge cases. The basement entrance can be picked up even after a player entered the basement, and that would leave them no exit. A similar problem is with what has to be done with the goods in the basement when its entrance is picked up. Also security and performance issues have to be worked on.

13:05 Starr. They thought it would first be a super simple idea, to expand player property; but its more complicated to implement than they thought. You could carry around players in your backpack because your basement entrance is in your backpack. It's being worked on. The biggest priority for R12 is the new user experience; the hint system, and game start, and stability and polish. Things are going well, all they have to do is not F— it up.

14:30 FireLotus. There are questions about the changes to the maps, including about hex size and variations. Why was the change and what will it allow them to do?

15:06 Lord British. They began to notice if you made every hex enter-able, then you have a lot of repeated and similar hexes. All of which would have the same play experience. As people would go out into those meadows, they'd find themselves in a random meadow, and a second person would find themselves in a second meadow. As a multiplayer game, they're trying to get people to find each other and have them bump into each other on accident, and this dispersed players too much. Also, they're trying to create more specific maps. If each scene is given a concept they can be much more interesting. They'd rather save up their time to make specific maps, and then add more and more over time to expand the amount of scenes there are; so for instance, there might be a meadow which later expands to be a northern and southern meadow with a content update. This will be a richer world.

17:23 Starr. Random encounters will come in R12, which will pull you into the same generic maps you previously saw for hexes. While you won't be able to manually select one of those scenes, you might have a chance to get pulled into them. They're also planning to enlarge the scenes that you manually enter. The original play-space was meant to be the size of a play-space for a random encounter. That is: a specific, small, play-space where you where you could choose to fight or run for the exit. Those will still be the scenes for random encounters that you get dragged in, but for those players are able to enter manually through the map they'll be larger. The scenes you'll be able to enter manually will be anywhere between 20% larger to double in size. There'll also be more variation for the encounter maps.

19:25 Starr. In R12, there will be a few samples of random encounters. As it's first implemented, you'll land in the scene and get attacked. In the future, when you get pulled in it might be a bunch of wolves attacking villagers. Or, dark elves who have pulled over a merchant cart and attacking villagers. Or, a guard patrol attacked by skeletons. It will be a scene in progress, influenced by faction information. Sometimes in the game, you'll already see wolves eating rabbits and skeletons fighting each other. You don't see that often now because if that happened all the time everything would be dead by the time you got there.

21:02 Lord British. When one person has an encounter on the overland map, that will be a location that someone can else join; you can come to the rescue and help them out.

21:28 Starr. This is an iterative process. One of the reasons for the change is navigation and coordination with other players, so that you can meet at a certain place. Because the hexes looked identical, you had no way to know whether you were at the right place. People will also now recognize how the map works from past games, lowering the teaching curve. Hopefully the game will expand to a large audience, and provides them an intuitive learning experience for people not familiar with the game. They hear us out on issues about less explorable and less unknown space. There might be unnamed places on the map that you have to discover. Pauses. I see on chat someone told me to shut up. Chris. TIME! Starr. I'll shut up now.

23:39 FireLotus. Koldar says he found it more difficult to find resource nodes.

24:12 Starr. That's fairly complex to explain, because there's a lot of different things going on that would have changed that. A lot more resources were introduced. Also, some of them are hard to see against the background, even though they added a subtle sparkling effect. That helps, but its still challenging. Garlic is the worst case scenario, since it can look exactly like grass. Also, there was a competition problem with people on the same map looking for the same resources. There was a pass through spawning resources and leveled creatures on a map, but this was only was done on six or seven maps total, and they need to work on it. The data wasn't able to be adjusted properly during internal play sessions; now they have the data to tweak it some more.

25:52 Lord British. When he was debugging prior to launch, he was doing mining, and noticed the ore re-spawned pretty quickly, which was bad. They don't want to turn re-spawning up to a point where people just can wait for resources and monsters to re-spawn in the same space. They want a sense of continuous exploration, to draw people further into a scene, into deeper and richer places. It'll take time to balance this out.

26:59 Starr. You're seeing a fraction of maps that will be in the final release; they don't want to turn things up high, just to turn them down later. Also, there were no crafting skills, so what you get is at its base level, without bonuses.

27:35 FireLotus. There were questions about mages, archers, mêlée, and their strengths and weaknesses as implemented.

27:59 Chris. Archers and mages are as powerful as they were last release. Mêlée guys are scaling up with level. Plate mail is still incredibly unbalanced, and will be nerfed. Starr, interjects, pining. NOOOO! Chris. That's being addressed. There are a couple of issues with combat that are unbalanced, and they didn't get to address. Right now there are two packages that work in combat. The first is blades, because there's a full tree. Plate mail is also extremely effective unless there's root and nuke. In PvP you can kind of get away with pole-arms also, otherwise you're pretty screwed. Currently, magic isn't scaling up with level. A lot of things changed this released, and they re-did a lot of combat math. Magic math wasn't given the love that was needed. Magic will get in the next release, and will be effective again. As well as archery.

30:01 Starr. One of concerns is about how support skills are shaping up. Currently, they look like they're cards you spend points on until you get to the useful skills. When they looked at data, buffs are way below other skillls in use: basically nobody is using them. Either have to make them much better, or tack them on to other skills as a side effect. Or not do buffs, but probably not. In addition to ranged attack and mage attacks they want to work on support skills too.

31:18 Chris. The deck size did make it feel like you got less powerful as you leveled. Probably will lower the maximum size of the deck. But its also a problem because they don't have the full skill sets in. They're thinking about removing requirements for skills, so there are less "silos" of skills, and more active skills available to everyone. Also will experiment with handling passives versus actives. They need to balance passives versus actives, so players can't dump everything into passives.

32:33 FireLotus. Scaling of content to player levels. Currently, there's some variation in leveled content. Where is this going, and how will this be balanced with player leveling?

33:04 Lord British. One of the theoretical differences between an Ultima-like sandbox game in contrast to a WoW level-gated game, is that in those games that are level-gated and really a type of level-grind, there's a fence of creatures that make it impossible to exit a general play area until you've reached the next level, where they then release more geography to the player. The dev team wants people to be able to explore all over the world. Instead of zones being at different levels, they're taking it down to a specific game play areas instead. Its quite reasonable to say a part of the map will be relatively low area, while say the Graff Gem Mines might be difficult because its one of the most lucrative places to go. Because of the danger there, it might not be a place for young characters to go if they're not alone; powerful, competent teams might be the ones going there. But people will have a choice. The Graff Gem Mines will be hard, the Tower of the Shuttered Eye will be hard hard. Less important parts of the map will be easier.

35:32 Chris. They have not decided to do auto-leveling. One of the problems with the map change was they did not set limits. There's a couple of different types of scenes. Open scenes, where the cap for players can be set as low as 10, so you don't have to compete with 50 people for resources. Another scene type is "adventure scenes", you'll only enter those scenes with your party members and won't find strangers. A lot of the dungeons will be like that, and are currently like that. Many people don't realize that because you can still /zone to people, and that breaks the intent. But you'll see a message telling you the time you have to exit the scene if the party leader has left.

36:54 Lord British. The Obsidian Keep is an example; it was designed as an adventure experience. You'll eventually be able to shoot the crank on the drawbridge to bring it down. The scene will eventually be spawning more bad guys, and encouraging you pull the drawbridge up behind you. The experience will be much more fun if you go with your own party.

37:54 Chris. A lot of things will be more scaled for individuals and levels, other things will be scaled for groups or parties. So far they don't have plans to auto-scale the levels if you're in with groups of people. There are a lot of problems with that. Interrupts himself. INTRUDER RICHARD! INTRUDER! Continues. Currently they have the ability to force individual scenes, also, so you can only go in alone. They'll have something similar to the challenge dungeon, but only instanced to individuals.

38:51 Lord British. There will be parts of the story that require soloing. That's how they're doing the story maps, which won't be coming online for another release or two. If you go into a throne room to have a discussion with major game characters, you're let in by yourself, and the guard closes the door behind you. This is important for certain aspects of story-telling.

39:35 Chris. One of the things that came up was scene templates, where you can have different things show up when you go into a scene, depending on the state of the scene. They didn't do that for this release, all of the systems need to be brought into place first.

40:21 FireLotus. Can you give information about Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence on gameplay.

40:40 Chris. There's a lot of math behind the weapons that isn't obvious. All three stats are used for calculating attack and defense, just the ratio is different for each weapon. For calculating attack rolls, and not damage, using a bow, for instance, might use 1.3 × your Dex and 0.7 × your Int, and 1 × Str , while a great maul might be 1.5 × your Str, 1 × your Dex, and 0.5 × your Int. That math is being used for attack rolls to see if you hit. Dex is also used for defense, Str and Int are used to calculate hit points and focus. They're also used for encumbrance. In terms of how the math works, it'll be tougher and tougher to increase stats as you advance in level. If your Strength is higher, the cost to buy more Strength increases, and as you level the amount of points to level up increases. So this will be a flattening out of the power curve, making it a little less than a linear power curve. The formula for these things will change, however, with every release.

43:01 FireLotus. Drocis asks when they'll be able to talk about the economy.

43:18 Starr. That can be talked about right now. It's been heavily discussed internally for the last few weeks, so it's perfect timing. One of the things being seen right now is all resources are available anywhere. In the long term, access will be regional. Places with active volcanic activity nearby will be the best place to find sulfurous ash. There'll be some places on the map where you can't find any. The further you go away from the volcanic regions, the rarer it'll be. By having these regional variations, and not having a universal auction system, there'll be different opportunities for markets and caravaning, helping player businesses. The toughest part for a player driven economy is that also has to be balanced, so items are cycled in and out of the economy. As soon as there's an ability to upgrade or advance an item, which effectively destroys the item to create a better version of it, that will help with the cycling. A lot of knobs not in place yet. Another thing they're going to have, and may be in R12, is every vendor will have a buy and sell list, which will depend on the vendor type and region, and what your player state is and where you are in a quest. For the last thing, for example, there might be one trainer that will sell a skill, and he might only give it to you once you do a quest for him. Some of the economy will also be related to the skills.

46:47 Lord British. They plan to stay out of the economy as much as possible, to keep the player economy fluid. He was working with Scott Jones on the Nature to Nutrition assets. During that process, when you harvest a fruit from a tree, you also get seeds, so you can start the process all over again. Because that has to start somewhere, they're going to have to start with putting a certain enough seeds in the game. However, eventually, it'll become self-sufficient, as people start planting their own crops. The seeds sold through NPCs might be very expensive, in order to give players room to undercut them. Supply and demand will rise and fall depending on what players like, in terms of either role-playing or game-play. Players will have the tools to create everything. One of the debates he was having recently was about how players will build something. If something is in the game, there needs to be a player method by which to make it. Everything must be craft-able.

49:00 FireLotus. Amber Raine thinks the chess board is amazing. Players are asking about other games. Especially dice! Many people want to play D&D style games over the radio and in-game.

49:31 Lord British, heartily congratulating the Priestess of Chaos, a praise which she deserves. Great suggestion.

49:35 Chris. They have something that will somewhat work. The problem is to have 3D dice work real-time with physics, but they have something that will work reasonably well. They can have one person own it and drop it, so its possible. Everything else is simple. Obviously you can do things like checkers all on your own already just with decorations.

50:35 FireLotus. What would the highest level people could reach in initial playtime?

50:58 Chris. People are leveling pretty quick, and they'll continue to be able to; the game will be much less grindy than any MMO style game, which they can get away with doing because of the flat power curve. They don't want to force people to play 200 hours to do something competitive or meaningful in the game. They got around to re-spawning 1/3 of the map with appropriate type creature that give the appropriate experience. A lot of the time now, the same type of creature might give 50 and another 900. There's a lot of imbalance in terms of leveling speed right now. He was able to get to level 28 in one long play session, which he did for data on how to balance it. From the data he gathered, the R11 release, he was expecting someone to get around level 60 to 70. The long term plan is that getting to level play would take 70 hours of active play about 100 hours of normal play. When you get to level 20, you're probably about half as powerful as level 50. To get to level 100, which will be somewhat of a soft cap target, it will take you about 2 to 3 thousand hours of game play. For this release, they expect someone to get around lev 65 to 70. The current highest-level person, other than a dev — who cheated —Starr. Doesn't know what Chris is talking about. Chris. Is around 65. FireLotus. Was it Lum? Starr. No, it was not Lum. Starr, bashful, acknowledging it was he that cheated. Chris. But they're in the 60s, he believes. He's been teasing people by posting lists of top 20 players in terms of level, but sorting it alphabetically instead of level. Upon posting it, several of those playersshot up in terms of experience points pretty quickly.

53:40 FireLotus. Such a troll! Compliments to Amber Raine on Avatar Radio. She's wondering if we'll be able to buy a moon tower to power radio.

53:57 Starr. To be clear, its not a power generator, it consumes power to generate a force field.

54:11 Lord British. It does radiate the power through the ether to devices that need it. So the city she needs to set up her station will need both to convert water or heat or wind energy into her tower, then the tower to spread the energy to devices that need it, so she could broadcast her radio devices. What she really wants is an æthereal rectifier, æthereal wave amplifier, to push those waves into the æther, so she might need what people refer to in modern vernacular as an "antenna."

54:54 Starr. Sure, yea. They can make that happen. In the long term they want it so devices like wireless only work if you have power to your property or you're in a town with free access.

55:13 Lord British. So you need a modern-erm Tesla device on your property in addition to some power generator.

55:27 FireLotus. Artemis would like to know more about control points and their intent, and whether they can be bypassed.

55:54 Starr. It will depend on which control point it is. They want there to be multiple solutions and for you to be able to bypass through different methods. Chris is doing something on his screen. Starr to Chris. He knows he lost the duel last night and Chris doesn't have to show him. Troll! TROLL! Chris was showing a screenshot of the duel he lost last night, even though he was higher level than the person he fought. — Back to the point. Vertas Pass is designed so there is a bypass, so you can run past it, but even the bypass is meant to have challenges, like guards.

57:13 Chris. Only a fraction of control points is implemented right now. There'll be several more layers. There are still a long list of fixes also, for example more gaps before respawns so players can catch their breath. Several changes will be in R12, although its not high priority. The major fixes will be done.

57:53 Starr. So, things like scaling the difficulty of the waves, changing the time, tuning them; they'll probably get to all of that. The bigger tasks are gates are gameplay elements like gates that can be destroyed, siege weapons, etc. — AND it was a close duel. They're still talking about the duel in chat.

58:19 Chris. One of the guys who beat Starr is in chat. That came up because someone asked if it was possible for a lower level player to defeat a higher level player. The players pointed out Starr lost, even though he was a cheater.

58:41 Starr, defending himself. At least he wasn't invulnerable, like someone else on the hangout...

58:43 FireLotus. That is true.

58:45 Lord British. As the designated target of all people, he can understand the bragging. Congratulates the player for taking on the Lord of Chaos. Suggests the brave knight must have been a follower of the virtues. If he sees him in game, he will love to offer him a hearty congratulations.

59:12 Starr. As soon as Chaos magic is in the game, that won't happen again.

59:16 Fire Lotus. She has seen chaos followers. Noting her observations, suggests that Starr might have just lost on purpose in order to work up the ranks... Starr. Yes. FireLotus. Time is about over, apologies for not getting to every question. What are we looking forward to most in R12?

59:36 Starr. Well. Who first?

59:39 Crosstalk.

59:40 Starr. Because of the number of questions and the amount of content we had in this release, he wouldn't mind extending the hangout longer if everyone else agreed to it

59:49 Chris. He promised Duke Violation he would answer every question he had. Starr. So it would be fine.

1:00:00 Lord British. He has another phone call in 15 minutes, but will stay until then.

1:00:02 Starr. Chris and him will stay for at least another 30 minutes, because they love us. They really do.

1:00:12 FireLotus. So Violation will have to submit his questions in a shorter format.

1:00:19 Lord British. Redirects to what he's looking forward to in R12 before the chat circles back. He knows clearly what his R12 excitement is, and the team is painfully aware, and begrudges him greatly for it. He's been very vocal about the Nature to Nutrition document, and has been trying to get momentum on the team to flesh out the crafting cycles beyond combat crafting cycles. A lot of the data has been created and a lot of the art has been created. This might not be finished by R12, but a good chunk has been and will continue to R13. Because a lot of crafting is interrelated — you need tools to make food, and to plant, and forage, and so on — it touches every single skill category in the game to create even the first couple of recipes. The data should be completely circular, in that everything you need must be capable of being made as part of the skill tree. He's very excited that a good chunk of it is coming online, and is looking forward to what players think as it starts to come up.

1:02:18 Chris gives a thumbs up.

1:02:20 Starr gives a thumbs up.

1:02:22 Lord British. Thank you so much. In a few minutes he has to go to another call. Thanks the backers for all they do to support them, and what they've created in game. States he works with the finest developers ever, that the whole team is fantastic. They're amazing people and he's proud to work with all of them. Thanks to Gina, and Starr, and Finn, who he notes is snacking, and Chris, and everyone else on the team. Waves goodbye.

1:03:15 FireLotus. Thanks Lord British. Asks if they should cycle around for that question or go back to some more chat questions.

1:03:30 Chris. He wants to make sure all Duke Violation's questions get answered. Starr put him to shame in terms of work hours. Starr. That's hard to do. Chris. Explains its because he has a seven-month old at home. Starr. That's the only reason it happened. Chris. Great work, Starr.

1:04:02 Starr. One more question before the list of Violation's questions. There was one about the sound, and whether there'll be more audio assets in combat. 99% of what you hear in terms of sound effects is what they can beg, steal, scrape, and plug in at the last minute. All of them wear multiple hats. Chris is tech director / sound effects guy. How it works on the last day, he runs into Chris office and says they need more sounds. Chris spends the last 14 hours to please him with what they have for free.

1:05:01 Chris. They'll do a little better going forward. There are a few people in the community like melchior making sounds. But he personally got in about 30 sounds this release. The spider, is him saying "Hey guys! Hey guys! Be quiet! Okay! Sssst! Sssst! Sssst! Sssst!" Hissing into his microphone, and then going back and lowering the pitch and modulating it a little bit and sometimes playing in reverse, etc. Other than him, they actually have some professionals doing that now. Its becoming obvious as things are getting more polished, that sound is the huge thing that's missing. They'll get more and more stuff in as they move forwards.

1:05:55 Chris. They're way behind on Violations questions. Starr. Here's the list.

1:06:06 Chris. He hasn't looked at the zone play-time yet. PvP vs PvE was more popular this time. There were 3K-4K people who spent time leveling up. Several thousand more who did no leveling whatsoever. Looking at charts — There was a large group at the bottom who obviously did nothing but role-play and talk. There was a large group at the top who were doing nothing but level and figure out skills. A thousand people were in the middle who had the starting experience plus one to ten experience points. These were people logging into Braemar and killing a couple of chickens.

1:07:03 Starr. Chicken killers!

1:07:05 Chris. The number of chickens killed in the game is probably setting some kind of record. Speaking of chickens... For the PvP island started off on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, the frame-rate was fast for the first people in the map, then was slow for the rest. There was a bug... a chicken who was on a tiny little island, a small mountain sticking out in the water, was having a pathfinding error. This is happening in other maps too. But this was only happening to the second or third people in the map. In case people were wondering why the PvP island had a bad frame- rate. It was caused by a chicken trying to pathfind off the island.

1:08:08 Starr. That wasn't really answering a question.

1:08:17 Chris. Violation questions! In terms of what other people did, the numbers across the board were way up in terms of play time. Lots of people PvP-d and several thousand spent time PvE-ing. Haven't looked at quests or zones. Concurrency was up. Does he know how many hats were given away? Chris, looks to others, shaking their heads. Knows it was almost a thousand on Friday. He thought nobody would be able to get the hats because of the liches in the swamps who would kill them with a single hit. But people figured out how to do it.

1:09:23 Chris. What else? FireLotus. He narrowed it down to two. Crosstalk.

1:09:40 Starr. Amber Raine asks if they can get books standing up or have the ability to rotate things up and down. Yes, they just haven't gotten to it yet. Spoon has a suggestion for all of the devs to all play as pure mages, so the mages can get some love earlier. They know range and mage need some balance against melee. Torniquet asks if two story plaster wooden balcony house will have a fire in the fireplace. Yes there's already a bug report.

10:10:26 Chris. Archers are now weaklings with the movement penalty? Yes, he knows. They'll be giving bows and magic more love and they'll be nerfing things Starr loves dearly in the game.

1:10:45 Starr. He only loves and holds dearly the things that make him more powerful. So if there's other things that make him more powerful, he would love them equally.

1:10:55 Starr. Jack Knyfe asks about more player towns being added in R12. Yes. Expect to see the towns come back. And also, he put in a request so the town criers will give you more granular data about available lots. This ill give you descriptions of lots; such as row lots vs. village lots available, versus a general number of lots.

1:11:50 Chris. There was a complaint that in PvE someone could kill a lot with a dual wielding build, then was killed easily in PvP with a single swipe of a pole-arm against him. The person was probably wearing plate mail. Pole-arms have armor penetrating capability. Also there are many different weapons with invisible stats that players will have to figure out on their own over time; for example, weapons have different stats on how armor counts towards them. Those are made fairly logical to start off with, and then balanced out. Things that feel like they should penetrate do penetrate, those that don't.

1:12:42 Starr. A pole-arm, because of the puncture capability, in the first PvP release was the weapon of choice.

1:12:54 Chris. Combat needs tweaking? Absolutely. There's feedback asking for floating damage numbers. If they do that in bright colors with junk coming off of it and so on, like in other MMOs, it will definitely be made an option people can turn off and on. They definitely do need to give more feedback about whats going in combat, so players can tell when they're being effective. They're continuing on working on ways to solve this problem.

1:13:27 Starr. They already have a bit of tech for this. For instance, they have the ability to scale the size of blood spurts based on amount of damage, they just haven't built the assets to use in the game. They also have the ability to detect the direction, so the direction of the blood spurt will change. Same story. They have one guy whose doing that plus all the crafting stuff, etc.

1:14:08 Chris. How linked are SPO and MPO? As of yet, vendors did not get moved over to the scene server. There's a server for instances, plus scene servers that contained shared data. If you go into forest or shop, they're still not using share data. Vendors in R12 will carry shared items, that will be seen between instances. It'll be the same server used for decorations. In terms of resources — for more common stuff, the items vendors carry will be for instances, but rare items will be shared through the scene server, so there's one copy, and those items remain rare. The tech all exists, but they haven't implemented it yet.

1:15:34 Starr. Drocis is asking about fully furnished homes, and the decorating limits. Is there a plan to raise the limits? Yes. They'd like to relax the limits, but one of the biggest issues is memory and performance, and anyone who's tried to load Owl's Head has seen its created a direct impact on performance. They'd rather be more restrictive now and relax later than less restrictive now, and shrink the amount of stuff you can have later. What they don't want to do is make it worse than it is now, though they hope to loosen restrictions with optimizations. For some things, though, for it to get better than it is now would require increasing minimum requirements for the game.

1:16:51 Starr. MulGirtab asks about other input devices like game controllers. That's on their wish list. Alienware really wants the game on their box, so that's one of the things they push them towards periodically. The technical implementation isn't hard, but the design for it to work with the game is hard.

1:17:40 Chris. When will vendors come online? Starr. States he can look that up while Chris answers other questions.

1:18:02 Chris. Right now leveling is done by grinding, re-spawning, etc. Will this be in the final game? Starr apologizes that the camera was moved away from Chris, notes used same machine to look up master list for the schedule. There will be other ways to gain experience. They're trying to get all types of players opportunities to level up. Love will be given to everyone. Creature grinding will be one of the most brain-dead way to level up, but there has been talk of other ways even including active play time.

1:19:11 Chris. Level is not as important in this game, so grinding is not something you have to do. By design you can get about level 20, even in the final version, within about 10 hours of play. And you should be able to be competitive if you do PvP with level 20. If you get level 30 or 40 .. by level 30 you should be able to kill DarkStarr easily even if you're not very good.

1:19:44 Starr. Back to the question about vendors. Right now thats scheduled for R15, around February. But they can pull it in earlier, they will.

1:20:08 Chris. In terms of the magic system and finding things, they'll be doing changes. With what's up now, there's nothing about how you'll actually train. Says he knows this will shock everyone, but in the final game a player won't be able to allocate and un-allocate points instantly. This will hold true with all spells; you won't be able to start with all spells. Some you might not even be able to get from a trainer, and will have to find them or do something to acquire. The same goes for multiple levels. You might be able to get Fire Fist 1 easily, but getting level 6 might be more difficult. Up for debate whether the first pass for that will be made into next release. Probably not the final system. Lord Darkmoon asks if there will be more to finding spells than clicking here or there. You might have to craft things or do quests or find some specific person or unlock an item.

1:21:17 Starr. The general idea with the way skill acquisition is.... specialization of trainers will diversify the further you get in the game. At the begining there might be just two kinds or three kinds of trainers: combat, magic, and crafting. But from there, it'll get specialized by school, such as fire magic, blades, ... then it might get specialized by specific spell, like for the summon elemental spells. They've also talked about archetype trainers, which means trainers who have a mix of skills that compose "play archetypes"... like tank, or sword-wielding mage, or stealthy ranger. You'll be able to see by the skills he teaches what the optimum build for that play type is. They want to play with trainers and see how that works. Especially for high level skills, players might be required to do something before the trainers give you the skill... Turns to Chris, redirects to Violation's question.

1:23:08 Chris. There are things you can't take and zones you cant conquer in SPO. Definitely, in the final game that will be addressed, but for now — for example, with Vertas Pass — they don't expect a single player to take it. In SPO online, eventually they'll have some ways to balance it, but they wont have it for R12 or R13.,. it will be in next year, when they're able to add additional game mechanics.

1:23:51 Starr. In the long-term things like rate of resource spawn will be affected, there will be differences for SPO and MPO.

1:24:08 Chris. For the more rare resources, the rate wouldn't need to be changed, SPO would just share rare spawns with players in other instances.

1:24:23 Starr. They did a good job covering questions and went beyond time. To Chris, you're scanning?

1:24:38 Chris confirms. There's a list of ten pages of questions.

1:24:48 FireLotus. The hangout so far covered about the gist of it.

1:25:01 Chris. There were some questions on when /zone will be removed. That's talked about every release, its not removed in case something breaks. Maybe in the future will be some alternative, though. Its also good for GM events.

1:25:36 Starr. Although, for GM events, that slightly backfired on the MMORPG stream last night at Vertas Pass. They didn't see a single living elf the entire time because players would show up and crowd out their view and slaughter the elves.

1:26:02 Chris. They might make it so you can only zone to a GM, or they might have a server flag which can be enabled and disabled for everyone in case bugs come up. They still have /stuck, and the behavior of that has changed. In the long-term, they want some other game mechanic in to zone to someone in your party or guild, or to your house. They need to continue to work on the macro-economy stuff before that happens. Maybe not for R12; they don't know for sure yet.

1:26:57 Starr: What's going to happen when they get $5 million? There'll be a gift backers will receive at that mark. They're planning for Cyber Monday, the end of the 15% bonus. Will be a telethon that day with giveaways, cool prizes, from Plantronics, an Alienware desktop to give away, and a couple of peripherals. There'll be a big hulaballoo, not just about the $5 mil but also were they are and the Steam launch. There'll be a gift for everyone. He'd love to his their team a giant party, but they're hard core about where their dollars go.

1:28:13 Chris. Shows off a bottle of Glennfiddich single malt scotch whisky with a sticky note tacked on it from the fair Dame Lori, directing them to open it at the $5 million mark. This is from Dame Lori, she sent it months ago. When it was arrived it was in his office, and someone, who would remain un-named, drank about half of it in three nights before anyone noticed. Starr smiles. He guilted them, and they bought a whole new bottle of scotch. That's their open at $5 mil bottle of scotch. Thanks, Dame Lori. Predicts they'll be drinking it hopefully in the next day or two.

1:28:51 Starr. Any backers who were at their offices and has seen the kitchen area and coffee-maker has seen how hardcore they are about only spending dollars and directing the money to making the game and for nothing to make their lives easier. Anyone whose seen their black sludge ... coffee ... or looked in the microwave... knows how hardcore they are. Maybe at $5 mil he'll relent and let the team have a non-disgusting microwave. That's the big party they'll have.

1:29:28 Chris. The microwave besides being disgusting, the tray in it that turns is broken; it doesn't turn, it just sits there, so when you try to cook popcorn, you get it half done. And the coffee maker is disgusting... a $29 cast-off from somebody's wedding gift 20 years ago, its ridiculous. He keeps saying they'll do the $5 mil stretch goal of getting the coffee maker and the microwave, for a grand total of about $100 dollars, and they'll do a video of them bringing out the old ones into a field with a baseball bat, like in Office Space.

1:30:12 FireLotus. Would offer to come down to the office to clean it; that's one of the things she used to do because dirty microwaves annoyed her so much.

1:30:25 Starr, redirects to wrap things up. Chris. One or two more things here. One is Duke Violation asks if they don't have a K cup ? They don't even have a coffee service. They used to, but they were spending $300 to $400 a month on coffee and butter,so cancelled that. Now they order five-pound bags of beans from Amazon and those are ground in the office, so they feel special with fresh ground coffee.

1:30:51 Chris. Fizzling was cited as a big problem with armor. Shows a toddler's drawing of the magic skill wheel. Notes he's trying to do this lie a weather man, looking at it as he's looking the camera and figuring out whats going on. Acts like a weather man on TV. They're set up so that one side is really meant to be more tolerant of wearing heavy armor. So on one side, "light magic", there's meant to be no penalty or fizzle chance for wearing heavy armor. That can be set per spell, but its something that never made it into data. Earth and Water, as well as Life are going to be in the "light magic" category, and that corresponds to the traditional Priest or Paladin type archetypes you find in role-playing games... Then as you get into the Sun and the Moon, Imitating a weather man. ...and the cold front blowing in from the east... Returning to his tech director persona... They're going to be a little more tolerant. Then as you get into Fire, Death, and Air, those are going to be very intolerant of armor, and they have a high fizzle rate. Hopefully some of those numbers will be set in the next release. Life, Earth and Water, will have much reduced fizzle chance based on armor type. That fits with all the background and story, and hopefully people will see what hes been talking about. Again, being a weather man, not as easy as it looks!

1:32:55 Starr. Okay! Wrap it up! One just quick announcement before they go. Apologizes to people who have sent in report tickets that haven't been dealt with. Notes that they're a small team, spend 90% time on development, and they all wear multiple hats. FireLotus manages the community, does customer service tickets and writes a lot of content in game.

1:33:36 Chris interrupts Starr, showing an updated sketch with chaos symbol in the center. Starr. She also manages a lot of the volunteers for the community and moderators.Be patient. Some of those tickets and requests are causing duress, but they're tyring to address that as quickly as they can. Hopefully they'll be wildly successful on steam and they'll have more people to help with those kinds of support issues. Thanks the community, and says the community is making the game as much as the developers are. Thanks to players for giving feedback and reporting issue. Thanks to those who take time to read directions and whats in and out of the game., since answering questions takes time. It's the most amazing community he's been a part of.

1:34:59 Chris. Drocis had a question about Open PvP and rewards, either the next chat will be on economy, but there's not a simple answer to Open PVP flag. There'll probably be an open chat at some point about this.

1:35:23 Starr. Asks why Chris is supposed to punch him, and whether he's talking too loud.

1:35:28 FireLotus. People probably just want him to be punched.

1:35:32 Starr. Violation is trying to get Chris to him.

1:35:35 Chris punches Starr. Starr. Oh, that's not a punch! That's okay. He's frail. Too old and frail. Chris laughs as he leans back in his chair.

1:35:43 Chris. He didn't hear a thing Starr said, as he was reading the forums. Thanks everyone. He's been on the forums, but not as much as he'd like. Instead, he's been dealing with a lot of game issues. He's amazed with the both the patience of players, and the level of depth in terms of screenshots. He also saw maps of professional quality of the towns. Generally is amazed with the community that's formed around the project. He looks forward to R12 for a number of reasons. There'll probably will need a wipe before R12. Starr interjects. Sorry. Chris. But there'll be more villages, and they'll do what they can to help people doing heavy building of stuff as much as possible. People should keep in mind R12 will be live for a while before it goes on Steam, so people should build their stuff up in that period. Starr interjects. Four days, shows four fingers. Chris. They'll do what they can to help everyone rebuild everything. Starr punches Chris. Chris. What the? Starr. Amber directed him to show him what a punch was. That was slightly less frail than the other one.

1:37:32 Starr. He's looking forward to seeing how new members of the community are going to add to things. He's optimistic. So far, the experience has been incredibly positive. He's looking forward to random encounters on overworld. Hopefully that will be in. Starr crosses fingers, and Chris nods. He's looking forward to filling out more of the combat tree, so blades isn't the only viable school. And also, making it so magic and ranged folks get some balancing, and so buffs are more useful. Any improvement would be more useful.

1:38:37 FireLotus. Thanks the dev team, and community for taking the time to do everything; to tune in and ask questions, and give comment, and feedback. That makes them able to do a better job and make a better game.

1:39:17 Chris devilishly gets the last word!

 

tl;dr went to watch hangout instead... lol

 

Thank you, Redfish!

 

@Redfish, you are awesome.

Thanks!.

 

Thanks redfish

 

This is a great service you are doing, especially for the non-English speaking members who relies on translating text.

 

Many thanks OP!

 

Getting close to the 5M mark. Wonder what the gift will be!

 

Neon hair and black blessed sandals

 

thank you redfish!!

 

thanks, I lol'd about the part of those who only fought chickens. Hopefully they will soon learn how to get stronger.

 

I really appreciate that recap Redfish. My duty computer can't play videos. They installed some sort of video-blocking software to keep us from goofing off while on duty - so your thread was a great work-around from me working. lol

 

Actually most of the time I prefer reading to watching videos, and that's why I don't regularly listen to podcasts. It takes a lot longer to watch a video.

I don't mind watching the SotA dev team of course :>

 

I had the same reaction. It really should be a SotA tradition to slaughter every live chicken in the game. Like an obligation.

How did the chicken in SotA cross the road? He didn't, he was DEAD.

 

I believe the chickens got the last laugh. In return for their brethren being slaughtered they dropped peoples ffs. They are more cunning than physical appearances would lead you to believe.

 

Maybe they're Zelda players. Now they just need the ability to throw chickens.

 

Thanks Redfish for the transcript - it helps a lot because I don't have time to watch videos. I read a lot faster so this is great for me.

Aside to that, I'm hugely pleased that there will be no universal auction house system. This is a bold (and very good IMO) step forward!

 

Starr & Chris mentioned the deplorable conditions the Dev Team trudges through day in and day out, having to take turns as baristas in house and dealing with burnt popcorn. Is there a list of things the team could really use?

Christmas time is around the corner and we all know that folks appreciate the simple things while working. Maybe the community can get together and send some token's of appreciation y'alls way to show our support.

Spero

 

Cheap instant noodles and even cheaper whiskey. I think they can subsist on that until they ship.

 

Maybe a big tin of home baked cookies, a big tin of coco. Ect.