R45 Instructions

I'll respond but I didn't' get back on n QA for the last 4 or five patches so things may have changed a bit.

Overall you are correct, it may swing the power to locked decks. Time will tell. However, there are two distinct drawbacks.mfirst you have to deal with the heat system. The heat system didn't go away. So the second time you stack / charge your glyph, it uses more focus than the first time.

The second drawback is the the number of charges that will stack is dependant on the heat cool down. So you are likely to only stack 4 charges right after the first use. When the heat system provides makes another glyph available it will increase by one then.

I also know they made another change that is in the QA thread, but never got to test it out. It seemed to imply that the stacks may not be as powerful as the unlocked stack. When the system first went in, the stack were as powerful as the unlocked stack. I'm not sure of that status now though.

 

Until it falls off the page due to new content, then you're left with your google foo to find what you're looking for, easier to just search the forum.

 

Step 1: Eliminate the focus tree skills that allowed for altering of deck size and draw speed (long time ago).
Step 2: Add a mixed locked deck option.
Step 3: Add the heat system.
Step 4: Add "hold a glyph down instead of stacking" = does same thing.

Card combat officially neutered. Can't even pretend we have something unique anymore. Won't be long till it's discarded. Pun intended. Hard to know what to think. At least I won't be watching the combat bar anymore?

 

I appreciate that, but sometimes I'm looking to find when/if something happened and it may have been 3 releases ago or 10, and I don't want to search each post - whereas a forum search (as long as I'm looking for a keyword of appropriate length) will pull up all past mentions of something by particular devs.

 

How doea that change the fact that 4 locked slots accopmlish what 8 unlocked do for max efficiency? Why wouls i ever in my unlocked deck run 5x healing ray in 2 areas.. opposed to 1 locked now? Guatenteed 5 stack on demand.. 1 slot.. no randomness vs 2 slots needed.. 5x cards /20.. plus the neeex to manually stack it 5x???

This sounds massivly unbalanced to me! Eszentially i cam run 10x glyphs guarentees 5x stacks or better yet heat system vs.. the equivalent of 5x10 =50 cards unlocked for the same effect..on the same cooldown!??!?


Edit..
Seruously.. someone break down why i woudlnt respec my deck before i test this.. as the written seems prettty mssivly unbalanced to me!

 

So is it balanced and im mis reading or is it unbalanced and the tech is the priority here??

Enlighten me as i cant test for a day or 2.. but read my other comment.

Please give me a rough idea how im mis reading this and in reality its better.

 

But in an unlocked u still have individusl cool downs per card..

So if i lock and use x5.. its same as if i have 5x cards .. manually stack using multiple slots.. then use..

How is unlocked equal in this situation? Heat system allows a guarentee ovious timer.. as unlockd is insividual card based on top of random draw...

Seriously.. i cant test till tommorow.. tell me this is better then it reads.

 

Good stuff in r45, thank you Portalarium-Team for the hard work.

 

@MrBlight, I wpn't make a judgement on its use one way or the other, there are plenty of others that I sure will rant about this system just fine.

On the other hand after using it on QA, I will still be using a hybrid deck. as a blade user I use my main weapon skills as they come up, I don't stack them So thrust, double slash, whirling blades, and others I still want to come up as dealt cards. I found when I tried to stack them when they were locked, I was spending more time waiting for a glyph to be ready so I couldn't use it right away. On the other hand I put coup de grace as a locked glyph so I could fire off a 5 stack without having to wait for all of them to come up. And then I could fire a 4 stack right away. I see that as a win-win situation as I can use the locked glyph stacking to my advantage when necessary. For others it will be different.

 

@MrBlight

I agree as well it certainlty swings alot more power to locked skills, and just as I did with the heat system, I will be changing my deck based on this ability (on a per skill basis).

Free draw skills still have the advantage of having more than 10 skills available with only 10 slots. Free draw skills are still the only way to make combo's, and theres some other not so obvious benefits like fizzling on a manually 5 stacked card you don't really suffer a penalty, you just spam the button again (for charged up card it fizzles and you need to spend time to recharge).

However, I think that the amount of heat that is placed on the slot when you charge it up is wrong, as I can 5 charge then immediately 4 charge, followed by an immediate 3 charge and then a 2 charge, which I'm pretty sure I can't come close to stacking that much power with a draw deck with cooldowns.

Needs some balance but I like the change still.

 

You can also have multiple skills stacked and ready to go with an unlocked deck. That is not possible with a locked deck.

 

I was slightly jealous of those getting the new Event Cloaks.

Now..... not so much!

 

"Performance: Significant focus will continue to be made on performance improvements, including stability, framerate, memory, and load times."

Love it. Great work.
A new update is always exciting.

 

No recipe for a craftable Quiver?

ps.
The missing SotAmap integration under Linux is not in the Known Issues.

 

And by parties, I assume you mean human sacrifices, etc...

 

@MrBlight, and one thing that I forgot to mention is that there is a charge time. It's not like you hit the key and, boom you have a five stack of something. YOu have to go through a charging period before you get a 5 stack. I suspect that Chris made it so that that time can vary based on the type of skill (ie. power based charge). So I believe they can vary the charge time for different glyphs.

 

Wait, seriously? Someone requested that? What if I'm knee deep in a quest and I won't be able to leave the area to find an Oracle for a few days?

 

I wonder who requested it. The daily log in XP should have been a separate entity from your test from the Oracle but just a thought. I usually log out home though and the Oracle is almost across the street from my in game home.

 

Unfortunately we ran out of time working on it because of the Norgard work, Tree Creature, and the Perforce issues. We will have it ready for R46.

 

Looks like it was changed back - or will be soon. <-edit

however after reviewing this change the time required to get to and from the Oracle to gain the reward was offsetting the value of the reward too much so we are going to change this back to getting rewarded at login for Release 46. Please accept our apologies for the change back and forth on this.