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| Weekly Development Activities |
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Date: 07-07-2006 |
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| Summary: |
Author: Turbine
Check out the latest updates to the "Weekly Development Activities." The goal for this feature is to give solid expectations on what you can expect to see in future updates.
In QA:
These items are in QA and should be a part of the next update.
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UI
NEW - The Guild message of the day will be able to contain punctuation.
NEW - We have changed the text of the in-game help request for "Stuck" to reflect the best procedure to follow if you get stuck somewhere in-game. Previously the instructions directed players to log out of the game, which is not the best course of action. Instead you should submit a help request and wait for assistance.
General
NEW - In order to bring the stealth and invisibility system closer to the D&D Core Rulebooks, we\‘ve redesigned how the systems work.
Monsters that think they have detected a hidden target will no longer unerringly home in on the stealthed character; rather they will rely on a "best guess" to target where they logically believe the character to be.
Invisibility, rather than being complete undetectability, now routes through the stealth system as Hide and Move Silently do. When using invisibility, you will now have to make a stealth check with a +20 bonus. Invisibility does not grant Move Silently, and so you are advised to activate stealth when you are invisible.
Both invisibility and stealth now contain detaunt elements when you are in a party. Opponents will prefer to attack targets that are visible, and if they cannot find you they will eventually give up, rather than omnisciently hunting you over long distances.
Read more about the Invisibility changes here
Vendors and NPC\‘s
The Jewelry and Clothing Pawnbrokers will be moving to the Marketplace Tent. Vendors selling non-magical consumable goods will take their place in the House shops.
We will be correcting some of the (now) incorrect NPC dialogue following the recent relocation of several quest NPCs.
Scrag the kobold will be fixed so that he can talk to more than one player at a time.
NEW - Sailor Calatin of Smuggler\‘s Rest will be moving down the dock next to the Rook\‘s Gambit Tavern. He will be more centrally located so that you can choose to skip the class-specific tutorials and head directly to Stormreach if you want. However, we still recommend running through the class tutorials that can be found in the buildings behind the Rook\‘s Gambit.
Items
NEW - Permanently damaged items will reduce in value at a slower rate.
The variety of Bane/Greater Bane/Slaying arrows and bolts will be significantly increased. Additionally, we will be adding Bane and Greater Bane missiles to the loot tables for chests.
Warforged Oil (Drink) will be significantly improved so that it is comparable in effectiveness to similar to non-oil drinks of equivalent cost.
The Brooch of Waterbreathing will once again have a 90 second effect.
Players will no longer find Slaying arrows that don\‘t have killable monsters associated with them.
Hold Person scrolls will now be available for sale with the rest of the level 3 Arcane Scrolls.
We are changing the description of some resistance items to help clarify stacking. For example "of resistance" items do not stack with items that give a bonus to a specific category of saves (i.e. will saves).
There is the possibility that some items have been created that cast Fireshield. Fireshield has not been fully implemented into the game and does not return damage to enemies that attack a fireshielded character. These items will no longer be created, but Fireshield items already in existence will not be changed. Fireshield does reduce damage from fire while it is in effect.
Holy, Axiomatic, and Anarchic weapons no longer display the Immune message when a player of the correct alignment equips them.
The Brooch of Shielding and Raktu\‘s Trifle will no longer display an alert icon for their Magic missile shielding effects.
Any new Docents of Filtration will be properly identified as docents.
Any new Thanatos Weave Robes will be properly identified as robes.
Quests
We will be adding a rest shrine near the Black Heart Encampment in the Jungle of Khyber.
When we made the recent adjustments to the difficulty of the kobolds in the Old Sully\‘s Grog quests, we neglected to adjust the level of the kobold in part 1. He will now be the same difficulty level as the other kobolds.
Combat
We will be making some improvements to combat feedback for critical hits.
We will be changing the tooltip description for the Power Attack feat to help clarify that this feat only applies to melee attacks. We will also be changing the language of several additional tooltips to help make sure their meaning is clear as well.
Monsters
The Conjured Spiders in Euphonia\‘s Challenge have had their AC reduced. This should reduce the amount of time it takes new players to take these spiders down.
Performance
We are fixing a graphics memory leak that causes performance to severely degrade over time, eventually causing instability or crashes. This should also help alleviate "hitching."
NEW - In a continued effort to help our dial-up players we will be making some further reductions to bandwidth usage. All players should see some benefit from this reduction.
Fixing a bug that sometimes causes players to crash while teleporting.
We have added or corrected several focus orb images.
Under Development:
These items are currently in development and are scheduled for the Twilight Forge Module or later.
(Please note: this is just the second installment in the extremely lengthy list of fixes and changes that we are working on for the Twilight Forge Module. This is just the beginning.)
UI Improvements
Alerts for "Missing Spell Component" will now list what the missing component is.
UPDATED - The "/help alias" description of the /alias command is being updated to properly reflect /alias\‘ capabilities.
NEW - There is now an option to ignore all guild invites.
NEW - Guild invites from squelched players will now be ignored.
NEW - The correct error message will now be displayed if your guild invite expires.
NEW - If you die from constitution damage you will no longer have an ability damage icon appear on your screen after you have resurrected.
NEW - In order to explain the death penalty more clearly, the Death Penalty tooltip will be changed to read "You are significantly below the minimum amount of experience points required for your level. Your maximum hit points and spell points have been reduced, and you suffer a penalty to your attack rolls, saves, skills, and caster level."
General
You will now be able to log out while incapacitated.
You will no longer be able to be both exhausted and fatigued; exhaustion will remove and block fatigue.
NEW - The upper limit of 40 on skills will be removed.
NEW - We are changing the way "Over Time" spells and effects work. The intervals will be closer together (i.e., 2 seconds instead of 6 seconds), but will do less damage/benefit during each interval. There will be no change to the total amount of damage/benefit, this is purely a change to how the damage/benefit is spread out over time. This change also applies to the way lava does damage over time.
NEW - Owing to their construct nature, Warforged will find that they are able to hold their breath under water significantly longer than they could before.
Combat
NEW - All races will be able to cause damage when they attempt to attack while sneaking with a shield.
The display for your party member\‘s HP/SP bars will refresh more frequently.
We are fixing a display issue where the damage over time component of Slicing Blow isn\‘t displaying properly (please note: the DOT is occurring properly, it just isn\‘t displaying properly.).
Enhancements
Warforged with Improved Fortification will no longer be healed, even if they have taken the "Healer\‘s Friend" enhancement.
Items
We have fixed a display error in the description text for mithril armor where the text stated that mithril armor was a medium armor instead of a light armor. This was a text error only and will not change performance.
Spells
NEW - We are fixing a problem where holy smite is not properly stunning evil creatures.
NEW - Lightning bolt and flaming sphere would periodically hit targets more than once. This issue will be fixed.
NEW - The Divine power spell is being fixed to properly apply the correct amount of temporary hit points to its target.
NEW - We are fixing the Bard song "Inspire Greatness" and the spell "Greater Heroism" so that their greatness effects will no longer prematurely end when the bonus temporary hit points are used up.
Melf\‘s Acid Arrow is having its look and effects changed so that it appears bigger and brighter.
We are fixing an issue where if you\‘ve been hit by multiple blindness spells, all of the spells would end as soon as the first spell expired. Now your full sight won\‘t be restored until the final blindness effect has ended.
The "doom" spell will now properly give you a -2 to your attack rolls (as per D&D rules).
Having the benefit "Improved Heightening" will no longer give a discount to spells that are already maximum level.
The poison spell will now show immunity effects if cast on an immune target.
When you resist a spell due to an item of spell resistance, it will now send feedback to the combat chat tab.
Monsters
MOVED FROM "IN QA"- The Guardian of the Seal of Shan-to-Kor will now be less likely to walk on top of people (float) during combat.
NEW - Xorian skeletons will no longer be immune to fire.
NEW - Casting "Blind" on Velah the Dragon will have no effect.
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