Ask the Devs 4 Transcript
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ASK THE DEVS 4
RECORDED FOR DDOcast, EPISODE 72
AIR DATE: Sunday, July 15th, 2008
www.ddocast.com
Host: Jerry Snook
Jerry: All right, got our fourth segment of "Ask the Devs" here ready to go and we've got quite a few folks from Turbine with us this week. I really want to thank everyone for being on the show. Let's go on down the list - first off is Merlask...no, wait a second - Tolero!
Tolero: Now, now, you all should know by now that's Tolero.
Jerry: I know, I just say that on purpose here. We miss ya! How ya doing there?
Tolero: Not bad, how are you doing Jerry?
Jerry: Doing really good. Also with us is lead designer Eladrin. Welcome back to "Ask the Devs" here Eladrin.
Eladrin: Thanks!
Jerry: Also with us is Theragrim - return visit to DDOcast.
Theragrim: Thanks for having me, Jerry.
Jerry: With us here is Django - how ya doing?
Django: Good, good to be here.
Jerry: And a first time on DDOcast, I really do appreciate it. Also with us is Torc, how ya doing, Torc?
Torc: I'm doing well, thank you very much.
Jerry: Great to have you on the show. And finally here, the third new person to "Ask the Devs" this week is Flimsy Firewood. How you doing?
Flimsy: Doing all right, thanks. How about you?
Jerry: Doing real good, really appreciate you taking a few minutes for us. Couple more folks to mention here. Returning back to "Ask the Devs" is Glin, how ya doing Glin?
Glin: Doing good, staying cool...In fact I'm going to try to speak like Eldorudo here for the whole podcast, just to stay cool...
Jerry: Nice. And, uh, yeah - speaking of cool voices here - Eldorudo. How you doing Eldorudo?
Eldorudo: And I'm going to try to do my best Glin impersonation, which I probably won't do very good....(laughter)
Jerry: Nice.
Glin: So you're going to be real sarcastic, huh?
Jerry: Thanks everyone for being on the show. We really do appreciate it. Let's get right to the questions here.
Our first question comes from Hakuna Mutata who says, "Would it be possible to add a low level raid, so twelve people can have fun questing together at once?" This guy is suggesting levels 4 to 6, potentially something based on Searing Heights, now that the Twelve has been opened.
I know we've talked about this a little bit in the past, but what do you think? Any considerations? Any change of thoughts on that one?
Torc: I guess I'll field this. Because of the recent creation of a quest called "Devil Assault", something like this might be possible down the road. What "Devil Assault" did is it allowed us to make a relatively level-neutral quest that could expand throughout the level ranges, and, uh, we might be interested in trying to do something like that again except with a raid. This would make something available potentially to that level range.
Jerry: Ah, that would be excellent! I know, myself, I think a lot of people would really like that, that would be pretty interesting. I like that whole "Devil Assault" thing, it was pretty cool, so...
All right, the next question here comes from Suemo, who says, "There have recently been some features added to Lord of the Rings Online like clothing, character customization, player housing, etcetera, that have been requested by the DDO community. In general (he asks), how easy is it to port things over from Lord of the Rings Online than, say, creating it from scratch?"
Is the technology somewhat similar, is it a lot more difficult to do. I mean, how difficult is it to bring some of that LOTRO stuff over to DDO?
Glin: Basically, uh, porting over LOTRO tech suffers by evolution by convergence. So, they may have something in there that, uh, is based on the Turbine proprietary code. They've been integrated into their system, which has started with the same roots. Like our mail system, for example, between the games is similar. But, for the most part we can't just "port" something over like a copy-paste. But there's been a lot of things that we have traded back and forth that were not too heavy, like the live event system for example is one that was originally created for the LOTRO game. And then there's things that are Turbine engine, so it's the larger engineering tasks that aren't specific to the game content, like DX10 support, which DDO is going to have a Beta in an upcoming release.
Jerry: Cool, cool. You know we did have an email here also to "Ask the Devs" where someone suggested about the possibility of maybe bringing in the grass and tree leaf tech from Lord of the Rings Online. I know that they in particularly like the kind of the way the grass sways in that particular game, and that sort of thing.
Glin: Yeah, actually, Necropolis-Orchard of the Macabre already has some of that in there. Um, so that's something the moving trees, the moving grass, that's something that's been in recent modules. You will definitely be seeing more of that as we take advantage of the DX10 support, probably this fall.
Jerry: Sure. All right, next question. Mapa asks, "Why is the preferred weapon of a Paladin of the Undying Court a scimitar, but all racial weapon enhancements are for long sword, rapier and short sword? Are more enhancements coming to make my elven pally want to pick up a scimitar?"
(chuckles) I don't actually know this one myself. This one is a little over my head, I think. Preferred weapon of the Paladin of the Undying Court a scimitar? Racial weapon enhancements, long sword, rapier, short sword. I guess he's wondering if any, uh, we might be seeing some enhancements for Paladins or elves that would encourage them to pick up a scimitar?
Eladrin: At the moment I don't have any plans on doing that, but it's possible if there's a desire for it. The Paladin of the Undying Court receives the scimitar as it's favored weapon because that's the favored weapon of the Undying Court. Similarly, the poor drow should be very happy that they didn't receive a kama, the favored weapon of the Vulkoor.
Jerry: Yeah. All right, Talyn asks, uh, "Can we have the ability to cancel buffs?"
Eladrin: Maybe!
Glin: The work involved in something like that...I realize where that would be appreciated in the live events, in the particular example that that player asked about. But, uh, it would be a lot of work for a rare occasion, where it wouldn't have a lot of benefits in a party to "shake a buff". Uh, if we some, uh, more timing-based things like an obstacle course where you had to go slow and you were hasted and had to wait for that to
wear off. I mean that would be that kind of rare occasion. I don't know where too much strength is a bad thing in any place in the game, for example...
Jerry: Yeah.
Glin: I just think it would be a low return on investment.
Jerry: Sure.
Glin: To add that sort of ability, given the chance for it to have ill effect in the gameplay itself.
Jerry: Sure. Let me just mention since I forgot to actually include that part of the question - he specifically did mention in his question here about the anniversary event where people were trying to casting haste on others trying to climb up that tower there.
All right, next question comes from Lowell who says, "When can we see some different weapons? Things like pole arms, elven thin blade..."
Theragrim: It really depends on the specific weapons. Something like the elven thin blade it's possible that we might be able to do something like that. It would probably be something kind of akin to one of the, say, shining crescents. Sort of a one-off or something like that, or possibly a piece of specific named loot. But the possibilities of pole arms are less likely just because of the animation time and things of that sort.
Jerry: All right, not sure who might be able to field this next one. This one comes from Ustice. You might have some idea what he's asking about if you've read his posts on the ddo.com forums and that is: "Why is it taking so long to replace the favicon on the forums?" This guy wants a favicon!
Tolero: That's all me. It's one of those things where a lot of people I've gotten pokes from people saying "just load the favicon up!" and it's really not that simple. There's a lot of processes on the side of things, and everything has to be scheduled and a lot of times higher priority things get pushed in front of little things like that. But that doesn't mean I've forgotten about it! Uh, I have it and a few more forum avatars coming, so just keep your eyes peeled and one day you'll look up and there will be your favicon.
Jerry: All right, next question did not have a name attached to it, but this person asks, "Are there any thoughts on going back to spreading out the content a bit more?" You know, a while back you guys moved from having, say, point-one updates to solid number updates, you know, basically consolidating these smaller updates into larger updates like what we saw with Mod 7 here.
Any thought, this guy's asking, about maybe going back to the old way of doing thing?
Torc: Well, if I'm reading the question right he's actually talking about rolling out kind of what we're already making gradually. Um, I mean taking an existing module and like we don't release the raid, we don't release The Shroud in the Vale of Twilight until like a month after we've released the first part, if I'm reading this question correctly.
Jerry: Yeah, that's right. This person did suggest, uh, "as opposed to, say, having 12-15 quests with a wilderness area and a raid on a Mod, why not do a wilderness area with five quests one month, open the other ten quests the next month and then add the raid the following month?" I guess sort of spreading out that sort of idea maybe rather than one big lump, kind of doing that more frequently.
Torc: It's an interesting idea, though, like my, you know, just total "gut reaction" to it is that most of the players who are biting at the bit to play this content, they will immediately race through the dungeons and hit that line and be waiting to play the raid immediately within that first week. I just, just imagine what Mod 6 would have been like if we did that, I think a lot of people would have been waiting. Um, uh, I'm not sure...yeah.
Eldorudo: Just to add to that Jerry we sort of did that in Module 7 when we sort of had the big race to unlock the Subterrane. I know it wasn't spread out over weeks and months but at least we had an opportunity for players to unlock content at their own rate, so. I think that went pretty successfully, so we'll kind of evaluate and go from there and maybe we'll do some more stuff along those lines.
Jerry: Sure.
Eladrin: And it gave Thelanis a chance to show their dominance.
Eldorudo: Ghallanda was pretty close.
Jerry: I thought us Sarlonians were going to win it, but, uh, what can I say...
Tolero: I thought it was really close.
Jerry: Yeah, absolutely, that was pretty cool, that's for sure.
Uh, just a couple more things to bring up. Tolwyn asks "How about a true castle quest? We have had to defend an outpost a few times (like Kobold Assault), but how about a quest where toons have to sneak into a castle and could be outside on the walls and then get inside to take something or stop a kind, etc? Perhaps even a quest where monsters are trying to protect an item, caravan, NPC, like we have had to do before?
Glin: I can hear the DM text now, "Have fun storming the castle!"
(laughter)
Eladrin: Sounds a bit like Splinterskull to me.
Jerry: That's right, that's right, you know, I guess Splinterskull would probably apply there too.
Eldorudo: A lot of the actual things you just asked in that question we have in the game, actually. It's just, we don't have a, you know, "a castle quest", but, um, we actually, in Module 9 we are going to be going to Shavarath. I know this doesn't necessarily answer the question, but it'll be a little nugget of info here, so, and that should have some pretty epic encounters in it. We have some cool things that we're already planning, um, so that should be a properly epic for everyone.
Jerry: Now, I know that this isn't obviously a castle, but a bit like Meridia in the Vale of Twilight could maybe be the setting of some kind of attack as well. That's a bit castle-like. I don't know, ya know, just a thought I guess.
All right, let's just kind of go around the room here. Wanted to ask a bit of a casual question as we're wrapping up this week's "Ask the Devs". Wanted to ask you guys what in particular - you - liked best about Mod 7. Mod 7 of course recently released here and, uh, I'm sure having a good time with it, I figured you guys are too. So, let me just kind of ask ya: What is your favorite bit about Mod 7?
Eladrin: Abundant step.
Jerry: Yeah? (chuckles) That's a good one. I think a lot of people are going to agree with you on that one there.
Eladrin: Except for the people who hate it.
Jerry: Yeah, that's true.
Glin: Who hates abundant step?
Jerry: Yeah, I don't know.
Tolero: Yeah, you can't hate abundant step. If you've seen it in action, it's just way too cool.
Django: Um, yeah, there's a personal part. I don't know if anyone's actually seen it yet. Uh, there's a certain area of Three Barrel Cove that you might find a certain individual stalking you. If anyone does find him, I'd love to see a post.
Jerry: Oh, that's uh, cryptic and interesting.
Flimsy Firewood: I liked a couple things in that module. For one, that was the first Module I was working on with Turbine. But, uh, we had a lot of success I guess with the
Three Barrel Cove area, because it had this "feel good" feeling to it about going back to old content and putting new life into it. That was, uh, something that we accomplished very well. And, Django here, was the person who built the landscape from scratch.
Jerry: Yeah!
Flimsy Firewood: The other thing that I was kind of watching carefully, on the live servers was the secret vault in the Subterrane area. Only a very few people actually got into that, and there is a sort of a mystery about how to get to it, because it's not...well, I actually can't say too much about how to get there because that would be telling.
Jerry: Sure, want to keep the secret there.
Flimsy Firewood: Yeah, yeah.
Jerry: Sure.
Eldorudo: And, Jerry, I think my favorite thing is the "spamming buddy list bug".
Jerry: (laughs)
Eldorudo: Actually, no. I'm just kidding. I would have to say the revamp of Three Barrel Cove. I think it's just beautiful. Keeper and Django did a wonderful job on the landscape, and I also had a lot of fun doing the three new quests that we worked on. I think my favorite part is Penzance, I had a lot of fun doing the "piratey speak" for him. So, that's probably my personal favorite. But I think overall it was a really fun area to work on.
Jerry: Yeah, my personal favorite is probably Three Barrel Cove as well. I mean I like the monks, and I like the other stuff too, but there was just something about Three Barrel that really just appeals to me.
Theragrim: I was actually really happy about the ability to start making item sets and things of that sort. It's just some new item tech that we just got and I'm looking forward to using it in the future a little more.
Eladrin: I like itty-bitty beholders.
Jerry: Yeah, the mini-beholders, huh?
Eladrin: and dogs that bark bees. Oh, they don't know about that yet. (laughs)
Tolero: Oh noes!
Jerry: Are you serious?
Tolero: Maybe.
Eladrin: Maybe!
Jerry: You know someone did bring up, not sure if you saw on the forums, about the, the, uh, mindflayers, when they suck up the warforged. There's a video on YouTube about that one there. I don't know if you guys are aware of that.
Eladrin: Oh, yeah, we did that back in Module 2, that's old hat.
Jerry: Oh is it? Well, I hadn't seen it before.
Tolero: Think my favorite thing and it's kind of oddball thing compared to the bigger, grander things that are really awesome, but my favorite thing is the custom chat channels. Um, back when I was doing player things I would have loved to have had a channel where I could make an event channel, keep from spamming the general channel, get all my buddies together, make alliances. And the users have really latched onto it. I noticed that, uh, a lot of the Ghallanda folks made a raid channel and went in and were organizing together in their custom chat channel to help get everybody motivated to unlock the race.
Jerry: Ah, yeah. That's interesting. I myself I really haven't had a chance to check out the custom chat channels too much, but it is certainly a cool idea. Thanks for bringing that, too.
Glin: My favorite thing is definitely monks in general. A couple of the more subtle things, though, is I love the slow fall animation, that, uh, pulled right out of the cinema and onto our screen. And then, um, I'm trying really hard (and Eladrin didn't make it easy), to get a monk that can do whirlwind attack.
Tolero: It looks awesome.
Glin: Really cool, and I really want a build on live that can do that.
Eladrin: Yeah, I totally didn't make that easy on you, do I?
Glin: It's like, "Intelligence is a dump stat?"
Jerry: Uh oh.
Tolero: Yeah, I have a monk that can do that and if you can get a monk that can do it it looks really neat.
Jerry: Huh.
Eladrin: Oh, and did I forget about my other favorite thing about the mod? Did I mention Thelanis' dominance of the race?
Glin: Oh, you mean the live event.
Jerry: Yeah, but it's all because of the Xoriat folks on there, right?
Eldorudo: (jokingly), Oh, you mean that Thelanis cheated and Ghallanda was screwed?
Glin: Wait, you're not bringing up the fact that I tried to help Argonnessen on Thursday, are you?
Eldorudo: I wasn't going to, since you do bring it up...
Theragrim: By "tried to help", do you mean failed the dragon raid?
Jerry: Yeah! (laughs)
Glin: As in trying to qualify my alts on Argo, instead, yeah.
Tolero: Traitor!
Glin: Oh, c'mon.
Eladrin: Don't let the devs in your party.
Glin: That's true.
Eladrin: It'll only end in tears.
Jerry: This question's out of the blue, so I don't know if you guys want to address it, but do you think we might see something more in that respect in the future here? Could we see potentially another kind of race or live event tech involving some kind of inter-server competition?
Eladrin: It was a lot of fun this time, so I wouldn't be surprised to see something like it in the future.
Jerry: Sure.
Eladrin: It may be a little bit longer, cuz this one only lasted a few days. Maybe a week or so.
Jerry: Did you expect it to last that long, or did people surprise you?
Glin: We expected another week, overall. I think we didn't take into account all of the alts that were ready, and overall I know a lot of people (like I was able to get a level 8 Bard to go along on a couple of parties just to catch tokens), because people don't really need twelve people to run those raids, so you can bring on some low levels. Didn't really account for all of those things as well. So they definitely cleared through those quests very quickly.
Jerry: Yeah.
Glin: Which was great. I mean I'm much happier that they got in there fast, as opposed to dragging it on a week, and everybody was in by the weekend, which was great.
Tolero: Even watching it before we got the first graph out, I was surprised at just how much movement there was. Even before I got the graph out, Khyber was in the lead, and then all of a sudden Ghallanda came rolling up, and then all of a sudden Thelanis came up, and there was a lot of movement up and down and that made it a lot more fun and exciting to watch. If it would have been one set pace and no movement at all, then that would be a little bit boring.
Jerry: Yeah, maybe you guys should have had the turn-in for that Abbot token?
Eladrin: Yeah, we should have actually, considering how many times the Abbot's been beaten this week.
Jerry: Yeah, I've heard that. I've heard that. I mean, you guys are obviously more on top of that than I am, but is that the case? I mean, have we seen the Abbot get beaten this week?
Eladrin: Oh yeah, and people found some of the new raid loot in there.
Jerry: Cool.
Tolero: Ironically, Argo was all over that.
Jerry: Huh, wow. Well, I guess I'm going to have to head back in there and, well, probably get stomped. But maybe not!
Eladrin: Bring your monk.
Jerry: Yeah! Well, actually, my monk's only level 2.
Glin: There's definitely a difficulty difference in the Abbot, and we didn't set up the tech to have a variance in how many coins or tokens need to be collected in the raids, so we didn't include it because we didn't want to have to have people have to run it as many times, that would have extended the event longer. However, we probably would have
only gotten another week out of it, in hindsight, because people are able to run it now. And enough level 16's can get in there and run it that it's probably less of an issue.
Jerry: All right, well I think I've taken about as much time of you guys as I can this time around. I really do appreciate you guys taking some time with us for "Ask the Devs" on DDOcast. I know the players like to be able ask you these things, and we of course like to have you on the show as well. So let me go down the list here: uh, thanks very much Eladrin I really do appreciate everything you guys have been doing here.
Eladrin: It's fun, that's why I keep coming.
Jerry: Cool. Also, uh, Theragrim. Welcome back to DDOcast and thanks for being on.
Theragrim: Thanks for having me, it was a lot of fun.
Jerry: All right. And the new guys! Well, not new to Turbine, but new to DDOcast. It's great to have you on Django, Torc, Flimsy Firewood. Cool to be able to connect a voice to the name there.
Django: Thanks Jerry.
Flimsy: Thanks for having us.
Torc: Yeah, thank you.
Jerry: And producer Glin there, thanks for being on the show as always.
Glin: Sure, hope to be back the next time around.
Jerry: Eldorudo. Thanks for being on the show - any plans, have you given any thought to GenCon again this year? I know you went last year.
Tolero: Muahahaha.....quiet!
Jerry: Oh, okay.
Eldorudo: Well, I don't have any firm plans yet, but I do hope to be there. I just haven't made any commitments. But yeah, I do hope to go. I've been there the past two years and I really enjoyed myself there. I assume you're going to be going there, Jerry?
Jerry: Oh, yeah. I've got all my four-day tickets and me and the wife will both be there having a lot of fun I'm sure.
Eldorudo: Excellent, well I do hope to see you there then.
Glin: DDO does plan to be at GenCon and PAX this year.
Jerry: Really? Hmm. Well.
Glin: That's our plans.
Jerry: Cool, cool. And finally here, Tolero, I'm sure you'll probably be at GenCon too, huh?
Tolero: Oh, yeah, just keep your eye on the forums. We'll have more information regarding all the places we'll be visiting coming up. We do still have the forum for our live real-world events, so just keep your eyes peeled and as we draw closer we'll have more information for you.
Jerry: Cool. Well, thanks everyone for being on the show this week.
END
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Just a note that if you'd like to submit a question for "Ask the Devs", just send it to ddocast@gmail.com. Please include a name or character name that I can use to identify you on the air, although it's not necessary, just helpful. Thanks and later!
Jerry
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