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Thread: Monthly Development Update - September 2014

  1. #1

    Funcom employee Monthly Development Update - September 2014

    Hello everyone!

    I hope you've all had a nice September. It's hard to believe the month is over and it's time to write my second update letter.

    Over the past couple of weeks, progress has been made on the new Inferno Missions, which I'll be introducing here. I'll also be listing out some of the upcoming changes to arrive with the Inferno Mission patch.

    New Inferno Missions:
    Near Ergo in Inferno, a new cave will open. You'll be directed inside to investigate what fate has befallen this previously sealed Xan temple.

    These missions will involve protecting NPCs from waves of assaulting creatures. The difficulty of the mission (easy/medium/hard) will determine how many waves will appear, level of the assaulting monsters, as well as the mission reward. The assaults will end early if all the targets that need to be protected are killed.

    These missions can be taken by anyone above level 170. Rewards for these missions are defined by an item, similar to daily missions, so there is no longer as much of a necessity to find a level 220 character to roll a mission. These missions will all take place at the same location, and given the layout of the encounter, it won't be as much of a time-consuming task to leave once completed.

    The waves of monsters are all themed, ending with a mini-boss, each which may provide an additional reward. Initial waves will place a single-use Shadow Rift, similar to the ones seen within the Rubi-Ka missions. Some waves of monsters will be less commonly seen than others, while others will be unique to the Hard difficulty.

    With these missions, the intention was to create an encounter that learned from the feedback from the existing Shadowlands missions, while adding new mechanics and incentives. I hope to have these on Testlive in the next couple of weeks.

    Additional 18.6.15 changes:
    We are still going through various lists of suggestions/feedback, but two of the additional changes for this patch will be:

    Reimplementing the 3x Battlestation daily missions, and giving them XP rewards back. These missions will be done in a slightly different style to remedy some of the previous problems, and will be more true to their original design.

    Adding mission exits. To cut down on the downtime between missions, upon killing a mission boss, an exit item that'll send you to the start of the mission, will spawn. This initial pass will be for Shadowlands, Alien Invasion, and Lost Eden missions.

    There will also be several more QoL improvements/bug fixes, which will be listed out when the patch reaches Testlive.

    That's what I have for this month. Thank you everyone and have a great October!
    Henry "Michizure" Senger
    Lead Designer
    ___________________________________
    Twitter - Welcome to Testlive - Customer Service

  2. #2
    Hope you had a nice September also michi!

    New mission (y) genuinely looking forward to it
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  3. #3
    Thanks for the update michi. I was away for awhile so missed the staff swap but welcome to the position.

  4. #4
    On the topic of the new Inferno missions, will they also scale if you're solo ?
    Currently I sometimes enjoy doing a solo Inf mission, as it only creates a single floor mission, when I have little time to play or am going to be distracted by work, wife, cooking food etc so I don't hold up a team with my constant /afk'ing.

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  5. #5
    I also want to know if the new missions will be doable solo.


    Other than that this is a fantastic patch Michi. You have given me hope.
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  6. #6
    This sounds promising. Looking forward to see it on Testlive.

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  7. #7
    Thanks for the update!

    Will TestLive be wiped to run 18.6 series again or will those QoL changes be patched to TLs 18.7 series?
    ~ HS ~
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  8. #8
    You're already making this look easy!

    Keep up the content Mich, we all <3 this i'm sure!
    One profession to RoO them all, one profession to proc stun them, one profession to calm them all and in the darkness Exp perk them!

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  9. #9
    Nice progress. However.

    Will these missions scale based on lvl or be capped?

    Will these be a better alternative for 220 toon doing research lvls 9-10?

    Also do you see these missions promoting more solo or dual logged play instead of teamed?
    ~Anyone can level, but only the wise gain experience~

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  10. #10
    On time and with good solid info. Good start to the GD business

    I wonder just how much inspiration for the Inferno Missions was taken from TSW's Scenarios Hoping for random bosses/traitors/benefactors/supply drops... (And a sarcastic voice that tells you if one of the survivors has died, making the term 'survivor' ironic.)

    Interested in finding out what alterations have been made to the BS dailies to allow them to make a return, yet avoid the issues they got shut down for in the first place.

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  11. #11
    Looking good there, and yeah please make them scale as in how many enemies come with each wave or whatever depending on how many ppl actually are in team/inside of mish. Also less running inside of mish is better, but i think that's already the plan
    Don't you just hate this kind of ppl
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  12. #12

    Funcom employee

    Quote Originally Posted by Wakizaka View Post
    On the topic of the new Inferno missions, will they also scale if you're solo ?
    Currently I sometimes enjoy doing a solo Inf mission, as it only creates a single floor mission, when I have little time to play or am going to be distracted by work, wife, cooking food etc so I don't hold up a team with my constant /afk'ing.
    Regrettably, I didn't consider solo play too heavily in the design, though the "Easy" difficulty should be doable solo.

    The gameplay is similar to what I did with the Entvined vs. Enigma encounter (though heavily toned down difficulty-wise, and actually possible to complete), so I'm not sure how well you could take a break mid-fight. That said, one of the main goals with these missions was to create something that can be completed more quickly than traditional SL missions, so hopefully it'll be able to fit within a tighter schedule.

    I'd be interested to hear of your solo adventures in this encounter.

    Quote Originally Posted by Misat0 View Post
    Thanks for the update!

    Will TestLive be wiped to run 18.6 series again or will those QoL changes be patched to TLs 18.7 series?
    Ah yes, that will be an unfortunate consequence of this patch: Testlive will need to have its characters wiped when this is patched. I'll try to add more stuff to Auto to make the rebuilding process easier, while restoring the Testlive Transfer function, as it seems to have fallen asleep at some point.
    Henry "Michizure" Senger
    Lead Designer
    ___________________________________
    Twitter - Welcome to Testlive - Customer Service

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Michizure View Post
    Regrettably, I didn't consider solo play too heavily in the design, though the "Easy" difficulty should be doable solo.

    The gameplay is similar to what I did with the Entvined vs. Enigma encounter (though heavily toned down difficulty-wise, and actually possible to complete), so I'm not sure how well you could take a break mid-fight. That said, one of the main goals with these missions was to create something that can be completed more quickly than traditional SL missions, so hopefully it'll be able to fit within a tighter schedule.

    I'd be interested to hear of your solo adventures in this encounter.



    Ah yes, that will be an unfortunate consequence of this patch: Testlive will need to have its characters wiped when this is patched. I'll try to add more stuff to Auto to make the rebuilding process easier, while restoring the Testlive Transfer function, as it seems to have fallen asleep at some point.
    Easy come easy go on test servers, nice job Michizure on time with relevant and interesting info... breath of fresh air really.

    Thanks
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  14. #14
    Oh, mygod, so beautiful, so epic, so great. 3x bs daily, fun endgame leveling... all i want now is an Iphone that wont bend.

    Could you please make AS pistol have 1.7 second recharge?
    Quote Originally Posted by Michizure View Post
    This'll be fixed for the next patch

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Cratertina View Post
    Could you please make AS pistol have 1.7 second recharge?
    Only if deflect has 90% chance.
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  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Raggy View Post
    I also want to know if the new missions will be doable solo.
    I can see why the game has so many people leave, since they can't do team things.
    I hope they make it where you're required to have at least 4 people to do it.
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  17. #17
    Nice info. Looks like our new wheelman knows what he or she is doing.

    Coming from me, that means quite a bit!

    Doesn't have to be fancy and big. Focus on more quality if life stuff just like that and tve future is bright!

    Ps. Org bank building back ig plz! But with common banks and 1k slots in each!

  18. #18
    I did the Entvined vs Enigma encounter the first year you put it in game but haven't gone in since so my head's a bit fuzzy (just remember spending multiple hours kiting and killing waves of mobs). Will anything about the new inferno missions promote the use of some of the less preferred professions? I'm guessing a MP would come in handy to put a heal pet on the NPC being protected (thinking about Informant).

    I'm also really glad to hear that we're getting exit beacons and that you're working on some quality of life changes. I really loved Lindelu's focus on those type of things (QoL) as they tended to have an immediate impact on the game experience without taking too much time to implement.

    Looking forward to testing.
    Last edited by Traderjill; Sep 30th, 2014 at 15:54:31.
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  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Michizure View Post
    These missions can be taken by anyone above level 170.
    I think this is a very stupid decision. It is a huge power-diference between tl5 and tl7. It should 170-205, then 206-220.


    Reimplementing the 3x Battlestation daily missions, and giving them XP rewards back. These missions will be done in a slightly different style to remedy some of the previous problems, and will be more true to their original design.
    You have to do more than that. Bring back some of the old bs. Give more stuff to use vp on.

    PS
    It shoulda been rk-missions for high-level players instead.
    Last edited by Cyberleet; Sep 30th, 2014 at 16:02:03.

  20. #20
    Well, if this is any indication of where you will be going with your Lead position, I'm incredibly happy. I love it all and those are simple things that just plain make sense. Things that could/should have been implemented years ago.

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