Andy Speaks on General Discussion Forum

Here's a brief summary of some of the things we're currently working on. Please keep in mind, none of this is currently finalized and some is in early design and testing:

A fix for the RR84 Respawn bug is currently in testing. We're hoping to have this pushed live this week. As such, we're delaying weekly maintenance until this fix passes testing.

ORvR Anti AFK measures currently in testing.

Tweaking Thanquol's Incursion boss encounters.

Revamping the Packmaster Play As Skaven class to make it more utilitarian and globally useful.

Potentially adjusting Battle Field Objective interact flags. Looking into possibly increasing interact time and requiring players to be out of combat to use.

Evaluating pre RR81 RvR Weapon Costs, looking into further reducing their costs.

Minor mirroring changes between the Warrior Priest and Disciple of Khaine

Internal design and testing on Single Target Healing changes. Potentially reducing cast time of AM, SHA, RP and ZLT single target high value heals (long cast time), improving single target healing capabilities of WP/DoK and moving WP/DoK melee lifetap into the appropriate Mastery Paths (melee healing).

Right now the Community team is working on reporting on current individual server environments and recommendations moving forward.

Community team is also recruiting new Core Testers (please see thread here for more information: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/232/index/5617424)

"Potentially adjusting Battle Field Objective interact flags. Looking into possibly increasing interact time and requiring players to be out of combat to use." Darn, there goes alot of my recent fun. I've been getting great satisfaction from the few times I have been able to single handedly leap into a BO being stolen (as dramatically as possible), drop a land mine on top of any destro foolish enough to huddle too close together, and then quickly steal back the flag while the Destro are still staggered, locking it down again. I've yet to survive such a manoeuvre (never enough stagger time left over for a proper escape), but I'm sure the times I have been successful have been of great annoyance to destro. Even successfully pulled it on Moaning and Maliath once when they capped Graveyard - though I'm sure they were equally happy to kill me in return and likely only capped the BO in order to bait in random Order for an ambush. Probably for the best though.

Oh I can't wait to see what kind of bugs come with this one. The part that really makes me snicker is: requiring players to be out of combat to use. They ever fix that in combat permanently bug? :P Getting out of combat is not always so easy lol.

Quite true. Even without the bug, in the past I've often found myself waiting for quite a few minutes long after I stopped taking damage and left a combat area before I could accept a scenario pop or make use of items that can't be used while in combat. Apply such mechanics to the capture of BO's and the era of last minute saves will be long gone. Taking a BO will require nothing less than total obliteration of the enemy, followed by anything from 2-10 additional uninterrupted minutes before anyone can even attempt to grab the flag... And once the flag is capped, that 3-4 minute timer to secure the point becomes redundant, as no player rushing to save the BO has a hope of being "out of combat" in time to recap the flag if there is even the slightest skirmish required to do so.

» Edited on: 2011-01-03 18:51:30

Hopefully they will just extend the time needed to cap a BO. Honestly, I didn't find the flag capture time a problem. It's good to see they are planning on doing something about the afkers. They need to address the cost of weapons and armor. With less keep takes available, getting enough crests and medallions to keep up with accelerated rr gains is pretty difficult. Overall, i was hoping for larger changes to bring back some of the fun from pre 1.4. But I suppose they'll wait for more than a month before making too many drastic changes.

"Right now the Community team is working on reporting on current individual server environments and recommendations moving forward. " Any clue what they're talking about here? Server population, maybe?

I think the key word here is 'reporting' "reporting on current individual server environments and recommendations moving forward". The Community team reports and recommends. IF the recommendations are acted upon, that would seem to indicate server consolidation.

Getting out of combat to pull a flag... so much for being like a ninja haha So you either clear every enemy there or they plan an aoe nerf? Either way its a bone - now we hope it works out.

Being out of combat to pull a flag..why? What is the issue with flag capture now other than is being somewhat short? In my opinion there is one problem that plagues Mythic and that is fixing things that are not broke.

With the lockout period being only 5 minutes, what exactly is the problem with a ninja flag capture? Not only that, but you can effectively make the BO useless to the other side by killing the RC coming out of it. I just don't see this as a burning issue. If they want to fix something, how about why there are defensive ticks for BO's but not keeps? I logged in yesterday and ran by Sanctuary of Dreams and suddenly got like 1.5k renown for a dtick after I killed a single Destro who happened to be mostly dead. But I can sit in a keep for 4 hours defending it and get no such tick? Makes absolutely no sense.