We're adjusting Velious post-launch. Been fairly vocal about that previously, but notably my time is less abundant this year, and thus it didn't travel as far quickly.
I actually appreciate the folks providing feedback, even if I push back at times. It really reaffirms how well the formula of just making something fun works.
The two posts by Bruges and Chapell are really well written. That is precisely where we want to end up. I made a change today based on Chapell's posts, fwiw. Inspiration is rare these days, data is cheap.
Velious is an expansion I'm even less familiar with than Luclin, or Kunark. Truthfully, there's a lot of escort quests, scripted encounters and bottlenecks that our team hasn't really scoped out until they were showing up as an issue.
I wanted to avoid another issue this launch, which was the fact that we launched Kunark overzealously on the side of QOL, and the October 1st Anniversary was a clear sign that we needed to pull back and develop 'from the heart' again.
So we did minimal changes, but some, of course, on Velious launch, and have plans to continue to add QOL quickly. Quickly being a relative keyword; I have a dayjob I've been focusing on.
We also made a change to the resist system that puts it closer to the actual era. This isn't really popular and we're monitoring how we can remediate it.
Since launch, we've done a number of similar fixes, and plan on continuing them:
Highlights:
- Pets will now zone with you when you change zones.
- Pets will no longer depop on being summoned, except if via call of the hero.
- Significantly reduced the length of the Vulak Ring Event to 7 waves total.
- The carrion drake 'failure' mechanic no longer yield more than one Drake at a time in the Vulak fight.
- NTOV creatures will now only respawn every 2d 18h in instances.
- Translocate spells no longer consume reagents.
- The Symbol and Mark lines no longer consume reagents.
- Wizard Bane spells Porlos' Fury and Hsagra's Wrath now use 1 Jade
- The following faction hits have been adjusted:
- King Tormax, The Avatar of War, Idol of Rallos Zek and Statue of Rallos Zek will now grant Coldain, Dain Frostweaver IV, Claws of Veeshan, and Yelinak faction when defeated.
- TheIdol of Rallos Zek will now grant faction hits similarly to The Statue of Rallos Zek and The Avatar of War.
- Lord Yelinak will now grant Kromzek and King Tormax faction when defeated.
- Dain Frostweaver IV will now grant Kromzek, King Tormax, Claws of Veeshan, and Lord Yelinak faction when defeated.
- Narandi the Wretched will now give +750 Coldain, Dain Frostweaver IV, Claws of Veeshan and Yelinak faction.
Misc Changes:
- Tain Hammerfrost respawn set to 5 minutes
- Ry’gorr Messenger now spawns every 5 minutes
- Removed Ring 7 Dobbin Crossaxe spawns, other than the one triggered by Corbin arrival, for final hand in.
- Poxbreath Yellowfang now drops group-quantity Note from Kromrif
- Warden Bruke is now a guaranteed spawn
- Glowing Worm Bile added to all wurms in Great Divide @ 10% drop chance
- Drakkel Wolf Whiskers drop rate increased to 15%
- Geonid item drop chance substantially increased
- Resist floor lowered from 10% → 5%
- Idol and AoW will now save their completion state when they spawn and will persist past shutdown in instances.
- High end Necro pets now take four bone chips instead of a peridot.
- Donal's legs are now increased in cast time by 3 seconds to make them competitive with the Shissar staff in VP due to the Symbol changes
- Sirens Grotto is now a 15 minute respawn (down from 1636 seconds)
- Royal Kromrif blood now drops at 100% chance off of a kromzek sorcerer, who now spawns every 15 minutes.
- Fellspine is now guaranteed to drop at least one of his items.
- Bloodmaw is now a 60s respawn. Experience for killing him has been reduced to 5% of base value.
- Eastern Wastes zone trash is now a 600s respawn.
- Any mob in Great Divide or Eastern Wastes that had a respawn time above 1 hour has been set to one hour.
- Plane of Mischief is now a 10 minute respawn timer.
- Western Wastes trash is now a 15 minute respawn time.
- Cobalt Scar trash is now a 6 minute 10 second respawn timer.
- Hsagra's Wrath quest mobs no longer despawn on turn-in.
- Ziglark Whisperwing now drops 6 keys at a time.
- TOFS is now a 5 minute respawn.
- Velketor's Lab is now a 10 minute respawn.
- Myga and other placeholders are now a 1 hour respawn, even in instances.
- TOFS keys now drop 6 at a time from the named creatures they trigger from.
- Stormfeather no longer drops his map piece. Lodizal now has a 100% chance to drop both map pages.
- Stormfeather is re-enabled to spawn in open world.
- Stormfeather Talons no longer drop in the Tower of Frozen Shadow global table.
- Lodizal no longer spawns in open world except during quakes; he now only spawns in instances (including PVP) and is a static 18 hour respawn. (Mirrors Phinigel from Classic)
We plan on continuing quickly to make changes in this direction. Hesitant to change too much at once, but still OK with how we're proceeding.
Thanks for the feedback, too; greatly appreciated.
