THE HERALD

The Grab Bag doth return!

Below we have 5 questions collected from the community by our Knights to get us started. If you want to send in your questions for a future Grab Bag, you can do so through our Grab Bag submission form! 

Additionally, we have been blown away by the amount of responses to our playerbase survey. Thank you for the several thousand (OMG!) responses and for taking the time to give us such valuable feedback and insight. The survey is now CLOSED while we analyse and discuss the results internally. We will return with a follow up survey soon, so keep your eyes on the Herald!

Onto the questions!

Have you considered adding any color effects to say a players shoulders or somewhere to signify if they have certain abilities up? I’d love a small way to be able to read what my opponent may have up, even if its not super easy to tell. Purge, Moc, ML abilities and class defining seem like the most important for my solo and small man style of play. To add on to this would it be possible to show if a specific items abilities are active by making it more sparkly?

Many of these are good quality of life suggestions that fall under our over-arching goal of improving the UI/UX (user interface/user experience) of the game. While we haven’t gotten to the point with the game client or UI to specifically look at these suggestions yet, we’ll certainly keep them in mind when we do!

What is the internal process for the feedback forms?

Each feedback is read by myself, the Producer, and if warranted, shared with relevant members of the team. Topics from feedback are sometimes discussed on our internal boards as well if we want more insight on them.

The best types of feedback we receive are ones that highlight an issue, explain the context of how it affects their experience/play-style/realm/class directly in-game, and then offer some possible solutions.

We do *not* reply to feedback as it would be a severe resource drain and the topics that would merit a reply are worth replying to the whole player-base instead of just to one person.  If you do want a discussion about your idea(s), the best bet is to post the feedback on Postcount’s Dark Age of Camelot board or on the upcoming official forums when they launch. There, other players will be able to discuss and expand on your ideas and we may chime in as well!

Some new items have been added to the game since the introduction of Platinum Bound Chests. Can we expect their loot tables to be updated to reflect the additions?

Eventually. There are no immediate plans to add these new items to the chests. Our immediate focus is taking a hard look at item procs/uses and addressing the really powerful ones; as well as addressing the amount of /uses a player can have up at once. Once that re-balancing has been done (coming in patch 1.123!), we can take a look at which new items still deserve to go in these chests.

Can the ruined keeps be returned to their original state? Or return non home realm porting?

Good question! This is a great example of a popular feedback topic that warrants a broader response. We receive a lot of positive feedback about the Ruined Keeps from solo and small-man players. However, we also receive a good chunk of feedback from large-scale focused players who would like to see the Ruined Keeps made whole again. We’re going to take the slow approach here and will be allowing non-home realms to once again port to these ruined structures in 1.122C. Depending on how things look in RvR after that change, as well as your continued feedback, we’ll revisit the decision to leave them ruined.

What is Broadsword’s opinion about the support classes in their current state, especially following patch 1.121 and the changes most of them got with it?

Overall, we feel that Bards and Shamans are in the best place out of all the support (including Healers, Druids, Clerics, Regrowth Wardens, and Rejuvenation Friars when using the term ‘support’) with the recent adjustments in 1.122. While Clerics are preforming better with the new mesmerize in Smite and Druids are faring better with their pet improvements, we still feel that the lesser-used lines are lacking (Nature, Cave, and Smite). However, given the lessons learned from the 1.121 and 1.122 updates, we are looking at only minor tweaks and adjustments focused around those lesser-used lines in the 1.123 update.

That’s it for this week! Happy Friday all 🙂

Carol <3

Greetings all,

We’re already a month and a half into what will be an exciting 2017! We’ve been busy discussing, planning, and working on what’s coming this year as there are a LOT of things on our plate. In this letter, I’ll be giving our take on where things stand currently, addressing much of your feedback from the past several months, and outlining the plans for this year!

Over the past year much has changed in Dark Age of Camelot: a complete overhaul of the Necromancer class, brand new RvR bonus systems and layout changes, returning player rewards, pet class improvements, stealther class changes, Siege-craft streamlining, and the introduction of some challenging PvE instances just to name a few!

Many of those changes helped reinvigorate certain classes and aspects of the game that had not received much attention in a long while; and we thank you for the great feedback on those!

That said, a few of the changes have gone too far, too quickly and have impacted game-play in unanticipated ways. Dark Age of Camelot can be enjoyed in many fashions and our goal has always been to improve the game without negatively affecting preferred play-styles and we regret that that line was crossed. We appreciate your patience as we revisit and tackle those changes based on your feedback in early 2017.

First, we’ll be focusing on the pet changes to bring down both the number and power of pets that are available in-game. We still believe in the need for many of the pet-class changes that were done to bring those classes up to date, but it’s clear that a lot of the pets themselves still need adjusting. We’ll also be looking at some further Necromancer class adjustments. Light tanks and their roles will be reviewed again and most likely will have their pet procs removed along with a few other changes.

Next, we’ll be looking at addressing the new Slow CC so that it is harder to use in conjunction with other powerful abilities in smaller scale fights. Finally, we’ll be looking closely at damage values on a myriad of abilities and styles to once again increase the duration of fights.

These changes are coming quite soon, in early March, along with several other much-requested improvements and bug fixes. We’ll be adding in-game UI displays for the Buggane’s RvR objective control and the dynamic underpopulation bonuses, fixing a common mouse-targeting bug, allowing direct teleportation to relic towns via the /realmwar map, and more! Along with these changes, adjustments, and bug fixes that directly respond to your feedback, we’ll be launching a new PvE Campaign with this update that involves some familiar, large, and fearsome foes of each realm. 

Beyond the March and ongoing campaign updates, we will be looking forward to addressing many of the classes and specializations that haven’t made it into the previous few patches. Specifically focusing on the hybrid and support archetypes, reducing the power and ubiquity of item-based abilities, introducing some cosmetic-only options for armor, cloaks, and mounts that can be bought with real money (MTX), and offering players the opportunity to achieve Champion Level 20! These changes are currently planned for late Spring, so there won’t be too long of a wait after March’s update!

For the hybrid changes we’ll be focusing in on Skalds, Minstrels, and mostly melee specializations of the other hybrid classes that are currently struggling in solo, small-man, and group combat. Learning our lesson from the previous few class-balance change patches, the plan is to offer more tweaks and evolutionary changes rather than completely new roles and revolutionary abilities. Similarly, for the support classes, we’d like to keep their roles essentially the same but continue to increase their flexibility so that groups can more easily be formed around their nucleus. 

Item-based abilities have become a common complaint in feedback and we’re glad to be able to finally address them! This again, will not be a wholesale removal or upheaval but instead will be targeting the biggest offenders (ablatives, among others) and the ability to have so many active at once. With this change, we know that base survivability will need to be looked at and so we’ll be allowing characters to obtain Champion Level 20 along with the typical increase in health that goes with it. In addition to that, we’ll be looking at reducing some of the damage values on certain abilities too!

Next, the introduction of MTX items with this late Spring update is a first step into providing some much-requested features later on. To be clear, we never intend to offer any “pay to win” items for real money and will be only selling already-existing items with unique cosmetic skins, as well as new mount types, to start.

The MTX system will include the introduction of a new, account-based currency (Mithril) that is initially purchased from the Account Center website and applied to the selected game account and can be viewed from any character on the account. In-game, players will see the new Mithril currency and be able to use it on specific in-game stores just like how any other in-game store works! Most excitingly, once this system is in place and working smoothly, we’ll be able to work on the much-requested quality-of-life features like race, gender, and name respecs as well as potentially account to account character transfers!

Additionally, we are re-doubling our commitment to ensure that our communication with you is a two-way street. As such, we are happy to announce the return of the Grab Bag, in a bi-weekly form, and the monthly Newsletter. The Grab Bag will be where we answer questions about gameplay mechanics, reasoning, and address any concerns of the moment. The monthly newsletter will go into greater detail on upcoming changes as well as highlight many of our community’s efforts! 

Lastly, we are still hard at work on the new website and official forums. After much of the groundwork has been done, we’ve gone a different direction on the layout of the site and apologize for the delay in getting it out. We hope to have this new version of the site out by this Summer with tools like a searchable Item Database (an official downloadable version will be released sooner) and Realmwar/Leaderboards included! 

As you can see, the first half of 2017 has a lot to be excited about! We’ll be providing much more information on these upcoming changes as we get closer to their launch, as well as providing another update on what can be expected in the latter half of 2017.

And on THAT note, we’d like to request additional feedback from you on a popular topic of late: an alternative ruleset server.

Below, we have a link to a survey we humbly request you fill out so that we can get a better understanding of our existing and former playerbase’s views. Please share it with your friends and let us know your thoughts by answering each question truthfully as we are eager to see what you all have to say!

Survey link HERE. Please note that the survey requires a Google account in order to be completed.

Onward,
John Thornhill
Producer

Class Changes

Animist

Creeping Mastery (Creeping specialization)

• Shroom of Life has changed as follows:
  • Is no longer a ground target spell.
    • It is now single target. It still heals all allies around itself.
  • The pet is now level 50.
  • The pet is now immune to mesmerization effects (can be stunned, confused).

Bainshee

Spectral Guard (Spectral Force specialization)

• A new pet summon spell has been added:
  • Level 50 – Sound Vortex – 1500 range – 10s cast – 20s duration – 4s frequency – 10m RUT – 25% power – Summons a vortex at the ground target location that fires sound waves for 300 damage to up to 8 targets within 1500 units of the vortex.
  • The Sound Vortex can be killed, stunned, or feared. It cannot be mezzed or confused.
  • There is a limit of 3 active vortexes allowed in an area.
  • Bainshees will need to respec to see this ability if they already have 50 Spectral Force specialization.

Bonedancer

Bone Protection (Suppression specialization)

• The low level disarm spells have been changed:
  • Level 1 – Punish Combatant:
    • RUT increased to 5 minutes, up from 60s.
  • Level 11 – Punish Assailant:
    • Duration reduced to 2s, down from 3s.
    • RUT increased to 5 minutes up from 60s.
  • Level 21 – Punish Aggressor
    • Duration reduced to 4s, down from 5s.
    • RUT increased to 3 minutes, up from 60s.
  • All other levels remain unchanged.

Bone Legion (Bone Army specialization)

• Sub pets have changed as follows:
  • Fossil Defender
    • Now moves at normal movement speed.
    • Health increased by 15%.
  • Fossil Guardian
    • Defenses against all damage increased by 10%.
    • Health increased by 5%.
    • Now have a staff style:
      • Fossil Jump – Any – Reduces the target’s armor factor by 50 for 10s.
    • Provides a new additional buff to groupmates and pets:
      • Fossil Strength – Increases target’s Strength by 50. Does not replace more powerful spells. This spell is lost if the pet dies or is released.
    • Fossil Healer
      • Heal cast time increased by .2 seconds.
      • Damage taken increased by 50%.
    • Fossil Soldier
      • Overall damage reduced by 10%.
      • No longer have a double attack chance.
      • Now take maximum damage from melee attacks.
      • Styles have been readjusted as follows:
        • Fossil Cleave, anytime, no longer has an attack speed debuff.
        • Glacial Movement, side, snares target for 19s.
        • Raider, off evade (self), bleeds target for 20 damage every 4s for 20s.
        • No longer has any back positional styles.
        • No longer has any stun styles.
      • Fossil Seer
        • Disease cast time increased by .5 seconds.
      • Fossil Mystic
        • Damage on the snare nuke reduced by 10%.
        • Damage on the regular nuke reduced by 5%.

Cabalist

Spirit Animation (Baseline)

• Pets have changed as follows:
  • Jade Simulacrum
    • Now moves at normal movement speed.
  • Sapphire Simulacrum
    • Now takes maximum damage from melee attacks.

Enchanter

Enchantments (Baseline)

• Pets have changed as follows:
  • Underhill Compatriot
    • Now moves at normal movement speed.
  • Underhill Ally
    • Now takes maximum damage from melee attacks.
    • Heal cast time decreased by .2 seconds.
  • Underhill Stalker
    • Poison now changes depending on which Enchantment buff is active.
    • Enchanters must spec in Enchantments to gain access to certain poisons.
    • All poison debuffs last 15 seconds (does not include Lifebane).
      • No Enchantment – No poison.
      • Enchantment of Ice – Touch of Death.
      • Enchantment of Earth – Swordbreaker.
      • Enchantment of Fire – Lifebane.
      • Enchantment of Mana – Widow Venom.

Hunter

Beastcraft specialization

• The level 50 pet, Hunter’s Elder Avatar, has had its damage dealt reduced by 15%.

Mentalist

Holism (Mana specialization)

• The AoE Damage over Time spells have been increased to match the Bonedancer and Necromancer:
  • Level 23 – Fog of Delirium – 30 damage every 5 seconds for 20 seconds.
  • Level 29 – Hallucinatory Winds – 60 damage every 4 seconds for 20 seconds.
  • Level 36 – Torrent of Dementia – 88 damage every 4 second for 20 seconds.
  • Level 46 – Storms of Insanity – 131 damage every 2.5 seconds for 20 seconds.
  • All remaining lower versions remain unchanged.

Necromancer

Deathsight Baseline

• Decrepit Form changes:
  • Melee attack speed reduced by 100% while in Decrepit Form.

Deathsight specialization

• Channeled Frenzy (PBAoE), and all subsequent versions, now require Decrepit Form to be active.
• The single target slow has changed as follows:
  • Range reduced to 1000.
  • Now requires Decrepit Form to be active.
  • The Level 2 version, Crippling Exhaustion, now has a RUT of 5 minutes.

Painworking Baseline

• Chthonic Form changes:
  • Fixed a bug where ‘Chthonic Armor’ was not dropping upon shapeshifting, thus allowing Spirit and Decrepit forms to have over 400 additional armor factor.

Painworking specialization

• Freezing Howl (AoE damage and slow), and all subsequent versions, now require Chthonic Form to be active.
  • The Level 7 version, Freezing Hold, does not require Chthonic Form (Chthonic Form is gained at level 8).
• Summon Death Shredder (pet) now requires Chthonic Form to be active.
  • You may exit Chthonic Form once it is used and retain the Death Shredder for its duration.

Death Servant Baseline

• Spirit Form changes:
  • Final Blast (bolt) now requires Spirit Form to be active.
  • Death Blast (bolt) now requires Spirit Form to be active.
  • Melee attack speed is reduced by 100% while in Spirit Form.
• Pets have changed as follows:
  • Umbral Aegis
    • Now moves at normal movement speed.
  • Priest of Arawn
    • Now takes maximum damage from melee attacks.
    • Heal cast time decreased by .2 seconds.

Death Servant specialization

• Arawn’s Legion has changed as follows:
  • All pets summoned by Arawn’s Legion now take 100% more damage from all sources.
  • The pet cap for ranged pets reduced to 8, down from 12.
  • Range reduced to 1500, down from 2000.
  • Knight of Arawn
    • Damage dealt reduced by 50%.
    • Health reduced by 5%.
  • Handmaiden of Lilith
    • Health reduced by 5%.
  • Mage of Arawn
    • Health reduced by 75%.
    • Cast time increased by .5 seconds.
  • Tempter of Arawn
    • Health reduced by 75%

Spiritmaster

Summon Mastery (Summoning specialization)

• Gates of Valhalla has changed as follows:
  • The Pets summoned by Gates of Valhalla now take 50% more damage from all sources.
  • The range of which the gates will spawn pets has increased to 1500, up from 750.
  • Duration reduced to 60 seconds, down from 2 minutes.
• Pets have changed as follows:
  • Spirit Warrior
    • Now moves at normal movement speed.
  • Spirit Shaman
    • Now takes maximum damage from melee attacks.
    • Heal cast time decreased by .2 seconds.

In celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s day, the following bonuses are now up for you! Happy long-weekend, folks!

These bonuses will end on Tuesday, January 17th, 2017.

Class Changes

• The Amber Simulacrum pet’s style damage has been reduced very slightly.

• The Underhill Stalker pet’s style damage has been reduced very slightly.

• The instant taunt line of spells once again interrupts enemy players properly.

• The Plated Fiend pet’s spirit-form style damage has been reduced very slightly.

Painworking Specialization

• The Death Shredder pet’s style damage has been reduced very slightly.
• The Villainous Strike anytime style has had its damage reduced from Medium to Low.
• The Frozen Edge rear style has had its damage reduced from High to Medium.
• The Deathseeker follow-up style has had its damage increased and its damage-over-time effect removed.
• The following instant damage over time spells’ values have had their damage adjusted:
  • Level 37 – Freezing Clench reduced from 64/tick to 54/tick
• Netherbane’s damage over time proc has been converted to a direct damage proc.
  • It now delves for 150 cold damage. 
  • The slow portion of the proc remains unchanged.
• All versions of the summoned Icebrand weapon’s cold direct damage procs have had their damage reduced.

Death Servant Specialization

• The single-target snare nuke no longer applies its snare on root-immune targets.

Paladin

• The instant taunt line of spells once again interrupts enemy players properly.

Spiritmaster

• The Spirit Valkyrie pet’s style damage has been reduced very slightly.

Our Knight Podcast last Sunday took a look back over the past year’s changes as well as looked forward to what’s coming in 2017.

Knights Luvly, Maceric, and Cyrric were joined by DAoC Producer John Thornhill during the podcast, which is now available on our official YouTube channel!

Watch it below!