Today Aventurine released the most anticipated Darkfall Unholy Wars patch commonly referred to as “Custom Role” Patch. This patch removed all class restriction and now allows users to choose any combination of skills. Many of the existing skills has gone through adjusted and balancing. As part of the patch, all player prowess (XP) has been reset so that player can re purchase their skills.
This patch changed fundamental game play. This patch provides much needed changes to bring back tens of thousand subscriber who didn’t migrated from the old game and to rejuvenate and jolt the interest of the existing players.
So far it looks like the patch is delivering on its promise. The number of people in offical forum doubled. An official stream this morning previewing the patch had the highest number of viewer of any Darkfall Unholy Stream. Some users are also reporting login queue. Judging from our Sanguine city cam the population have tripped in the city
So far it looks like the patch is delivering on its promise. The number of people in offical forum doubled. An official stream this morning previewing the patch had the highest number of viewer of any Darkfall Unholy Stream. Some users are also reporting login queue. Judging from our Sanguine city cam the population have tripped in the city
Check the Darkfall twitch.tv streams.
Here is the patch notes for custom roles.
Performance fixes
A completely new way of rendering special effects with the aim of improving large scale combat performance. Special effects are now handled in a way that has minimal effects on FPS performance. There is also a new option under “video” option where you can reduce the SFX quality. Additionally grass rendering has also been optimized to further improve general FPS performance.New Content
NEW Custom Roles system
Players start with some common skills and their default weapon attacks. Role skills can be purchased from the corresponding vendors.
Custom role application has a 10 minute cooldown but speaking (Pressing F) to the Sage NPC in all NPC cities resets the timer.
Shop
An in game item shop strictly for services and fluff items. Purchase Selentine Gold through our account management system and spend it in game. To kick the system off, two items are being introduced, with more to come. Selentine gold purchase might not be available at the same time as the servers go up due to technical concerns but it will be available later today.
Current shop items
Regressor - A service item that allows players to reset their prowess (Crafting skills will not be affected by the reset).
Identity Nullifier - A service item that allows players to change their character name. Ten day cooldown applies.
New robe sets
- Added 2 sets of Elementalist robes
- Added 2 sets of Primalist robes
General Changes
- Mastery-level ships nets’ are now retractable. You can do that by pressing ‘Space’ while attached onto a ship’s helm.
- Nets automatically reappear if ship health drops below 25%
- Nets can not be retracted if ship health is below 25%
- Currently affects all ship nets
- Added smelting in house small anvil
- Boosted salvaging success rate to 70% at skill 100 (from 50%)
- Reduced Salvaging timer by 40%
- Cannons can no longer be spawned while the character is inside the safe zone.
- New sounds for transfer spells
- Duel request window now appears in action mode
- Brushed up the Party UI
- Revive no longer brings you back to full stamina
General Fixes
- Fixed a bug where the feat tracker suggested feat wasn’t using the window opacity setting.
- Fixed a bug where the feat tracker was showing suggested feats below currently tracked feats (when "Suggestion Popup" option was off).
- Fixed a bug where Suggestion popup for a feat would no longer show if it was toggled while there was a progression on that feat.
- Fixed a bug where market overview value text fields wouldn't show the full value.
- Crafting sound is now syncronised with the crafting animation.
World fixes
Prop Fixes in the following tiles:
Scarbourne
Faukul
Optional: If you want to dive deep, here is a collection of all the communication Aventurine released related to this patch over last 7 days
Changed skills and weapons
For the custom roles patch, we have applied several changes in skills.
As a general rule, we reduced a lot of crowd control skills, and boosted melee oriented style builds.
Also, we've applied some changes to some of our weapons:
Knives and 1-handed weapons
- Knives Range has been increased by 21%.
- 1-handed weapon Range has been increased by 5%.
- Attack Speed of knives has been increased by 5%.
- Damage of knives has been increased by 31%
Stamina damage changes
- Slashing, Piercing, Bludgeoning Stamina damage has been reduced to 15%(previously on 20%)
- Lightning, and cold Stamina damage has been reduced to 30%(previously on 40%)
- Fire Stamina damage has been reduced to 15 %(previously on 20%)
Below you can read regarding the skill changes:
Baresark Skills
Maelstrom
- Cooldown has been reduced by 33%
- Damage has been increased.
Pulverize
- Cooldown has been increased by 13%
- Damage has been increased
Roar
- Cooldown has been reduced by 61%
- Base Attributes Penalty has been greatly increased.
- Functionality changed from player Centered AoE to front cone.
Stampede
- Sprint speed bonus has been reduced.
- Cooldown has been reduced by 19%
- Bludgeoning Damage has been greatly reduced.
This will now serve more of a "stay in melee" range ability.
Battle Brand Skills
Battle brand now has 2 protection self buffs, 1 for melee, 1 for magic damage. These will last for a fair amount of time.
Bandage
- Cooldown has been reduced by 17%.
Foebringer
- Cooldown has been reduced by 12%
- Radius has been increased by 43%.
Spell Bane
- Cooldown has been reduced by 47%
- Duration has been reduced by 16%
Stinging Repost renamed to REINFORCE
- Functionality changed from Damage Reflect to Physical Protection.
- Cooldown has been increased by 83%
- Duration has been increased by 1200% (has similar duration to Spellbane)
- Casting time has been added. (no longer instant cast)
- Mana Cost has been reduced by 25%
- Stamina Cost has been reduced by 33%
Stoic Defense
- Cooldown has been reduced by 17%.
- Duration has been increased by 69%
Slayer Skills
Battle Rage
- Cast time has been reduced by 31%
- Health penalty has been reduced.
Power Attack
The duration of the following skills has been doubled
- Axe Strength Penalty.
- Club Strength Penalty.
- GreatAxe Dexterity Penalty.
- GreatAxe Slashing Protection Penalty.
- GreatClub Dexterity Penalty.
- GreatSword Dexterity Penalty
- Knives Strength Penalty
- Polearm Dexterity Penalty
- Sword Strength Penalty.
Also:
- Bleeding Damage on GreatSword Power Attack has been greatly increased.
- Poison Damage on Knives Power Attack has been increased.
Brawler Skills
Dash
- Cooldown has been reduced by 30%.
- Duration has been reduced by 81%. (Base duration is now 0.25seconds. However you are allowed to jump to increase the distance covered.)
Efficiency
- Cooldown has been reduced by 25%.
- Duration has been increased by 15%.
Evade
- Cooldown has been increased by 18%.
Heightened Reflexes
- Cooldown has been reduced by 17%.
- Melee speed bonus increased.
- Archery speed bonus increased.
Leap
- Cooldown has been increased by 25%
- Duration has been increased by 200%.
- Cast time has been reduced by 93%
Deadeye Skills
Explosive Arrow
- Cooldown has been increased by 25%.
Puncture
- Targetting has been changed from Line, to Very Thin Cone.
this will help resolve some targetting issues.
Salvo
- Damage has been slightly increased.
- AoE Radius has been reduced by 1 tier
Duelist Skills
Lunge's cooldown has been increased by 8%.
Common Skills
Staff Bolt's cast time has been reduced by 40%.
Staff Bolt's missile speed has been increased by 23%
Air Skills
Attunement to Air
- Cooldown has been reduced by 33%.
- Duration has been reduced by 20%.
Lightning Bolt
- Cooldown has been increased by 131%.
Thunderbolt
- Knockback force has been reduced by one Tier.
Tornado
- Cooldown has been increased by 84%.
- Knockback has been reduced by 16%.
its cooldown was making it extremely powerful skill against melee oriented builds.
Fire Skills
Attunement to Fire
- Cooldown has been reduced by 70%.
- Duration has been reduced by 89%
- Casting time has been reduced by 8%.
- Mana cost has been increased by 50%.
- Casting Speed bonus has been greatly increased.
- Fire Protection bonus has been increased.
this will give you a short window of burst opportunity, as well as increase protections against fire spells.
Dragonbreath
- Cooldown has been reduced by 14%.
Fireball
- Duration has been reduced by 18%.
- Knockback Force has been reduced by one Tier.
- Missile Speed has been increased by 55%.
Heat Stroke
- Cooldown has been reduced by 20%.
- Damage has been increased.
Water Skills
Attunement to Water
- Cooldown has been reduced by 33%.
- Duration has been reduced by 25%.
Bitterstep
- Cooldown has been reduced by 27%.
- Duration has been reduced by 10%.
Frostbite
- Duration has been reduced by 50%.
- Cold Damage has been reduced.
- Cone angle slightly reduced.
This was already an extremely powerful Crowd Control spell coupled with damage.
Law Skills
Law school now has 2 "buff other" spells, 1 for Magic Protections and 1 for Melee protections. These are more potent than the "Battle Brand" spells, however they last for a shorter amount of time
Bastion
- Cooldown has been reduced by 78%.
- Duration has been reduced by 42%
- Casting time has been reduced by 33%
- Functionality changed: It now buffs the physical protections of other players.
- Protections have been increased.
Invigoration
- Cooldown has been reduced by 13%.
- Duration has been reduced by 30%.
- Health Regeneration has been reduced.
- Mana Regeneration has been reduced.
Primal Surge
- Cooldown has been increased by 33%.
- Duration has been reduced by 61%.
- Casting time has been reduced by 17%.
- Functionality changed: It now buffs the magic protections of other players.
Virtuous Wrath
- Damage has been reduced.
Wall of Righteous Force
- Cooldown has been reduced by 38%.
Life Skills
Exalted Sacrifice
- Cooldown has been reduced by 50%.
Healing Blast
- Cooldown has been increased by 60%.
Resuscitation
- Casting time has been increased by 83%.
- Revive stats have been greatly reduced.
Chaos Skills
Bolt of Bedlam
- Cooldown has been increased by 144%
- Damage has been increased.
Havoc Blast
- Cooldown has been reduced by 13%.
- Unholy Damage has been reduced.
Pall of Pandemonium
- Cooldown has been increased by 50%.
- Duration has been reduced by 14%.
- Unholy Damage has been reduced.
Seizure
- Cooldown has been reduced by 31%.
- Radious rank has been reduced by one tier.
Soul Flay
- Casting time has been increased by 20%.
- Range has been reduced by 32%
Do we still have to buy the school skills (Stampede, vampire strike, barrage) with our prowess or are they all available from the start?
All characters, existing and new, will have no school skills available after the custom roles patch is applied. Players will need to purchase any skills they desire from the appropriate vendors. The first skills have a very low prowess price that increases as the player progresses towards the Ultimate. Skill can be purchased in any order as there is no requirement for the previous skill to be bought.
"Will the current 'power level' of a character go up, down, or stay the same with this change. IE: Will fireball from someone with 140 INT, leenspar staff, and full light armor (+dmg) hit for the same amount as fireball does today from an Elem with leen and 140 INT? Or will it hit for more/less?" (It will hit for more).
It will hit for the same damage. However if you are wearing elementalist robes, the damage will be increased, because elementalist robes give bonus to magnitude.
Will the custom class patch increase time to kill?
Depends on the build used. Some builds increase it and some are very powerful but extremely fragile. In general the vital stats of all characters have been increased, we lowered the stamina loss from hits but we also increased the damage output with the light robes. But overall we expect TTK to increase.
Will I be able to bunnyhop properly?
What we can say for sure is that nothing is set in stone. From the feedback it seems that people are against no-risk bunnyhopping that allows a player to travel a great amount of distance. We are experimenting with some values that might achieve fixing that. Mainly it has to do with finding an acceptable (large) value of damage that the player receives from “horizontal falling damage”. This might affect other areas of the game as well, so we are rather tentative until extensive testing has been performed on this subject. In any case, we are closely watching your feedback regarding this issue.
What about PP in craft skills - we will get back adventure/skill PP to buy/skill the schools again but not craft mastery PP or?
Crafting skills and masteries will not be affected in any way by the custom roles patch. Player will retain the skills they have bought and levelled up.
Are you going to change or limit movement skills? That is, will you make it impossible to use Evade+Leap+Dash+Stampede+Attunement to Air etc. on the same character, implement cooldowns, or just let people choose the abilities they want, without limits?
There are no artificial limits to skills. Players are free to mix and match as well as use any skill they want. Several skills have been altered to a great extent however, especially movement skills.
What about skills that are rarely used nowadays like eg roar and other skills that will be relatively uninteresting when people can choose from a much higher pool of skills. Any details on adjustments?
There are too many adjustments to go through in this format but our goal has been to make all skills equally desirable. Further tweaks will happen based on our observations and your feedback once the custom roles patch has been deployed. As for the Roar skill that is mentioned we changed it so it is a front cone debuff, rather than cast centered, so it is more useful. We also buffed it.
Any chance you will be reworking movement ? It feels clunky and most people would agree that your character seems like walking on ice. Combat requires responsive movement without any delays to be fun.
We have made several changes to movement and animation blending lately which has mostly addressed the “ice skating issue”. We will not stop there however, as we take combat responsiveness very seriously. After the roles patch we will be tweaking and experimenting with some hard-coded variables, mainly in direction switching and jump delay, in order to make the feel of combat more responsive and accurate.
We know that this will inevitably have other repercussions in the game, we are well aware of them and planning to fix them preemptively.
"Will we need to choose a school to be ""primary"" as now (not role, I mean just school, I know that role will be gone)? If yes, this school will improve its skills (reduces cooldown)?"
No, the concept of a primary school does no longer apply. You can still level up your schools with prowess like before and their bonuses will apply to all skills in the school. I.e all skills now count as primary school skills.
Will opposite school lockouts still apply (e.g. can't have fire and water spells at the same time)?
No, you can choose skills from any school.
What are you going to do about the inevitable situation where practically everyone has ranged gank and rez?
These skills and many others have been tweaked to a great extent.
Are you still going to release the new schools, and if so, will you release them all at once, or one spell at a time?
We definitely want to release new skills, schools and even roles. Whether we do it one school or one skill at a time will depend on our schedule and the intended purpose of the school. One thing is certain, the new system makes it a lot easier for us to introduce new schools to the game as relative balance is no longer an issue.
Following is part 2 of the community Q&A, with part 3 to follow on Monday.
I just mainly want to know if we will have to wait weeks/months for skills to be balanced, Pulverise + Stampede combos in the current meta of everyone being warrior makes playing elementalist+primalist very hard compared to playing a warrior. This has been going on for a long time and could of received some tweaks but hasn't, why should we believe you can balance this new system in a timely fashion.
This has to do with 2 things. First, in a role based system with specific roles, relative balance is something that we always needed to keep in mind when applying tweaks. This will no longer be the case. Second, our new strategy is one of prompt reaction and communication with our community. Tweaks will happen as often and for as long as needed, based on your feedback.
Can we expect some kind of prowess planner on the website or in-game? For attributes, skills, abilities etc.
This is something we definitely want to do either as a complete system or as an API that the community can use to create applications like that. This will not be available with the custom roles patch but we want to work on it as soon as our schedule permits.
How will shields be handled? As I understand it you can assign 2 Hand weapons, 1 Hand Weapons, Staffs and Bows each to one of the 4 attributes (STR, WIS, DEX, INT). Will shields be tied to your 2 hand weapon attribute as they are right now (currently both tied to STR)? If not, then how will they be handled?
Shields are grouped together with 1 handed weapons at the moment. The other groups are 2-handed weapons, Bows together with daggers, and Magic Staves.
Will there be implementation of a backpack GUI option to view backpacks and banks as they were in Darkfall 1?
There exists a design for a grid based inventory system already. It allows for amazing ease of use and many custom ways to sort and filter items. We will be implementing it further down the line.
What will it be replaced with (wobble) and how will it affect the cone of fire mechanic we have now will that be removed/replaced as well?
The wobble mechanic is being completely removed with the custom roles patch. It was used as a balancing mechanic for particular roles, but since relative role and school balance is no longer an issue, it has no place in the game.
You also said: (All vital stat pools are being normalized with significantly more weight being placed on the base attribute instead of the booster. This ensures that all character builds start from an “equal footing”.) What does this mean for leveling base stats is it still necessary or are they all the same for all characters?
You will still level your attributes as you do now and they will provide more of a bonus to their connected pools than they do now.
Will the particle effects for spells be implemented with that patch so we don't see massive drops in frames with the massive amount of fights?
We are currently working on an improved rendering system for effects, one that addresses client performance in large scale battles. It is in testing stage at the moment , and will be deployed either with the custom roles patch or the next one.
Any plans to make theyril weapons more attractive?
We are looking into possible ways to make them more attractive.
Any plans for transfer buffs?
No plans to further buff the transfers currently.
Plans to make stam drain and vamp touch parryable?
We have this in mind at least for the vampiric strike. The stamina drain from damage has been reduced in this patch already and we will keep our eyes on it if it needs further reduction.
Will we be able to save custom builds for quicker and easier changing of 'roles'?
Yes, there are 10 blueprints you can have saved at any given time.
Will armor protections be re-adjusted??
It was not deemed necessary in this patch, but we can easily do it when it will be needed. For now, we tried to tweak and balance the skills and the new armor attributes on the existing armor protections and we did not identify any game breaking problems on our tests (limited as they were). We will have our eyes and ears open for your feedback so we can intervene promptly.
How will this system work for someone creating a new character? Do they just get a giant list of skills of which they have no idea what they do?
No, new players start with no school skills. They can purchase skills from the corresponding vendor, starting at low prowess cost.
If all armors are beneficial now are the crafting costs going to be balanced finally so that metal doesn't cost so much more than cloth?
This has to do with supply and demand. We will look into increasing the supply of iron through monster loot to adjust the price if it is needed with the new system.
Heavy Robe/Light Robes currently just have 5 slots. Are there plans to fill out the remaining 5 slots?
No but we have added 2 more ranks of robes so that they have the same number of ranks as the other armors. Have in mind that the cost and attributes of the pieces have been balanced on that number discrepancy and in the current patch we also took into consideration the helmet, shoulders mix and match system so the particular pieces are “equally” desirable on the new attribute we added.
When changing roles, will we now be able to adjust the boosters? (Current system just swaps out boosters). How will this work since it costs prowess to purchase the boosters?
As in the previous system, you have to buy the boosters only once. When you have already bought them you can use them as needed in any build.
Eventually will all armor pieces be interchangeable?
Due to technical limitations, at the moment it doesn't seem so. We have however allowed to mix and match helmet and shoulder pieces.
Will robe items be twice as good on the armor bonus since there are half the pieces of metal?"
The effectiveness of armor pieces has been adjusted taking into account the fact that the helmet and shoulder slots can be mix and matched. This is true though only for the new attribute, the protections and the crafting costs remain the same as before.
Will you be adding more item slots now that builds will potentially need more weapon types to be viable?
We have added weapon slots to all skills and we will look into adding more quick slots later on.
If I want to play the current pure 140 Dex Duelist type playstyle, am I able to tie both a bow and a 1her to Dex, or am I now forced to pick one?
You will need to pick one, as bows are in a different weapon group than 1 handed weapons. The upside to this is that you can now use the best 1handed weapon with the best shield as a “duelist”.
How will the cost and cooldown bonuses of skills that are leveled to 100 now function since there is no longer a primary school? Will all abilities be increased in effectiveness if leveled up?
Yes, all skills within the school are affected.
Will armor protections be more normalized much like stat pools are? Dread/Imperious closer in line, and Intricate/Extravagant closer in line?
We think that with the addition of the new armor attributes they are more in line. The lighter the armor the more the damage output. We hope that they will be all desirable and we will be monitoring the usage so we can adjust any values needed in the future.
Are the epic continent monsters still in the making and planned you were talking about during beta?
There has been development progress on several of those monsters but they have been put on hold due to AI issues. We will pick them up again once we have the time.
Is it thinkable to have a new (and this time realistic) roadmap for upcoming content during 2014?
Right now we're working on developing and communicating our immediate plans. Once we've optimized our operational workflow and we've regained community trust through consistent timely delivery , we'll be happy to communicate our long term plans as well.
With the ability to link an armor type and a weapon type to stats will skills now inherit their power from the stat the associated weapon is linked to?
No, skills retain their current attribute links. That system is only used for the required prerequisite stat.
Will daggers be reworked in game so they are more viable for PvP?
Yes, daggers have been tweaked with this in mind, their damage, speed and especially their reach has been increased.
How will the auto weapon swap work with skills that allow several weapon choices?
If there is a weapon linked to a skill, when the skill is activated the weapon will also be unsheathed. You can leave the weapon slot empty to make a manual selection.
Example: If you have a sword unsheathed, and you select fireball(magic staff assigned), the magic staff will replace the sword. Your next click will cast fireball.
Will we be able to bind two types of weapons to one skill, ie vamp strike with one hander and 2hander or dash with melee weps or bows?
No, only one weapon can be be assigned to the skill slot. You can leave the slot empty and equip the weapon you want though.
I assume that the time to kill aspect will be significantly improved, but if you were to wear the lowest protection armor will you still have an improved time to kill compared to today or will we just be looking at another glass cannon? In short, how big is the difference In protections from heavy armor to the lightest armor.
For now we did not change the total armor protections. As stated before, we tweaked heavily the skills and also the vital stats pools. So compared to today, you will have more vital stats overall.
If you mix and match your boosters will wearing i.e. studded instead of intricate be a worthwhile sacrifice for the mix? and if not are stat requirements on gear such as dread, imperious, etc being lowered to compensate.
We expect in particular situations, some combinations to be making more sense than others.
So you can decide to wear a lower-tier armor but that means you will have more boosters in an off-stat, and therefore some of your skills will be more effective, because they will benefit from the increased attribute. Stat requirement on gear has not been changed for the time being, but this can easily change depending on how the system will play out.
How the knock back effect will work out vs heavy armors, till we already know, that they will have some kind of resistance on gravity/ push based powers. Is the full light armor will mitigate the resistance by its magnitude bonus, are self knock back will be lowered as well by the amount of resistance?
Any physics vector magnitude applied on a character will be reduced by the set reduction percent the armor will provide. Also keep in mind the higher quality heavy armor you are wearing the higher your knockback resistance is going to be.
My second question would be around stat regeneration and primalist gear, would it be stack with food effect? Would it's HP part will stack with invigoration? And will invigoration stack with int mana regeneration effect?
Every regeneration bit stacks and it always did. As for invigoration, we lowered it’s effect of course, as it now can be combined with the other regeneration sources.
How much of my prowess am I going to get back to spend.?
All the prowess that has been spent on purchasing and leveling combat skills, common skills, attributes and boosters. Basically, everything except crafting skills buying cost.
How much impact will "stats boosters" have on skills compared to "normal stats" (not boosted).
As much as they had before.
Keep in mind that we did not change how skills are affected by attributes and/or boosters. They follow the same rules as before. Elementalist spells benefit from Intelligence, Skirmisher skills benefit from Dexterity and so on.
No comments:
Post a Comment