Greetings and Salutations!
Please join us Thursday, September 10th at 3:00 PM Central (20:00 GMT) for our next Hangout of the Avatar! Richard, Starr, and Chris will be chatting about Release 21 and giving you a sneak peek at Release 22. And, of course, FireLotus will be taking your questions and feedback live in the chat-room and also in advance right here in the comments section.*
We will be giving out some really awesome prizes during the 90 minute extended Hangout, and all you have to do to qualify for one is to come hang out with us in the IRC chatroom during the broadcast. As always, the link to the hangout will be posted here directly before the hangout begins.
*Please keep in mind that questions and feedback related to Release 21 specific topics will be given priority and really verbose questions may be skipped, as they can be a challenge to shorten and summarize live on the air. In brief… please keep your questions… brief. 
What changes are going in for magic to make non-melee mages easier to play at low skill levels?
I’d also like to know this, making a Pure caster viable to combat with compared to a cookie cutter build with skills that make them a Hybrid mage and not a Full mage outright.
1. Will we start to see more heavily decorated NPC buildings soon (at the moment they’re a bit sparsely decorated)
1. When and how will magery, melee, and archery be balanced?
2. Would it be possible for the XP pools (crafting and adventuring) to be combined and what are the reasons for not doing this?
3. How’s the…. ummmm… schedule looking for the rest of the year with four releases to go before 2016? Will that be enough to say… finish :-)?
4. What’s keeping the opting out of physical rewards for store credit from becoming a reality? Seems like it would save a ton of time and money for Portalarium.
Thanks for all that you guys do.
^^
2. I do NOT want to see shared XP pool, i was very excited that i learned about this. Crafting XP should be earned by doing crafting. one of the MAJOR dealbreakers for me with level system was that everyone got passive crafting skills, which made crafters obsolete.
Just my opinion, ofcourse.
Question: Is there a skill “cap” we should know about?
I understand there is a soft cap according to your level, please explain…
Question: Can you give us a “salvage all” button, so we can salvage multiple items at once (of the same type metals or woods or leathers)?
Future of zoning: will zoning be available in EP1? Very useful for social events, there could be a high cooldown timer. Also an incentive for having multiple lots/houses. Without zoning I do not know why to keep more than one home.
I am also curious about zoning. Since the R. Garriott games of the past have had teleportation abilities will we see this in Shroud of the Avatar but different to avoid copyright issues?
Any info about the planned tax on lots? AFAIK the price for a lot deed will be quite high, I assume >40h playtime to gather/craft the gold. But what about the monthly tax? How long do I need to collect gold per month to keep a (non pledge) city lot for my airship (lot available in a POT, but lot deed needed)?
1. Currently, a common complaint is that new players are having a hard time, especially playing solor. What plans do you guys have for optimizing the starting section for newcomers?
2. Can we start to get some clarification on when we will start to be able to test single player offline mechanics?
3. How will POTs work for Single Player Online?
4. What will NPC towns look like in single Player Offline mode? Will we see loads of empty houses or lots?
5. What modifications or improvements, if any, are planned for NPC conversations?
RE: #2
I would like to have a pseudo-offline mode, where it still sends the telemetry that the devs need, but players get to test the unique offline gameplay mechanics:
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/single-player-offline-unique-features.21739/
I would like to add a number 6, just to get all crazy.
#6: Can you please give some detail on how virtue will work in SotA?
How does localization work in future releases and how can the community help in particular?
#saveautoattack
To put this into a question form:
Do you plan on making “auto attack” auto attack?
Thanks Dev Team!
Haha
Yes, save auto attack…
1. Dyes – Will black/white dye and bright dyes be coming back soon? Will they be craft-able? Can you give us an idea of when you hope to get them back in?
2. Clothing – How soon might us chicks be able to craft some dresses to wear when in town?
[I am presuming we would be able to dye them – please correct me if I am wrong.]
3. Hats in Online Store – Will the Devs consider adding in the ‘brown’/dye-able hats from the earliest quests?
[I still would love to buy a Cavalier hat! Yes, I have one- but one is not enough!]
4. For Newb Characters – Will lower-level, easier-to-kill creatures be placed in the game?
Comment: Right now there seems to be not enough of them to effectively level on. Further, I fear that the ability to salvage/repair/have-enough-gold-to-buy-a-repair-kit will be over-burdensome on that fateful day when the final wipe comes and we go live.
1: So what’s the news on the asset bounty list?
Can we at least get a confirmation as to whether or not it’s going to happen? Or is all hope lost?
Can we please have a row lot unoccupied by a building, so we can have a garden or open vending area, etc.? At least let POT owners designate certain row lots to not require putting a house on them?
When will we get more dyes?
Black
Purple (from pledge rewards)
Will these eventually be crafted by players?
And Clear dyes that allow you to revert back to the original color of an item?
Clear dyes? You mean some type of bleach?
Could we please have some work done on the Elven Mage Robes. They don’t look particularly flattering on a male avatar. Elves have a much thinner frame than humans do.
And robes in general. When might we see these enter the game?
QUESTION: When will Stealth Skills be supported? Episode I?
QUESTION: Will masks ever conceal the name of a player?
And real cloaks. That cloak around you, like a cloak.
“This skill will gain experience each time a relevant skill is used”, this tooltip appears whenever I hover over one of the skills in the skill tree. Will this tooltip be changed to show the relevant skill or will there be a list somewhere that mentions what skill needs to be used or action taken to raise a skill?
Some seem obvious like swordplay, but other things like Armour Preservation or Train Strength less so.
Agreed, I turned off some skills but they changed to greyed arrows with comment that they were left that way so they wouldn’t negatively affect relevant skills…but I don’t know which ones they affect :/
QUESTION: When the option for Dynamic POT Owners becomes available to place an NPC Vendor in our NPC Shops, will we have a selection of which look/style NPC to use?
(Idea: a selection menu like we currently use to choose a house for a claimed lot)
At the moment, if we are WEAK and POOR we have the option of just RUNNING through a control point, rather than trying to fight our way through. Will this continue in Episode 1?
What are the thoughts of the dev team on allowing guilds that command a control point the option of collecting a toll from those that want to pass but not PvP?
In light of recent bug fixes that weren’t, and past bugs that seem to recur (e.g., ‘Prosperity’ tools that don’t work), it’d be interesting to know:
Is there any regression testing other than what’s done by the players?
What’s in use as far as configuration/source management?
I’d like to play in the game magic, so I’d like of which depends damage in magic I made staf, but he has a little damage in the characteristics … so I wonder how connected the main damage staf and skils? Whether enough to have any kind staf and after only increase your level skils? or necessary to increase the level of staf? if so, where it should take prescription to create a better staff
Question Will skill decay be part of the final game or is there a nother solutions?
QUESTION: When will Duke Custom Heads, and Coat of Arms make it into the game?
What will we be able to put coat of arms on? Flags, Banners, Clothing, etc…
Will coat of arms be crafted by players onto these items? (i.e. will it be a crafting step)
Love the use based skill system very much …
Question : will the taming require diffrent levels of skill to have a chance at taming higher level beasts. How will we be notified if our skill is not high enough or if it’s just a failed attempt.
Question: when will we see mini versions of our pets with us on the overworld map.
Question: are there any plans to make larger more populated scenes that feel more like zones. I’m not complaining but some scenes do feel a little single player like.
Edit on skill gains I’d like to see that in blue in my chat window, it would remind me of the good old days.
Clarification : I’d like to see the example that was 200 people possible in 1 scene currently I cannot think of one that can support even a fraction of that many are so small 5 people feels crowded.
With Blood River coming up, just wondering about the map layout there.
Will our in-game geographically, particularly of that region, be changing to represent the out of game maps of Novia? Blood River currently circles around into the Fogladden, turning Longfall into an Island instead of a Peninsula, and the two “rivers” into more of a channel. On the out of game maps, the rivers are distinct, and a road runs up from Aerie right through the Vertas Pass (while that pass, in game, is crossed from a different direction.
Just curious on whether serious updates to the map will align in closer to the out of game maps, or vice versa? I’m hoping to see it all match up closer with the out of games personally. Thanks, Albus
Again with Blood River stuff coming up, wondering about collecting trophies such as say elven ears, or creating wall mountings of say elven, human, etc. heads or skulls similar to the elk head wall mounting in game now. “Trophies” might be useful for player-made quests, i.e. show that you slew x # of kobolds, elves, whatever, and the wall mountings would fit in with the cannibalism. More things we can get and craft with for new furnishings from our adventures would be appreciated (and not all with grisly themes – those just came up with the Blood River Massacre, human/Vertas elf war).
Thanks again,
Albus
QUESTION: Could we please get swamp trees into the add-on store for purchase?
QUESTION: Could we please get LARGE Obsidian walls (like keep walls) into the add-on store for purchase?
QUESTION: Could we please get poison and ANTI-poison into the game so that Spiders don’t kill me 100 times and I can kill things other than wolves and bears?
QUESTION: Could we get cypress trees (Mediterranean cypress) into the add-on store for purchase?
Yes please! Cypress and Swamp tress would be great!
Also a bunch of other trees I’d like, including juniper trees and olive trees. But we don’t know how fruit bearing trees will work in the game yet, and olive trees can certainly be one of them. There could always be fruitless olive trees for decoration though.
Although it would be nice to be able to pick oak branches and acorns from oak trees and juniper berries and so on, but I digress.
QUESTION: How will you prevent the bad use of zoning from people who live in POTs or towns, with the tranquility, far from the main cities and places empty row houses just for teleport?
I really don’t want a ghost neighborhood
– Navigator Concerned
Question: During the Kickstarter, and with the advent of Player Owned Towns, there were promises made for being able to establish Central Markets in towns. What is the status of this, and how will it be implemented?
These would be areas where Avatars could place vendors in a central location to avoid the tedium of having to travel from lot to lot searching for an appropriate and stocked vendor.
Zoning will not make it into the final game, so it can’t be abused.
I read a related question earlier and I was in doubt. Thanks for the answer
QUESTION: Right now, its difficult to see how with the decoration limits, POT designers could make features like city walls, like those we see in Owl’s Head, or avenues/parkways with rows of trees. Will you try to find ways to make these things available to POTs? What are the plans?
Question: Will the final use-based system be complete independent from adv/ prd level so that success chances and slugs are not bound to the intangible level?
Question: Will every active skill have an improvement when leveling and not only give more cards?
Question: Can Chris explain again the meaning behind the skill decay? Why is it not a punishement of active playing people that try to make progress every day?
Question: Did they XP sharing is still the same? Will it get back to equale share when the adv level doesn’t play a role anymore?
Question: Will the crafting XP gain be changed so we have not to fight against skill decay and XP decay? So that pure crafter are not punished for spezialising.
Want to add the question:
When will we see a polishing release again, which focus totally on killing bugs that summed up over the last releases? This was one of the worst releases since quite a time and many bugs that were once fixed came back and old ones that live now since several releases are still there. It is really hard to test new features if the basics are not working as they should.
A few questions.
1) will taming continue to use up expensive collars on every taming attempt? No other skill requires this type of resource use to train…(each taming attempt uses 2 silver ingots, 2 leather and 1metal ingot)
2) will birds/chickens ever drop feathers?
3) any more information on lot allocation? Is it going to be a free for all (between tiers) race and land grab with all the issues of disconnects, server loads etc or is there a possibility of web based option where you just select your lot on a map?
-Who has the most clean organised working desk in the office , and who has a working desk worthy of followers of chaos.
-Incase your Coffee Mashine counts the numbers of coffee:
How much coffee does the coffee machine in the Portalarium Office show that have been drunk.
( i thought sometimes a not so serious question is nice as a closing quesiton.
)
1 – Could we please get some insight into just how much a skill improves per level, i have levelled a skill before at least 20 times without one change to it, and it is now too expensive to currently level further so i have wasted 20 levels worth of exp on it. Maybe for a random example if you gain 1 intelligence per 6 levels it could show +0.16 intell a level in the toolip (rounded down.) or have each skill stat gain/upgrade the same every set amount of levels and that could be shown, both the amount of increase per each set amount of levels and the amount of levels it takes to upgrade, in the tooltip.
2 – could we please see the amount of exp gained for each enemy again. One of the main reasons is new players are having trouble knowing which areas they should be levelling in, for example a level 30 that did not get one level over 2 days, i found out he was killing grey wolves in graymark forest, told him of a more appropriate place his level and he started getting great gains straight away and was very thankful. Others have left because of this. Not sure why this was decided to be hidden as i personally don’t see any paticular reason besides some artifical immersion.
3 – If we can’t see our experience bar for each level, can we please at least see a notification maybe telling us every 25% we gain towards the next level, or even 50% then 100% (As the new combat system isn’t completely use based, being half of the old system so we still need to level and it would still be great to be able to see the progress we are making at later levels while grinding monsters for hours and hours. Knowing if we are still 3 hours away from a level, 3min or anywhere inbetween.)
4 – Fair enough if you guys want to keep the exp pool hidden, i can understand a bit why, but could we at least see how exp each level of each skill takes, as it varies wildly between skills and grows majorly at higher levels, would be a major positive change for build planning.
5 – UO was an amazing game i played again recently and one of the reasons why to me it was so amazing is because all its numbers and formulas for everything and anything you could want to know was there online, which made for some of the best theorycrafting and testing and unique build making i have ever done. Will we ever see that again? Are so much of the numbers and core information hidden from us because its still early (pre-alpha) and mechanics are still being reworked let alone numbers, or are you guys wanting to hide so much of the information even after release, for potential balance reasons or anything else?
6 – When will ranged/archery, the only weapon skill still not completed, be finished roughly? Was there any paticular reason, any paticular setback or hardship with this paticular fighting style that has made it take so long?
7 – Are you guys happy with the fact that although pets are strong (obsidian bear anyway) that you lose focus during combat, with anything more than a quick skirmish draining your entire bar and then having to dismiss your pet for an hour at a time, with minimal chance for sustain?
8 – Is it just me or is there currently a much more major discrepancy of survivability between the types of armor and the dmg avoid and resist differences? Ive change my loadout (including a plate chest to cloth chest) giving me 3 more dmg resist (funnily enough) but 1 less damage avoid and i seemed to be taking 2 to 3 times more damage, got hit and crit alot harder and my survivability crashed way more than those numbers indicated. Of course pre-alpha etc but it just seems these numbers are so completely out-of-whack compared to the indicated dmg avoid and dmg resist.
Can we ever expect to see an automated in-game mail system at some point?
Do you guys have any plans to tweak the way floating combat numbers are displayed?
Like the floating text but they could look cooler imop.
I think a good question is, rather, if they plan to get rid of floating numbers down the line.
RGs ideal is I think to have everything visible so you don’t need numbers. Plus I think he likes better verbal, rather than numerical, descriptors, like we saw in the earlier Ultimas: “critical” vs. “heavily wounded” vs “lightly wounded” vs “grazed”. etc.
When is the next scheduled wipe?
R23
QUESTION: The blog post on fishing mentions “Seasonality and time of day differences (dusk/dawn best times) will become important when you fish.” Will the game eventually move in the direction of land animals also having different activity depending on the time of day and season?
For example, in the real world, wolves are crepuscular, meaning they mainly come out during dawn and dusk, though this is also affected by the seasonal conditions, and the moon.
One of the most impressive things about Shroud of the Avatar, that I believe a lot of folks don’t quite grasp yet, is the power of the selective/filtered experience. The ability to filter individuals based on play-choice inside of one massive server instead of having multiple “shards” tailored to the different play-styles that are attracted to “Lord British” games is an earth-shattering brilliant foundation to build upon.
QUESTION: With this power of filtering, what are the chances of SotA featuring specific Scenes or even Player Towns that, when entered, will filter players into “Single Player Online” or perhaps “Party Only” experiences until exiting?
Examples: Silent Hill style ghost towns where you can’t find your friends, story specific events that are meant to be personal for each player, or even cinematic party experiences.
Also, I was really hoping Richard Garriott would have joined me for my karaoke birthday party at Dragon Con this past weekend. Maybe next year?
1) StretchgoalQ – Has any work on the game (such as dynamic placement?) brought us closer to a stretch goal such as flexible placement where the target could be lowered?
2) StretchgoalQ- At this point are any stretch goals expected to make launch?
3) Functionality – When will we hear about “hidden effect” items sold in the store? (Oracle Head, LB Cloak, etc.) – No more lightsources please
4) End-Game – I know this is a big one, but once one has completed the story and obtained a nicely crafted suit of armor, what future goals does the (your) avatar have in Novia? Will all post-story content be player-generated such as RP/PvP or will there be other long-term quests/goals to undertake?
So was the corpion being the name for all scorpions a real stretch goal or was it just someone who drank to much?
I would like some clarification on Exp , how it is earned / used. Basically how much we are earing and cost for skills. Like the table once posted that showed how many points went to what level. TY
Three questions for the hangout tonight:
1) When non-player vendors sell player crafted items, will these have reset the durability to max and/or removed enchantments/gems – removed the ‘crafted by’
2) At what point do you think you’ve got a release we can show to friends without scaring them away?
3) Are you aware of, and trying to fix, the connection issues players on T-online connections in Germany seem to have? I gifted a German friend an account. It lagged so bad he barely could play, despite having a 20Mbit adsl.
Why is there NO focus Regen ???
Will PVP players be able to attack other PVP flagged players on the overland map?
If so would this pull both players into the hex where the attack was initiated (hopefully away from an exit)?
QUESTION: When will weather and the environment start affecting magic?
eg. will we soon see rain increase the power of water and lighting spells and reduce the power of fire spells? Orm the same for being inside a pool of water while casting?
Use based is very cool, however…
Putting “locks” on skills to not advance is so unrealistic that it hurts my head.
Unlearning skills that people want? Also odd.
If you rocket up in one skill, then you can automatically gain more experience by doing bigger things (killing basically) and level up the rest quicker.
Suggest no locks, you use it you gain some experience in that skill. But I would add “focus/concentrate” toggles. I am “concentrating on blades”, or “focusing on death magic”, etc. This allows extra gains in these focus areas without having to manage switching off things.
This also means the “decay” can be set a much longer time scale, like a month since it will be much harder to rocket up skills.
In Arx Draconis, all the npc-buildings have their supporting npcs available, so that it is as useful as the cities like Ardoris or Owl’s Head? You can buy your crafting stuff, armour, sell weapons, supple leahter straps ….
1. Why doesn’t the other PoT’s don’t have the vendors yet?
2. And when will they have it?
Traveling a whole continent, (or even travel to another city, because the Ardoris lag) isn’t neither fun – not good for beginning players. The npc-functionality should be everywhere, so that at least beginning players have much more easier life.
Longtimers know how to use the way of /stuck
Helloooo
Questions
1. Can we get the combat cursor fixed please so it’s more visible
2. Any way to Move a activate combat to a different key other than “Z” i’m finding myself hitting the Windows key too often just saying…. I’m sure I can customize it just like the R key
3. There used to be a tiny bonus when you would achieve levels (in points) like 40-50-60 etc…. is there any such bonus now if so how is it shown or seen I can’t see any achievements or reward for leveling
1. Will we ever be able to pet the NPC cats wandering around (and ok, dogs also i guess)? or a scratch behind the ears?
2. Are there any good one-handed battle-axes to craft? They seem to be missing, or I can’t find recipes
Question
Will the health bar UI ever be movable? I use 3 monitors to play with a spanned resolution of 5760×1080 and I find it hard to keep a good eye on my party and my own health/focus when in pvp/pve combat due to the fact that I have to turn my entire head to see the UI. Thanks you guys and gals rock!
Extra Question for the hangout:
Can we please have some casual wear as tour rewards instead of hats at some point?
I’d suggest some victorian style underwear
Will we be able to have ability to clear off dyes that have been applied? Or reset an item to it’s default colors?