Ok so I just spent a few hours writing up everything I scribbled down at Fan Faire. This comes with a few caveats. It's not blog style or intended to be entertaining, it's just straight information. Also I haven't read all the other threads so there may be duplication.
Now please, don't flame me if I got something wrong somewhere! Also please don't start attacking the devs for something I've written here. It's possible I could have misunderstood them so just ask nicely if you want clarification. There were also quite a few "we would like to do..." statements made at Fan Faire, so keep in mind that just because the devs would really like to do something doesn't mean you're going to see everything implemented in the near future. Thanks.
Pantheon
Pantheon lore not fully revealed yet, few players are in t3 and the information isn't getting out to people yet.
Nate Kamelott discovered energy flakes around powerful beings and he harvests them to power the laser weapons, etc. Then he tells everyone the gods are a lie to keep the power for himself. Later we get to harvest these energy flakes to use them too.
So the KDQ is using the power of the imprisoned gods, which is why the gods hate them. Players are supposed to hate the KDQ because they represent everything that isn't Telon and Vanguard. At the end you get to kill Nate Kamelott (woohoo!)
The KoS feature in the Halls of Order/Chaos was put in because players were asking for meaningful consequences from their choices ingame. However it only extends to those 2 halls, not further parts of HOTP or HOSS. This does not mean that order and chaos aligned players cannot group in there, it just requires some creativity and coordination. Or people may end up forming order or chaos groups with others outside their guild. However devs are prepared to see how it goes as more people progress through Pantheon. If people are really struggling to get groups then something could be changed, since the dungeon is still new and tweaking is still an option. (I did mention that PuGs are generally less common and harder to get on Halgar compared to the US servers due to different social factors such as native languages.)
Pantheon armour stats were designed taking into account player's complaints about the APW sets, but are still open to a little tweaking if people feel they are not right.
Complete set of t3 armour has an effect which increases power for the class. E.g. druid gets 10% increase in damage (from pet and/or phenomenons? not sure), bards get 10% increase in power of shouts.
Pantheon armour has different colour depending on deity. Also has symbol of deity on the front. The armour benefits vary slightly, chaos is more destructive whilst order is more protective. This is a small, subtle difference though, a passive effect from the armour. The main class stats are identical on order/chaos armour.
Epic weapon comes from completing Pantheon. Raid version has same appearance but has particle effects added. The epic is not actually a weapon, but an enhancement which goes in new soul slot on all future weapons. Therefore you get to keep the epic enhancement forever and keep using it as you gain better weapons in the future.
The epic adds the additional stats to the weapon and gives it the epic appearance. Devs could look at making an alternative version so weapon appearance is not over-written in future if that was preferred.
The epic enchantments are energy from the souls of warrior Ancients. For the raid version from HOSS, you are questing to break these open the release more of the energy (hence the name, Hall of Shattered Souls).
God blessings (Pantheon deity buffs) are not as critical as people are currently thinking, it is not a make or break decision! They are not a permanent buff for your character. You will get your blessing in future areas like Halls of the Pantheon and Halls of Shattered Souls (Pantheon B) by clicking on the black rift stones. Your deity will then give you a buff to help you in the area you are fighting in. E.g. if mobs have high resistance of one type, you might get something to compensate for that.
Exact benefits of the blessings will therefore vary between dungeons, but each god has a general theme to their buffs, e.g. healing, defensive, dps, etc. However the buffs will not be hugely overpowering, just something extra to help you in a specific area.
The price for switching deity was lowered, so it is available as an option, though you have to redo the faction. And no you can't get both mounts on 1 character, if you reset so you can switch deities then everything you obtained is removed from you.
You have to complete Pantheon A (HOTP) before you can enter Pantheon B (HOSS). That means getting the t3 armour, the mount and the epic weapon. The devs estimated that very hardcore players might get through Pantheon in a month, whereas normal players might take 3-4 months of regular gameplay to do it.
A later stage involves killing the named bird mobs in the halls of order/chaos which are 12-man targets, it is intended that 2 normal groups in the Pantheon area should be able to join together to do these. These birds are t3 targets.
HOSS
This dungeon looks like the first Pantheon, except smashed up with rubble lying on the floor, etc. Also there is no upper floor to it.
There are 6 raid bosses you have to progress through to unlock each further area, like killing the sentries for access in HOTP. After the 6 raid bosses comes the final raid boss. There are no trash mobs in HOSS, you can just go in and fight your raid targets.
The dungeon will probably be sharded, although not as many shards. This is not fully decided yet though. Might look into a mechanism for locking a shard to a guild for a few days so that you can continue to progress through it, i.e. after you've killed the first couple of bosses you can go straight to working on the next ones.
Nexus
Tiraslee has a grand design for Nexus all worked out. It will be much bigger than Stiirhad, and will make APW look tiny. The design has 9 levels and a huge amount of content. The story/theme is Kojan and you are fighting on the Ulvari plane. (I'm guessing that means you get taken to the place the Ulvari are coming from.)
However the devs really want to get it right, hence it has been put on hold for now because of the time and resources needed to do it properly. One option might be to release it in stages, one floor at a time or something like that.
Nexus would involve both crafting and diplo, like Pantheon. Could have more diplo involvement, such as parleying with an NPC to spawn a boss.
Pankor Zhi and Stiirhad
These are both going to be 6-man dungeons for groups of 53-55, or maybe just 55 (devs not sure yet).
They are intended to be EQ-style dungeon crawls, with not so much in the way of quests but more about going off exploring and seeing what you can find in there. The structures of both these areas were created a long time ago and were done really well, both are ideal for dungeon crawls with twisting corridors and rooms etc.
Pankor Zhi will tell the start of the Haelifur story. Stiirhad will be the end of the Haelifur story. So both will be mostly populated with dark elves and dragons.
Stiirhad would be group content above ground. The dungeon underground would contain raid content, but might be partly group content as well (undecided as yet).
Other Adventuring Stuff
The salamander caves (dungeon under swamps) - this will be revamped and released in the next few weeks, with new drops on the mobs. Being done now because tier 3 of Pantheon sends you there to kill a boss. Will still be a group area.
OT - this is another area the devs would love to revamp. The art for the surface of OT is a mess and would benefit from being redone, although the art for the dungeon below is better.
AAs will be a combination of strengthening existing abilities and giving new abilities. The base code and slash commands for AAs has been written, now need the UI components and to create the abilities themselves. The initial AAs seen will be straight forward upgrades whilst the system is new, the really cool new abilities will come after that since they require more thought and more careful balancing.
The runes/enchantments were made soulbound to stop them being sold on LiveGamer. However at Fan Faire we talked about how people are getting stuck because they have the wrong craft class to upgrade the item they've looted. Was suggested that in guild groups people should loot according to craft classes not adventuring classes, but this doesn't work in PuGs (or half guild members + pickups) as are common on SoD. Silius will look at removing the soulbound restriction from them.
Mentioned the problem with Slappy the Cool's dance on SoD preventing healers from casting heals, and then a group member dies from a leftover DoT whilst everyone is dancing. Silius said the dance could be shortened or something.
Content requiring galleons - there are already art assets for an island only reachable by galleon which could be populated in the future. Quite a large area with potential for a fair amount of content, but not currently in the plans of things to work on.
The new druid pet and the level 55 necro pet should have about the same durability, (whether as hp or mit, it's not going to be exactly identical).
Future contents the devs would like to do includes finishing Torvald's story, so far only 4 of the 7 giants have been implemented.
Devs looking into a way to provide info on crit, SDR, accuracy values etc as tooltips on the character sheet, instead of the game variables (which were removed as many weren't actually reporting correctly).
Garuzamut - idea is to make him a special target that requires 5x 24 man raids. Something you'd do occasionally, by getting several guild together. Would get some kind of kill credit to hand in for a reward rather than dropping loot. Level 59 mob. (I don't even want to think what the lag would be like though!)
The current apprentice on Vanguard is going to be working on the Hilsbury story next. A copy of the dungeon exists ingame already for it, just needs populating.
Copy of Rahz Inkur also exists which is coloured red (big red swirling sky). Tiraslee wants to turn this into a "plane of fear" type thing (whatever that is.)
Housing
Guildhalls are not likely to see additional functionality such as crafting tables, or any new functionality would be a feature of all guild headquarters (including normal houses) not just a feature of guildhalls. The main intention with guildhalls was that the size would be a status symbol for the guild, but the same functionality is available in a normal house for smaller guilds too.
Normal items put in houses can't easily be given the appearance of furniture, as the furniture system was done differently. However it should be possible to put tooltips on the "cup" (or beer can) items placed in houses to see what they are without picking them up.
Transfer of guildhall ownership (after guild leader leaves) is a nightmare for CS as well as for players, issure keeps coming up. Devs will try to look into making a tool that CS could use to do this for players.
Other Non-Adventuring Stuff
Banks are going to change in the next few weeks! Merging the banks would be a high risk coding change, and the potential for lost items makes it too dangerous to do. So instead all 3 banks will become accessible from the same NPCs/locations, whichever continent you are on. The size of each of the 3 banks will also be increased (don't know by how much).
The intention in Vanguard is that, whilst it is possible to play a single sphere character, there will always be advantages to having your character active in all 3 spheres. Hence there is some new craft and diplo content within HOTP which is tied to the adventuring content there.
Crafting is likely to see more special recipes at levels 50-55, however no true t6 crafting at this time. This is partly because crafting goes in tiers and the current level increase is only half a tier, so fitting 51-59 recipes and items into 51-55 wouldn't work. New recipes could include larger bags and housing chests.
Harvesting skills are capped at 500. Anyone who is seeing their skills go up above this - it is a bug (which will be looked into). This is why adding gear and buffs to a maxed harvester isn't really increasing the yields on t6 nodes by a noticable amount. Nothing is going to change here, the cap wouldn't go up unless t7 was added.
Armour dyes were not in the original design for Vanguard because Brad/Jeff wanted to keep the integrity of the original art and design. However current dev team is not at all against having them. There are problems with itemization since each different colour would be another asset (another object) in the game, so not easy to implement without becoming a nightmare. Would require programming time to do this properly instead of a nasty hack and exploding the database with different coloured items, but could be looked into.
Weapon appearance slots are not likely to happen. This is because of animations attached to the weapons and your abilities. If you're holding a sword for appearance yet actually using an axe, it's going to get confused when your character tries to swing that axe-sword.
Fishing was implemented by Itchie who was an apprentice on the team, but he left for a new permanent job. Was going to be followed by cooking, which would be an assembly process done outdoors. However fishing/cooking won't be taken further at this time since no one to work on it now.
There has been some talk about allowing players to move characters between accounts (since this technically became possible with LiveGamer). This might be a tool CS could use if players petition for a move, rather than an option players can execute themselves. Will be looked into further.
Expansions - one reason Vanguard is not likely to get a formal expansion is the extra resources required from elsewhere in SOE to do this, e.g. Platform Support and Marketing departments. Since Vanguard does not get first call on such resources, this would significantly delay getting new content out if done as an expansion rather than as patches.
Scavaging System - this is Silius' idea to get non-crafting adventurers a few crafting levels and a little taste for it whilst running around dungeons. You would find/loot broken pieces of items in a dungeon, and collect these pieces. Then go to a machine in the dungeon to craft the complete item. Handing this in to a treasure hunter NPC would give some craft xp. This would be added to all dungeons. Would not get you to level 50 in crafting, but might get to mid-levels incrafting by the time you're level 50 adventuring.
Another vetertan reward coming in the next few weeks, will be an ettercap illusion. Also a winback promotion for returning players with a Xerkin illusion (from Pantheon).
And lastly, how to pronounce the names that people usually get wrong. Salim is "sa-LEEM" and Silius is "si-LI-us". Ikik is "I-kick' (yes it's a deliberate bad pun, his original full name was Ikikgud).
03/07/2009, 12h31
