Post:Recall Simucon - Bards - 08/14/2011 - 03:31

Re: Recall Simucon - Bards · on 08/14/2011 03:31 AM CDT	1305
Just some clarifications now that I'm finally home again and more or less unpacked (And before any of you snark, I'd like to point out that my "getting home and unpacking" involved a 2000+ mile drive and setting up a new apartment). >>Heritage Houses will more than likely be released in the following order: 1) Taleweavers 2) Lorekeepers 3) Songsworn I asked if people would want me to hold back a basically finished Heritage to wait for the others, and the general response was "no". This was a couple of months back. That order is correct as far as the likely order for them to be completed. If there are now strong feelings that they should be released as one, I'm willing to listen to them. >>The Songsworn quest is by far the most involved and is being reworked to be a bit less involved due to its present incredible scope :P This isn't actually why the Songsworn will be last (Though it's part of it). It's more a matter of some of the Heritages being less dependent on other projects. While there's no way I'm going to give spoilers, I will clarify by "scaled back" I mean when I looked at what I'd plotted out it was realistically more on the scale with the Resurrection quest, and would have involved something like 5 brand new mechanics to support it (Compared to one of the Taleweavers and a tweak to one for the Lorekeepers), so I'm going to have to mechanically simplify it quite a bit. I fully expect it to remain the most involved of the quests, and most of the story line should survive the simplifications. >>Scream Concussive To clarify on this a little, think of it as a multi-shot TM spell under magic 3.0. It's your shotgun (accurate), while breath of storms (Or potentially other TM spells) are your rifle (precise). While I don't want to just say "This is how and when you should use this" I feel that the abilities I'm writing for you guys should feel like they at least can be tactically deployed. In the case of screams the general idea is for them to be somewhat less devastating than they are now, but also a more natural part of your day to day existence if you should so choose. >>Was there any mention of how the high level AoE scream would function? Just like the single target ones, but, you know, on everything. If we let them play nice with groups is something I have not yet decided. Part of me wants to say "No" but the other part of me feels that not being able to protect a group really hinders the Bard's group/leadership nature, and to do otherwise would be to create the bad kind of tension in game play. >>Will cyclics train Performance? No. Yes, I do realize this means Performance is going to be a little rough to train. Socharis and I are working on a fairly robust system to help make Performance a skill worth pursuing, though I am open to other suggestions for development of the skill. >>When he says Heritages will be released, is that just to mean that the quest to join and simply being a member is all that will be released? Or will it include some of the planned feat systems? When they are released they will include a joining quest, a clubhouse, and all their cosmetic perks. The feat system is the very last project in the current schedule for the overhaul of Bards. >>Things I didn't see anyone mention, but was still relevant to you guys: After setting aside the recall rewrite months ago due to rethinking how I wanted to go about it, and then having my time consumed by other projects, I rewrote Evoke (The new version of Perc History) before the Con and it is now in QC. I fully expect it to be the next release for you guys. Should it prove as robust and sturdy as I hope I should be able to convert Recall History over to the same mechanics and start converting all the actual recall histories over to the new system. The other variants (plus some new ones) of Recall may or may not be updated at that same time, depending on how smoothly rewriting them goes. Most likely the next update will be to the mojo system itself, setting up the new system while leaving the old abilities in place. And of course the X3.0 updates are all rushing towards you. More updates... soonish as a few things gel and the general shape of my schedule (DR and otherwise) shape up for the next few weeks. The good news is that some of the major limitations on my time are now gone since the move is finished, but the bad news is that a few remain (Nothing like realizing your apartment is a big empty box and you need a new everything) and some non Bard projects are trying very hard to sneak onto the top of my priority pile. -Raesh
This message was originally posted in The Bards \ General Discussions - Bards, by DR-RAESH on the play.net forums.