Editing AC2:Announcements - 2003/02 - Ambuscade (section)

== Letter to the Players ==
{{AC2 Article
 |  Link = microsoftgamesinsider.com/AC2/Episodes/FebLttP.htm?nc=1
 | Title = Ambuscade"<br>February 2003 Letter to the Players
 |  Text = 

We will proudly unveil our February Episode, "Ambuscade," shortly.  There's lots of cool content for all levels of players… And we're certainly excited about being able to show off the first tier of a feature that will be released solely through the Live team process; no expansion pack required. (If you don't yet know what the feature is, log into the game after "Ambuscade" goes live, and you'll soon find out!)
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I want to hit on some of the significant changes and bug fixes to be presented in this Episode. Consider this a combination of our usual monthly Letter and the Developer's Notes. I'll talk about skills, combat, quests, inventory and UI, treasure and crafting, and miscellaneous bug fixes.
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Before I begin, one important note: There are a number of exploits that we have fixed for February which are not mentioned below but will be announced in a short addendum to the February Developer's Notes released the day of the Episode.
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'''Skills and Pets'''
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For February, we've made some changes to the Tactician class. Additionally, we've fixed a couple of issues that we were not able to get in by the February deadline. These include Invoker pets failing to move to their target, and classes trying to summon a pet such as a Turret, but the pet fails to place even though the skill timer is greyed out.  These things will definitely be fixed for March, and potentially sooner, should there be an intra-Episode patch.
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Also for March, all skills that we're aware of as completely non-functional (e.g., Fate's Forgiveness, critical hit skills, and a few others; we will publish a full list in a few weeks) will be fixed. In the Skill examination panel, skills will display full information about their effect: duration, heal rates, damage-over-time rates, etc.
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Here are the changes for February:

* '''Pet Information''' —The owner of a Pet can now view the skills cast on a pet along with the duration left on the effects.  Players other than the owner will not be able to see this information.
* '''Turrets [Tacticians]''' —A few things:
** The damage of Turrets is no longer tied to the level of the Casing skills, but to the level of the Ammo skills.   Having a level X Ammo skill should roughly deliver the same amount of damage that the level X Casing skill did.  Improving your Casing skill now only determines the armor level and hit points of the Turret, and a part of your "to-hit" with the Turret.
** The Tactician Adept skill now also helps determine your "to-hit" with your Turret. It is worth noting that having X level skill in your Casing and X level skill in your Adept skill represents a noticeable bonus in your "to-hit" percentage over the old system.
** All Ammo skills except for Single-Barrel and Armor Piercing must now be reapplied to your Turret every 5 minutes. Single-Barrel and Armor Piercing now have to be reapplied every 10 minutes. 
* Recurrent Ministrations [Sage] —There was a bug which allowed this skill to be recast every few seconds.  This has now been changed to have a cool-down timer of 5 minutes, as was originally intended.
* Parry [Lugian Missile] —You can no longer inadvertently hit yourself with Parry.


Minor skill changes:

* All self-sprint skills can now be cast while moving. These include Surge Step [Lugian Melee], Sprint [Bounty Hunter], Dash [Human Missile], and Wingfoot [Tumerok Mage].
* Skills which affect weapons indirectly, such as Emblem of Might [Defender], can now be seen when you examine the affected weapon. The name of the skill and its remaining duration are displayed.
* You can no longer use Pet enhancement skills on the wrong type of Pet. Before this change, Pets wouldn't receive a benefit from the wrong type of skill, but now you can't even cast it.
* When attempting to use a skill on a target, and the target dies before the skill goes off, the skill would still consider itself used, and the cool-down timer for the skill would have started. This has been changed so that the cool-down timer does not start unless the skill actually goes off.
* Trailblazing [Ranger] can now be cast while wielding a magic implement. There was a bug preventing this previously.


'''Combat and Creatures'''
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For February, we continued to focus on monster A.I. improvements, along with a few general combat tweaks. Our goals are for monsters to represent an appropriate danger for players in all situations. Once we feel that this goal has been accomplished, we will reassess the XP totals for Tyrants and Giguraths. The March Episode will represent the last of our planned changes/fixes to monster A.I. Our focus in monster A.I. will then change to expanding the repertoire of monster strategies and making them work more effectively together. 
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Here are the fixes for February:

* '''I Hit This!''' —There was a bug affecting both players and monsters that sometimes prevented melee attacks from successfully making contact with either large monsters or monsters on a slope.  This should be fixed now.
* '''Critical Hits actually work now!''' —Each auto-attack now has a 5% chance of being a critical hit, which will do double damage to the target. There was a bug preventing this from happening.
* '''Monster Targeting and Pathing Tweaks''' —There are lots of tweaks and improvements to monster A.I. to make them more likely to target those players who represent the most current danger to them. Factors such as Nemesis hatred of certain player races also still play a very large role. Monsters should also be more effective at negotiating difficult terrain to get to players.
* '''Fellowship Immunity''' —Fellowship members can no longer be affected by harmful attacks from the fellowship, whether these are area of effect attacks, single target attacks or auto-attacks.
* '''Dereth is Full of Wonders''' —Many landscape objects, such as many types of rocks and trees, and monster "cultural objects," are now ethereal to monsters and will no longer impede their movement.


'''Quest Changes'''
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Quests are an essential aspect of AC2, and we have tried to make sure that the rewards of quests reflect their importance. However, there were a number of quest rewards that significantly overshadowed their skill-based counterparts. Some of these quests could be repeated often, which made those skills not very useful.
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Furthermore, these buffs were actually overwritten by some skills, which is why people who had done the "Curse of the Moarsmen" quest reported that their skills negatively impacted their HPs when they used an HP-buff skill.
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As a result, we've reduced the reward on a number of different quests. To compensate, we've made most of these rewards stackable (i.e., able to be added on to) with skill bonuses.
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The changed dynamics are:

* The speed increase provided by "Vakentu's Haste" (given as reward for the "The Broken Totem" quest) has been reduced from 30% to 10%.  This speed increase will stack with skills that increase speed, such as Winged Foot and Dash.
* The damage increase provided by the "Ghostfire Gauntlets" has been reduced from 20% to 5%.  This damage increase will stack with skills such as Berserk and Acumen.
* The hit point increase provided by the "Curse of the Moarsman" quest has been reduced from 200 points to 50 points.  This hit point increase will stack with skills such as Life Unbound and Lumbering Might.
* The damage increase provided by "Idol Crusher" (given as reward for the "Burun Despoilment" quest) has been reduced from 23% to 10%.  This damage increase will not stack with skills, but will stack with the increase provided by the Ghostfire Gauntlets.


'''Other Quest Revisions:'''

* The Rytheran dungeon has been tweaked to make the experience more challenging.
* There had been a bug where The Font of Icefire advanced the quest for everyone in a fellowship once one person had handed in his or her Ancient Weapon, thereby breaking the quest for everyone else in the fellowship.  This has been fixed.
* The entrance to the Golden Age Reliquary dungeon has been moved from a Kingdom versus Kingdom zone to a nearby Peaceful area.
* The Amulet of Seeking from the Eeruk quest had mistakenly been being created with spell effects on it.  These have been removed.
* If Dantry sent you to find the Drudge Heretics, they'll now properly advance your quest and let you know that you should return to Dantry after completing the quest.
* The portal to the Shreth Spawning Pit now requires you to be on the "Shreth Gauntlet" quest to pass through it.
* The Shrethwarden Door Key now requires you to be on the "Shreth Gauntlet" quest to pick it up.
* The Burun Shrethwarden's Head is now bonded to the character that picked it up.
* The portal to the Sclavus Hierophant's Temple now requires you to be on the "The Sclavus Hierophant's Cabals" quest to pass through it.
* Characters who have completed the Arwic and Mad Crone Vaults will no longer be able to pass through the final Vestibule portal in those Vaults, as is the case in all the other Vaults.
* The Shard found at the Thusik Delta Vault has been fixed and will now provide the correct experience reward. Players who have already completed the Vault will be able to repeat it and get the experience reward they should.
* Players can no longer recall or summon the portals to the Inner Darkness, Darkenfowl Pens, or Ghost Mines dungeons.
* The drop rate of Deep Darkenfowl Eggs is now 20%, while the drop rate on Chthonic Darkenfowl Eggs is now 25%.
* The "Broken Totem," "Burun Despoilment" and "Sanguine Fang" quests no longer fail when the character logs out.
* The "Three Doctrines" quest has been revised. Those who were in the process of completing this quest will need to restart it now in order to complete it. However, if a character has already completed the quest, they will still not be able to repeat it.
* The negative effect applied to players for failing the "Curse of the Moarsman" quest has been reduced from 6 hours to 2 hours.
* Characters at level 28 can now receive the "Dillo Rustlers" quest, as was intended.
* Characters at level 25 can now receive the "Cleanse the Burial Mound" quest, as was intended. 


'''Inventory and UI'''
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One of the major pushes of the AC2 Live team over these first few months has been to polish and enhance the UI of the game. Whether that is better highlighting of information, or making a feature easier to use, we are committed to continuing to make AC2 a fun and enjoyable game free of frustration. This month, we improved the ability to loot corpses and enhanced the effects display on the top left portion of your screen, among other things.
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Next month we will work on a UI for your Friends list, add additional backpacks and storage space to your inventory, and further improve the information you get from examining magical items and skill effects.
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Enhancements and fixes for February:

* '''Far Easier Looting and Transmuting:''' When opening a monster's corpse or a treasure chest, there will now be two new buttons to use. The first button on the bottom left of the corpse UI is a "Loot All" button. If you have room in your inventory for all of the items, they will be placed in your inventory. The second button on the bottom right of the corpse UI is a "Transmute All" button. This button puts the converted gold directly into the character's gold bag; however, the character will still need one free inventory slot to temporarily hold each item as it is converted.  Also note that "Transmute All" will ignore Quest items.
* '''Duration Status Bars:''' Each spell or effect cast on your character will now display a small yellow status bar below its icon. This status bar will shorten as the spell or effect wears off, and it should let you know at a glance which ones will need to be refreshed. We have also increased the number of effect icons which can be displayed at one time, from 5 to 9.  The sorting on these icons has been changed as well, so those on the far left will run out sooner than those on the far right.
* '''Temporary Inventory Slots:''' In order to prevent numerous issues that crept up from people trying to interact with quests and NPCs when the player had a full inventory, we've added a few "overflow" slots to your inventory. So if an NPC gives you an item, and your inventory is full, the new item will appear at the top of your inventory, while the last item in your inventory will temporarily disappear. Don't worry, the last item in your inventory has not been lost; it simply isn't displayed until inventory space is freed up. There is a limit of 10 overflow slots, so we still recommended that you try to free up space in your inventory. Most NPCs will no longer advance your quest if they cannot give you a quest item.


'''Treasure and Crafting'''
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For February, we've made only one notable change to the crafting system. In the next few months, the majority of our time will be devoted to expanding and adding a lot of cool things to the treasure system. We are committed to crafting in AC2, but our first priority is to add spice and variety to the treasure system, which for a few months will take the full attention of the team to improve in the fashion befitting AC2. Once we've completed the treasure system enhancements, we can then turn our attention to the crafting system, making it a suitable counterpart to the treasure system, and worth the time and attention that crafters have put into it.
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We know that this may be frustrating for some of you, but we feel our best path of success is to focus on one major "item" system at a time, instead of trying to split our attention on both. If you like the treasure changes over the next few months, then I think you will enjoy the direction the crafting system takes after that period.
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For February, the one major crafting change is that when you succeed in a Dye attempt, there is no longer any possibility of damaging your armor.  Unsuccessful dye attempts still can damage your armor.
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Minor crafting changes:

* Item Gambling Recipes are changed from "Boost <item>" to "Improve <item>."
* The Mucor Mushroom Potion Recipes are now in the Potions section of the Quest Recipe vocation.


'''Miscellaneous Bug Fixes'''
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We've improved or fixed various issues for February.  The biggest series of improvements are our fixes to some of the sound issues that have been affecting players over the last few months. This has been a challenging problem for us, and we continue to welcome feedback and specific information from you if you have any issues with sound and performance. We also continue to look into lag reports, especially at Linvak Tukal.  Again, please continue to report these types of issues to us.
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For February:

* '''Improved Sound Performance'''—We've addressed several sound issues to improve performance. Performance may be improved further by lowering the "Number of Playing Sounds" slider in your sound preferences. Also, the music volume slider will now remember your setting throughout your current and future game sessions.
* '''Missing Shore Effects'''—A bug in the revised shoreline effects code has been corrected. Shoreline effects should display correctly again.
* '''Experience Display Bugs'''—If a skill was partially untrained, an error could occur that would give the impression that experience had been lost and that the skill could never be raised to its maximum skill level. This has been fixed. Now when examining a skill that has been partially untrained, whatever experience is needed to raise the skill by one point will be displayed.


Miscellaneous minor tweaks and bug fixes:

* The arrival point for the Northwest Outpost portal on the Malthabbor Ringway has been moved out of the Kingdom v. Kingdom zone and into the nearby Peaceful zone.
* The musical instruments introduced in January were accidentally set to bond to the character that picked them up. This problem has been fixed so that all newly generated instruments may be given to other characters. However, instruments generated in January are not changed and are still bonded to the character that picked them up.


'''Conclusion'''
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For March, we plan to release our specific plans for changes to existing gameplay, quests, skills, and items sooner in our production process in order to give the Asheron's Call 2 community more insight into the ways that we are changing your world. We are keenly aware of the issues that continue to plague some of you—lag, sound issues, broken skills, monster exploits—and we are working hard to address each of these as quickly as we can. We depend on your feedback to continue to respond to those issues in a timely and effective manner.
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And while we continue to address existing issues in AC2, we're also striving to provide you with new gameplay experiences in an ongoing game that no other MMP can provide.  We know that some of you would prefer us to focus only on bugs, others only on new content. We feel that the health and ongoing success of AC2 depends on us continuing to do both, using all the skills of our development team—the artists and programmers and designers—to make AC2 the best ongoing game experience possible.
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Everyone here at Turbine and Microsoft appreciates the time and energy you, our players, spend in these worlds. It is your passion that allows us to expand and evolve the world of Dereth. Thank you for playing Asheron's Call 2.
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Ken Troop
<br>Producer, ''AC2'' Live
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