Editing Announcements - 2002/04 - Betrayal (section)

== Letter to the Players ==

{{Microsoft Zone
 |  Link = <nowiki>http://www.zone.com/asheronscall/news/ASHEletterapril02.asp</nowiki>
 |  Date = April 09, 2002
 | Title = Letter to the Players
 |  Text =

<font color=#FFFFFF>'''Betrayal'''</font>
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Once again, the April Event, Betrayal, like its predecessors, brings a host of new content and gameplay to Asheron's Call. The one theme that runs through all these changes is our desire to let players play and explore more in Dereth and have more fun than ever. Let's get started:
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<font color=#FFFFFF>'''Housing'''</font>

As we mentioned last month, April sees the advent of a new housing dynamic in Asheron's Call -- Residential Quarters.
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Residential Quarters are comprised of 100 rooms, all within the same "dungeon" type space. These rooms are separate from one another, and each room is owned by a separate player. The overall "Quarter" has some shared communal spaces to be enjoyed by both the various owners and the public, but only the owner and their guest list may enter the specific room.
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Each room has a few hooks upon which to place items, as well as a 50-item capacity storage chest. The cost to purchase the room will be 100,000 pyreals and a Writ of Refuge. The maintenance cost for the room will be 10,000 pyreals, due every three months, as opposed to the maintenance period for the other types of housing, which is one month.
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Players will also be able to recall to their RQ room, using the same command they would for a Cottage or Villa. One difference between RQs and landscape housing is that the location of your RQ will not show up on your House panel. Also, keep in mind that a player may not own both a landscape dwelling and a RQ room, just one or the other.
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As for the overall implementation of RQs now and in the future: This month there will be a 3-city ring, each with one portal leading to a "hub" dungeon. This dungeon will have 10 portals inside, each one leading to a different dungeon, each dungeon containing 100 RQ rooms. So for April, there will be 1000 RQ rooms available per world. For May, we are planning on an additional 2000 RQ rooms per world. There will probably be another 2000 rooms available in June. We will also continue to add landscape housing during this time. This month we are releasing another 200 total landscape units: 150 cottages and 50 villas. We are committed to adding both kinds of housing until every player has an option of owning either a landscape dwelling or an RQ.
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Our future plans for housing include (all of these are scheduled for some time in the next 5 months -- if that estimate changes, we will let you know):

:* Adding more usable hooks in the mansions.
:* Allowing players to be able to use pyreals and Writs to purchase additional storage space in their houses.
:* Allowing players to be able to use items while the items are on a hook, and create content that takes advantage of this ability, e.g. questing for a portal to (cool place X) to put in your house.
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<font color=#FFFFFF>'''Endurance'''</font>

For the past two years, people at Turbine and Microsoft have been discussing what to do with Endurance. We were distressed that players not only felt that having a high Endurance carried no real benefit during the longer stages of a character's life, but in fact felt that having a higher Endurance was a curse at the higher levels due to drain and a difficulty in healing.
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This was counter-intuitive to us on many levels, and we kicked around a lot of ideas on how to make Endurance a more valuable attribute, and one that would increase the fun for players. Here is what we came up with:
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First, some combination of strength and endurance (with endurance being more important) now allows one to regenerate hit points at a faster rate the higher one's endurance is. This bonus is in addition to any regeneration spells one may have placed upon themselves. This regeneration bonus caps at around 110%.
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Second, the higher a player's Endurance, the less stamina one uses while attacking. This benefit is tied to Endurance only, and it caps out at around 50% less stamina used per attack. The minimum stamina used per attack remains one.
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Third, the higher a player's Endurance, the more likely they are not to use a point of stamina to successfully evade a missile or melee attack. A player is required to have Melee Defense for melee attacks or Missile Defense for missile attacks trained or specialized in order for this specific ability to work. This benefit is tied to Endurance only, and it caps out at around a 75% chance to avoid losing a point of stamina per successful evasion.
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Fourth, some combination of strength and endurance (the two are roughly of equivalent importance) now allows one to partially resist drain health and harm attacks, up to a maximum of roughly 50%.
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Fifth, some combination of strength and endurance (the two are roughly of equivalent importance) now allows one to have a level of "natural resistances" to the 7 damage types. This caps out at a 50% resistance (the equivalent to level 5 life prots) to these damage types. This resistance is not additive to life protections: higher level life protections will overwrite these natural resistances, although life vulns will take these natural resistances into account, if the player does not have a higher level life protection cast upon them.
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For example, a player will not get a free protective bonus from natural resistances if they have both Prot 7 and Vuln 7 cast upon them. The Prot and Vuln will cancel each other out, and since the Prot has overwritten the natural resistances, there will be no resistance bonus.
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The natural resistances, drain resistances, and regeneration rate info are now visible on the Character Information Panel, in what was once the Burden panel. This panel now displays the above three Endurance benefits, the burden info, as well as @age, @deaths, and @birth info.
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The 5 categories for the endurance benefits are, in order from lowest benefit to highest: Poor, Mediocre, Hardy, Resilient, and Indomitable, with each range of benefits divided up equally amongst the 5 (e.g. Poor describes having anywhere from 1-10% resistance against drain health attacks, etc.).
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<font color=#FFFFFF>'''A few other important notes:'''</font>

:* The abilities that Endurance or Endurance/Strength conveys are not increased by Strength or Endurance buffs. It is the raw Strength and/or Endurance scores that determine the various bonuses.
:* For April, natural resistances will offer some protection versus hollow type damage, whether it is from a Hollow Minion or a Hollow weapon. This will be changed in May.
:* These abilities are player-only, creatures with high endurance will not benefit from any of these changes.
:* Come May, you can type @help endurance for a summary of the April changes to Endurance.
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<font color=#FFFFFF>'''Portal/Transportation Changes'''</font>
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The other major change for the month of April is our new dynamics for lifestone recalling and item magic portal spells.
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Here are the basic changes:

:* All characters at all levels, regardless of whether they have Item Magic, will be able to use the command @lifestone to return to the lifestone they have attuned themselves to. This command will take a 15 second animation (during which you cannot move), and cost half of the player's current mana. This will also be the lifestone you are returned to when you die.
:* Players with Item Magic will get the following benefits:
::* A Lifestone Tie spell. The Lifestone that they use the Tie spell on will be the Lifestone they recall to when they cast Lifestone Recall.
::* An ability to Tie to, Recall to, and Summon a second Portal. Players with Item Magic now will be able to cast Primary Portal and Secondary Portal spells.
::* A new Portal Recall spell, called?drumroll?.Portal Recall (as opposed to Primary Portal Recall and Secondary Portal Recall). This spell allows one to recall through the last used portal, as long as that portal was tieable.
:* As a result of these changes, Portals are now either Tieable and Summonable, Tieable and Not-Summonable, or Not-Tieable and Not-Summonable. Tieable is now synonymous with Recallable.
:* Also as a result of these changes, Portals maintain their restrictions regardless of whether you are trying to enter them, recall through them, or summon them. For example, if you are level 30, you will not be able to recall through a portal that has a level restriction against anyone above level 20.
:* The portal that you were tied to with the old Portal Tie spell, will be the portal you are tied to with the Primary Portal Tie spell. Primary Portal Recall will recall you through that portal. If you had learned the old Portal Tie/Summon/Recall spells, you will automatically know the Primary Portal spells.
:* Finally, the @die command replaces the old @lifestone command. You may use @die to die and leave behind a corpse.
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We hope these changes allow people to explore and hunt in areas they had never encountered before.
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<font color=#FFFFFF>'''Weddings'''</font>

Two months ago, Ken Karl, the Microsoft Project Manager for Asheron's Call, and Eric Helbig, Microsoft Test Lead for AC, came to Turbine to pay us a visit. Their mission was clear: They wanted weddings in AC and they wanted them now.
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A few weeks before that, they had asked when we could put weddings back in the game. When we told them that we had no time for weddings, that if they wanted them so bad, they could come to Turbine and do it themselves, we were very surprised when they said, "Ok."
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So began a week of grueling training and effort. Ken and Eric slaved over banks of computers for days trying to both learn the ins and outs of being a Turbine content designer, as well as implementing the basics of what was known as The Wedding Bells quest.
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Finally, at the end of the week, sweaty and exhausted, Ken and Eric left Turbine to go back to Seattle, happy in their efforts to get Wedding Bells in for April.
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Of course, half the work was still undone (Those crafty MS people?.)
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So, Kim Payson and Sean Huxter heroically stepped in and finished the job, using the design specs that Ken and Eric had so thoughtfully left for us.
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We hope you enjoy the fruits of all their efforts?. let us know where you went for your honeymoon.
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<font color=#FFFFFF>'''Hot Topics'''</font>

:* Hollow Weapons ? The Hollow Weapon Upgrades are now in for April. The Hollow Sword, Axe, Mace, and Spear have been upgraded. Keep in mind that if you choose to upgrade your weapon (through a process which you will have to discover in-game), the weapon will have a wield requirement on it of 250 in the skill of the weapon.
:* We hope that making all levels of jewelry have a small percentage chance of having a double spell helps people of all levels find jewelry appropriate to their level.
:* Allegiance @boot command. As a monarch you now have a much-asked for tool to help control and organize your allegiance. We always appreciate feedback both on how this tool works for you, and other tools allegiances and fellowships need to manage these social structures.
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Here are some specific details about the command:

:* Exact syntax: @allegiance boot <name of character to boot>
:* This command breaks the allegiance between the named character and that character's patron, just as if the patron had renounced the named character. Therefore, this command does not affect the experience cost for the booted character to swear allegiance to someone else.
:* Also, this command does not affect the bonds of allegiance between the booted character and his or her vassals -- they remain sworn to the booted character and therefore are also no longer part of the booting monarch's allegiance.
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<font color=#FFFFFF>'''Known Issues'''</font>

Please take note with the Drag and Drop Secure Trade option in the Character Panel: If you don't hit Apply after making the choice, it will not take effect, and dragging an item to a player will just result in giving that item to the player. This was mainly implemented for those players who inadvertently drag something to another player other than the player the item was intended for. If you actually want to initiate Secure Trade with a player, you can now just double-click on the player.
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Two issues with the Wedding Bells quest:

:* If you dye the male wedding raiment it will always be green. This will be fixed in May.
:* Players are currently unable to dye the female wedding raiment. This will be fixed in May.

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As mentioned above, currently Natural Resistances help a player resist Hollow Damage. We are changing this back in May (we could not fix it in time for April) for two reasons:

:* In terms of PvP, changing this dynamic would further reduce the effectiveness of Hollow Weapons, in a context in which they generally need to be made more effective rather than less.
:* Even more importantly, while we initially implemented the Natural Resistances in this fashion, after further discussion we realized that the whole goal of Natural Resistances was to mimic Life Protections, not be superior to the functionality of Life Protections. And if we wanted to keep Hollow creatures as the effective threat they are, we would need to upgrade their capabilities over time. Ultimately, we have decided to make Natural Resistances have no effect on Hollow damage. This will be done in May.
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<font color=#FFFFFF>'''Next Month and Beyond'''</font>

For May, we will be working on a number of different tweaks to dynamics to improve them for playability and fun.
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Some of the highlights (please keep in mind that some of these items might be pushed out to later months):

:* Players losing fewer items when dying at the lower levels.
:* Making all items appraisable, regardless of skill or level of player, thereby removing all the functionality of the appraise skills. This will set up our replacement of the Appraisals skills with a whole new branch of skills, which will open up many new crafting branches for players. Part one of these changes is scheduled for June. We will release more information in May about what our plans are.
:* Further treasure changes, focusing mostly on Armor ? improving armor quality and distribution in many of the same ways we tweaked weapons. Also we will continue to make some small tweaks to the weapon loot system.
:* An upgrade to the Fellowship Panel, so that players can see the health, stamina, and mana of all players in their fellowship.
:* And lots of other cool things as well?.
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After May, we will be working on tweaking and improving magic, melee skills, crafting skills, abilities to explore the incredible amount of content in AC, housing improvements, the mid-level play experience, and a new high-level playground.
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We think we've made some significant progress on our goals over these last few months, and we're really excited about the next six months, both with our story and our game.
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Yes, we AC1 folks over here at Turbine and Microsoft acknowledge that Asheron's Call 2 looks incredible and is going to rock the house. But we're not planning on going anywhere for awhile. The best of AC is yet to come.
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Thank you for playing Asheron's Call!
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-- The AC Team
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