Editing AC2:Announcements - 2003/01 - Cacophony (section)

== Dev Notes ==
{{AC2 Article
 |  Link = microsoftgamesinsider.com/AC2/Guides/ep2-devnotes.htm?nc=1
 | Title = "Cacophony"<br>January 2003 Developers' Notes
 |  Text = 
The chaos, first seen in the Drudge incursions on the continent of Osteth, has spread to Omishan, the ancestral lands of the Tumeroks. These threats may have seemed daunting just a few weeks before, but the ingenuity of the mortal races, tested and refined by the Drudge plague, has risen to the challenge.
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Many crafters, not satisfied with the arduous nature of crafting some items, have simplified the process of creating and enhancing many of their products. Others have found better ways to obtain the materials needed for crafting items, making it possible for everyone to be well equipped to face the challenges ahead. It is even rumored that one ingenious crafter has found a means to craft powerful potions to restore one's health and vitality.
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Improved lines of communication have developed as well, so that all can be informed of the latest threats found in the land. In addition, adventurers, hardened in combat against the Drudges, have better control of their skills and can more clearly discern how to use the items that they find in the field. Yet some wonder if these and the many other discoveries made will be enough to face whatever threats their unseen enemy has in store…
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'''Highlights'''
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'''Omishan Quests:''' The Tumerok continent of Omishan has received a number of quests and tweaks to existing quests. Players will find more NPCs who can guide them in the process of uncovering Dereth's secrets and the forces responsible for the heightened monster activity.
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'''Monster Quests:''' Monsters on Osteth and Omishan are bestowing more and different types of quests. In addition to quests to kill certain numbers of monsters, other monsters will bestow quests to find and defeat boss monsters found somewhere in the land. These boss creatures have enhanced treasure and experience rewards.
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'''More Chat Enhancements:''' Players can now adjust the opacity of the various chat windows found in game, from completely opaque to completely transparent. They can do this by selecting the new option button found on the chat windows and adjusting the slider bar found there.
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As mentioned in January's Letter to the Players, we're introducing three new types of chat channels in this episode. Full details on how these channels work are in the Letter, but the table below briefly summarizes these channels:

{{{!}} border=1
{{!}} '''Channel name''' {{!}}{{!}} '''Switch used to speak on''' {{!}}{{!}} '''Speaks to'''
{{!}}-
{{!}} General {{!}}{{!}} /cg {{!}}{{!}} Entire game world
{{!}}-
{{!}} Regional {{!}}{{!}} /cr {{!}}{{!}} Sub region the character is currently in
{{!}}-
{{!}} Trade {{!}}{{!}} /ct {{!}}{{!}} A small region surrounding each town
{{!}}}

In addition to these changes, the format of the text displayed in the chat windows has been streamlined. Each message received in the chat window will indicate what channel the message is on (such as the trade, allegiance, or fellowship channels), and who sent the message.

:'''Example''' - [Trade] Pectar: I'm selling all types Human armor, next to forge!

Along with these changes, two more minor changes have been introduced. Chat windows can now be set to "pop up," or become visible, when they receive a new message. This will allow players to hide windows that currently aren't receiving messages, such as a window that has been assigned to receive allegiance messages. Finally, chat messages can be assigned a new "smaller" font size (which is actually the same as the text size was when AC2 launched).
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'''Treasure System Improvements:''' Almost all the values used by the treasure system have been touched upon in some form for the January episode, resulting in a number of improvements. For example, there is a more even distribution of usable weapons and armor for all levels of players, filling many of the "holes" that previously existed in the treasure system. In addition, weapons used by many specialized classes, such as Claw Bearers and Hive Keepers, are now generated with damage values akin to their non-specialized cousins. Players will also find that the level restrictions on many items are roughly equivalent to those on the creature from which the item came. This means that items coming from a level 20 creature would have restrictions a few levels above or below level 20. The traits given to many items have been revised as well, and now many of the uncommon traits no longer appear on lower level items.
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'''Craft System Improvements:''' We've examined and improved a number of areas affecting crafting. The first area is mining. To make mining more lucrative and appealing, players will now tend to receive higher trait motes from mines than they did in the past. Also, mines flagged as producing uncommon motes will generate these more often. Distilling materials has been enhanced as well. Distilled uncommon motes, such as a mote of Elariwood distilled from a mote of Wood, now receives traits equal to 35% of the original mote's traits. We've also doubled the number of times you can mine a specific resource to 10 times a day.
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The trophy items dropped by various creatures will now appear more frequently and on more creatures than before. This includes the highly sought-after Mimbu carapaces, so these items shouldn't be as difficult to track down as they once were.
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Item Improvement now offers more benefits and is more accessible to all players. The first tier skills should now be accessible to players level 10 to 25, tier 2 improvements should be accessible to players 25 to 35, and tier 3 should be accessible to players level 35 to 50. To make these skills more accessible, we've reduced the trait values required for the various recipes. We've also instituted new higher caps on the maximum possible benefit each skill tier can provide, motivating players to continue to improve their skills as they increase in level.
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Another crafting area addressed in this episode is Dyeing. The Dyeing vocation has been completely removed, and all dyeing recipes have been moved to Item Improvement. This means that a character's Item Improvement skill will be used to determine that character's success at dyeing an item. While the character's previous skill in the Dyeing vocation will be carried over and applied to the Item Improvement skill, the difficulty of some of the dyeing recipes has been changed, so players may not see their skill points carried over to Item Improvement on a one-to-one ratio. In addition, unlike many other crafting skills, all characters have access to all of the dyeing recipes by default. Finally, the dyeing recipes have been simplified and now only require two things: a dye plant found scattered throughout the game world and gold. The gold costs for dyeing have been dramatically reduced.
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Workshops and recipes are now displaying more information for crafters. When examined, workshops are now displaying the bonus amount they provide along with the amount of fuel needed to reach the next level of skill bonus. Recipes will now display the difficulty of the recipe, letting crafters know if their crafting skill level is high enough to have enough of a chance of success to risk attempting to craft an item.  Along with this, the reset timer on nearly all of the recipes has been removed; those timers still remaining are displayed when examining the recipe.
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Finally, the items created by the Armor and Weapon crafting skills have also been revised. For the most part, we have increased their damage or armor level. These changes should bring the crafted items on par with, or in some cases make them slightly better than, items generated by the treasure system. Crafted items will also have higher gold values, depending on the skill tier of the item. Also, the cost of crafting weapons and armor in tiers 7 to 10 has been reduced by 30%. Toolmaking has also been revised so that it is easier to progress to more difficult skill tiers.
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'''Additional Skill Information:''' When examined, skills now provide information on how they work and their effects. This additional information includes:

* The damage the skill does at its currently trained level.
* The damage the skill does with a skill rating of 1 and the damage it does with a 50 skill rating.
* Vigor cost.
* Range, both the minimum and maximum, in meters.
* Reset (or cool down) timer between uses.
* Recovery time, or how long after using the skill before you can perform another action.
* Additional effects, such as if it does damage over time, area of effect, or other special properties.


'''Enhancements'''

* The snow has crept down the mountains of Osteth, covering the continent in a blanket of white and freezing many of the rivers solid! Snow can also be seen gracing the mountain tops of Omishan.
* The various caches left behind by the Kingdoms are providing even better treasure!
* We have increased the arc in which position-dependent skills (such as Backstab) do additional damage from 90 degrees to 180 degrees.
* The types of musical instruments that can be found have been increased.
* Various terrain issues have been found and addressed.
* Fellowship members can no longer be the target of an area of effect skill, but they can still be harmed by these skills if they are within the skill's "blast radius" and are in a KvK or FFA zone. A complete fix for this issue will be introduced in a future episode.
* Many NPCs will no longer advance the player's quest if the player has a full inventory and cannot receive an item needed to complete the quest.


'''Miscellaneous UI Enhancements'''
<blockquote>
The health values for nearby fellowship and monsters now update at a faster rate; however, the values for players and creatures that are farther away from you will update at the same rate as before.
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A bug that was preventing many avatars' heads from being displayed in first person mode has been corrected.
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The setting for "Shore Details" will now be saved between sessions, instead of automatically reverting to "Medium" each time the client is launched.
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All known issues causing "floating shorelines" have been corrected. In addition, shore effects should no longer be appearing in smaller standing pools of water.
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To prevent them from being accidentally ignored, patron, vassal, and monarch messages are now classified as both allegiance and regular tell messages. If one window is set to receive allegiance messages while another is set to receive tells, the messages will appear in both.
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Chat windows should be scrolling correctly again.
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The delay that players experience when examining items should be reduced. This does not entirely remove the "inventory lag" many players see, but should be help reduce it quite a bit.
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When changing game options unrelated to the chat windows, the chat windows should no longer resize or move.
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To highlight which chat window has focus, the move bar on the active chat window is now highlighted.
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The raise skill option is no longer shown for skills at their maximum level.
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Skills can now be placed on more than one shortcut bar.
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The "/alias shortcut" and "/shortcut" commands now places the alias in the proper shortcut slot.
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If a character isn't a member of a fellowship, he will receive a message advising how much experience he's received from killing a monster.
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Upon completion of a quest, players will now receive a message informing them of how much experience they gained from the quest.
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The sack icon, shown in the inventory panel next to the amount of gold the character possesses, has been changed to a stack of gold coins. Visual metaphor is important!
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The "/AFK" emote now displays floating Z's above your head, while the new "/Love" emote displays an animated heart. How cute!
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Characters with a single letter name will be correctly displayed and can be selected in the character selection screen again.
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In the character creation screen, Tumerok females are placed next to the Human and Lugian females. Girl power! Oh, and Tumerok males are over by the men now as well.
</blockquote>

'''Fixes'''
<blockquote>
The cool down timer on many skills, such as creating Turrets, can no longer be circumvented through unintended use of the skill system.
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In our December episode, we corrected a bug that would cause many items in the process of being picked up to become "stuck" in-world, with no one able to pick the item up. However, many of the items effected by this bug were still in game in December and had the potential to crash the game's servers. This server-crashing bug has been corrected.
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We have found and corrected a few areas in the client that could lead to it consuming more and more of the system's memory.
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Players should no longer see situations in which skill credits are not immediately returned when a skill is untrained.
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A bug in the combat system was causing it to ignore the damage special vuln attacks or damage over time attacks were doing to creatures when rewarding experience and determining loot rights. This has been corrected so that the total damage done by a character is taken into account.
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Monsters and pets should now be able to follow you better, especially as you cross boundaries in the landscape.
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The experience point reduction code for killing monsters that cannot reach a character or otherwise react has been enhanced.
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Characters can no longer regenerate their health and vigor while in midair.
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Falling humans now have the correct falling animation.
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Several effects that stop all movement on an enemy (by setting the enemy's actual movement speed to zero) were not actually allowing the enemy to slow to a stop, causing the target to "rubber band" back and forth. This has been corrected.
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The corpses of monsters killed by "misadventure" can now be opened by anyone.
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The death messages for inanimate objects, such as barrels and turrets, now display that they are "destroyed" by players instead of being "killed." In addition, their remains are no longer labeled as "Corpse of (Item)," but rather "Destroyed (Item)."
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When first introduced, it was possible for the various Kingdom caches to get into a state in which the chest opening animation was shown, but the chest could not actually be opened. These chests should now be working properly.
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Health regeneration potions now have more accurate descriptions of their effects.
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The damage of crafted bows has been lowered to be in line with bows generated by the treasure system.
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The "Sapling Bow" Recipe is now called the "Basic Short Bow" Recipe.
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Female characters can once again wear crafted robes.
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Characters created before the December episode will now have the starter weapon recipes.
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Improvement Workshops now correctly list that they take items with crystal traits for fuel.
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Items labeled on the map as "Chemical Stills" and mines labeled as "Fumaroles" have been renamed as "Acid Stills" in both locations.
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In December, players who did the new quests in an order different than the one intended could at times find themselves with a "Find the Person" quest they couldn't complete. We've corrected this, and now players should not be stuck with a quest they cannot complete.
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The quest found at the Isle of Tears Drudge Fort is now more fellowship-friendly.
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If the original member of the fellowship that picked up the Cragstone blueprints leaves that fellowship, the remaining members of the fellowship are no longer prevented from picking up another copy of the blueprints.
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All "Kill Quests" (i.e., quests that are bestowed by killing a certain creature and that require a certain number of like creatures to be killed) are now fellowship-propagated. This means that the quest will be bestowed and advanced to all members of a fellowship.
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All fellowship-propagated quests are now restricted to players equal to or above the minimum intended level of the quest. For the "Kill Quests," the minimum level is typically 10 below the level of the creature that bestows the quest. The minimum level for other quests is based upon the intended level found in the map panel.
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The death of the creature that bestows a "Kill Quest" no longer decrements the number of creatures needed to complete the quest it bestows.
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We've given the right name to a few unique and champion monsters.
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Champion monsters are dropping better treasure.
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We have fixed a generator in the Esper region that was producing a creature that bestowed a quest to kill creatures not native to the region.
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The Thornling Master Rogue spawn has been moved from the Lost Wish Mountains to the southwest Mad Crone Mountains.
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The quest bestowed by the Sneaky Drudge Robber now correctly says to kill normal Drudge Robbers, as was intended.
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The "Revered One," a powerful Burun boss, no longer advances the Slavetaker quest or drops Slavetaker loot.
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The Mistress of Madness, a powerful Crone, has been assigned the correct level.
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Prior to this month, the Sclavus Faisi Fearbringer had been shown in game as the wrong type of Sclavus. This has been corrected in our January episode.
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The Red Wasp Incursion quest now requires Red Soldier Wasps (instead of Red Wasps) be killed to complete it.
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The Doomed Ero-bal Incursion quest now requires regular Ero-bals (not Cursed Ero-bals) be killed to complete it.
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The "Aunmauri's Vengeance" effect given by the Obelisk quest now increases your combat damage by a few points, as was intended, instead of increasing your run velocity through the roof.
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The pet Steppe Armoredillo, awarded to players who complete the "Dillo Rustlers" quest, now has 2,000 hit points.
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The Inferno Drudge Monitor quest now gives less experience.
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The experience reward given by Tyrants and Giguraths has been reduced to 10% of its previous value.
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Tyrants now have a ranged fireball attack.
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Gurog Minions now have a missile attack.
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Many objects that can be dropped on the ground from the player's inventory are now ethereal and will no longer block player or creature movement.
</blockquote>

'''Class Changes and Fixes'''
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''Human Ranger''
* "Bluff" and "Eye Rake" can now be used while wielding two weapons.


''Human Enchanter''
* Impenetrability can now be layered on top of the default armor spell found on crafted armor.


''Tumerok Feral Intendant''
* Soft Underbelly now costs 100 Vigor, increased from the previous 10 Vigor point cost.

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