Patch notes from Testlive forum

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Patch 07-23-08
PvP XP and Bug slaying!
Tester Log
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- Melee Fatality chance increased
(may be due to passive melee weapon speed increase)

- 1h weapon speed increased

- Mem leaks and server performance seems to be stable , no major lag or crashes.



=== Bugs ===

Dark Templar

- The Combo 'Enraging Strike III' directional icon sometimes changes to show incorrect final outcome.
Icon shows final outcome as Left, sometimes Icon switches to forward.

- Combo 'Brutal Enraging Strike III' directional icon sometimes changes to show incorrect final outcome.
Icon shows final outcome as Right, sometimes Icon switches to forward.

GUI

- In the Interface Options, some of the options have lost their dialogue text that goes along with the check box. In particular the floating portrait, and pvp experience bar text (reported by : ankhesanamun)

From Tarib:

Outlook on the next updates

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We want to give you a short outlook about things to come in both this week’s update as well as the plans for the update scheduled for next week. This week’s update will be a smaller maintenance one in order for us to tidy up a couple of the issues while we work on the next larger update which is currently being tested and hopefully will be ready for the live servers next week.

Our tech team is hard at work to investigate about memory leaks (like for example the issue with your map going gray) and they have made inroads on those issues, and we have found and resolved a couple with this weeks update. This is of course a process that does not end now - on the contrary. The team will keep on working hard to find the leaks that are still there so we can expect more of them to be resolved in updates to come. Finding such memory leaks is quite a tricky thing but we are making progress and the tech team is keeping the focus on this issue.

[WILL NOT BE FIXED]Also fixed should be the issues from last week was the behavior of caster pets as some of them were in fact quite passive after they had been summoned. Our developers have found the source of that issue and the fix for this is getting tested by QA so this week's update should resolve this issue.

Lastly with this week’s update we wanted to give you all the opportunity to revise your feat points given the recent changes to the abilities and feat trees. What we have done is that the counter of how many times a character has reset his feats will be set to zero so the next reset will be viewed as being the first one in terms of money it will cost, as if you had never reset any feats before.


As we mentioned at the top, the update planned for next week should include some additions and changes that our community has been looking forward to (beside the usual fixes and updates).

Instance Changes

There are for example changes to the Pyramid of the Ancients dungeon which include wide improvements of the encounters and dangers that can be found in the pyramid. We really think that this will make it an interesting dungeon and should provide a real challenge for solo players.

Next up is Toirdebach’s Tomb in The Fields of the Dead. This group instance has been tweaked so that the mob levels are more in keeping with the level of the Fields of the Dead. We have also been through and amended the placement of mobs in the dungeon so that the balance between ranged and melee opponents should be much fairer to groups trying to tackle this ancient evil!

Resource Zone Updates

The resource and building zones (Lacheish Plains, Purple Lotus Swamp and Poitain) have had a thorough repopulation based on player feedback as to what resources were problematic. New resource nodes and many new camps have been added to these zones to help the avid tradeskillers amongst you find what you need. Be warned though venturing too far off the beaten path may result in you finding yourself face to face with some dangerous foes who won’t take kindly to you trying to harvest from them!


These fixes will be made available on the Testlive server later this week. So if you are interested in checking out these changes beforehand make sure you connect to the Testlive servers.

Please bear in mind that all these updates will of course be tested in detail before we decide whether they can be made available for the live servers. But we will keep you up to date about the latest status.


Edit:
Preliminary Update Notes for July 30th patch

**These notes do not necessarily reflect the final version that will be deployed on Live**


GENERAL
* Several causes of crashes and assert failures have been addressed and fixed.
* The Skewbald Pinto Horse has had its stats adjusted to horses of the same tier and price.
* Important notification sounds now won't be interrupted by other sounds.
* Mounts can no longer be sold.
* A fix was implemented for item descriptions when switching between languages on the client.
* Fixed an issue that would cause some playfields to be empty after logging out for some time, and then back in.
* You can no longer send unlimited mail through the tradepost. If you send several mails and are informed via system message you cannot send any more, you will need for in-game time to pass before being able to send more mail.
* Ignored users will no longer be able to send you mail.
* Raid playfields will now kick players who are not in the raid.



CLASSES
* All Assassin, Barbarian, Bear Shaman, Conqueror, Dark Templar, Guardian, Herald of Xotli, and Ranger combo damage and stamina costs have been rebalanced to match the newly adjusted animations.

Assassin
* Combos granted by feats should now deal significantly more damage than before.


COMBAT
* Aborting multihit combos before they're finished won't activate their full effects anymore.
* Pet commands should now be more responsive.


GUI
* The "Quests" tab in the quest journal should now indicate the current number of accepted quests and the total number of allowed quests.
* An option to add a player to your ignore list was added to the "Add by name" dialog.
* If your trade is rejected, you will receive an onscreen message.
* Tooltips for NPCs on the map should now show up in the localized version of their names, instead of their default English names.
* You can no longer trade while in combat mode.
* You will see an onscreen message stating that a team member has joined your team.
* Onscreen feedback for a failed attempt at a trade due to a full inventory has been tweaked.
* Added a new option that allows the player to make his cloak invisible.


NPC / MOBS
* Toirdealbach's Tomb has had its level range adjusted from 50-53 to 46-48. Loot in Toirdealbach's Tomb has been adjusted to fit the new level range of mobs.
* Pyramid of the Ancients: The Harem Girls have been dressed up properly, and sexily!


PVP
* Players will now always see Massive PvP results, and the time left in a battle during battles. This information is displayed in the right top corner, below the minimap.


QUESTS
* Field of the Dead: Changed the level on the quest Entourage from 52 to 47.
* Field of the Dead: Changed the level on the quest Cleansing the Tomb from 53 to 48.
* Khopshef Province: Forbidden Knowledge - The Crumbling Codex will now despawn after it is picked up.
* Khopshef Province: Slave Cages will now show a visual effect when player is on the correct quest to interact with them.
* Pyramid of the Ancients: New Quests have been added to enhance your questing experience. Bosses have been upgraded to present a challenge to solo (or small groups) of players. Pay careful attention to the items they drop - they could be the key to defeating more challenging enemies.
* Pyramid of the Ancients: All quests should now be working.
* Tarantia Sewers: Orphans in the Hovel - Galeria should now talk to you after you kill her captor.


TRADESKILLLS
* Cloth Resource droprate in the world has increased somewhat.
* The Resource and Building playfields (Lacheish Plains, Purple Lotus Swamp, Poitain) have new NPC camps that will drop tradeskill items previously only available through the Alchemist's Cache. Some of these encampments will aggro, some will not. This makes these zones more dangerous, but allows lower level players a chance to get the tier 1-3 resources they need.


WORLD DESIGN
* Checkerboard textures should no longer appear on the ground throughout the world.

COMBAT
* We're now done with the majority of the process to completely equalize Male and Female damage. We've balanced the animation-lengths for all "white damage" attacks as well as all "combo finishers", and furthermore we've matched the animation length of "moving attacks" to the lengths of "stationary attacks". As a result players should now experience no difference in damage dealt or time needed to execute an attack based on what gender their character is.


CLASSES
Herald of Xotli
* Pillar of Internal Flame Rank II is now a three-step combo (including combo starter) instead of an instant cast.





GENERAL
* Many of the spells used by raid bosses will now ignore line of sight-checks, thus making it impossible to avoid them by hiding behind pillars and such.
* Many of the spells used by raid bosses will now be impossible to fully resist.

EDIT:
07.28.08

GENERAL
* Localized patchers will fall back to English if your LDB data is corrupted.
* Fixed a crash related to the people and guild search UI.


CHARACTER
* Fixed some animations that weren't blending properly. You should once again see legs moving while in stances.


GUI
* Instances of strange or seemingly out of place text on the UI should be resolved.


QUESTS
* Defeating Lord Atum-Keket in the Pyramid of the Ancients will now reopen the door to the Lord chamber.
* The teleport altar behind Lord Atum-Keket will now be visible at all times.

EDIT:
07.28.08

TestLive
*Added a buff npc that can be used by players below level 11 to level up to 37 in their class. More details will be posted soon on this NPC!

Pyramid of the Ancients
*The Master Torturer in Pyramid of the Ancients will no longer spawn multiple times in a row.

DARK TEMPLAR
*The Talisman Mastery buff will no longer be removed upon death if the proper feat is trained.

PRIEST
*Spirit Aegis will now give 0.5% invulnerability to Holy and Fire instead of 1% Fire with the first rank trained.

NECROMANCER
*Bone Horde debuff now uses the proper icon in the debuff GUI.

GUARDIAN
*Shield Sweep combo will now scale more consistently across the first three ranks.

NPCs
*The Dark Flames breath attack used by Vistrix will now use normal line of sight checks.
*The knockback strength on Kyllikki's Blizzard has been reduced.

Bind on Equip
*All items Green+ are now Bind on Equip (BoE) or Bind on Pickup (BoP).
*Items which are BoE/BoP should now state this fact below their item name in the mouseover tooltip. When these items are equipped and bound to the character, the text below the item name will change to reflect this. A message will now ask if you are sure when attempting to roll "need" on a Bind on Pickup item.

General
*When aborting a multihit combo finisher, you now get a percentage of the full cooldown depending on how many hits you got in before the abort happened. (It's really in this time!)

Gem stacking has survived.
Gems have been substantially nerfed.

Good God have they been nerfed.

Edit #2 on advice of fellow poster: To re-iterate and consolidate known effects:

1) At least a few weapon gems have been untouched. For example panoptic trillion gems.
2) Armor gems providing damage have been nerfed in the range of ~40%. The reference gems were a level 50 uncut and a flawless level 70 gem. I do NOT have numbers for level 80 damage gems...but it is reasonable to assume the amounts are on par.
3) Immutable/evasion/inviolate gems have been nerfed and they still do NOT scale. Evasion .4%; inviolate .4%; immutable .3% (external reference for the immutables, if that is wrong don't blame the messenger.)
4) Single resist gems have been untouched. (at level 80, they may scale now, but i really doubt it)
5) Many garbage effect (taunt/hate/secular guard/ripping revenge, etc. etc.) have been left alone.
6) I have no data on proc rates.

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Response from devs about gems 07/24/08
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Hi guys,

Seeing some of the feedback on this thread I just wanted to explain a little of the issue from our standpoint. It is important to mention up front though that the data on test-live isn’t complete just yet, only part of our total resolution for the issues with scaling and value of item bonuses are currently deployed on the test-server. That was an oversight on our behalf. While yes, it is a test server, it would also have been better for you to see the changes as a whole rather than in parts. Ok, now on to the issue at hand!

The issues that have required we look at the item bonuses again are as twofold really:

The combined effect of invulnerability bonuses on gems and items were giving bonuses beyond the intended frames set down by our System Designers.

Secondly, percentage-based bonuses (including the much discussed invulnerability bonuses) did not provide the intended progression scaling through levels. (i.e. they were not scaling correctly).


Both these issues are now resolved internally, and you can already see some of the changes on TestLive now. However, as I mentioned above, unfortunately due to some of the data living in different places in the system you are only seeing part of the fixes on Test Live at the moment. We are working to ensure we get the rest out at the same time (and the scaling issues will hopefully be resolved across the board as and when this update is completed)



But let's just jump right into what has changed and to what, and get down to the detailed why and how of this matter: Starting at the top – the combined effect of stacking gems, or what we call the conglomerate effects internally.

Firstly it is important to note that the design of the gem slot system was always intended to allow users to slot all their slots with a single type of bonus if they so wished. The problem is that since the bugs mentioned above meant the budgets weren’t enforced correctly it meant those slots became far too powerful.

So that said, what do I mean by ‘conglomerate effects’ and how does it effect the way the items are supposed to be structured?

Let’s take the "Inviolate Cabochon Star Ruby" as an example, it is a gem that provides conglomerate invulnerability bonuses to all Physical damage types (the physical damage types being Slashing, Crushing, Piercing and Poison).

Compare that to a "Tenacious Cabochon Emerald" and you'll see that it only increases your invulnerability towards a single damage type, in this case Slashing.

Now imagine that each of these gems has strict budgets to adhere to, and that their total magnitude of effect can never exceed a certain threshold, and look at the gems again: The conglomerate effect gem does indeed yield the same magnitude of effect as the singular effect gem, but spread out over several effects instead of focused into one single effect.

- The "Inviolate Cabochon Star Ruby" gives 0.4% invulnerability to 4 damage types - a total of 1.6% invulnerability.

- The "Tenacious Cabochon Emerald" however spends all of its "points", so to speak, on a single effect and provides the full 1.6% range to Slashing Invulnerability.

And the same applies to "Immutable" gems and their singular representatives as well, being of the same nature only aimed towards magical invulnerabilities (Cold, Electrical, Fire, Holy and Unholy).

The intention of these conglomerate effects is to provide the player with the choice between multiple invulnerabilities at the cost of individual effect magnitude and higher and more specialized singular invulnerabilities at a greater magnitude, making it a conscious choice what damage mitigating effects to aim for.



Next up there was the issue with percentage-based effects not scaling properly with level, effectively rendering the higher level gems redundant and causing an unnatural progression in the bonuses provided by items in general; a level 48 cloak providing a greater magnitude of effect than a level 75 cloak with the same stats is a prime example.

Obviously this is a highly illogical item progression and we had to work through the way the items were built and implemented to find where the logical error was. Now that we have found and corrected that scaling it does mean that some bonuses will rise and fall in value with the change. The percentage based modifiers did need to be reduced in places to provide better incentive to work up towards the higher level versions.

All other non-percentage based bonuses like damage increasing effects or expendable stat bonuses like health, stamina and mana has not been decreased at lower levels but rather been given a boost in magnitude on most levels and remains unchanged on a few - roughly 80% of all item bonuses has been boosted because of this change to maintain progressive development across levels.

Continuing the previous example with invulnerability, this resulted in the following progression for the invulnerability gems:

- Level 80: 1.57% (unchanged)
- Level 75: 1.42%
- Level 70: 1.34%
- Level 60: 1.26%
- Level 50: 1.18%
- Level 40: 1.10%

This provides us with a healthy entry-level bonus while still preserving the progression through the levels.

Combining these changes can in some cases (where the player has crafted high-level equipment and inserted low level gems for instance) result in quite different end-results than before the patch, and we are truly sorry for the inconvenience this may cause some of our players, but this was a change that was highly needed in order to preserve item balance and item progression for the long term.

I hope that this information helps to spread a little light on the changes that are in progress and the reasons behind them.