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 |  | Here We Go Again On Our Own: The Grab Bag of Player Questions |  |
|  | Posted By: Sanya Thomas | 2004-06-18 21:05:37 |  |
| |  |  Going down the only road I've ever known, metaphorically speaking:
Q: There has been talk of this new hack-detecting technology. I am all for this and think it's a great idea. However, I have one concern. I am a programmer that has a lot of medical clients and if there is some kind of 'drive-scan' I'll either have to quit playing or purchase a new computer for DAoC. Can someone provide some kind of clarification on this?
A: There are no drive scans. We are not looking to establish new legal precedents, and we’re not violating anyone’s privacy. While I am rubbing my talons with glee at the thought of booting some deserving butts to the curb, I do not think that “by any means necessary” is a good attitude for a company to have, and I’m pleased as punch to work for a company that feels the same way.
Q: Do you have any new information on getting CDs burned for those of us who would rather chew glass than endure the download on our dial up connections?
A: Yes! We have arranged for a partner who now has CDs for sale for the cost of shipping. The order form can be found here: https://www.plimus.com/jsp/buynow.jsp?contractId=1637037
Q: Some of the sites on the downloads page have downloads for New Frontiers(open beta) and that’s all.
A: The files on our download link page are now all final – it just took a little time for some of our partners to take the word “beta” off the links. Heck, it took a little time for ME to take the word “beta” off the site. Download away.
Q: I recently started playing again. However, my guild leader and officers with the ability to invite new guild members has left. How long does it take for autopromote to kick in?
A: Autopromote is temporarily disabled. The programmer who can fix it should have some time now that New Frontiers is on the runway waiting for takeoff. I’m very sorry about the delay.
Q: (Insert question here about autotrain and free respecs.)
A: Okay, first I have to explain that I’m a big monkey who phrased the announcement very badly. I’m sorry. TOTALLY my bad. If you don’t care about context, skip the next paragraph.
You see, we get appeals every day from autotrained people who try to respec, and find that they don’t get all the points back for their free and especial use. The long, boring, eye-glazing explanation usually fails, and I tend to boil it down to “those points are lost to you.”
While there’s a chance we’re going to take another cold hard look at autotrain in the future, there are no changes in the way respecs work with autotrained characters from the way it is now on live.
Here is the full, long, eye-glazing explanation for How It Works. If you've been with us since 2002, you may even recognize this as being basically ripped straight from an old Grab Bag, with new clarifications and edits by the beloved Team Leads:
Q: I am confused about how the full respec will work with autotraining. Can you clarify?
A: Let’s start with some background. Autotraining is a feature of the game for some classes, but not all of them. One class that has autotrain is the paladin – they have slash and chants as skills that autotrain up (extremely slowly) IF they do not choose to train those skills of their own accord. If a paladin never puts a single point into slash, by the time he is level 28, he will have a spec of 7 in slash. Those seven levels of points are "free" and don't come from any specializing or leveling. If he gets to 48 without ever training in slash, he will have autotrained up to a spec level of 12. Again, those seventy plus points just magically appear. This feature went into the game a long time ago, and was intended to prevent a player from entirely gimping himself.
Whether the feature serves its intended function, or has become instead a tool used primarily by players known as "min/maxers" or "kind of scary" is not the point of this wee essay, and an entirely separate discussion. Certainly the discussion coming from my badly worded and, well, WRONG note the other day has been carefully observed and passed up the chain.
When we first introduced autotrain, the game would use your spec points FOR you, to make sure you never fell below a certain level. The public outcry was great, and to cut to the chase, we fixed autotrain so that it did not take your points. Instead, if autotrain kicks in, it creates the points and adds them to your total.
This is why some people have a few more points than others of the same class.
The free points thing sounds like a much bigger deal than it actually is. For instance, going back to our paladin example, a pally has two lines with the autotrain option – chants and slash. I do not think there is a single paladin that would try and level to fifty without putting any points at all into chants, do you?
A player who autotrained, and accepted the fact that he was going to be gimped just to get that handful of extra points, has more points total than a player who did not autotrain. It’s a severe tradeoff for very little reward, but the reward does exist.
Now, on to the respec thing. When you activate your respec, the game will check your character to see if you have any autotrain lines that have a minimum attached to them. If our paladin is level 50, the game will automatically assign points to the autotrain lines until they are both at 12, before our paladin does anything else. (The game calculates what the minimum level should be depending on your level.)
Why? Well, if a player autotrained, the points he had were “free” – and to prevent abuse of the system, those free points must be assigned to the line from which they came. However, code is an if/then, either/or kind of thing, and the game cannot tell if the training you did at level whatever was the result of an autotrain or a choice on your part. So the points are automatically deducted.
NOW we're getting to the whole "lost" thing. If you try to spec out of a line that you autotrained into a line you did not autotrain, you will not be able to spec it as high. That's because when you train, autotrain lines AUTOMATICALLY take however many points that would have been gathered via autotraining. You can thus get lines with autotrain back to the same level they were before you respec'ed, but lines without cannot go that high.
Points are not technically lost. But they can, in some specific circumstances, be lost to YOU – and customer service is COMPLETELY UNABLE to remove the points from the autotrained line and give them to you to use.
And just in case it helps, here’s a wee chart showing which classes get what, and how many “free” points you might have at which levels, if you don’t ever, ever put points into an autotrained line:
ALBION| Class | Skills Auto Trained | | Armsman | Slashing, Thrusting | | Infiltrator | Stealth | | Mercenary | Slashing, Thrusting | | Minstrel | Instruments | | Paladin | Chants, Slashing | | Reaver | Slashing, Flexible Weapons | | Scout | Long Bows |
HIBERNIA| Class | Skills Auto Trained | | Nightshade | Stealth | | Ranger | Recurved Bows |
MIDGARD| Class | Skills Auto Trained | | Shadowblade | Stealth | | Warrior | Axes, Hammers, Swords |
LEVELS AUTO TRAINED| Level | Level of spec (counting from one) auto trained if no training points have been spent in the skill | | 1 | 1 | | 8 | 2 | | 12 | 3 | | 16 | 4 | | 20 | 5 | | 24 | 6 | | 28 | 7 | | 32 | 8 | | 36 | 9 | | 40 | 10 | | 44 | 11 | | 48 | 12 |
Q: Your announcement said "YOU MUST USE THIS RESPEC BEFORE YOU LEVEL AGAIN. If you are “this close” to your next level, you should use your respec before you so much as whack a single badger."
Do realm level's count? Realm ranks? Basically, if I'm level 50 already, can I lose my respec?
A: This free, full skill respec will overwrite anything you happen to be hoarding from previous Mythic giveaways, but since you can’t outlevel it, you can’t lose it, either.
Q: You recently stated that you can no longer crit with a weapon proc. Does this include style procs, such as Blizzard Blade?
A: Yes.
Q: When Mythic does an update, does the removal or deletion of old files occur? Will Mythic eventually create a new cd with current files? If so, what of your current customers? How will this impact them?
A: For your first question, I turn to a programmer whose work is so far behind the scenes that I don’t even have a clever nickname for him. Therefore, Marty’s nickname is “Marty.” When I asked him what happened to orphan files, he replied, ”They [the orphans] will be cold, dirty and fed gruel.
“No, seriously, the number of orphaned files has always been pretty low. Usually, we replace (overwrite) existing files or add new files as we go along.”
Whenever we release a new version, such as the Dark Age of Camelot: Gold Edition, we print a new master of the classic game, with all the updates to the point we ship the new CD. We’re going to do another release soon with the original game, Shrouded Isles, Foundations, Trials of Atlantis, and New Frontiers, all in a box called Dark Age of Camelot: Platinum. That way, brand new customers don’t have to sit through two years of patches.
Returning customers are a different kettle of fish. We’ve offered “patch CDs” on the Mythic store before, and we will again – the current one is a little out of date. The free trial available on Gamespy helps returning customers as well as newbies. Finally, we’re going to be sending out “come home” CDs in the next month – watch this space for details.
And of course, current customers already have the latest, greatest patches.
Q: If I have already downloaded the New Frontiers Open Beta for Pendragon, will I need to download the installer again (from the partner sites) to play on my regular servers?
A: Wow, two for Marty in one day?! He assures me that while you might have a bigger patch than others on opening day, you do NOT need to get the installer files a second time. I recommend playing on Pendragon up to the bitter end on Monday, to be sure you’ve gotten as many of the patch files as humanly possible.
Q: With this full respec, how do I get my artifact weapon exchanged for my new spec?
A: Unfortunately, the short answer is that you can't. Once an artifact has been activated, it can not be deactivated or exchanged for another type of that artifact. Your friends in the CS pit would like you to know that as much as they'd like to help you out, they are powerless to assist you in this matter. If you really love your (insert artifact here) so much that you don't want to give it up, you should probably not respec that skill line.
***
Yeah, I know, I'm late tonight. I've been scribbling away at the documentation for New Frontiers – we've got a whole lot more than there is on the beta site, and it all needs to be pulled together.
Really, if Miss Linda and the Team Lead Program weren't handling the RA documentation, I'd have lost the rest of my mind by now. The RA chart is just about as final as final can be. Any changes from this point on will be extremely minor, so please, feel free to rely on it this weekend if you'd like to get a jump on planning your new Realm Ability template. And while you peruse that wonderful chart, thank a volunteer for helping to ensure that the chart matches what you'll encounter in game. Thank you, volunteers, can't say that enough.
Ladies and Gentlemen: Good night.
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