0.9.9 Patch Notes

"

Chris wrote:

[li]In addition to using a variety of curses, Merveil's Daughters can now summon Spawn to attack you. These Spawn don't yield experience or drop items. Some Merveil's Daughters summon Exploding Spawn which run into you and detonate themselves.[/li]

Summoned monsters should give something for going through the trouble of killing them. Small exp, chance for items...perhaps even items exclusive to specific spawn.

I agree with those raising concerns about the vagueness of support gems. After just going 1-60 since last Tuesday. I was able to figure out how the system worked for the most part, but I've also been playing computer games for near 25 years now and as much as I would like to think anyone who picked the game up could puzzle through the support gems, I really can't say that is true.

For instance, when reading the gem text it does not provide exceptions for the gems and implies as long as it is linked to a skill it will work. So when I first started, I kept trying to link + elemental damage to auras to maximize my mana investment. Then I inspected the tooltips and found unlike my other skills the damage modifying support gems did not seem to effect auras, I researched it on the board and was able to locate information showing that the damage modifiers needed to be on an active attack skill and not on the auras. I adapted and life moved on.

Yet if I have learned anything from playing mmo's and online games it is that most people will get frustrated and stop playing before they start searching forums for answers. I'm not saying that is smart but it is the unfortunate reality of gaming - people want the information immediately at their finger tips and will not go look for it. This is especially true in a game that will be free upon release as there will be no initial investment that inclines them to search for answers to justify their purchase.

A simple fix would be to have the circle of the socket and links to active skills glow when linked.

Example: Weapon Elemental Damage and Anger placed in a 2L item. No glow.

Weapon Elemental Damage and Heavy Strike placed in a 2L item. Sockets glow and the adjoining link glows to show the path the support gems effects are traveling on and the socket they are affecting.

This allows for easy at a glance confirmation of support gem/skill interaction and makes sure that the player can draw those conclusions on their own with little prodding or overhanded instructions.

Just a thought, typing on my phone so excuse any typos!

It's a scary patch o.O
I think it will lower the max levels in the 3 hour run.
And I can't wait for the Shadow :D Best class^^

"

Fiveby5 wrote:

I agree with those raising concerns about the vagueness of support gems.

...

A simple fix would be to have the circle of the socket and links to active skills glow when linked.

Example: Weapon Elemental Damage and Anger placed in a 2L item. No glow.

Weapon Elemental Damage and Heavy Strike placed in a 2L item. Sockets glow and the adjoining link glows to show the path the support gems effects are traveling on and the socket they are affecting.

This allows for easy at a glance confirmation of support gem/skill interaction and makes sure that the player can draw those conclusions on their own with little prodding or overhanded instructions.

Just a thought, typing on my phone so excuse any typos!

That's a really good idea actually - as I still get a bit confused to which parts of supports affect which parts of other skills.

Although, the linked-glowing might not help the situation of - Concentrated Affect will reduce the AoE size of Poison Arrow - but do nothing for the damage. Maybe they just need to make that support gem completely not work with PA.

But I do agree that the game still has a long way to go in terms of explaining things in-game, either with tutorials/tool tips, or visual indications like you suggest above.

I don't think that many of the systems need to be simplified, just better explained in a more intuitive manner.

"

Chris wrote:

"

darkjoy wrote:

So i guess, loot dropping from shattered mobs bug not fixed?

This is only true for Shield Crabs, right? As far as we know, all other monsters drop items when shattered.

"

hexster wrote:

diminishing returns on magic find is stupid why even bother having mf at all if u cant stack it up for better returns you do know it gimps ur charater to have high mf very dumb idea to even work on ur mf now how will you know when ur mf starts diminishing might has well have none at all now

Increased item quantity and rarity mods are still both very effective. After this change, we can adjust the values of them so that having a few of them grants a reasonable impact.

"

Dester666 wrote:

still no act 3

Yes, as we have said many times, that's coming with Open Beta.

"

WAWAMELONS wrote:

The majority of the changes in the patch notes seem to be about monster AI. Then a section about totems / mines / traps. While this stuff is nice, many core aspects of the game are still lacking. They didn't even add the trade screen yet, which is an absolute joke. Also didn't address the "spam 1-2 skills over and over" aspect of the gameplay. How much do you wanna bet that these totems / mines / traps are going to be less effective than just holding right click on your 30k split arrow / ice spear / whatever skill?

Also didn't address SO many balance issues with skills. For example:

- Rain of Arrows is completely ignored. What a waste of the best looking skill effect in the game. This is one of, if not THE, worst skill in the game. Come on? Add a slight snare when the arrows hit or something.
- Tempest Shield still terrible
- Puncture still bad compared to other options
- Viper Strike still bad compared to other options
- Why was Discharge damage buffed? Seriously?
- Why was Hatred aura damage buffed?
- Explosive Arrow still bad compared to other options
- Glacial Hammer still underwhelming (needs some sort of AoE effect, this game is a massive AoE fest)
- No chaos damage passive nodes or anything to help boost Poison Arrow's damage a bit. Solo'ing PA is fine but if you tried using it in groups you'd see how useless it is.
- No buff to Spark. Lightning casters are still at the bottom of the barrel compared to Cold and Fire.
- No changes to the terribly grindy and RNG-ish fusing orb mechanic.
- No changes to the FFA loot system.

Thanks for the list of balance concerns. This will definitely be handy.

We generally do not make major micro-balance changes in these large patches. It's better to wait for feedback from players (after playing the large patch) and then tweak numbers in minor updates. Once you've played 0.9.9, we'd really appreciate a similar list of balance concerns. Feel free to PM it to me if you want to make sure I see it.

Don't expect a change to the Fusing orb stuff any time soon, we are pretty happy with how that's currently working. High variance item mechanics are a key design choice! It's pretty easy to get four linked sockets. It's not cripplingly hard to get five linked sockets. Six is overkill and designed to be very rare. I want there to be something for players to strive for in the long term.

Just a heads up - I'm 100% behind what wawa just said, and I hope that appropriate measures will be taken before release.

none the less, thanks for an awesome patch.

It's difficult though, when you see an important aspect of the game that is currently lacking - still being neglected (don't get me wrong, the changes are awesome except for buffing discharge, that is a BIG BIG mistake), you start to focus on only that and can sometimes forget the good things that comes with it.

"

*We've added a corner map. You can turn it on in the UI Options.

YES

My friends who I gave a beta key to hated the map. I can see why, it did sorta get in the way...

Nice to see new things..

Minor patch notes typo on:

"

Aded additional elemental weapon passives on the Ranger side of the tree.

Otherwise, patch notes are pretty terrifying in a good way... hope to see an update to the passive tree planner (on site or in-game planning features) but I understand that's probably not the highest priority atm.

I like all the new stuff coming with this patch, but things like trade system, chat system, desync issues, frequent crashes needed to be addressed IMO, especially since a new public stress test is starting in few days. Nothing says unfinished like having to drop items on the ground and blindly trust the other guy...

NICE!!! great job GGG !

Greetings HunT3Rq