Suggestions and questions based on roadmap

Suggestions
#1

So, I know this might be a little premature since we weren’t given exact details but I wanted to give some suggestions and questions regarding the roadmap and its plans.

  1. Shaman appearance. Firstly I’d like to say thank you to the Devs for listening to the community about the Shaman as a class, and I really really am hyped to see shaman masks on player’s faces running around but I do have some suggestions/concerns regarding this. In the blog it talks about how shaman’s masks will appear to others now in the 3D world. The thing I don’t want (for the sake of emersion) is to grab my grab trigger from my back and pull, only to be greeted with the mask instantly placed on my face. Is this the direction you were going to put the masks devs? The mask instantly applied to the face when pulled out? Where did the mask go? Do I even have the mask on? (Dev/blog talked about how the mask will not obscure player’s vision, which is great!, but no indication.) Right now as it is in game when you pull the mask the “mask” is put on instantly and totems can be spawned. The problem with this is however, if you put your mask back “off” the totems can still spawn. There is no indication besides items on your belt disappearing or reappearing to be able to tell you have your mask on or off at that point.

Suggestion for fix:
Have the mask APPEAR on hand when you guys implement the masks showing for others update. Have the shaman able to physically grab the mask onto their hands, and then place it on their face (like a magnet where it’ll pop right on[disappear] once its close enough). The player can then grab near their face (maybe with a vibration indicator that you’re within grabbing range of the mask) to put it away. OR have them pull from their backs to put the mask away instantly instead. Also maybe have totems not appear when the mask is unequipped after.

Edit: You won’t be able to see your shaman mask otherwise besides in icon/equipment, whats the point if you can’t see it yourself unless it’s in selfiebot/character tab? Let us see it in our hands before putting it on!

  1. Shaman being optimal in melee range.
    You’ve listened to the community and said you’d make shaman orbs timer when release and not when it hits the target theoretically making shaman not required to be melee range to do good dps! That’s great!!!
    But the problem I see with this is that: Lightning totem is majority of shaman’s dps IF i’m not mistaken. IF we were to take what the devs said literarly we need to question if the lightning totem crits will be calculated BEFORE or AFTER hitting the target. If the lightning totem with the crit reset talent were to be used (which lets be real all shamans should use) and the crits were to be calculated AFTER the orb hits the target, that means the lightning totem is still effectively better in melee range. No good shaman would realistically want to spread their totems in different spots so what do they do? Put them all in one area. And whats the best place for that if crit hits were to be calculated on hit instead of when release? Melee range.
    That idea in mind, to most efficiently use shaman you need to be in melee range if the crits were to be on hit calculated, effectively making the shaman change (orbs timers starting when thrown not hit) useless for lightning totem/players who wish to use shaman to the max potential.

Sorry for rant on this one,
Suggestion for fix:
Make lightning totem calculate if it’s going to crit upon release for lightning totem resets.

  1. Overall looks for shaman and other classes with the update.
    Shamans will now be able to equip masks and have others able to see it! Thats great!!! But here’s the issue I see this one. Some of the masks look cool yes, but they’re all well most of the weapon’s color don’t match most people’s gear that’s dyed.

Suggestion for fix:
A lot of people might already have suggested this before, but with the appearance of shaman masks this issue becomes more of an issue especially since this will be on someone’s face, where people can have masks, helms, etc. Let us dye our weapons! We already can waste our dyes on our weapons but it does nothing to change the color. Let us change the color of our weapons using dyes.

Just a small thing for this as well for customization: Scoundrel bullet trails, and ranger’s arrow trails should get some love and allow players to customize their trail’s color. (Maybe only for the player for the sake of consistency for other players, but with this, this would allow people to be able to tell their own trails from others in party without having to resort to turning off graphics!!!)

This is more of a question and a half suggestion:

  1. Public events tracker on map/somewhere.
    A lot of players, often resort to using an online public event tracker, and whether or not it is the dev’s intention of having players explore the world and joining up to a random public event by chance I have to say; Public events are lackluster in population.
    Most new players don’t even know about public events. Most new players who do know about public events only find out about highsteppe defense because it is the nearest one they ever get to. (That they’re knowledgeable of.)

Are public events going to be visible on the new interactive map? If not there should be somewhere where it lists all public events/when public events are happening IN GAME, or an announcement. Here’s the thing: public events are supposed to be events in public with multiple people correct? I only see people going to highsteppe defense, because that’s all they know. No one goes to the other ones except for the people who know the teleports and locations and timings via online sources. If there were to be an in game teller of public events, more people would come to different public events, thus making a healthy flux of players going to public events overall.

Sorry for rant again;
Suggestion for fix:
Make public events traceable/locate-able on map or in game.

Small thing asking about maps: It said that it’d allow us to see where we are on the map, but can we see where party members on the map? (Since the compass does that directionally already) would be nice in trickster hunt/ finding each other.

Edit: spelling and formatting

2 Likes
#2

  1. woohoo Shaman mask! I don’t care if it’s on the face or not, but even if it is, something we can see would be awesome. So even if there is a face mask, I’d like to have the mask visible on the back of the equipped hand (like someone else had suggested) or like a bracelet.
    Most of all, when I sheath my weapon, please let the totems disappear / be sheathed.

  2. Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only non-melee Shaman and if any others in high mobility fights have a pattern of totems down to run between (not applicable to all high mobility fights). I’m almost always just as far back as the other dps. If I’m closer, I’m off to the side, and still not “close” enough to block shots (unless I run in the path of something while fleeing, but as a mage my spells would be blocked by other long range dps too as we scattered and hopped around). I guess caveat here, I’m not a super min-maxer, so any of that “most dps physically possible” isn’t a concern or thought for me. I enjoy throwing far and not risking dampening others’ experience by impeding other dps trying to increase mine to the super duper max when my mediocre style suffices. To me, that’s more like personal shaman dps vs group dps, and it may be fine for a well coordinated min-max group. (No particular opinion on the body collision debate. I don’t mind it existing as it does, and I wouldn’t care much if it was lifted, but I don’t “want” it lifted).

  3. Yaaaaaaaaas!!!

  4. +1 for a bulletin board in Highsteppe (for all) and at each outpost (for the area, if not all? Maybe for the area initially and for all once that outpost mission complete / established?) The lights are useful, but maybe the boards could announce what’s coming up within the next hour and update every 5 or 10 minutes? Whatever rotation makes sense if one does.

1 Like
#3

bump.

Shaman mask issue happened exactly like i thought it would. Would be nice if you can grab and put mask on, or at least have it visible in character equipment (inventory).

Shaman orb throw changes only min damage which is fine i suppose but shaman would become viable if crits were to be based upon throw and not hit.

Public events still hard for people to figure out. (New/never bothered to research.)

#4

On a technical level, the issue with shaman masks not showing in the character sheet, or on login, or until you “unsheathe” them is that they’re weapons, so we would have to code in all that behavior to the system for them - that’s not to say it won’t ever happen (it would be nice to see them on the character sheet so you know what they look like, though they show in the dresser thankfully), but to explain why it isn’t currently. So, definitely something that would be nice to improve in the future if we have a chance, but that’s a lot of additional programmer time on it and we have a tight schedule at the moment.

Can you elaborate a little more on the critical lightning orb issue?

As for public events on the map, we do show them as a point of interest but I assume you mean when they are going on, showing differently as a different color or something like that. This current iteration of the map is definitely a starting point, and we appreciate all the feedback on it and are making a note of everyone’s feedback on it for the future.

3 Likes
#5

The critical lightning orb issue is that the talent strikes twice resets the orb based on when the lightning orb hits the target upon a crit.

The change to shaman with the patch increased minimum damage. It did not however change anything at all for whats required to maximum dps. Because of how the totem works currently the lightning totem resets when you crit and it’s only calculated when it’s hit on the target.

Lightning totem does over 40% of the damage a shaman does and the lightning totem requires the player to still be as close as to the target as possible. (If you’re melee range as shaman and your lightning totem crits it’ll respawn very quickly, but if you were further away it’ll respawn much later, lowering dps.)

1 Like
#6

Can there be any validation that the devs know this is a problem?.. From the community standpoint you are just ignoring the past warnings of the problem and the current complaints of it over and over.

#7

Just to elaborate on the significance of this issue: on a boss fight where the boss is standing still like the Minotaur where shamans have to stand only a few meters away from the boss (3-5 estimate meters [it’s still pretty close to the boss]) vs gorgon where the shaman stands RIGHT on the boss, Shaman does 14.45% more damage on the gorgon than on the Minotaur. a few meters accounts for 14.45% damage loss. And this is all because of lightning totem crits are based on on-hit.

1 Like
#8

I see what you mean. As you said, this means the change to the respawn doesn’t affect that part of the playstyle. We’ll consider that problem. Thanks for the feedback.

4 Likes
#9

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