Something I forgot to mention:
Dungeon loot! I think everyone should get what the boss drops. With the exception of any rare drops. With those I’d recommend perhaps a need or greed type roll. I found it very disheartening when, by the end of the dungeon, everybody but me go something from at least one of the bosses. Made me feel as though my hard work on that team went unnoticed or was underappreciated.
Just to elaborate further on chrondars idea, once you complete a quest for the level 2 or 3 spells, it would appear in your practice area to test out and practice with the visual outline.
I second Chrondar here. There needs needs NEEDS to be something in game with the actual rune that is being used as a reference in the code. I could hardly ever get affliction and ice Lance to cast, even if I took the time to do them nice and slow. Sometimes they could look fairly identical to what is on the wiki, and still no dice. The new second rune for the teleportation is another example of this, couldn’t ever get it to work. If I used (as well as many other people I heard teaching others at the obelisks) an exaggerated form of the frost symbol, I could get it to work every time.
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Sometimes former party members appear as level 0 no names
Everyone, last test I discovered that the guards that are everywhere are a part of the order! You can see this when you take the quest to kill the wraiths. When you accept the quest the guard that gives you it says “the order thanks you for your help” . When I mentioned this to my party while we were all taking the quest, they asked if we were going to be arrested for being wizards and when I said that we wouldn’t as long as we didn’t do magic, we all started pelting the guard with fireballs XD!
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That is interesting, Affliction and Ice Lance were two that I could cast very reliably. I had trouble with Arcane Ray and Pushback.
Loot is an interesting conundrum. On the one hand, obviously we want you to have to work for it at least a little. On the other hand, we don’t want you to play for 6 hours and not get a single usable upgrade. I do think it probably makes some sense to have the loot table be more likely to give you things for your current class than just totally random like it is right now.
I’m going to disagree with you on the idea that everyone should get a loot drop off of every boss kill (so 5 drops total for the party). Obviously if we did that and we weighted the loot to drop for your class, you would only need to kill a single boss to get what you need. While that might make some sense for the Level 8 dungeon (which is the current one in the game), which is really just a “stopover” on your way to max level, if we gave you all the loot you need from the end-game dungeon on the first run then you’d never go back! Haha.
I think on loot what I’m thinking right now is:
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Change it so that if you get a drop, it’s a drop that’s useful for your current equipped class. Then maybe also prioritize things you don’t already have after that. If we do that, we’ll probably need to consider making the drop rate a liiiitttle lower on random world drops. Of course we will be adding other things besides gear to the drop tables once the crafting is in so those can drop more frequently.
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Continue to give 1 guaranteed loot drop per boss kill per group. Keep in mind that in the end-game dungeons, there will be a lot more bosses per dungeon. We could also prioritize it so that the guaranteed loot drop goes to a different person each time.
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Allow players to trade loot for a certain amount of time with people who were there with them when it dropped, even if it’s Soulbound (which gear drops in dungeons would be). So maybe while you’re in the dungeon, all the loot that dropped is tradable, but once you leave the dungeon, it’s Soulbound. Something like that. That way if someone gets a drop you need you can still trade for it.
The one drop per group per boss system is pretty standard, as far as I know…I know it’s used in WoW, FF14, and Destiny, just off the top of my head. That’s no reason to use it no matter what, but I never had an issue with it when I played those games personally.
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Okay, yeah, interesting. I never personally experienced that but I have heard similar reports from at least 4 or 5 different people which leads me to believe it might be something with our CDN provider or our hosting provider. Just out of curiosity, did you play both days and was it any better today than it was yesterday? At least one other person who was having that issue in a big way reported it was much better today, but they also said they switched out their Ethernet cable at home so who knows 
I can try a couple of things on our end…if it’s happening to you during the next test, please let me know like right off the bat (just say “That latency thing is happening to me again and you told me to tell you about it!”) and I will try a couple of things to see if I can figure out if it’s on our end.
To be completely honest, I’m not unhappy with the loot drop rates as they are now. If I were going to ask for anything it would be for visual feedback as to what dropped for which player. I don’t mind not receiving loot for myself as long as I know that someone in the party received something for our efforts. In a small 5 player group it doesn’t matter as much, but after working for over an hour to down Elongata and not knowing if anyone received loot I was pretty disheartened (I did learn later that at least one player did get a drop though). You could just display a message on the screen briefly with the item name and player that received the drop or maybe have the item tooltip hover above the player’s name briefly after the drop. I don’t know if either of those methods mesh with the feel of the game currently, but they’re the best suggestions I can come up with at the moment.
I’m also not sure that you need to implement both changes 1 and 3 mentioned above. It seems to me that method three alone would be enough. If you have an increased chance of receiving gear related to the class you’re currently playing as a drop then you are probably less likely to trade it if you get the drop (unless it’s a duplicate). If you are able to trade gear for a class you’re uninterested in or have duplicates of to other party members that need it that would be enough for me.
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I completely agree with Damage’s entire post.
I also agree with your number two maybe some sort of check to make sure someone isn’t getting lucky and getting all the guaranteed drops for the whole dungeon wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Plus, won’t some sort of keys be dropping for people off of the bosses which is some sort of loot you will need for the multi team boss? Between keys and maybe a common crafting material or two that would be some sort of nod that you are receiving something for your efforts.
Yes, that’s true. There is a lot of “loot” that’s not in the game yet that definitely will be.
We’ll keep playing with it.
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What about a library building, with multiple books, i.e. “book of fireball” and when you pull the book off of the shelf and open it it shows you the rune.
I’d also like to point out that in an earlier post it was stated that gear will eventually have stats on it. I’m assuming that one piece of gear will not have the same stats each time that it drops, and stats that are on it will vary somewhat from one piece to another. So even if players got pieces of gear that we’re good for them they could still go back for a piece that has better stats on it.
You also make reference to WoW, final fantasy, and destiny and how their gear drops work in those games, but the drop system that is in place in those games only works the way it does because of the number of different gear pieces that you have to attain for your character. Additionally, for WoWand destiny you can only get gear for the class that you are currently playing, and in Orbus (like FFXIV) you will be getting year not only for the class that you’re currently playing but all of your classes.
I do very much agree with you about the one item per boss, but the item NEEDS to be trade-able, otherwise you’re talking about 3/5, 4/5 or possibly even all 5 players of the party getting nothing from the dungeon run (what if the warrior gets both drops, which are both Mage Shoulders of the Plains, which he already got in a previous dungeon run).
I unfortunately did not play today. So I can’t say whether or not it was better. I will however, notify you immediately should the problem persist into the next test.
As far as loot drops are concerned I like the thought of option 2 and 3 out of the options you gave. I don’t believe making it class specific would be the best idea, simply because you may want to try for gear for your mage but are not skilled enough as a mage to run a dungeon effectively.
I’m not sure a library of spell books will fit with the lore they mentioned, although since I’m still murky on what the lore actually is, it may work. However, I still believe a traceable rune in front of you will allow for perfect practice.
Practice does not make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. If you practice doing something incorrectly then all you do is get really good at doing it wrong.
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I was trying to steer away from the idea of making visible runes from other players due to a foreseeable future of many penis drawings.
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Enjoyed it much more than last time no complaints other than much more glitchy…for lack of a better term. ie It seemed to cut back and forth from Steam really quickly crashed it twice.
Thanks Again
Also Riley, will you flesh out the currency system next test? Because I noticed when I finished the wraith quest that there was an icon in the bottom right of my inventory saying “10 coin”. Just thought I would ask that because you said that trading was almost done.
There is also the option of a token based system for boss loot. I have encountered these systems in other MMORPGs before, where you get a unique token/coin for defeating a boss. One or more tokens can be traded back in town with an NPC trader merchant for items like class specific armor sets.
This should simplify the system since the bosses only need to drop tokens, instead of having a complex loot table. Here is an example from LOTRO, where you have to acquire medallions and marks to trade for gear. http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Armour_of_the_Stag
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The traceable runes would be put there by the devs. NOT players. If the Devs chose to draw a penis would be up to them. lol
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My feedback for this test:
Runemage:
The class was very refreshing! Great work! Although some spells were challenging (my team members know all I went through to get a resurrection out) which is understandable and part of the fun.
Suggestion: Please be careful when changing rune designs in the future as, myself and other players went through fun hell but hell to try and perfect our techniques for casting some spells and I realized they all have specific quirks once you practice them, almost like shortcuts, which I believe are unique to every player casting (their methods).
Something else I did notice in this test as other mentioned sometimes I’d lag a bit, doesn’t make it unplayable but it could have been frames being skipped even when I was alone or somewhere practicing spells. Sometimes it didn’t feel butter smooth like the previous test. I wish I could give you more detailed information but that’s really it sometimes it got worse when around groups and multiple actions at once. (This never happened during the previous test for me)
Some monsters in the dungeon (ghosts) and starting town (frog thingys) were untouchable and frozen, they would neither attack or more or could be hit.
I like the drop rate no problems there to be honest from my opinion.
The game is shaping up to be great, my thanks for letting me and other players to be part of the development by providing feedback.
I still wish we had some type of friends list to keep track of people we meet.
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