Looking for a fresh batch of questions for the next Dev Q&A!

Community
#1

Have you ever had a question you wanted to ask the art team, or programmers, or any member of the team about the game or development? We’re looking for a fresh batch of new questions for our next Q&A on the official blog!

Feel free to post questions you’ve wanted to know and we’ll pick some during the next blog post!
Currently, the main upcoming content that we’ve been working hard on is the Citadel Raid and we’ll likely have more to show and talk about on a standalone post, so we won’t be able to talk much on that subject yet in this Q&A.

Thanks!

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#2

After the DPS balance changes I remember reading about tank/healer balance changes. Do you guys have a rough idea what / when that will happen?
#BuffBard :slight_smile:

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#4

1: I’ve got a bunch of data regarding the healing capabilities of Bards and Musketeers, posted before and currently sitting in a Google Drive. I also reported several bugged features of Bard (Instruments of Defense/Protection not functioning in PvE, Upbeat doesn’t function), and the lack of shielding abilities. How much of a priority is getting these fixed?

2: Several games in the past (Sword Coast Legends, Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Online, Divinity: Original Sin, etc) have featured the ability to create custom content from within the game. Essentially the player was given assets to use in game to carve their own dungeons. Is this a possibility to do for Orbus? Obviously there’d have to be ways to prevent easily cheesable content from giving rewards (fight one unscaled level 1 to get a glimmering shard? Sure!), but I think having a way for players to build our own dungeons would add a good deal of extra content, whether it be running through new dungeons or creating them.

3: Can we look forward to new PvP content? Whether it be new maps, different game modes, static PVP goblin, etc?

4: Is Account-Wide storage something that’s on the list?

5: Proof of life of Riley.

6: Can you confirm or deny that Defense makes an appreciable difference? Based on my testing with different sets of armor, differences in Defense stats within the same armor type and level mitigated less than a hundred points of damage. When we’re getting hit for thousands, saving 12 damage isn’t going to help anything.

7: The current theory is that Strength adds approximately .03% extra physical damage per point, and Intel adds approximately .03% magical damage per point. Can you confirm those numbers?

Will edit as I remember more.

1 Like
#5
  • Will we see graphic improvements for PCVR? Advanced settings? Please don’t let Quest hold PCVR graphics back
  • Do you plan to address the inconsistencies with the rarities of loot, loot beams and such, see Potato’s post: More consistency in “beam” color for chests and lootbags
  • Combat logs… Any plans for improving them?
  • Any plans to add more stuff to the API?
  • Are you aware only 2 of the 3 world bosses show up on the API? It seems like something that should be easy to fix and I’ve brought it up before but it never did get fixed
  • What is your favourite thing about reborn? (not all my questions are bad)
  • After reading the blog post it says about the raid coming out and mentions the Lore quests from the reputation NPCs, will the rest of the Lore quests be out before the raid? or will they be coming with the raid release? (before if possible as we will want to focus on the raid)
  • I know you’ve said the Reputation levels won’t increase with the next lot of lore quests, right now the weekly missions are important to grind the reputation levels, but once you’ve done that, there isn’t a whole lot of motivation to do them, by now, a year after reborn released there are a lot of players with maxed rep, could we see an increase in rewards from weeklies for those with maxed reputation such as higher exp than daily missions to make up for the reputation we would have gotten if the levels were to carry on?
  • How goes the effort to fix Upbeat and the passives on Instruments of Defense and Protection?
  • How much of a shielding effect will Defense and Projectiles be? (10% of dot damage, 50% projectiles [Bard will become super meta on Powered Strikes!] etc) I’m working on a written Bard class guide and things are on hold for the time being on that.
  • Is there any plan to change Paladin in PvP regarding them being able to hammer port quick and far enough to avoid continuing a fight they initiate?
  • What can we do as players to help test things?
  • Do you ever plan to do something with the dragon race so players would use it more?
  • Do you plan to bring back the wilds?
  • Will existing classes receive extensive new content such as those found in suggestion threads? Not specifically, but along the lines of: shamans being able to hold totems and move. More warrior weapons/combos (like DPS warriors). Fixed/updated talent systems? Reworked runemage spells(fireball 3, frost 3, arcane ray, arcane blast)?
  • How do you guys take into account suggestion threads and getting a feel for what the community wants as part of your development cycle? How do you decide what your development cycle is?
  • How aware are you of the looting system and the off-putting inventory nightmare players face?
  • In terms of things the community complains about, what does your priority list look like?
  • Will we see an increase to the stack limit?
  • Can you add a note in the journal saying that the Justice Crescendo gives a Sickness stack in PvP?
  • Will useless talents and abilities be addressed? Like an AoE fireball 3? Arcane Ray? Will you work with the community to discover agreeable fixes?
  • Are you open at all to redesigning some of the existing classes? I mean medium to large changes, not just small tweaks.
  • can you make a change to Market Stalls to allow pets and dragons to be seen?
  • Would you consider shared storage between mains and alts or family members? like an extra chest which can only be accessed by those on that account
  • Have you thought about adding “set bonuses” to raid gear?
  • What happened to the 1v1 PvP Arena? Is that still coming?
  • Will there be a new raid pet and raid mount for us to farm in the new raid at the end of the year?
  • When will knuckle support be added?
  • Will you be willing to release info on monster drop tables and item drop rates? This info is really lacking and I think the community as a whole would probably like to see this sort of stuff somewhere

(Note I cleaned it up so there isn’t any old answered questions on there to make it easier for you)

Unanswered questions from the previous thread, do you not want to answer these or something?

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#6


I will note the last Q&A:

"What sort of further balance or talent fixes can we expect in the future?"

While we just did a DPS balance pass, that was mainly only a numbers adjustment. We are planning on looking at the healing and tanking classes next, and also looking at and fixing the broken mechanics some classes still experience. If you would like to read more about the DPS balance pass you can find that here.

Basically, are mages going to get a useful level 30 talent? 2nd level 20 talent? Runic Strength fix? I guess nobody is really complaining about selfish/shared streak but they are also kind of bland. Can lend a hand be made into an optional setting? Can we get two better level 5 talents? Need ideas? The community has a ton.

People miss casting different spells. We don’t want affliction/fireball to be pooped on, we just want to once again raise the skill ceiling and/or add reason to have diverse mage builds within a group.

For example, can True affliction just not have a massive, massive, invisible-text MASSIVE damage loss? It would actually be decent, as-is, if it didn’t completely ruin your DPS. Definitely wouldn’t be as much DPS as affinity because of current fireball speeds, but we would see many rotation mages go into true affliction for the utility/variety. Probably some noob mages too who can’t cast quickly, the DoTs might be favorable. But the base damage is sooooo poor its unbearable lol.

Contamination is poo, would be nicer if it made DoTs tick quicker, tick harder, instantly consume X seconds off of DoT timers as damage, or something useful. Though spreading dots is usually about killing trash, so the more immediate the effect, probably better. The exception would be high level shards where trash doesn’t die immediately.

Can we expect to see any major changes to the classes? The talent system itself? I thought when the talents came out, it was a barebone implementation because it was beta. Aside from receiving level 30 talents (except when that was taken away from mages), we’ve seen very little positive changes to talents, especially useless ones (which other classes have). While useless talents should not really exist, the problem may be less about the talents themselves and possibly more how you are limited in your choices. Like rather than “pick left or right” we could have some kind of point-allocation system with certain talents having more cost, and more talent options. Like snaring enemies with frost spells etc. Again… if you need ideas… lol

  • Affliction damage now fills your gauge (the 15 spells thing). You can cast res+affliction 2 to consume the gauge(at whatever level its at), which begins to drain it. Every spell you cast is now imbued with dark magic, doing bonus damage against afflicted targets and removing 1 second of affliction off the target. Idk something like that. Some math will definitely need to be involved. Something useless like triplicity is not attractive even if it’s cool. Certainly more involved than fireball go pew pew extra damage, frost go pew pew extra ticks, affliction go pew pew debuff extra damage. Just one rough idea there are probably better ones. But hey even if triplicity was fixed, thats one new spell to add to my rotation.

Affinity is a damage increase to things we already do, just like selfish streak. True affliction changed how we played, which was cool. I think it’s a good idea to have a “baseline” talent like affinity that doesn’t change up the playstyle much, for players who don’t want to level up and be forced into a different playstyle, but where are the options to include variety? Turn muh fireballs pink/purple, make them trigger arcane runes instead of fire, and have like a 25% chance for them to do smaller, weaker, arcane explosions. Idk stuff like that people will eat that stuff up. Honestly this would be a way cooler wand than a talent (gear variety, particularly unique effect gear, is also a subject for me…) and would synergize with something like an arcane rune tileset or true affliction (if it didn’t suck).

Can we expect to see any major changes to gear? Such as unique weapon/armor effects as mentioned before? Like a wand that instead of just being +6 and doing more damage with 2 affixes, it’s a +6 with either just one interesting unique affix that gives your non-fire spells a frost 1 effect, or like a frost dot on your frost spells(frostburn), or a guaranteed iceheart + this unique wand effect? Frost spells could do increased damage (not to overtake fireball), particularly icelance, or even give icelance a wider cone effect rather than a narrow line? Maybe if you hold the “a” button the cone of icelane narrows, doing increased damage. Frost 3 now AoE’s (to synergize with this new wide icelance effect). Now you got a kickass ice wand and reason to cast frost spells. Maybe not all of these effects go on just the wand, but some of the effects are talents or armor uniques and the players will need to mix them up. Do you get what I am saying here?

I mean you could make talents which give us reasons to cast things like pushback, icelance, pushback 2, fireball 3, frost 3, even arcane ray every so often or even consistently as part of a rotation. Essentially by reworking some of the abilities, and giving us talents that trigger every X seconds for a spell or under certain conditions (or both). Or not let triplicity/contamination hog up our entire blue-bar for special abilities. A talent could even completely modify a spell. Frostfire, electric spells, 2-step rituals similar to triplicity/contamination (like why not make that one talent where every or many spells gets a worthwhile ritual?). Mass Polymorph, Cone of Cold (Ice lance) and so on. You could give us completely new runes with certain talents (I realize the implication of this on existing shortcuts) and so on. Frost can now be a stackable effect. Each tier of frost applies 1 stack, Frost 3 Aoe applies only 1 stack to targets hit by the AoE. At 7 stacks the target is briefly snared until hit, the next hit direct hit dealing increased damage to the target. Pushback might do massive damage to frozen targets. Pushback might be converted into an electric spell. Pushback 2 might summon an AoE lightning storm on CD every 30 seconds. A burning wand or talent might have a similar effect, applying a stacking fire DoT. Fireball 3 might do increased damage, and boost your fire spell damage by X % for the next S seconds, and AoE too why not lol. Even putting that AoE or buff on a cooldown, like 8 or 10s. You could put effects on our wand (like a little flamey orb) similar to musketeers to let us know when these abilities are ready.

Honestly, an entire subtype of mage would be amazing. Give us a mage with mana & cooldowns who can heal, I would actually want to heal. The runes can be the same and mean different things, or you can use totally different runes. Make them separate as to not effect normal magery. asdasdawd

1 Like
#7

Simple question here. New class? When and what?

#8

With the game increasing in players daily, will this urge the team to push content (that’s complete and tested) out faster than we’ve been getting, or implement a system of mini event’s that’ll keep people busy and entertained during the week. example being like on a wednesday a battleground buff, can be more rep for gold turn in’s or double honor in order to get placed higher in the ranking that week. or any of the mission people really, just giving small daily bonuses to keep players more active.

#9

I have a question when will the tank and healer test fix will be and any plains to increase warrior damage or equal damage of the pally in overall dungeons and raids

#10

Would there be a way for you guys to add a setting to remove the extra effects of spells?
For example fireball 2 could just be a orange or yellow ball, or remove the lightning effects from shaman’s lightning
I think this would help with some lag issues while rendering too many spells on quest and pcvr

#11

We we ever get mouths that move when we talk?

#12

As for the new raid bosses coming at the end of the year what kind of things can we see so the bosses don’t melt quickly? I was personally a fan of the 5-10 minute long raid boss fights and would hate to see these bosses just melt.

For example will the bosses have damage scaling based on how fast the boss is dying to an extent as to encourage higher skill groups to get better times but keeping the boss alive for more than a minute or two like the current raid bosses.

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#13

+1 for the longer boss fights, but specifically for this example mechanic: If I understand, this would just mean the group has to slow down their DPS intentionally to prevent the tank from dying. Rather than a raw damage boost I’d rather see mechanics going off that affect the party, otherwise it will just be DPS snoring. Or, atleast a variety of such effects. One tank crusher boss would be fine.

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#14

I thought of an affix / class feature that may help with this and fireball spam

As the mage casts quicker and quicker an arcane charge begins to build around them [static shock is what I’m picturing] while they are casting at nominal speeds (use tile runes as the speed gauge) this then arcs to any other mage/party member who is close for a stacked shared streak buff.

Once they go faster than a nominal mage the static turns red and the Buff turns into a ‘debuff’ “Your on Fire!” damage (minus buff) remains same but they begin to take fire damage proportional to the speed that they are casting at and have a damage AOE proportional to their speed. (Have an 18 triplicity cast = empowered lifewell radius “flame well”.)

Use mistkeeper esk mechanics but closer together.

Can damage party members and mobs.

A strong healer will be required to keep 1 flaming mage alive … many flaming mages in a party and you might need to rethink playstyles.

I’m picturing slightlyfaster than nominal ticking like virus and the fastest mage ticking like an affliction stack.

(Allow decurse to purge it so new playstyles can emerge : have this act like tradu squid boss … actually yes … exactly like squiddy it then takes the same amount of time as squid to come back)

Could use the existing burn dots … have Fire 1 dot Fire 2 dot and Fire 3 dot apply at activation runes. (Or just squid damage at different shard levels … )

And anyone entering your zone gets it too … so it would be as much of a feature as a deterrent to blindly melt without communicating with your healer.

It would also, I assume be a status thing for those who can activate it … let’s give them a title or a flame mantle or something let’s have a faint firy glow eminate from their gear as a transmog … like gold foil but more arcane looking …

I like this idea… then have other effects trigger from standing in a flame well or shooting thru it.

All archer arrows are fire arrows if the shoot thru a flame well

Scoundrels have all burn cards or something standing in a well … because their cards ar burning … get it?

Flaming bard mallets …

Have bosses that heal from fire and target the strongest well to jump to … when that happens that mage has to halt dps or it just heals the boss.

Or a boss that spews explosive gas and he jumps randomly as a mechanic and you get poison for being in the cloud but if it hits a flamewell it goes boom.

Etcetera … etc , etc.

Also all the things Delceri said about improving talents and making existing spells more useful

Fireball 3 needs an AOE all line attacks need to be fixed (they shoot at vive orientation invisibly and not touch orientation and wand orientation does nothing to fix it (steamvrplayedthroculus))

#15

Please we would really really know the answer on the age old question if there are tiles that currently do not proc in the game. And if not, which ones?

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#16

Will there be Any updates to pvp in the near future?

4 Likes
#17

We put out the Dev blog post today but I didn’t have room on there to answer all the questions, so I answered more here.

  • The current theory is that Strength adds approximately .03% extra physical damage per point, and Intel adds approximately .03% magical damage per point. Can you confirm those numbers?

Yes that is correct

  • Will we see graphic improvements for PCVR? Advanced settings? Please don’t let Quest hold PCVR graphics back

With each each new content we try to improve the overall graphics of the game (not just for PCVR but for all users in Orbus). I personally feel like the DLC showed this off with more diverse environments, new creatures, etc. and we plan to continue that with the new future content.

Yes this is on our bug list

  • Combat logs… Any plans for improving them?

Yes I want to include the current class a player is playing in the combat logs, but this is a lower priortiy and something that won’t come until 2021

  • Any plans to add more stuff to the API?

Yes, with the patch on 11/12/20, we added some additional API endpoints for the Auction house and the Market stalls for community created tools.

  • Are you aware only 2 of the 3 world bosses show up on the API? It seems like something that should be easy to fix and I’ve brought it up before but it never did get fixed

Yes we are aware and is on our bug list

  • What is your favourite thing about reborn? (not all my questions are bad)

Has to be the community and how willing they are to accept and help new players (if your asking about Orbus in general), if your asking specifically about the differences between original Orbus and Reborn then I think my favorite new thing is the new types of missions (dragon racings, critter capture, etc). While they have been out for over a year and are old news for the veteran players, its fun sitting inside of Sicilus dragon shop downstairs and watching new players flying their dragons for the first time.

  • After reading the blog post it says about the raid coming out and mentions the Lore quests from the reputation NPCs, will the rest of the Lore quests be out before the raid? or will they be coming with the raid release? (before if possible as we will want to focus on the raid)

I went back and tried finding the blog post but didn’t see it recently so this could be another older question, but the Lore quests will be out after the Raid (if you are asking about the lore quests from the mission vendors), there will be a new short questline coming out with the raid though to explore some of the lore surrounding Markos and the Citadel.

  • I know you’ve said the Reputation levels won’t increase with the next lot of lore quests, right now the weekly missions are important to grind the reputation levels, but once you’ve done that, there isn’t a whole lot of motivation to do them, by now, a year after reborn released there are a lot of players with maxed rep, could we see an increase in rewards from weeklies for those with maxed reputation such as higher exp than daily missions to make up for the reputation we would have gotten if the levels were to carry on?

The first of the year we will be making some changes to the Mission vendors and their Reputation levels. While we will see an increase in the reputation levels for the mission vendors, we will also be limiting the amount of “saved” missions you can keep stockpiled. We have discussed this before publicly, and we will give a lot of lead time for players before making any changes (which won’t be coming until next year).

  • How goes the effort to fix Upbeat and the passives on Instruments of Defense and Protection?

This will be coming when we do a balance pass on the Tank and Healers

  • How much of a shielding effect will Defense and Projectiles be? (10% of dot damage, 50% projectiles [Bard will become super meta on Powered Strikes!] etc) I’m working on a written Bard class guide and things are on hold for the time being on that.

We will be able to give out more information on where the balancing of the healer, support, and tank classes after the balance pass

  • Is there any plan to change Paladin in PvP regarding them being able to hammer port quick and far enough to avoid continuing a fight they initiate?

Yes the Palidan hammer slingshot was not intended the way it has worked out being used, and we will be taking a look at it when we do the healer/tank pass

  • What can we do as players to help test things?

Just keep providing feedback of what isn’t working, whats working but no fun, etc. I honestly have no complaints when it comes to the community and the amount of feedback or bug reports we receive. We might not be able to get to them all right away but it is good to see them come in so we can prioritize them and work through them.

  • Do you ever plan to do something with the dragon race so players would use it more?

We are planning on adding in more races, but I think you mean things like free flying or something of that manner which we don’t currently have any plans on adding.

  • Do you plan to bring back the wilds?

We don’t currently have any plans on bringing back the wilds where it was forced PvP

  • Will existing classes receive extensive new content such as those found in suggestion threads? Not specifically, but along the lines of: shamans being able to hold totems and move. More warrior weapons/combos (like DPS warriors). Fixed/updated talent systems? Reworked runemage spells(fireball 3, frost 3, arcane ray, arcane blast)?

We will continue to try and improve the existing classes as well as look forward to future classes, and have already made some tweaks to a few of the existing class talents when we did the DPS balance pass, but I don’t want to promise making any fundamental changes to the classes.

  • How do you guys take into account suggestion threads and getting a feel for what the community wants as part of your development cycle? How do you decide what your development cycle is?

We talk about the threads that are aligned with what we currently are working on during our team meetings, as well as the general wants/likes/dislikes of the community also during the meetings. As far as development cycle goes we generally have some longer term plans that we are working towards and include some of the QOL improvements or bug fixes that the community reports while working towards those goals.

  • How aware are you of the looting system and the off-putting inventory nightmare players face?

I’m going to assume this is asking about the lack of storage space with the amount of items the players acquire, like the amount of capes, pets, mounts, etc that can not be broken down and transmoged like armor, along with the lack of storage space some players have that have stockpiled a lot of ingredients. We have added additional storage tabs to the main player chest, and implemented other things like the breaking down of tinkerer blueprints to try and free up some space in players inventory but are still aware of it.

  • In terms of things the community complains about, what does your priority list look like?

Id say our top 5 priorities currently are: Citadel Raid out in Dec along with the Winter Festival, Fix Invisible players bug, Fix the bug with muting players with the new VOIP system, Upgrade the Quest 2 graphics to make more use of the processing power, and healer/tank balance pass along with fixing broken mechanics of those classes.

  • Will we see an increase to the stack limit?

I can’t answer that yes or no as we haven’t looked into it yet, so I will side with no currently.

  • Can you add a note in the journal saying that the Justice Crescendo gives a Sickness stack in PvP?

Yes we can, I will pass this on so we can get that in game.

  • Will useless talents and abilities be addressed? Like an AoE fireball 3? Arcane Ray? Will you work with the community to discover agreeable fixes?

Are these still considered “useless” after the DPS balance pass we made? For the second half of the question, yes, we will always work with the community when working on all things Orbus.

  • Are you open at all to redesigning some of the existing classes? I mean medium to large changes, not just small tweaks.

I feel like I sorta addressed this in a different question above, but no I’m not willing to promise any fundamental changes to the existing classes.

  • can you make a change to Market Stalls to allow pets and dragons to be seen?

We can look into this, I’m not sure currently why they don’t appear since it has been a while since we have made changes to the market stalls. I know there was a bug before that was causing nothing to appear on the market stalls other then potions and that was fixed when we worked on the furniture house placement so you should see other ingredients and such appear.

  • Would you consider shared storage between mains and alts or family members? like an extra chest which can only be accessed by those on that account

We don’t currently have any plans on adding something like this, currently the only shared chest in game is the fellowship chest.

  • Have you thought about adding “set bonuses” to raid gear?

We have discussed this but have no current plans on them coming on the upcoming Citadel Raid

  • What happened to the 1v1 PvP Arena? Is that still coming?

I know Riley spoke about this some time ago, but we are not currently working on it to bring it into game, but are planning on working on some PvP related content in 2021.

  • Will there be a new raid pet and raid mount for us to farm in the new raid at the end of the year?

Yes

  • When will knuckle support be added?

You can currently use the knuckles to play Orbus, but we are aware of the issues with the bindings and plan to take a look at it when we have time.

  • Will you be willing to release info on monster drop tables and item drop rates? This info is really lacking and I think the community as a whole would probably like to see this sort of stuff somewhere

This is something that we can look into sharing, though it would probably be in a limited context. I will speak with the team at our next meeting and see how we want to address this and where that information would best be exposed.

7 Likes
Dev Blog: Questions and Answers #5
#18

Thanks for the ridiculous amount of info/answers you gave! Seriously, that was like, a ton of information and it’s awesome.

Regarding my question of player created content:
How manageable would it be to have the ability for players to import content, if not create in game. As in, we players creating things in Unity, uploading onto the Steam Workshop/somewhere else, and players being able to run that content? I understand creating a dungeon creation system would be a huge project, but if we took care of the building aspect by using other tools would it be possible for us to find a way to play that as well?

2 Likes
#19

There will be a new short questline coming out with the raid though to explore some of the lore surrounding Markos and the Citadel.

Will the new raid be locked behind a Quest line?

#20

Will this effect the ones we currently have stockpiled if we choose not to turn them in? Like, they won’t just disappear will they??

2 Likes
#21

I think you assumed wrong (but of course im assuming too).
I think the question was asking about the breaking down items individually hassle. a good example is when grinding, you get a lot of armour/weapons in your inventory, it takes up lots of slots + is mind numbing to break down each and every one over and over and over.

-possible fix a mass break down button

On another note: glad you answered a bunch of questions, I remember last time feeling disappointed that not a lot of questions got answered but this time you got through a ton. Nice :slight_smile:
Thank you

4 Likes