Kander's Candor Questions thread! [Always Open]

If this is true, then why have you locked the recipes for them away behind the Overseer RNG? This was a reasonable assumption in the past, when recipe books were mob drops at a rare-but-reasonable drop rate. With the overwhelming amount of stuff the Overseer can hand you, there's really no realistic way to make that assumption anymore.

This game and WoW have borrowed heavily from one another over the years. What you just described is WoW's "talent" system, after their Cataclysm-era talent tree revamp, especially the part I've bolded and made red. Please, for the love of sanity and retaining your player base, please tell me that you don't intended to completely gut the AA system and replace it with the "illusion-of-choice, select one of three things every x levels" replacement they implemented. If we wanted to play WoW, we'd be playing WoW. Please tell me that you're going to keep the AA choices extremely plentiful. The part I've bolded blue seems to stress that the nebulous up-in-the-air-still description given IS going to be WoW's lousy replacement for their already-inferior AA system, and you're being vague and mysterious until it happens. I'm actually seriously panicking now. Please tell me that's not happening. Please. Earning a LOT of AAs as an additional character progression method, earned the same way one earns XP, is the entire beauty of the system, *including* the grinding for AAs part, because it gives people a reason to go run a lot of content. Yes, they need some love, but it's only because so many other things were added to the game that so thoroughly overshadowed their usefulness. Please, please tell me you're not even considering making this into WoW's talent "choices."

I...actually have something else I want to talk/ask about, but I haven't even gotten past the part of Episode 4 that I referenced first in this post. I'm too busy freaking out that you're about to murder the AA system.

Will you EVER please allow us to remove Red/Blue adorns from gear without them turning into no-trade so that we can utilize them on our alts?!?!?!?! /Please

Finished Kanders Candor ep.3 the other day and wanted to reply to it about casual players feeling kind of left out. A small issue I had during Chaos Descending as a casual player who groups when I can. I purchased 2 of the armor crates from heroics then realized I had no way of getting the gems from heroics. My fault for not paying attention. It would be nice to see the gems occasionally drop in solos or somewhere and also if they were heirloom. Some people like the stats others the appearance. As casuals we are left out on that part. Hope this made sense if not I will respond to any replies.

thanks,
Shur from skyfire

That whole new AA idea is bad. I, for one, don't want to have to 'change templets' with various zones or fights. AA's give spells and when you change the templet, you change your spells which is also on the spell bars. I am not going to do that and I cannot see everyone doing that. Your getting deep into the weeds with everything now having to be leveled also. Enough. If you want to change the AA's, then I suggest you look at EQ1's system. By far the best out there. Allows players to really choose how they want their class built. Not this pick a tree then your limited to what you can do. Open up AA's.

WOW Can people actually WAIT and SEE what they are gonna do to our AA's b4 you start in on them, no point going on and on about bad ideas etc until you have actually seen what they are doing! Yes it may turn out bad but for all we know it could turn out real good or maybe in the end what they do will just be like it is now, be patient and give them a chance!


People have been asking for the AA's to be changed for yrs now so they are just doing what you/us/we all wanted!

When's the PvP beta server launching?

My two most important questions still stand after listening to episode 4.

1. Will the class revamp you're working on extend to fixing the tooltips? Tooltips which currently give wrong explanations of stats and advice. I mean the tooltips when you hover over something like Avoidance on your character sheet.You shouldn't expect people to return to EQ2 or to try it for the first time while those are misleading.

2. Will you stop allowing people to transfer from Free Trade servers? This is a cheat as bad as Dungeon Maker and demotivates casual play. If you must allow it, then make the wait time 5 months, and put limits on how much can be transfered with the character.

Thank you for focusing on mages. As a person who takes pride in playing a Warlock well, I anticipate those changes. Even without using the free trade server trick, and without raiding, I've managed to be in the top 10 parse in every posted parse after a PQ since Kunark Ascending.

Like you said, you don't "need" to cheat, or pay to win, but you also said you don't consider those things when you balance the classes. So basically all your effort will be for naught if you try for class balance and then you sell things that unbalance it anyway. Every time someone uses one of these unbalancing chacthka's I have the experience of "Why did I bother to grind my way here? Why did I learn my class? Why not just give in to the game selling out and becoming mindless and easy, as long as you're willing to pay cash?" I could probably press random buttons and win if I paid you more money to be better. I'd rather pay you for crafting mats, housing items made by players, cool new mounts, etc.

If being a member were just $3 more expensive for everyone, would that make up the diff and would you stop the transfers from free trade server? Because I can afford to do it, but it enrages my sense of fair play to do that. I would rather never play again. Any expert gear I had in the past several years, dropped to my group and I won the RNG for it. How many can say that? Everyone should have to say that. The free trade server hides deficiencies in the looting system.

New question: will you make it faster to go from playing quests to playing in groups? Right now, casual players will take at least a month to be "ready" after a new expac. That's if they didn't take a break. If they did, it will take at least several months because of the summer ethereals event which again unbalances the playing field. When I first played eq2, players could join groups even if not perfectly geared. Now you're killing your group's DPS if you do that. We can't even carry more than one poorly geared player in a group. And we can't carry the tank at all.

How are we supposed to have tanks willing to play if they need gear, but can't be carried to get it?

Will you start testing groups made up of three well geared and three iffy characters in beta, in instances? Will you start testing groups with poorly geared tanks (not very poorly, but quest gear and a few extras)? Because until we can all play together, all this balance is meaningless to me.

You have to ask yourself if shame has any entertainment value. Because shame is the feeling a player has when they have all the gear they can access and yet are still told in a group that they're not good enough.

I was also freaking out a bit. At first it was "We're going to take stuff out that doesn't help anyway" (I'm thinking: two digit buffs to crit chance.) Then now it's like "You'll have to choose between utility and dps." And I'm like .... no, God, please no. Before I played Warlock exclusively I played Swashy. This should make every swashy player absolutely panic.

Kander, please betray to swashy temporarily, and join a lot of groups for several months before you make this sort of choice something you force on that class. I don't know other classes as well as I know that one, but I imagine a lot of them have some utilities that people will be very upset if they are locked behind a trait setup.

Also, it's not exactly trivial to switch AA's. My group will have to stand there for 30 sec to a minute while I recast pets, and buffs, etc.. And it's not trivial to miss recasting something.

I'd be tolerant of a system like the LOTRO war steed traits which can be switched on the fly, and most of the skills can be used in any trait, except the capstones. When they divided up the (character) traits in LOTRO my captain and I parted ways. It was impossible for an old time captain player to get used to a system where half their ecosystem of skills was locked away. I haven't played WoW enough to know how their revamp went. But LOTRO I can tell you was a source of ambivalence to me. I could now play other classes better, but some of the jack of all trades classes have never recovered from it, in my mind.

What you're suggesting is an end to jack of all trades classes, which require the most skill to play well. Or it sounds like it. I don't know, maybe you've thought of this already, but if so, you didn't mention it, Kander.

OK, simple clarification question:

When Kander said that Wizard/Warlock were supposed to be First Tier DPS, that's a bit confusing. Is that top tier?

Because I've been casually playing a Channeler and that's supposed to be Tier 2, using the language of tiers of instances.

So you can see how "first tier" might sound like it's not top tier.Sorry to be picky, but I realized later it wasn't clear.

We are guildmates on Kaladim *giggles snarkily*

Channeler's aren't dps, they're healers...

I wasn't talking about DPS but the language used to describe "tiers" is confusing.

If you look at a raid parse, there are pretty distinct plateaus for various classes' DPS. The real high DPS (T1), then lower but not insignificant DPS (T2), then usually support classes then healers.

Over the years (if you look back through the forums) various classes have kvetched bitterly about not being T1 DPS. EVERYONE thinks they should be T1 DPS. When I started playing, T1 was predators and sorcerors. That's shifted around over the years.

I like the scripting of the BoL Challenge heroics. They have nice scripts, and are difficult at times. But you gave almost zero reason to run them with the itemization currently in them. Is there any plan to give a bonus for taking 2-3x as long to run a challenge zone, as a normal heroic zone. As it stands right now, there isnt, and I am sure if you can see how often they are completed you can understand how un-utilized these zones are based on itemization. Some Idea's - Always get a No-Trade Shiny, Increased Master Drop Rate, Chance of Singing Steel Chest on Boss. Just a few ways that would make people run them much more frequently.

Just out of curiosity why are wands not a primary weapon for mages?

Hear, hear!
My mages refuse to use crossbows.

Because Gandalf wouldn't have looked nearly as convincing crossing his wand in front of him and saying, "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!!"

Seriously, wands are ranged weapons, not used in a primary slot. Swords, daggers or staffs work well. A wand wouldn't work nearly as well in close combat with a larger beast. I can see it now: a giant rock climber approaches and the mage yanks out his/her wand in a threatening fashion and with one hand on hip, says, in a commanding lisp, "Come any closer and I will slay you, foul beast." Meanwhile the rock climber takes one look at the 12 inch want and falls over dead laughing.

That said, I still haven't figured out why is the starter chest in BoL only equipped with crossbow for crying out loud. It should have a wand for mages. I constantly weep that, almost five months later, this discrepancy is still going on. And not only that, having a crossbow is like having a machine gun....and you only get one lot of 200 bolts?

So what happened to the rest of the classes?

What is it like 4-5 years since Kander talked about class balance coming. Are we going to see any more updates soon or what you said in the recent podcast is to be taken in the context of next expansion?

Please be clear.

I'd much rather use a wand, but you can only put the 2H Crit Bonus adorn on a bow or crossbow for the ranged weapons, which means that you are giving up that extra bit of stats if you go to a wand.

My understanding from reading the notes from the podcasts is that Mages got the first pass with this latest GU. Kander was also clear other classes will be next in line, but I'm inferring from the podcast that the foundational work required to redo AAs hasn't been spelled out yet. My impression was there was a lot of stream of consciousness talking, but the fundamental mechanics involved in a restructuring of AAs isn't on the first floor yet. I see class balancing and AAs tied together at the hip, so AAs will definitely play a role in this. I think what we saw this morning was doing some clean up work on the mages. More to come in the future, I'm sure.