Kander's Candor Questions thread! [Always Open]

Going forward, what is going to be done to return Crafting to its former glory?
Thank you.

Will we ever see a complete AA rewamp? Currently very few classes have AAs that really improve the classes, most classes are only impacted by SF endlines and the prestige tree.

Does the developer team have any ideas to make non raid content able to improve your characters and relevant for more than a month? (In wow you have mythic+ and essences to grind for as an example). We used to have diety points which I personally liked as it gave you a reason to play daily.

Will challenge mode gear be looked at? Currently it has 35 more base potency and thats pretty much it.

Is there any more PvP news able to be shared with us?

Will keep it short-ish but don't mistake it for rude please.

Can we please have the state of monetization and game balance (not class balance) addressed?

More specifically, how does the team balance features like bonus infusing, spells that can only be upgraded through researching, BiS familiars needing to be purchased (3 months and 1 week into the xpac and the best free familiar [celestial familiar from BOL missions] is still only available by purchasing premium xpac, and of course the cobalt mount and singing steel merc.

I understand we now get 2 free singing steel crates per week, which is nice, but that is not enough to even start closing the gap. We aren't asking for handouts, but we currently have no way in game to work towards any of these high end items.

With BoL, crafting has become largely irrelevant. Only spell upgrades and consumables have any value and the recipes for these items are locked behind steep RNG walls.
My questions are:

1. Is it the intent to slowly eliminate crafting from the game?
2. If not, is there any intent to itemize recipe books to add value to all crafting classes?
3. Is there any intent to give crafters access to recipe books outside the Overseer and rare random drop approach? As a reward for effort? Anything other than chance?

Will we ever see a replica of the Kander on the docks of the Overlord's Outpost or Queen's Colony, complete with movement and verbiage?

Are there any discussions occurring on the team or will there be discussions about our ideas continually submitted in the Homeshow Forum for more depots that will hold building blocks, tiles, appearance items, armor, weapons, tinkered items, heirloom, no-trade, et al, both player crafted and marketplace purchased, both for personal homes and guild hall amenities? The crafters and decorators of Norrath would love to help clean up Norrath by placing all of our treasured decorating items into depots instead of in banks, vaults, storage alts, etc, and deleting them is not an option.

Will we ever see an extension of the ignore function so that it can ignore the entire account? What is the point of ignoring a single player that is harassing or trolling you if they can simply log in to a different character and continue on with their bad behavior? Making the ignore function ignore the entire account of the offending player would make much more sense.

Is there any intent to make Mastercrafted Armor and Weapons better like they were prior to BoL?

Will carpenters be seeing any real love any time in the near future?

Will we be seeing any crafting events like the Anchorage any time soon?

Thank you.

will the default UI be updated wrt new meta (no spillover from haste -> flurry, casting speed -> double cast etc)?
will the default UI's trade / market coin limits be fixed (can't put in more than 9.9~m plat so selling pricey stuff is very annoying, btw there's a but in the commission window in default ui: try to put in a but number of plat and see it default to a lower number, so have to trade coin outside commission window which requires trust and not all like that)

you asked about tips for stuff for loyalty merchant last year, any news on that?

can we get some technical details on what was done in the database migration? new iron? move to in-memory databases or all ssd storage? some of us are technical nerds (even work with stuff like this) and its very interesting to get some inkling on the technical platform

I would still like to hear more specifics about things like class balance such as:
1) What does that mean to Kander
2) How balance will be observed/measured/monitored
3) What role player-driven feedback will play in the process
4) How does the marketplace factor into balance?

Is there any interest among the team in creating a more true-to-classic experience for future TLE servers- i.e. classic class progression, crafting, etc.

If so, would it ever realistically be viable? Is there anything that we, the players, can do to help make it a reality? Even if it's just paying a higher sub?

1) Are you bringing back the old battlegrounds?
2) Do you like tatertots?

Hmmm.... Questions....

For Crafting......
Is there a plan in place for extremely rare/basically non-existent recipes/components to be added to the status or fabrication merchant? (Examples: Empyral Infuser Recipes, Sambata/Shadow/Empyral mount patterns, I only ask bc it's 4 months in and maybe 5-10 people per server actually have had the favor of the RNG gods and are charging ridiculous amounts for these)

Is there any type of future for the Seru fabrication hall? Such a nice little crafting area, but it servers absolutely no purpose... no recipes, no mats, no quests, no nothing.

Will DB upgrade the quality of Mastercrafted and Mastercrafted Fabled items at any point during this xpac, or should all those crafting classes just write this xpac off as a loss and just wait for the next one? (I don't mean for this to sound snotty or be mean, but it's just the reality of crafting at the moment)

For Adventuring....

Is there a plan to bring back in the buffs from the class orange adornments last xpac or class cloaks?

Can we lose all the different currencies/stones in the future? Really only need 1 currency per xpac, just adjust the value of what items cost. And the stones are kind of silly.. we get armor in instances, but can't get the gear until we run the instance 10 more times for stones... kinda silly to have a 10:1 crate to stone ratio... please just bring back the 'unpack' option


Other....

Are there plans for any server mergers?

When will the next TLE server launch? just came back to game, but I don't wanna jump in Kaladim at the moment, would prefer to brand new one..

Seems like all the gear from this xpac looks exactly the same and just recycles old art... any plans on releasing new appearance armor (whether crafted/marketplace, w/e)

What else are you planning on having us "level"... we have mounts, mercs, familiars, weapons, rumor of overseers... anything else in the plans?

Is there any plans on reigning in the out of control economy? If not, can more stuff be made tradeable/sellable... such as recipes... obv this doesn't refer to free-trade servers, but I feel like a LOT more should be tradeable than what it currently is (and would save on the SLR spam, etc..)

Anyway... there you go... some general questions from diff areas of the game

I think the only concerns I have with todays podcast are all overseer related. Mostly to do with the ethereals. Obviously the system is drastically different this year but the overseer ethereal brings up two notable concerns in my mind.

1. Overseer missions are account wide, does this mean if I wish to keep an alt up it will need to be on another account? (Maybe if its a similar system to last year it could just count towards the heroic mission count so we don't phase out alts but it makes it easier to perform on a toon?)

2. I am curious if this will be the primary source of ethereal coins or if group content will continue to remain the primary source. I realize this is all very far out but this is the time of year we get to see a bunch of groups in these (normally expert by then) zones.

Either way mostly good news, those two thoughts I had in my head as concerning .

• Will gear ever see new procs and unique abilities/buffs like they did in the past?
• With the AA tree rework will we see more new AA nodes added as future content?
• When will live servers see the ghettos re-added to the game that mentioned to happen?
• Will goblin games and maj dul pet arena ever be readded to the game? and why were they removed to begin with?
• What is the status of the loyalty vendor update?
• Will we ever see new heritage quests added to the game again?
• Will old heritage quest items see another update for lv120 versions that is via tle or live in someway?

What are the criteria the EQ2 team will use to make decisions on class balance ?
Can Cobalt Crates be upgraded to the current expansion ?
Will a better progression of gear be set up for future expacs, such that Tradeskill stuff is worth doing ?

Yes, permanent PVP-TL server info, please!

Could we get some clarification about the caps on heals? Even outside of zones with Chaotic Leech, group wards are landing for about the same amount as other wards with only 1/2 the value listed in the tooltips.

Are encounters taking into account that the cap on wards and heals hasn't changed much in 3 expacs while the incoming damage has increased?

Are there any plans to give the players a clearer idea how Chaotic Leech actually works? We know exact numbers about the dps debuffs but the healing debuffs are a complete mystery to the players.

Also could we get bleedthrough information put BACK into the logs? It was there for KA, but it got removed for some reason

Here goes - and i might add more later!

1) with the fact that BoL beta - and as such launch - was "a plane coming in with 1 wing on fire" i totally can relate to the extra work of making things "alt friendly" might have hit the bottom of the pile, however, is there any thoughts to making it more Alt-Friendly? Ill add a few things that could be QoL and alt friendly :
Rune unlocks per account - with the 2 crafts per this would be SO nice - PoP did this absolutely right might i add
Meta reward account wide
Raid Shoulders, the only slot that isnt account unlocked.
Shared Mount levels for the same mount? (Thinking out the box here!)
Shared familiar levels for the same familiars? (see above)
Im sure we can find more things where alts are left in the dust.
Can we consider making spell upgrades from premium expansions become 1 per character - NO TRADE - instead of 1 per account? again its the alt logic playing into it

2) What is the intend with microtransactrions ? it seems to be intensifying with regards to it becoming more imporant in order to be able to perform at your class that you invest quiet a chunk of cash into microtransaction lottery. Is it the way going forward?

3) With overseers now in the game, and them having seasons etc. it seems like we got yet another micro game within the game, which again benefits those who can login consistently vs the more casual player - daily rewards vs weekly rewards is a grand example of this. More bi/tri/5 hourly quests, PQs etc.We are currently at a point where i feel its more hard work to keep up with all these - which in some respects is the only way to acquire certain items - than it is to actually play the game. Is this the drive going forward? more focus on these "mini rng games" than on the game itself? and if it isnt when will we see effort vs reward trickle down into the game play again ? - ie less focus on the mingames/hourly tasks and more on ingame achievements. (I know, old school. but i am old)

Thats it for now..

Overseer Change Suggestion: How does this sound?
When the overseer system was first advertised, I thought we might get like a mini "Risk" board game ingame.
I would suggest just as familiars and mercs affect it (our army),
let our mounts and houses affect it also (be our calvary and castles)

Tappit