Here is my labor of love for our hearing-impaired community. Sourced from Spotify. Dreamweaver: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 8 of Kander's Candor. I'm your friendly neighborhood Community Manager Dreamweaver, and I'm here once again this week with Kyle "Kander" Vallee, (sounds drawn out Vallll-aaaaa) *Kander laughs* which is how I'm saying his name now. Kander: Yeah. Dreamweaver: Cause that's where we found ourselves, in this dark alternate timeline where we are still at home. I'm pretty sure this is the darkest timeline. I don't know if you've watched Community, but I, I, I think this is the darkest timeline. I don't know if anyone has any proof that there is a non-dark version of this timeline, but if you do, please send it directly to Kander at his email address if he'd like to post it on the forums. Kander: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll give ya-, I'll give you an easy way to remember how to prounouce my last name. It's "Vol" like volume, and "Lee" like Lee Jeans. "Vol-lee". Dreamweaver: Oh no, no, no, I know. I pronounced it correctly this time. Kander: I do not-... Dreamweaver: Specifically after we discussed it! Kander: I do not-, I do not park cars for a living! Dreamweaver: I just wanna be clear. After we discussed it, I know how to say it correctly now. Kander: OK. Dreamweaver: I just, you know, it's kinda of, I feel like it'd be a let down if I prounounced it correctly at this point. Kander: So "Valet"? Dreamweaver: With all due respect to your name, I'm probably gonna say it incredibly weirder the further we go on. Kander: That's totally fine. Yeah. Dreamweaver: Ok. Cool. Good. *Kander laughs* I wanted to be clear where we're at. Let's, uh, let's dive right into questions this week. Kander: Alright. Dreamweaver: At this point, Episode 7 has not yet aired cause we're waiting on some approvals I think, but it is our longest episode of everything we've done so far. So one, apologies, and uh, two, hopefully you enjoyed listening to all almost-forty minutes of it. Hopefully this one will be a little bit shorter. That's kind of the goal. We'll find out. Kander: It's action packed! Dreamweaver: Yeah, exactly! Alright, so the first question comes from Grrrrrl, or (high pitched) Girrrrrrrl! I don't know, however you want to pronounce it. TLE specific, 'Is there going to be an upgraded mount like in DOF from instance bosses, and EOF? It is the bestest, especially going into ROK, it'd be a shame not to have a new upgraded version since DOF drops will no longer be accessible because of level increases/ mobs being grayed out. Pretty please and tosses up some metal horns for emphasis'. Kander: Right. That's a good way to get me enthusiastic about it. So, we did not make one for EOF since there's not really a plethora of stat-ed mounts in the game. I thought it would be good for people to have to go back and play in those older zones to keep getting a stat-ed mount. But we will, we will be putting one in for ROK. That's the plan, so that way, cause obviously, you won't be able to go back and do those instances when they're gray, and being gray, they won't drop loot, so the plan is to put a new stat-ed mount in for TLE in Runes-, er, Ruins...ROK... *both laugh* Dreamweaver: You're like, 'I'm not even gonna try, it's not important'. Kander: It's like, even when I was working on Runes of Kunark, I was calling it Ruins. Dreamweaver: Rough. Kander: It's like, it's one of those... Dreamweaver: It's one of those like your brain can't get away from it. Kander: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dreamweaver: Alright that one was a fairly easy answer. The next question comes from Liav. 'How difficult would it be to get replicas of mage Mythical weapons that are flagged as appearance-only for the ranged slot? I know this is a super-fluff question, but since the introduction of wands to the game, it has always saddened me that mage Mythical weapons are only ever seen sheathed. Especially with RoK coming up soon on Kaladim, I had been wishing I could display my Wizard Mythical weapon as a wand.' Kander: And, ROK, *Rise* of Kunark. (Yay Kander! At least Dreamweaver isn't alone in misprounouncing names! ) Dreamweaver: There you go! I was like, I was like, what is Runes of Kunark? Kander: I don't even know! Like, it's been...it's been... *Dreamweaver laughs* Dreamweaver: It's been a long Monday. It's just been one long Monday. Kander: People are like 'He doesn't even know the name of the expansion...what is wrong with him?' Dreamweaver: I thought you just knew something I didn't know, like it was originally called... Kander: No, no, no, no, no. Ah, no. I don't think it ever was. Dreamweaver: I'm sitting here being like, like I know that's not what it's called, but uh, okay, cool. Kander: It's not okay. It's ROK. Dreamweaver: Yeah. Kander: So the question is about, they would like appearance versions of their epics? Dreamweaver: Well, so, it sounds like the mage Mythical weapons, they're only ever seen sheathed. Like, they never see them when they're casting or things like that, so it sounds like they just want an appearance-slot version so they can see their mage Mythical weapons actually being utilized? Kander: Hmmm...wonder if there's any other classes that have that dilemma? Dreamweaver: Possibly. Kander: Yeah, I mean, I'll be honest, appearance items for weapons are not, they're not-, I mean, they're not difficult to make; they're not time-consuming. I mean, I guess, maybe everyone would like to be able to, like, once they, maybe once they finish their epic, they could buy appearance versions of their weapons so that they can use them. I mean, I don't know. I don't think it's a bad idea. Dreamweaver: I mean, I, I could see that. Some of my favorite things in some of the games I play, like Diablo III is a good example of this, I'm trying to think of some others. Death Scene II just had it added, but where it lets tran-, it basically lets you transmorgify. So like, say you had a weapon that's better with stats and everything else, but you like the look of another weapon better, like, that's the whole thing behind Diablo III's seasons, basically. Kander: Right. Dreamweaver: Like you're, you're unlocking new appearance gear on a regular basis, and personally, that's one of my favorite parts of it. I like very specific builds and weapons and things that I'm using, and I always like changing up the appearance though, of some things. Sometimes the Best-in-Slot item is not what I think looks the best. I know I'd be in favor of it personally, but obviously, you know, this is me talking from a personal standpoint. I, I think it's cool to be able to change the look of your weapons and armor, if it's possible to do in games. Kander: Right. Dreamweaver: Knowing the amount of work that it takes... Kander: Right. Dreamweaver: For those things to happen. I person... Kander: Yeah, they're, as I said, they're not difficult to make. They're pretty, relatively, pretty quick too. I'll put it on the list, maybe and-, people that...the epic 2.0's, they might want them, too, so. Dreamweaver: Yeah. Kander: I think that we could probably...if we set them up so that they're predicated. I mean there's-, that would be a lot of items on one merchant, but we could set them up so that they're predicated that if you've finished those quests, then you could purchase appearance versions of those. I mean, I guess, the appearance versions are like, to add to the wardrobe, right? And then... Dreamweaver: Yeah. Kander: Cause you, cause you don't want to blow up your original weapons to do that... Dreamweaver: Exactly. Kander: So...so. Yeah, I mean. I'll definitely add it to the list. Dreamweaver: Cool. The next question comes from Nucleaar, or Nu-clear, or Nu-cle-ar, or Nu-cle-ARRRRRR! Been wanting to ask this for a couple of years now. Heroic Opportunities - they were the thing that got me addicted to this game initially when it was in it's infancy. As we, as we all may know, heroic opportunities are a system of symbol combinations in which players synergize and chain to achieve a cool effect, buff, or damage strike. Those symbols are found on your profession spells. These combos can, to my knowledge, run up to four separate abilities in a chain. To me, it was a way for players to get a bit extra out of teamwork, or just matching the symbols on a pretty wheel. Unfortunately, the scaling of those effects, buffs, and damage strikes have, by and large, not stood the test of time. My question is, are there or could there be plans to scale this system to the numbers flowing now, or perhaps an expansion beyond Balanced Synergy? Kander: Yeah, so, that's actually a really good question, cause Heroic Opportunities was one of my favorite things, too. I thought they added a lot to group play. I thought...remember, you know, having a macro, so like, you could put the spell that you would cast every time it was up, you'd put a macro on there to start your Heroic Opportunities. Like playing a brigand, we always wanted you to get, you know, the scout buff, cause it was good. They never scaled; they weren't set up to scale properly, so they basically are, I mean, they're, they're pretty much worthless to cast now. That said, I would love to make them current. We have talked about, you know, doing like, a..a revamp. We've talked about, you know, changing them. I was one of those people that, as a designer, I used to try to put Heroic Opportunities in my own, make my own in some fights and stuff. I always thought they were really super cool, and I always wanted to have like, an epic, you know, Heroic Opportunity, like you're fighting a dragon, and you like, have this giant visual of like, a tumbler lock turning as each person does their part, and then you know, like an explosion or something. That, that said, um, I am not... Dreamweaver: Opposed? Kander: Opposed, in the know, of how much work that would be, nor am I opposed of doing something to try to make them current, and I will definitely put it on the list of things to talk about in the design meeting. So, but, it might be...not super hard to try to put some sort of scaling in them so that they are actually cool and relevant. But that said, no promises, but I definitely agree with what they're saying and I will definitely add it to the list. Dreamweaver: Cool. Alright. Next question, SgtPmpkn, Ser-, Ser-gent Pumkin, I'm gonna pronounce it phonetically, (muffles and sounds like underwater) Srrrgnnnt Pnnnnfknnnn... Kander: Is it like, missing all the vowels? Dreamweaver: Oh yeah! There's no vowels at all. *Kander laughs* I mean I know it's Sergeant Pumpkin, but Srrrgnnnt Pnnnnfknnnn sounds funnier. "I know it's been said many times, but as a player from launch I want to emphasize that the recipe book drop rate," oh recipe/book drop rate, "system is the worst it's ever been. Missing so many regular books as a crafter sucks. Never have I needed regular expert sage books at this point in any expac, and the RNG for runes is even worse. So question, what are the plans for this system? Will we see any change, or is this the way it will be for the expac?" Kander: So, I pretty much agree with that, but there's not-, there's a lot of unfriendliness about it. We are discussing it right now. In fact, it's probably going to be one of the big ta-, topics at the next design meeting, cause we're going to be talking about a bunch of different stuff that we wanna try to fix or make better, more friendly for the tradeskill stuff. To give people a little bit of background, we had big plans. In fact, I think I already talked about those... Dreamweaver: We kind of already, yeah, we kind of already talked about tradeskills and stuff. Kander: Yeah, yeah. We did...we had... Dreamweaver: I don't know if it...go ahead. Kander: We had big plans and they didn't work out, so this year, we're really trying to make sure that we can make some of the stuff better, and also, I think like, the availability of, of those types of recipe books and stuff like that, if they were something that were just on a merchant that you could just earn and you knew like, 'There it is and I'll be able to get it', that might be much better than just praying for an RNG drop. So, I mean, all that stuff is definitely on our minds, and we definitely wanna try to make some changes this year with the expansion. The bad news is, is it probably won't happen right away. The good news is we definitely want to get it better by the end of the year. Dreamweaver: OK. And our final question of the episode from players, since we're trying to keep these a little bit shorter, and not take up as much your time each day, Austerity asks, 'I would like to know if the ethereal tokens from last summer will be made heirloom. Thanks.' Kander: Ah. No. *Dreamweaver laughs* Dreamweaver: OOOO! Well, that was the shortest answer. Austerity, I'm really sorry. Kyle, would you like to explain why, maybe? Kander: I, so, I'm going to give an answer that I'm not 100% sure on, but I thought we made it so that they didn't need to be made heirloom, because you-, once you finished the ethereal stuff, it unlocked for your alts, and your alts could get it, too. I thought that was the reason that we didn't make them heirloom. If people are talking about like, they want to have them tradeable on Isle of Refuge, so they could port over there and buy some, yeah, probably not. Dreamweaver: I-, are heirloom items tradeable on Isle of Refuge? Kander: Yes, they are. Dreamweaver: I've never used-, I've never been on Isle of Refuge. It's one of the servers I have not... Kander: And I believe Rivervale also, right? Rivervale also has the trad-... Dreamweaver: Yeeeeeesssss??? Kander: The tradeable stuff? Right, so... It's an amazing amount of information that I have to keep in my head. *Kander laughs* But I thought, I thought Rivervale also had the, all 'the heirloom stuff is tradeable' code? Dreamweaver: That's, that sounds right. I just, I honestly don't remember. Honestly. Kander: Yeah. Dreamweaver: I mean, yeah, I guess that's why Austerity could be asking. I'm, I'm pretty sure we put everything being accessible to alts once they unlocked everything, too? I, I feel like we put it towards the end though, so maybe Austerity is coming back and hasn't experienced this year's ethereals yet, like, maybe they came back after last year's ethereals? Kander: Hmm hmmm... Dreamweaver: Which is why maybe they're asking? I'm not sure. Not a lot of extra context to the question. Kander: Well, so the thing about Summer Ethereals is that we originally started doing these to give people something to work on during the summer time, and not-, not the first couple of years, but in, about in the middle area, it became this thing where people decided A) you know, it's just easier for me to skip it, and go buy everything on Isle of Refuge, and that was definitely not what we were shooting for. We want you to participate. We want, you know, summer, Summer Ethereals means come play during the summer, and we want it to be perceived more as an event that if you miss it, then you miss it, so... That's also part of the reason why we kind of tried last year to not put anything in it that you literally just can't play without. Like the ethereal armor is good up 'til, I think, raids for Tier 2, and there's better stuff after that, so that was the intent. We're trying to not put stuff in that'd be like 'Oh, I didn't play in the Summer Ethereals and now I'm completely edged out of something.' It's a really crazy balance trying to do something. We wanna make it so that people are excited about it and they want to participate and they feel like there's something worth earning, and at the same time, players who missed it, cause there definitely will be players who missed it, aren't, I wanna say, asked out. Dreamweaver: Yeah. No, I mean, I get what you're saying. Okay. Well, that's a good note. So, we're at the end of the episode. We've done our questions this week, and I have my question for the episode, and I think this one is, kind of, hopefully, going to be a fun one for the players to listen to, but I was wondering if you could tell us about the very first thing you worked on, on the EQ2 team; like when you first came on to the EQ2 team, what was your first big project? Kander: Ah, so when I bec-, when I first started working on the EQ2 team, I was an apprentice designer, and I did a lot of the solo content that, so we, we launched the game, and then there was this big push to put more solo content in. So I did, like, some of the Antonica stuff, the Matsy Rollingpin - yes, I remember the NPC's name. And then I also ended up doing a lot of the Zek solo stuff. That was my first stuff. So I did Birchbark, I believe was the name of the NPC, the ent, that sent you out to avenge his fallen friend, and like, so I did a lot of that stuff. I did a lot of that along with Tony Garcia. He was my, my mentor. So I did a bunch of the very early solo stuff that we put in. Dreamweaver: Awesome. Kander: Yeah. Dreamweaver: Do you have, like, a favorite part of those, like when you were doing those solos, like that you remember anything like that? Kander: Yeah. There was an ent in Zek...ent is kind of one of those words, we don't-, I don't know that we call them ents in Everquest, but... Dreamweaver: There was a tree person. Kander: There was a tree person in Zek, and his name was Birch-, Birchbark, and that was, that was like my first real, um, *laughs* my, my first real questline in EQ2, and I put a lot of, a lot of work into those. So, yeah, that was...and I definitely remember it, because it was, it was definitely intimidating working on that stuff the first time, and...but I, I thought it, I thought it came out pretty good. I thought it came out pretty um...you know. I was really, I was, I was really proud of it. Let's just say that, so...yeah. Dreamweaver: That makes sense. Alright, awesome. Well, like I said, I think that's all the time we have for this week. I wanna try to keep these a little shorter than we're currently running. So, everybody, thank you for listening. Kyle, thank you for spending time answering questions again. As each and every other time before this, until I melt into nothing, I'm Dreamweaver, your fa-, your favorite Community Manager, probably. I meant friendly, *Kander laughs* but we'll just go with favorite. Let me just live this lie, guys. Please, let me live this lie. And we'll see you in game!
Enjoyed the podcast very much ... but one thing I really do disagree with. I would like not to have to do the sig on each toon to fly. I really do have way too many toons for that.
