Here is my labor of love for our hearing-impaired community. Sourced from Spotify. Dreamweaver: Hey everyone. Welcome to Episode 9 of Kander's Candor. As always, I am your friendly Community neighborhood Manager, probably not your favorite, as I said last time, Dreamweaver. I'm here with Kyle "Kander", and I'm not gonna say his last name, because I will screw it up. And, this week, so you can hear the sigh in his voice - he knows - this week, we actually have a kind of a different episode for you, and we have a special guest. We have our first special guest. So if I could put applause in here, I probably would, but let's be real, I'm not going to. *Laughs* See, I had it all right in my mind, and then I just, I psyched myself out, and I messed it up. Ja-ninja, or Ga-ninja, or Ninja, because the 'G' is silent, as some people have told me, which I don't believe you. I think it's Gin-ja (sounded like the Japanese gin for silver, hard 'G'), probably. Gninja: I was totally not going to answer unless you actually said my name wrong. Dreamweaver: Nope? This is a...did I ever say it right? Were any of those right? Gninja: You just did - the third... Dreamweaver: Gin-ja is right? Gninja: Noooo! Ninja. Dreamweaver: Oh! *Dreamweaver laughs* Gninja: The 'G' is silent, like gnome. Dreamweaver: Okay. In my, in my defense, I really thought...I really thought the way...Gin-ja is... Gninja: I've hear so many different ways of it being pronounced, it's, it's ridiculous. Dreamweaver: Alright. I mean, the 'G' is silent makes the most sense, but everything else, I really just, like...Ga-ninja... I like it. Sounds kind of funny. And he's gonna be here this week. We're gonna do kind of a deep dive into Blood of Luclin raiding and it's state currently, and it's state previously, and what we're looking at in the future, and we're also going to take some time and chat a little bit about our TLE and Kaladim and what's coming for... Kander: Rise of Kunark. Dreamweaver: Rise of Kunark. I almost said Ruins, and I knew it was wrong. But you screwed me up. *laughs* Kyle, you're killing me. You're killing me man. Ruins of Kunark is not correct. Gninja: Riiiiise! Dreamweaver: I-No! I was correcting myself. There was...I was...you know... Gninja: Riiiise! * Kander laughs* Dreamweaver: Thank you. Gninja: Sorry. Dreamweaver: Very helpful. Super helpful. We're just gonna get right to it. Gninja... Kander: We should probably get right to it... Dreamweaver: We should probably get right to it. We should probably, probably get started; get right to it. Let's, let's start kind of at the beginning. Talk to us about before the expac launches, kind of like that November-Beta timeframe, and kind of all the things that lead up to launching Blood of Luclin. Kander, I'm sure, will hop in from time to time to provide commentary, and I will sit here mostly quietly and we'll see how this goes. Kander: Boing. Boing. Boing. Boing. Boing. Boing. Boing. Boing. Boing. Gninja: Yeah, right. You're going to have commentary, too. Dreamweaver: I never have valuable or useful commentary ever. Gninja: *laughs* Well, I mean, if we talk about, you know, before launch, we were really being ambitious with the raids this expansion. You know, we were, we were really jazzed, and we thought it was gonna be great and the scripts were going to be super awesome and players would enjoy them, and it would be challenging, and they would have that option of normal versus challenge, and all that. And, you know, we went into it, you know, knowing that we were using a couple of systems that were kind of new, but we figured, you know, if it's solid on Beta, it should be fine. And it did. We did a lot of testing on Beta, and I had a ton of help from players. It was great. But when we went live, we kind of found an issue with some of the new mechanics that applied the buffs to mobs that were being affected by latency. So when we had performance issues, it would be seen there, and all of the sudden you'd have a boss that had a couple thousand hitpoints or a couple million hitpoints instead of trillions hitpoints that we're at now. So it, it became a problem really quick at launch, as most of you all probably knew. We ended up having to split the zones, cause they were originally designed as one zone, because that, that, that issue was, we had to work around it somehow to, to make the content available for everybody. It, it ended up being kind of a cluster. I mean, it was, I'm just being honest, you know it's, it's...we did the best we could to try to make that content available, but because it was after Beta had already closed, there was a, a big lack of, of being able to get 24 people behind a mob and test every little mechanic again after it's been moved around and changed zones and stuff like that. On top of that, we had the issue of, since they were using the same character file, which they still do, when you make a change on one, it sometimes affected the other and we've seen a lot of that too. Been trying to min-, minimalize as much of that that's happening but there's, there's been quite a few that have snuck through and trying to change things a little bit. It was, it was unforeseen and unfortunate, but trying to react to them as quickly as possible without creating more issues like we can. Dreamweaver: Ok. Kind of with, where we're at now, in that, is still occasionally happening. Do you think that's an issue with the complexity that we've layered over the course of the years? Or like... Gninja: Yeah. Dreamweaver: What, what do you think? Break...can you break down the symptoms and the, like, cause and effect of what we're looking at, at least to an extent? Gninja: Sure, sure. Well, I mean, as the years have progressed, we've gotten more and more complex with raids, you know, just trying to, you know, push it a little bit further, make it a little bit more challenging and give something unique to players that they hadn't seen before, and that complexity has grown every single year, and has kind of been rolled into the next year of raiding, and into the next year, and it's kind of gotten to the point where we've just gotten a little too complex for what our, our engine can handle, at least for the way that we're doing it. So we have to kind of step back a little bit and re-evaluate, you know, the things that could be affected by, by high lag or latency and stuff, not to say that we're not working on those, cause the code guys are really, really, you know, hitting that hard right now. They're, they're trying to figure all that stuff out, and making good progress. But, you know, I, I, we need to step back and, and look at things that could be affected more by latency and plan for those things rather than, than you know, testing it on Beta and assuming everything's okay and then we get into a laggy situation and all, all of the sudden things don't work. Dreamweaver: Ok. So, knowing all of that, where do you feel knowing how, kind of how the player base feels, or at least a section of the player base feels, about raids, where do you feel like where we're at now? Like, today, we're recording on June 12th, how do you feel, where do you think we're at? And Kyle, I think, if you want to weigh in on this too, how do you, how do you guys feel like where we're at with raids, and in it's current state for Blood of Luclin? Gninja: On, on our end, I think we're in a decent spot. I mean there's a couple of issues remaining. Not saying that raids are great. I'm just saying that I think we're in a pretty okay spot right now, just with the last couple of issues that are remaining there. They, they should be worked out in the next week or two, and that should be it. That should be, you know, what, what this expansion can be. Kander: Yeah. Gninja: But I don't know, I don't wanna say that. Kander: We're, we're trying to make an effort to go to you know, where we, where we hot-fixed last, but the problem is is we didn't anticipate, you know, what was going to happen with raids. I mean, fixing stuff every two weeks means people are waiting on progression. They're waiting on stuff to move ahead and that's a problem. So we have been trying to hot-fix a little more than, than just every two weeks, so... Especially if it's something where it's we've found the issue, we know what caused it and you know, this is a simple fix, that's-, then we definitely, you know, make an effort to get that stuff out, so... Gninja: We've, we've also added a bunch of controls to where we can, if a boss isn't acting right, I can kind of allow it to be bypassed in the zones. It doesn't work with every fight, especially fights that control a lot of progression within the zone, like, for example, Mindless Blood in Ssraeshza. He, you know, is a major kind of figurehead controlling who goes to the next boss, so I can't really just turn that fight off, and allow people to go past it and keep going. So there are a few that are in that case, but for the majority, except for zone bosses, most can now be turned on and off if they need to be and that's just something I've tried to do to keep people from being blocked. I don't want people blocked. I want people to be able to log in and play and progress and make, and, and make their kills and get their loot, you know. Kander: Mm hmmm.. Gninja: Myself included, cause I, I play quite a bit, and I, I, I would, I would love to not be hitting those roadblocks myself. Kander: Yeah, so you should stop roadblocking yourself. Gninja: I know right! *Kander and Gninja laugh* Dreamweaver: Building, building your own roadblocks, then. Perfect. Great way to handle things. Gninja: Yeah, I mean, no, actually, building in a way to get around those roadblocks is what I did. Dreamweaver: Oh there you go! Kander: To be clear, there also has been some code bugs that we didn't anticipate that caused some problems, too. I mean, it's, it's kind of, you know, beat above the head and shoulders, but we are making plans to try to do things differently in the future and not have this happen, so, if you want to talk about that stuff Carlos? Gninja: Yeah. We've been really kind of watching this stuff that's happening this expansion and really putting down on paper what we need to fix and what we need to change in order to keep things going better, going forward. One of those things is, you know, instead of planning to do a full zone, or full zones, full of normal and challenge modes, we take the complexity out of that and just make it all normal mode like we have done in the past. However, you know, challenge modes are cool, so maybe we do, you know, the normal suite of raid mobs and they're tested, and they're good, and there's no real complexity on what version you're getting, and then after launch, maybe we have the Raid Council decide on, you know, a handful of fights that, that we could make a challenge mode out of, and we could even, you know, make it a little update that adds a bunch of challenge modes for their favorite fights. Kander: Yeah, yeah. Gninja: Something like that, you know. Kander: Or like add challenges with the GU. Gninja: Less moving of the parts towards the beginning to keep the complexity down, so there's less chance for stuff to happen, and then making completely separate versions that don't affect that version when we do go back to actually make challenge modes. Dreamweaver: And those, so those versions are... Gninja: And focusing on the ones, on the ones that people enjoy more than just me picking random ones that, that should be challenge, you know? Dreamweaver: Got it. That makes sense. So kind of, and, and not the, not the, probably the best way to probably put this, but like, challenge mode by popular vote. Gninja: Right, right. Dreamweaver: Basically the fights that the most amount of people have the most fun on and enjoy it the most, and had the, had good times raiding on - those are the ones that we would look at turning into challenge modes and stuff like that, based off of player, player engagement and voting. Kander: Then we're also talking about having them, putting them on a Beta server, an open Beta server, and just letting everyone go test them, right, like, just an open Beta and try to have a good, long open Beta, like, you know, six weeks or something. Gninja: That, that brings up another good point. I mean, so in the past with Betas, we've typically just kind of said "Okay, here's the mob, go! I'll watch for errors," you know, and yes, I have a little checklist going through of the things I need to check for, but the players are going in blind, and I'm not necessarily sure that's a good thing. We used to do it because we didn't want to give people strats, and, and, and then have people be able to pick it apart from Day 1, but I'm not sure that's that important anymore. I think it's better they go out working and bug-free than trying to hide how it works, you know what I mean? Dreamweaver: Sure. Gninja: So being a little bit more descriptive on how things work for people, I mean it, it wouldn't, it would be public. So it's not like I would just be giving one guild a strat. It would be on the forums or something like that. Dreamweaver: It would be, it would be like, "Hi, if you...", basically a post that says "Hey, you're going to be raiding in Beta - here's all the things you should watch out for," and like, each specific boss or fight is detailed to an extent. Gninja: I think, I think it's good to, I think it's good the way we've done it in the past where, you know, we say, "Okay, this guild has signed up. This is what they have available. Okay, we're going to assign a couple of bosses." That was a good thing I think. It's just not giving them the information that they need to test it accurately or test it fully. That, that we haven't done. That's not to say those mechanics weren't tested. But they weren't given the same level of attention, and that's usually where the bugs fall in and stuff, that, that, that we assume, should be working and tested on ourselves and tested in-house, and it all works fine, and then it goes live and there's a bug in it. So it's, I think, giving them more information, or giving the players more information when they're actually testing the stuff will help with accuracy and making sure that we get all the bugs squashed. Dreamweaver: Ok. Well, that all sounds interesting. I think it's gonna be, I think it's going to be really interesting as we continue to move forward and like, execute these things. I think, I think there's going to be some trial and error on some of it. Gninja: Oh, of course. Dreamweaver: But I think, I think that's, I think that's a encouraging move that I think, hopefully, a lot of the players will...will enjoy. Gninja: Well, I mean, as it evolves, I mean, whatever ends up being, you know, the, the system that we use to test them, I mean, it's probably going to evolve like you said, but players will be a part of that. It won't be, you know, we're just randomly changing things behind the scenes and not telling people. You know, if we decide to test a different way or to, I don't know, if we decide to assign specific guilds where they can only test this one boss...I mean, I'd rather not do that, but that's the way that they feel is...better or fair? Dreamweaver: (at same time as Gninja) Better...fair... Gninja: Then I'm cool for talking about that. I mean, it's, we have a Raid Council. The council, for the most part, is pretty cool, you know. There's a lot of people in there. They have a lot of knowledge, so you know, it's, it's good to include them going forward when we start talking about Beta, to see what they think will help more with Beta rather than just saying 'okay, here's how it is'. Dreamweaver: That makes sense. Gninja: I mean, in an effort to be more transparent, we have to start allowing people to, to, to uh...you know, give their opinions on, on how to change things. I mean, they might have an idea that's way better than what we're doing as far as testing-wise. Dreamweaver: Yeah. Yeah. I can see that. Where, especially for me, I have a lot of dumb ideas, so... Gninja: Yeah? *laughs* Dreamweaver: It's always, it's always better when people have better ideas than me, because usually that means that's the idea that we're going with. *Gninja laughs* Look, people are not friends with me cause my ideas are good. That's all I'll say. *Dreamweaver & Gninja laugh* So, that all being said about Blood of Luclin, and what current raiding is like, and what we're looking for in the future, let's take a moment, and kind of dive into TLE on Kaladim and what's upcoming for Kunark. Gninja: Yeah. Kunark... Dreamweaver: For R O K. Gninja: On the raid side, things are, things are looking pretty good from what I can tell. I mean, we've had a bunch of players on Beta, you know, running through things, and, you know, we're kind of waiting for a little bit of item-, itemization to drop so we can be a little bit more thorough in adjusting the difficulty along the way. But, you know, a base pass has been done, and things are a little bit more challenging. They're still a little off from where they're supposed to be, but they're definitely getting there, and getting a lot of feedback from players, which is awesome. Kander: Yeah, the goal is to have itemization on Beta by Monday, so... Gninja: Monday, yeah. Kander: Yeah. Dreamweaver: And then we'll do another pass for the raids then. Kander: Yeah. We'll probably... Gninja: Yeah. Raids and heroics mostly are the ones that need the attention, so I've, I've, I've increased the difficulty in some of the heroics as well. I already did it in the one first pass for a small bump, but it's not quite enough, so we're probably going to end up doing another pass. Kander: We'll probably gear out some Beta players and go run tests again, so... Dreamweaver: That's cool. Alright, is there anything that either one of you are specifically excited about for ROK? Gninja: Uh, I'm a little... Dreamweaver: Like any of the fights or... Gninja: I'm a little interested to see how people will be against Trakanon and The Tangrin. Kander: Oh yeah! Gninja: They're both...they're both... Kander: And pretty also... Gninja: They're pretty challenging. Kander: Carlos fixed the lava, so just saying... *Dreamweaver laughs* Gninja: Yeah, you probably don't want to just stand there and not move from now on, like we used to. I remember that strat. Dreamweaver: Kyle, do you wanna give any hints about the, about the mount that the Kaladim players are going to be seeing. Kander: Um, yeah. There's a mount. Dreamweaver: That is definitely not really a hint, but thank you. *laughs* Kander: They're in the heroics, so it's the same, pretty much the same drop rate as the one previous, and they're in the heroic zones, and it's actually really cool. It's a model we haven't used before. So you're actually getting something kind of new and awesome. I'm not gonna say what it is cause it's, you know, exciting. Dreamweaver: See? But that's still a cool hint. Kander: Yeah. It's cool. Dreamweaver: There! Now we've reached the hint portion. *laughs* Kander: Hinty hint. But yeah, so people have been asking about that cause they've were going to back and farming old content to get the cool stat-ed mount, so this one will be set up the same. So you'll be able to choose a stat layout from this bag, same as the last one. Dreamweaver: Okay. Awesome. Kander: Cool, cool. Dreamweaver: Well, I think, that covers everything we kind of wanted to address today. The only other thing I think we kind of missed that I still have on my really awful sheet of scribbled notes, is one of the things for live players. In those upcoming Betas, we're in the process of looking at incentivizing them and things like that. We don't have anything that we can really talk about yet, cause nothing's set, so keep that in mind if you're listening to this and then you want to run to the forums or Discord to ask us follow-up questions about that. We don't have anything, and it's not because we're not telling you, it's just because we're not quite ready to talk about it yet. Kander: Yeah. Dreamweaver: When we are, we'll definitely give you guys more information about those things. Other than that, I think if you have ideas about incentivization or things like that, similar to what I've said before in previous episodes, feel free to reach out on the forums or on Discord. If you're gonna put it on the forums, and you want to see if other people are interested as well, put it in, you know, the General section, put 'Suggestion' in brackets before your thing, or 'Feedback', or something like that, so I know what threads I'm looking at, and I can always forward those along to the team if they, if they look interesting, or things like that. And don't forget, they read the forums; they read Discord. Just because they don't always have time to respond doesn't mean they aren't listening. It just means people are busy. Some people have more time than others depending on, you know, timing or what they're working on at the moment. But they do read a lot of what you guys are writing. So don't forget. Kander: *laughs* We do read. Dreamweaver: Trust me. They read a lot of things. Constantly. And then sometimes message me about it with questions. So...*Kander laughs* That's it for Episode 9 of Kander's Candor. Gninja, thank you very much for being... Gninja: You said my name right! Dreamweaver: I did! Thank you very much for being our first special guest. It was great to have you... Gninja: It was cool! Dreamweaver: On this week. It was really enjoyable. We're obviously going to have more special guests, other devs, and maybe even some players, eventually, maybe. Kyle and I are still figuring that out. But we will let everybody know when those things happen. Kander, thank you very much for another episode. Kander: Um, I was told, I was told there would be expansion hints. Dreamweaver: Oh! I'm sorry. There will be expansion...I'm, I'm so sorry. *Kander laughs* I didn't realize this episode was where you wanted to start. Kander: Are we doing it next episode? Dreamweaver: Well, we can do it this episode. Would you like to have an expansion hint? *Kander laughs* Are you prepared? Kander: *laughs* Ahhhhhh....no... Dreamweaver: That...that sounds like a no. Okay, so no expansion hint this episode everybody. That was a fake out. But thank you for continuing to listen to Kander's Candor. Kander: Wait, no, I've got an idea. Hold on now. Dreamweaver: Oh! You have an idea? You're good? Go! Kander: Nope, never mind. Dreamweaver: No? Wow. Now you're just letting me just drag this out. Gninja: Well, we can tell, we can tell people to make sure that they're working on the Scepter Quest, cause it might come in handy? Kander: Sure. Dreamweaver: General people? Gninja: General? Eh... Dreamweaver: Alright, well, continue to work on that Scepter Quest everybody. It might come in handy. Kander: There you go. Dreamweaver: Hint hint, wink wink. This was Episode 9 of Kander's Candor. As always, I'm Dreamweaver, and we'll see you in game.
