The recording can be listened here:
https://youtu.be/5x2AGHEdrDE?t=716Here is the short (yeah very short
) summary:
1) What decisions have been made in regards to the "Feudal Democracy" polls? What has been decided about the "Space Marine" tactics and the “Holy fire” from the monument?
- Will avoid the “holy fire” and replace it with the “coward” effect instead, the enemies will stumble randomly.
- Players will be teleported outside the city claim before each JH. So if they disconnect during the JH itself they will still get in where they were.2) How does the class meta fit in LiF? Why do you think it’s good idea to force specific armor for specific builds like in the old skill tree? Competitive players know even small bonuses matter, so the “bonus is not big” isn’t changing anything, they will be forced into specific armors even if the bonus is like 5%. Don’t you think it’s better to just rebalance the armors better, so there are pros and cons instead of magic bonuses? Like cheaper leather armor meaning no linen cloth in the recipe and lighter+cheaper padded armor.
- Chainmail is used in most combat situations atm which shouldn’t be the case.
- Tried to implement the meta classes in the past with the longer trees and skill cap – didn’t work out well. Now will try to promote them again, but do it mildly – it’s not obligatory as before to wear specific armor and will provide small bonuses for the ones (that are supposed to be the majority) who will use the meta classes. That will lead the majority of the players into 5 major meta classes that will be much easier to balance toward each other. Once instanced battles are implemented will have a tool to observe and gather statistics (about classes, weapons, armors), that will severely help with the balance, but until then it’s mainly reactions on feedback. In medieval armies there were such different “meta” class of troops. The MMO is aiming for large scale battles and different “meta classes” will make it easier for players to understand their role and to know what to expect when they see the enemy unit.
- balancing armor around cost is historically correct, but LiF is a game. If plate and chainmails are the best everyone will move to them once they can afford them which is much easier in game then irl. As result everyone will run with them as now, so the “meta classes” idea is prefered.
- Will try the “meta classes” idea, know some players won’t like it, but hope the majority will. 3) How do you plan to combat the so called “drag”?
- Pikes and Lances exploit for high speedbonuses was fixed in the latest patch. Changed some stuff about trajectory measurement, but if the “drag” effect is still in the game will investigate further and fix in the next patch.4) Do you have specific plans/ideas how to improve the parry system? Many players find it lacking compared to other games and wish for some changes.
- Lack interaction and animations, that’s why the parry system doesn’t feel satisfactory from players point of view. Don’t want twitch based parry system in the MMO.Sub Questions on the parry:
4.1 should wooden weapons like simple spear take very high damage when blocking, breaking them after 2-3 successful parries?
A: Not very high, but still greater than metal weapons like swords.4.2 should all weapons be allowed to parry? Swords have guard, but others as spear or flanged mace don’t and the enemy weapon will just cut the hand. If not all weapons can be used to parry that would promote shields use as well.
A: Agree, will be beneficial to implement. But for now it only comes to weight.5) How will you deal with facehugging? Most 1h weapons are fine sure, but 1h spears, 2h mauls and swords for example shouldn’t be usable in such close range as they are now. Also will the 'push' ability have a stun on the end of it and what was decided about female characters, will they stay as they are now?
- Push is not only against facehugging, it’s to increase the distance in general (if you are 2h and need more space). Will depend on the weapons weight. Will be on the middle mouse button, so shield will deal bash, some weapons pounce, but the rest will produce this push which will have stun as well. But have to make the push somehow worse than the shield bash.
- Females had almost the same reach which was NOT intended as they already have smaller hitbox and that makes them very OP atm. Will first make them have their intended shorter reach (meaning they will be gaining smaller speed bonuses because of that) and see how it goes.6) What changes are planned to the formations? What kind of size, bonuses and general usability can we expect?
- Formations will be separate skill, won’t be so deep as now which is very wrong.
- Plan to boost current bonuses, maybe increase the size and fix the bug where they are not increasing in size for the cavalry. Generally boost them to be more situational and provide benefits for their users.
- Plan to add stability bonuses to infantry performing “hold your ground” – they will be able to stop even heavy cavalry and won’t get knocked down.7) Tell us something about the planned instanced battles. What will be decided in those battles, will they be pre generated maps, can you build structures on them (like walls and towers, not only combat preparations), how large will be the POI we need to capture and how long do we have to hold it in order to win?
- The instanced battles will be held over actual terrain blocks from the MMO, not new pregenerated maps for the battles only. Will choose terrains that are suitable for battle (like no cliff in the middle, river, not on islands and so on). Will prepare all those “blocks” and place the POI based on that – in some cases it might be bigger, in others smaller. The general idea is that both sides can’t stand in turtle formation on both sides of the POI and just block it, doing nothing. Only 1 side can effectively control the POI.
- Can’t build on them, only combat preparations. It’s just a field battle. Will strip the terrain from everything, only trees will stay.
- Will prevent sides from “camping” in their spawn and will motivate them to rush for the middle POI in order to capture it before the enemy – face to face combat. Cavalry can cap it first ofc, but can’t hold it against infantry, but can slow down the enemy infantry enough, so that friendly infantry secures it first.
- Timer of how long you control the POI, something like 5 minutes. If enemy enters the POI area the timer resets. If you hold it for certain amount of time without resets you win.
- There will be an option to flee from the battle, but the personal/guild statistics will record that of course.
- There will be time for looting.8. Why are there 20+ different melee weapons when only a few are actually in use?
- In some cases yes, some weapons are indeed just different skins of the same weapon.
- In other cases plan some future mechanics, for example better with poisons, worse with poisons. Or better special attacks and combos.9) What kind of timer do you plan to implement between the peace- and war-stance? Like can’t switch it back for 1 minute or something else? Also if players are finally forced to fight in war stance (instead of switching in/out) do you plan to buff the agility and willpower bonuses? Like more speed and stamina regeneration, so that they can still catch targets as now, but only if they have AGI+Willpower build?
- Something like 30 seconds timer. Timer will be overwritten by flee, so you can always flee.
- For the AGI+Willpower buff – will be considered.10) What do you think about weapons out of Vost. steel? The time and effort investment is completely out of balance with the tiny damage increase they provide. Are those weapons supposed to hold RP (Roleplaying) value only or you have some interesting ideas about them? Also do you plan to make the weapons creation process more involved or it will stay metal+billets?
- Will maybe boost it. Actually plan to move some of the current weapons recipes to the regional resource crafting (like the armors atm) and some recipes of good weapons might require vost steel to begin with. Might also require vost. steel as the only material to craft the 90 skill armors.11) Do you plan to nerf the arrows/bolts damage to shields durability? It’s kind of expected that shield wall is the thing allowing infantry to advance in the open field, yet it’s not working now, because shields break way too fast.
- Shield wall should definetly work and hold arrows fire. But won’t be indefinitely, should break at some point. If like 10 archers shoot stationary shield holder it will break after 2 or so minutes, but not in seconds as of now. The chopping type of damage will be more damaging to shields, but arrows won’t have it, so won’t be effective vs shield.12) What kind of advantage do you plan to provide dedicated lancers with, if everyone can ride a trained warhorse with full speed on 0 skill? Shouldn’t dedicated lancers have access to better (like Hardy warhorse) horses that are both faster and harder to be dismounted from? Also how do you plan to improve the heavy cavalry? They are supposed to be better against infantry sure, but is it normal if they are so weak against regular warhorses due to the very low maneuverability?
- Hard question, considering options now. Maybe something like horse weight bonus to lancing.
- Looking into making more significant bonuses for all horse riding skills and different types of horses.13) Do you have something in mind for the current “meta weapons” (aka boar spear and Partisan)? When so many players use them there is probably something wrong with their power, don’t you think?
- Checked Partisan and the hitbox was really too long, that was a bug, so it will be nerfed.
- Devs in all games always try to balance and buff/nerf stuff leading to OP and UP builds. Sometimes it’s hard to avoid creating “meta weapons”, esp when there are no statistics as of yet from the instanced battles that will really help with the balance process. For now the balance will be hard, mainly actions based on players feedback and reports.
- Boar spear will be checked, maybe nerfed.14) Shouldn’t shields passively block all the damage (without blunt maybe)? Or at least transform it into blunt damage instead. Is this supposed to be only for arrows as now? Also will shield mastery become stand alone skill? Do you plan to make the small shields more popular in combat (meaning they are better then parry with weapon)?
- Passive block will just decrease the damage, but not convert it to anything. From the game design perspective, it is fine.
- Will consider the shields as standalone skill.
- With pushing mechanics it might not be that straightforward but agree that something is to be made with smaller shields blocking.15) What do you think about the nights currently? They are long on the MMO and lots of battles happen during the night. Some players just adjust their gamma with outside programs and have no problems fighting during the night while the others are in significant disadvantage.
- Nights are dark and full of terrors . Will consider that cheating which is banable. In the MMO where you pay to play and for characters that will be deterring enough to cheat. Will implement (without announcement of course) system that takes screenshots, so that with semi manual work cheaters will be catched and banned. Changing the gamma setting as players do now won’t be allowed.16) What is the supposed role of the Battle Survival skill. Can it be viable in the 400 skillcap limitation?
- The skill has to be boosted on itself to provide better bonuses, not secondary now as now which isn’t worth it in 400 skillcap.17) With the horses doing blunt damage with charges, can we expect a change to how the fall damage system works? Its not the horse charging that causes the damage, its hitting the ground or a building after being hit that causes it right now.
- Direct hit by horse will produce blunt damage on itself. The padded armor will help with that with the “meta classes”. Like how currently horse can push you towards a wall and you take a damage from it. But will reduce that damage in the future.18) Will the heavy horse gallop/charge ability of not being stopped by anything other than wall of pikes or defensive fences be implemented soon?
- Yes, it’s a bug that's why it’s not working now.19) Are there any plans to re-work the shield-bash mechanic?
- Will review it along with an implemented "push" ability.20) Will you allow the use of throwing weapons together with shields? Lance with shield?
- Probably not, don’t really want to allow “strong builds”. Throwing weapons is considered as secondary to melee troops to hit fleeing targets.21) How much will the durability of the weapons effects the damage of the weapon?Will that formula implemented in the Armor durability too?
- Will consider that for armors too. Want to make the weapon maintain viable with the repairs, so weapons/armors should always be fully repaired.22) Will you implement proper Flail Style weapon?
- Most likely no, takes lots of physics. Will be really complicated.23) Siege ladders, do you have progress there?
- On the to-do-list before the release, but not soon.24) Do you plan to implement horse archery?
- Definitely no. There is no real counter to that, the west european medieval knights were cursing them – too heavy to chase them, but they can still painfully hit with the skirmishing tactics. They also used to gallop in circle as group, dealing with that will require many archers on the other side as well and simply it will become a ranged game. This is not LiF, won’t turn our melee type of combat into a shooting game.25) Are you planning to include system of "combat log" like mortal online or other game ? People to wait like 30 seconds in game before disconnect for avoid combat log ?
- It’s already in QA test. Maybe next patch.26) Once there is difference between male and females - will that also affects throwing weapons? Like throwing them further because of longer arms = more leverage for males?
- No, that difference will not affect ranged combat at all.27) In the latest devblog you mentioned you plan to make horses more "valuable" - what do you mean with that?
- Make them harder and more expensive to produce. But that was mostly related to the simple horse to warhorse conversion.28) Are there any plans of more detaild tabards and big banners for war banners that u can hold and fight with?
- Yes, have such plans. But part of the ingame shop – it’s to show off, so sorry, you will have to pay for it 29) What do you think about the idea to "nerf" the regular warhorse to the speed and maneuverability of a Hardy warhorse and "buff" the same Hardy warhorse to the current speed and maneuverability levels of regular warhorse? We can then consider that Hardy warhorse is special combat breed, something like the medieval destriers. It will be more valuable for combat and it's already much rarer then the regular warhorses.
- Looking into making more significant bonuses for all horse riding skills and different types of horses.