Continued...
Q: Are there any mana quality of life changes coming to Marksman soon?
A: Ahh, possibly. There’s a lot of little changes that happened to nodes and there’s some changes coming that will affect every class in the mana category – especially ones that use a lot of medium to low mana cost skills instead of really high cost skills, but it’ll also help those ones too. I think it’ll have the most impact on people who use a lot of medium cost skill.
Timestamp: 1:38:24-1:39:02
Q: When multiplayer comes will we have a new online stash or will we keep the same stash?
A: It will be a completely new online environment so you will not get to keep anything you have here. You’ll be starting from scratch online because, really, we just can’t trust you.
Timestamp: 1:39:12-1:39:36
Q: With the proposed new Idols panel, will 1x4 & 4x1 Idols be receiving balancing changes to account for the fact that only 2 of either Idol type can be equipped?
A: Yeah, so most of the effects that appear on 1x4’s and 4x1’s also appear as lesser power on 1x3’s and 3x1’s – not all of them but most of them. So you’ll still be able to use those versions of a lot of them. We’ll be taking a look at them. Every time we make a big change like that we rebalance a lot of stuff. I’d say there’s a good chance they’ll get some bigger ranges put on them – I’d say is a guess. We haven’t actually had that meeting yet, but I’d say bigger ranges would be a good guess…if you were going to make a guess.
Timestamp: 1:41:00-1:41:46
Q: I really like boss fights, they are awesome, but I wish I could fight them more often. Any plans to add boss rush or target farm bosses?
A: This is a question I actually get a fair bit. I think that’s there’s going to be some new endgame modes eventually that will let you to interact with this a little bit differently, and hopefully help with what you’re hoping for. We don’t have that system ready to go yet. I could see an easier way to access some boss fights coming in. The new Monolith changes, on average, will make it quicker if you want to just rush the boss – it’ll make it a little bit easier to do that.
Timestamp: 1:41:48-1:42:40
Q: Is there any reasoning behind Void/Necrotic/Poison affixes/shards being more common than Elemental/Physical ones?
A: I don’t think they are. I think they have the same drop rate. If they are different drop rates than it likely because there’s less classes that can take advantage of them, in general.
Timestamp: 1:42:50-1:43:24
Q: I feel like Attunement across the board could be a little stronger, as usually any other attribute is just better. Any plans on buffing or is it meant to be niche?
A: Ah, yeah…it is a little less awesome than some of the other ones. I could see it possibly getting some buffs. Yeah, attunement does feel like it might be the weakest of all of them especially because of the interactions with other stats – the way that they work – is a little bit inherently better for the other ones, typically.
Timestamp: 1:43:26-1:41:15
Q: Any intention on changing the AI of minions to attack enemies while your character is moving?
A: Yes, there are changes coming to minion AI next patch.
Timestamp: 1:44:18-1:44:29
Q: What are your thoughts on endless monster scaling in an endgame system? In my opinion without some type of cap it won’t feel as rewarding or deliver a sense of achievement.
A: I think there’s a place for infinite scaling in games like this. I think if it’s the main endgame system or the only endgame system it can feel a little like a treadmill or a hamster wheel or whatever. I think there are times when it’s really fun to see, ‘what are the limits of my character?’ – like take me right to the limit, let’s see what happens. I think that’s a really positive thing to have, in some cases.
You’ll notice that this philosophy already exists in our campaign – you go to a level and maybe you’re too low level or your character isn’t good enough or whatever and you struggle, you fight, and you can’t really do it. So you say, ‘I can’t do this, I’ll come back’. You go farm a boss few times and you get better gear and you come back, and now you can do the content. I think that character progression to the world is really important – is a sense of power. So I think they’re both very positive things to have.
Timestamp: 1:44:30-1:46:10
Q: Will there be craftable cosmetic items in the game?
A: I don’t know. I don’t think we have any, like, hard plans for them right now. Maybe…it’ll be kind of cool.
Timestamp: 1:46:28-1:46:45
Q: Is there a story behind the bug where some potions are called beer?
A: It is not a bug. It’s a fun little thing we’ve got in the game. This is the story behind it – someone was like wouldn’t it be cool if, and then someone did it [Mike laughs].
Timestamp: 1:48:40-1:48:57
Q: Are there items that are going to be gated behind PvP?
A: Umm, that’s a good question. There’s a possibility I could see that happening. If they were they’d either be mostly cosmetic or not very useful for things other than PvP. I don’t think we have any concrete plans like, ‘yes, this is going to be gated behind PvP’ or anything like that, at the moment.
Timestamp: 1:49:04-1:49:34
Q: What engine was this game developed in?
A: Unity
Timestamp: 1:51:30-1:51:31
Q: Where can I get API info to build apps such as a planner? There’s already a planner now, but I don’t know where they are getting all the API info from.
A: I know Sarno’s been working on getting that to actually be public. We’ve been on and off working on an API now for a while. Getting that information out of the game smoothly is difficult to do, because the format that it’s in changes every time we add a new feature. So like, for example, there’s affixes – as soon as we added affixes that could have multiple stats, just the way they’re stored and exported had to be changed again. So the API has to constantly be updated every time a new feature is added to the game which creates what’s called technical debt – we start an API and then every time we add a new feature we have to make sure that it’s compatible with the API and update that as well at the same time. We’re working on it.
Timestamp: 1:51:32-1:52:50
Q: Are there any plans for mod support?
A: We do not have any plans for mod support at the moment. That’s one of those things that we know a lot of people really like modding games like this, and there’s so many awesome ideas that come from the community. One day it’ll be a cool thing for us to have, but for the time being it’s a little out of scope for us.
Timestamp: 1:52:51-1:53:10
Q: Will we see Marvel Heroes raid-like content in LE?
A: We don’t have any plans for huge multi-party bosses or things like that at the moment. I could see there being some sort of community event or something where every time someone beats the boss – again, off the top of my head kind of making this stuff up. Let’s say that every time someone beats Lagon a counter goes up a little bit more and depending on how high the counter gets in the course of a week maybe some content is dropped, etc. I don’t know, but things like that are much more feasible for us than getting 40 people in a room and fighting a single boss – partially from a mechanics standpoint, but also a technical standpoint.
Timestamp: 1:53:12-1:54:22
Q: Is the loot in multiplayer going to be instanced or party loot?
A: It’s going to be instanced loot.
Timestamp: 1:54:28-1:55:50
Q: What are your endgame plans, beyond Arena and Monolith of Fate modes?
A: Yes, we’ve got several endgame modes planned. We’d like to ideally have an easy way for people to hop into the game and play different ways depending on how they want to play endgame. So someone who really like pushing Monolith style content or Arena style content or endgame mode three style content or endgame mode four style content or whatever – we want to have that variety available so that there’s lots of different things to do right off the bat.
Timestamp: 1:57:36-1:58:08
Q: Speaking of multiplayer, how large are the party sizes planned?
A: I don’t know if we’ve made an official statement on that. It might be changing as well. I would suggest a reasonable number in the range of four people would be an accurate guess, if you were going to make a guess. That said, it’s not set in stone yet – so maybe more, maybe less.
Timestamp: 1:58:24-1:58:50
Q: Support Classes have typically broken the game for most ARPGS. It becomes bring one geared character and 4 support follow bots. How do you plan on approaching this issue?
A: I think that’s really going to depend on how those builds emerge. I think having support builds be viable is a really cool way to do things. Having it be the only viable method is not really that cool. If it’s possible to do the game that way, but it’s also possible to do game with a full group of just straight DPS or a tank, DPS, and a healer or whatever – if it’s possible to do it all the different ways we probably won’t touch builds like that very much. However, if we look at the group ladders and the top thousand entries are all just parties of one DPS and the rest support then we’ll take a look at that and it’ll probably center around what’s the interaction with that and try to make something that stacks not stack. Let’s say – I’m going to use Diablo 2 as an example – you could get the bonus from eight Oak Sage’s then your health could stack to the moon, but only one of them works so it only matters to have one of them really. So having effects like that not stack really helps with that.
Timestamp: 1:58:52-2:00:40
Q: I would love to see an Uber boss that drops an Idol (similar to the Hellfire Torch or Annihilus in Diablo 2).
A: Yeah, like getting your first Torch ever or getting your first Anni ever is such a great experience. The only downside with them is that they are indisputably the best item to get in that slot. There’s basically no time ever where you don’t want a Torch or you don’t want an Anni in Diablo 2. They’re great in the sense of finding one is amazing, but they kind of suck in the sense that until you have one your builds never done.
Timestamp: 2:01:02-2:01:48
Q: Will you have seasons? Like in PoE?
A: Yes, but they won’t be exactly the same. They’ll be similar – I’ve talked about it a fair bit here. Yeah, we’ll be doing seasonal style content, and it’s more to have a way to theme larger content packs as a big drop – almost like mini expansions than anything else.
Timestamp: 2:02:30-2:03:00
Q: What are your thoughts on character boosting? Will you have to do the campaign every single time you make a new character?
A: This is still something we’re working out – how multiplayer quests will specifically interact. One of the downsides to having character boosting be possible – and I’m not saying this is enough to just kill the idea or whatever – but one of the downsides is you get third-party websites that will start selling services like character boosting. This isn’t ideal, to say the least for us. There’s lots of pluses to having it as well – like for someone who has done the campaign 80 times in a row or something like that, doing it one more time is probably not going to be the most enjoyable experience. Hopefully we can make the campaign cool enough that it’s still fun to do, but after enough times completing it I can see it becoming maybe a little mundane…who knows.
Timestamp: 2:03:05-2:04:20
Q: With PvP, have you entertained the idea of making a game mode like Capture the Flag or Arenas (like Battlerite)?
A: We’ve definitely talked about different types of PvP modes – I think there’s even some mention of it in our Kickstarter campaign page. I think it’d be a ton of fun to have a capture the flag style mode, or a king of the hill, or one person gets like 100% to all stats and is three times as big but it’s like an eight person arena or something – you know, just weird stuff like that. You could almost do like a Gun Game type thing where every time you get a kill you unlock a new skill or something and they get worse and worse or something…I don’t know. There’s lots of room for innovation and experimentation in PvP, I think. There’s a reason why a lot of games don’t do it for this genre, because a lot of those PvP modes probably work a lot better with different camera angles, really. However, I think we can have some fun with it. I think the important thing will be to not take some of those weird PvP modes too seriously. Who remembers the battle royale in PoE? That was a ton of fun, right? It started out as a joke.
Timestamp: 2:04:30-2:06:25
Q: Since recent patches have increased player power, will you be bringing up the mob power as well?
A: Yeah, we’re constantly looking at player power versus mob power, and classes compared to each other. I think certain classes have recently spiked a little bit and others have not so it’s created a little bit of disparity there.
Timestamp: 2:07:55-
Q: Will there be future classes?
A: Probably, yeah. Not at 1.0 launch – at 1.0 launch you’ll be seeing the classes that are currently available. There’s still three more Mastery classes we’re working on. We’ll be expanding that. We have plans for potential new Masteries and base classes, depending on a few things. I’m not going to tell you which ones are coming first because I don’t know [Mike laughs].
Timestamp: 2:08:48-2:09:24
Q: Golden key like key/method for skipping story when?
A: I don’t know. Maybe never.
Timestamp: 2:09:25-2:09:32
Q: What do you think of doing seasonal content that stretches over a year instead of a new league every 3 months like PoE? So have a year long league that has 3 or 4 parts released every X months, kind of like what Magic the Gathering does with their card sets.
A: Yeah, that’d be cool. The way Magic the Gathering does it where they have the storyline carry over from set to set – making up a block – I think is something that’s really cool. While we don’t have specific plans for it right now, I could see there being value in that…so maybe.
Timestamp: 2:09:52-2:11:10
Q: How do we feel about an incredibly rare Rune that would allow you to swap affixes to a different base? Given the rarity levels of a good single or even double T6-7 and then having them show up on the right base for the right class.
A: That’s an interesting proposal. We don’t have any plans for two items being able to go into the crafting system at the same time…yet, I guess you could say. We also don’t have any plans for shards having a tier on themselves…yet, either. But that’s a cool idea, and we do have some different crafting runes coming down the pipe – so yep, maybe.
Timestamp: 2:11:55-2:12:42
Q: Last question you mentioned something about Monolith changes. Anywhere I can read about these or can you explain them a little?
A: We haven’t really told much about it. We hinted a little bit at a few things here and there in some of the streams, but we haven’t really gone in-depth on the changes we’re going to be doing to it. They’re also not done yet so I can’t give you much information there yet, but I’m sure you’ll see more teasers as we get closer to the patch.
Timestamp: 2:12:46-2:13:10
Judd posted this in chat with the description, “Mike doesn’t want to show the new rogue skill???”:
The link to this video actually downloads a file with the name: “Shade_of_Orobyss_23_Giant_Void_Meteor_01.mp4”. So a possible Shade of Orobyss attack? Seems quite likely.
Timestamp: 2:01:01