Transcript: Q&A Live Stream with Lead Designer Tomas Foss on 9/23/2016

zebular · September 2016

Well met, everyone!

I know it's been a few days, yet I had been working on a transcription of the Q&A Live Stream with Lead Designer Thomas Foss on Twitch that happened on September 23rd. Alas, as I work pretty much every day, even seemingly on my days off, I have not had much time to complete the arduous task of repeatedly rewinding and typing out, spellchecking and making sure I heard things right. Thankfully, I have now finished it! So, for your reading pleasure, I now present you with the Transcript of the afore-mentioned Q&A session. Enjoy!

What:
Developer Stream: Q&A with Lead Designer, Thomas Foss

Who:
Lead Designer, Thomas Foss - @mimicking#6533
Community Manager, Andy Wong - @strumslinger

When:
September 23rd, 2016

Where:
Perfectworld_Community on Twitch

zebular · September 2016

*stream begins*

Andy: Hey everyone, how's it going?

Thomas: Howdy!

Andy: This is Thomas with me now. I'm obviously Andy "Strumslinger," your Community Manager for Neverwinter and as I've promised, I have Thomas Foss here.. I've already said that but that's okay, he goes by "Mimic King" right?

Thomas: That's right and I'm ready to roll for initiative. *rolls a D20*

Andy: What'd ya get, what'd ya get?

Thomas: Bring it on... an uh, 18!

Andy: 18! Wait ok I'm going to do one myself... *rolls a D20*

Andy: Well, we're going to ignore that one..

Thomas: Four... hahha

Andy: Shhh!

Thomas: Four!

Andy: Four....teeeeen.... no I got a four...

Andy: So, before we get started on everything, I know I said this was going to be a QA-Stream with Tomas. He's ready to answer all your questions.

Thomas: ... Most of the questions...

Andy: Most of them! Even the tough ones...

Thomas: Yeah

Andy: Yeah. I'm excited too, just to let you guys know.

Andy: So, before that, you guys just saw Storm Kings Thunder. That's coming to console, both PS4 and XBOX One on October 18th. That's pretty exciting. You can ask the PC crowd, they all really loved it. You loved it?

Thomas: Yeah, STORM KING'S THUNDEERRRRR!

Andy: Yeah, exactly! So, yeah FYI, I'm super excited, we're going to be in the coming weeks pushing more initiatives on what social media, forums, blogs just to tell you more about Storm King's Thunder and to, you know, tell you what's going to happen.. change of updating systems and whatever.. and to just hopefully prepare you guys for it.

Andy: So, as usual, I am going to call out the Mods today... they are ManicGypsy (@kreatyve) and DrIronZerg (@ironzerg79).

Thomas: Doctor Iron Zerg... I love that name.

Andy: Yes, haha.

Andy: They are the Official Moderators for the Forums, Twitch Chat, everything... they are kind-of my eyes and ears so say hi to them. I call them Kim and Dave, I like to do this thing where I call them by their first names.

Thomas: Those are their real first names or are they like your SIM-Characters you just made up names for?

Andy: *rubs hands* I don't know... Unless they're lying to me, I think it's their real first names...

Andy: But yea... so... You can call me "Strum" if you want to. "Strum" and "Mimic King."

Thomas: Or "Thomas," that's fine.

Andy: Let's start by telling us a little more about yourself, your history with Cryptic and I guess your design experience.

Thomas: Yeah, sure. I've been with Cryptic for, this is my thirteenth year now. I started out in City of Heroes when it first launched and went through and was Lead on City of Villains and I've gone through working on actually every game that we've had... that I think you know of. Champions and Star Trek Online, and of course Neverwinter... and about a half-a-dozen games you guys don't know of that just never actually made the light of day. So, I've kind-of fire-jumped across all of those.

Thomas: One neat thing about Neverwinter, is that I actually built the first Demo, created and built the first Demo that we pitched to Atari.

Andy: Way back when...

Thomas: Yep, way back when, well I can tell you exactly how way back when.. it was eight years ago because my wife was due a week, with my daughter, just when I was over in France pitching the game to Atari. So, yeah it was an exciting time.

Andy: Did you get back in time?

Thomas: I did! Yeah, daughter was born a week later.

Thomas: That (pitching the game) was a lot of fun, that was a really good challenge and of course the game has changed SO much since then... but I've been on Neverwinter all the way up through it's first inception and building... I'm trying to think of... I came on the game off and on but when we were first building it I built Blackdagger and Ebon Downs... Helm's Hold... By built I mean I was the Lead Designer so I actually built the zone, laid out the zones, figured out what the story flow was, working with our story team to do that. Built the dungeons, actually I built most all the dungeons way back when. Figured out what skirmishes were, what encounters were going to be in.. how you fought them, all the nuts and bolts to actually make the game more... and I mentioned in my post on the forums about story-telling. Back then, you know really getting Ebon Downs for instance, you're coming in and getting that feeling of the scary swamp city, the village all down and ghosts everywhere... the surrounding it's telling the story and then all the people that you're interacting with, either with missions or with contacts, and the things that you're seeing around you, the lore, it really helps tell that story. Then you get to the Kelemvor Keep, the temple there, it's just for a passion right. It's like that last stance of holding off all the undead. The once you go past that its just, you know, "No Man's Land." Then going into all the Barrows of the Kings and their Crypts and that story. It was actually Randy Mosiondz that worked on those stories and that, so props to Randy! But man I loved building that kind of stuff and going into that and then culminating into the dungeon where uhm... we'll talk more about dungeons later.

Andy: Yes! A lot of dungeon questions!

Thomas: Yes, it's because it's not just called, "And Dragons." Right? So, I'm TOTALLY into the dungeon part.

Andy: Yes...

Thomas: So, yeah long story short... I was on Neverwinter up the last time and then I was off for a while working on another project, actually at that time helping Star Trek Online get out the door. Right, launching Star Trek because it was a young thing then. Then I came back and working on things up through I think Icewind Pass was the last thing I worked on at that point. Again, I built the zone, was working on missions and I prototyped all the and built the in-game PvP... Something else we'll talk about.

Andy: *rubs hands sinisterly* "PvP...."

Thomas: And the other zone, the Dwarven Zone, I can't think of it right now!

Andy: Dwarven Valley!

Thomas: Dwarven Valley, yeah thank you! Been a long night... and then I actually went off to work on other projects for a while, for almost two years right? And now I'm back and there's been a lot of changes, good and bad. To be honest, I hadn't had a chance to catch up on all those changes, because one of the things as a game designer, you don't just get to stake a claim in one game... I love Neverwinter, it's go back... I've been playing D&D since the Blue Box, I used to play Chainmail! My Godfather, Allen Lucen (sp) wrote the first two Ninth-Level Spells for the original, he's still got his type-written thank you letter from Gary Gygax, by the way which is all he got...

Andy: Anything from Gary Gygax!

Thomas: I know right, very cool! So yeah, D&D's in my blood. I've been playing for a very long time. I have my dice, my kids have their dice, we play D&D. I'm in three different D&D adventures. One at work, one's with friends going off and on for years and now I have to start playing with my kids at hone, which is kind of cool.

Andy: That's cool!

Thomas: Yeah! So it's neat.

zebular · September 2016

Andy: What's your favorite class to play in D&D? Or what are you playing now that you like the most?

Thomas: So yeah, good question. My favorite's Guardian Fighter. I love the Guardian Fighter, but I play a really hitty Guardian Fighter... you know I stat him up that way. But what I'm doing now, one of the new things, it's a come-back.. there's a lot of classes we didn't have when I first started designing the game. So, I've actually taken it upon myself to play every single class, starting with the new classes, starting at level 1 and working my way up. What I do is I play them up to like level 15, I just got done dinging to level 15 with my Great Weapon Fighter and now I'm working on my Hunter Ranger and then I think I got my Necromancer, errr

Andy: Scourge Warlock.

Thomas: Thank you so much, *laughs* I think of him as a Necromancer... I think my Scourge Warlock is at like level 8 or something. So I'm kind of going through the list. Then when I get them to level 15, I'm going to go to level 20 and what I'm doing with that is I'm actually looking at all the powers, how I'm playing the powers, what I like playing, what content I'm finding, is it easier for this class or harder for that class... what kind of loot drops I'm getting, you know: "Does this make sense and why am I getting a bunch of Guardian Fighter loot if I'm a Great Weapon Fighter and why can't I use it? Cause those boots are cool!" So, I'm really going through and reviewing all of this stuff, as a new player. But also as the Lead Game Designer and seeing and making lots of notes: "This door's broken, why's this loot drop keep happening, wow this power is really underpowered, need a stronger string on my bow..." You know for my Hunter Ranger and a warlock was just awesome. I'm really liking the Warlock right now, it was always what I wanted our Control Wizard to be. I want to be like "Son of Makos" now.

Andy: I want to kill everything!

Thomas: YES! Yeah, so that's kind of where I currently am in the game.

Andy: So, what of the questions was, "What exactly does a Lead Designer do?" What are your Roles, Responsibilities.. I think someone actually asked if your Role/Relation to Taramak and the rest.

Thomas: Oh, yeah yeah yeah, sure. They're producers, I work next to them and tease them as much as I can and hunt them out. So, rules of a lead designer... so, I as I kind of mentioned, I came up through the ranks being a Content Designer, which means I'm actually building stuff. As a Lead Designer, I'm a manager. My role is to manage my team and currently my team consists of nine, which is large for us. That's awesome that I actually have nine people, even though I'm down a couple people. My day is three fold, it's managing my team, and making sure they have all the things that they need to build the content and the story, secondly to be to work on the story and work on the flow of whatever the module or release or expansion's going to be... and that goes both up and down. So, up-wise it goes all the way to Wizards of the Coast. I was up there last week.

Andy: I'm jealous!

Thomas: Yeah, it was really cool and I'm working with people like Ben Petrosor (sp) and John Feil. I've got, you know, I've got my... *stacks paper on table* ...here's our story, here's what we want to do... and they're like, "Eww ohhh, ehhh" and we're but like "oh come on, THAT! What would happen if I throw in this?" So, we'll work back and forth, you know, creating a cool story and one that either works off of their current Module, like "Storm King's THUNDEEEERRRR!" Or, something in between like when we do our updates, we get a little bit more free time - like on the update we're working on now. Being able to tell a little bit different story, but still tieing into WotC. So, once we have that story, and it's not just me going up there right, I'm bringing up all the ideas that my team has put together and put a big story, you know... and not just my content team, this is the producers like Ben Harris, it's the artists, you know and their ideas, its everybody. QA especially, right and I want to give a shout out to the QA Team because my QA is basically my first and last line of defense. They're in the trenches with you guys, playing every day, you know.. where I'd like to be. Shout out to you guys too for giving us great feedback on things, you find things that we just don't even think about and that's pretty magical. So, thanks!

Andy: Cool!

Thomas: Finishing up on what a Lead Designer does... So, yeah I do a lot of the story, and then really at that point it's just taking that story and turning it into gameplay. Right, and gameplay means figuring out... well then there's that sad part in there where @panderus jumps in there with "BUDGETS!" because right, we only have so much time to build things and we only have so much man-power to build things. So, I have to figure out, you know it's kind of like in military terms, at this point I'm kind of like a Colonel figuring out where my resources can be best put to advance the game and support the game and make sure we have some reserves in case we need to build something new or those reserve are where we can actually start doing more research on the next new thing, right, to build that up. So, it's really kind of budgeting that and that's both an exciting time and a sad time, because there's things you had projects...

Thomas: Let's talk about Foundry.

Andy: Okay, yeah, let's talk about Foundry.

Thomas: I love Foundry, I've built Foundry Missions. I helped prototype it. I ran through a Foundry Mission just the other day, it was this cool wizard's tower. It had some great lore in there, I wrote it down somewhere, the author's name, I give him praise and cool money. But it was really great because the first thing you do, is you walked into a... it was like a school of wizardry, and there are cats running everywhere and this cat... there's this scroll on the table and the cat jumps up on this scroll and you click on it and it's like "well of course that's what cats do.." Good story telling. I love that so, thanks! Shout out to that Dungeon Master that created that.

Thomas: I know you guys want more stuff in Foundry. I want more stuff in Foundry. At the end of the day, when I have Ten Dollars to spend on new content or updates on things that we can do for quality of life issues, or research for new stuff coming up.. I need to figure out where that money goes and what I can spend to list. Believe me, on my White Board, I have the list of "Cool Things That We Want to Change" and pretty much everything that everyone sent out in the AMA is on my "List." Except for there is one fella who asked me to play some of his foundry quests, I haven't gotten to that yet.

Andy: That is @torontodave.

Thomas: @torontodave, @torontodave! I'm not promising either, but I'll put it on the "List."

Andy: I'm seeing a lot of questions about the Console having Foundry. Right now, we don't have any plans for that. That's the little, speaking from your point I guess, it's really difficult to put into Console, right?

Thomas: Yeah, so it's even difficult to put into PC. You'd think that it's just basically swapping over and giving you guys the custom parts and stuff, but it isn't. When we built Foundry, it's literally making unique items and unique costumes and unique powers and unique pieces for every single thing that we have in the game with tags so that you can use them. Am I sad as you that Foundry doesn't have a lot. Yeah, but honestly, I don't know when I'm going to have time to fix it.

Andy: It's a balancing act.

Thomas: It is a balancing act...

Andy: I think what I always say is that development is a lot harder when you're actually doing it than I guess if you're just a player right. Players are awesome, they give us all their bugs, we love you guys so much but development is very difficult. I'm not even a developer. Sometimes they consider me a dev, but I'm not. That's why it's great to hear that, you know, very honest answer.

Thomas: Yeah, there's no lolly-gagging around it. Sad, but it's fun. If you guys aren't playing Foundry Missions, you should. Why should you? Is it to get the loot? NO! It's because you guys are great storytellers and you should go out and enjoy each other's stories. Way back when, let me go to the way back machine when I first started... My plan was to have Strongholds, which we have now, and we'll talk about that later, to have Strongholds... my plan was like, you have your Stronghold, you meet all your friends at your local tavern at your Stronghold in your zone, in your map, and then be like, "Okay guys, I built a dungeon in Foundry. Let's go play D&D!" Right, that was my plan originally. So in your Stronghold, you're meeting up and there's a door where you can go hit your Foundry Missions. Something I'm still playing around with, and we've got some of the parts but we won't be able to support all the parts. That's one thing as a Lead Designer, and I've been working with... we have a new Executive Producer, Gordon Fong, who just joined us this week. Gordon and I have already been in talks about retention, and not just about fixing things in the game, and making it better because it's important to us.

Andy: That's good and I appreciate that you want to be here and answer the tough questions and be transparent about everything.

Thomas: Mhmmm *nods*

Andy: I thing everyone is going to appreciate that too. So, just going further into things....

Thomas: All-right, next question!

zebular · September 2016

Andy: Next question! So, we've already talked about the Foundry a little bit, if you guys want to know more about the Foundry, just let us know. But, let's talk PvP. A lot of people do PvP... Class Balance, Chris.. @amenar, he did phenomenal job of balancing the first three classes, so what are your plans for balancing the next classes and are you going to do it and how are you going to do it?

Thomas: *laughs and shakes a D20 at Andy* All right, that's it, don't make me use the dice.... Uhh, yeah. The answer is... "Yes, please." Yes, @amenar was awesome, still good friends. Saw him at lunch the other day. So the thing you need to know about @amenar is, when he was doing class balance, he had easily 50 hours on each critter under his belt, on each class under his belt. He knows this inside and out, one of our best designers... he's moved on to another company, which I'm really excited about and I'll let him tell you about that someday. But it's hard to fill his shoes. So, I actually have a new designer, one of our guys on the team, who is... actually I have two designers, that are looking into filling Amenar's shoes, he's actually like 6'6", he's a big guy... *laughs* But it's going to take some time to get all that together. Like I said, I'm running through all the classes and learning about them so I can get the powers goings. So, I think currently we've already done Warlock, we've done Guardian Fighter, and we did Hunter Ranger... and I'm still not sure we did Hunter Ranger right. Still looking at that, cause I'm playing it now. Next on the list, I think is Devoted Cleric and hopefully Great Weapon Fighter, if I can look again at my list on my wall... so yes, "When is it going to happen?" Hopefully within the year, and I mean starting as if this day were January first.... not by the end of Christmas... But looking into it and trying to figure out what we can do with it, right now... it's more about getting the right talent to bring that up and give you guys the balance that you want and need.

Andy: And the Community Interaction in it too.

Thomas: Yeah, yeah yeah. Community Interaction, we're jumping on that as well. As a matter of fact, one of the guys @asterdahl, he's on the forums, he's good. I was just talking to him today about that.. shout-out to @asterdahl. He's one of the guys that's also looking into class balance, one of my two guys.. one of my two systems guys that are building some cool stuff. Some great new ideas that we have on boss fights, to give you guys more of a challenge. So, that was the long answer, the short answer is "Yes, it's happening." But, give us some time and during that time, we're definitely going to be getting some feedback from you guys.

Andy: I think a lot of people were excited when you mentioned Cleric, because in my opinion, I also think the Cleric should be the next one. And just to let you guys know, we are aware of that one bug where Divine Glow doesn't proc encants. We know, it's in the system.

Thomas: *scorns* Which god did you choose? Hmmmm! *laughs*

Andy: I'm seeing a lot of people mention Dungeons. So, let's talk about Dungeon Loot. Right now, Dungeon Loot is a little strange in that you fight Demogorgon, or you do FBI, or you do Fang Breaker to get gear for Fang Breaker. So, I guess there's very minimal reward now to doing Dungeons. Do you have any plans to increase the loot or make it a better system to gain loot?

Thomas: Yeah, uhm. Yes, and yes, and yes, and back to the other one... not true! So, I'll start at the beginning. So, FBI which is a term we don't use, we just say "Fang Breaker." So, the idea of Fang Breaker is actually the best armor and loot in the game, it's the best gear that you can get. And its not, you know, go kill things in Fang Breaker (to those who haven't played it yet) to get the best loot, to fight them. It to get the best loot over-all, right. And then that loot will help you when you replay to go get the other pieces, to fight them and get that. The other cool thing that Fang Breaker has its got a theme that gives you free frost protection. To me, that's huge because I always forget to pop my potions or eat my chicken soup or something, right. So, that's helpful. Going back to the other dungeons and things, even when I was making dungeons back in you know, Ebon Downs and Blackdagger, we'll just use Blackdagger as an example. When you fought Travin, and then you got to the chest and you rolled and there was that percentage chance of getting the piece that you didn't want, right? I hated that. But I was not Lead Designer back then. I was the "Dungeon Builder." I think that, you know, we definitely want to put the cool gear on things. We did have to back-end it a little bit, because people were just playing that first part of the dungeon, getting that first boss. So we did kind of back-end it, so you get the full experience.. Yeah yeah, you have to play the full dungeon to get the gear. I have a couple of notes on this, because I was actually talking to Robert Gutschera, who's our Systems Lead on my team and he had some good feedback on this... and I'm dumb I don't have any good feedback! But I'm smart enough to know to go to the right people to ask the right questions. You surround yourself by smart people! Again guys, I've been away for two years, I didn't know a lot of the newer end-game stuff, I'm getting up to speed, so give me some time. If there's something I should look for, let me know!

Andy: Let me know!

Thomas: Let him know *points to Andy*

Andy: And I'll let him know.

Thomas: Let Andy know, Andy's great. You're great!

Andy: Aww, thank you.

zebular · September 2016

Thomas: So, we're talking about dungeon drops, right?

Andy: Yes!

Thomas: So, basically there's loot you can earn in the dungeons. There's the random stuff that could be for you that's great, then there's other random good stuff that you can sell and I know that we've started looking at getting tokens to buy and stuff, but I want to look at getting better dungeons drops in particular. Once we start themeing and re-releasing our dungeons and building them up, the dungeons of the future we'll be able to do that better.

Andy: "Dungeons of the Future?"

Thomas: Dungeons of the Future...

Andy: I wonder what that is.

Thomas: We're running out of dragons! Tiamat kind of really hit the high bar there! ...not "totally" out of dragons.

Andy: No, there's like other ones...

Thomas: There are others.. yes... Wizards of the Coast is "kind of about" dragons.

Andy: Even a "Good Dragon." Maybe.

Thomas: Maybe. Yes, "Be the Dragon."

Andy: How about the Dungeons that were taken away?

Thomas: Well, we've been slowly bringing them back and we'll be bringing more back. I'll say that right now, spoiler alert, and more dungeons.

Andy: Yes... and more dungeons and returning them.

Thomas: Pretty soon you're going to say, "Where are the Dragons." I mentioned before that we're working on better traps and tricks and things. So, doing mini-puzzles like how to find new areas or get through dungeons, adding a bit more of the magical D&D element to it.. and the mechanical part of it, of the dungeons. One of the cool things about when you're playing D&D, it's not just about going forth and clobbering the orcs, rifling through their pockets, and going to the next group. It is a good part of it, but there's also you're figuring out the next thing, the exploration. I know, you guys just want to take the... not all of you... take that quickest route to the loot and that's fine too, yeah. But for them that want to explore, I want to add the extra rewards for doing so. That reward could be just story, that reward could be "reward."

Andy: How about Skill Nodes in dungeons.

Thomas: Not just about in dungeons but everywhere. I'm sorry, we broke them. Well, actually we didn't break them. Botters broke them. I had them out, again Ebon Downs, Blackdagger, I'll go back to the old dungeons and zones, I loved them. Its like Easter Egg Hunt, putting skill nodes everywhere in great places or, you know, putting them off in that area next to that... "Is it a treasure chest?" But being able to put them around for you to fight for them, is really fun. But, the botting system basically broke that. So, we stripped all of the rewards out and made them not cool. Well, with the new mini-game system that we're currently working on... ™, "TBD..."

Andy: You heard it here first!

Thomas: Yeah, not saying it's going to work but we are exploring to make this work. It works in Star Trek Online, and that's actually where I got the idea. Before I came back on to Neverwinter, I was on the last year getting Start Trek Online onto console and I kept playing mini-games and thought, "These are cool! What can we do with these? What knowledge can we gain from this?" So, the idea is where if we can get the mini-games, where you actually do a mini-game on the skill nodes, right... and if it's your skill, you're going to get a plus to do that, or maybe its longer, or its going to unlock one of the the components already, right. Then we can actually start putting better loot back into these things. It's like our "Captcha" thing, "I'm not a robot." And that goes to treasure chests as well. I love putting treasure chests in dungeons and even in the world, you know. How many of your guys actually know that there's a treasure chest in the Tutorial?

Andy: I know there's one right before the Harbinger.

Thomas: No no no, there's another one in the destroyed siege tower. If you hop in there, there's a treasure chest.

Andy: Interesting.... Is it a mimic?

Thomas: It is NOT a mimic!

Thomas: My nine-year old son just started playing and it's been really fun showing him where all the chest are.

Andy: Nice.

Andy: I think someone actually mentioned that we forgot about PvP, but uh, can we talk about the NCL, the Neverwinter Combat League.

Thomas: Sure.

Andy: That was there for a month and then we said we needed to work on class balance. Which we did start.

Thomas: Mmhmm.

Andy: But yeah, what's up with that?

Thomas: Yeah, again... it happened when I was gone. Although I did play it. Yeah, the NCL was a great idea, still a good idea, and I love the competitive stuff and I think for console, it's a great thing to put on for everybody, it'll work great for the console game. The downside to it that we found, once the whole thing played out, was a month was probably too long so we're looking at maybe next time it's a week, two weeks, more like an event thing. The leaderboard system, how we built and to track our leaderboard system, our technology was just not up to the job and it was just really hard to keep that up. So, I don't know if the next time that we do it, if it will have leaderboards... I do love leaderboards, but I'm not going to commit to those. I will say that we did like the event and I want to totally bring that back. And in PvP, show of hands out there, how many of you actually played in the solo event. Solo PvP was really fun, I loved it. At lunch time, I was calling people out.

Andy: Really!

Thomas: Yeah, I was like "So, Gordon. Solo PvP time, it's lunchtime!"

Andy: So, there are more plans for Solo PvP?

Thomas: Yeah, we're actually looking into Duo next! But I will caution, PvP is only going to be so much fun until we get all the class balances in.

Andy: Exactly.

Thomas: Right, so making new maps for PvP... new gameplay systems... not there because we need to balance those classes. Remember going back to that "Ten Dollars that I have to spend" and where I can budget my time? I think class balance is a better place to put that.

Andy: I would agree.

Thomas: And other things, right. Now, PvP in Strongholds. Right now I was looking at it this morning, and it looks like it's broken. Not a lot of you guys out there are playing it. Something happened.

Andy: Stronghold Siege is yeah, it's uh...

Thomas: I think our Matchmaking System that we just put in might not be working right. So, any Stronghold Siege PvP players out there, let me know what's going on. I'd like to hear about that. So, get in there and play so we can see what's going on and help make that better.

Andy: Yeah!

Thomas: PvP! Go do it.

Andy: I'm going through my list of questions and something someone asked is what is one thing you are most proud of in Neverwinter, what works for Neverwinter right now and what would you change in a general basis?

Thomas: Hmm, I'm going to get into trouble for this one... "What am I proud of?" I'm proud of actually just getting the game out there, you know, from the pitch to where it is now... I'm actually proud it's one really big D&D game, right? I look at the forums, yeah I actually do look at the forums... not that much... I lurk, I lurk.

Andy: But you have like a system with these forums?

Thomas: Yeah, I do but we'll talk about that in a second. But we're just generally watching the gameplay when I'm live, we're just watching people play and checking out their costumes and which mounts they're using and I love PUGing and playing with people. I'm out there... you don't know it. I'm out there... I'll give you a hint, I've transmodded my sword to an axe for my Guardian Fighter. That's my thing, right! A dwarf should have an axe!

Andy: Yeah! I know, very true. Yes!

Thomas: Yeah, I guess I'm just very proud of the some of the first zones, I'm proud of the, I think the Icewind PvP was great. I'm proud of the little moments like my mimics, or getting the gelatinous cube in the game! We didn't have a gelatinous cube, I'm like, "This is Dungeons and Dragons!" So, over lunch time, for about a month and a half to two months, myself and Lindsay Haven and an artist we built the gelatinous cube and we hid it in the files, calling it "Bill" like Bill Cosby, "Gelling" you know... a name we don't invoke these days, but back then you know.... and I snuck it into the side dungeon, Temple of the Spider, the duergar dungeon, and we did a team playtest and hearing everybody just screaming and yelling like "Ahhhh" and running from it and then running straight into the arrow traps we hid behind it, cause they were freaked out. That's one of my proudest moments. Destroying... team kill! My whole team and getting that emotional moment. I talked earlier in my forum about the story, it's the emotional moments where we look at it like "Yes!" or "That was awesome!" or "We just died! WOW!" You know, all those kind of things, coming away and telling the story cause that's what D&D is, it's about telling stories.

zebular · September 2016

Andy: And that's one of your main focuses too, right? Bringing "Story" back and D&D rather than just grind, grind, grind?

Thomas: Yeah, right. Exactly. That's harder at the higher levels, because you have to do a lot of grinding. I kind of equate it sometimes at the higher levels, you eeking out that little bit and I don't have an answer for that yet guys. But I am looking into it. But yeah, I want to tell the stories. The theme I'm proud of is my dungeons. I love my dungeons. Last dungeon I think I built was.... Valindra's Castle, no Malabog's Castle, no Valindra's Tower! And actually that was a lot of fun and that's something I want to bring to you guys out there is, when we first built Neverwinter, we had an idea what the game was going to be, what it was going to be, the story we're going to tell, then once we launched it to you guys, the story changes. It's your game at that point. It's like, I'll equate it to the Dungeon Masters out there that bought the newest coolest dungeon module... "Look, I got Tome of Horrors! We're going to play, I got it right here my Tomb of Horrors!" and you're like "Okay, they're going to go into this room and this room and they're going to do this." Then what's the first thing your part does? "Okay, what do you guys want to do?" "I'm going to go steal those horses and paint them purple and ride off over there!" And you're like, "What!?" Everything's changed. We thought we were building this one game and then you guys took the game and ran it a different way. So, we are being malleable about that. Blackdagger Ruins was a very long, classical dungeon. Valindra's Tower was more like the Skirmish System that I started building. It was a Skirmish Style. You guys wanted a little but shorter gameplay and ready to get to the boss but have those good challenges. So, looking at how you guys are playing the game and what you want in the game, has changed a lot how we're designing the game. Because we made it for you. You know, Wizards of the Coast talks to us about things that they want to put into a Module and we talk to them and now I'm talking to you and you're talking to me on the forums.

Andy: You are... and I just also saw someone talking about Gateway. So, what's Gateway, SCA, all the Companion Gear....?

Thomas: Sure. Okay, I'll talk about that. Who was that... *taunts with a D20* ...want to roll for initiative?

Andy: *laughs*

Thomas: No, it's uh... it's crazy. No, wait... this just in. I'm going to, somebody said something... somebody said something about Druids... who was it? Sorry, I'm new to this live stream thing. *scrolls through Twitch Chat* Uhh, I'm not... I already talked about Foundry! Rewind a little bit.. I talked about some Foundry. I'd like more but we can't right now. Maybe a Foundry Dragon would be cool. Getting any kind of assets in the Foundry would be cool. But I just don't have the time for it. Uhm... DRUIDS, YES! Somebody talked about druids. They, uh, believe, uh... I don't think they're going to happen any time soon. But I'll tell you around the Team, Druids and Monks have been the thing that everybody keeps like, "I want this," you know, "I want a Druid," "I want a Monk!"

Andy: Everyone's like, "Druids, druids, druids!"

Thomas: Yeah, Druids and Monks! I want one! I think I actually put one in Temple of the Spider, one of the contacts... YES!, one of the contacts that you talk to is a druid, he's the one that asks you to capture the warp spiders for him, yeah. I'm sorry, I've totally gone off track again.

Andy: *laughs* No, it's cool! It's cool!

Thomas: Oh, we were talking about Gateway.

Andy: Yes, Gateway!

Thomas: *jokingly* Ahhh, I tried to get out of that.

Andy: And the companions... Yeah I know, I'm like, "Nope, not getting out of this one!"

Thomas: Nope, the hard questions. That's fine. Uh, yeah we had to close Gateway down. You know, sometimes guys, it's about financial. Gateway was actually costing us a lot of money and man-power just to keep alive. I love it, I played it a lot. And we had the heavy botting stuff, and the botting on it wasn't just affecting Gateway, it was actually affecting live server. Right. Really affecting live server! That was the big reason, right. It wasn't just keeping to itself, it was actually affecting our server base and that was it, we didn't want you guys to have to deal with that live on the game. Especially when some of you aren't even playing the SCA. Right and repercussions for that. So, it was a hard call but we had to close it down. Now, that being said, let's talk about the...

Andy: Companion Gear...

Thomas: The Companion Gear and stuff, yeah?

Andy: And SCA, yeah.

Thomas: We are hoping to roll some of the Companion Gear back in. I know I want the Halfling, because my Great Weapon Fighter's a Halfling. I want the Halfling Companion! But, when it was designed, the designer that built it wasn't really in-line with Neverwinter, some of the stuff is really OP.

Andy: Yeah.

Thomas: It's really OP. It we bring it back in, we're going to tune it. Right, I'll be honest with ya, some nerfing will happen. Some tuning, but I wanna get that gear back in. We'll make it in-line for what it should be and still make it cool. I wanted, here's my dream... I actually to take Sword Coast Adventures, the game part of it, and roll it into Professions and that was my big pitch. Wrote a big pitch and idea for it. So, like you know, instead of going to do my profession thing, I can have my guys play the dungeon and speed up the time and have fun doing it in that mini-game. Unfortunately, because it was written for like bonuses and stuff, it was actually written for a different code script, it was written in java script... it doesn't port over. Much to my sadness. In order to do that, we'd have to rebuild the whole thing. Believe me, that was a black day for me. Because that was like, "Oh you know we're doing this.. BUT I've got this cool thing that we can..." Yeah, it didn't happen. But, all the critters and pets and stuff... we are doing them now, looking at what's cool with them. Some of the stuff, you guys have kind of outgrown, but I still think there's a lot of great ideas and pieces there and as we go through them and kind of, you know, make sure they're safe... *laughs* "User Safe," and are fun! Then, we'll get them back into the game.

Andy: And we'll make announcements about them too, on like forums and... OH FORUMS!

Thomas: *jokingly* No No...

Andy: *laughs* Oh no, no yeah we're not going to we're just going to put...

Thomas: Sneak them in!

Andy: *laughs* Yeah!

Thomas: We'll hide them in Mimics!

Andy: That would be pretty cool actually... *makes claw-hand gesture* ...awrrr...

zebular · September 2016

Andy: But yeah, like you were saying, you have... you were telling me earlier that you have this "forum schedule" thing for yourself...

Thomas: Yeah, someone asked... I think it was Godlast (sp) asked me, hi Godlast (sp), "Is this a one time thing?" No! No, as I said earlier, I'm not the best on the forums. I've been lurking a lot, reading stuff, and I'm lucky to have a Team that points out a lot of cool forum posts that you guys do to me... because of my busy schedule. But, what I've done is I have actually scheduled time on my schedule... I'm not going to tell you how much, or when, but I have dedicated scheduled times so that producers can't push me into a meeting or something that where I'm just actually on the forums. That doesn't mean I'll be talking on the forums, but I'm definitely lurking. I'll be on there. You guys aren't *that* scary.

Andy: *laughs* And if anything, I'm here, I'll just bring it up to you.

Thomas: Except for you, YoungDreads (sp)... I don't know about you. You seem scary.

Andy: Mmm, I don't know about him.

Thomas: PvP? Yes... more PvP! We're working on it.

Andy: How about, I know you mentioned it to me earlier, anything about Dual Specs? "Loadouts?"

Thomas: Oooooh! Yeah, okay. So, here's a good tid-bit for you guys. Loadouts is something that we're working on and I mean *have* been working on and it's really cool. Because one of the things that I want to be able to do when I'm playing PvP, YoungDreads (sp), uhhh is have my "PvP Loadout!" Right! Instead of having to swap everything over and over. We're working on a system where it's really just a click of the button, where everything's set up and you can switch to that loadout.

Andy: Nice...

Thomas: So yeah it's the gear, its the look, it's the fashion gear, it's the mounts, it's the companions and you can set like, "Always want to keep this weapon or not." Again, I'll say it's more than just in the prototyping phase, I'm not sure when we're going to release it but it is something... unless something really breaks heavy, we are going to release. I'm super excited about it.

Andy: I'm super excited too. I question all the time.

Thomas: And it goes back also to the Story-Type stuff, right you know. I've got my flame armor.. I wanna look cool in my flame armor... I want to have that set ready to go when I'm going to, you know, when I'm going up against zombies. That just makes me feel good... to actually have flame armor when, cause I hate zombies. Right and you know, and I've got my PvP loadout that I want to set up, so I don't have to keep moving my gems and stuff around. So, it can be a hassle, and we don't need that hassle. So, set it all up and a click of the button and I don't know how many you can get, but...

Andy: Yeah, it would be good to have one for Dungeons, one for PvP, one for just Heroic Encounters or whatever...

Thomas: Yeah, again as a Guardian Fighter, I need my more taking area in fighter build, I need my more aggressive fighter build and I need that guardian fighter build where I just got that horse head helmet, *chuckles* you know...

Andy: Yeah, exactly! So, let's talk Coal Wards and Invocation.

Thomas: Not going to talk about it.

Andy: Not going to talk about it?

Thomas: No. No.. I'm kidding! *smirks and grabs his papers* Oh my gosh, yeah, Coal Wards. Oh, yeah that was @ironzerg79 that talked about that, oh no he was talking about rings. Somebody talked about... I'm learning all your names, there's so many of you out there, it's going to take me a while to get all your names... Who was it that talked about... do you remember? Well, just Coal Wards! It was probably a lot of people.

Andy: Yeah, a lot of people!

Thomas: More than one of you. Yeah, Coal Wards are cool and the problem was is they got put onto the market by accident and that was a big mistake. Not because we're loosing money but because they broke the balance. It was not really meant to go live like that. The uhm, and they're hard to get. I totally get that. But, I'm looking at my notes, here we go... yeah, uhm it's kind of a long complicated story. Again, I wasn't here. There's some kind of scapegoating on that one... But, here's the fix part of it, right... the thing we really want to do, that I'd love to do is get them back, not in the Tradebar Store, but make sure that they are more accessible and one of the things we are doing since we already did the Invocation Updates, right, so you play more, invoke more, get more which is cool. We're actively looking at, as in by "actively looking at," we have meetings on this right, and actually digging at that part, as opposed to just talking about it in the hallway. We're talking about revamping the rewards tables for the Invocation, cause right there are the Coal Wards in there and actually when we did the Invocation Revamp, we tripled the drop rate on those. You know, it's still tiny, it's still rare, but we did triple it. So, that's something but I want to look at it even more. So, there's a chance when you're doing the right thing and playing the game, saying all the words, cause it's invocation, that there's a better chance of making that happen.

Andy: Yeah, cool! And.. what are your thoughts on adding more character appearance and personalization? More character appearance options.

Thomas: What do you mean like more Drizzt and stuff like that?

Andy: Uhhh...

Thomas: Drizzt took all my girlfriends away and never showed up again.

Andy: *laughs* More like when they're making up their characters.

Thomas: Oh, well, we fixed the hair system except for that strange thing that happened with some of the dwarves' beards from the Storm Kings Thunder where they all turned white. I'm blaming that on Stromvauld, messing around with the Ring of Thunder (Winter) and that was kind of a curse thing, still trying to figure that out... *chuckles*

Andy: But, do you like more options?

Thomas: Yeah, I like more options! I love more options. Both in the fashion set and the gear and stuff. I know that going back to dungeon rewards, back when we used to like give out full sets and things because we could dedicate time to do that, and that's one of the things... that money that I talked about spending, dedicating time to actually get more more full set appearances and fashions too. And that's where loadouts also come back into... so we can actually have a place to show off all that stuff.

Andy: Exactly.

Thomas: I'm up for it.

Andy: I think on of the popular questions was about the ability to disable weapon and armor enchants. This has come up so much... and for previous things I think that we're kind of like in the same real that it's something we'd like to do, right?

Thomas: Yeah.

Andy: But it's actually more difficult than it seems?

Thomas: It is. It's not just like a flag where we can just turn those off and on. They're so deeply embedded into the code of how our systems work, that it is a real challenge.

Andy: And with loadouts and everything, again it's a balancing act.

Thomas: Yeah.

Andy: Loadouts before that.

Thomas: But I hear ya! I feel ya.

Andy: Yeah, exactly. I think that everyone knows that disabling enchants, or the visuals is...

Thomas: It's something that we look at, that we look at a lot, especially when we start playing... you know our ten-man trials or Tiamat, so many people in the game. Somebody also mentioned that we're going to do like a big 25er or 30-man thing... I don't know, uhm. I'd actually like to focus more on Strongholds and the Stronghold Game play than doing something like Raids. Wanna Raid? Raid somebody else's Stronghold... that's cool.

Andy: That's cool.

Thomas: Capture their flag, right. Yeah, so maybe something more towards that.

Andy: Okay, yeah cool. I'm looking at this right now, there's a lot of questions that are coming in.

Thomas: Oh, somebody just said... MysticMarks (sp) is saying " please fix the tool-tips as they are read and as they function." You know, MysticMarks (sp), you guys keep sending in bugs as you find them, especially on the console side, because they all had to be set up with flags, it's kind of technical... whatever, they had to be set up with flags so that they would say instead of "Press F to open the door," it's "Press X to open the door." And, or if there's something out there that doesn't make sense, yeah send it up on the forums. Write us those bugs, get us those buttons because we go through those things, that's... I may not be on the forums all the time, but I do go through all the bug lists and exploits that you guys send in and thanks for those. Because if I can make a better game through you, when you guys do that, it's making a better game for everybody.

zebular · September 2016

Andy: Yeah, exactly. I also, because we're kind of running out of time a little bit... Do you want to... so you mentioned way at the beginning of the stream, about our next update. We can't give away too much right now, but do you want to say a little bit about it?

Thomas: Yeah, sure! Let's see, what can we talk about the next update... Uhm, which will be on Preview very soon!

Andy: Yes! That is very...

Thomas: Very soon...

Andy: No exact date but...

Thomas: Very sssss...

Andy: Pretty sooon..

Thomas: Soon... *jokingly* go check it out! Soon. Go check it out. Gotta wait till after the stream.

Thomas: So, yeah I'll tell you a little bit about it. You're still going to be up in the Frozen North, hopefully culminating the whole Story Arc that you've been building up to and there's a lot more water up there. So, one of the things we're going to do is give you free travel powers and the travel power.. the mount is a kayak, a boat that the ice-hunters make. So that you actually travel around in there. While you're out in the water, and there's lots of it, you'll actually.. one of the things you'll be doing is fishing, you can do fishing. Hang on! I know, I know... "fishing."

Andy: I like fishing!

Thomas: Fishing.. we had some animation issues in Bryn Shander, making you do wonky things... This is totally new. We actually built a new whole mini-game fishing. Going back to those mini-games. A whole new mini-game fishing system, where you bait and throw in the hook and you got to pull left and pull right and pull back and you do like, its a tiny thing and you can hook the fish and its actually really fun. I think you'll enjoy it and watching others play it. And you know.. while you're fishing, just be careful to not become the bait. That's all I'm going to say.

Andy: Hmmm.... So, yeah. Look out for more information, there's a lot of developer blogs, some you're even writing yourself.

Thomas: Yeah, absolutely.

Andy: Coming out probably, again...

Thomas: "Very Soon!"

Andy: So yeah and that's just to make clarification... That's an update, so its a smaller, it's not an actual Module. It's not an expansion.

Thomas: Curiously enough, this update is a little big bigger than some of our other updates.

Andy: Like Guild Alliances or something.

Thomas: Yeah, exactly. This is a full zone. You know, it's got... and we've got a Trial, yes, yes! So, it's meaty. It's meaty... and we also have some good quality of life changes and fixes in the game.

Andy: Nice. That's very nice. Cool! So, *reads a Twitch Message* "Who cares about fishing!" *laughs*

Thomas: *laughs*

Andy: Oh, you'll care!

Thomas: Actually, you will care about fishing because it leads to one of our other mini-games. So, it's not just fish you can catch in the water, so...

Andy: There's a lot going on in the next update.

Thomas: Yeah.

Andy: Again, more than Guild Alliances had. Guild Alliances had the guild alliances and the campaign reward. This is definitely more things that you can... touch.. I guess.

Thomas: Yeah, yeah. This is a pretty beefy update. I'm excited about it.

Andy: Yeah, I'm excited too! Cool! So, there's like so many questions here that I... let me ask the Moderators.... Oh! Do you, cause this is like a question within a question I guess you can say.

Thomas: Mhmmm?

Andy: But... and I know it's really hard to develop... but from the beginning, people have been wanting Player Housing. Is that something that you like?

Thomas: *chuckling*

Andy: You don't need to say that you're going to work on it...

Thomas: No, no, no... I'm trying to figure out... I like Player Housing too, and Strongholds touches upon that. Do you guys want interiors for your Strongholds? Let me know. Right. Let me know. I think that's a good place to start.

Andy: *turns sincerely to Thomas* I want interiors for my Strongholds.

Thomas: There you go. Alright, so give the shout-out right. I think that would be a fun thing. Now, do you want it where you can actually dress it up yourself? We could do that right. Think about the Stronghold type where you build up your Stronghold's Towers... you could build up that lovely moss-covered credenza in the corner into a full armoire or something.

Andy: That'd be awesome, being able to decorate little sections.

Thomas: I'd love to put little trophies and stuff in there.

Andy: Oh, that would be cool.

Thomas: Yeah... here's Valindra's Head....

Andy: Oh my gawd yes...

Thomas: Here's Malabog's Sword!

Andy: Exactly.

Thomas: Here's Tiamat's tooth....

Andy: That would be really cool just having a Trophy System.

Thomas: I'd love to have that.

Andy: Yeah.

Thomas: *jokingly* I'm going to go on the forums and post that too.

Andy: We only have four minutes left.

Thomas: Okay.

zebular · September 2016

Andy: So, I know some people are saying... I already asked that, sorry... How about, Professions? I know you're looking into them right?

Thomas: Yep... you know, I can say I'm looking into them, but I actually have other people looking into them. Yeah, they're not supporting you the way that we want them to and they're not giving you guys the love that you need from professions. So, I am... I don't have a clear answer on this one guys, sorry but I uhm, they need help. We know that. You know that. There's so many pieces of the game and one of the things that we've done in Neverwinter is, sometimes we build something cool, then we run out of time to support it in ways that we hoped that we'd have because we need to build other content. It takes a lot of designers to build a zone, it takes a lot of designer's hours. If I've got, you know, five... four content designers right now, two of them, two and a half of them are building the zones, the missions, the dungeons and stuff like that... So, that's resource going into that... there's that "10-Dollar" analogy, how much of that am I spending on things. So, really like the updates are more supposed to be about quality of life... this update has a lot more than that in it. As we move forward, we're looking into how we can better spend that money, tell the story, and to support thins... and to fix things. So that the whole game works better.

Andy: Again, it's like this huge.. there's only so much time.

Thomas: Yeah. Now, sometimes that means pulling the plug on something, right... like Gateway or about being able to give Foundry the love because we need to make sure that the Campaign that you're building supports the Zones that you guys and get the right gear and the right gems and all that stuff. But, you know, it's a living game and I love that we can have this kind of talk and building on it.

Andy: Yeah, I mean there's a lot stuff that people keep saying they should write, like loadouts... I've heard about that since my first day here. Just to hear that it's finally happening, that's pretty amazing. Again, development is a balancing act and we need to make new content and make, you know, community requests like loadouts and everything. So, it's just.. again I'll say it's difficult.

Thomas: It's a.. but it's a fun job. At the end of the day, we make zombies that explode. Come on. That's pretty cool.

Andy: Exactly. And you know, you guys are just... you can't be a game developer unless you're passionate about video games.

Thomas: Yeah. Somebody asked me, do I play other MMOs? Yeah, I've played quite a few of them. WoW, and uhm.. I've play Wizard 101 with my kids right now, I mean you go through the litany, go through the list... I love playing Warhammer Online, Lord of the Rings Online was great fun, I played a bunch of my friends and that was great. The one game I just kind of missed out on was Everquest.

Andy: I haven't played that either.

Thomas: I just kind of skipped over it. But you know, I got a kind of long litany There are a few Asian MMOs I've looked at when we were designing other games. Going back to that, to when I was working on other projects. We only have so much time to spend playing games, it's one of the reasons I'm getting back into Neverwinter and getting back to especially the end-cap stuff, and playing from the beginning too, is because when you're working on other projects, you kind of have to focus on games. When you're working on First Person Shooter Games, as an example.. not that I was, but then what you're doing is you're playing other First Person Shooter Games, right, to get ideas of what they're doing out there and what's on the market. You're going to be doing a racing game, your going to be playing a lot of other people's racing games and that kind of what sets up... I don't actually... Right now, other than Neverwinter and STO... and Champions, I actually really love playing Champions and you should to! I don't play a lot of other MMOs right now but if a new one comes out, like I mean when Secret World came out, I was REALLY into Secret World. Right, and then about after six months, I wasn't anymore because it just wasn't helping me. Right now, at home the games I play like I said, I play Wizard 101, that's the MMO I'm playing with my son it's fun gaming cards. But you know, I'm playing Star Wars: Battlefront. Come on, that's cool! I like playing a lot on my iPad, Plants vs. Zombies, that's kind of my wind-down game. I've been playing a lot of First Person Shooters, Call of Duty... I like playing. And I'm finally getting to play Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak which is the prequel. I love the Homeworld games. I've been playing that, so that's what I'm playing now and I'll see you guys in Neverwinter.

Andy: I think people are asking about lockboxes. I'm going to answer that one. Yeah, PS4 is getting a new lockbox pretty soon, Glorious Resurgence is the next one I believe.

Thomas: Yep.

Andy: We're going to announce that pretty soon so I'm not like, you know, revealing anything.

Thomas: They don't let me touch the lockboxes because I'd just turn them into Mimics.

Andy: *laughs* You open it and it's a mimic! No, but yeah... Glorious Resurgence Lockbox is coming back and you can kind of follow the lockbox order that PC got and you should kind of know what's going on with that.
--- skipped part on the stream giveaways---

Andy: So, we are out of time. I hope we answered a lot of the questions and if we didn't, let me know and I'll just like...

Thomas: Maybe we'll do it again, and again I'll be on the forums. Yeah, there are lots and lots of questions, I tried printing out all the cool ones and some of the hard ones, to either if I didn't know the answer, I could get the answer for you guys... because the whole team's actually behind this, it's not just me. But.. keep on playing. Thanks and I'll see you out there.

Andy: This is your first live stream, so I actually end it in this, in a way that they're all used to.

Thomas: Like rochambo?

Andy: No! I have a saying...

Thomas: Alright.

Andy: And I didn't do it once and they all got mad at me.

Thomas: Do the saying man, invoke!

Andy: So, I am a huge Spider-man fan, and Uncle Ben says something to, you know, Peter Parker, "With great power comes great responsibility." So, I made it D&D and I said, "With great rolls comes great responsibility."

Thomas: Nice.

Andy: And, we can roll again?

Thomas: You ready to do it again?

Andy: Yeah, yeah *rolls a D20*

Thomas: *shakes a D20* Dude, you shouldn't... I'm not even going to look at that...

Andy: Can I reroll that....

Thomas: Say it again...

Andy: I'm just going to reroll that...

Thomas: *rolls a D20* Twelve!

Andy: *re-rolls the D20* Geeze I got the same number!

Thomas: TWO! *laughs historically*

Andy: I got a two! Anyways... you won...

Thomas: *continues laughing*

Andy: So, yeah, if you have any more questions... post them on the forums and I'll, I'll promise...

Thomas: *still laughing* Are you, are you a cleric? Are you a cleric?

Andy: I am...

Thomas: *chuckling* You should be a cleric.

Andy: I'm a paladin!

Thomas: *still chuckling* Have you considered... oh....

Andy: Yeah... cool... thanks guys!

*stream ends*

zebular · September 2016

Feel free to comment, discuss, and give feedback here! Safe travels!

vinceent1 · September 2016

dear mr. Foss -

i am glad you dont avoid pvp topics like manys before you. I know you are kind of newcomer and you still collecting knowledge, but i am sure many others will support what i try to explain you now.

your pvp ultimate goal is class balance and then start from there. I am sure you should rethink this and be more flexible with your pvp view. Class balance is far from perfect, but pvp in this game is a lot more about items and not so much about classes. If you figure it out and the fact that cryptic is already doing class balance for a long time and it will still takes ages to finish, you should follow more flexible way to make better pvp experience. You already know that solo que was great success, now try to imagine Zen sells when you announce permanent solo que option. Priority should be increase numbers playing pvp, give them better rewards, give them solo que permanent and premade lobby que permanent. Pvp population increase in numbers again and will be ready for final class balance and new NCL, instead of nowadays slowly dieing, boring trading nodes and premades stomping pugs. I strongly recommend this priorities swap. Feel free to que for domination at your lunchtime and experience it for yourselves. thanks

ironzerg79 · September 2016

Wow, nice work, @zebular!

kormantor · September 2016

Zebular, thx

!

lindess · September 2016

Oh, thanks a lot!

rafaelda · September 2016

Really nice @zebular, was a lot easyer to (skip work wille) reading than seeing the video XD

ravenskya · September 2016

Thanks @zebular !

rifter1969 · September 2016

Thanks zeb for the hard work put into the transcript.

It was worth the wait to read over some of the topics

mightyeriksson · September 2016

I'm kinda curious about this part about Coalescent Wards:

"We're talking about revamping the rewards tables for the Invocation, cause right there are the Coal Wards in there and actually when we did the Invocation Revamp, we tripled the drop rate on those. You know, it's still tiny, it's still rare, but we did triple it."

Are you able to get a Coalescent Ward from the Celestial Bag of Refining, or is he talking about the Celestial coffers from Vault of Piety?

kreatyve · September 2016

mightyeriksson said:
I'm kinda curious about this part about Coalescent Wards:

"We're talking about revamping the rewards tables for the Invocation, cause right there are the Coal Wards in there and actually when we did the Invocation Revamp, we tripled the drop rate on those. You know, it's still tiny, it's still rare, but we did triple it."

Are you able to get a Coalescent Ward from the Celestial Bag of Refining, or is he talking about the Celestial coffers from Vault of Piety?

I'm pretty sure he's just talking about the coffers.

zebular · September 2016

mightyeriksson said:
I'm kinda curious about this part about Coalescent Wards:

"We're talking about revamping the rewards tables for the Invocation, cause right there are the Coal Wards in there and actually when we did the Invocation Revamp, we tripled the drop rate on those. You know, it's still tiny, it's still rare, but we did triple it."

Are you able to get a Coalescent Ward from the Celestial Bag of Refining, or is he talking about the Celestial coffers from Vault of Piety?

kreatyve said:

mightyeriksson said:
I'm kinda curious about this part about Coalescent Wards:

"We're talking about revamping the rewards tables for the Invocation, cause right there are the Coal Wards in there and actually when we did the Invocation Revamp, we tripled the drop rate on those. You know, it's still tiny, it's still rare, but we did triple it."

Are you able to get a Coalescent Ward from the Celestial Bag of Refining, or is he talking about the Celestial coffers from Vault of Piety?
I'm pretty sure he's just talking about the coffers.

Aye, from watching that part over and over while translating it, I am quite sure he's talking about the drop rate of them in the Coffer. They do not drop from any other Celestial Reward but the three Coffer Choices that cost 11 Celestial Coins.

beckylunatic · September 2016

Coffers. When they revamped invoking from the 2-hour cycle to the 4-hour cycle, they also changed the coffers. The transparent change was increasing the price when they added the ability to get 2 celestial coin per day, but they also did a behind-the-scenes change on drop rates.