Camelot Grab Bag Q&A

In this week’s Grab Bag Q&A for Dark Age of Camelot, EA Mythic’s Sanya Thomas answers questions about the upcoming archery changes, switching servers in your cluster, and more.

Q: (Insert archery question here.)

A: I know some of you don’t follow the boards, so let me catch you up to date. We try to share (coming soon) data with players that attend our real life gatherings. At the most recent one in New York, we posted this picture (go ahead, mouseover it and enlarge it so you can see the text): http://www.darkageofcamelot.com/roadtrip/2007/images/DAoC_NYC01.jpg

The archery revamp notes got a certain amount of attention on the message boards, and raised questions. Some of those questions raised questions. I cannot answer all of the (perfectly valid) questions and concerns tonight, however. The revamp has been broadly designed, yes, but we do not yet have any code completed for that design. Until there is code, we cannot test it, and until we test it, we cannot get user feedback, and without user feedback, we cannot go live.

But I am going to try to answer some of the more basic concerns here, based on a conversation I had with the live team producer and the lead designers.

Let me get two things out of the way now.

Item: We are planning to change the steps it takes to fire an arrow from three clicks to one click. This does remove the functionality whereby you could nock an arrow, and hold on the release to hit targets from maximum range. We are doing this because we desperately need to lower the barrier to archery faced by new and casual players, and because streamlining our interface in general is necessary to bring the game to modern standards.

Item: We are planning to remove the elevation bonus. We put this bonus in, back in oh, early 2001, because we wanted archery to have certain experiences you might find in real life. ((Agincourt, boy, Agincourt!)) However, in practice, it means an archer can hit targets that are way, way, way out of clipping range. It’s just not a good thing anymore.

Now, the benefits to the revamp probably need to be played to be appreciated. But let me try to explain some of them.

– We are introducing a much greater variety of arrow types to the game, and they will be automatic no need to haul a pile of multiple arrow types around in your packs. Many of these arrows will have nifty graphical effects.

– What will happen to artifacts that summon arrows? That should be settled and in the patch notes when the other changes happen. I don’t know the details, other than the discussion is afoot.

– What will happen to fletching? The Trade Goddess has all kinds of stuff she’s considering, and she would like fletchers to know that she is open to suggestions. Three things among others that she is considering craftable tents, recipes for tradeskill tools currently only available through quests, and a new type of tradeskill tool for example, a tool that would minimize the percentage chance of failing an overcharge.

– The new system will be much easier to use. Even specials such as volley will be easier to use. As a result, archers will be more effective, overall.

– We want (50 spec) to mean something. In the new system, someone with 50 spec will consistently outperform someone with a 35 spec.

– Across the board, we are looking to see less variance in damage amounts, and damage in general to be more reliable. Once you figure out which types of shots are more effective versus specific targets, archers will find their results are more predictable (as opposed to the guessing game of current archery.)

One of the most important changes won’t even be visible to you, but I hope I can explain how tremendous the impact will be. Right now, for us to make the tiniest of changes to how much damage a particular arrow does, or to make the most minor of changes to bow performance, we have to make changes to the code. That’s right, the entire system is hard coded. Compare this with, say, spells, where if we want to change how long an effect lasts we just pop into a spreadsheet and change a setting. The new archery system changes all that. After the revamp is done, if we need to make a change due to player feedback, it’ll be a simple matter for the Redhead to flip open a spreadsheet and make it happen.

The extent of the behind-the-scenes changes is why you have not seen a single archery patch note yet, despite our best hopes. Another behind-the-scenes project requiring our programmers has just run a little longer than we had hoped.

I hope to see everyone on Pendragon, bows in hand, when the first changes are made to that server. And I will also do more archery questions once we’re in testing, but for now, what I’ve given you is all I’ve got.