This Week’s Podcast – Skill Trees and the v1.53 Patch

Spiff and I have been working on a v1.53 patch with various bug fixes and balance tweaks, and I’ll make a full post about that update here when it’s ready to go. In the meantime this week’s podcast features discussion on the communities’ reaction to the skill trees, the first round of changes that we’re working on, and a talk with Spiff about what new features are in the pipeline. Also, this weekend’s Halloween event!

[mp3-jplayer tracks=”Ep11 (10/26/11) – Reaction to the Skill Trees + Future Development@NEStalgiaPodcastEp11.mp3″]

You can find this podcast and others on the NEStalgia Podcasts page and also on iTunes.


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11 responses to “This Week’s Podcast – Skill Trees and the v1.53 Patch”

  1. puppetshowjustice Avatar
    puppetshowjustice

    If you want someone to bounce ideas back and forth with related to the Halloween event let me know. We can Skype or something. It’s my favorite holiday ever and I was sitting here like “Man. I want to make a Halloween event.” Obviously I can’t. But I do think it’d be fun to be a part of the idea / theme / location blender.

    Unless you’ve figured something more concrete out between the recording of said podcast and now.

  2. TalZahn Avatar

    I understand the nerf on Merchants and Warlocks perfectly; i think on my merchant, i was dealing SO much damage i didn’t know what to do with it in certain builds. It was like “I don’t actually need all this strength!”

    That said, I do hope you make some of the merchants other skills more viable, because sadly, the costs of Tax and Goldrush just made them less desirable (Goldrush is the bigger offender though). I mentioned this in one of the topics I think, but figured I’d redo it on here. And if Inspect is going to be doing less with attack and defense, perhaps lower its cost a smidge then? Personally, think it’d be better as either double defense (harden and perhaps self stopspell?) or empower with speed. Heck, speed with harden would be fine too if it weren’t for the fact that it’d basically be a shield spell then.

    For Warlocks, I hope you make their curse tree more usable. Another thing I mentioned on the forums was how since curse only affects the warlock’s damage and random abilities (which only seems to be the element taps), perhaps have it so either the effects help the warlocks party, or make curse a group effect to help the warlock out some. Otherwise, the warlock tree was perfect imo (besides the glitches).

    Looking forward to seeing some of the changes you have in mind; hoping to perhaps find new build paths. 🙂

    Oh and also: HALLOWEEN! 😀

  3. Sonix Avatar
    Sonix

    Out of everything that was mentioned, I feel skeptical about the Unique Names.

    I feel the First Come First Serve thing might easily be abused when it comes out to steal someone’s name and prevent them from using it.

    And I really don’t want to have to struggle with thinking up a name that someone else hasn’t used. ((And I certainly don’t like having to deal with a person that used my name, didn’t do anything, and just leaves the account sitting there preventing others from using it.))

  4. saro Avatar
    saro

    As soon as the unique names are implemented, I’m going to create characters named Silk and Balzack and log them in so they’ll be reserved

  5. d3adm0nk3y Avatar
    d3adm0nk3y

    I LIEK DESE PODCASTS, DEY KEWL

    BUT MONKEY SAD SOLDIER NOT KEWL NUFF

    MONKEY SAD MERCHANT GET NERF,

    MONKEY LIEKS MUDKIPS

  6. evilinuyasha Avatar
    evilinuyasha

    Aside from leech, warlocks don’t need a nerf for end game.

    However, I’m sure early game they could use a nerf.

  7. omalley50 Avatar
    omalley50

    I think you are way off with why people are upset with the ranger. I believe its the problem of when they have all the best stuff and are fully decked out to heal they still do not heal well enough to be anything but a secondary healer. At least that is why i currently dislike the ranger.

    Even past that though for the people who make the arguement that they should be a jack-of-all-trades, well I somewhat agree with them. Otherwise, why is the ranger even in the game? It doesn’t really have a roll to play that is unique other than the jack-of-all-trades roll. Yet, I will be happy if I can make my ranger a viable main heal if I focus completely on heal.

  8. acapella Avatar
    acapella

    I like Ranger alot. I’m doing a storm/heal hybrid and was able to main heal Occ -> Malice, though I did have a Red Ranger secondary healing, it was a nice run and I like the class’s tree.

  9. lordrith Avatar
    lordrith

    No melee class should be able to empower themselves. (Except Ranger on the bow tree)

    Personally I think everything is balanced for PvP.

    The only problem I’ve been having is making a PvP build viable for PvE, and Vise Versa.

  10. ec10 Avatar
    ec10

    To the comments about people being upset about the ranger. I think you may have slightly misunderstood. Previously gear was available for a melee–heal hybrid ranger and a storm ranger. While yes some people want a “jack of all trades” so to speak, most people want to specialize in one skill and have an alternate that is pretty good. The heal/melee build allowed this quite well pre patch and the heal/storm spec allows it now. Both of these builds are and were quite viable but the current trees destroy the heal/melee hybrid as you can only either have 18%int and 5% heal or 8%phys or def and a weapon to attack with. While there should be some sacrifices they seem to dramatic to make any good hybrid build other than storm heal. Storm/Melee would also be a cool build too that hasn’t been used much.

  11. buttlebee Avatar
    buttlebee

    I am the Buttlebee.

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