The balance changes related to cooldowns have been made as the first steps towards the PvP balance we're working on for 1.0.0 as well as upcoming new Trap skills for 0.11.6. Please note that the below patch notes could change by the time the patch is ready.
Version 0.11.5
Notes:
- Cooldowns have been changed significantly in this patch. This may affect your character if you're using multiple copies of the same skill gem. Please read the specific details in the balance section of the patch notes below.
Features:
- You can now access the microtransaction store in-game by pressing M. It appears to the right of the microtransaction stash if you don't have your inventory open.
- Added a consumable microtransaction - Skin Transfer: You select two items and it transfers the visual appearance of the first one onto the second. The first item is destroyed, but can later by recovered using the "Reclaim" button in the microtransaction stash. Note that items with modified skins cannot be traded until the skin is removed.
- Shadow rendering has been improved. The shadowing options are now "None", "Low" and "High". Shadows are now faster to render and we've fixed the light bleeding and halos that could be seen around shadows in some areas.
Content:
- Added a new Strength support gem - Empower: This is a world-drop-only gem with three levels that only does anything at level two and above.
- Added five new Unique items, four of which are Diamond Uniques. One is a Unique map.
- Added two new cosmetic microtransaction effects: Infernal Weapon Effect and Infernal Skull Anger Aura Effect.
- A new summoner Sea Witch boss has been added to the Upper Submerged Passage.
- Added 3D art for Bronn's Lithe, Death's Oath, Ashrend, Foxshade, The Covenant and Demigod's Stride.
- Added 3D art for the alternate art items of Shavronne's Pace, Rainbowstride, Windscream, Sundance and Sin Trek.
- Jeweller's Orbs and Orbs of Fusing now describe that they consume quality when used.
- Tiki Totems now have their death effect - they splinter upon death or expiry.
- Continued to incrementally improve the sound, art, effects and environments.
Balance:
- Skills now start fully cooled down upon entering an area. For example, when you enter an area, your traps are immediately ready to use.
- Different instances of the same skill now share the same cooldown, except in the case that the cooldown is overridden by a support (for example, the Trap support). Note that this means that skills supported by the Trap support gem cannot be bypassed by charges when they normally would be able to be.
- Cooldowns persist and will elapse even when the skill gems are unequipped.
- Using flasks now breaks the grace period of invulnerability you gain upon entering an area.
- In Maps, the Vaal Fallen now appear in separate packs from Necromancers, fighting alongside other Vaal constructions.
- Bear Trap's damage has been increased at lower levels and reduced at higher levels. It has been increased by 15% at level one and reduced by 20% at level 15.
- The number of charges produced by Enduring Cry has been increased at all levels.
- Dual wielding action distances have been changed. You now close to the shortest range of both weapons, so you can be guaranteed to hit with both weapons. Cyclone uses the larger of the weapon ranges for its area of effect.
- Quality on the Trap support gem now offers faster trap throwing instead of trap duration.
- Fire Trap's on-hit damage has been reduced at high levels (20% at Level 15). The damage of Fire Trap's burning ground has been increased by 50%.
- Clarity levels after 20 have had their mana cost progressions corrected. Each level over 20 costs 20 more mana per level, instead of 40.
- The cooldown times of traps (except for Conversion trap and the Trap support gem) have been lowered to four seconds.
- Spawn, Bandit and Insect suicide explosions now do appropriate damage at lower levels. This currently only matters in the Endless Ledge.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where Lightning Warp was not affected by Increased Duration.
- Fixed a bug introduced in 0.11.4 where Zombies were given substantially more life than intended.
- If you get disconnected from the patching server the client will now error out rather than only downloading a partial patch.
- Fixed a bug where items forced to be dropped in Cutthroat could appear disabled.
- The Goddess Scorned recipe has been changed so that a Goddess Scorned can't be used as the elegant sword for getting a Goddess Scorned.
- "You have been muted" messages now show hours, minutes and seconds muted.
- Fixed a bug where the Searing Bond sound played after the beam had gone.
- Fixed a bug where the Death's Oath aura did not work correctly in PVP after the first round.
- Fixed a case where Hillock could lose his sword.
Last edited by Chris on Sep 3, 2013, 12:27:23 AM
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Posted byChrison Sep 2, 2013, 11:47:25 PMGrinding Gear Games
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e: also, please go into more detail regarding Skin Transfer. It sounds like a one-use consumable, and people really didn't like those when they were first presented (albeit later changed).
What would you like to know about it? If the description there isn't clear I'll definitely improve it.
The consumable microtransaction idea that we presented in January was that users had to pay to remove effects from items. That was scrapped and we instead went with expensive permanent effects. Since then we've received masses of feedback that we should try some really cheap consumable ones, which is where Skin Transfer steps in.
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Posted byChrison Sep 2, 2013, 11:59:26 PMGrinding Gear Games
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what happen if I use skin change my hammer to bow or wand something
do ground slam and heavy strike work as well even for bow/wand/sword skin something?
You can only change hammers to look liker hammers or wands to look like wands, etc. It doesn't affect skills.
As a side note, alternate art race rewards look awesome when applied to your items :D
(Note that you can't trade items with skins, so that this isn't pay to win. Gotta remove the skin first).
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Posted byChrison Sep 3, 2013, 12:05:40 AMGrinding Gear Games
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Might I suggest the Guild Wars 2 approach?
This is a really clear interface - you click on the traits you want to keep (in order: appearance, stats, sigil [ignore this one]) and then click the transmute button. Right clicking will probably cause people to mistakenly apply the wrong appearance/stats to the wrong item.
Thanks for linking that - we actually checked it out in the design of this. We do have a prompt that pops up to explain which one is which (the visual identity vs the stats) but it's not as pretty as the GW2 one. I'd like to improve this in the future if we get time/budget.
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Posted byChrison Sep 3, 2013, 12:21:39 AMGrinding Gear Games
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after reclaime the skin transfer, do i get the effect back so i can you it on another item?
nice patch, like it very much
You get the original item back so that you can put it on something else. But the cheap "Skin Transfer" consumable is used up.
So for example, if I want to put my pretty sword effect on some sword with good stats, then later move it to my super new sword with good stats, that's no problem, but it'd use up two of the consumable microtransaction.
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Posted byChrison Sep 3, 2013, 12:26:40 AMGrinding Gear Games
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Edit: Will the skin transfer work on uniques, and if so, will it work both ways? Also, will the demigod wreath and boots skins be transferable to other helms/boots (since they have no standard item equivalents)? For that matter, can any [base item type] be transferred to any other [base item type], or is transferring restricted to indentical base subtypes?
It works on uniques, and I believe it goes both ways. (This means that in PvP we may have to have a way to disable microtransactions so you aren't confused by what you see). You can transfer skins of Demigod items, but the glowy effects/footprints don't go with them. I believe any item from one base type can be transferred to another of that type (helmet, sword, etc).
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Posted byChrison Sep 3, 2013, 12:40:33 AMGrinding Gear Games
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I don't like skin transfer working on uniques at all btw. I think it makes the items less unique when their art is gonna get plastered on everything.
you still need to have the item you are copying from, and it "destroys" the item while is imprinted so meaning someone cant use their awesome unique while their rare is impersonating its looks so there arent actually any extras of the uniques floating around.
I dunno about you but that seems a fair trade off.
This is our plan, yep.
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Posted byChrison Sep 3, 2013, 12:52:03 AMGrinding Gear Games
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Chris, I am curious about the new unique map. Is the new unique map going to be in the lvl 60s range or in the lvl 70s range? I understand if you do not want to disclose it, but I am kinda curious. :P
I can't comment on it because part of the fun of being a Diamond/Eternal supporter is being able to leak that info yourself or watch people speculate as they look for it :)
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Posted byChrison Sep 3, 2013, 12:55:27 AMGrinding Gear Games
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Before, it was explained that having multiples of a trap in order to rotate cooldowns was working as intended, because you're increasing uptime while reducing the number of supports you can use. What changed?
I remember it as being a bug (or at least, unintended feature) that is now fixed, but my memory could be wrong. It wasn't planned to work like that, at the very least.
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Also, you should look into eventually altering the way the Skin Transfer works. If I'm understanding it correctly, both items need to be in the same league, which is a massive waste considering that all the unique race rewards are in the least populated league. Most HC players will be in the ladder leagues with no access to the alternate art items, and most Standard players won't want to devalue the uniques they got from races. Make it so that the item is "absorbed" and put into the microtransaction stash itself as a skin, just like the Eternal "absorbs" the backup of its item. "Reclaim" would then destroy the microtransaction itself and return the item to its home league in a remove-only tab.
I'd really like to solve this also, but it'll take some effort that we don't have time for before Release, unfortunately.
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Chris, you clarified that you will not be able to change a weapons appearance to that of another base item class, so no hammers that look like swords.(which is a great thing) Hopefully that also applies to other equipment slots? Im a huge supporter of character appearance customization, but hope that we wont be able to make a pure es chest look like platemail.
I believe the armour types are cross-compatible. There's a lot of internal discussion about the merits of this.
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Posted byChrison Sep 3, 2013, 1:20:26 AMGrinding Gear Games
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The interest in this game is slowy dissipating. My friendlist of 50 is empty. Top players in the new Leagues has already given up, because the game is so unrewarding and progress is non-existant past level 90 and without the use of eternal/exalted orbs.
Thanks for the feedback. You should check out the game when it's released (later this year), because there are piles of changes that we're making in 1.0.0 that we're not yet ready to introduce into the 0.11.x series of patches.
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Posted byChrison Sep 3, 2013, 1:23:52 AMGrinding Gear Games
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