HoC Chat - May 16th.

[Maevenniia]

Personally, I think AAs should be introduced to further eliminate fizzles, all teh way to current level caps - and let ALL classes that can cast a spell buy them. I see no reason why priests and hybrids should not also have the same opportunity to eliminate fizzles.

And yes, fizzle rates did go up for level 71-75, because the spell casting skill and specialization caps went up...Im hoping once my skills are all maxxed again, that my fizzle rates will go back down.

[Bobaten]

The jump in fizzle rates at 71 was only true for characters that dinged 71 right away. My mage was 67 when TSS came out, by the time she hit 71 she had skilled up her casting skills to the new cap, and saw no real differences in fizzles.

[KyrosKrane]

<Maddoc> [wed May 16 13:34:02 2007] Casts: 18294 Fizzles: 507 Failures: 2.7714% is an example from some of the data that I've been running just this morning.

This is 1/3 more than the expected 2% fizzle rate and he says that he doesn't plan on changing this. Thanks for "fixing" one of the rare bugs that works in the players favor, AND doing it so that you have made it worse than intended and calling this acceptable.

That was actually one of the preliminary results. Maddoc continued testing and got further, much more extensive results. I believe the results were indeed a little off from the predicted, since Maddoc posted he's going to be looking at whether it needs adjustment. (I forget the specifics, as I was only paying half-attention to that thread. Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)

As to bards specifically, the devs have already posted they're re-evaluating how fizzle and /melody work for them, and they're definitely going to make some changes. They just haven't said what the changes are yet.

[Gaell Stormracer]

And yes, fizzle rates did go up for level 71-75, because the spell casting skill and specialization caps went up...

This wasn't on casting level 71+ spells, this was casting spells I'd been casting perfectly well for over a year... and it wasn't immediately with the TSS launch either, it was well over a month later.

In other words, it changed things that should not have been affected -- yet another case where the dev team didn't understand the effects of their changes.

[olhoss]

Don't get me wrong, I have no issue with an occasional fizzle...this hasn't really affected me all that much as far as my day to day play. My issue is that there are a lot more important things that could have been looked at and fixed before they fixed something that was allowing the players an advantage. Even now, they fixed it and are having to look at how this will affect bards. Wouldn't QA on this issue have dictated that the consequences of the change be looked at BEFORE something went live?

Even if it is something as simple as asking "I know this is a fix but it works against the players...with the shrinking player base would it be better to wait on this before putting in the fix? Or coming up with alternatives like extending the AA to reach higher spell levels so there is at least a trade off?"

[Gaell Stormracer]

Personally, I think it would have been better to say something like: "We found the cause of a long-standing bug, and we need to fix it so we can prepare the groundwork for some other things - this is going to have an adverse effect on some of you, but it needs to be done. It's on Test/Beta now, so copy yourself over, check it out, and come tell us how best to deal with this" -- then work on stuff like tweaks to melody, higher level versions of MotP etc - and then put it all live as one bundle. Sure, there might still be bugs with that, but engaging the community would have defused a lot of the hysterics.

(I mean, after all, unlike the stuff that Ngreth has to deal with, like tweaking recipes while avoiding hoarding etc type issues, that sort of gameplay bug can't be exploited simply by giving warning of its' removal -- especially since that was a bug that had become so widely known in the Bard / robed caster communities that it was assumed to be permanent).

The Dev team are doing a pretty good job of keeping their temper and working on ways of alleviating the problems though, for which I give them a lot of credit...

[Wyvernwill]

Tell them how to deal with it, eh?

There was no reason for a test/beta fix of this to "test the waters". The bard side is unfortunate and being looked at. As for casters, they have had an unfair advantage over other spell casters for years.

Afterall "Mastery of the Past" does not mean "Mastery over casting your current spells and spells that don't even exist yet". I am really getting sick of casters complaining repeatedly over something that was a known bug. It should have been fixed years ago. Anyone who has decent reading comprehension could tell that something was wrong with the AA not allowing you to fizzle anything at all when it openly states the level caps per part of the AA.

I've got no problems with them eventually removing fizzles, or whatever. The fact of the matter is that it was a bug and needed to be fixed. The only class I have sympathy for is bards, but that's due to the nature of their class.

[Gaell Stormracer]

Apparently higher levels of MotP are indeed on test, and take the non-fizzle limit up to 70, AND make them available to anyone with a Mana bar. While that still won't satisfy some people, I think there'll be much rejoicing from the Priests and the other Hybrids who didn't have such an AA...

[Maevenniia]

Clsong thread, derailed off the tradeskill topics, feel free to start another thread to discuss any tradeskill HoC chat topics.

ps - yes, I am just as guilty of derailing the thread...should have known better, lol.