Posted by Rekhan
LavaLama: What can we expect after the first Adventure Pack? Will there be a new Super Power Patch?
Saikyo-RyuHatman: What’s next on the “passes” after Supernatural / Melee?
A: poz: The update after the first Adventure Pack (Serpent Lantern) will include another power review. We haven’t decided which set or mechanism we’re going to work on yet. Force and Electricity are near the top, but we’re waiting to see how the Endurance Builder changes affect them first. Threat and pets are also pretty high on the list. Once we’re clear of the endurance builder stuff, we’ll figure out what’s next.
Khristen: What are your upcoming / current plans for non-combat aspects of the game, including more support for role-players and supergroups? Essentially, is there anything coming to give us more to do to interact with others that isn’t combat related?
Silverspar: When can we expect new emotes and those that aren’t fully Star Trek related to be ported over to Champions for player user?
A: poz: There are some supergroup features which are coming down the pipe (too early for an ETA) including an event calendar and a search/recruitment tool. Also, there are also more emotes on the way.
DigitalShaman: Improved teaming has been acknowledged as something the game is in serious need of. What is going to be done about ensuring not only ensuring future content is more team friendly, but ensuring the game’s other material is updated also?
A: poz: The new team tab in the mission journal debuted in the Super Power Pack Update. It works wonders in keeping your team together. In addition, all new instanced content we make will scale to the team size. (Adventure Packs, of course, scale to your level as well.)
The Serpent Lantern Update is scheduled to have the difficulty slider in it. This can be used to make missions more challenging, which some teams are looking for. Upping the difficulty will also increase the rewards. In addition, the bonuses we give based on team size will be increased in this update.
Over time, we will revisit older content and put more scaling in. We will also be revisiting lairs and fixing some of the big bosses there too.
Maekada: The one thing I want in this game soon, above all else, is Supergroup bases. I know it has been stated that they do not intend to make them any time soon, and I would like to know why this is, when it is something that players want dearly.
A: poz: I’m sorry to say that we don’t have the time or resources to get Supergroup bases in properly right now. We’re focusing on the Adventure Packs, quality of life features, and bugs for the time being.
Dardove: Can we get any more details about the difficulty slider? What sort of rewards will running a mission on a higher difficulty earn you?
A: Arkayne: The difficulty slider is still in testing so this information may change. The difficulty slider is set on an individual or team basis and increases the level of enemies in any instanced mission based on the difficulty increase. The tougher enemies in turn drop better quality gear drops.
Dardove: Any chance that Andrith and Mandragalore will get touched up so there is some incentive to run them for Unity’s Most Wanted instead of NemCon?
A: poz: Yes. We plan on doing a review of these, but it hasn’t been formally scheduled yet.
Niniva: Is an expansion for the Nemesis System in the works, or otherwise planned anytime soon?
A: poz: We have several ideas for expanding the Nemesis system, but haven’t yet decided on exactly what we’re going to do. Sorry that I don’t have anything more concrete than that.
Crosschan: Is this entire thread just a means by which to get tons of questions so that those which best match predetermined answers in line with State of The Game information can be cherry picked while the harder questions are intentionally overlooked?
A: Stormshade: Nope, I actually read every single question. I try to pick questions that are very popular, and that we haven’t answered before on the forums. I also leave some wiggle room for really outstanding questions, and then we answer as many as we can. I know it can be hard to believe, but the only agenda here is to let you guys ask questions, and have the devs answer them.
A: poz: No.
gardengnome: Why do game breaking bugs that hinder the enjoyment of other players, such as the energy pistols which proc endless stun, take so long to fix?
A: poz: The things we work on first are those things we and players as a group consider absolute top priority. We don’t have an infinite number of developers, so some things end up waiting a bit. Also, when we work on one top item, there may be other related and interconnected problems which we’ll look at and modify and fix as well. This means that it takes a little bit longer for other things further down the list to get done, but in the longer term is much more efficient.
There are occasions where we don’t know the problem is as big as it is. We look at bugs and the forums all the time, but it’s happened that some completely broken things sit around because not a lot of people use them or they are stoic and don’t complain. So, they drift down the critical list.
A: Arkayne: MMORPGs have a lot of moving parts, many of them interconnected. Making a change in a single power may have repurcussions on many other systems, so any change has to be unit-tested, then put into a product build, then QA-tested, then pushed to the Public Test Server for user testing, then pushed back to the dev team for any further iteration. This can take a bit of time.
Wilhelm Scream: With all due respect, why is grinding the number one reward-yielder in game? Between 5K kill perks, travel crafting, nemesis and UNITY point collections, and especially Vibora drops, why is it that tedious activity is rewarded?
A: poz: In the abstract, because some people enjoy doing that kind of thing. Some players like to have some crazy goals, even if they are waaaay out there. The top-end perks and other long-term “grindy” things are for people who want those kinds of targets. By and large, we only put cosmetic/prestige things out there (though we have made mistakes). One man’s tedious grind is another man’s relaxing rinse-and-repeat.
In regards to the Vibora drops: Now that there has been some time with the BoE changes live, we were able to crunch some more numbers. We are planning on doubling the drop rate of the costume pieces that many covet. This will be up on PTS soon.
Chaytel: Between the ‘Rocket Punch’ attack that some Destroids use, and the EVE-01 and G-Mech Action figures, somebody in the Dev team is a big fan of Japanese Super Robot anime. Who is it, and have they slipped any other references in I may have missed?
A: poz: That’s a group effort… who DOESN’T like giant robots?! I don’t know of any Easter eggs offhand, but there are likely a lot of references out there. Here’s a shot from our lead animator’s office of some of the bazillion robots he has:
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