Title: Game Update 52 Post by: shiznitz on June 03, 2009, 11:48:47 AM Only one thing really matters about this update: Research Assistants. While you are offline, they will make your Masters for you. Level 80 Master takes a month of real time and scales down from there. A mont might sound insane but I have been 80 for a year and have less than half my T8 Masters. Only two were looted. Only 1 looted by me.
Title: Re: Game Update 52 Post by: Numtini on June 03, 2009, 12:17:35 PM I scanned the boards, but can't seem to find a whole lot of information. Are there significant costs? Quested/dropped items? Or is this really just insert coin and wait a month? I really gave up hope of ever getting my group ward mastered unless my guild built up a warchest and bought it for me, so whatever it is, it's got to be a better chance than I have now.
GPU shadows are a big one too if you have performance issues. Title: Re: Game Update 52 Post by: Sky on June 03, 2009, 04:16:13 PM I basically had no hope of ever getting a Master root, I was looking forward to the RA patch. Of course, the usual suspects showed up to whine about it, but I'm glad it went in.
Title: Re: Game Update 52 Post by: shiznitz on June 08, 2009, 10:24:27 AM I scanned the boards, but can't seem to find a whole lot of information. Are there significant costs? Quested/dropped items? Or is this really just insert coin and wait a month? I really gave up hope of ever getting my group ward mastered unless my guild built up a warchest and bought it for me, so whatever it is, it's got to be a better chance than I have now. GPU shadows are a big one too if you have performance issues. If you commission for a Master, you have to have the Adept 3 of that spell, I believe. I haven't seen any reports from Test about what resources, if any, the player must contribute. Title: Re: Game Update 52 Post by: Hawkbit on June 08, 2009, 12:13:36 PM I like the very last part: no more App1, App2, App3? AZpp 4, Ad1... etc.
Quote Research Assistants (RA) Eighty-some-ugh pages of speculation, adoration, arguing and whining... (that thread is in the Development section here: http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=444889 ) Please keep the rants there! I have been working backwards through the thread to try and find some updated answers as this is going to be here very Soon(tm). Answers below are from Kirstie... Where this is at this time? GU52 will probably hit the test servers on the week of the 18th, and this feature is slated to be part of that. Once it goes to the test server we'll be looking for feedback again on the specifics of the implementation which should be fully spelled out then. How to get it? The research assistants are going to be moving out into the world instead of staying in people's homes. You'll find them in many of the places where you would have previously bought App II's. There is also a good chance that we'll be adding a research assistant as a guild hall amenity either in 52 or future update. What if I get the spell as a drop before the RA is done? As it is implemented now, if you change what the researcher is working on you'll be refunded one third of the days he's been working on the spell. So if he's been working 10 days on a spell you'll get 3 days back (it's rounded down) to apply to the next thing you want to research whether he's part way through the research or all finished. How long for a spell? A level 80 upgrade from Adept III to Master I is set to take about 30 real life days to complete. Even if we don't get a full 30 days on test, there are a lot of other levels of upgrades I'm hoping people will try on test to help us make sure its working correctly (range is 1 to 30 days). The time spent researching a spell is based on the spell level, not the player level. What are the requirements to get a spell? There were a few changes made between my initial post and now. The primary one is that we removed the tradeskilled versions of spells and combat arts from the progression of the research assistants. This means that in order to use the research assistant you will have to have scribed one of the tradeskilled versions (APP IV or Adept III) of the spell/ca you want to research. How many can you get? Each account can have one character working with the research system at a time. The only exception is if you have characters on separate servers. Antonia Bayle researchers don't talk to Sebilis researchers so one account could have one character on each server researching. Right now there is no limit on how many you can get other than the time investment. Getting all the spell upgrades for a full account of characters would take a long time. What is the cost per spell? The only cost associated with the RA is acquiring the previous tier of the spell (Journeyman or Expert) and the time required by the Research Assistant to finish your upgrade. One other thing alluded to was the veteran rewards system. Currently you only acquire time towards your veteran rewards while you have an active subscription. In the past it has had some problems, but the RAs are using the same logic to find out how far you are in researching your spell as we use in determining veteran reward time. In the process of implementing the RAs we've cleaned up some of the bugs that system had. Does this mean we can upgrade “masters” to “grand master”? Nope. The Master II system is not being touched right now. You'll get Master II's or "Grand Masters" as they will soon be called the same way as you did previously. Another tidbit: The spell system will be changing to: App I -> Apprentice (Level gift) App IV -> Journeyman (Handcrafted) Adept I -> Adapt (Drop) Adapt III -> Expert (Mastercrafted) Master I -> Master (Exquisite drop) Master II -> Grand Master (Training Choice) Title: Re: Game Update 52 Post by: Numtini on June 19, 2009, 01:29:40 PM The research assistant thing couldn't be easier. Bolster is still 220PP on the broker though, so I think the predictions that the master spell market have crashed are a little premature.
I gained a lot better shadows and about 10fps from moving them to hardware. (And upgraded my PC the following day adding 30 more FPS) Most of all though, as a level 80 who's way behind on AA (I've been 80 for ages and have 154) the change in XP->AAXP at 80 is enormous. The daily shard quest went from 3% to 5% to me and running the daily double last night got me over 20% of an AA about half that from killing mobs. Previously it would probably have been 6% or so--3 for each of the two quests. Right now I'm pretty much fully spec'd until I get to 170 and have very minimal returns until I hit the 170 minimum for the Mystic shadow line. Oh yeah, as far as I can tell the world hasn't stopped because of the proc thing. I still haven't made it to Kurn's yet. I can't quite figure out. Is there a basic access quest or do you need to grind Bury faction first? Either way, I could care less. Just the non-content parts of the GU were worth it to me. The rest is just frosting on top. Title: Re: Game Update 52 Post by: RhyssaFireheart on June 21, 2009, 10:42:59 AM Yeah, the upped XP=>AA gain is incredible and almost too fast now. Talking with some guildmates as they helped me finish an old green HQ up in KoS and the two of us completing the HQ got over 15% of an AA level for turn-in. Even at level 80 that was crazy. We came to the conclusion that the XP=>AA gain is probably going to end up tweaked somewhere down the line. Otherwise, if it remains that fast across all levels, wouldn't there be a problem of people maxing out AA long before they're 80? Keep the AA gain for mob kills, but lower it slightly for quest and HQ turn-ins might be logical.
Title: Re: Game Update 52 Post by: Numtini on June 21, 2009, 11:34:36 AM The AAXP gains are only for level 80, so they won't affect anyone before that.
Title: Re: Game Update 52 Post by: RhyssaFireheart on June 22, 2009, 04:13:09 PM Ah, we missed that. Well, if it's just for level 80s to help them reach 200AA, then that's fine. I'm still only at 152AA and it'll take me forever to max out, even with the increased gain.
|