[AC] Weekly Update 2/12/07 - Colosseum !!!

[Ziv]

[turbine]

http://forums.ac.turbinegames.com/showt ... hp?t=33088

Hello there and welcome to the February 12th edition of the weekly update. Let’s get into some of the things going on this week.

In the interest of keeping everyone informed of what is going on, I wanted to give an update on the unexpected downtime last week. After some investigating it appears there was a problem with something on our network where the servers are housed. It does not appear to be anything major, but our Ops team is going to be watching things closely, to be sure. We hope the downtime did not cause too many issues for anyone.

Now on to the good stuff.

This week we are going to focus on something coming in February, The Colosseum.
This is pretty much what it sounds like. The Colosseum is a dungeon of sorts with repeatable content. The premise is very simple. Players will enter the Colusseum and fight their way through increasingly difficult stages.

Players of any level will be able to participate, but The Colusseum is geared towards fellowships. In order to go through, you must be part of a fellowship. When players enter, they will be in a staging area which will be used by everyone. This is a great place to get your fellowships together, or to find a group to tag along with. Once in a fellowship, one person will need to purchase a ticket at a reasonable cost from a nearby NPC. That person will then give the ticket to the starter NPC who will lock the fellowship and let them know they can enter The Colosseum.

In the interest of full disclosure I will say the initial download time upon entering is a bit longer than most places. The drop is not hot so players are safe upon entrance and should only have to go through this download once. Once you hand in your ticket, your fellowship will have 1 hour to finish the Arena from the time that they start. After this time is up they will all be teleported out of the arena and will be able to speak to the NPC to get their reward. The rewards will depend on how far the fellowship has made it in The Colosseum. If you die in the arena you will be able to re-enter through the first door and then go through all the doors that you have passed through, they will remain open and the creatures will remain dead in previous stages as long as you are within the 1 hour time limit allotted to your fellowship. If this time is up and you still have a corpse in one of the rooms, the normal corpse timer applies. This means that you may need to get some help to run back through for recoveries. Or you may want to prepare ahead of time so that corpse loss will not be an issue.

There will be 5 branches of The Colosseum so 5 fellowships full of players may do The Colosseum every hour. Once a fellowship is inside a branch of The Colosseum, that branch is locked from letting other players in. In the coming months we have plans to further update The Colosseum with things such as Boss fights, which can be unlocked by completing various stages in The Colosseum.



There will be an Authentication downtime on Tuesday February 13th from 7am EST - 12pm EST. During this time, players will not be able to log in to the game.


Last but not least, the February event, Rekindling the Light is still tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, February 20th.



That's about it for this week. Everyone have a great day and see you all in Dereth!
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Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc

[Ziv]

LOL - nette Idee mit der Arena


Colosseum ???
<a href="http://www.icelords.com/images/00000010198-1.jpg">
</a>

[Ziv]

More Infos from Frelorn:

Is there a timer on repeating this?

No. You can run through as many times as you and your fellowship desire.

Are there level ranges or is it anyone can participate in the sense that there is no level req on the portal? Is it hard right away or setup in a way that "anyone" can do the first few rooms as they get harder and harder and get an appropriate reward for doing what they did?

anyone can participate, as there are no level requirements on the entrance portal. The xp rewards are proportional based on level.

Are the rooms full of terrain and objects, or just empty rooms?

You will have to wait and see.

In testing has it been cleared? Is there a defined end or will everyone be playing there for exactly 60 minutes.

There is a defined end, but no matter how far you have made it, you will be portaled out after 60 minutes. If you want to leave before the 60 minutes is up, you can, but you must wait for the 60 minutes to expire before collecting your reward.

Is it 60 minutes so that we are forced to
-buff aug
-fellowship buff somewhere after the first 10 mins
-rebuff before the end?

With some planning these should not be too much of an issue.

Can one person or the whole fellow bail after a certain amount of rooms and get something?

Yes. However that person will still need to wait for the 60 minutes to expire to collect their reward.

[Ziv]

Frelorn:

About this, if i go in with a high level fellow when i first go in will i be fighting bunny's and then drudges and then at the end we have mukkir and sleeches?

Or since the fellow is higher level we start out with tuskers and move our way up?

Yes, there is a way for those higher level folks to skip the first few levels if they so choose.

Also, is this an instance dungeon in that only one fellow per ticket. So only 5 fellows can be going on at once. And if this is true will there be a standard line like a que system?

Unfortunately our current tech will not support a queue system on an NPC right now. /e looks over at Severlin. So for the time being it will be a first come first serve type of thing when the notice goes out that a branch of The Colosseum is coming open.

Will rares not be allowed to be used in here?

A Whole team with a melee D rare and Magic D rare can run through unscathed...

Rares are allowed to be used. Everyone will however have to kill everything in each section before moving on. There will be no running through and skipping some critters in the room just because you feel like it. Everything must be killed before you can access the next section.

The rewards are a big surprise, can you tease us?

I could, but what fun would that be?

[Ziv]

Originally Posted by Sucamarto
So the further you get the higher the reward, does this mean as an example if a level 1 made it to end without dying by tagging along with high level group the reward would be substantial or have I misread this?

The rewards are based on what level you are and how far you made it through. So if a level 1 makes it all the way through with a fellowship they will get a reward based on their level, not on the level of everyone else.
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Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc

[Ziv]

Originally Posted by Frelorn
The rewards are based on what level you are and how far you made it through. So if a level 1 makes it all the way through with a fellowship they will get a reward based on their level, not on the level of everyone else.

Further clearification on this: The "starter" section of the Colosseum, the part that higher level players can elect to skip, gives flat xp no matter the level. This is intended to be rewarding for a lower level character who puts some time into doing this. After that it's pxp.
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Django
AC1 QA Associate

[Ziv]

Originally Posted by Ministry
Frelorn this is great news. I tip my hats to all of you for the idea and making it happen and keeping it hush hush for so long. Im really excited to try this out.

Im 275, will there be rewards for me?

Yes, you'll want to do the Colosseum to get the completion reward and access to future boss fights that may also grant you useful rewards.

At this point I'm wondering if you guys will be able to make it through the Colosseum in its first incarnation. I'm thinking no. I'd love to be proven wrong.
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Django
AC1 QA Associate

[Ziv]

Originally Posted by immortalbob
Sounds like a challenge

Oh, does it?

I was hoping I wouldn't have to say "I challenge you to defeat the Colosseum!"

And apparently I didn't, but then I said it anyway...
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Django
AC1 QA Associate

[Mystick]

na dann auf in den kampf iclords müssten heute gegen 21 uhr mal schnell dadurch

[Gand the Hard]

Das klingt ja toll .. ich bin gespannt.

Lustig das ich am WE auch so eine Idee hatte - ich frag mich die ganze Zeit aus welchem Spiel das kam Das mit den verschiedenen Bossmonstern mein ich

[Ziv]

Denke das ist aus Guild Wars...

[Kezz]

Wie jetzt heute um 21:00?
Ist heute Patch day? Dachte die Auth server sind nur unten..

Uhh das ist mal ne Geile Idee

Aber ich seh schon wieder mein Blutdruckmesser explodieren und Rhas "Auto Permit" rufen

[Gand the Hard]

Habe nichts finden können wann Patch Day ist. Heute scheint er jedenfalls nicht zu sein.

[Ziv]

Nach meiner Einschaetzung ist er am Dienstag den 20. Feb...

[Sun_al-Mage]

Steht ja auch im letzten Absatz vom Weekly das es am 20ten sein soll.....

[Kezz]

Wer lesen kann ist klar im Vorteil..Danke Sun

[Sun_al-Mage]

Ich sach nur Ruhetag

[Ziv]

You make xp based on how far you made it in the arena, not on how many people you had in your fellowship.

The more people in the fellowship the more arenas you'll complete and the more xp everyone will make.

You could try for the challenge but for the most reward for your time you'll want to play with as many people as possible.
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Django
AC1 QA Associate

[Ziv]

So after getting some feedback from various sources we are making a key change to how The Colosseum works. One of the fears that players brought up was about corpse recovery. Well after some discussion and some magic from Severlin, players who die in The Colosseum will not drop death items. We are hopeful that this will help increase the overall enjoyment of this new area.
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Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc

[Ziv]

Originally Posted by An Adventurer
sounds cool. That's only for deaths from the monsters though, right? If someone on DT kills another player in the colosseum they will still drop stuff?

That's the plan, yes.
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Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc

[Ziv]

This feature was more put in due to the timer on The Colosseum. It would be very possible for someone to die as the timer is up and leave a corpse in one of the further chambers. If this were to happen there would be a potential corpse loss by that person if they could not get help.

We know it takes some of the risk out of things, but we do not want to take away from players enjoyment if they are worried they will not be able to recover a body.

Not to mention that being able to do something like this opens the doors for other cool changes we might be able to make in certain areas, further down the road.
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Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc

[Ziv]

Originally Posted by PurEvil-HG
How does that work with Rare items such as my Eboonwood rare bow???

The death is treated as a PK Lite death - therefore, even always-drop items such as rare remain with you. The corpse will have no items at all.
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Lupus Argenteus
AC1 Data Integrator

[Ziv]

Originally Posted by Pimpinsins
Man again this is really really lame first you say this is a place ment for fellows last I checked you could always permit someone to loot your body and if the full fellow dies well you have 9 guys that need to recover

Really 5 years we have been asking for something to be done about housing and barriers on darktide NOTHING some white dot say omg what if I lose my DIS and you guys insta nerf droping dis in this place?

How about you put a perma envoy in all white worlds so people can just run up and ask for the items they want also?

LAME LAME LAME LAME LAME

We cannot guarantee that the next fellows who decide to go into the arena will be people that the person who died will trust with their items, and we cannot guarantee that a griefer won't fill that branch of the colosseum until a corpse rots away. Loss of items on death has always been a penalty that one can, if they so choose, erase by going back and looting their corpse (sure, it might be extremely difficult, depending on how they died - but there should design-wise always be a path back). However, given that in this case it may be physically impossible, by the design of the dungeon, to return to one's course, the team felt that it was better to introduce the mechanic of no death items dropping in certain locations than to either scrap the arena mechanic entirely or to cause the PSRs to have to become CRRs (Corpse Retrieval Representatives). And make no mistake - a lot of people are going to die in this colosseum. If you value your spotless no-death record, you may want to let someone else go first rather than rushing in.

The idea of no death items dropping in certain landblocks has been tossed around internally before. This was not a new concept to us - rather, we already had an idea how it could be accomplished and implementation was, comparatively trivial. It was a matter of deciding that this particular design was worth implementing the change. The tech was there.

Housing barriers on Darktide are a trickier issue. I know you're going to say that everyone wants it, but it's not like a vote's been taken, and I have seen people hiding in a house barrier before on Darktide (and this is not the thread to discuss the relative worth of those people, before someone thinks to comment on them - it is irrelevant to this issue, as for the purposes of this discussion they are a Darktide player, just like any other). This is one of those issues where we move slowly and with deliberation - and yes, the issue does come up, and no, we're still not sure what the right answer is yet. Bear in mind that if we were to make a change of that magnitude, it would have a lot of ripples you may not anticipate, but which we've looked and grimaced at.

Now, as a final note - please keep it civil in here. There are people who dislike this change to how death items work. I suspect that there are people who'll be upset after my post, too, and that is well within their right, as it is well in their right to post in disagreement to the idea. But let's keep civil about it and communicate, rather than flaming. A few people seem to be edging toward flaming rather than talking, which in the end accomplishes nothing useful.
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Lupus Argenteus
AC1 Data Integrator

[Ziv]

If a players is killed by another player who is a PK you should still drop DIs in the Colosseum. If anything about this changes I'll give you an update on it.
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Django
AC1 QA Associate

[Ziv]

Risk vs Reward concept isn't something that is looked at too closely by the Devs is it?

There is now no risk involved in this new "Quest". Go in see how far you get and then get XP with no consequences of death or loss of items. VP will probably be cleared by any reward received from the quest, and can always do a quick run back to current section (since no harm in dying late rather than early people will just be able to run back through section).

Even in EO/Eaters/Fuins there is a chance the macroers will die and leave a corpse, but in this place there isn't even that.

Very sad to see this type of Tech implemented for this. Go ahead and add it for every quest that may take some time or a fellow to get the corpse back if a death occurs.

IMO rethink some ideas and slow down with implementing new tech and give some of the "In Development" ideas more depth.

Yertle, there are 5 branches to the Colosseum. Let's say you were in branch 5 and you died, or worse your fellowship all dies, right before finishing and could not get back in to get your corpse because your time ran out.

Now you're going to have to get togeather with a new fellowship and hope to make it at least as far as the last fellowship did so you can recover your corpse.

Now possibly nobody is using any Colosseum. When you go pay for access you will be given the first available Colosseum to fight in. In this case it'll be Colosseum 1. You'll never see your corpse in 1 because you died in 5.

At this point you're forced to get people to eat up the rest of the Colosseums and shutting them off for other players who validly might want to play them or you have to wait till people are using Colosseum 1-4 then sign up so you can enter 5.

Now, this might not seem like an issue because most dungeons aren't active unless players are in them. This isn't the case, to maintain progress through the fights and to make sure nobody's Colosseum resets these dungeons don't go innactive. So, you have X amount of time to get to your corpse and this is real time, not active dungeon time.

In fiuns, wherenot, you know where your corpse is and you can get back to it without having to interup the play of others or having to spend more in entrance fees.

The main risk you're taking by doing the Colosseum is that your fellowship will not do well and you won't get as much xp as you would have made outside the Colosseum.

Originally Posted by Yertle
Also will people with the two accounts be able to dual log, get in fellow, teleport, stay in beginning area, and then at 60 minutes run the other toon to wherever the fellow is and receive the same XP without actually hunting at all? Along with no fear of death?

Yes, you could do this the same as you could join a fellowship in EO/Fiuns/wherenot and just sit at the top and leach xp. I doubt many fellowships would be receptive of this as it would reduce how far you could make it in the Colosseum as a group.
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Django
AC1 QA Associate

[Ziv]

Originally Posted by Yertle
Sounds like a great idea for a level 50 or so to just leach for 60 minutes then run through to get max XP, then repeat. In essence free XP, especially if the fellow would be less than full anyway.

The majority of the creatures in Colosseum are worth 0 xp. So a level 50 won't be leaching xp from players killing creatures along the way.

The xp reward is given based on how far you made it through the colosseum and is Pxp.
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Django
AC1 QA Associate

[Ziv]

Originally Posted by Hoggy
Other then that Good Job Turbine, I look forward to Tuesday

I'm looking forward to it also. I'm excited to see how people do at the Colosseum.

Also there's some other fun stuff in the patch that I'm looking forward to, something about Bur...
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Django
AC1 QA Associate

[Ziv]

In response to your concerns,

First, there is no mitigation of the Vitae penalty. A group or individual who dies over and over will suffer more and more penalties for Vitae, and they will either have to play through those penalties or use up consumable resources to remove them.

Second, the decision to remove the possibility for someone to get timed out and unable to recover their corpse is not only a balance and fun issue, but also a customer support issue. Any kind of content that is likely to generate customer support calls is considered... bad. We are instructed to avoid it. If someone did not read these boards, and the colosseum timer prevented them from reaching their body, they will be likely to contact customer support and view that situation as a bug.

Third, the game offers very few situations where you can absolutely not get your corpse because of game mechanics. Introducing a common and likely situation that will totally prevent you from ever getting to your corpse is not something we want as a common mechanic. In the past when isolated events have caused this situation the players involved become frustrated and - you guessed it - contact customer support.

Don't get me wrong, I understand and applaud the hard core attitude and the desire to have real consequences from hard content. In general we don't want to mitigate the danger in the game any more than you do. In this case, however, we had to compare the value of the extra risk with the frustration and logistics of the encounter and we felt that this design needed to be implemented.

Sev~
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Severlin
Senior Game Engineer

[Ziv]

Originally Posted by Septa Scarabae
It wasn't a concern as much as it was a suggestion. I think you addressed everything except my suggestion, which is, why not just have one NPC for each section? You can go back in and do it again and get that corpse or corpses. And as with any quest, if you're worried about the challenge, you don't have to run it. If people are able to get back into the exact dungeon they died in, does the corpse recovery issue not become moot?

While redesigning the colosseum with one NPC per branch might be a good idea, it wouldn't entirely solve the issue of retrieving your corpse. If the timer ran out and the next group started while you were corpse running you'd still be locked out. Even if no group jumps into that branch and you were not locked out, you would need to restart the colosseum at that point and fight your way all the way to your corpse. That means that corpse retrieval would be expensive and basically require an entire group to get you back to the right place. That really doesn't solve the problem.

Sev~
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Severlin
Senior Game Engineer

[Ziv]

Originally Posted by Dread-Vitae:
We only ran through it once but from what it seems the coliseum is just for xp.. we got up to the high level mosswarts in the advanced room and got 234mil xp.

As of right now the experience is the main reward and there are a few other rewards as well as titles.

However, you are being flagged for entering various boss fights already. So once these boss fights go live you'll be starting with the ability to access them and you can play them on the first day without having to run the Colosseum again if you have already obtained the correct flags.

Some of these flags may require you to repeat parts of the Colosseum more times than one, so while you're in there making your experience you may also be gaining access to boss fights that should be going into the Colosseum in the not so distant future.
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Django
AC1 QA Associate