Feedback Friday 27th June 2008

We’ve got a great Feedback Friday for you today because we’re spilling the beans on several new developments in the pipeline. There’s lots of stuff to share, so let’s get on with it!

New Shotguns!

Two new incendiary shotguns will be making their way to you in Deployment 10. These aren’t your grandpa’s shotguns - they are equipped with not one, but two and three barrels for the ultimate Bane killing experience. 

• Double-barrel shotguns appear at Level 23. These shotguns do more damage that standard shot guns, but don’t get too trigger happy just yet.  These shotguns fire slower, consume twice the ammo, and gain heat faster.
• Tri-barrel shotguns appear at Level 34. These shotguns do more damage as well, and have a wider arc. And just like the double-barrel shotguns, you must be wise with your shots, because in addition to their awesome fire power, these shotguns fire slower, consume triple the ammo, and gain heat faster than standard shotguns.
  
  
  

  Red Shirt Makeover

  
  Introducing the new Red Shirts!  As part of our optimization process, we’re making the new NPC Red Shirts easier on your video card by giving them a makeover.  The Red Shirt’s new look also makes it easier for you to distinguish fellow players from NPC’s.  This change will help towards our goal of making players feel that their avatar is unique in the game.  The picture below features the Male Red Shirt NPC armor in “heavy” and “light”. 
  
  

  
  
  

  Dual Color Hueing Prototype

  
  
  Speaking of making your avatar feel unique - the ability to dye your armor more than one color is on its way.  We’ve recently built a prototype of what we call the “dual color hueing system” on our internal servers to test.  Here is an example of the prototype.  As you can see, the armor has been dyed the blue and gold tones. Certain parts of the armor will keep a metal base to keep it consistent across a multitude of colors and armor types.
  
  

  
  
  While you may not see this in the game for a while, we wanted to show you what we’ve been working on this last deployment.  Creating UI elements such as new icons, menus, creating special dyes, etc. for this feature are all in the works! We’ll be sure to keep you up to date as this exciting new feature progresses.
  
  

  Tooltip Overhaul – Now with Base Damage Numbers!

  
  
  In Deployment 10, we will be rolling out a significant change in the way you view an ability’s damage in its tooltip.  No longer will each ability have an adjective describing the damage amount (medium, high, extreme…), you will now have the base damage numbers to back it up!  In addition to this, we made some formatting changes to the tooltips to give more information and make them easier to read.
  
  For our examples we show the before and after tooltips for Lightning V: Storm (one of our most complex abilities) and Ruin V: Conflagrate.  Note how the damage amount, duration, and other items are documented as numbers instead of adjectives, the description has been removed (can still access this by hovering over the ability icon in the skills menu), and more information is provided such as the target type and chance to stun.
  
  

  
  
  
  Please keep in mind that this is only base damage, meaning the damage done without consideration for modifiers such as attributes, weapons, buffs, etc.  The number is displayed a per-shot base number. When attacking an enemy, the number will be higher or lower depending on modifiers, range, resistances, and other variables.
  
  That’s it for this week’s Feedback Friday!  Keep up the good fight with the AFS!