End of Year Grab Bag!

Solicfire

Over the last few weeks there's been a number of questions that we have been asked quite regularly, and what better way to answer them than a Grab Bag?!

Thank you to everyone who sends us questions through our feedback form, ingame, and the various forums and social media avenues out there - please keep sending them in


Without further ado, here's your (our?) end of year Grab Bag!




Can you describe how you decide what comes first in the next patch ? People often can't understand why glitches/problems the community complains about aren't addressed that quickly.

We’re very glad you asked this! With the 1.117 patch we’ll be devoting a significant amount of time to fixing as many bugs and common complaints as possible.

The reasons for this are two-fold: 1) With our very ambitious 1.116 patch complete, we want to give players time to earn CL15 and obtain their Champion Weapons before we add in more end-game focused content. 2) We think that focusing our development resources on bug fixing for an entire patch cycle is something that hasn't been done in a long time and is something that will make everyone's gameplaying experience that much better!

Now, this doesn’t mean we’ll squash every issue, but we’ll do our best to get the worst of them. If you have something, or even a list of things (you know who you are!), that you’d like to see fixed, please send it our way by either posting about it on the forums over at Postcount.net or by submitting feedback via the feedback form!

 

Is the Casual Group Finder feature coming out soon?

For those that don't remember, the Casual Group Finder was a feature we had planned on for 1.116, that would allow players to find groups in an easier, more automated way. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite in a polished-enough state that we were able to release it with 1.116. However, we've been working on it hard since 1.116 came out and are confident that we'll have it ready for 1.117, in addition to the multitude of bug fixes we're planning.

Can the amount of quests in the quest journal be increased? Or allow some of the older quests to be removed?

Unfortunately the amount of quests a character has active at one time is not able to be increased at this time. Instead, we’ll be doing an audit of the existing quests and allowing several of the non-removable quests to be removable, which should free up some space.

The login procedure is very clunky and outdated. Will there be a way to see upon logging in which chars are on which server? Plus, please make it possible to change servers without having to completely restart the game!

That would be nice, wouldn’t it?! We have several ideas and plans for the patcher, but are not ready to announce a timeline yet for when those changes might be complete.

Back in old old NF there used to be a hammer, tree and cup on the map to show where large forces are, with size changing depending on how many. This was great for directing action, have you any plans to add this back in?

We’ve received feedback on both sides of this issue. It’s still something we’re looking into and are currently leaning towards adding them back in. As soon as we make a decision, we’ll let you know!

Have you ever considered adding in a new RR ability like the R5 one, but at R10 or 12? It takes a lot of time and playing to get there so maybe a reward of new class RA would be possible?!

This is something that would depend on feedback. It would certainly be another compelling incentive to get to the higher realm ranks but we’d have to look at how that would balance out against the plethora of lower realm rank players.

A lot of ROG’s on the market explorer have a bonus level of 51, can this be fixed?

Sure! We’ll increase character levels to level 51!  Only joking!

This has been an issue for some time and one that we’ve experienced ourselves. We’ll be devoting some time in the next patch cycle to get this addressed, though it will not be a retroactive change.

Could the starter guilds get an overhaul of sorts? Trial accounts can’t speak in /region or /lfg channels so can’t ask for help. The starter guilds are mostly empty so there’s no one to talk to or ask questions, share levelling, or anything. Guild bonuses would be a great help too!

We have some plans and changes in the works for starter guilds, including official Broadsword player reps, scheduled raids of all sorts, and more. Keep an eye out for more info on that later in the New Year!

The trial restrictions are staying in place for now, but we can look at something more newbie friendly and see what we can do.

Have you any plans to increase realm ranks to 14 and beyond?

Yep! Stay tuned for more details in the next patch.

Why doesn’t Broadsword get involved in the 8v8 draft?

Well, for one, we wouldn’t want to take away from the players who organised this in any shape or form, and who are doing a fantastic job with the draft. If we did get involved, the draft would almost change completely to make it official with rules and requirements. Also, if we do it for this playstyle, we would have to have a draft or tournament for all other playstyles and that’s just not manageable currently.

Have you any plans for a realm timer or, if not a timer, a loyalty bonus for those who stick to one realm and deter people from realm hopping so much?

At the moment, no, but we are always watching and evaluating population and the frontiers, so that’s not to say this is off the table for good.

Hope everyone enjoys the holiday period! We'll be back on the Herald in the New Year so, until then, see you all in the frontiers!