Please excuse the poor formatting (when will these browsers
get cut and paste right and exclude the leading spaces...).
The bard-specific part is:
Butler said there is no correlation between Charisma and
one's saves. Your charisma is related to how well you
interact/affect creatures. He also mentioned that
Bard's singing skill has a check against charisma.
I guess this explains where the talk about charisma affecting
missed notes started. And the talk about charisma not
affecting resists is a misinterpretation (your charisma does
not affect *your* resist rate). The entire post is included
below if you're interested in the other stuff:
Spell News From Zatkin: Ensnare
Community News [ 11:51 PM PT ] - Den <mailto:
den@...?subject=EQNews>
From Edward:
In a series of recent emails with Geoffrey Zatkin [Verant
Interactive's resident magic guru], I pointed out the results
of some experiments with Ensnare. According to
GZ, Ensnare was designed to last substantially longer than
Snare (which only makes sense, as Druids get Ensnare at 29th
level). However, based on a series of
controlled tests on a yellow monster, it appeared that
Ensnare would last only 5 to 10 seconds. GZ just sent the
following message, indicating that Ensnare might be
fixed tomorrow:
"Hmm - I made a change - we are patching spells tomorrow
morning - see if it works better for you then. :)
-Geoffrey Zatkin"
Thanks!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last week Verant held a social at a local Milwaukee bar,
Bucky Bradleys. Yes, there was free food and drinks, however,
there was also easy access to three of the
four persons I most wanted to ask questions of. The only
one missing was Mr. Zatkin.
From 7pm to 10:30pm we deluged Verant bigwigs with
questions concerning EQ. To our astonishment and pleasant
surprise we were given direct, concise answers
to all questions. These guys even did it with a twinkle in
their eyes. Personally I was very impresses with how they
handled themselves. There were approximately
100 to 125 players there all wanting to bend Verant's ear.
I think no one was disappointed. Of course there was a machine
gun type atmosphere of questioning. Here
is what I found out.
Camping is a major priority with Verant at this time.
Smedley's thought is the world is overcrowded. He leans
towards making similar items available in other areas.
An example of this would be Jboots (call them Tboots for
travelers boots) and put them somewhere other than Najena.
Much is in the works here.
When told that we maxed our characters in under 30 days
/played time Smedley suddenly was Very interested in us and
queried us on how. He called us the
Milwaukee guard killers and said to pay attention to them
after the next patch. (and started dialing his cellphone :-()
Plane of Fear (PoF). Why is the God CT was such a wimp.
Smedley told us to drink to our characters tonight because in
a week, upon entering the PoF they would
not be around.Smedley said the 16hour respawn time was due
to the economics of high level items in the game. (He thinks
the PoF is WAY too easy)
Smedley said the penalty levels (divisible by 5 levels)
was an uncontrollable error and was unavoidable.
Smedley said that the Shaman was one of the most difficult
classes to balance. He also stated that they were going to get
an entertaining revamp to their much
nerfed disease spells.
Smedley said the tracking screen probably will never get a
scrollbar and yes, Druids only get track to 20% skill.
McQuaid said that outdoor shrink was not going to be
implemented because he thinks shrunken PCs outdoors look
terrible.
McQuaid said that personal gate was probably going to be
removed as a way out of the PoF.
McQuaid hinted at there not being ANY way out of the PoF
in the future other than a Zone line he himself places in
there.
McQuaid said he is considering putting a 200 to 400HP
damage effect just from zoning into the PoF.
McQuaid smiled mischievously when we asked if the portal
out was in the Temple in PoF. He said the Hate plane opening
is not yet on the schedule.
McQuaid is disappointed at how the ranger turned out. He
wanted him to be the master of Dual Wield.
McQuaid said there wouldn't be an Improved Spirit of the
Wolf. He thinks the world is too small already.
McQuaid said they forgot to place the shield icon on the
Barbarian class (WHOOPS) and that it is a 10meg library file
that controls that so no fix soon.
McQuaid said he wanted warriors to be jazzed up just a bit
more. Perhaps weapon specialization....
McQuaid said there is a marked difference in experience
required according to class and race. He also said that they
would not give out formulas and to question
what the rumor mill says about this. Obviously, there is a
huge spreadsheet somewhere detailing class experience charts
and penalties.
Butler said there is no correlation between Charisma and
one's saves. Your charisma is related to how well you
interact/affect creatures. He also mentioned that
Bard's singing skill has a check against charisma.
Bulter gave me a 20 minute history of the Guide program.
He explained what Verant's position and policies on exploiting
were and that there have been quite a high
number of banned players. The golden rule here is that if
you are decreasing another player's enjoyment of the game you
are going to be in trouble. If you do same to
multiple players you will be starting over.