Supporter newsletter 8

Issue
This is a copy of Eternal and Diamond Supporter Newsletter #8, published by Grinding Gear Games.

Hello Diamond Supporters!

It has been a huge week! 0.10.5 was released last Monday, and 0.10.6 was released on Friday.

0.10.5

0.10.5 was delayed, but a large patch, and it included three new support gems.

It also included two diamond unique items, Pillar of the Caged God from Jarchan, and Darkray Vectors from Sleekray.

Darkray Vectors has a couple of interesting elements that are worth mentioning as they affect those of you with uniques with potentially very powerful, but not straight forward elements.

In out internal balance testing, Darkray Vectors proved very strong. Sleekray was less certain we had the initial values right, and I promised him if it proves too weak we will adjust it. On release many felt it was a weak item. I do think we will see people take advantage of its powers. If we don’t see that in a few weeks, I’ll be making good on my promise to Sleekray and buffing the item.

Pillar of Caged God has also had its power level argued about, but I think it is more apparent that it has potential to be very dangerous.

The other two unique items in 0.10.5 were Tabula Rasa and Icetomb. Tabula Rasa has impinged on some design space that some people have asked for in their Diamond Unique items. We did feel it was worth putting in as designed (in this case Tabula Rasa is an Erik design, our Art Director). If you feel an item introduced covers a similar design space to what you wanted, let us know!

If you present an idea for an item, you can change it, you aren’t tied to what you first suggest.

0.10.6

0.10.6 was a smaller patch. Searing Bond was the skill introduced, it is different to many of our other skill designs. It introduces a different style of play, but because of how different it is, it doesn’t play well with our existing supports.

The diamond supporter unique items included in 0.10.6 were Soul Mantle from Durentis, The Coward’s Trial from OverUsedChewToy. The other unique items, from Brother Laz were Aurumvorax and Abyssus.

Both Soul Mantle and The Coward’s Trial took a lot of time to develop.

They both covered something we wanted to do internally, an item with +1 totems, with a different downside to Ancestral Bond, and a map with a different style of play. Both required a lot of testing and changes. The Coward’s Trial was also presented at the same time as another undead themed unique map with interesting elements.

For the Brother Laz items, I’d like to point out other GGG items not attributed to him also have his input. There is a lot of discussion (mostly with comments on our unique planning documents over a great deal of time). I suspect these discussions would look harsh and argumentative from the outside, but getting items right is important.

I mention this, as I noticed a diamond supporter mentioning to someone else on the forum that I “didn’t like” the items they suggested to us, based on my reply. As it happened, I did like the idea a great deal, but I wanted to mention the problems it would have, and what elements wouldn’t work. In our internal discussions for GGG items, this would normally lead to comments defending ideas, discussion of what we’d need to change, under what conditions we could do something like that.

If you get a comment back from us that sounds like a flat out no, or in a tone that seems overly harsh to you, please let us know, and don’t take it personally! We are used to tempering by fire in our creative process.

0.10.7

After all that discussion, there is the next patch to discuss! We haven’t exactly nailed down what is going into 0.10.7 as far as unique items go, as we have several items which are very close but missing one element or another. We may see a map from IronCageSkirt, an amulet from Tertium_Quid, a ring from Davros70. We also have several items that have been sitting almost ready for a while that need something that has proven a little harder than first imagined, including items from Devoware, NuclearRaven and Kohrock. We also have many more items which are close, or we are keen to get started on.

Rory and I are hoping to get back to many of you soon. Also feel free to contact either of us regarding your item.

Insider Info

This has been a long newsletter, and has discussed a lot of items. So you won’t get much effort spent on insider info today. Luckily the office has concept art just lying around, so I can show you some of that: http://i.imgur.com/rZzeWO3.jpg

In this photo we can see early concept art of Brutus, a high level Alchemist class (which became less of an alchemist and Dex/Int became the Shadow), a ranger with a unique bow and a captive summoned creature, and a high level int/dagger concept.

These images have a nice mix of stuff already in the game, stuff abandoned or changed, and spoilers for stuff yet to come.