Being able to make bashing more interesting would be amazing. Being able to give a fabulous new bashing area magic resistance would be frigging awful. I'm going to reserve my judgement until I see how things turn out, but I'm worried. Warriors and monks already bash better than casters, and giving elemental resistances to anything will only exacerbate things.

Sure - and on the other hand, we might make an area filled with iron giants that are resistant to cutting/blunt damage, but weak against magic source.

Or an area full of fiery beasties that laugh at Pyromancers, but sob sweet tears of bitter defeat at the hands of an Aquamancer.

With a change like this, I think we'll see bashing variously get easier and harder (and always a bit more rewarding). So tae'dae denizens might laugh in the face of warriors, druids, geomancers and aquamancers with their mighty cutting, blunt, cold, poison and psychic resistances. But they might be easy pickings for something like a cosmic guardian or a wicca. (<- dramatization)

Certainly, there's the potential to make certain areas less desirable bashing for certain classes - and simultaneously, certain areas more desirable for certain classes. I can only see good things coming of it, really!

While I much like the different areas for different classes I think the earlier pointed out fast bashers versus slow bashers is something to keep in mind. Yes, we guardians can influence up to level 90 and then join the bashing, but even then we will always be slower, yet influencing stops being so goddamn great as it does not take criticals into account. If that whole thing is being redone maybe think of ego battle crits to give us a different edge? Or just extra influencing content, because it sort of stops with the Illithoid, and I am not even sure what those enemied to Mag should influence in the high-end tier. >_>

Also I think the whole some areas better for some classes / races is nice, it also pushes towards the realm of min-maxing even more. Say that from level 20-50 race x + class a is the fastest, and then from level 50-90 race y + class b and so on. There will be people just going for that and the guilds only good for low levels then have to deal with people going through their ranks like that. We already have people going for bashing classes to level with then change to the guild they really want.

One last concern is also that there might be race/class combos which find themselves at some point with no content because everything is resistant versus them. I heard the idea of maybe giving mages more elemental skills, but I'd expand this across the board tbh. If you are going to add weapon resistant mobs, make sure there is either an area on par to level in for weapon users, or give them an elemental attack of sorts.

So, about report 436....

Yeah, what she said. You either make two new bashing areas so everyone gets their share, or you do what you have been and say "Nothing is a bashing area, they're just a new area with quests and story and whatever" and if that's the new high end bashing, you're just screwed if you can't do it. It's going to be a tough balancing job, I think.

EDIT: And I'll reiterate, I'm not saying the sky is falling, just that this has a lot of potential to be either awesome or utterly fail. I really do hope it all goes well and things get more fun.

It could actually work out to help magic users more than monk/warriors if magic users are given new bashing attacks of different damage types.
If magic users were able to capitalize on mob weaknesses then it would work out to be a buff for us.

Just having watched Munsia's and Lothringen's speed while bashing tunnel trash during the last greathunt (both were using automatized bashing from crown, I think), I'd say that warriors don't have a noticeable edge over casters in general, although mages may do more damage than druids or guardians, and I don't know how nightkiss/moonburst perform. I don't think bards suffer in the bashing department at all.

Applying racial strengths/weaknesses would pretty much only benefit casters for now, since the races with physical weaknesses (krokani and lucidian) are scarce bashing material.
What's more, though, is the fact that it wouldn't really make bashing more interesting, since you still only have a simple attack you spam over and over. I don't think it's worth putting effort into with so many other things wanting attention.

Yeah, I'm not seeing how this would improve bashing. You'd choose your area based on whatever's weak to your bashing attack, but other than that it would play exactly the same.

What it'd do is to spread out the bashers a litt.e For instance, aquamancers and geomancers wouldn't fight over the same areas anymore. Although really, the effects are likely to be minor.

Well it might turn out interesting. Like if it comes out a little buggy and turns every mob in the game into an aggressive tracking avatar level death machine

Just to reiterate, the changes envisioned for existing mobs (after the underlying code architecture is setup) will be that low level mobs will probably not have a noticeable change, middle level mobs will have a slightly noticeable increased health (i.e., take a few more hits at the most), and upper level mobs will have very noticeable increased health. How hard the mobs hit will not change at all.

Again, we had reached a ceiling in creating high level mobs -- it got to the point that even workarounds couldn't bypass the limits to mobs. Thus, we are restructuring the underlying architecture to give us more room for creating new mobs and possibly upgrading some of the higher level mobs (especially cosmic lord levels, etc.). Heck, if there are a list of mobs you think need upgrading (Ladantine?), now may be the time to list them!

I still want more intelligent mobs that just don't attack randomly. Having them go "Hmm, if I hit the poor sod with this venom, I'll greenlock. Muahaha" would be interesting

EDIT: Of course not all of them, but at least having the occasional one...

Just out of curiosity, will this underlying code change possibly allow (in the future) afflictions to hit Mobs. They released that feature last year in MKO, and there's talk about that coming in ToP, so I figured if this might be possible with the "behind the scenes" code change, even if it won't be worked on right away.

If you watched the ustream, you'll know I'm not a fan of hitting mobs with afflictions. (We could have done it in the past if we really wanted.)

I agree fully with certain smobs more powerful/healthy (esp. the fleshpots and spheres, which both seem pretty easy to drop (though I don't really have anything good to compare them to)), but making even mid-level mobs that are commonly bashed (e.g. Astral critters, Muud, Dio, Catacombs) take even a "few more hits" doesn't really seem a good idea without evening out monk/knight vs. caster bashing. If that's also being looked into, that's great, but otherwise it's a bit of a kick in the teeth for those who are already not so great at bashing. Is this adjustment of mid-level mobs a fundamental goal of the redesign, or is it just an artifact of allowing very high level mobs to have much more health?

We're not reviewing monk/knight vs. caster bashing at this time.

Note that those mobs that do have more health and may take a hit or two more to kill will also be worth more experience so I think it should be seen as a wash.

The adjustment will revise calculation of health so higher level mobs will have more hitpoints AND take health into consideration when calculating xp.

Will elemental weapon runes affect mob damage in this new shift-up, I wonder?

I believe they do now.

Really? Interesting!

Must have said that when I had to freaking reconnect after a browser crash.

I'll leave future questions to Ask Estarra, as I think that is more comfortable for me. (And Twitter message limits suck...)