Notes From the Q&A Developer Stream with new Lead Designer Thomas Foss

Yesterday new Lead Designer Thomas “MimicKing” Foss and Community Manager Andy “Strumslinger” Wong gathered on the Perfect World Twitch channel to roll initiative. And they also talked about the game a little. You can watch the video below and we also summarized the most important stuff.

First of all it seems like Thomas is a likable guy. He was very genuine and seemed to care about the game. Overall he left a nice first impression although it’s clear he still needs to work himself back into the game after being assigned to other projects for two years. He often talked about stuff and experience from “back then” while crawling through his monster notes for the more current stuff. He clearly had prepared for the questions, it was nothing he could have answered because he knew.

Sorry Foundry, PVP and Enchantment visuals

Let’s start with the negatives, because there were actually only a few. The foundry is still dead, because “budget”. PVP is also semi-dead for at least another year. The devs want to do class balance first before they add any new content for the game mode. Also Foss said there’s no easy way to disable Enchantment visuals, because they are deeply embedded in the code. Players like beckylunatic had actually pointed this out as possible reason for quite some time and this adds official confirmation.

The Lead Designer also briefly added that the Gateway was brought down due to financial reasons. This confirms my initial feeling that this was as much a business as an anti-botting decision.

New content

The preview will be patched with a new update “really soon”. Followers of our datamining posts already knew that something was going to happen involving fishing and we have some more details now. Module/Update “10b” will introduce another zone, which is largely covered by water. Players will have to travel by kayak and experience fishing, which is a mini-game we think could work equal to Sahha. Encounters and At-Wills will be replaced with other powers. The story will continue the current module and a new Heroic Trial will be added. That could be the decisive fight to get the Ring of Winter back. The update will also contain a few quality of life improvements.

Multiple Loadouts

Big news are also coming on the loadout front. It is happening guys! Foss said it’s something they are actively working on and trying to push to live as soon as possible. This would fill a long-time request and is especially important since a third-party software is already able to provide the feature.

Profession Captchas

Profession nodes might get an update as well. Star Trek Online has a mini-game that needs to be solved when interacting with a node. This adds a minor skill component to the nodes, but more importantly serves like a captcha to fight bots. At this point they are still testing, but if it’s something they think they can do, removed skill nodes and nerfed loot due to botting could be reversed.

The Voninblod controversy

Foss contradicted Wong that Everfrost gear is only good for the Module 10 dungeon Fangbreaker Island, because it’s BIS in other areas as well. While that’s technically true, the added item levels currently don’t seem to justify the necessary Voninblod grind. There is a pretty big discrepancy about how players view the system and how devs look at it. We’ll probably need to see whether players are willing to commit to Everfrost gear long term. Panderus has been actively defending the system on the arcgames forum and expects reliable numbers once more players have completed the campaign and are able to spend all their Voninblod on the gear.

More Coalescent Wards for everyone

They talked about reworking the invocation system once more, or at least the reward boxes. They also want to make Coals more accessible.


We hope that coveres the most important bullets of the livestream. Thanks to our blog team for providing some opinions and especially MinMax, who compiled a comprehensive list of the topics.

j0Shi

j0Shi plays the Neverwinter MMORPG since the open BETA in 2013 and is a regular contributor to the blog and the whole UN:Project. Originally a Guardian Fighter, he has built up ALTs of all classes and plays on BIS/near-BIS level.

5 thoughts on “Notes From the Q&A Developer Stream with new Lead Designer Thomas Foss

  • September 24, 2016 at 9:48 am
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    Good interview. I like him. Tom Foss will make the most of the time and latitude allotted to him.

  • September 26, 2016 at 7:47 am
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    Foss talked about Loadouts, not Dual Spec, He spoke nothing about Dual Spec, only about power Loadouts. Loadout does not equal Dual Spec nor should it be affiliated with the word in anyway.

    Loadouts are good but a minor QoL fix, but as long as Dual Spec stays out of our reach this class balancing act around PVE/PVP is gonna be hard and less balanced, than what it would be with Dual Spec.

    • September 27, 2016 at 12:26 am
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      Thanks. We’ve edited the post.

  • September 26, 2016 at 5:51 pm
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    Why to disable enchantment visuals?????? no point for that….

    • September 28, 2016 at 10:47 am
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      Some wrecks the dyes and colors of the gear you have it on, most notably the chest pieces, this is why some would love to get rid of it.

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