Welcome, friends and Realm mates! Carol Kenny here, bringing you the Friday Grab Bag!

Also, be sure to keep an eye on the Herald, as I will be opening new avenues for question submission. You'll be able to submit your Grab Bag questions via The Camelot Herald, Facebook, PostCount, and more! Submitting a question along with a valid Email address puts you in the running to win a 30-day Dark Age of Camelot Game Time Code!!

Click the 'More' button on the right to view the questions!

These days a fair amount of people play DAoC on a laptop. For some, including myself, that presents a problem when it comes to taking screen shots! My laptop doesn't have a numpad and it doesn't have a Fn key to use to emulate the numpad. It appears that the screen shot button, = on the numpad, is hardcoded into the game as I cannot find the option to assign a new key via /keyboard. Is this something that can be changed? Thanks

This is a change we can make for our players who primarily use laptops. There are a number of Engineering tasks ahead of changing the default screenshot key, but consider this added to the list. 

Until then: ALT + PrtScn FTW! I realize it’s not quite as elegant – but you can still capture that special moments when you’ve ripped a small man by yourself and are standing triumphant over their defeated characters!

The current range for tab targeting (using a key to cycle through monster or player targets) is 1025. Would it be difficult to allow the player to choose this range in game? It would be like a dream come true to be able to set it to 1500 for my caster class. I am sure archers would be joyful as well. 

Yes! We can update the tab-targeting radius to 1500 and see how players react to it. If it’s too large a radius, or not large enough we will tweak until we get it right. 

Man, it feels great to say yes =]

Is there any chance to implement a new encounter that gives either an OTD or a quest reward that takes the entire realm to accomplish, that does not occur in an RVR zone? Raids in an RVR zone tend to be often beyond a realm's ability to control with the largest zerg winning or the realm with the most macro teams entrenched or the realm with the most active 8man groups trying to ruin raids means that it is difficult especially for the casual player to participate. 

Large scale raids offer a unique opportunity to the community in that all have to band together to accomplish a task. Making a limited duration raid in a pve zone, can help bring the realm together and avoid many of the realm balancing problems of a PVP centered raid. This request would probably apply more to a Caledonia king killing quest rather than a springtime bunny kill quest as the king pops once every 8 hours and takes 60-100 people to kill, while the bunny pops every 10-20 minutes and is easily killed by a full group. 

Community-driven encounters and events are an initiative that Carol and the Dev team are currently working out. We will have more representative of the community engaging their Realm in encounters and raids. There’s a wealth of content in Dark Age of Camelot that deserves an upgrade in mechanics, difficulty, and rewards. Look forward to polls and questions from Carol as to which encounters we should start with, and what kind of rewards you would like to see. 

You have heard a bit, and you will continue to see a trend regarding the community. We have a great time engaging you folks and you deserve to be heard. Dark Age of Camelot belongs to you and we would like to help make your vision for DAoC’s future a reality.

Are there any 'events' planned for the near future involving Broadsword employees? I was not around for a Live DF event years back; I think events like these will be great for the community. 

There are mixed feelings about Dev-run events. Under no circumstances will we enter the game and use our super awesome powers during an event, unless it were on Pendragon for the purpose of testing. It would however be an honor to stand and fight with you as ordinary players. New, exciting, and rewarding events are a big part of Camelot’s future and we will do our best to provide as much advanced notice as possible so that everyone may plan to participate!

Could it be possible to change a toon’s name?

We’ve had a goodly number of requests to change character names. Currently, doing so requires the time of one of our In-Game Support representatives and is currently categorized as a service we do not provide on an ‘on-demand-basis’. Automating the process will involve the investment of resources, primarily Engineering. If we reach a critical mass of feedback, this type of request moves up the priority chain and we would start looking at how such an initiative could potentially be implemented. 

Short answer: it is possible but it’s not currently part of our plan.

Hello, and thank you for taking the time to read my question:

Will you ever consider implementing adapters for inventory / equipment slots?
Namely, to alleviate the process of swapping between several different weapons. One of the issues now is that it's clunky and the controls are very small so it's a bit tedious to swap weapons. I think that allowing users (of which the community has many capable and willing ui hackers) to customize their interface and make the swapping process more fluid would go a long way in improving UX and making customers happy.

Players of the assassin archetype would definitely benefit from this, but so would all players. Old school daoc didn't have as many weapon options, and weaponless templates weren't even a consideration. But now, weaponless templates are commonplace and weapon swapping is a reality for a wide variety of classes.

I know that there are so many other things to tackle, but UI features (eg configurable buffbar dimensions) have a direct impact on a players appreciation of the game. I also know that implementing adapters for something like inventory would be way more complicated than it was to implement scalar/text adapters. But it couldn't hurt to ask, thanks! 

Improved UI/UX (User Interface and User Experience, respectively) is a strong commitment we have for the near to mid-term. We’ve talked about this in previous Q&As and Grab Bags, and have often cited a lack of resources as the blocking factor. Under Broadsword, this landscape has changed and I’m happy to say that we are examining and prioritizing the updates and improvements we want to make to UI/UX. How players interact with and equip armor, weapons, and accessories is fairly high on that list, I’m happy to say!

When the RVR changes are ready to be implemented, are there any plans on beta testing the improvements? Maybe some sort of Pendragon event with incentive to make a decent amount of people test the mechanics behind it. 

Yes! We are planning a Pendragon event where we will funnel as many players as possible to test the changes we’ve made to NF. This will occur after the next round of feedback-based changes go in and you’ll hear about specific dates and times from Carol. We will do our best to have a live Q&A during or directly following that event so that we can exchange ideas and hear your feedback while it’s still fresh. Those that show up will be rewarded for their participation as well, so /charcopy now and beat the rush!

Dear Broadsword, some years back RAs where made to light up when they where off cooldown. Could you please do the same for item /use and for potions? 

Great question! This is certainly something we will look at as we plan and execute our UI/UX improvements. I know that it would be very helpful to players to have this type of direct visual indication of your potions use-ability, and this is exactly the type of improvement that we are planning to make.

Will the mythril currency ever be added to the game? If not then why was it ever there in the first place?

Why is that a guild bank can hold more than 200 plat, even more than the max limit on consignment merchants, but players cannot hold more than 200 plat? 

1) It is unlikely that Mithril will ever be added as a useable currency. From an economic perspective, we would like to deflate the available currency so that players may conduct their in-game business without having to resort to other methods of holding and trading funds. This is an appropriate segue to the answer to your second question. 

2) It stands to reason that a Guild Bank be able to hold more plat than any one player can hold. Some Guilds set fairly aggressive Guild Dues and a 200 Plat cap would certainly be reached very quickly.

After having problems with the billing section of the dark age of camelot website regarding the free time given to players. I am left with questions as to why the website is not as effective as it should be. For example, why do you require to validate my payment for an account that has been inactive for many months and yet the free game time is there to be had. Second, why does the daoc website not offer the paypal section as opposed to the referal of a card payment. Things have moved on, even Origin offers it and even an Origin advisor is actively saying that I only need to do this via their website and not the daoc website via me game account. Thirdly, is there a plan to integrate Origin and daoc billing sections as one item thus to save subscribers the means of going through effectively two payment methods on two websites if you get my meaning. You can see this is ineffective and inefficient, So when are the plans to make the daoc and origin sites at least acknowledge the details of one another to get a more effective system? 

The simple answer is YES and ASAP! This is a priority for us, and is being worked on as we speak. We have recognized that the process by which a character re-subscribes, links, un-links, or engages in the Return to the Realms campaign is not as intuitive as it should be. In-fact it can be downright frustrating. This is why we have placed Account Center improvements as a top priority for Broadsword. You’ll see a good deal of changes to Dark Age of Camelot as we move forward. Expect a more intuitive and user-friendly Account Center to be among the first!

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That concludes this Friday's Grab Bag! Thank you to those who submitted the questions, and for a list of Time Code Winners, please visit the Grab Bag page on Post Count.

Cheers, and we'll see you in the Frontiers!

Carol Kenny
Community Lead