This is also being posted in Announcements and on updates, but I want to get ahead of it and reply here personally. Reasons why, and plans for the future.
First, this is the update:
SUMMON ADJUSTMENTS
- Almost all summon balance adjustments introduced since the addition of Runic Sequencers have been reverted. Notable exceptions:
- Undead creatures remain unchanged, as they only received flavour updates during this time.
- Summoned Celestials still cannot cast Word of Faith.
- White Slaadi still do not stun on hit.
- Dire Animals and Fire Elementals retain the existing chance to receive a temporary 7 AB boost during combat.
- Balors and Pit Fiends retain their visual updates.
SPELLS AND SUMMONS
Mass spells such as Mass Haste, Mass Bull's Strength, or Mass Cat's Grace no longer affect summons. Regular AoE spells continue to have an effect.
Applying Haste or Mass Haste to a character now results in their summons receiving a 50% speed increase for the spell's duration.
So the reasons being are quite simply that summons (Also beyond those listed here), continue to quite simply break the game. I see this repeatedly when watching PCs in the game client, and I know that 95% of those reading this have direct experience of this too.
Essentially player characters are superfluous and almost any summoner can simply sail through PvE content behind near invulnerable summons. This doesn't just happen at at high levels, but almost immediately. Game content, and gameplay is trivialized by what I consider to be absurdly overpowered content.
The sequencer update was meant to impact this, though given the resistance and just general drama that followed we agreed to make some changes, and exceptions (see the update above) while we assessed the impact of the change. Well, quite some time has passed now and it's crystal clear that the problem of overpowered summons is still with us. Not only is gameplay a concern, but also performance - pathfinding is a big part of performance issue, and obviously when dungeons are essentially being run by ai and not players, that does have an effect.
Quite honestly, I could have gone way, way further in curtailing them, but the main fact that stops me from doing so is just how much I admire our current system from a narrative/creative point of view. It is the mechanics of summoning, the interesting and fantastic looking spread of available streams and summons that prevents me from simply reverting to a near vanilla state.
The above changes aren't intended as a solution, and there remain considerable issues to be overcome, such as:
The problem this presents for wizards, who despite all of our additional spells and features for arcane users continue to rely on summons (they really shouldn't have to)
The power of planar conduit.
The issues caused by the fact that some hostile monsters have access to overpowered summons also (throwing at least one Skaljard dungeon entirely out of the CR range it was intended for)
And much, much else.
The reason I wanted to post this though, is that there was a real outcry last time, and what I considered to be quite a visceral reaction, as there often is in such situations.
In this case I very much want to wait before making any rapid adjustments based over the drama of the moment. It's stressful for staff members at such times, especially if they start getting personally flamed for defending changes. In the midst of such a frenzy it is often hard to make balanced decisions, or any decisions at all. I have been asked by staff members not to bring the hammer down on summons yet further (my instinct is absolutely in that direction) and instead give the changes a few months to properly assess. I'm asking the community to do the same; take time to play with the above changes before rushing to forums to demand less/more of them. To this end I've advised staff members not to engage with feedback on this topic until an appropriate transition period has passed, maybe 10 weeks? Players are welcome to post here of course, but outside of addressing actual bugs I won't be engaging, and have encouraged staff to avoid doing so too.
Essentially, give this update time to settle.
Finally I want to thank the player volunteers that run the wiki. We all rely on it so very much, and I know some people still don't realise it is done, for the most part, by volunteers outside of our actual staff. I know changes like this demand changes there, and that can be a headache. It's such a fantastic resource that we shouldn't take for granted.