News: (11/25/07) First the extras:
Group Additions: Command: Group Open - This is something only the leader is able to use. When set, it allows players to portal to you even inside a mission. This is meant to alleviate summoning hassles. If a group is set to 'open'. It is assumed you are ready and willing for anyone to join, at anytime. Group Idle - This happens automatically if your group is split up and not actually working together. When Idle is set, Exp bonuses are lost and positions and group combos no longer work. You can undo this by killing stuff as a group. When you've been away from your group a while, you will stop receiving 'free loot' from embers and such. The point of that was to make sure people killed during the fight didn't miss rare loot. It was never meant to be an opportunity to go to sleep while your buddy farms tokens for you. :) Three hour experience window - A group's experience levels only track 3 hours into the past. That means keeping a group intact overnight won't yield exp bonuses the next day. We want to emphasize the idea that you gain a nice bonus for playing as a team for a few hours. There are many reasons for this, such as any time a huge group is maintained all day, it's vastly better than any solo'ing or new group options. While we love to reward everyone for sticking together and leveling, the difference between a mega group and regular life is so severe that there's a decline in play interest without the big bonus. Passing the torch to new leaders is great, but eventually the bonus from the group's efforts are set upon people who didn't even take part in earning them. The never ending growth made it hard to quit and give up that work. Now you will only be losing at most 3 hours of gameplay, something you can make up again any day. Regardless of how many reasons I spin at you, most people will still see the exp 'window' as a big nerf but we are offering a great form of compensation. First there's a small boost to the exp from group levels. Second we are introducing the first generation of Group Combos. As you execute abilities in combat, energy accumulates towards goals. Once your group successfully reaches a goal, you will be given a special affect for 10 mins. These include bonus exp, reflex, defend and evisc. Additional details are in the following news post. Group Combos!
Combos are meant to reward active groups. The bonuses are much bigger than what you would be losing from all day groups while being quicker to attain (though you have to keep reattaining). They also are meant to encourage more activity even from the weakest players in the group. The amount of contribution to a combo is not level or power based. Everyone can help equally. Larger groups have higher goals, however, it does not scale in a linear fashion so there is a small benefit to being in a big group, especially if everyone chips in. Now your allies can see if you're not bothering to help, or they can see if you are just spamming the same thing instead of putting some effort into fulfilling combo goals. This doesn't mean anyone should be hounding people for not doing the right kind of abilities for a desired goal. It does mean that players who are idling should be dismissed from the group until they return to their keyboard. Their presence in the group will delay combos if they don't chip in a bit. The amount gained from an ability declines the higher your points are for that type of ability. That means every cast of a fire spell might give you 5 points towards a combo until you've cast 20 times, then it would give 4 points, after 40 casts it will give 3 points. This is a gradual penalty for being a one trick wonder or a lazy scriptor. Everyone has multiple skill groups and using variety will be rewarded with more frequent combos. The goals for combos are random. They will change everytime you reach a combo. It will help to check 'group combo' to see what type of abilities you want to use to reach the next combo. This rewards people who put a little thought into their actions. You can see what type of combo progress you are making any time you execute an ability during combat. The game will tell you so that you aren't forced to memorize everything. Combos are executed in 5 minute segments. So once you've reached a combo goal, it won't occur until the the segment is complete. It will then last for 10-15 minutes. It will be possible to have overlapping combos. This system is meant to prevent combo checks from lagging us everytime an ability is used. We expect to expand on this system. There's a ton of potential. For now we just want to work the kinks out of this and fine tune it. But feel free to pass along suggestions and critiques. Combo bonuses are removed if you leave the group and they are added if you join a group. The bonus is shown when typing 'aff'. News: (11/05/07) General Changes:
Builder Changes:
Skill Changes:
Stat Changes:
We're attempting to offer additional character building paths by generalizing some stats. This makes various items and perks more viable for a larger group of players and *hopefully* is a first step to more diverse builds. Even though you can benefit from all these stats, players are going to choose which suit them. Later we'd likely aim to have them differ noticably per path. Anyhow: Stealth - In addition to backstab/circle/sneak attack damage. It is now taking on a defensive bonus. It is anti-critical hit. We're planning to allow this to delay aggro upon entering a room in most areas as well but not *yet*. Force - Once melee-crit, now every type of damage will use force to determine how hard the critical hits are. The 'impact' of this is not as strong as it will be later on, but wanted to keep it reasonable until we see what people can do with the extra multiplier potential. Mystics - This still boosts the amount you can heal for. But now it also determines how much of your regen goes off each turn. If you have 1k Myst and 5k regen. You'd random regen from 1 to 5k. In a similar pattern, having more Mystics will increase your regen beyond normal (critical regen chance). Surge - This is now our Area damage stat. First for any tech/spell that is area, it is the critical hit power instead of Force. Second, there's a chance per round for your aura/melee to 'surge' and hit a few extra foes. Later on, stances will determine how many and how often this happens, for now it's random. Spam Issues:
All individual group levels are silenced now. You won't know when your team
is leveling up unless they get to a round 100. This is nice info to have, but
it's an unnecessary burden on the server for huge groups and the spam *really*
adds up with 20 people leveling multiple times per kill. :) Removed the limitations upon individual potential. This means anyone can work on territory capturing all day. Clan potential's penalty has been greatly reduced to almost not there. The experience earned from domination holidays is now based upon how many areas are captured by *everyone*. that means if your clan gets 7 areas and your opponents each get 3, you would have 7+3+3+3 = 16% bonus exp beyond the base amount. The more people playing, the greater the prize and stakes! Lore Changes:
Pet Changes:
New Armor: This converts all base armor but does not affect randoms or Enchants in any way. Armor has 3 basic stats: Defend - This is a well known stat. It reduces all forms of damage. Armor - Special type of hitpoints that regenerate. Armor reduces the damage you take but drops like HP. Having 10,000 armor would allow you to ignore 10,000 damage then your armor is used up. Over a few rounds of combat, your armor recovers. Reflex - This now represents your quickness and freedom of movement. The higher your reflex, the quicker your charge fills. This stat will likely have other offensive or defensive bonuses added to it in the near future. Also two new stats help classify each suit by character type: Might - +100 Might gives +100 to both Attack and Finesse. This is a physical damage character's boon. Power - Same thing as might but it adds Affinity and Magic Attack. Now this of course 'nudges' players to combine aura and spell as well as tech and melee. There may be some concern that we are giving up on the four paths of damage, but players will still be able to specialize in each path via randoms, enchants and perks/skills. Having the armor paired just simplifies the number of combinations required for fair variety with all the secondary (support) stats that are possible. We are thinking of joining Melee/Tech and Spell/Aura in a more global sense because it ideally all players have motivation for activating abilities even if their overall character build emphasizes auto damage. By pairing up those paths, we plan to create many sub paths such as Physical-Stealth-Healer, Magic-Area-Critical hits, and so on. We want to increase the number of valid character molds with notable play differences. Also there are suits of armor with both Power and Might that are intended to better support Hybrid characters. We want melee plus magic to be a viable and different option. In addition to these common stats, each piece of armor support stats that are based on the armor suit (Ninja gear, Ranger leather). The idea here is to remove the clutter of base armor stats and give each suit of armor a useful purpose. As noted in the changes, mystics and surge and stealth and force are all being updated to be useful on a wider scale. We are transitioning from small amounts of every stat per suit of armor to giving each suit a few stats that it focuses upon. Choosing armor should be simpler since you will be looking at 50 stealth versus 50 mystics, instead of 7 stealth, 18 mystics, 22 force versus 22 stealth, 11 mystics and 9 force.
Much of the Exotic armor layout is yet to be coded, this choice will be fleshed out over the next few builds/weeks. New Armor Commands: This part is especially good. You can now view the armor stats very easily in a comparison table. Type 'data gear all'. You may also view all the armor of one type, a specific suit, or all the armor containing a specific stat. Type 'data gear' for syntax. New Stats: Armor has been divided into two offensive categories: Might and Power. "Might" gives +attack and +finesse. "Power" gives +magic atk and +affinity. Certain suits have both Might and Power to support better hybrid options. All the stats on these new armor suits are subject to change so feel free to give feedback after trying things out. The idea here is to let players choose physical or magical damage from the type of armor they use, then to have them further specialize in area attacks via surge, healing/regen via mystics, critical hits via force or surpise attacks + survival via stealth. Other stats will allow further detailed specialization and we'd like to continue create/offer additional character sub-paths such as building a Reflex character to use charged tech and spells near nonstop. |
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