First off, factions! The current control crystal system is being revamped, it hardly benefits anyone and doesn't change much to the game. Some things to note based on the patch notes I'm creating:
-Factions added. Control Crystals are no longer guild based and are faction based:
--There are 5 control crystals, and a faction can hold up to 3.
--While holding a control crystal a faction will gain points. The faction will also gain stat bonuses and XP bonuses. Bonuses do not apply in arenas.
--Faction rewards are given out on Sunday and points are reset. Points can be redeemed for CM and PP, amongst other things.
--You cannot join the current 'largest' faction. Only the leader has access to join/leave a faction.
--Faction rewards are split depending on the amount of people in the faction and is based on the total amount of points earned from holding crystals and won events (The more people in a faction, the less rewards per person). There is also a boost to faction rewards (25% boost) to the smallest faction, AKA the underdogs. There is absoultely no reason to help another faction out unless you want less rewards
--You can leave a faction whenever. You can join a faction once a day. However you will NOT gain rewards if you join on any day other then Sunday & Monday until the next faction point reset (Sunday). This is to prevent people swapping factions at the last minute for rewards. The same goes for anyone who joins a guild after Sunday/Monday individually.
--Factions give a faction chat. You can use /ignore if you don't like the person and it will function as it does elsewhere. Faction members cannot see the individuals that are online, and when they come online. There is no way for guilds to 'track' one another bar knowing a total count of how many in their faction is currently online.
--Faction chat is considered semi-public, so no swearing, and chat is throttled. Faction chat uses nickname instead of character. You CAN be muted!
--You cannot attack anyone in your faction except in FULL PVP areas! (Typically areas of interest like oad boss rooms, etc. If we missed one contact us ASAP!)
--REWARDS WILL BE ADJUSTED AND RELEASED AFTER TESTS! (Faction stores will be added shortly.)
-Faction combat is currently basic but will be expanded. It is as follows:
--6 defenders vs 6 attackers maximum. In the future we may have 'lives' (AKA when someone dies another person can enter.). You do not need 6 attackers/defenders, but it is good to prepare with your faction using faction chat!
--You enter the room individually, parties are fine and recommended but they will not follow into the room. Your pet will follow fine.
--You cannot leave the control crystal area with a combat timer. No hit and running here! Proper PVP teams!
--If the crystal is under attack, entering and leaving the area will count as a lost life, so be prepared to fight! Also, if it is under attack and you enter, you will gain a combat timer by entering.
--You can leave the control crystal room if the crystal has not been attacked and is not under siege.
--If you successfully capture the control crystal, it will become immune for 5 hours. If you successfully defend the control crystal, it will become immune for 50 minutes TIMES amount of attackers, up to 5 hours.
--Each crystal gives one point per second. That means with three control crystals the faction will gain 3 points per second.
--The crystal will warn the faction when it is being attacked, almost immediately.
--Any abuse will result in the guild being kick & banned from factions for two weeks. ( Yes, this is coded and ready to rock! 8) )
As you can see, the focus is 6vs6 combat or less, and we're removing alot of control crystals, boosting the rewards, and trying to even help out the smaller guilds. This is just a step towards fixing some guild dynamic problems that we currently swing back and forth in at the moment. Faction events may also be a thing but won't exist just yet.
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Crafting is coming along nicely, we're almost done now and we are testing everything before release. There are a lot of fun things coming with crafting, including the ability to add prefix and suffixes to weapons/armors, adding hums to current items, knapsacks to increase your inventory count, crafting weapons/armor/rings/etc, and alot more! To start, we are allowing everyone to be able to craft up to purple items, however in the future this will expand... We want to make sure the system is stable and 'functions properly/is balanced' before we go further. My goal however is to eventually have 'dragon' type items in game with bonuses or something fun/unique. Regardless it should be pretty fun!. It might be a little hectic when it starts, but it should calm down as people start leveling their professions and spread out. We'll try to compensate for it the first few days if needed but please expect many changes the first few days!
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The party window is coming!
- image_2021-01-13_110800.png (21.13 KiB) Viewed 16880 times
Now you can view your whole party's HP in real time! You can even click the party window to perform actions. On top of this, parties are going back to 6 per party.
Just a note though, we may introduce 'overhealing', aka being able to heal someone even if they don't require it to prevent spammers. I feel like healing should be a skill, not a spam ability, making it tougher to deal with, which shouldn't be a problem with the party window
The overhealing effect won't be in on release though. I'll be looking at it with a balance change.----
There will be easier ways to use potions and food as well. Four new commands are being introduced, /usefood (/uf), /usedrink (/ud), /useheal (/uh), /usemana (/um). This will take any potion/food in your inventory, starting from reverse. You can also CTRL+Click items in your inventory to use them, and CTRL+Clicking equipment will unequip/equip it. Super simple!
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It's going to be harder to track people now in game. /i and /p will require a exact match now in order to reveal information. Global chat and some other areas will now use your nickname instead of your player name. Meaning that the current character you are on will be harder to track. Hopefully this makes it a little harder to hunt people just by knowing their names or knowing party comps unless you actually walk in front of them.
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Events and PP will also be changed. For the most case I've been seeing that the system rewards too much, to the point where level 1 characters can come in and get a free PP because it rewards all. We're re-balancing the event rewarding a little, but for the most case the event PP rewarding will scale a little more harshly. It will still reward a good portion of people, but to get rewarded you're going to have to participate instead of sitting in the back now.
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Events will revert to dropping items again too. Currently in some events, people do not drop anything. i thought this was originally OK but now I'm finding this was probably not a good solution to events:
1. I don't like the fact that gear that is supposed to be soulbound and locked is being shared amongst characters. It devalues having gear sets for each of your characters.
2. I don't think it's right that someone who has orange boots/gloves/equipment can simply swap it over to another character, which is not fair to 80% of the game who don't have this sort of equipment.
The system was originally for newbies when binding costed alot. This isn't a factor anymore, and it is a system that is being abused and actually hurting newbies now who don't have orange gear to swap around as it's taken advantage of. If you have 20 characters, then you should equip 20 characters. Only some of those characters will get your 'best' equipment until you earn more or gain more. For example of it's abuse:
-Adam enters the event and sees 12 characters in there. 9 of them are fire based. Adam tells Eve that there are mostly fire characters in the event.
-Eve gets her orange gear that is not soulbound and swaps them to a water character and slaughters many people because not only did she know who was in the event, she was able to swap equipment to her benefit.
-Newbie logs off in rage because he doesn't understand why everyone has orange gear when it's actually only one set of orange gear that someone is swapping with ;(
I obviously can't prevent people from seeing each other in the event easily, but swapping gear is too much. If you want the advantage but all your good gear is on a Night character in the example above, then tough luck. Use the night character, or use a water character that doesn't have your legendary gear and deal with it. Sometimes you're lucky, sometimes you're not.
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There won't be any balance tweaks bar a couple small ones coming to this patch. However, after this is released I will be looking at MR adjustments, class tweaks, and racial tweaks again. This change should come pretty fast (month or two) so we shouldn't be waiting around too much, as most of it is simple tweaks or additional and not two completely new systems.
I also want to get in achievements for bonuses, talk about the future of 25+, and some other things. I have some fun ideas for this year coming anyways
Thanks!