Hey all, I wanted to update you all on a few systems that we have put in place since the last test.
We find that immediately after a playtest is the best time to start smashing new systems in, testing things, and seeing what works and what is fun. This gives us time to balance and polish things up before the next open testing cycle. We also seem to get MEGA motivated right after these big successful tests, so we have continued to 'ride the wave' of motivation.
We have added so many large systems in since the test, I thought it would be fun to highlight them and our thinking. Patch notes dont always have the reasoning or detail for some of these larger changes:
Tagging System
April 8th
DPS racing has never really fit the vibe of AOA, and we have transitioned to a tagging system.
Most people wont notice the change, and gameplay for 99% of cases will stay the same.
Tagging still allows anyone to damage the Npc, it only affects kill credit (exp and loot).
The main goals of our system are:
- Help make it clear when something is already engaged (the nameplate will turn grey and an icon appears on the target window)
- Allow the player or group who started the fight to get the credit (avoid kill stealing)
- Prevent groups of players from being easily griefed by a single higher level player
To accomplish this, instead of the 'first to hit' style tagging, we will be going with a 'certain number of hits' threshold. (Hits can be melee hits, spell hits, combat abilities, pets damage, etc)
- If a mob is uncontested, and only a single player or group has engaged an Npc, it will become locked after 2 or 3 seconds regardless of how many hits, this means in a lot of cases, whoever is pulling will quickly get ownership over the Npc
- If an Npc is contested (multiple players or groups engage the Npc at the same time) Npcs will require a certain 'number of hits' before they become locked to a player or group. If you are much higher than the level of the contested Npc, you will require more 'hits' to lock the Npc, giving the advantage to appropriately leveled groups.
- For example: If a group of level 8s was camping a level 10 mob, lets say the level 10 mob needs 12 hits before its locked. A level 25 would require more hits (say 25) and would have a mucher hard time doing 25 discreet actions before a group of 8s could do 12.
This isnt designed to fix all problems with camps or npc claiming - but it educates players using the UI while streamlining some interactions.
Leashing Changes
April 9th
In order to prevent some cheesing of our old leashing system (splitting out named) and to make camps/dungeons more functional in an open-world environment leashing Npcs now:
- Run back home
- Be immune to all damage
- Will not aggro things along the way
Monk feign death now causes mobs to leash, instead of walking back home, which helps mitigate monk griefing.
In order to allow monks to still split out mobs, monks get the 'Stop Heart' ability which marks freezes a mob in place, and prevents it from leashing upon feign
We know that fans of old school games still enjoy trains (or at least enjoy the memory of trains?) Trains are still possible as people pull too many mobs, evac out, die etc. Mobs will still make their way through the dungeons back home, potentially gathering up a big pile that might end up on another group, etc.
Marketplace
April 13th
In order to facilitate trading in Adrullan, the marketplace has come online. In addition to being an important part of the economy, the marketplace will support our goals around crafting, and act as money sink as both purchasing marketplace slots and selling items has a cost.
The marketplace is accessible in towns by interaction with a Market Place Npc. The marketplace is connected globally.
Loot System
May 6th
We introduced the first full pass of the Loot & Notifications System, a major quality-of-life update for corpse looting, group loot decisions, item alerts, and inventory overflow.
When soloing, if you right click a corpse the loot system functions the same as it always has, with an enhanced loot window which allows you click the 'Loot All' button. Shift + Right clicking a corpse auto loots the corpse directly into your inventory. All actions are reported in a brand new notification area which allows the player to see what was looted without having to look through chat logs.
When grouping, the default group setting is Round Robin. In this mode, every time a group mob is killed and looted (any group member right clicks the corpse) loot cycles through the group rewarding each player all the loot from that enemy. If an item has stats or is no drop, the item is rolled, and the group can need/greed the item.
The group leader may also change the group's loot setting to other modes including: Free for All, Master Looter, and Roll Special Only.
The loot system is really important to AoA for a number of reasons:
- We want to encourage grouping! The easier we can make it to manage groups, the better. Having groups default to Round Robin makes the jump from solo to duos and trios simple and fair.
- We want casters / healers / buffers to focus on playing the game, and not having to worry about spam right clicking a corpse before other group members. Spells are expensive!
- This system aligns with our goals of how much time we want to spend dealing with loot related support tickets 😄
This wont 100% solve every problem with loot. If someone looted a quest item you need, you might need to talk to them! Its an MMO! You might be collecting more 'junk' that you want in a high throughput group, this is where we are hoping salvaging will come into play, allowing you to 'crunch' down a lot of the trash weapons / armor into stackable items.
These systems are all optional as well - if you have a static you play with and want to disable these auto loot systems, that is possible from the options menu as well.
Journal Updates
May 15th
We are excited to introduce a ton of Journal changes which solve a few problems:
- Npc conversation history will now be stored server-side, so when changing devices / reinstalling / etc you will keep all your conversation history.
- During the conversion effort we have also cleaned up a lot of random stuff that would make it into the journal, including ability spam (from things like Steal), random greets, npc attack text, item rejection messages, and others - which just made the journal feel like it was full of garbage in some cases.
In addition to the improved conversation system, we will also be introducing some light task tracking through the Journal. This is a thin / flexible layer ontop of our existing Npc scripts which allows us to track anything we want. Completable Quests / Repeatable Quests / Simple Tasks / Clues / Mysteries and more...
While the newbie introduction quests (seen above) are very explicit (while people are learning), the system allows us to still have a wide spectrum of how much we reveal to the player, and the player will still be using the conversation history (and other tools) to complete more mysterious / involved quests. For example, the 'Quest' entry might just say "Uncover the mystery of the undead chickens'... and the player would have to go out into the world and figure out the mystery themselves.
Its our intent to keep the journal focused on the individual Npcs you are interacting with, what they have said to you, what their motivations are, and the things they need help with. This is more grounded then some disconnected list of 'Quests' pooled from multiple Npcs. Things outside of Npc interactions will not be tracked (collect X items, kill X number of mobs, etc). Only when speaking to the beings of the world will your journal update.
Items and Required / Recommended Levels
June 2nd
This next patch you will see our first iteration of the Required / Recommended level system for items.
- The problem this solves is that the 'common' level 50 drops / crafted items will filter down pretty fast and ALL the content (quests / crafting / mob drops) will become pretty irrelevant pretty fast, especially with other things like the market system
- We are a small indie team, so we need to protect our content - we dont have a huge company pumping it out. We have hundreds of engaging quests, events and recipes that we want to ensure people still find rewarding
- Its our design goal such that if you are playing the game normally, youll never bump up against the level requirements (ie see the Husker Breastplate below)
But what about twinking!?
- We will have certain items we decide to either omit or reduce the level requirements on, causing these items to be coveted / sought after. So it wont necessarily be a one size fits all.
- We have plans to allow people to remove the required / recommended levels via other systems, potentially turning those items into 'Bind on Equip' or 'Account Locked' to ensure that twinking is still viable (more details to come in the future).
You must be the required level in order to equip the item.
If you are able to equip the item, but are below the recommended level, the stats will scale down to about half. (Which will probably need adjusting as we go)
To start, we will only be restricting the required level, and stat scaling will come live in a subsequent patch. It will be a slow process over a few patches as we size each item.
Notifications
May 6th
In our quest to take as much stuff out of the chat window as possible, the new notification system not only lets players know about what items they looted, it also has support for a TON of other things including: quest item rewards, currency rewards, level ups, quest completions, faction changes, mail, and a lot more. We have made all of this configurable in the settings, so you can tailor the notifications to your liking.
Music & Sound System Improvements
We have heard a lot of great feedback on Adrullan's ambient audio and music, and it means a lot. Soundscapes do so much to immerse us in the environments, and we're incredibly proud of our fantastic music Tony has composed for us.
One of the biggest issues with environmental sounds and music in AoA is that the volumes (which trigger these sounds) were hand placed and square. This causes issues with music / environment sounds dropping in and out, low coverage, and it was very time consuming for the designers.
The new system piggy-backs onto our existing 'Zone profiles' which already control things like the sky / clouds / fog / watever etc for an entire zone.
This should help us working towards 100% coverage for music and environmental sounds over the next few patches.
In addition to the big "systems" updates above, there has been a TON of content, UI, class, design, sound, graphics updates and more. You can read our full list of patch notes here: https://www.adrullan.online/patch-notes