Major ATS Updates Coming - 08/26/2020

[Actinate]

Hello everyone!

Before I jump into what major updates are coming, I want to take a moment to offer a few apologies and a thank you for your continued patience.

I am sorry that we've been so quiet these last few months (this past month, especially), and I am sorry if we've been unable to respond to your DMs and requests in a timey manner. I am also sorry about the lack of role-play opportunities and the imbalances ATS is facing at the moment, and I apologize for the lack of communication to you all about what we are doing to address it.

Day and I have been on the receiving end of some IRL problems as of late, and COVID-19 has only compounded those problems. This isn't an excuse; it's just an explanation. I know you all have been dealing with your own related challenges as well, so if you are feeling frustrated or worried about ATS, I hope you will be able to understand and relate to our situation.

Transparency has been a tricky nut to crack lately. I know people are unhappy with the one-shot meta and some of the recent changes that were made regarding power increases and some classes being left imbalanced. I feel you and so does Dayrinni. We tried something, and it didn't work, but the problem has been how to go about fixing it, and we didn't want to say anything before having a solution in mind.

With role-play opportunities, it's become increasingly difficult to provide you all with any challenges due to the current state of the meta and power level you possess. NPCS are either too strong or too weak with very little middle-ground, and that is a problem--a big one. It has hindered our current roadmap for design and story-telling, and has left us and you all unhappy with the direction and state of things.

With all that said, we have a plan to fix all of this, and we are starting it in motion, today. All I am going to ask is that you remain patient while we implement it.

So, let's jump into what is changing and how it is changing:

THE PROBLEMS
The current state of skills, abilities, spells, gadgets, etc. isn't working--I'll be referring to all of these as things as abilities for the remainder of this post. The various problems we are facing are: ability effectiveness (too much vs too little), class imbalances, too many abilities or not enough, similar abilities, abilities that don't do anything, abilities that aren't used, NPCs (too strong or too weak), lack of end-game content, and working with the quirks of a game engine that is over 15 years old. All of this has left us spinning our wheels trying to fix multiple problems, which results in us creating less content and running less RP.

ABILITY CHANGES
We have well over 1,000 unique abilities. Each one needs to be changed, tested, and balanced. Complicated formulas and variable situations make this a long and difficult process. Some need to be redesigned completely, while others need little to no adjustment under the current meta. So, WHAT DO?

We're going to take a bit of a radical approach to changing how things work. Instead of editing 1,000 abilities, we are going to redesign them with appropriately adjusted values and roll them up out to you. Major abilities (ones you need: buffs, debuffs, attack, dot, etc.) will be available at the changeover. Some minor or secondary abilities will be given to you overtime. The plan is to essentially refund your tier points, gold, and EAL points, then migrate you to a newly designed class with the same name, with new abilities, and let you train them back to max with your refunded character currency. This way, you will not lose anything during the transition. I've worked the numbers and can tell you that we will have classes balanced and move the game away from the one-shot meta without leaving it unpleasantly grindy. There is a happy middle-ground that will provide some challenge, but keep combat fast. You won't be taking down mobs at equal level in 1 hit without additional support (critical damage, buffs, etc.), but you won't be battling them for any extended time either. Everything significantly lower than you will go down in 1 hit. Enemies within a level or two will take fewer or additional hits.

After we start rolling this out, I plan to remove critical damage caps; though, we may adjust how critical damage works (we'll discuss that with you at all a later time). Seasoned players with high critical damage, better equipment, trained abilities, EALs, trained attributes, and buffs will be more powerful than newer, equally-leveled characters.

NEW ABILITIES
With new changes comes new abilities. More on that at a later date, but for now I can tell you that if two or more abilities do something similar, I am going to try and combine them into one.

DRAGON CHANGES
Dayrinni and I are not happy with where Dragons are at the moment, and I want more time to really work on them. For the time being, we are going to lock dragons to new players until we have some more stuff to do with them. Currently their level 3 and 4 evolutions are a complete mess, and they just need some more time to bake in the oven. Once we've made some adjustments that we are happy with, we'll roll them back out again. We are giving everyone until Wednesday, September 2nd, to create one. If you were on the fence about rolling one, now's the time to do it.

Let me be clear: I'm not saying we are removing Dragons from the game or that any related stories or RP events will end; what I am saying is that this race/class isn't where we want or envisioned it to be, and I want to fix it, so that we are delivering the best experience we can for Dragons (new and old).

DISCORD CHANGES
With us making the decision to lock Dragons for the time being, we are considering archiving the Dragon Discord channels and removing them until we have something better planned. We know it's a place for Dragons to discuss Dragon matters, and I think that's cool, but I also think we can do something better that promotes inclusivity for all players with and without access to Discord. The concept is interesting, and I don't want players to need Discord or a Dragon to have access to a feature like this.

ATTRIBUTE CHANGES
Attributes were left behind during the last big ability change. You work to improve those attributes, and you should be rewarded for it. Day and I are still working on what to do with them, but we plan to make them have more significant roles in how abilities work. There will be more on this at a later date and time.

ROLE-PLAY CHANGES
I will be regulating role-play to Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and minor events throughout the week. During the week, I am going to focus on trying to get these changes in place, but since I have to do less individual testing with individual classes, I am going to actually have a bit more free time for RP. I'll do some individual RP this week, but I'm going to set up a player-wide campaign over the next several weeks for everyone. When it's ready, I'm going to mark it on the calendar and make an announcement.

TESTING THE CHANGES
I'll be asking for some testing over the next few weeks before rolling some of the new ability designs out. We are going to start with Early Access and then move to a server wide test. The reason we are starting with EA is for stability. If one of the abilities is bugged and crashes the server, it's easier to catch it with a few people than a bunch of people.

WHAT IF WE NEED TO CHANGE ABILITIES AGAIN?
If we need to make future changes to abilities, it will be much easier. Dayrinni has created an option for me to group abilities in tiers, which means if I need to change a bunch of abilities in a tier, I only need to change the tier. So, if I need to change a scaling value for one type of ability--like a damage ability--I can change all the scaling values with a single command as opposed to tracking down each ability, editing it, and changing the values by hand. This saves times, reduces errors, and ensures no ability gets missed. If necessary, we can still adjust abilities individually too.

ESTIMATED TIME TO COMPLETION
Unknown at this moment, but I am working as quickly as I can. I'm hoping this will be finished quickly, like within the next 30 days or sooner. I just ask for your continued patience while we work through this adjustment.

WHO TO CONTACT GOING FORWARD
For the time being, I will be taking point on ATS. Dayrinni will sub-in for me if I need to leave for IRL stuff, but we will let you know when that happens. Please contact me directly with questions and requests, but also understand I am receiving a large number of questions/requests, and many I am still working through from the past 30 days. I may be slow to respond, and I apologize for that ahead of time.

Dayrinni is not leaving ATS or stepping back from ATS. He's still going to help with role-play, but he's primarily trying to fix some bugs to improve the game and engine's stability.

Thanks for taking the time to read this! I know some of these decisions may seem a little odd, but they really are all being made in the best interest of ATS and its community. I will post updates with how things are changing as they progress. I ask you all keep an open-mind and have patience during this transition.

Thanks you again for being such a great and supportive community!!!

Also, I apologize for any grammatical issues or typos. I have a little one showing crayons and toy animals in my face.