12/10/2020 - Skill Updates / Game Updates

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Actinate
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12/10/2020 - Skill Updates / Game Updates

Post by Actinate » Thu Dec 10, 2020 11:01 pm

Hi everyone!

A big thank you to everyone who has stuck with us over the last few months. Things have been rough for both Day and myself due to issues with COVID, childcare, and family illnesses. I know many of you all are experiencing or have experienced similar situations, and my heart goes out to you.

Updates are going to be a regular weekly thing, so you all can keep track of the progress we are making. Additionally, we will begin a role-play campaign during the interim for anyone interested. Dates for that will be posted on the calendar, forums, and discord sometime next week.

Let's waste no time and jump right in! Here are some things we are working on:
* messaging for automated temp skills (reduces spam).
* new ways for you all to cooldown skills.
* damage changes.
* stat changes
* class changes.
* skill changes.
* NPC changes.
* Fighter updates.

AUTOMATED TEMP SKILLS
Some of the new skills will--when executed-- add temporary abilities to your character. For simplicity and for your sanity, these abilities will not appear on any ability screen, will be temporary, and either execute automatically, or provide you with a notification they are active. You do not train these abilities, they will level-up with you as you progress. There are some abilities in the game that do this now, but they will work a bit differently moving forward. I'll discuss what this looks like more in the Fighter updates section.

COOLDOWN
There will be a new way to cooldown your abilities, but not all abilities will utilize this feature. Day posted an update that some abilities will cooldown by X seconds when you use another ability. For example. You use Ability A and Ability B. Ability A has a 2 second delay and a 0 cooldown timer. Ability B has a 2 second delay but a 10 second cooldown timer. When you use Ability A, it will shave 2 seconds off of Ability B's cooldown timer.

DAMAGE CHANGES
This is one of the big ones. At this current time, damage is using an incredibly complex formula that results in you either 1-shotting NPCs or struggling to kill them. That system is going to be simplified, and it is also going to prevent us from having to take so much time fixing skills in the future. There will be three primary components to your damage calculation: TIER DAMAGE + WEAPON DAMAGE + ATTRIBUTE DAMAGE +/- BONUS (buffs/debuffs, items).

All abilities currently have individual formulas that gain on percentages as the skill levels up and you level up. Some take attributes into account, some don't, some take weapons into account, some don't, some take both, some don't, some factor something else entirely into account. Then additional bonuses from various skills, buffs, hit percentages, risk, etc.. are all taken into account. It gets really difficult to determine how much damage someone is going to do at a particular level, and when one thing changes, we have to go change a bunch of formulas so that things aren't unbalanced, and this is exactly why things are unbalanced--things get missed or there is human error, which is completely understandable when you're looking at updating 1,000's of abilities.

NOTE: Damage values will just be filler numbers for these examples. These are not final values.

With the TIER system, we set the base damage to a global value (TIER_DAMAGE ##) and then apply that to an ability. if we need to update the base value for all skills after a change is made, we only need to update the global value, and it updates everything else automatically. The TIER_DAMAGE value increases as your player level increases. So, at level one, a TIER_1 ability might only do 5 damage, but at level 100, it will do 500.

Weapon damage has a similar TIER system. A weapon's damage will increase along with your character level, and the change is significant. At the moment, some titanium weapons only do 53-56 points of damage. This was OK before the major damage buff update, but it's still pretty low. Under the new system, Titanium weapons will do 500 points of damage at level 100, but maybe only 5 points of damage at level 1.

Attribute damage is going to follow a similar system, but it is tied to the individual skill you are using. right now, attributes BARELY provide any bonus. They are so small, you most likely don't even notice them. We're talking maybe a few points of damage here and there, literally. Under the new system, each skill will be assigned a parent stat that will be multiplied or divided for its bonus. If a TIER 1 ability is doing 500 damage at level 100, and a titanium sword is doing 500 damage at level 100, then... you guessed it... your attributes are going to add a 500 damage bonus at level 100.

What about damage post level 100? Great question! That is where EALs increasing base damage, stats, and weapons stronger than titanium will come into play. This will guarantee that players just reaching level 100 will not be on the same playing field as veteran level 100 players. The more EALs you train and the better equipment you get, the more damage you're going to do, which is going to be important for battling NPCs post level 100.

STAT CHANGES
Dayrinni's earlier update mentioned that all stats will be capped at level 100 (they can be further increased via skills, items, and abilities). Minimum stats will still exist at roll-up. This means, all characters--regardless of your race--can train a stat to 100. Why did we make this decision? Stats will be a strong factor determining your damage up until around level 10, after that, weapons and TIER_DAMAGE catch-up. As soon as you reach level 20, you can start putting EXP into gaining stat increases via the seepage system (you can also purchase the consumable items for perm increases), then stats will start to catch-up again. At level 100, we want your abilities and equipment to push you past damage thresholds, so you can battle tougher monsters--these will increase your stats by default--but we don't want any players getting left behind because their racial stats max out at 70.

What else does this do? Well, it allows you to play the character you want to play. If you want to play an Indago Fighter, you won't be at such a disadvantage that the race/class combo isn't fun to play. Your character's story should determine and define your character, not your stats, and we don't want to punish you for being creative.

Also, it's important to note that we are not going to stat check your character during RP. If you want to play an idiot Mage, we aren't going to say "you can't do that because your INT is level 100." Those numbers are for your character's skills only. You are free to use them as role-play guides, if you wish, but no one is going to say "you can't play a weak character because your STR is 100, or a smart character because your INT is 10."

CLASS CHANGES
There are going to be more updates on classes, but we are shaking up some stuff. There are going to be new classes to choose from as well as some changes to old classes. Every class/race combination will be balanced in terms of combat and time-to-kill, but some are just going to have more options than others. This means, a Cleric might have a prayer that allows them to inflict 1000 damage, and a fighter might have 5 melee attacks that do 200 damage in the same amount of time. Every class/race combo can solo hunt, and will have something to offer to group dynamics. No one will suffer, be left behind, or be strictly better or worse than anyone else.

SKILL CHANGES
We have some pretty big skill changes. There are a lot of new skills as well as old skills that did similar things being condensed into one skill. For example, if you had three similar skills, and each increased your damage by 10%, but one increased your HP by 100, one increased your DEF by 5, and one increased your attack by 5, these skills will become one skill that increases your damage by 30%, your HP by 100, your DEF by 5, and your ATK by 5.

Skills will have faster cooldown timers to keep combat fast and fun.

Skills will be listed on the website and have detailed helpfiles explaining how they work, what attributes affect them, what they do, how much damage they do, and with examples of how to use them.

NPC CHANGES
NPCs will be adjusted so that their HP and armor will grow with the amount of damage you inflict. You will pretty much 1-shot all trash solo mobs 4 levels below you, and you will struggle against enemies that are higher level, but enemies with a few levels of you, you should be looking at a reasonable time-to-kill (enough for them to do some damage, but not a 30 second - 60 second long battle. I'm shooting for 10-20 seconds per fight with a minute being the longest, if you do the bare minimum.

In future updates, I'll talk about some additional changes we are making to group NPCs.

FIGHTER UPDATES
Next week I'll have more information about Fighters, including some skills to showcase for them, then we'll start testing. I have a lot of the classes done, but I'm doing a few additional updates and some testing before putting anything down as final or close to final. For now, I want to talk a bit about the Fighter styles because those are going to change.

Right now, you can choose from 5 styles of fighting at roll-up. This is pretty cool, except some of them overlap, and some are probably better than others, and some are difficult to gauge without spending time playing them. I am combining the styles together and creating something new. Now, when you roll a fighter, you will choose from 1 of 3 styles (to start with). Those three are:

NOTE: Non-official descriptions in-coming.

Brawler - Fighting is in your blood. You love to get rowdy and you might fight a little dirty. You may have some training, but you lack discipline and finesse. Overall, you just want someone to put a weapon in your hand so you can go ham on someone's ass.

As a Brawler, some of the skills you have access to are: Brawl (a DoT where you headbutt, kick, and punch your way to victory. Unlike other DoT's, when you leave the room, it ends), Shoulder Charge (an ability where you slam into someone and knock them down, leaving them temporarily stunned), Wallop (oh, that guy fell down from your Shoulder Charge, time to hit him while he's down. This attack activates when a target is knocked down), Counterpunch (when you get hit, you punch back), and Pulverize (when your target falls below a certain amount of HP, you leap onto your target and deliver a brutal beatdown, killing them, and resetting Brawl and Shoulder Charge for your next fight).

These are just a few of the abilities Brawler has. I'll be going into additional details about these ones and a few others next week.

Additionally, Brawlers have a higher attack rating and have skills that encourage them to use LEVEL 3 weapon attacks (think cleave instead of slash or slice).

Trained - You're a fighter that's learned the importance of a good defense. Your abilities hit less frequently than a Brawler, but do more damage. You are more aware of your environment and can use it to your advantage. You benefit from LEVEL 1 and 2 attacks more than LEVEL 3. You keep your risk low and are capable of protecting others, yourself, and tanking. The skills for this style are designed, but I need to adjust them based on changes that we will be making to DEFENSE, BUFFS, DEBUFFS, and ARMOR (more on that at a later date and time).

Disciplined - You are a disciplined fighter that has spent your life learning various forms of martial arts. You attack fast and utilize a new way of combat using a combo system. You don't utilize weapons as much, but you can--most of your combat is close-range and hand-to-hand. You can focus your energy/chi into powerful attacks.

As a Martial Artist, some of the abilities you'll have access to are: Punch (a jab punch) that activates counter-cross for a short window (if you are attacked during this window, you automatically counter-attack with a cross punch). When you counter-cross, there is a possibility of activating a hook punch, which can deliver a devastating blow to your opponent. Punch can also activate low kick, which--when activated--throws your opponent off balance and lowers their defense. Low kick can result in activating an Uppercut, which knocks your opponent to the ground. Using Punch cools down leg kick. Using Hook cools down Uppercut.

Fighters will also see the return of an old school favorite skill: fix. This ability lets you repair weapons and armor if you have a repair kit.

Next week, we'll dive into some upcoming changes to Mages, and we'll talk more about Fighters, specifically Brawler.

END
Right now, you can go and level up your attributes to level 100. That change is active. As for all the other changes and when they go into effect, that will all sort of happen at one time when everything is completed. If we put the NPC changes in before the skill changes, you'll be struggling in combat. If we add the skill changes now, they might need additional fixes or might sway combat to be even easier than it is today. We'll keep you updated on when all the changes will be made.

Thanks for reading this wall of text. I am happy to answer any questions you might have. I love y'all, and I apologize for any typos or grammatical issues. I am on the Nyquil.

- Act
COFFEE TIME FOLKS! Gotta build the game!
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