What's up Agonians?!
Michael is away this weekend so I'm filling in, let me know how I do :) - Tj (Kilrain)
This week in Development:
The Public Test Server:
The combat changes have passed the first steps on the internal server and we're passing them onto PTS. Neil has been hard at work this week (among other things) modifying the PTS to run only a single tile, Hintenfau, to keep players together and hopefully improve test server performance. Unfortunately this includes wiping the databases so when you first log in you will need to create a new character. We'll have people logging in to boost players skill levels until we can get a more automated method for that purpose. We'll also be running a script to fill the market with tons of cheap items so it should be easy to acquire the items you want for proper testing.
We aim to have PTS up and running Saturday, hoping for around noon but don't hold us to that too much, please :)
When the test server does come up, this is what you can expect:
- Back damage reduced 50%
- Buffs have been removed from the UI, they are still in place on the player so your levels will not be lost if they are implemented again later.
- Armor protections have been boosted 25% across the board.
- Base casting speed has been increased 50%
- Staff magnitude effect on spell damage has been increased. Top damages staffs will remain the same and lower damage staffs have been reduced (effectively)
- Stamina damage for bludgeoning has been doubled
We have opened another Discord server for discussing the combat changes to keep things nice and clean. Feel free to join us HERE.
Discord RoA Combat Focus Group Rules:
- No trolling, flaming, personal attacks, toxicity, sexist/racist remarks, explicit or offensive content.
- Give opinions! try to be specific and provide reasoning not just "it's good" or "it's bad".
- Don't spam.
note: buff foods are still on PTS. It is suggested to not use them as they will function as normal food when the patch reaches the live servers.
Internal Test Server:
Along with the PTS work, Neil has been working on the clan name change tokens and some issues with the market not returning the proper gold amounts when canceling buy orders.
I have revamped a good portion of the alignment system. Players will no longer be able to farm or pray their alignment back and now will be required to wait it out as it regenerates over time. Players will no longer lose alignment for dropping another player (gank mode) and instead will only incur an alignment hit if that player dies (gank, bleed or tap out), with that the "Forgive" and "Punish" options have been removed. Some more work put into GM tools, revamped the title system to make it easier to add new titles more dynamically as well as several bug fixes.
Billy Lee has several new tasks in place that were waiting on the title revamp that will be going through testing very soon.
The QA team is hard at working busting and breaking these things and once we're satisfied we'll push them through to PTS and on to live!
Hope everyone had a great week and join us in the discussion HERE.
Sincerely,
- The Team at Big Picture Games