Combat & Progression Update – Progress Report

[p][/p][p][/p][p]by Nephele[/p][p]Hi everyone! You may remember that before the holidays, we released a series of dev diaries talking about everything that we have planned for our Combat and Progression Update coming up this Spring (or this Fall, if you live in the southern hemisphere). Since then, we’ve talked a bit more about how the design for the Mastery system has been evolving. However, we wanted to give you a more complete update on what we’ve been doing and how that effort is going. Let’s dive in![/p][h2]Mail System and Market System[/h2][p]A few weeks ago, we finalized the detailed technical requirements for the mail system and the market system. This documentation is what our programming team uses to start building out these systems. It lays out all the functions we need to provide not only for players, but also for our customer service team and for economic data tracking, in excruciating detail so we can try to make sure nothing gets missed. These two systems will also include some general QOL features when it comes to items, including the ability to link items so that other players can see their details, and better display of item information on tooltips across the entire game. Our programmers are starting on building out the back end for both systems to handle all the data, and once that’s ready, we’ll get the UI windows put together that you’ll interact with in the game. Both systems will be available for testing when our Public Test Realm opens.[/p][p]One important note about the market system: Initially, we’re going to keep it simple and focused on the aspects that we expect just about everyone to use. This is on purpose – we need to make sure those basic interactions, like listing an item for sale or browsing items that have been listed are solid and responsive, especially when hundreds or even thousands of our players are all trying to do those things at the same time. Once we’re very confident in the stability and performance of these systems, we have a plan to add in more advanced features, including the ability to post orders that other players can fill.[/p][h2]Combat System Enhancements[/h2][p]While much of the combat tuning involved in this update centers around NPC data and moving to unified NPC templates, there are some underlying combat formulas that we will be adjusting as well. Last week, we finalized the updates for the formulas that govern things such as hit/miss, dodge, parry, and block. This might sound like a very small thing, but it has major implications and tie-ins for almost every part of combat tuning as well as our itemization, so we ended up doing a lot of mathematical modeling to try and make sure that events like dodges and parries are still meaningful, but aren’t happening so often against higher level opponents that you feel like you have no chance at all of contributing to the fight. We want groups to be able to take on yellow cons and even slightly higher NPCs in their adventures, so getting these base formulas to come out with the right results for players at any level is extremely important. At the same time, we also need to pay attention to how quickly the challenge falls off as you level past something. If things are becoming trivial as soon as they turn blue, that doesn’t feel very good either.[/p][p]Along with all of this, we’re going to be making a few changes to help make some of those combat skills more meaningful. For example:[/p]

• [p]Your weapon skills and spell skills will now contribute more directly to your chance to land an attack, and (at very high skill levels) those skills can help you bypass some of the target’s avoidance.[/p]
• [p]Your defensive skills like dodge and parry will now have more of an impact when it comes to incoming damage – as those skills increase, it should make more of a measurable difference for you during fights.[/p]
• [p]The shield skill (which formerly didn’t do anything except let you equip a shield) is now going to improve your chance to block attacks, making it work more like dodge and parry. Shields overall are going to be getting a bit of an overhaul to help make them useful without being overpowering – we’ll try to talk through that a bit more in the next progress update.[/p]

[p]The actual numbers involved here will be subject to tuning, of course – we have a few rounds of internal playtesting we will need to do, and then we’ll be very closely watching how things go on the Public Test Realm when that opens. Overall though, when these changes are combined with the NPC changes we’re making, we believe that it will help to make combat a much richer and more engaging experience than it is today, and also help contribute to that sense of your character’s combat prowess improving as your skills go up and as you equip better items.[/p][h2]Class Updates[/h2][p]Over the past several weeks we have also been hard at work going through each of our classes to determine how best to incorporate the mastery system into their progression. If you’ve been reading our previous dev diaries you know that our implementation of mastery has evolved a bit as part of that work – but there’s more to it than just mastery. We’re also looking at what skills our classes have and how those skills function, as well as how we’re using class resources such as Battle Points for the Warrior. In some cases, we’re even planning to make some adjustments to the armor and weapons that classes can use, and the level at which things like heavier armor become available for those classes. Our goal here is to make horizontal character progression through options like skills and mastery matter just as much as vertical progression through leveling up or obtaining more powerful items.[/p][p]Our focus over the past two weeks has been our Tank classes, partly because tanking is a critical role in group gameplay, but also because the three tank classes and their unique styles provided us with a good starting point for working out how we should approach this work for our other classes. We need all our tanks to be able to function well in solo situations and in group situations, but the way they accomplish that needs to be different enough that each class feels different (and fun) to play. We’ll be wrapping up the pass through our tank classes shortly and starting on healers next, and we should be able to share the details on what’s changing with each of our tank classes in a few weeks.[/p][p]We have a lot more to do for the Combat and Progression update, so we’ll try to get another progress update out to you all soon! Until then, we hope you’re all looking forward to the upcoming Nightfall Crypt and the Summoner Updates which are almost ready to enter final testing so we can make sure everything is working well before they come out to all of you.[/p]