Characters have been migrated from live to QA as of April 4rd at midnight Central US time.
New Stuff
Mail
Mailboxes have been added to Newhaven City outside of each bank for testing. You can send text, money, and/or items. The recipient can either accept or decline this mail; when declined if something is attached it will be sent back to the sender. In addition, you can specify a cash-on-delivery amount which the recipient must pay in order to accept (or they can return to sender). We're still working through the details (audio, UI, etc) but we wanted to get this into your hands to break sooner than later. Give it a go and let us know what you think!
A few important bits of information:
Content Compression:
Frequent feedback that we receive from the community is the desire to have more variety in content and to be able to expand the range of players that can participate in that content. After internally considering multiple factors we are finally ready to have players experience the change that we are calling the "Content Compression".
All content on QA will undergo compression by a a factor of roughly 3/5 (it's not exactly this, but a good estimate). This means the 1-50 journey will be compressed down into a 1-30 journey. In doing so we see the following positives for the player base:
- Banners and torches near the Proving Grounds will no longer collide with the camera.
- Lower height of collider on Proving Grounds arena platform to better match visuals.
- Fixed new footstep audio collections not being bundled properly (memory improvement)
- Fixed some weapon textures not being properly marked for streaming MIPS (memory improvement)
- Adjusted visuals for Crystalized Great Sword to differentiate it from the Glacial version.
- Added a dropdown to the Map window listing other maps you have discovered. Selecting a different map will load that map.
- Added zoom & pan to the map UI (still no windows resize)
- (loading a different map will cause any teleport from monolith icons to go away if you go back to the current map, move away from the monolith and back to it in order to re-activate the teleport buttons. this will be fixed in the next qa patch).
New Stuff
Mailboxes have been added to Newhaven City outside of each bank for testing. You can send text, money, and/or items. The recipient can either accept or decline this mail; when declined if something is attached it will be sent back to the sender. In addition, you can specify a cash-on-delivery amount which the recipient must pay in order to accept (or they can return to sender). We're still working through the details (audio, UI, etc) but we wanted to get this into your hands to break sooner than later. Give it a go and let us know what you think!
A few important bits of information:
- Sending text has a flat fee.
- Sending items charges you a fee based on the item's category. Think of this as insurance. Current values are placeholder and likely need adjustment (feedback welcome).
- You cannot send mail to yourself.
- You cannot send mail to other characters on the same account.
- Messages are polled on the social server and hence there can be a delay of a few minutes before the mail is recieved
Content Compression:
Frequent feedback that we receive from the community is the desire to have more variety in content and to be able to expand the range of players that can participate in that content. After internally considering multiple factors we are finally ready to have players experience the change that we are calling the "Content Compression".
All content on QA will undergo compression by a a factor of roughly 3/5 (it's not exactly this, but a good estimate). This means the 1-50 journey will be compressed down into a 1-30 journey. In doing so we see the following positives for the player base:
- Expands content options for players
- Expands groupable player base
- Increases per-level benefits, giving each level more impact
- Reduces levels between skill upgrades and skill acquisitions.
- Reduces levels between equipment upgrades
- New characters will start with at least one additional skill
- Address gaps in progression where certain levels become harder to find on-level content
- Address gaps in crafting/gathering where certain levels become harder to find on-level content
- 1 -> 1
- 5 -> 3
- 10 -> 6
- 15 -> 9
- 20 -> 12
- 25 -> 15
- 30 -> 18
- 33 -> 20
- 36 -> 22
- 40 -> 24
- 43 -> 26
- 46 -> 28
- 48 -> 29
- 50 -> 30
- Is this a stat squish? Will all my numbers go down? No. All stat values and numerical calculations remain the same.
- Do I stay the same level as before? No. Your level and progress through it will be adjusted to fit into the new progression curve.
- Will I lose any skills or ability to wear any gear? No. All reductions are done globally. So all consumables, equipment and skills are reduced by the same amount.
- What about unlocks such as Ember Stone and Alchemy? These will also be shifted down with Ember Stone access at lvl 6 and Alchemy access at lvl 12.
- Is the exp needed for lvl 1 -> 30 the same as before? No. The experience required to reach max level has not been reduced.
- Does this mean it takes longer to level through each individual level? Yes. At this time the compression of the progression results in bigger rewards per level but more exp required per-level. This is something we are keeping an eye on for further adjustments.
- Is GEL still up to level +5? Yes. GEL remains with the same coverage as before. This is something we are keeping an eye on for further adjustments.
- Are there any changes to the color con system? What level something is grey/blue/yellow etc? Yes. On the low end mobs will be gray after 6 levels now instead of the previous 10. For other colors and level difference bonuses they remain unchanged, but this is something we are keeping an eye on for further adjustments.
- Is Gathering/Crafting adjusted too? Yes.
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