State of the Mud AddressThank you all for taking the time to read this long winded thread. I hope that through this post I can shed some light
on the direction of the mud, timing, pwipes and new features and changes on the horizon.
Arctic has always been a great game, the combination of sandbox style development coupled with the dynamic content
generated by the players keeps us coming back for more. We all have our faults and I know we haven't always seen eye to eye,
but I hope that we can all bury whatever hatchets we have and move the game forward.
Class Design: I wanted to set the stage and shine a little light into the future of classes by divulging some
information about class design. Over the next few wipes we will be redesigning each class from the ground up. Nothing is
on or off the table at this point but the guiding philosophy will be to give most classes the ability to fill multiple
roles.
We will be keeping the holy trinity around, Tanking, Healing and Damage but we want players to be able to do more with
less. A Warrior for example, could become a great tank or swap and do some needed damage, a Druid could easily play main
healer and switch to damage when needed. We want the combinations to make sense and be more balanced for smaller groups,
not being able to run a zone because you dont have a Barbarian or have a 14+ heal Cleric online is something we want to
get away from. We hope to have enough uniqueness in each class that you can select something that fits your gameplay
without making each role generic and bland.
A while back we posted that one class most likely would not make the cut in the next wipe. That class is the Scout. I
won't go into any specifics other than the class did not play well with the current mechanics and vision we have for the
class. The Scout will be replaced by a completely overhauled Ranger class and we will release more about the class when
we have the design in a more finalized state.
Mechanics: To accomplish the class design we will be implementing several new game mechanics. The first of these new
mechanics is something we call 'weapon attack skills'. The skill 'long blades' is pretty boring so we are creating a
mechanic to add some life and variety to gameplay. Weapon attack skills are new skills that use the weapon class
(piercers, bludgeon, etc...) of the wielded weapon to perform different types of attacks. The weapon attack skills have
3 different types, a basic attack, an affect attack which adds different affects onto the target and a finisher attack.
The basic and affect attack can be used to unlock the finishing attack. In order to have the system effectively, we
collapsed the 'long blade' and 'short blade' into a single 'swords' class. This change means some short blades were
moved into the piercers category. The two-handed skill was completely removed and the weapons were placed into the
appropriate class.
We are also building a new mechanic to handle affects both positive and negative that occur as a result of a skill or
spell. Our goal with this mechanic is to allow for 'crowd control' type affects to work more of the time but limit
stacking/overuse of them. We are spreading crowd control abilities and leveling the playing field so that more classes
can perform them. Our hope is that players won't always need a Warrior to bash because a similar crowd control affect
can be delivered by another class. We are deep into the design of this system so I won't disclose to much but we are
trying to keep the mechanic balanced so that it affects players and mobs the same way. Our focus is to keep the
mechanics the same between PvP and PvE.
Some quick highlights on other mechanics that will be making their way into the game:
- Hit point normalization: classes will have more of an equal base hp
- Mages will become more gear dependent and the casting_level affect will be removed
- Possible XP table changes. Don't get your hopes too high as we honestly think the tables were fairly close to where we
wanted them but we have received the feedback from you and want to seriously evaluate some changes there.
Zones: The next wipe will bring a complete rewrite of an old zone. I hope that I can do as good as a job as Sanjuro has
done with Dargaard and we hope that we can keep refreshing old content for you to explore. Our goal is to redesign older
zones more to the Dragonlance theme in the War of the Lance timeline. We will be starting with the core zones and moving
out from there. This of course, is a long project and will take the longest but we will strive to keep fresh content
coming in each wipe in some shape or another.
Pwipe: A pwipe is coming, the unknown is exactly when. A lot of code and a lot of creation changes need to be made
before we can pwipe and the timing of that is just too much in flux to be able to lock down a date. We are open to
listening to arguments for a wipe just to wipe, but aren't sold that it is a great idea.
