Greetings Mortals,
We released the first patch of the Era of Refinement last week, which if you missed you can read the patch notes for here.
We are very pleased with how positively it was received, and we are excited to now be well and truly stuck into working on the second one.
In this development update, we will once again be talking about some of the larger items contained within the upcoming patch and why.
As we are trying to pack in as many things as we possibly can into this sprint, it is possible that certain items mentioned below end up not quite making it for the PTR or the release, however the below list is what we are working on at the moment.
Aggressive Flag
As many of you may remember, we first talked about the concept of the Aggressive Flag all the way back in March this year. If you missed that or would like to dive much deeper into the intent behind the change, you can view the Into the Vault #156 post here on our website.
The response we received regarding it was very positive, since then it has been sitting in the pile of things we want to do, and finally the time has come to implement it!
In summary, the Aggressive Flag represents the ability to identify the intent of a player before they commit a criminal action, by requiring them to toggle on their Aggressive Flag (which replaces the Criminal Actions toggle) in order to be able to commit such actions.
Aggressively Flagged players are also able to be legally attacked by anyone, even if they have not committed a criminal action yet.
Note
As this was a slight point of confusion the last time we talked about this, to be absolutely clear:
This is not a PvP toggle.
It does not mean you need to opt in for other players to attack you; you can still be attacked at any time. What this means is players must Aggressive Flag themselves before they are able to attack Blue players or commit criminal actions. This allows other players to identify hostile intent and act upon it pre-emptively. It places the initiative of an encounter upon those who may be attacked, rather than with the attacker.
The full details of this are already in the linked post above, so if you are interested in more detail we very much encourage you to read through that, however we will recap the most important outcomes of this change from that post here:
Aggressive Flag Mechanics Description
The Aggressive Flag:
- Replaces the Criminal Actions toggle, and is activated in the same way via a keybind.
- Has a 3 second activation delay window, which exists via a transitionary buff to avoid abuses and to serve as a “debounce” window so players can correct an accidental activation without becoming globally vulnerable.
- The specifics of these timers may change drastically.
- Allows the player to be legally attacked and killed by anyone.
- Allows the player to commit criminal actions while Aggressively Flagged.
- Has a 30 second removal delay window, using the same transitionary buff.
- This means a player can turn on their Aggressive flag very quickly, however turning it off requires waiting a short time.
- If a player is hit during this 30 seconds, their transition buff timer resets, in the same way getting hit as a criminal resets your criminal timer.
- This is to avoid potential abuses and odd behaviors if a player attempts to remove their Aggressive Flag after already engaging with another player.
- Behaves the same way as “Local Grey”, in that you can be attacked and killed, however if you die while Aggressive Flagged then you can be legally looted.
- If a blue player attacks you while you are Aggressive Flagged and you kill them, looting them will be a criminal action.
- Activating “Aggressive Flag” initiates a transitionary buff with a duration of 3 seconds
- When this buff timer ends, your Aggressive Flag is now on.
- When your Aggressive Flag is on, you become “local grey” to all other players, with a specific new “flag icon” under your nameplate and a changed name color.
- Being Aggressively Flagged allows other players to attack you pre-emptively, as you have flagged yourself for open PvP.
- When you toggle off your Aggressive Flag, you get a transitionary buff again, but for 30 seconds.
- If you are not a criminal (you didn’t commit any crimes while you had it on) you return to your base flag.
- If you are a criminal, you remain one however you can now not commit any new crimes as your Aggressive Flag is now disabled.
At its core, the goal of this proposed update to the flagging system is to make all PvP engagements more intuitive, easier to understand and fairer as player intent is more accurately conveyed which allows all players involved to make better informed decisions, while reducing the prevalence of receiving murder counts in scenarios which do not warrant them.
Naturally with a change as impactful as this, we will greatly appreciate everyone who tests this out on the coming PTR.
Customizable House Components
Player housing is a significant element of our game, being able to place and build your house in the world and decorate it the way you want with items found throughout your travels is a joy we encourage everyone to experience.
However up to now, the visual customization options and ability to really personalize the look of your homes has been essentially non-existent, which is what we are fixing in this patch.
A simple selection of customizations to demonstrate a small fraction of the added variety.
You will now be able to customize the appearance of your houses with great detail, with the option to replace and change individual components such as the outer walls, beams, inner walls, flooring, ceiling, roof and front door.
Each component is an individual item found in the world, with basic variants available on town vendors and common to very rare components being found as loot. There are components which use existing materials found in the world, allowing you to do things like make your house look like it belongs in Morin Khur or Tindrem, as well as a wide selection of brand new materials and colours.
This started as a relatively small idea, but very quickly the potential was realized and now the team is very excited about what we have been working on for this. The level of visual variety for houses has exploded.
However, this does not only apply to normal player houses, but also to Strongholds and Keeps, as well as keep walls.
This represents an entirely new type of loot that we can distribute throughout the world, as rare collectable visual components.
There are certain bonus aspects we are currently experimenting with to see if we can support them which we will not discuss in this post, however it will suffice to say the possibilities here are vast.
New Spells
Utility Spells
New magic is always exciting, and something that we have been wanting to introduce for a while now are spells which serve more of a utility focus than simply dealing damage.
We will be introducing a number of these new and practical spells in this patch, such as:
- Breath of Efficiency
- Allows you to speed up your gathering ability when mining and woodcutting to achieve faster yields.
- Amplified Attunement
- Provides you with a small bonus to Trinket rolling odds.
- The scroll for this spell will be rather rare to provide value for those that scribe it, as well as cost an expensive reagent to cast, so use it wisely!
- Levity
- Reduces the effects of gravity upon you for a short time, allowing you to jump a little higher and descend slower to potentially survive larger falls. Be careful though, as this spell lasts a short time and you will begin falling at normal speed if the effect ends while you are in the air.
- Aquatic Attraction
- Increases the chances of a bite while fishing for a short time.
- Beast of Burden
- Allows you to carry more inventory weight before becoming encumbered.
- Flare
- Create a small light which follows you around.
- This light is smaller and less effective compared to the larger Illumination spell in the Elementalism School.
Although it would be potentially appropriate for some of these spells to be part of a new magic school, due to that route requiring much more time to implement, for the time being they will be added to the list of Ecumenical Spells.
Combat Affecting Spells
Although we are excited for the above mentioned new utility spells and what they add to the world, we have also designed a few new combat-affecting spells to go along with them.
- Blood Sacrifice
- A Necromancy spell which allows you to draw from your own Health when out of Mana and attempting to cast spells from the Necromancy School. This enables you to continue casting with no Mana left at the cost of your own life.
- Mana Shield
- Allows you to mitigate a portion of damage received by draining it from your Mana instead of Health, with damage dealt to Mana being removed at a much higher rate.
- Repelling Ward
- Applies a short lived force around you which will physically repel the next person who hits you, while mitigating a small amount of their dealt damage and reflecting it back to the attacker.
- Relinquish Undead
- A simple spell which allows you to abandon a controlled Walker.
The specifics around these spells such as effect strength, cast time, mana cost, skill range requirements and reagents used were excluded from this development post as they are still in a slight flux at the moment.
Quality of Life Changes
As with the last patch, a significant amount of focus has gone into identifying areas where quality of life can be improved both removing long term areas of frustration as well as generally making the game smoother to play.
Here are some of these quality of life changes, some of which have already been completed and are being tested internally while others are still in the todo pile:
- You can now always walk slowly while encumbered, regardless of how much weight you are carrying.
- This change will make it so you are never in the situation where you are completely unable to move due to carrying a lot of weight, allowing you to get closer to a bank, pet with bags or vendor without needing to resort to dropping all of your items on the ground and then picking them up again to be able to move.
- Drinking potions or using bandages while you have your weapon out will now no longer result in using the item slower than if you manually put away your weapon first before using the consumable.
- This means you can now safely use these items directly from the action bar without needing to manually put your weapon away first to have the fastest use time.
- Intelligence no longer impacts book reading speed.
- Character attributes are a core part of every build, however penalizing a huge portion of the playerbase with substantially longer skill training times purely because they prefer not to play a high Intelligence build caused needless friction without adding much value to the game. From now on all characters will read books at the same speed, unless of course they have a Clade Gift or skill (such as Skimming) which affects this.
- Hitching Posts have been added to high traffic areas in many towns, which allow you to quickly stable your pet for example before entering a bank.
- These Hitching Posts have a maximum stable size of 1, and are not affected by Mastery Gifts.
- The purpose of these is to offer an option for people to easily store and withdraw their pets in high traffic areas to reduce pet clutter in towns.
- Changed the way Melee Weapon skills affect damage dealt.
- Each skill now only increases the minimum damage you can deal with its associated weapon, resulting in higher weapon skill allowing you to hit higher more consistently while it is still possible to achieve the same maximum damage with lower skill at a lower chance.
- We are working on adding new wearable banners which display your guild Heraldry, to make identifying important guild members easier during larger fights.
- We had noticed that many guilds had resorted to using the red banner dropped by the Bey Wafa Commander for this purpose, and so now you will be able to fly your own Heraldry instead.
- We are looking at changing most Outlaw spawns to instead be patrolling in an area rather than spawning very close to you in an ambush.
- Most of the remaining creatures that make sense on Myrland becoming mountable.
New Clade Gifts
We have reworked more Clade Gifts for this patch, with the following gifts being changed:
Human
- Northerner has been renamed to Tempered Focus, and increases Spell Power based on on Adrenaline stored, up to +9% at 10 Adrenaline.
- Scholastic has been renamed to Physician, and increases healing received by +10%.
- The increased reading speed has been maintained from Scholastic.
Thursar
- Staunch has been renamed to Ferocious, and applies a lifesteal effect based on Adrenaline stored, up to +5% at 11 Adrenaline.
- The Poison resistance effect of Staunch has been moved to Styganthrope.
Alvarin
- Stalker has been renamed to Energetic, and increases Stamina Regeneration based on Adrenaline stored, up to +2% at 10 Adrenaline.
- The AI aggression effect of Stalker has been removed, as it often resulted in engaging with Alvarin opponents inside densely AI packed areas such as dungeons much more oppressive than intended due to AI almost always attacking the not Alvarin players.
Oghmir
- Devour has been renamed to Anabolic Synthesis, and now increases the Health Reserve gained when eating.
- The additional maximum Hunger from Devour has been moved to Consume, making it twice as effective.
Concentration Skill Rework
The behavior of the Concentration skill and how it relates to interrupting casting has changed.
Instead of there being a chance for a spell to be completely cancelled if hit which is reducible to zero percent with 100 Concentration skill and the associated Masteries, there is now a penalty to Spell Power (the effectiveness of the spell when released) which increases for each hit received above 10 damage while channeling a spell.
This is of course a familiar mechanic, as Bandaging interrupts work in a similar way.
One key difference here however, is that unlike Bandaging interrupts there is a minimum Spell Power that you cannot go below, currently set to 40%.
The Concentration skill now reduces the Spell Power penalty received for each interrupt hit, lowering it to 15% at level 100, with the associated Mastery gifts lowering it a little further, however it cannot reach 0%.
This change comes as a result of the Concentration skill no longer serving its intended purpose, which is to ensure casters cannot simply cast spells freely without penalty while a melee player is actively hitting them.
The exact values of this mechanic are of course also subject to change, so be sure to let us know your thoughts on it in the feedback form below.
Lasting Respite Buff
To encourage and incentivize more social engagements, we have added a simple system that applies a beneficial buff called Lasting Respite which you can gain from sitting near a campfire for a short time.
While sitting next to a fire, you will gain the buff after a few seconds and then slowly increase the lifetime of the buff toward its maximum over a few minutes.
Lasting Respite slows the accumulation of reserve loss, and lasts for a maximum of 30 minutes.
Hunting Prowess Skill
For a long time, the Zoology Lore skills contained within the Profession skill tree have affected both damage received from and damage dealt to creatures.
This was problematic due to it being considered “required” for competitive players to spend their Profession points on these lore skills in order to deal the most damage to and have the highest defence against player pets in PvP encounters.
Profession points are intended to be spent on skills that you are personally interested in for crafting and utility purposes. More specifically, the skills contained within the Profession tree are not meant to affect PvP or PvE outcomes, as those are what Action skills relate to.
To resolve this, we have removed the effect of the Zoology skills on AI damage and defence, and added a new Primary Action skill called Hunting Prowess, which replaces it.
Hunting Prowess does the same thing the Zoology skills did, by increasing damage and defence against creatures by 20%, however it is an Action skill. Now that it is in the Action skill tree, we may increase its effectiveness as a result of it costing Action Points to get and thus being harder to fit into builds and less easily obtained by a majority of players.
“Anti-Zerg” Mechanic
Something that we have received many requests for over time, and especially when gathering feedback from the last Era of Refinement patch, is a mechanic which attempts to mitigate the advantages held by larger groups when attacking smaller ones.
The purpose of this change is to implement a fundamental and pure in form “zerg protection” mechanic for lack of a better term, that simply makes it so if multiple people are hitting you at the same time, within the same second, then subsequent hits after the first one will deal reduced damage for a very short time.
The proposed system works by keeping track of how much total health you have lost within the past 1 second, and applying a floating defensive bonus to all damage received based on the amount of health lost.
As an example, this means if you are hit for 50% of your health, for 1 second you would have a 50% damage resistance bonus, making it so if another player hits you immediately afterward, they would deal significantly less damage. If you were hit for 50% of your health and then instantly healed, the defensive bonus would be decreased.
The targeted scenarios here are when multiple people are hitting the same target in a very short amount of time, such as when two players are holding attacks in two different directions and attempting to release them at the same time so that the target cannot block both of them, or when multiple casters or archers are focusing the same target at once.
Note
This only affects the specific case of multiple players hitting one player at the same time, and does not attempt to address or affect cases of “zerging” where there are many more players attacking a smaller group over a longer period of time.
Solving or meaningfully affecting such cases is a far trickier problem to tackle without introducing odd or much more complex behaviors, however it is something that we are keeping in the back of our minds and would like to touch on it again in the future when we are able to.
This mechanic is currently in active development, and could change drastically or even be removed entirely from the sprint depending on feedback and how the implementation progresses.
The specifics such as how long the defensive effect lasts for and how much it scales with your net health decrease are also subject to change
We are of course very interested in community feedback about this newly proposed mechanic, and so if you would like to share your opinions with us then please do so in the feedback form at the bottom of this post!
Town Crier
Although serving a rather simple purpose to begin with, this new NPC addition to many towns is planned to support certain future content as well that we can’t talk about just yet.
For now, the Town Crier will announce when criminal players are spotted fairly close to town, alerting those within of their nearby presence.
Town Heraldry Banners
We are working on adding banners throughout towns which display the Heraldry of the guild who owns the Region the town is located in.
Emote Wheel
Social interaction and engaging with other players is one of the core experiences that can be incredibly valuable in our world, and the use of emotes has the potential to enhance those experiences by a significant margin.
Although we have a lot of emotes to choose from in the game, they are hardly accessible due to requiring you to manually type out the name of the emote in the chat window to use them, which can be especially clunky feeling for emotes with longer names, not to mention having to do so while under pressure.
To make using emotes much smoother and more accessible, we are working on adding a new radial menu, from which you can use any of your unlocked emotes with ease.
As mentioned at the start of this post there are a few items we are looking at in this sprint which might not end up making it into the PTR or release, and this is one such item, however we do very much want to add it.
Rare Loot Expansion
We mentioned in the last development update about the new rare loot table support and how it would be something we continue to expand upon in future patches, and that remains true.
In this patch we will be implementing the new rare loot mechanics to more things throughout Myrland and Sarducaa, and we have also updated the system in a way that allows us to have much more granular control over it.
One of the main differences you will notice is that more difficult encounters such as bosses will have a much higher chance to draw from these rare loot tables than currently, and we will also be adding very small chances for even the most common things to potentially access them. For example killing a chicken could potentially drop something very rare, however it will be a vanishingly small chance for that to actually happen.
Balance Updates
There are several smaller items in the patch for adjusting the balance of existing things, a small few of which are:
- Decreasing the Mana cost and cast time of Gale to make it more useful for gaining distance from opponents.
- Adding Elementalism debuffs to existing Ecumenical spells, such as making Flamestrike Ignite targets and Thunderlash apply Shocked for a short time.
- Increasing the effectiveness of Atrophy against pets.
- Increasing the Sprinting stamina drain benefit from Persistence Hunter to -20% from -10%.
Return of Tagmaton Invasions
The Tagmaton Invasions have been disabled for a while now due to some server performance related issues they could cause, and in this patch we will be working on resolving those problems and re-enabling them.
Note that these adjustments may result in their behaviors changing from their initial implementation.
We are also going to be working on a new additional type of Invasion, however at this stage we are unsure of if it will make it in time and so we won’t be going into detail about it just yet.
Henrik’s Next Stream
Our CEO Henrik Nyström will be addressing you all once again in a livestream on Twitch on the 11th of November, one week before the PTR.
In this stream he will be showing some of the different items coming in this patch, as well as talking about some interesting things coming both in the near and not so near future for Mortal Online 2.
You will likely not want to miss this one.
PTR Date
The above items are only the most major things that we wanted to mention and get your feedback on before the PTR on the 18th of November, when you will be able to get your hands on and test them out.
There are many other items being worked on at the moment, some of which you will find out about when the PTR opens up and some which will remain secret up until the release.
Feedback Survey
Have any thoughts on any of the items we have mentioned above?
We would love to hear them! Simply follow the link below to our questionnaire and let us know what you think.
See you in Nave,
The Star Vault Team