Greetings! This is the last boring stuff PTR build, yay!
Aside from any necessary fixes for these changes, we are now feature complete on the basic platform stuff and can now move on to working on skills, attributes, monsters, items, cutscenes, quests, etc. What a mission this has been.
In the future, trusted long time players will be awarded the helper role to help them stand out to newer players. This rank is visible via the player details screen and in the help channel.
What has changed?
- Internal changes to packet execution stuff Server side, keep an eye out for any weird behaviour or requests no longer working
- Promote and Demote commands re-implemented, game masters can elevate players to helper status
- Helpers:
- Status visible on player details screen with rank icon
- “H” Status visible in player list on Help chat
- Rank icon visible in Help chat
- Can view the “moderate” panel
- Can slap players
- Can view their criminal records
- Can view basic rule violation details
- Namelocks are added to a permanent “disallowed names” list
- Fix for various small bugs from previous PTR
- Implementation of “moderation log” so admins can easily view all of the punishment actions taken in the last 30 days
- Criminal record now sorts violations newest to oldest
- Update of lanuage files as per community submitted changes
There was actually a fairly unreasonable amount of UI rework in order to get the helper role working as it should, but everything should now flow correctly. There are a few tweaks I would like to make still to the internal rule violation view to show some extra details but they are no big deal.
What next?
I am going to take several days to plan out the next phase of development. I can’t say for certain the order things are going to get done, but these are the things in my mind at this moment in time, in no particular order:
- All new player attributes & Stats, total rework
- Scaling monsters with levels (they do not have to scale correctly at this point)
- Re-implement items from the ground up, supporting “blueprints” for items that scale with ilvl
- Various new equipment slots
- Optional Gem slots on gear (added through gemsmithing)
- Item durability
- Item upgrades (through armoursmithing, leatherworking, tailoring, and weaponsmithing)
- Over-time limited item effects:
- Rings will provide buffs but expire
- Utility items:
- Quivers will reduce the cap taken by ammunition
- Potion belts will reduce the cap taken by potions
- Rune satchels will reduce the cap taken by runes
- Backpacks will reduce the cap taken by equipment
- New loot table implementation that works with blueprints and allows nested “pick one drop from this” style tables on rolls
- Complete rewrite of NPCs, heavy focus on server-side scripted interactions
- New “final fantasy” style UI for taking players through conversations with NPCs
- Triggers for interaction availability
- Basic quest system
- Monster / NPC behaviours:
- Patrol paths
- Town guards
- Wander around
- Professions:
- Gathering:
- Mining
- Woodcutting
- Fishing
- Herbology
- Salvaging
- Skinning
- Crafting:
- Runecrafting (no longer spells)
- Fletching (no longer spells)
- Smelting
- Armoursmithing (heavy armour)
- Leatherworking
- Tailoring
- Weaponsmithing (all weapons)
- Alchemy
- Cooking
- Enchanting
- Gemology (jewelry & gems for gear upgrades)
- Gathering:
- Complete rework of Monster & Player abilities:
- 3 new “utility” spell slots
- Utility spells for light, movement speed, etc
- Cast times
- Buffs & Debuffs
- Stacking buffs & debuffs (global and personal)
- Abilities able to consume stacks for further effects
- Stuns (likely through debuffs)
- Interrupts
- Damage over time effects (likely through debuffs)
- Heal over time effects (likely through buffs)
- Slows (likely through debuffs)
- Monster AOE abilities have cast times and show a highlighted template of where the AOE is going to occur
- Players can interrupt or move out of the way
- AOEs are going to really hurt
- Cinematic mode for the client
- For in-engine cutscenes
- Phase the player out of the game world
- Take total control of the client
- Able to “act out” scenes in sequence, controlling the player, NPCs, monsters, etc
- Instances:
- Able to generate instances from “pieces” of pre-mapped areas like a jigsaw puzzle for pseudo-random encounter layouts
- Realm of Orea:
- Filled with toxic gas, player can only spend a short period of time in this realm each hour
- Vast majority of mined materials are found in this instance
- As the player completes objectives and gets further through the questline they are able to extend the amount of time they can spend in the mines
- The further into the mines you venture the rarer and higher quality the materials
- Environmental hazards such as falling rocks, earthquakes, etc
- The deeper you go the more hazards get in the way, monsters and such become a pain
- If you do not return in time you are rescued and lose 75% of the materials you picked up
- Runnable in parties, but each player is restricted to their own time limit, subject to their progress through the questline
- Realm of Sindar:
- Mechanics tbd, but much trees and cloth 🙂
- Dungeons:
- Scaling content, progression is reset each week
- First run of a dungeon rewards a piece of equipment that allows the player to access new areas of the world (flippers, hookshot, machete, whatever)
- Boss rooms have scripted mechanics, piece of equipment rewarded by dungeon is necessary to clear certain phases
- Rewards crafting materials, gems, and blueprints not found anywhere else
- When progress is reset, receive carebears for completing lower-level runs with lower-level players while you build back up to the high level runs
- Carebears can be spent on cosmetic rewards and fun stuff
- Factions & Reputation:
- Completing quests & dailies for different factions rewards reputation
- Reputation allows access to reputation vendors for various stuff (cosmetics, crafting ingredients, potions)
- Reputation provides discount to vendor prices of that faction
- Guilds
- We’ve all played games with guilds before, not much point going into this
- Core Stuff
- Rework of “push” mechanics, drag and drop pushing with no in combat exceptions
- Items can be dropped, pushed around and picked up
- Money in banks. The innovation.
- Overworld
- Continent made smaller, for players up to level 20, none-pvp throughout
- New main continent, PVP everywhere (including towns), town guards to mitigate stupidness
- Experience and skill loss on death regardless of how it occurred
- Drop approximately half of items in inventory and carried money on death
- Can look at player corpses to see who it was
- Can drag corpses around to hide them
- PVP
- “Outlaw” system changed to a negative reputation that decreases for killing players 10+ levels lower than yourselfPlayers flagged as outlaws will be attacked and killed on sight by town guards
- Players flagged as outlaws respawn in the chaos realm instead of in town and have to navigate their way back to the realm themselves as temple guardians will no longer help rescue your soul when you die
- Chaos realm is an instance that is re-generated every hour so the path out will not be obvious
- Chaos realm has some very nasty mobs patrolling that will do % max health damage and cannot be killed. You can avoid them, but if you are engaged you will likely die again.
- If two guilds declare war on each other they will not gain outlaw reputation when killing members of the opposite guild and will always appear to enemy guild members as having a special colour skull. They will not get any kind of skull visible to bystanders for fighting enemy guild members.
- Blessings
- Players under level 50 can speak to any temple guardian for a free blessing that significantly reduces loss on death
- Players level 50 and over will no longer qualify for this blessing, however there will be a level 50 crafted necklace players can wear that has the same effect but is consumed on death
- Marketplace
- As most of the items available in the game will have been crafted by players, and I am sure there are many players that don’t want to craft things, the marketplace will be a big and important part of gear progression for many players
- On the flip side, I am sure for some players crafting will essentially be “the game”, so for these guys the marketplace will be a nice central asynchronous place for them to sell all their stuff without having to sit in town losing their minds spamming trades
I’m sure I have left stuff out, but this is essentially “the game”. Heavily leaning into crafting, daily quests, reputation, a storyline quest, and open-world conflict. I want players to be able to play through the story and do their dailies, crafting and collecting cosmetics, but I also want players to be able to essentially ignore all of that and just war it out.
The PTR is positioned perfectly to start moving forwards for the first time in over a year (a year and a half?), I am pretty excited and optimistic about the future and the direction we are going.
In other news, a very good friend of mine in RL will be joining the project as a part-time Developer soon, we are taking the first steps this weekend and he will soon be pouring through the code shaking his head 😀
Expect the roadmap for the rest of June by the end of next week.
Peace,
Fhox