State of the Game - 2014 and into 2015

[dayrinni]

Hello!

Here is the end of year State of the Game for A Tempest Season.

Overall 2014 was a successful year for the game. We had some new players, staff and new RP events. We released two new classes, a new spell line for Mages, several areas, introduced many quality of life updates and rebalanced the older classes to be more inline with the game's overall vision.

Many of you ask: How can we help the game? And we answer with: Be patient! You have all really shown your patience and dedication to this game, especially in a time where it's more of a niche than mainstream. Your dedication and patience is what keeps the staff moving ahead and towards to opening officially!

It has become clear to all of the staff that when this game opens it will be a successful one. Every day, we see the fun and excitement of the players as they log in and play. Sure, the game isn't perfect, but I think it's darned good! Nothing is prefect and striving for perfection is a folly and that leads me to the question: When will we open?


Hopefully, we have answer for you! We are planning to really open in 2015. There must be a few things finished though, and I'll list them out plain as day:

• 1. Areas up to level 100. We're almost there – roughly 4 remain to be completed (half already contain descriptions).
  2. The 3 additional classes need to be finished: Ranger, Blood Shaman and Evonian Agent.
  3. Attribute system update.
  4. General pass of updating the newbie area, quests, help files and some polishing of lore on the website.

These four tasks is what must be completed in order to open – each are vital to the game's long term success.

Our current focus is finishing the areas up to level 100 in order to do better high level balancing. After, we will move forward in finishing the other tasks*. We really hope to open in 2015 and we will strive to do so. It is our end goal to have the game in a state where the staff can focus more on RP than implementation of systems that should already be present in the game.

Thank you for your time in reading this update and for playing the game!
Dayrinni, Actinate, Verdandi, and Elric



*If anyone wishes to help with the above 4 tasks, please contact me and we'll see if you're a good fit. Any help that is given will be awarded with in-game beta rewards(which has always been our standard policy).

[dayrinni]

Hello!

While the previous post touched on some high level topics and what's needed to open, there are some things that will be done prior to opening that aren't included in major tasks. To keep this short (And because I am on cold medicine right now), I'll just list them out.

• 1. Re-balancing of treasure drops from monsters after level 30. Long story short: gold makes the game go around. There will be a general increase in treasure drops. Some areas may be POOR but offer more ability points OR experience OR rare drops that are useful. In the new system, do not expect every area to give currency (or as much as richer areas). We'll be talking about this in the future.
  2. The rewrite of Tralisia, including the Market District. This will get done when Actinate is satisfied with it – I'd say it's roughly at 75% completed. We will make sure ample cats are included in the rewrite.
  3. Platinum and Titanium equipment in the shops. This will cost a lot – but with the treasure rebalancing, it will work out. Please note that the Platinum armor is made roughly for levels 55/60 up to the 80s, where Titanium is set more for end game(level 100). Do not expect to get titanium armor right away. Some armor may be adjusted so that it protects more (namely the appendages).
  4. The Lore time on the page is a huge project – we will be putting general overviews in most of the entries and fleshing them out later.

Now, I know that we like to hear what's to come in the long term, so I'll drop a few tidbits in list form:

• 1. We will slowly move away from offering the typical “Quests” (we won't be removing any and of course, adding quests here or there). We want to write up a dynamic Event System that can change the world based on triggers and game/world state. I have a design for this and just need time to implement it. This will be done after we open.
  2. We will be working on the back end in terms of the Action Component System(ACS). This system is used for builders to create dynamic items, NPCs and locations. Think of legos – you can build anything if you have the pieces. This will reduce coding for me.
  3. Our own client and support for the MCP protocol(if it is really annoying, I may write my own custom protocol, we'll see).
  4. Trade skills: I want to make sure they are fun and something that can be done long term and as a profession, while having impact on the word (ie: farming). This will likely be done after the Event System (so after we open).

The future is bright!

Thanks for reading and being members of the ATS Community!
Dayrinni, Actinate, Verdandi, and Elric

[dayrinni]

Hello!

A quick update:

We have put in many new areas for the game and we're getting close to wrapping up the hunting areas to get up to level 100.

We'll be finishing the areas up and then moving into the new attribute system and then, into the new classes.

We've also been collecting a lot of data in order to do a balancing sweep this year. This sweep will focus on some quality of life things for players:
1. Wound generation and bleeding.
2. Repair costs for weapons.
3. Currency drops.
4. Skill tweaking. There are still some powerful abilities out there and we'll be tweaking them as needed. To the best of our abilities, we'll let you keep the majority of the OP versions as a reward for helping test but this is no guarantee.
5. Monster tweakage.

Thanks!

[dayrinni]

Hello!

We have recently put in the level 100 area. This means that for the most part, every area we had planned is in the game (Actinate is working on the 69-74 area). So we have definitely reached a pivtol milestone in the game. Thanks for being patient.

Next, we will be redoing the attribute system. Thanks to everyone for contributing to that discussion.

Down the line, we'll be doing some rebalancing of the classes and other aspects. These will consist of some tweaks, some of which will be ability adjustments for various classes based on the data that has been so far collected.

Thanks.

[dayrinni]

Hello!

We're still making great progress forward to our goals this year. We still hope to open later this year. We will try to keep you all updated best to our abilities on this. We will not open this year if we feel we aren't ready. Again, we're always looking for helpers from the players to make the game's progress go faster!

We just completed a massive project in the new saving and loading for players. We have great performance even though the complexity (under neath) in saving and loading has increased. But from a usage stand point (of this new way of doing things), it's really easy to do. So this will help us out in the future in adding new features to the game.

We'll be testing the players over the next coming few weeks while fixing bugs. Then we'll go onwards to the area conversion. This will be much easier and quicker, since all of the work has been done with the implementation of the new saving/loading APIs. And also, the complexity of the data for areas is MUCH LESS than players. So that's great!

In addition, we have revamped the attribute system. Yahoo! So far, everyone seems to enjoy it (Except for finding that Wisdom trainer!)

So what's next? Actinate has bombarded me (in a good way) of a bunch of feature requests he wants for the new Merchant District. He's making AMAZING items. So I'll be working on that for a bit. He also wants a portion of the ACS in soon, so I'll be working on that too.

From a player perspective, we have some work to in balancing the classes and overall game out. We're looking in re-balancing the vitals a bit (to make them more predictable and making the attributes for vitals easier to understand and work), as well as adjusting the focuses from 10 abilities to 7, in order to make up room for end game specs (hurra!). Please see the respective threads in the Ideas forums if you have already not checked them out.

We also have been collecting data for over a year on all of the other issues classes have been reporting. We'll be addressing those in the near future (few months). These include changes such as making the end game Clerical gifts the proper power level (ie: vigor). Others will involve tweaking damage a bit, some will go up, others will go down. We have some other items we want to change, such as rebalancing higher monsters. 90+ have too much health right now. Another is making the Templar's Alignment blade skills have a lower cool down so you can use them more often. The list is long and we'll get to it.

I have some other internal code changes that I'd like to do:
1. Removing the affect execution system from the player file to the ModType file.
2. Implementing a performance monitoring system for all executed commands from players. This will help track down any potential issues with commands taking up too much processing time.
3. A generic statistical system that can track any type of piece data we want - on players and on the game.

Finally, the new classes. Actinate has been designing the Blood Shamans. From what he has told me - it's gonna be awesome! We have three new classes to put in: Blood Shaman, Evonia Agent, and the Ranger.

So that's this update and we've moving quickly ahead.

Thanks for your support!

Day, Act, Elric, Verdandi

[dayrinni]

Hello!

Here's June's plan of action:
1. Implement the vital recalculation for the players.
2. Rebalance the monsters accordingly.
3. Remove 3 focus skills from each focus.

We'll be tackling these items next and then moving into new tasks in July (likely the area conversion).

In July, we're looking to begin work on designing 1 of the 3rd remaining classes.


Note: All of this is subject to change based on new information and situations that present themselves.

Thanks for your continued support!