1st, most of this maintenance is about just implementing of the Skill balance update. With it there are some other system changes that we need to update as well.
1st Some 3rd classes do have HP modifications. Below is the changes, this would be level 150 with 0 vit (vit adds 1% HP)
- Rune Knight 17808 -> 14883
- Warlock 6960 -> 7669
- Ranger 10451 -> no change
- Archbishop 8283 -> no change
- Mechanic 10897 -> 12531
- GX Cross 13188 -> no change
- Shadow Chaser 13188 -> no change
- Royal Guard 13188 -> no change
- Sorcerer 10451 -> 8883
- Minstrel 10451 -> no change
- Wanderer 10451 -> no change
- Sura 10897 -> no change
- Genetic 8283 -> 9111
Skill Resets: There will be a new very flamboyant NPC in the Eden Group that will do a full stat/skill reset 1 time for free. If you want more resets on that character it will take 1 Reset stone for the 2nd, 2 for the 3rd 3 for the 4th etc (#ofReset - 1)= reset stones needed
The Kafra shop has largely moved into the Item Mall GUI which is a button near the minimap, this will work on most maps for access to the kafra shop. For now we will leave the NPCs in the 2nd floor of the Eden Group while you adjust to the update.
Maintenance notes:
- New Turnin from Gramps
- 90-110 Kiel Hyre
- Aliot
- Aliza
115-130 Rachel Sanctuary 5
- Hodremlin
- Seeker
135+ Somatology Lab 3 (biolabs 3)
- Cecil Damon
- Eremes Guile
- Margaretha Sorin
- Seyren-Windsor
- Kathryne Keyron
- Howard Alt-Eisen - Reset NPC in the Eden Group Kitchen 1 Free, each one after is 1 more Reset stone than the last reset.
- Item Mall GUI added to the game
- Skill and class rebalance added.
- Christmas Lucky Box added until 12/27 (scheduled) 300 pts.
- Early Wrapped Christmas Gift added as well 1800 pt next week it becomes tradable.
Next week will also be event WoEs of some sort, this means that this weeks castle holders will lose their castles next maintenance, their Econ and holdings backed up and reapplied once the event WoEs are over. During the event woes only certain realms will open up during the WoE period, and there will be 2 castles on the realm that are "normal" and 3 that are event WoE based, reward will not be treasure (indeed treasure won't spawn anyway) but will be items that help the guild make zeny and recouperate WoE cost.
WoE2 castles are disable this week, however WoE 1 will take place on all servers at the normal Saturday Time.
We are working on the PVP room delay on skill.
*-------- Long winded explanation follows ------------*
We began talking about the Skill Balance we were working on since last April, with expectations of having all the skill updates applied sometime last July. kRO at that time was directly working on a new skill balance that took feedback from many countries into account and was better received than the original, they wanted us to hold on until August/September to get the skill balance update. It was plausible to do this since huge sweeping changes should be few and far between, and this is a large change to be honest. When we were discussing our update schedule there were a lot of mini updates that had to precede the skill balance, as the skill balance was built with the "physics" of 14.1 in mind, which basically means that certain game functions only work with the 14.1 build.
So the Indonesia Map, Brasilis, 13.3 and the Costume Tab all needed to precede the Skill Balance update. That meant delays in our schedule. We were planning to be at this point of implementation in Late october or Early November, but we had certain technical difficulties due to this being the first implementation of this update outside of kRO or jRO, and not having workable files to work on our English systems. These are the sort of things that happen in development, normally we don't get so much at once, but it isn't unheard of. If we don't launch today that means 14.1 has to be delayed into next year, because the next 2 weeks are going into Holiday time which means very lessened support and ability to affect changes and fixes quickly. (Plus I had 2011 marketing budget planned for these updates, it going *poof* would make me cry with the lost opportunity)
I know with certainty that there are going to be things that are disliked in this update, likely because a class was glossed over, or made weaker or another class skills got enhanced etc. I know that is true and would happen in any sort of skill update, but I really hope that we all can look at this properly as a step in the right direction. Originally it was thought this would be the "end all patch" for skill balance from kRO, but after much discussion about feedback from around the world and the very passionate discussions over the last many months a new, more realistic, mindset emerged. It is impossible to fix everything at once, and really an MMO keeps evolving so constant tweeks have to happen, if feedback and the needs of the individual versions aren't addressed it will harm their player base and ultimately business. I know those statements sound like "duh" statements but a large business is not a person it is numbers and it doesn't have common sense it just has resource management and efficiency desires, and trying to cram an idea that uses resources without imediate gain is *hard*.
So 2011 is step 1, its long overdue but oh so needful. 2012 will likely have at least 1 if not 2 skill tweek updates (much smaller than this) , we need to take your feedback on how things are after this patch and get changes made. Things like resistances, damage, combination effects between skills etc all are things we want to modify. We pushed this update through Sakray faster than many of you wanted, and didn't allow tons of build testing, this was very intended as we knew it was impossible to make "balance changes" on this patch, it is a yes or no not a line item veto power. It takes months to get changes applied properly through the kRO then out to the world patches, I can't let iRO sit as it is for many months while we nitpick on specific skills, it just adds more frustration that we aren't moving forward. The Sakray testing was just to make sure the skills did what they were stated to change to (we will update the website as we can) testing builds so often misses the point of verification testing which was why the limitations.
