Greetings,
We have been reading feedback regarding the recent update to Classic (listed changes below) and want to give a bit of incite back to you for why these changes and where we can go from here.
WoE supply box change reason: We want players to engage in the guild dungeons a lot more than they currently do, making them slightly more populated, and to have a drop that should help supply the guild with the supplies to continue to WoE is the first stage of that. We had/ve a system on Renewal that let guild treasure boxes do the supplying, and it led to severe oversupply as castles got their economy rolling. This didn't lead to guild participation in the supply process at all, it got them to participate during WoE, but no reason to do anything else. In the end the guilds ended up being suppliers of many Woe supplies to the rest of the server rather than being consumers. With the WoE supply boxes being fairly obtainable by guilds going into their dungeons we hope to see more leveling down there and perhaps even some PVP battles!
White Slim Pot heal enhancement reason: It is true that ranked pots are very close in power level to mastela fruits, the default pots are not a good alternative to mastela for all classes (I agree with those that say some classes have bonuses to pots which this update may overpower). We want slim pots to be a viable option, they take more work to make, and they should get players interacting in the markets or with the monsterous denizens of midgard to make in quantities. Mastela fruits are expensive, but it doesnt cause any interaction with other players in getting supplies. In hindsight having mastelas never being sold by an NPC may have been a better thing all around, but hugel update was what it was. We decided that buffing slim whites rather than nerfing Mastelas would be a more exceptable change, though increasing cost or weight of Mastelas certainly was high on the list of alternatives.
Old Mastelas: 3 Weight, 400~600 Heal
Old Slim White: 2 Weight, 325~405 Heal
New Slim White: 2 Weight, 400~600 Heal
Discussion Points that I've seen as of Yesterday:
- Add Supply Boxes to MVPs: That wouldn't fit the point of the Guild supply boxes, it should be guild activities that award them, and require guild efforts to obtain them. Though increasing the interest in MVPs is on the plate, it is a later game update phase. We do intend to make MVPs reward more fitting with their challenge, and update the challenge level to make them more epic, but not just 1 skill all players die. 1 part is all MVPs have a Token (like Red Dragon Scale from Detarderus) imagine fun things we can do with that.
- Remove Tokens of Sigefried from Guild Dungeons: I'm assuming it is so people can't just keep fighting you even after death. This may be a good time to discuss having a death limit in the dungeons, IE after x deaths you are sent back to savepoint. This was going to be in the 5th dungeon used for the Seal quest, but could be of use here. I was thinking 5 Deaths and they are back at save, but discussions on pros/cons is welcome.
- Remove Ice Wall from Guild Dungeons: I would like to hear specific reasons for why, though one I am immediately aware of is IW on the guild entry point to scatter your party. That is certainly an annoyance. Though a factor we were planning is multiple entry points from each Castle (5~12 entry points) so you can't be "camped". Discussions welcome on this too.
- Remove Giant Fwing from Guild Dungeons: The group moving around isn't why I wouldn't want to do this, it is more of I want a group recall to me asset to keep parties together.. sadly this was not an item available. We can remove it though if it is seen as that important for guild battles to not have a hostile party hot dropped on you.
- The White Potion change is too much: It may have been, this was the change that we knew may need more tweaking. Changing it now made sense with the timing of the List Resets to allow players to burn our the WSS and get some Slim Whites in the game and start using them. Tuning SWP back a couple of dozen HP is possible, or adjusting the weight of the Slim pots as well (IE making lighter and reducing HP to distance them from Mastela). Or changing Mastelas, though I'm not sure how much players would like that.
- Add items to the Supply Boxes: Certainly this list was going to be played with more. Blue Herbs and Cobwebs make sense and will make their way in. We would like to hear player experience in opening them though. We based our drop rates, and item spawns on the assumption of getting about 30 boxes in a few hours of play without any sort of drop enhancer on. When opening we wanted roughly the quantities below to be gotten from 30 boxes opened:
200 Authoritative Badge
7 Karvodailnirol
3000 Poison Spore
120 Speed Potion
3000 Stem
5000 Witch Starsand
150 Zenorc's Fang
600 Fabric
400 Heart of Mermaid
100 Crystal Fragment
600 Immortal Heart - Add Supply Boxes to Guild Treasure, or some tradein: I can see the point, but we want activity between woes to have more a bearing on WoE supplies, Balancing treasure drops when the amount that can drop goes from 4 per night to 24, and the drop rates adjusted by so many factors there is no way we can keep oversuppy from happening with WoE supplies. Agreed that something amusing needs to be done about the common equipment drops that populate many Guild Leader storages.
October 30: updates directly pertaining to the discussion
- Cleared Alchemist/Blacksmith lists (normal timing)
- Upgraded Slim Whites to heal equal to Mastela Fruit as a base value
- Increased spawns in guild dungeons slightly ~ 15%
- Sped up Gajomart equal to Am Mut Speed
- Sped up Caterpillar to be equal to Leib Olmai speed
- Removed a drop, usually yellow herb, stickymucus or someother low quality drop to be replaced with a low% drop of a Guild supply box.
- Guild supply Box contents
- 200ea Authoritative Badge
7ea Karvodailnirol
100~700ea Poison Spore
50~ 70ea Speed Potion
100~700ea Stem
300~700ea Witch Starsand
150ea Zenorc's Fang
200~400ea Fabric
400ea Heart of Mermaid
100ea Crystal Fragment
200~400ea Immortal Heart