Dev Blog - Gameplay Updates

Saturday, April 15, 2023

Gameplay Updates

Happy weekend, Adventurers!

We are excited to share some new game design changes that we've been working on, thanks to your valuable feedback. Our goal is to continuously improve your gaming experience, and we appreciate your support in this journey. Today, we'll be discussing:

1. Updates to Party Questing

2. Introducing a new Mentor System

3. Fixes and Balances to the Tradepack System

4. Fishing Balances

5. Major Crafting Changes 

6. A New Attribute: Vitality

 

Party Questing

We have heard your feedback and agree that party questing could be more enjoyable and rewarding. So, we've made some changes to enhance the party questing experience:

When you're in a party, each party member will now receive credit for killing a creature if you share the same quest. This change should make it easier for you to progress together and share in your victories!

For now, this feature will only apply to Story Quests. We understand that you may want this for Dynamic & Environmental quests as well but implementing it for those could lead to gameplay and balance instabilities. We'll continue to monitor the situation and explore options to expand this feature in the future but it will likely remain only for Story Questing as a group.

Our aim with these updates is to make main-questing with a party feel more fluid, allowing you and your friends to enjoy the game together without sacrificing progress or rewards.

 

Mentor System

We're thrilled to introduce a new Mentor System that will help foster camaraderie and collaboration between players of different levels:

When you join a party with lower-level friends or new acquaintances, you will now have the option to "Mentor" them. This will downscale your Effective Level to the level of the highest party member within experience share range, allowing you to participate in content with them while also benefitting from that content as well.

Even as a mentor, you will continue to gain experience for your equipped Archetypes. Your Effective Level will simply be reduced to match your party members, ensuring a balanced and enjoyable experience for everyone.

This new system aims to make it easier for you to play with friends and new acquaintances alike, fostering a sense of community and cooperation in the world of Ravendawn.

 

Tradepacks

We have been closely monitoring the value of Tradepacks over the Open Beta and have found a few issues that we will be fixing.

First, we will be hard resetting the value of all Tradepacks in the next maintenance. We discovered a coding issue that resulted in majority of Tradepacks having a value lower than intended. Across all Tradepacks, they should generally average around 100% value, but currently, they are averaging at around 55%. Our fix will bring up the average Tradepack value up to the 100% range.

For the next test phase, we are also working on safeguards for Tradepack value. Certain Tradeposts will be locked until a specific point to prevent heavily lopsided Tradepack values due to early game pack running (many of which come from early-game quests).

These changes will ensure that Tradepacks have added value in more difficult-to-reach locations while maintaining consistent value for all players in the World of Ravendawn, not just the top-end players.

 

Fishing

Following the major changes we made to fishing in a recent update, we've received feedback that the overall value from Fishing has become somewhat underwhelming:

Fish were changed to be inventory items instead of behaving like Tradepacks. While this made it easier to transport fish, we also made some balancing adjustments that seem to have over-nerfed fishing to where it is not very worthwhile doing.

To address this, we will be adding some buffs to fishing for the next playtest. We're committed to making sure fishing remains a rewarding and engaging activity for all players.

 

Crafting

The Open Beta has highlighted some issues with the Crafting system that we're absolutely on top of and improving with quite a big change to Crafting. 

A significant problem lies in the progress on equipment that comes from Quality when crafting, allowing players to create very powerful equipment for extremely cheap, and going far above the power scaling with virtually no infusion or silver cost.

To resolve this, we're changing how the Quality system behaves. Instead of increasing the Grade of equipment, the Quality bar will now provide "Attribute Rolls" to the equipment once the craft is completed. This means every piece of equipment will be crafted at the base Grade, but skilled crafters will be rewarded with extra random attributes and sub stats on the equipment.

More information will come out about this systems rework for the next playtest! 

 

New Attribute: Vitality

We've been listening to your concerns about Archery feeling too strong, and while Archery does feel quite strong in the current state of the game, it is less about Archery, and more about the Might Attribute.

Balancing Might has become challenging, as it provides both Physical Damage and Max Health. This works well for melee classes but creates imbalances for Archery-based classes, which become as tanky as a melee bruiser style build while also being ranged.

To tackle this issue, we're introducing a 5th attribute called Vitality. This addition will lead to several changes in the attributes to ensure balance and offer diverse playstyles within Attributes:
 

Vitality (New)

- Max Health
- Health Regeneration
- Physical DP & Magic DP
 

Might

- Physical AP
- Physical DP (Changed)
 

Dexterity

- Attack Speed
- Spell Haste (Cast Speed & Global Cooldown Reduction)
- Physical & Magic DP (Changed)
 

Intelligence (Changed)

- Magic AP
- Healing Power
 

Wisdom

- Mana Regeneration
- Magic DP
- Max Mana (Changed)

 

Furthermore, we plan to introduce a soft-cap on attribute stacking for the next test phase. This will encourage more diverse build options and slightly devalue min-max stacking of attributes.


Additionally, we will have a full Marketplace coming in Open Beta 2. This is purely a teaser of the interface, so it may look different upon release:


While we've covered some significant changes in this dev blog, our team is hard at work on many other gameplay improvements and changes as well. The topics we've discussed here are just the primary areas where we've already made foundational design decisions. We are constantly evaluating your feedback and looking for ways to enhance the gameplay experience further.

As always, you can expect to hear more about our plans for additional updates and improvements across various aspects of the game. 

We want to thank you once again for your ongoing support, and for being part of our incredible community. Together, we will make Ravendawn the best MMORPG experience for everyone. Stay tuned for more updates, and happy adventuring for the remaining Open Beta days!