-- Q.
2/12/09 Update
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PowerUp Soulbinding Changes
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We'll be changing the properties of PowerUp items so that any PowerUp purchased directly from Back Alley Bargains will be tradable and non-soulbound.
Only the PowerUps gained within the game, as well as those gained from promotional items (contests or marketing promotions) will continue to stay soulbound. This is done to prevent item farming (within the game) and marketplace flooding (from promotional items).
Since PowerUps from Back Alley Bargains will be fully tradable and never soulbound, that means that players without access to GCash, as well as international players, will now start to have access to those PowerUps via the Marketplace.
Re-balance of Orb Rewards for Boss Lairs and Mini-Games
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When we recently increased the orb rewards for quests and monsters, we didn't increase the rewards for the Lairs, and the Goof Course and Water Fountain games were sorely due for an overhaul to make them rewarding also.
The Lairs now grant orbs more in-keeping with the other rewards you get in those zones. NOTE: You get a lot more orbs in a large crew than you do as a solo player. This compensates for the increased challenge when playing the encounter with a large crew.
The Goof Course gives you *at least* one orb, and considerably more if you beat par for the course. (The lower your score, the higher the reward.) This reward is also scaled by the goofer's overall CL, so if you're a vet, you still get a good reward for going back and playing those games.
The Water Fountain game now rewards you with orbs, increasing in award size for every round BEYOND 12 that you complete. So...you'll start receiving orb rewards from after finishing Round 13. This theoretically has no limit...so give it a try! (You'll need a crew of four!)
Also, the Goof Course and Water Fountain "first try" rewards were increased significantly also. (Us? Tease you to try out a game? Nahhhh.... wink
Bass'ken Fluff Changes
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The guards recently put out garbage cans along the road leading north. But two funny things occurred at that time:
- It turns out that the grass fluffs and carrion fluffs are intimidated by these silent iron sentinels and they now huddle in the bushes and the trees in the area instead of wandering freely.
- But when someone beats on one of the cans, that seems to encourage the fluffs to come out of hiding. (Maybe they think the trash can is no longer so threatening or something.) Carrion Flower Fluffs usually sieze the moment to attack whomever beat on the can, while the Grass Fluffs just tend to play instead.
- The trash cans don't seem to intimidate the Mother Fluffs or her guardians at all. If anything, the Mothers have become more protective of the fluffs in the area. Be warned...if you are attacking a fluff...and one of the Mothers sees you doing it...you're in for a world of hurt. (And visa versa...the fluffs feel a lot more protective of their Mothers now, also.)
NOTE: This change allows anyone trying to do the repeatable quest from Ryan (the guard) to find Carrion Flower Fluffs when they want to do so. They just have to beat trash cans for a while...and dodge the Mother Fluffs at the same time.
Trixie's Tips
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When you are Dazed and you choose to go back to the Null Chamber to Awaken, you will now find that Trixie tries to be helpful by giving you hints that might help you survive longer in the future.
If you don't want to see Trixie's hints, then you can speak to her right there in the Null Chamber and turn it off as a conversation option.
If you ever want to turn it back on again, you can do that in the same way.
Other Improvements
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- The "Suppress your CL" conversation with Trixie has been improved so that you only see the tutorial the first time that you access that conversation (after this change). From that point on, Trixie won't force you to read the tutorial and will let you just pull up the Suppression widget instead.
- Literally, over 200 minor bug fixes are included in this update (yes...200 more...we've been busy).
Optimization Fix List
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More artwork was optimized. This week's monsters that were improved for framerate reasons included:
- Sand Castle Golem
- Taiko Drum
- Predator Prairie Pup
- All Kokeshi Dolls (regular, collectible, and Kat's Doll)
2/4/09 Update
====================
Bug Fix List
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(too many to list)
Optimization Fix List
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We're still just beginning the optimization process, but here are some of the immediate changes we've made:
* Improved hornet's nest ring performance
* Improved Sand Golem performance
* Some avatar performance improvements (not as much updating of the avatar for things that are not visible).
* Some general efficiency improvements to things that happen on every frame or on a short timer
* Improved hotfoot performance
* Improved Taiko Drum performance
* Improved Peelunger performance
* Improved performance for chest, crate, basket, safe.
* Improved avatar performance (hit animation, dazed animation, healing and damage numbers animations)
* Improved train station animation
* Improved some water animations in sewer training
* Added a feature to boost framerate if it dips and the user has available CPU
* Some more general efficiency improvements to things that happen on every frame or on a short timer
1/27/09 Updates
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PDA Map Warp-to-Friend Feature
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The PDA Map friend icons are now much more useful. When too many people want to be in a zone at the same time, we have to spin up extra instances of that zone for the overflow. When one of your friends is in another instance of the same zone you're in, it can be confusing to understand on the PDA Map.
So now, you'll see a new icon start to appear when you have a friend in that situation. To join your friend, it's as easy as clicking on your friend's icon on the PDA Map and warping yourself to his/her instance. (To move your friend to *your* instance instead, you can simply invite him to your Crew. That will do the trick also.)
Huge Orb Drop Rate Improvements
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Most of you are gonna like this one. smile
We've analyzed play over the last months, and played a bunch of the game ourselves.
One of the conclusions we reached was that there was too much *grind* in the game, and not enough sense of progress.
So we're loosening up the orb drops...a lot.
If you're only playing in Village Greens, you won't notice much improvement here, but if you're playing in other zones, you'll immediately see improvements in:
* Orbs granted per quest. The increases are obvious (even in Village Greens, where most quests used to drop 1 per quest, but now drop 3), especially in later zones where you might get 10, 20, or more than 30 orbs per quest.
* Monster drops. Monsters used to only drop 1 - 4 orbs throughout the game, with the "big" drops only occurring in the latest levels. Monsters are now scaled per zone so that the later monsters drop many more orbs than monsters in the earlier zones. They still drop at the same *frequency* as before, but when they drop now, you'll get more orbs per drop. (Later-zone monsters do drop a lot of orbs.)
The effect of this change is to allow more rapid advancement through the game, with the end-result objective that it takes about 50+ hours (less, if you're loyal to the repeatable quests, which are much more lucrative now also).
Enjoy!
Null Fragment Pricing and Frequency Change
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To help stimulate interest in Recipes, and to make them just generally more affordable and cool, we're dropping the price of Null Fragments from $0.25 each to $0.05 each. This brings the price of a recipe, even if you had ZERO null fragments in your possession, down to much more trivial prices than previously.
Additionally, we used to "front-load" the game with Null Fragments, dropping a ton of them in the early game, and fewer of them in the later game.
We're flip-flopping that now, and you'll be getting few of the Frags in the early-going, but you'll find later-game quests to be much more lucrative for finding fragments.
This gives a better incentive to find later areas in the game, and it also allows a player to have a wider assortment of recipes to choose from when you start getting lots of fragments to play with, so we think it'll be more fun all around.
Other Improvements (in no particular order, so don't stop reading... wink
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- The Clan chat channel works again now!
- New mini-boss lairs (the Saw Mill and Duneslam Island) are available in this update. Like Katsumi's Doll and the Wolf Den, these are repeatable instanced-missions instead of the old "open-air" boss encounters we used to have.
- Back Alley Bargains gets an overhaul to make it more like other shops and easier to understand. (The display case is removed, the starter clothing items are now in other stores, and the PowerUps are now in the main window. )
- The old Ring Polisher PowerUp that increased all of your currently-equipped ring effects by 150% has been discontinued. It has been replaced with the new Ring Buffer PowerUp instead. Whereas the Ring Polisher only lasted three minutes, the improved Ring Buffer now lasts ONE HOUR instead with the same 150% improvement. (NOTE: You can still use the old Ring Polishers, but they are just no longer for sale at Back Alley Bargains.)
- We reduced the size of a bunch of our SWF files, so you should see big improvements in loading times, especially if you're using a slower connection speed.
- Some artwork optimization work, but mostly just small tests right now. The one place that is changed in the game is the Sand Castle Golems. They used to be framerate hogs and are now dainty little bite-sized morsel-eating folks. (More changes along that line will be coming next week.)
- Big improvements (again) in the guest experience for new users. Vastly fewer clicks and better representation of the game. (For you already in the game, this is kind of a *yawn*, but for new folks, they'll get to the game easier, which is cool.)
BIG GAME BALANCE UPDATE (1/20/09)
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Scenario Balance Changes
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* Landshark now talks (sort of), respawns are more rare, and it doesn't create giant, persistent loot lists any longer.
* Kat's Doll & Wolf Den encounters : Fewer enemies at larger Crew sizes. More time between "waves" of enemies to give time for recovery.
* LTs, Mini-bosses, and Bosses all got their health totals nerfed...but they also got *small* increases in the amount of damage they do. Intent : Shorter fights, with a bit more paranoia about the monsters hurting you, and encouraging buffs, heals, etc that aren't highly utilized now.
* Additionally, post-Zen Gardens monsters (all of them) had their health nerfed somewhat as we decreased the bonus they were getting due to our assumption that players had all eight ring slots filled by that time. (We still assume that you have those rings, but we buff the monsters less due to that fact.)
Loot Balance Changes
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* Common and Uncommon loot drop rates were increased (double the current rate to make collection quests less onerous).
* A *very* tiny chance of getting a PowerUp as a monster loot drop has been added.
Ring Balance Changes
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* Area of Effect size has less impact on reducing the amount of damage the ring does. (Since AoE attacks *can* hit many targets at once, they shouldn't do the same damage as a direct attack. However, the "nerfing" rate based on AoE radius has been reduced, resulting in a buff for AoE rings.)
* The same is true of Recharge timers. The slower your recharge timer is, the bigger the effect multiplier will be for your ring. We still do that, but we were previously only extending the bonus if your ring had a 5-second recharge timer or lower. Now, the bonuses extend up to a 10-second recharge timer, which results in rings with slower recharge timers now getting more effect than they did previously.
* Attack range counts against you less now also. Therefore, rings with long ranges now will have better base effects. (For example, you now do more damage with Hunter's Bow than previously.)
* Turtle duration extended to 30 seconds instead of 20.
* Turtle recharge rate reduced from 240 seconds to 90 seconds.
* Rock Armor was incorrectly at 60 seconds instead of 360 seconds duration, like the other buff rings. That is corrected.
* Improbability Sphere now recharged in 15 seconds instead of 20.
* Healing Halo and Divinity durations increased to 240 seconds (instead of 180).
* Healing Halo and Divinity recharge rates reduced from 360 seconds to 300 seconds. (60 seconds between end of duration and next chance to use the ring.)
(NOTE: Healing Halo and Divinity should have in-combat regen effects that are not happening currently. That will be fixed, but not in this week's update.)
* Meat duration increased from 60 seconds to 120 seconds. (Recharge rate increased to 180 seconds from 120, so it results in two minutes on and one minute off.)
* Added a Dodge debuff to a target that is suffering through the Hot Foot effect.
* Heavy Water Ballon now causes a small Accuracy and Dodge penalty to those in its area of effect.
* Hornet's Nest now has a small chance of causing a Fear effect to targets in its area of effect.
* Diagnose recharge rate reduced from 10 seconds to 8 seconds.
* Bandage recharge rate reduced from 5 seconds to 4 seconds.
* Coyote Spirit, Knife Sharpen, Keen Aye, Adrenaline, Ghost, Iron Will, and My Density all have increased durations from 240 seconds to 300 seconds.
The Only Nerfs
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* The current weight increase gained using the "Fitness" ring is being halved. (Other anti-knockback additions can still be gained through the "My Density" ring or the "Space Trooper" ring set bonus)
* Pot Lid's recharge rate is 420 seconds now, which is longer than the 360 second duration of the effect. (It had incorrectly been a shorter recharge than the duration, which is an error since this ring can only be used on "self".) So basically, you'll have at least 30 seconds without the buff. Plan for it accordingly.
* Fleet Feet recharge rate increased from 45 seconds to 60 seconds.
Update Notes (1/15/09)
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- The first step in our march to improve framerate occurs today. We found that we were drawing a few things WAY too often and we've prevented that now. This may improve framerate for a bunch of you by 2-3 frames.
- There are icons added to the ame under player avatars. You can see an icon if someone has their "Looking for Crew" switch turned *off* so that you know they're not looking for a crew. And, there's another icon if you are already IN a crew (so that other people know not to invite you again). These icons are handy when looking at the people in your area for crewmates instead of using the RECREWT list.
- A "News" page has been added to the World List page so you can stay up-to-date about the game even without checking the zOMG! forums.
- The Intro movie no longer plays automatically. To view the movie, just click the new, big "Play the Movie" button on the World List page. This prevents a hefty download of the movie file for new folks that don't have great bandwidth connections.
- New mini-boss lairs have been added! The Katsumi's Kokeshi Doll encounter in Zen Gardens is now an instance, and so is the She Wolf encounter in Bass'ken Lake. You can replay these encounters as many times as you wish! You have to have the quest, or have completed the quest OR someone in your crew has to have, or have completed the quest, in order for you to enter the encounter area. Also, these quests have max CL limits, so you may have to Suppress your CL to play them. (Talk to Trixie in the Null Chamber to temporarily suppress your CL.)
- Big improvements were made if you are playing as a "guest". The flow into the game, and the ease of registering are now MUCH better.
- Lots of script bug fixes throughout Barton Town, the Sewers quests, and the training sequence were made.
Update Notes (1/8/09)
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* Training mission fixes (from beginning of the game through Elizabeth's Defend and Explore paths). This is part 1 of the fixes that will be coming in over the next week or so.
* Leadership migration now occurs properly within Crews. If your leader quits or goes off-line, then someone else in the Crew will become leader instead.
* Removed the Christmas tree, restored the Fountain Game, and moved everthing back to its pre-Christmas position.
* Loading times have been reduced when loading into the game. Some players may notice no improvement at all, while others will see more marked improvements.
Update Notes (12/23/08 )
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* New task chains branch from Elizabeth after training. There is an "exploration" chain that takes you to all the various NPCs in Barton to help them with their tasks, and a "defend the town" chain that takes you back into the Sewers on several new quests. Both of these task chains result in nice rewards that include the *choice of a new ring*, so you can really advance your character by doing these tasks early on. NOTE: These tasks are intended for new characters only. They are not intended as "revisit" tasks. If you're already past this point in the life of your character, these new quests will not be available to you.
* Several new "teach tasks" are available from NPCs throughout Barton. These are informational and mostly centered around letting new players find out more about the features of the game. Heck...a lot of this stuff was never explained to you, so even you oldbies might benefit from some of these. smile
* The down-leveling feature ("suppression" wink is now available to you. If you want to lower your max ring CL, just go to the Null Chamber and speak with Trixie. She gives you an opportunity to down-level yourself. Just follow her instructions and you'll find that it's easy to do. NOTE: Suppression only "caps" your max ring CL. It does not directly affect your overall CL. Your overall CL is calculated based on the effective CL of all your currently equipped rings, just like normal. It's just that some of your rings may be artificially suppressed after you down-level and that affects your overall CL.
* The chat "send" buttons got text added to them to make them more easily understood by new players.
* The PDA Map icons were fixed so that active flags now show, even when a "?" icon is available for an NPC. (The active task flag was being hidden in the previous version.)
* You can now click and drag the Map around without having to unclick the "Center on Self" button. (To recenter the Map on yourself after dragging it, just click the "Center on Self" button.)
* Gustav's repeatable quest should work now.
* NOTE: We caught a really bad bug in our database stuff last night. It occasionally caused quest flags and mini-map flags to get restored (incorrectly) after they had been deleted. This *may* be the source of why quests were getting "flaky" for some people randomly. Our fingers are crossed that quests will be more stable in the future due to this fix.
Update Notes ( 12/18/08 )
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* The Barton Christmas Tree appears in the town square. It starts kind of Charlie-Brown-ish, but will grow as the holidays approach. Gifts are present also (more of them as the tree gets bigger) and they can be clicked for goodies. Some gifts are Naughty, and some are Nice. (And yes, there's a badge. smile
* A minor fix was made to the new Training scripts to prevent a rare, unusual glitch that trapped a few people in the Mumbler room.
* Gold rewards were doubled.
* Orb drop rate was fixed.
* Powerups are soulbound now. (They can still be gifted at time of purchase.)
* The crew invite bug that was plaguing some people is now fixed.
Update Notes( 12/10/08 )
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* Training (all of it) is completely redone. It's shorter, snappier, lots more pictures, less text, and less prone to breakage. Any players still within the Train, Old Station, or the Sewers will have their quests and flags reset to a newbie state and will be placed at the start of the Train again. For those of you stuck within the Sewers...this is the fix you've been waiting for. (And the "Do a Lap!" quest is gone, gone, gone.)
* The Map feature now shows ALL quest givers, so if you're looking for something to do, you can pull up your map and see where to go to get a quest. (Active tasks are still shown with the red flag, whereas potential tasks are shown as a "?" icon.)
* The chests have had their Total Charge checks removed. The chests now check overall CL only.
Update Notes( 12/2/08 )
=========================
* The values in the new "feast or famine" loot mechanism have been adjusted to provide better drop rates.
* The Hive has been rebalanced so that the dynamic scaling works better with it now.
* The Gauntlet is dynamically scaled (and gameplay changed signficantly from the original, depending on the crew size in the encounter).
* The Throne Room is dynamically scaled (and also plays differently).
* Three new repeatable quests added to Zen Gardens (Katsumi, Arnold, and Trip).
* Katsumi's quest chain has been shuffled around. Her quests are now in the following order: Wish Tree, Uncle Kin, Kat's Doll. This puts the "boss fight" at the end of her chain, which is better gameplay. NOTE: If you are currently doing these quests at the time that we update, your quests will be reset the next time you enter the Shrine room. You might have to redo a quest, but this will prevent you from getting messed-up data from the rearrangement.
* Combat regen removed from the chapter-end boss. Health for the arms and body were increased.
* New repeatable quest added to Bass'ken Lake (received from Ryan).
* There is now a "GO" command. (The "G" key.) When you have a target selected, you can hit "G" to move to where that target was located at the time of the key press. NOTE: This is not a finalized feature, but it *does* make it a lot easier to close to within range of a monster if you are using melee rings.
* There is now a "/invite" command you use in your Chat Pane that lets you invite people elsewhere on your same world server into your Crew. (Useful when trying to invite folks outside of your zone that don't appear on the crew list.) Format is: /invite
* Music volume no longer resets when you zone.
* Clan chat works again!
* The screen elements have been resized now so that monitor resolutions of 1024x768 can keep chat and PDA open while playing. NOTE: This change results in the save config for your window positions being invalid. So the first time you play after this change, you'll need to reposition your windows the way you like them, but the game will remember those settings from then on.
* If you are Dazed, you won't be able to use switches. (Switches are things like chests, the Goof Tee, the sewer valves, etc.)
* You shouldn't get any more "?" icon rings that don't function. (Mentioning this because it's annoyed some of you.)
* The "/r" (reply) functionality is fixed.
Game Balance Changes
* Cherry Fluffs have been offensively nerfed a bit.
* Rings that do statistic buffs got increased durations under the theory that if the effect lasts longer, more people will be interested in using them. They're a lot more useful now with 2-4 times the duration they used to have.
* Defensive abilities also got increased durations so that it's more feasible to have a crewmember buffing crewmates...but still able to do something *else* than buffing once in a while.
* Exhaustion costs for rings were reduced slightly. Monster healths were increased slightly. Monster damage was reduced slightly. The end result is that combats take a little longer to complete (only a tiny bit longer), but it gives a bit more breathing room to consider other tactics besides smash-smash-smash and it makes crowd control abilities more useful.
* Divinity and Healing Halo were improved significantly. Longer durations and better effect.
* Loot drop rings (rings found as part of monster loot or in chests), as well as rings granted as quest rewards, are now attuned to the user (cannot be traded or sold).
* Rings that were found previous to this change are NOT attuned...but the first time they are equipped by a player, they will become attuned to that player.
