Information Anniversary 2023 Balance Changes [Explained]

Reminder: This only contains the balance related changes.



It's time to discuss our balance changes for the Anniversary 2023 Patch! As the main focus of this patch was the release of our Anniversary Event, there aren't that many balance changes, but there are still some notable changes and adjustments we managed to slip in, so you guys still have something to read and look forward to. Without further ado, let's jump right in!



Like always, we'll start off by delving into the data in order to see how our server is doing. Depending on the nature of the balance changes we'll disclose additional data points, but for more general balance changes such as this one, we'll stick with providing a brief overview of our economy and the state of bossing as a baseline.

Spoiler: Server Overview: The Data

Economy
Starting with economy-related data, we've appended some extra data points compared to our last post so that players can better track and understand the trend we're seeing in terms of meso supply. As a reminder, we calculate meso supply based on the following:

Code:

Meso supply = Meso Generated - ( Meso Sank + Meso Banned )

A quick note on something we've spotted over the many months we've been tracking these data points is that during event periods we tend to observe a slowdown in the amount of meso generated and even sometimes go into a negative. Just food for thought!


To better visualize the rate of change, here's a nifty graph!


As meso supply calculations are reliant on the amount of mesos we have banned, here's a breakdown of the amount of mesos we've been banning on average over the past few months.


Here's a chart as well for easier visualization.


Additionally, the amount of total mesos banned since our last balance post (February 20th, 2023) is a whopping 22,844,273,091 mesos.

Bossing
We've seen a general increase in the number of expeditions for each boss, with the exception of the two Dunas bosses and CWKPQ. We do believe that the delayed release of our Anniversary event may have played a part in the overall increase in the number of expeditions and that the numbers may be a bit inflated at the moment.


For a more in-depth breakdown:

Spoiler

That is all for our server overview, but if you want to look at the numbers yourself, you can find the information directly here!



「 Hero 」

• Panic: Sword/Axe - Revamped to have a more consistent hitbox with a slightly shorter horizontal and vertical range than Brandish

Vanilla Panic can feel quite clunky/awkward to use, due to how it uses different attack animations varying in reach. This effectively meant that you had to be right next to a monster, in order to ensure it Panic didn't miss.

The intention behind this change is to make Panic a more reliable skill to land, by not only giving the skill a consistent hitbox regardless of the attack animation (swing or stab) but also by bumping its attack range slightly, so that you don't have to be literally breathing on the monster to attack it consistently.

「 Shadower 」

• Double Stab [Bug Fix] - MP costs at lower skill levels now match with the description (reported here, here)
• Double Stab - Damage at max level increased to 160% from 130%
• Double Stab - Damage scaling adjusted
• Smokescreen - Delay before players can use movement commands and skills after casting Smokescreen has been shortened, to be roughly 1.6x faster

Compared to its sibling Lucky Seven, Double Stab is undoubtedly a far inferior skill. While improving Double Stab's damage to be on par with the level of Lucky Seven would be desirable, we need to factor in the existence of Savage Blow. If the damage from Double Stab became very close to or surpass the damage of Savage Blow, the alignment of skill progression would also be affected. Therefore, the objective behind this change is to minimize the gap between Double Stab and Lucky Seven, while still retaining a meaningful boost in damage when Bandits learn and master the Savage Blow skill.

The smokescreen change is aimed to be a quality-of-life change, as we found that the original delay made the skill feel sluggish to cast.

「 Corsair 」

• Burst Fire - Base speed decreased from 840ms to 660ms
  
• Burst Fire - Damage scaling readjusted to match speed change
  • Burst Fire should now have better damage per second than Double Shot at level 1
  • While still maintaining the same damage per second as old Burst Fire at max level
• Burst Fire - Hit range increased from 380 pixels to 400 pixels to match with Double Shot

Despite being designed as an upgrade to Double Shot, Burst Fire was actually weaker at lower levels when compared to Double Shot, which made putting points into its early levels feel unrewarding. The solution we came to was to speed up Burst Fire as a whole while adjusting the base damage values so that Burst Fire would actually be stronger than Double Shot immediately from level 1. However, the damage output from Burst Fire at max level is already in a healthy spot, so we made sure to ensure that that did not change with our number readjustments. We also felt that speeding up Burst Fire to be faster than Double Shot is also more fitting to its name. Additionally, as Double Shot's range actually reaches 400 at levels 19 and 20, we decided to increase Burst Fire's hit range to match that.



「 Challenges System 」
In the alpha thread, we received feedback about how the HP values received by Warriors were too little, especially taking into account their supposed identity as a tank. We think that is a fair point, and have thus increased the HP threshold obtained across the different tiers. We purposefully chose not to give Warriors a maximum of 30k HP, as we still want HP equips to feel somewhat meaningful to obtain and to retain some meaning if players still wish to opt for the traditional HP washing method.

On the other hand, there we also heard concerns about how Buccaneers received too much HP. Prior to this change, Buccaneer HP was given a considerable amount mainly due to Aufheben fight and its spammable Dispel attack, which makes keeping Hyper Body up quite unrealistic. Since the spammable dispel attack is being changed (see below for Aufheben changes), we thought it was fair to lower the amount of HP Buccaneers were able to obtain as well.

Levels	Mages	Warriors	Bucc	Shad	Others	Note
100	1,520	7,000	5,600	3,200	3,200	-
110	1,720	8,450	6,500	3,700	3,950	-
120	1,930	10,200	7,550	4,300	4,800	-
130	2,150	12,250	8,750	5,000	5,750	CWKPQ w/o HB
140	2,380	14,600	10,100	5,800	6,800	Zakum w/o HB
150	2,620	17,250	11,600	6,700	7,950	HT w/ HB
160	2,870	20,200	13,250	7,700	9,200	-
170	3,130	23,450	15,050	8,800	10,550	HT w/o HB
180	3,400	27,000	17,000	10,000	12,000	PB w/ HB

We also accepted some feedback given in the beta thread by re-tweaking some of the numbers of our currently-active challenges.
Additionally, the remainder of our pre-planned optional challenges has been made available for a short round of testing.
Mandatory Challenges

General

Defeat 7,000 monsters in Deep Ludibrium.

Note: Kills from party count but characters have to be actively attacking.
Mandatory Class-specific Challenges

Hero	Deal 20,000,000 damage with Panic.
Paladin	Deal 50,000,000 damage with fire power.
Dark Knight	Deal 50,000,000 damage with Spear/Polearm Crusher.
Fire/Poison	Deal 50.000.000 damage with Explosion.
Ice/Lightning	Deal 50,000,000 damage with Ice Strike.
Bishop	Deal 50,000,000 damage with Shining Ray.
Bowmaster	Deal 100,000,000 damage with Strafe.
Marksman	Deal 100,000,000 damage with Strafe.
Night Lord	Deal 100,000,000 damage with Lucky Seven.
Shadower	Deal 50,000,000 damage with Band of Thieves.
Buccaneer	Deal 50,000,000 damage with Energy Drain.
Corsair	Deal 100,000,000 damage with Burst Fire.

Optional Challenges

Boss	Defeat Crimson Balrog 5 times.
Party	Complete 5 Amoria Party Quest.
Merchant	Use 20 Owl of Minerva.
Scroll	Pass 10 of any 100% scrolls.
Quest	Complete 10 Orbis exchange with Staff Sergeant Charlie.
Crafting	Refine 30 jewel, mineral plates, or crystals.
Special	Change haircut and face 3 times.

「 Item 」

• Maple Dagger introduced

As there are level 35 Maple weapons for every weapon type except for dagger, we thought it was only fair to have a unique item for our beloved Bandits as well. So, we decided to add our own custom Maple Dagger! You will be able to obtain it like all the other Maple weapons.

「 Expedition 」

Horntail Entrance NPC will now support two HT instances per channel.

As a result of the reduced number of channels in the server, the Horntail expedition has been harder to run during peak times. As Horntail expeditions usually take a significant time to plan for and complete, we have decided to take the effort to add support for an additional instance per channel.

Because of the special way in which Expeditions are handled (each expedition type only allows for the management of one squad per channel), implementing extra entrances for every type of content is not feasible just yet. Due to the Anniversary event approaching, however, we looked into at least "carving" the space required for a second HT instance to hopefully alleviate the problems that it was causing amongst our players.



「 Aufheben Changes 」

• Orb attack no longer dispels, but weakens instead
• Increased damage of Orb attack
• Fixed the inconsistent hitboxes when Aufheben uses skills

In the midst of balancing the HP Challenges system, we often found Aufheben surface as a point of argument when discussing changes to the HP threshold. Part of what made the Aufheben fight force players to be in dire need of HP was due to its spammable dispel attack, which makes high base HP extremely desirable for survival. These changes to Aufheben's infamous Orb attack will allow for HB to be more effective, thus reducing the risk of dispel-related death, while still having the attack remain as a threat during Seduce. We also hope that these changes will make the fight progress in a way that feels less annoying and unfun. We also noticed some inconsistencies with Aufheben's hitboxes during some of her skills, so we decided to clean those up while we were at it.

While there have been lots of feedback for making Aufheben more interesting and rewarding, we wanted to test the waters with a simpler change and see how players feel about the fight and the boss as a whole first. We'll continue to observe how Aufheben is perceived by the community so that we can better decide on what additional adjustments might be required in the future.

「 Heron Changes 」

• Heron now has proper hitboxes during his "iframe" attack

While looking at some bosses and their animations, we came to notice why some bosses have Invincibility Frames (iframes for short) in some of their attacks. While some iframes could be seen as intentional, Heron only gains iframes on one of his attacks (the one where he punches the ground several times) simply because he lacks a hitbox during the entirety of this attack. We felt this wasn't intentional and likely an error, so we decided to give him a proper hitbox during this attack, therefore removing his notorious iframes. Hopefully, this leads to the boss feeling less awkward and/or annoying to deal with, especially for melee classes who were more likely to trigger the attack.

Note: We are aware some of the other bosses have hitbox issues as well and we will try to get to them eventually!



We hope this round of changes improves some of the more lowkey but important problems. While there are many more changes we would like to do, we'll need to save them for another patch. As always, your sincere feedback is much appreciated!

Special thanks as usual to all our current and previous staff members who were involved with the changes!