Information Balance Road Map: Post-Anniversary 2021

« With the Anniversary patch we introduced a large number of changes and have been observing how things have been playing out. Based on the community feedback in-game, on discord, and on forums, we've been fervently discussing what our next steps should be.

Often times, we come to a conclusion, wait for developer implementation, test it, THEN release it to the public. This has been the case, as there are instances where people can easily get a head start over others and gain an unfair advantage.

Taking the recent CWK Exchange for example, some players could have farmed thousands of badges before its release. Compare that with other players that might only find out upon its release and start farming them afterwards. We wanted players to be equally in awe & curious about new content, and share their experiences exploring the new change on the live server together. Joint experiences like these are what makes the whole experience fascinating and worthwhile in our opinions.

Additionally, there are times we don't want to release the info to the public as we don't have the details finalized, and what we say could accidentally mislead people. An example of this would be Pink Bean's release and what we were going to do with all the pre-existing Pieces of Time. As the discussion was on-going, mentioning that Reverse Weapons could be crafted using Pieces of Time would have mistakenly led players to farm them beforehand, only to find out that they were useless in the end.

There are various other reasons that we don't discuss future changes in public, and this will continue to be the case. HOWEVER, there are some changes in the works that we believe can be officially mentioned to the public before they're released on the live servers, so that people can get a better grasp on our progress of things as well as giving players the opportunity to give us feedback. »



A very hot topic on the forums the past few weeks for sure. Making mesos only lootable by the killer (aka the looting rework or sweeper removal) has been a topic discussed over and over again within the team and we'd like to give you some insight as to what we think. The major issues that we've come to acknowledge with how the rework was originally handled are that it:

• Impedes party play
• Causes visual clutter (especially in PQs)
• Causes pets to spam "unable to loot"
• Affected single mages in some maps far more than other places

We decided that our primary goal should be to make sure party play returns to a similar state as before the rework and reduce the visual clutter (especially in PQs) from the plentiful meso drops. After lots of brainstorming, we've been working on a hot fix that should address this concern. This seems to be a good half-measure for now, but we're still looking for a more permanent and elegant solution. This may also be accompanied with some additional steps in the future.

The temporary fix in development is:

• Allowing meso coins & meso bucks to be lootable by ALL party members
• BUT meso bags will only be lootable by the killer

This should significantly reduce the visual clutter, while still regulating the amount of mesos generated. Once finalized, this can be implemented with a restart.

As for the case of pets spamming "unable to loot", we are looking at ways to reduce it. This, however, needs more attention and at the moment, we can't confirm if it's possible or not.

We understand that not all players are going to be satisfied with this change, as some specific concerns weren't addressed. We ask everyone to be patient while we consider further changes, as we're also thinking about how some behind-the-scenes changes as well as unannounced proposals (such as the bossing changes below) would affect the economy as a whole, and to what degree changes to raw meso generation need to be made.



We hope everyone has enjoyed the new CWK exchange. After gathering feedback and information including community compiled data we've decided to make some changes coming up!

1. Monster Drop Update: We're in the process of reviewing the drop tables of the CWK monsters that drop badges, and we'll be making some tweaks! After seeing community feedback, we wanted to make the process of farming the badges more rewarding as well. Everyone can look forward to some new drops from the monsters (I’m looking at you Nightshadows) and altered rates for some of the existing drops.
2. Meso Gears Ring Buff: Two of the most hated rewards from the exchange, despite their contribution to the lore, were the Meso Gears Ring & Subani's Ankh. Meso Gears Rings will get a buff so that they'll be better than ciders, but worse than energizers. This can only be done by the next patch though, so be sure to save them up!
3. A New Home for Subani's Ankh : Everyone's favorite Scambani Subani's Ankh! We’ve heard that they are frustrating to get, and we've been discussing ways to make them useful. While the specifics are still being discussed, we want to make the Ankh an ingredient that you can use to craft Safety Charms , as the Ankh is an object that promotes protection. Keep an eye out for when that change comes!
   • P.S. We'll also be making them stack, but this can only be done by the next patch, so you're going to have to bear with it for now. Sorry!

Asides from the above changes, we believe the exchange itself is currently in a very healthy spot in terms of its rewards. Hopefully the above changes make the whole process (including the act of farming for them) much better.



When we announced the CWK Exchange, we hinted at possible changes coming very soon. This change was supposed to touch directly on the availability of White Scrolls, Chaos Scrolls, and making bossing more profitable/relevant. Based on the rate of progress pre-Anniversary, and the fact that a lot of what we had envisioned was intentionally imported into the game in advance, this change was slated to be released in the middle of our Anniversary event.

However, like Murphy's law says, "anything that can go wrong will go wrong". Lots of pressing matters that we needed to discuss and test propped up, such as event balancing, looting rework, feedback on the CWK exchange, various bugs related to buffs, and other miscellaneous issues. With all these things, the Staff Team has been put back in finalizing the new content we had envisioned to revitalize bossing.

We truly wanted to surprise everyone with this, which was why it was in the wraps, but with the growing concerns the community had about bossing we felt we shouldn't continue to keep this a secret.

Staff fully acknowledges that there has been a huge disparity between bossing and farming. This isn't a problem that suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and it definitely isn't something we just started to work on. Discussions on how to revitalize bossing have been underway ever since 2018. There have been many different proposals and iterations of ideas over the years, but each of them had their fair share of problems that we just couldn't overlook.

The idea we arrived at is one that we think would be fair for players of all level ranges and not just cater to less than 1% of players. This system should help add to the supply of White Scrolls and Chaos Scrolls in the market, and should be coming soonTM. There's some additional stuff we're working on to make the economy more sustainable in the long run, which ties into making the progression of gear more natural and feel less like an impossible feat, but this is still early in discussion. Just know that there is stuff in the works looking directly at bossing!



The boss skill casting rework seems to be, for the most part, working as intended. However, one major issue we've found is that Weapon Cancel and Magic Cancel are always alternating. When testing things out, we were sure this was how it was meant to work, but after some thorough research we realized this is indeed a bug.

Just because a boss casted Weapon Cancel, does not mean the next cancel should be a Magic Cancel. It should be left up to chance what the next cancel should be.

While we have identified this as a bug, it seems this will take some time to fix. So we thank you in advance for your patience while we handle this. But do note it is definitely on our radar and classified as a bug that we hope to fix ASAP.

 

So we previously put in a check to prevent the opposite cancel from happening while the boss was cancelled.
(Eg) Weapon Cancel activates > before WC deactivates, boss casts Magic Cancel (but because WC is active, MC doesn't apply) > WC deactivates > but MC is still on cooldown

That check should still be in place, but compounded with bosses casting skills consistently, it ends up permanently alternating. So it's a bug/problem is caused by how the rework & our fix for cancels being cast when they shouldn't be. Since both of them still need to be a thing, we can't just revert the linked change to fix the problem atm Which makes it need a bit more looking into & recoding.