Balandar

[From a Forum Post by Chris “Atos” Spears] It is no secret that the Shroud of the Avatar team has chosen a very different path than any other project out there. From day one we wanted to change how games were developed and funded. As we move closer to something that feels like a final product we also need to move closer to something that feels closer to a final business model that is sustainable in the long run. So Friday we introduced the rough plan for the new model. I think we only gave it a paragraph or two and clearly we should have given much more detail. So our goal all along has been to make a game that has as few pay to win elements as possible. We have always said that Guild Wars 2 was the closest thing to our model but honestly upon closer scrutiny we thought it actually had too much Pay 2 Win for our taste. The amounts they chose were for short period of time and very large. +50% XPs and +50% crafting crit chance. Instead, with our initial offerings, decided to go much longer and lower with our buffs. We felt that was both less P2W and also more friendly than having short buffs where you must constantly spend to refresh them. So the thinking behind our week long buffs was that if players just wanted one or two buffs at a time, they could probably get those through normal drops. If they wanted 3 or 4 buffs at a time then it would cost about what people would pay for a subscription to an MMO. Even with all 7 buffs on, players don’t have a significant advantage over someone who has none. Once entering into PVP combat, the buffs have zero effect on who will win, NONE. They could make your life very slightly easier outside of combat through fewer repairs and fewer trips back to sell stuff, but in combat, they do not help at all and that has always been the goal. There are a few people who keep beating the drum on the same handful of topics so I want to talk about those first, then I will dive into the bigger picture of the economy. The following clarifications should make it clear that SotA’s monetization model is not P2W, but is more aimed at those capable, and inclined, to support the game, versus making every player feel like they have to pay to stay competitive. So first, the experience bonus. I looked at GW2 and other games. GW2 sells a 2 hour 50% XP boost. That felt like way too short and too much to me. We put ours at a week long timer and 10% exp boost. Why did I go with 10%? For those who didn’t know, each level is about 10.5% more XP than the previous level. So, let’s pretend you use the exp boost potion your entire time while in game while you’re adventuring with your buddy who doesn’t. You guys are always grouped, play the exact same number of hours and split every kill. When your partner dings level 40, you will still be level 40 for a few more kills. When he hits level 80, you will still be level 80 and then ding level 81 soon thereafter. So really what it boils down to is that for roughly a 4 dollars a month subscription (to buy four 1-week exp boost potions), you can get an extra level. Fair enough so far? Next up, coins for repair. So quick briefer on what this means. To make sure that crafters will have an audience, we have always planned on item durability having a max durability that slowly decreases. Eventually the item will not be worth repairing and you’ll need to buy new stuff from a crafter. We added an alternative, which is using a crown to repair a weapon can increase the max durability again as well to avoid buying new stuff. This topic was fairly heated before the crowns were introduced. Adventurers want items to last for ever and never wear out. Crafters want them to wear out far faster than they do now so they can have a more vigorous market. Neither side is happy about the crowns because they each want their own version and the crowns was really just the gas on the fire. So before I dive into the numbers and logic of the current system, let me first address what our crafting system is intended to be. First, it is not World of Warcraft’s crafting system. In world of Warcraft, crafting had almost zero meaning to the economy and in reality was just more of an incredibly long grindy quest with gear reward at the end. The only gear that could be made that was worth wearing was no drop. That is not now and never will be the intent of our crafting system. Our crafting system is where the best gear comes from, and before we’re done, the system will have enough challenges and complexities to it that the best gear will only come from the most dedicated crafters. Many will do it as their full time occupation. Gear made by crafters is one of the biggest economic drivers in our game. Part of making sure that the crafters always have an audience is making sure items are removed and need to replaced. The crowns to avoid replacing gear was a compromise to make it so players who wanted to wear really nice gear all the time could avoid having to spend massive amounts of money to replace them. I think our initial stab at this was actually off target. My expectation is we’ll change it so the number of crowns it costs to repair gear scales up over time so eventually players will go back to the crafters. Ok, so now for the math on damage. I’m introducing a new measurement system for durability called a “Bear hour.” This is the amount of damage done to a player with no durability skills or buffs and no defensive skills, in one hour by a small bear. I know it sounds silly but I need some measurement as to what it actually means because saying 100 durability really has no meaning in explaining how often something will need to be repaired. So, to drop a piece of armor from 100 current durability to 0 current and 90 max it takes 25 bear hours. The armor can then be repaired up to 90 and last 22.5 bear hours. You use it until it gets down to 20 max durability it will have delivered 135 bear hours before needing to be repaired or replaced. Now let’s figure out how that feels to a mid-core player. We’ll say the mid-core player spends 20 hours a week in game and 15 of those hours are spent either adventuring or doing PVP. While adventuring they are actively being attacked about 1/3rd or 33% of the time. That works out to around 5 hours of being attacked. That means that a player’s gear will last 135/5 hours or 27 weeks before needing to be coin repaired or replaced. So for an average player, they might only need to do this once every 6+ months! BTW, that same player would almost certainly find more than enough crowns during that time to pay for those repairs. So based on that, the crafters should be the ones freaking out right now and that might actually need an adjustment back towards faster damage. The reality though is that things that hit harder, break stuff quicker than a bear that hits for 5-8 points. Also, weapons break much quicker than armor. My best guess based on the data I’ve seen so far is that weapons will be adjusted to last a bit longer than what they do currently and armors will be be damaged more quickly before final wipe. My target number that I hope to tune to is an average player will need to replace gear about once every 3 months. For most players it will happen faster than that because they will be outgrowing their current gear and retiring it. I know this is a hot topic on both sides but we’ll be working to find a balance that feels equally fair (or equally punishing if you’re a pessimist) to both sides. That balancing will almost certainly continue post final wipe. On to the third, and possibly most contentious element, selling crowns for gold! This element was largely only contentious due to a couple screw ups on our part. The initial price of 2500 gold was thought to be so low that no one in their right minds would sell them to a vendor. That was the case when there were few and they were only dropping in game. When we added them to pledges, suddenly we flooded the market with an item that currently only had 3 purposes. First, it could be used for week long buffs. That will eliminate them all but not for weeks. Second, item repair! Also, it will remove some but not for weeks to months of people abusing their gear. That leaves only the third option for something to do with them in the short term, selling them to the vendor for gold. So our intent was that they not be used selling to vendors. The reason for this is pretty simple and tied into the economy. Doing so would create a large source of gold inputs to the economy that was not tied to any game system and couldn’t be controlled. The only way this would be feasible would be if we had a system where the value of the crowns varied based on demand. So more people selling crowns to merchants would drive down the cost. We chose not to go that route and instead make the crowns something that has value in game but little gold value (soon to be no value) in game. This allows the players to set the price BUT effectively they can still use them to buy gold but without negatively impacting the economy. This probably needs more explanation before it will sink in as to what this means. So player A wants to buy some gold with some real money. He goes and buys some crowns. He puts those crowns on a vendor for what he thinks is a fair price. Player B doesn’t believe in spending real $ and instead plays a lot and accumulates extra gold. He goes to the vendors and buys crowns from player A for in-game gold. So, why is this awesome for everyone? Player B got exactly what he wanted, effectively trading some of his time for crowns. Player A got exactly what he wanted, in game gold for real $ without having to give $ to someone he doesn’t trust. Here is the most awesome part: It doesn’t change how much gold is in the macro economy and cause inflation because it is really just gold moving from one player to another. (Oh, and the side effect is that it financially supports Portalarium to help us maintain, expand and improve the game!) Got it? Player A gives us money for coins, Player B gives Player A gold for coins he just bought and everyone wins and the inflation isn’t affected because it is just a voluntary transfer of gold from A’s pocket to B’s pocket. The only challenge for us is in making sure we have enough cool, but not P2W, elements in game to be purchased with crowns! Thanks for reading and remember, the only constant on the project is change. If something ends up not feeling as good as we planned, we’ll change course as needed.

Quite a bit in the update. Here are some highlights: Name Reservation Starting with Release 29, we began maintaining a record of character names for all pledge levels of Immortal Adventurers and above. When you log into the game for Release 32 after the Final Wipe, you will have the option to use the last saved name you used during Releases 29 – 31 or choose a new name. Please note that we only record the most recent name. If you have any issues with this process during Release 32, please submit a support ticket to support@portalarium.com. Please note that this replaces the previous Pledge Reward of “Last Name” in the Immortal Adventurer Pledge. Get your last name early! Experience in battle leads to Notoriety, but unlike ordinary adventurers, Immortal Adventurers will have the right to select and display both a first and last name right from the get-go! Tax Free Player Owned Town Lot Deeds (Bundles Only) With the launch of the new Add On Store Bundles, we are pleased to include Tax Free versions of the Player Owned Town Lot Deeds that we introduced in Update #172. These deeds can only be used inside Player Owned Towns and they can only be purchased through bundles, not individually. This is to mirror what we did with regular Tax Free Lot Deeds (which could only be purchased through pledges). We will carefully monitor sales of these as compared to placed lot markers in Player Owned Towns to make sure we do not oversell them. This week, we are introducing Row Lots but we plan to sell bundles with Village, Town, and City Lots soon.

A post from Darkstarr: We introduced Crowns of the Obsidians (COTOs) as rare items back in Release 28. COTOs drop from almost any activity, with higher occurrences on higher level creatures and resource nodes. They come in several different metal types, and each type can be exchanged for specific types of items. In Release 29, we introduced Potions of the Obsidians that could be purchased with COTOs, and these grant various temporary boosts to things like carry capacity or gathering speed. In Release 30, we added the ability for COTOs to restore Maximum Durability to items and also added Crown Merchants to the game, which allow you to exchange the various COTO types for Obisidian Potions or Gold COTOs. Gold Crowns of the Obsidians are unique in that they can be sold to any merchant in game for gold and now, starting today, they can also be purchased directly from our website or through Add On Store Bundles like the new Viking 2-Story Row Home Bundle. As you have probably surmised, Gold Crowns function as a premium currency for Shroud of the Avatar. As we expire all our pledges and move towards a commercial launch, hopefully near the end of this year, we must also move to a commercial model of monetization. As promised, we are not going to be adding a subscription nor are we planning to make the game free to play. However, as an online game, we must have a steady stream of income (in addition to base game sales) in order to pay for support of the game including monthly updates, bandwidth, servers, community support, etc. Our analysis shows us that Add On Store item sales will not be sufficient. When we have been asked for examples in the past of models we wish to emulate or that we admire, we always point to Guild Wars as an example of a Pay to Play with an Add On Store as the closest archetype to what we hope to achieve. Selling Gold Crowns and allowing those Crowns to be exchangeable in game for Gold currency and potions with game benefits (like repairing of maximum durability) is something we believe is a good and fair balance of revenue while still maintaining play-ability and player economy. We are working hard to ensure that the purchased items from Crowns are all matters of convenience, not power. For example, the Obsidian Potions do things like small increases to carry weight, slightly longer sprint times, or slightly reduced gear wear. It is of course worth remembering that since Crowns can be earned in game, no player will ever be required to purchase them, making them purely a time saver and convenience. As part of this introduction, we have added Gold Crowns to all Pledges. The amount of Crowns added to each pledge is based on the size of the pledge and is as follows: First Responder, Second Responder, Pioneer, Adventurer: 2 Immortal Adventurer: 3 Founder: 4 Royal Artisan: 5 Virtual Collector: 6 Explorer, Explorer - All Digital: 7 Collector: 8 Patron: 12 Ancestor: 15 Navigator: 20 Developer: 25 Citizen: 30 Edelmann, Edelmann - All Digital: 31 Knight: 35 Knight Marshal: 40 Lord: 45 Lord Marshal: 50 Baron, Baron 2, Baron 3: 65 Duke: 90 Lord of the Manor, Lord of the Manor 2: 200 We greatly appreciate your support on this new feature. While we know that Crowns have already been discussed in the forums in the past on their purpose, and some may find them less than desirable to have in the store now, please keep your comments and thoughts civil here.

7 days left for the COE kickstarter.

Darkstarr just posted the massive R30 changes over on the SoTA forums. Sample changes: Maximum Durability: The biggest change of course is the change to maximum durability, which can no longer be repaired at crafting stations unless you use a Crown of the Obsidian (see below for details). I understand that this change to durability so that items eventually break permanently feels challenging to process right now. On top of that, the amount of time to gather materials and the sheer amount of materials it takes to make items seems daunting to say the least. Our goal has always been that it takes specialization and time to become a crafter and the goods you sell should have real value. If we tune gathering to be fast and items to use only a few materials, then everyone could make their own goods and there would be no economy and no demand for crafters. If items continued to be in good repair indefinitely, then crafters would have no demand to fill once players got a favorite set of gear. We believe that all of these designs are necessary to have a truly player-driven economy where effort is rewarded and the amount of time to make items is relatively commensurate to the time it takes to fight and advance through enemies. With all of that said, the entire experience needs to balance entertainment with effort and we will be carefully tuning the experience over the next few releases (and forever for that matter). Masterworks: Crafting is finally also expanding with new skills including Masterworks; which allow Smiths, Carpenters, and Tailors to add new abilities to items they create. This works exactly like the Enchanting we introduced for Alchemists in R29, although both of these systems now balance the power of the abilities added with reductions in durability. Our goal for the system is to create interesting choices between power and convenience. We also envision scenarios where Avatars might have specialized sets of powerful gear that they use for boss fights and PVP tournaments versus their everyday adventuring gear. Targeting System: Finally we spent time iterating and polishing the new targeting system we introduced in Release 29. Our goal was to provide the same level of functionality we had before we added the new system while still enjoying the advantages of the new system. To that end, we have added back in target selection and target cycling amongst a host of other changes (see below for details). The Path of Courage: In Release 29 Avatars were able to follow the Path of Love from beginning to end for the first time. In Release 30 the story again greatly expands with the Path of Courage now being playable. To support that, Valhold can be visited for the first time and various other scenes have been filled out with supporting story including Skrekk, Demig’s Battlecamp, Ferig’s Battlecamp, and Estgard. This makes two of the three Paths of Virtue playable, with only the Path of Truth left to implement in the game (which we will start in Release 31). We also have added the first of our three Companions who will adventure with you in Offline Mode. Novia Overworld Rework: When we first built the overworld map for Novia we strayed a bit too far from the original design as laid out in the cloth map. This resulted in a lot of discrepancies including some major geographical mismatches, rivers that looked like oceans (or which were missing entirely), roadways that were as wide as mountains, misplaced points of interest, and other such oddities. In Release 30, we begin the effort to correct all of these errors and have brought Novia back into alignment with the contours and geographic features of the cloth map. During this process, all coastlines and areas throughout the entire, expansive interior of Novia were honed. Consequently, we were required to temporarily remove a lot of the props and decorations from the scene, but we will be putting those back in steadily over the next two releases. This work also required us to re-position some of the towns and other points of interest. Additional changes include the addition of boat teleporters for every Player-Owned Town island, as the proper method for travel to them. Please note that the locations of a few POTs have changed during this work. If your town location changed during this process and you are unsatisfied with the new location please post as a bug in the bug forums with a requested new location and we will do our very best to accommodate your request at no charge. Performance Manager There is now a Performance Manager in the game that works to maintain a constant framerate by actively turning up and down various features and levels of detail. New Female Avatar As many of you saw in a recent weekly update and Dev+ forum post, we have done a complete overhaul of the female avatar just like we did for the male avatar. Now that she is complete, we can focus on hair and improving the customizability of the faces of both the male and female avatar. NOTE: Morph targets for the female face have changed. This means that previously created female characters will likely look strange until you make a new character, especially in the chin area. Our apologies for the inconvenience. Scene Chat Channel We have added a new chat channel to the game that includes all players in the scene you are currently in. Please note that this defaults to off.

Tips from various sources: You should definitely get ahsoka she is a strong attacker and can sometimes help in healing. Barris is a weak attacker but good healer. And I highly recommend Ventress. Strong attack and stun powet. Don’t try the Guardian not worth it. So if you want my opinion get the Ahsoka+ Barris+ Ventress. But as you are new first of all try to open Luminara and it’s not hard to open. You can get her shards from GW. Strong healer and attacker. And if you want a really strong attacker go for rey Hero abilities and stats: http://www.swgohcantina.com/hero-stats/ Positive and negative buffs: http://www.swgohcantina.com/positive-and-negative-status-effects-explained/ @Borg@Sparty And of course, reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/SWGalaxyOfHeroes/

The Honor Empire would like to wish all members celebrating their birthday today a Happy Birthday! Rakdur (30)

Just a quick run through of Honor Hold and the Obsidian Tower during a thunderstorm. And some minor furniture moving at the end. R30 will be out next week. @Borg @Schneider @Wolf @Doddz @Martok

This is now visible, I had the topic hidden as they had not released the information to public until yesterday.

"I’m very excited to say that the female avatar has been updated. Much like the male avatar update, I started from scratch and built and integrated the character over a two-release period. With this update, the idea was to take what we had, and without completely changing the aesthetic, remake the art in a way that improves the quality but doesn’t completely change the look and feel with which players are already so familiar. Basically, the goal was to keep the female avatar looking as she was before, but with more polish and bit of a push toward an athletic look."

They reached their goal and are now moving on to the stretch goals. Only 16 days to go on the kick-starter. They posted a new Dev Journal today: DJ #18: Kingdom & Land Management

The Honor Empire would like to wish all members celebrating their birthday today a Happy Birthday! Crystalinne (34)

The Honor Empire would like to wish all members celebrating their birthday today a Happy Birthday! Kaerfiremane (37)

BRITTANY UPDATE: MORE HOUSING OPPORTUNITIES Brittany keeps on expanding folks. 30 more player lots were added to the South portion of the city. Most of these new areas of housing are along Cotton Road, Old Holtrop Road and Jennings Byway. Below we can see a Before and After comparison of the area I am referring to. New lots that were added include: 1 City 1 Town 1 Village 27 Row Gotta catch them while their hot!

The Honor Empire would like to wish all members celebrating their birthday today a Happy Birthday! Wolf (42)

Some updates: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/final-wipe-and-lot-selection.44430/page-50#post-557399