Dear Community,
Today we are going to publish the third community report and again share some insight on what we've been thinking about, discussing and developing in the past 4 weeks. As all the previous reports everything mentioned below is not a final plan and is subject to change.
Update on the November CR
We announced the level cap raise last month and since then worked on many Game Design topics like new jobs, new items and new quests. Most of the graphics for the items and job locations have been finished already and we are confident we will be able to release the level cap raise this year still.
Also, Main Story 3 has been released and 4 is being translated at the moment. We are happy to get so much positive feedback on the Main Stories and therefore have finished almost all parts of it already. Still, we want to keep the plan to release them piece by piece.
Furthermore, we mentioned the new forum style. All main screens have been redesigned and it looks pretty neat already. We are waiting for an update from vBulletin though (v. 5.1) that is supposed to fix a bunch of bugs.
Multiplayer Instances
Besides the level cap raise we are still focusing on the Multiplayer Instances and were presented with the first playable instance just last week - the developers did a fantastic job. The first Instance is the Bear hunt and besides a bug that made the bear behave more like a rabbit because it was always running away from the players it was already a lot of fun and when you read this the bear will be a terrifying deadly grizzly...
We are preparing to show you some pictures of the MPI soon so that you can see what it will look like yourselves.
Duel protection
We had a long discussion about how to save players from being dueled if they don't want to be dueled without taking away too many targets of the duelists who chose this direction for their character development. With this concept all players could be dueled, no matter if they belong to a town or not. For us this is a good step because we don't want players who are member of a town to have a disadvantage that townless players don't have. Also we thought it might be worth a try to let players not only duel in a specific duel level range but on top of that, all players that have a higher dueling level. So how can players protect themselves from being dueled? Dueling is an important part of The West and also something that players should not be able to avoid without a noticeable disadvantage. We chose the Bodyguard system that many players have suggested already as well as a solution for duel protection. Bodyguards can be hired only by town members and will fight all duels instead of your character. As long as your character is under the protection of the bodyguard you won't lose any HP from duels. The bodyguards stats are a mirror of your stats and equipment so that he will always be exactly as strong as your own character. Activating the bodyguard brings a couple of disadvantages though. First, he will take 25% of all the money you make while playing as a fee. Furthermore, the money you lose for paying the bodyguard has to be at least $500 a week. This means that you have to play actively that you make at least $2000 a week in order to be able to pay the bodyguard (All numbers are of course just examples and not final yet). Also the bodyguard would go away and be blocked for a few weeks if you start a duel while the bodyguard is active.
While we do like the general idea, we did not go further with it because dueling the bodyguard of a player is a very different gameplay as dueling the player and it would take away some strategic teamwork like raiding a town and just KOing everyone.
Shop
After comparing a lot of numbers we have decided to completely switch to the new Shop layout. We will not only just switch all old shops to the new layout but also add a couple of nice new features like a search function. We also want to integrated the Traveling Salesman into the Shop to make it better visible. Furthermore, the long timers like Higher Energy and Automation will be moved from the Premium page into the shop. More news on the Shop switch will be announced soon.
Bond limit increase
The last thing for this month's report is a discussion about the bond limit. We discussed some pros and cons of increasing the limit and while there is no final decision whether we will increase the limit or not there is a good chance you will read about a change in one of the next Changelogs.
That's all from Joony for now. As usual, we'd love your feedback (remember: constructive and respectful), so head over to the update review forum!
Today we are going to publish the third community report and again share some insight on what we've been thinking about, discussing and developing in the past 4 weeks. As all the previous reports everything mentioned below is not a final plan and is subject to change.
Update on the November CR
We announced the level cap raise last month and since then worked on many Game Design topics like new jobs, new items and new quests. Most of the graphics for the items and job locations have been finished already and we are confident we will be able to release the level cap raise this year still.
Also, Main Story 3 has been released and 4 is being translated at the moment. We are happy to get so much positive feedback on the Main Stories and therefore have finished almost all parts of it already. Still, we want to keep the plan to release them piece by piece.
Furthermore, we mentioned the new forum style. All main screens have been redesigned and it looks pretty neat already. We are waiting for an update from vBulletin though (v. 5.1) that is supposed to fix a bunch of bugs.
Multiplayer Instances
Besides the level cap raise we are still focusing on the Multiplayer Instances and were presented with the first playable instance just last week - the developers did a fantastic job. The first Instance is the Bear hunt and besides a bug that made the bear behave more like a rabbit because it was always running away from the players it was already a lot of fun and when you read this the bear will be a terrifying deadly grizzly...
We are preparing to show you some pictures of the MPI soon so that you can see what it will look like yourselves.
Duel protection
We had a long discussion about how to save players from being dueled if they don't want to be dueled without taking away too many targets of the duelists who chose this direction for their character development. With this concept all players could be dueled, no matter if they belong to a town or not. For us this is a good step because we don't want players who are member of a town to have a disadvantage that townless players don't have. Also we thought it might be worth a try to let players not only duel in a specific duel level range but on top of that, all players that have a higher dueling level. So how can players protect themselves from being dueled? Dueling is an important part of The West and also something that players should not be able to avoid without a noticeable disadvantage. We chose the Bodyguard system that many players have suggested already as well as a solution for duel protection. Bodyguards can be hired only by town members and will fight all duels instead of your character. As long as your character is under the protection of the bodyguard you won't lose any HP from duels. The bodyguards stats are a mirror of your stats and equipment so that he will always be exactly as strong as your own character. Activating the bodyguard brings a couple of disadvantages though. First, he will take 25% of all the money you make while playing as a fee. Furthermore, the money you lose for paying the bodyguard has to be at least $500 a week. This means that you have to play actively that you make at least $2000 a week in order to be able to pay the bodyguard (All numbers are of course just examples and not final yet). Also the bodyguard would go away and be blocked for a few weeks if you start a duel while the bodyguard is active.
While we do like the general idea, we did not go further with it because dueling the bodyguard of a player is a very different gameplay as dueling the player and it would take away some strategic teamwork like raiding a town and just KOing everyone.
Shop
After comparing a lot of numbers we have decided to completely switch to the new Shop layout. We will not only just switch all old shops to the new layout but also add a couple of nice new features like a search function. We also want to integrated the Traveling Salesman into the Shop to make it better visible. Furthermore, the long timers like Higher Energy and Automation will be moved from the Premium page into the shop. More news on the Shop switch will be announced soon.
Bond limit increase
The last thing for this month's report is a discussion about the bond limit. We discussed some pros and cons of increasing the limit and while there is no final decision whether we will increase the limit or not there is a good chance you will read about a change in one of the next Changelogs.
That's all from Joony for now. As usual, we'd love your feedback (remember: constructive and respectful), so head over to the update review forum!