Ryan
Ryan is back from his honeymoon! He has been taking it a bit easy since he got back, and finished up the team skill / team xp revamp that was started awhile back. There will be a blog coming up detailing the changes as soon as they are up on test server.
Auxilium
Auxilium has reduced the shieldbank of Ancalagon the Black by 40%. The fight was very tedious already and with the recent change to the Sniper analyzer it got even worse.
Additionally, Timotheus the Red has had it’s shieldbank increased by roughly 350%. The boss mechanics for this fight were often completely ignored and players focused on bursting the boss down as soon as possible.
Finally, the Bana King has received a 15% decrease in shieldbank because the nerfs to the burst series of weapons indirectly made this boss harder.
He’s also increased the spawners for the Earthforce AI ships that players need to kill for Piracy gear after some players were unhappy about the availability of these AI.
Jeff
Changed animation loop code so that effects can loop over longer periods than 32 seconds. Working on changes to Matura Scrapyard in pirate side of the Nexus.
Blue Dwarf
I’ve been working database support required for the automatic event system and making it so that wild bots will enter stasis instead of blowing up when inside arena galaxies (e.g., The Colosseum).
Hober Mallow
Hi, I’m the newest Developer!
I joined with the intention of improving the early and middle game experience for players, here’s what I plan on doing this week.
Support Focus and Fleet Focus are much better at engaging with solo oriented content due to how powerful Drones and Bots are at the lower end and the innate survivability these classes bring to the table from jump. Fleet Commander’s gain bonuses to Bots and Fighters, and have tools that augment those Bots and Fighters as they progress, so at lower levels they are effectively always in a squad. Gunners scale with Missiles, which are already potent before any bonuses and allow them to efficiently combat multiple targets before being overwhelmed. Engineers and Shield Monkey’s don’t scale as hard offensively, but they make up for it with good defensive scaling and efficiency with Drones and Bots. They both can use Bots and Drones, and their class skills (just like Fleet Focus) encourage them to use ships with ample hull space and solar panel slots. They get to use tools that other classes can’t necessarily fit. I’ll be looking at ways to mimic that flexibility for the other classes.
As you can see, these 4 classes all have a lot of wiggle room and allow the player to adapt themselves to different situations with a bit of intelligence. I plan on looking at ways to level the playing field for the Recon and Combat focus classes (Berserker, Sniper, Speed Demon and Seer) at the low end in order to encourage players to explore those classes the way they are played in the end game without feeling penalized for not using Bots and Drones. This may involve reworked super items (I really want to do this anyway), it may involve altering the progression of class skills (Something me and JeffL are going to look into later this week), or it may involve light touches to AI that were balanced with 1v1 combat in mind. More than likely, it will involve a combination of these things.
I’m also in the process of hashing out a rough outline for solo players to acquire Tech 20 skills via Daily Missions without being forced to group up, think Weaponry 20 and Shielding 20 “Dailies” of sorts. I really like the daily system and think it can be used to prevent players from feeling brickwalled as they make their way towards the end game.
I also plan to look into some of the underutilized Class Super Items. Class Super Items should be meaningful, and if they’re not being used then they are probably lacking in some way. I’ll see if I can get the OK to share some tentative ideas with the player base at large for feedback purposes by next week.
That’s all for this week, sorry for being long winded!
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