Hi everyone!
The update is almost finished and I suspect it should be in a state where it can be rolled out sometime next week. I am currently waiting for the last few last status effect images, which should also be finished next week as well, so everything is coming together, finally! I still need to write a bunch of content for the game, fix a few scenarios, and some bugs that appear for inanimate players, but I hope to have it all ironed out and released within the next two weeks.
Merfolk
This month I want to share some more NPCs with you that are coming with the PvE overhaul! This month's theme is merfolk! I've already shared an image of the mermaid, but we'll also have a merman and merponies, which are themed a bit around seahorses and pony-play. Seaponies have no arms and the females have two sets of boobs. They are the lowest-ranking merfolk and are often treated little different from animals by mermaids and mermen.
Graceful reconnection, -server restart, and session affinity
One of the things that have delayed the next update, aside from my being sick the past two weeks, is that I had a spontaneous solution for graceful server restarts. I'll spare you the brunt of the technical details, but the combined benefits of the implementation are as follows:
Players are now routed to the same game server when they connect.
When a player reconnects it will attempt to restore the previous session instead of creating a new one, which is substantially faster and has halved the time it takes for the server to handle player relogs in most cases.
When players use external endpoints, such as accessing profiles, they will also connect with the same server each time, which means the data is much more likely to be readily available, reducing response time for these operations as well.
Graceful server restarts means when a server is about to shut down, it will start a new server and transfer all players to that server before doing so, resulting in zero downtime and only a brief connection disruption for active players that were moved.
Coupled with graceful reconnection, players will then be able to continue playing as though nothing happened! When the client loses connection to the server, it will attempt to reconnect to the game and it is very good at keeping the client and server synchronized between connections. This should prove a huge quality of life for players on mobile devices that disconnect the client from the game when they change apps.
Character Specialization
Another thing for the future of the game I've spent a bit of time on was giving character specialization a closer look. Previously I've talked about fortune cards and passive abilities related to the focus.
Fortune Cards
To sum things up, fortune cards are planned to fit into 4 groups: backgrounds, races, artisan skills, and undifferentiated/standard cards. Players can have 1 background, 1 race, and 2 artisan, and 3 standard cards. Background and race alter a character's stats, but mostly they are used to allow for special interactions with NPCs based on their past, while artisan cards are required to unlock the third and final skill level of any skill, which will give players access to special and potentially game-changing spells and other abilities fitting their chosen proficiency.
Foci
The focus has been reimagined into a handheld item that allows the player to equip special enchantments depending on the stat distribution of the item. From a narrative point of view, it's funny to imagine players turning each other's wands into feather dusters or wobbling dildos, or using the same and other perverted tools to shoot spells at one another. From a game point of view, it serves as a sort of talent three and a weapon at the same time. In many MMOs and other RPGs, the weapon slot is the most important and impactful of all items, and the focus will act as this slot because certain skills require a specific stat on the focus, and most abilities scale with their respective stat.
Unique Items
The focus also plays into the plans for unique items, which similar to Path of Exile and the Diablo series are items that affect your character in more interesting ways than simple stat changes. To limit the use of unique items, these games have resistances and other stats that you must raise through well-rolled-non-unique items. Since Battle Mages doesn't have anything similar, to limit the usefulness of running around with only unique items, the power from unique items will be through unlocking unique abilities while worn, which must be equipped in the focus. This adds a meaningful restriction to how many unique items a character can benefit from, allowing for more impactful unique items.
Passive Skill Tree
The new thing I've been brewing on forks from my idea for these passive abilities that can be equipped in a focus. Originally, I planned for the focus to also have mundane skills such as flat stat increases, and having minor and major ability slots that fit abilities with different levels of impact. Instead, the focus will only have slots for game-changing abilities and act as a delimiter for the number of unique abilities you can have from unique items. For people familiar with PoE terminology, you could say that the focus is where you select your Keystones, which won't appear in the passive skill tree.
The passive skill tree is where you will find minor and flat stat increases and changes for your character, and will act as the core feature for deciding which stats you favor for your equipment and help add identity to each stat without giving the same power to all players.
The shape is inspired by the Celtic triquetra, which is often connected with witchcraft; a happy coincidence, seeing as the shape was decided on due to how mathematically it suits opportunity costs for traversing the tree well. The tree was created as an exercise where I attempted to come up with solutions for all my biggest gripes with the tree in Path of Exile.
PoE has many complex and interesting things going for it, but the tree certainly isn't one of them. Traversing the tree requires you to spend a ton of points on uninteresting traveling nodes, and between reaching build-enabling skills, often located far apart, and collecting enough life nodes (or whatever your builds version of life is), you are stretched so fin that their massive skill tree ultimately allows any specialized builds very little room for actual creativity. I used to think it was complex, but it's really just theater meant to impress and allow players to waste away 100+ points from leveling their characters and completing quests. For this, their passive skill tree fits their game perfectly, and the only real downside to it is the fact that it scares away new players and overwhelms even more.
I also don't like how they handled ascendencies, which are essentially subclasses to any class in the game. Classes themselves just determine where on the tree you start, but ascendencies allow players to specialize in a particular set of skills that are only accessible to that subclass. It adds another level of complexity, but really it just removes even more choice from the player as almost any playstyle relies on specific skills to a specific subclass, but to access them you are forced to start in a particular part of the tree. Classes and subclasses add flavor and help with limiting the use of skills that could become too powerful when used together, by placing them in different subclasses, which is why they did it like this, but in terms of actual creative freedom, it's just more theater.
So, my challenge to myself, while designing a passive skill tree for Battle Mages was to:
Not place build-enabling skills far apart or out of reach of one another. Players will be able to reach any one corner of the tree, from any one starting point. All build-enabling skills will be placed in the focus instead of being located on the tree. Any single nodes on the skill tree will be substantially less powerful than other sources, and the whole tree will maybe amount to the power of 1 or 2 extra items. (I may also have to dial back base damage a bit to avoid speed-creep)
Not have classes or subclasses. Players can select any one starting point (the yellow dots) in the tree when they place their first point. All starting points specialize the player in a certain stat, and unless the player feels strongly about two or more stats, they need not concern themselves with the outer corners of the tree, but those who do will be able to reach any, and multiple of these.
Not have traveling nodes. All nodes should feel meaningful and not act as a tax for getting between the interesting parts. One of the ways this is achieved is by spreading
Maintain a U-curve. The U-curve is the idea that a build should be the most exciting in the beginning (when you create your character), and again when you reach endgame. Most games achieve this by having a linear tree you progress through, and PoE uses subclasses for this. By placing all start points, which are stat-specific, around the outer part of the tree, and having all the less stat-specific skills near the center, I can achieve something similar. The reason I can cluster powerful skills together near the center is that they are all stat-specific enough that you have to invest stats in different ways to benefit strongly from any one of them, which makes a more mixed character more inclined to go for masteries by using the high-way around the center instead of through it.
Maintain pauper's stat caps. The concept you can spend points to gain immunities and reach stat caps that would otherwise require significant gear investment, allowing new characters to cover these caps earlier at the opportunity cost of not being able to spend that point elsewhere. I still don't like the idea of wasting a point, so instead, these are placed into the crossroads (teal points), which will be given to players for free by reaching those points. Many of these contain partial immunity, say 50% disease resistance, with a similar node at a connecting crossroad. For this example, to gain disease immunity, you don't have to waste a point, but you must spend your points in such a way that you connect those two crossroads. As a character progresses, this means they become less concerned with connecting certain crossroads and this means their optimal path through the tree evolves with their character, making an otherwise static selection of nodes dynamic over time.
Suffice it to say, a lot of thought and design has gone into this passive skill tree and I hope anyone who either is a game developer or curious about game development has enjoyed my breakdown of the many things that might not be immediately apparent, otherwise. As a disclaimer, I don't think this tree allows for more choice than the tree in PoE, but I believe it allows for about the same amount of choice with a fraction of the complexity (and less theater), which should hopefully make it fun and engaging while being less overwhelming and time-consuming. The size and simplicity of the shape also mean a player's selected points can be conveyed to other players as a relatively small icon with the selected paths/nodes traced with a highlighted color.
For anyone who wants to play around with the draft tree, you can start at any of the yellow nodes, and you cannot select a neighboring yellow node without going around the triangular path. All paths have a length of 3 nodes, and all crossroads are unlocked for free when you select a connecting node. All characters will have a maximum of 24 points, which amounts to 8 paths around the tree, approx. 20% of the entire tree, and enough points to reach 4 yellow points, 1 yellow point and all blue points, and 2 yellow and some blue points. I expect to add unique items and skill masteries (from fortune cards) that can give a character points beyond the normal cap, which if you collect a total of 3, will make the difference between reaching another yellow node or not, or allowing for a less straight path between two far corners of the tree.
Anyway, that was a lot of talk about character specialization, and the reason I have put so much thought into multiple upcoming systems already is that I want to get started on them after the PvE overhaul and before I can start on any one of them, and I want to make sure they all compliment each other well with distinct roles to fill for a character's growth!
I'll leave you with an overview of the many status effects images that are ready, and then I'll get back to writing smut for the next update that involves the new sex toys, instead of writing long essays about my thoughts on the game's design!
Thank you all for your support and I'm looking forward to rolling out the next game update, and the many more updates to come! ❤️
Cheers,
Tinon