Greetings Adventurers and welcome to the latest happenings in TADO.
Throughout April there were quite a few significant updates to TADO, more content, some game mechanic updates along with some performance improvements.
[Combat Updates]
We’ve gone through every melee animation in the game (and with having so many different weapon types, there’s a lot of different melee animations!) and improved the impact ‘feel’ of strikes. This has made every swing that lands a lot more weighty, and different to those which fly wide of their targets; something quite important in a game like TADO with action combat. Its difficult to show off 'feel' in a small clip, but attacks feel a lot more physical and that you're hitting something, rather than through something. We've also been careful not to overdo it and make swings feel to rigid and non-responsive.
[New Content]
For content, two new dungeon areas were opened on Star Island, giving new places to fight through as well as providing some areas where the main quest chain on Star Island will take you, which was also extended by a couple of stages.
[New Quests and Rewards]
April also saw the introduction of the Hunting Log Feature. Over the time we’ve been open, we’ve seen quite a variety of different types of players, some who just want to grind everything until they’ve found every rare, some who only want to play through the guided content of the main quest chains, some who want to explore.
The new Hunting Log provides players who like to grind and adventure in different areas of the world a large number of monster based tasks which offer a variety of rewards, be them equipment if they are doing them whilst level appropriate, skill gems, or ever a variety of small passive buffs. It can also provide a option for players who feel their character isn't quite strong enough to push forward to a new place, but would like more variety in what they are doing to gain that strength.
We decided not to just push the tasks on every adventurer and fill up their quest logs with a potentially overwhelming number of things to do, and put the first 28 Hunting Log entries safely away in Genmire Hunting Lodge. We will be adding Hunting Logs to the four major areas, which also contain tasks for all their subzones and dungeons, with Genmire just being the first.
[New Minimaps and Area Maps]
Something which many players have asked for many times is accurate in game area maps. Presenting good maps, of a quality we were happy with has proved a challenge for some time going through a variety of iterations, but we have finally come to a position we are happy with.
This means players not only have a much more functional minimap with clearer icons and view of their surroundings (particularly useful for better seeing champion spawns, resources or other players), but an area map you can pan around with, see active events and tasks which have specific areas to go to.
There’s some further functionally going to be added here with additional detail such as event cooldowns and some further detail on some side quests.
[New High and Low Level Events]
Speaking of events, we have added in two new events, one a reasonably regular, repeatable event in Genmire; which makes use of a previously underutilised piece of land and provides a place for newer players to experience a bit of challenge with their friends should they wish to.
We’ve also added a much higher level event to Fire Watch in Star Island which sees waves of fire elementals and champion spawns attempting to drag down the many defence points along its great wall. Defenders are rewarded for each banner that lines the wall they prevent from going up in flames.
As always we've continued to improve performance, we've made some pretty huge strides forward with improving rendering speed, loading times and memory utilisation.
Look forward to seeing you in game Adventurers!
Monty