Hello everyone,
First and foremost, thank you for your support for the game and ultimately your patience. It's understandable that there is a lot of tension and I'm well aware of it all. Just to reiterate, there was the lack of transparency and communication that I provided here, and I'm looking to fix that and let everyone know that I am still hard at work on this game. I am eager to keep learning on how to manage this sort of thing so I will do the best I can to maintain things and be as clear as I can.
A lot of the game as it stands on the live / retail version was very unfinished and in prototype condition, but since then I have completely revamped and revitalized a lot of the systems, ultimately making it much easier for me to develop with.
New Skill System
One of the major hurdles that I've had while developing this game was creating skills. Before, skills had a rank system. Each rank used different skill logic objects and parameters, making it a bit of a pain to manage.
Instead, I have gotten rid of the rank system for skills and made them cost a certain amount of skill points. This means there's no level requirement on them either, so you can purchase skills with your points as long as they are available in your skillbook.
To compensate for the removal of the ranks, the skills will scale with their stat attribute. For example Prism being a mind skill, will scale its absorption based on your magic power stat.
All the three primary classes have their skillbooks filled.
In this new Skill System, you will have two actionbars to work with for your alt and primary weapon swaps. Both bars will have four slots for "Action Skills", and two slots for "Support Skills". I chose to do this for balancing and to still provide a sense of limitation for skill loadout building.
New Overworld
The workflow I had while building the old overworld wasn't particularly working well for me. Instead I have opted to use a terrain system for the overworld maps, making things look more natural.
I did experiment with the idea of making one large map containing all of the old segments of the outer sanctum zone, but it ended up being too big of a scope to work with. I have made the choice to keep things segmented, but the new terrain zones make the exploration experience feel more open and free. It's also extremely fast to revise these old maps with the terrain.
New Outer Sanctum
New Effold Terrace
Weather in the Overworld Maps
New Character Selection / Creation Screen
The character selection / creation screen has a new environment and look to it. All of the player models have been refined to look more rounder / softer and less jagged.
Lowest / Thin Proportion example
Highest / Fat Proportion example
Head customization value ranges are increased for some races too.
Netplay Optimization
One of the biggest issues in Atlyss is the netplay performance. Atlyss is primarily a multiplayer focused game, so this was something I wanted to get to the bottom of. Fortunately, I have found many of the causes for the issues with this, and now netplay will be running much smoother for hosts. So far, with up to 6-8 players, the game will still run at over 120fps, at best being near 200fps. There's still a lot of work to do for this, but I am setting aside anymore focus for optimization for netplay until the next public update releases.
Confirmed Level Cap
The confirmed level cap for the game is level 40.
Subclass Development
Development of the subclasses have been going underway, primarily focusing on the Mystic Subclasses. Each of the primary classes will have two subclasses to choose from at level 30.
Fighter - Paladin and Berserker
Mystic - Magus and Bishop
Bandit - Rogue and Engineer
For the next public update, it is most likely that these subclasses will not be finished. The most near complete subclass will be the Bishop.
Moving Forward
I will stay by my word and be committed to continue providing communication and transparency at the best of my ability here each month. Again, I do apologize for taking as long as I am. There is a silver lining to all of this and I'm certain things will turn in a good direction soon.