Hey I’m Luke, I’m the designer on Worlds Adrift and today we’re going to be talking about future features to address some PvP imbalances and frustrations that players have been giving us feedback on.
First things first, Worlds Adrift is a PvP game, and while we’ve got a lot of PvE content planned, we always want PvP to be a major part of the game. Of course with the game being in closed beta it is by its very nature incomplete and we need to tackle issues in priority by the positive impact they add to players and the game. So starting off let’s talking boarding and ship defences.
Anti Boarding
We recently added the Atlas Pulse, which allows you to interact with your core and send a pulse of energy detaching any players attached by grappling hook and prevent grappling for a few seconds.
We have heard the feedback that with a few well timed grapples the effectiveness of this ability can be diminished and so changes will be made to how quickly you can grapple after your cable has been forcefully detached.
Something we’ve talked about before but will be making its way into the game soon is disallowing players to add momentum by using the movement controls and slowing them down while they are grappling and using salvaging tool at the same time.
Additionally containers will now need to be “broken into” by unregistered players in order to access their loot, so would-be looters are going to need to get nice and close with their cannons.
We’ve already talked about Swivel Guns as a method of quickly dispatching boarders and those pesky mantas, but alongside that will be the ability to place certain ship parts on the ground, so you’ll be able to form a defensive perimeter within your shipyard dome to get the upper hand against trespassers.
Shipyard Dome Shield
Speaking of shipyards, the shipyard dome will now act as a shield, preventing cannon shells and pistol bullets from penetrating it. Anyone attacking will now have to enter in on foot to be a threat.
On top of that, unregistered players will not be allowed to grapple onto the dome, meaning they must approach your ship on foot… and hope you haven’t set up some swivel guns to make their plan a bit more difficult.
Personal Reviver Charges
Another aspect of PvP we’ve had a lot of feedback on is that there is little risk for attackers, their ship is safe up high or far away and defenders often feel like there is an endless onslaught with few options to truly fend off an attack.
To address this, personal revivers will now have a charge that is depleted every time a player revives on them if they are more than 50 meters from their ship. The further away from their personal reviver a player is when they die, the more this charge is depleted.
Choosing to revive at a personal reviver when its charge is depleted will cause a tremendous surge of energy that will damage the entire ship and every part attached to it. As condensed versions of revival chambers, the personal revivers need protective measures to contain the energy needed to revive a player.
Personal reviver charges are replenished once a ship has docked to a shipyard, and reviving while attached to a shipyard will not deplete these charges.
The intention of these changes is for long range attackers to only have a few attacks before they have to risk their ship being torn apart, or to force them to bring their ship in close to engage in an all out ship battle and allow their crew to revive more often. The result is the same - they’ll have to put their ship on the line.
Your Feedback
These are our current proposed changes, and as always we’d love to hear what you, our players, think. PvP balancing will always be an ongoing process, and these features will be tweaked based on feedback and playtesting and as a result make it into the game at various points over the coming months, but now’s your chance to have your input and let us know if we’re heading in the right direction!