At Blue Isle Studios, we’ve been working hard at improving the game while riding the wave of feedback we received during the first iteration of our Public Test Server sessions. From the start, the purpose of this test has been to gauge player reactions to experimental new content, and tweak it in the direction we feel best reflects the interests of the community.
To that end, we will be launching a huge patch chockful of changes based on your feedback to the Public Test Servers (not the main branch servers) this Wednesday. Today’s post will outline what will be changing, so let’s get started!
Enhanced Character Customization
The biggest addition to Citadel in this week’s patch is a huge upgrade of our Character Editor. As many players noted during our first year of Early Access, our character customization options were quite limited: Players were historically only able to modify two physical components (ie: head type and hairstyle). With this update we’ve upgraded this with a total of thirteen new customization options, all of which (aside from head and hair) can be precisely tweaked and modified with full slider support!
You can see this new system in action in our livestream archive:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5N9lIk7_tg
We’ve heard some concerns from players about how these options might impact gameplay and whether or not certain characters will have a PVP advantage. This will not be the case: All players will have the same hit boxes, will have the same jump height, and will function in every other way exactly the same as any other player. This is a purely cosmetic update that we hope will empower players to create their own unique identity and take the Citadel roleplaying experience to a whole new level! We hope you’ll enjoy!
PVP Rebalances/New Notification System
We’ve been following player feedback from the test server very closely, and one thing was made very clear by the community: raiding in the test build is far too easy. With the current balance, players are able to very easily obtain Amethyst Crystal which, when applied to a spell, gives them the ability to do damage to another player’s structure. Because of the ease of acquiring Amethyst Crystal, many players found that they couldn’t build nearly as fast as raiders could raid. This is clearly not ideal, and we’ve made it a priority to address it in this patch.
The first step was to make the raid spells more difficult to craft, and the easiest way to do that was to remove pure Amethyst Crystal as a siege reagent. To now use Amethyst Crystal in raiding you must first refine it into Unstable Gem, which requires you to acquire 20 Amethyst Crystal, 20 Flawless Rune Gems and have access to a Forge. We hope this balance change will still make raiding a realistic pursuit, but will also slow it down to a place where it’s not significantly easier to raze a structure than it is to build one.
An additional change we’ve made is to reduce the number of charges available for spells with attached siege modifiers. We want the siege spells you create to be powerful for a player to break into a reasonable portion of a structure, but not so powerful that it can entirely level everything someone worked hard to create. Combined with the additional layer of work involved mentioned above, we think this change should effectively reduce the likelihood of griefing.
On top of that, we’re adding measures to expose players who raid to potential retaliation. Raiding in Citadel was always meant to encourage rivalries, but we never really gave players the tools necessary to develop those relationships. Being raided was purely an experience of having something and then seeing it disappear. Now, when any part of your claimed structure is damaged, you will not only be notified that if happen but be told who did it.
Lastly, anytime a player damages another player’s structure it will be made visible on the map for all other players to see. Now, raiders will be completely exposed to other players, but it’s up to those players to decide what happens next. Does the community band together to defend the structure? Turn a blind eye to the raid in-progress? Or perhaps they jump in as an active participant.
Resource Availability/Spawn Rates
Another resounding point of feedback from the first version of the test server was the palpable lack of resources, which in turn caused a major strain on some players looking to craft and build in areas that have already been picked clean. To resolve this we’ve made some major reductions in the time it takes for resources to respawn. Previously, a large tree or stone node would take about 24 real hours to respawn. We’ve dramatically reduced this to somewhere in the ball park of 4 hours. Smaller nodes, on the other hand, are down to as short a period of 20 minutes. These changes should have a dramatic impact on resource abundance.
On top of that, we’ve also given the resource yield of these nodes a bit of a bump. You will notice after this update an increase in the amount of resources extracted from a tree or a rock per tick, which should help increase the speed at which players can build a home and get settled. Keep in mind that, as always, the rate of extraction can also be further increased by increasing your damage stat.
Mana Management Improvements/Early Game Changes
Another frustration shared by players of our Test Build was the difficulty of managing your mana in the early game. Fighting monsters and harvesting resources can take its toll on a new Wizard’s mana reserves, and it caused a lot of unnecessary stress for new players.
To ease this, we’ve given the Fresh Berry Salad item from the top of the cooking tree a serious boost by adding a passive 1 mana per second regeneration buff to it on top of its current effects. While this will seem trivial to higher level players, this will make a humongous impact on reducing the tedium of low level gameplay.
On top of that, we’ve also doubled the amount of XP you will receive from low level/early game enemies. This will help you level up faster, making the first handful of levels a little breezier and help fighting enemies feel more worthwhile.
Weapon Trees Revert
Another big request, which we're happy to satisfy, is a return to the old weapon tree layout. The quality-tiered layout that we last tried was highly experimental, and we were hoping to gauge your reactions before fully committing to it. It became clear that players weren't feeling it, so we'll be switching back.
As a consequence of this switch, all players will have all their KP refunded on the release of the update. You should not lose any progress, you will just have to reapply your points.
Delete Character Button
We’ve also thrown in another small but exciting feature that players have been requesting for a while now: a delete button. Many players have requested the ability to start fresh with a new character on an official server, so we’ve decided to accommodate that request. After the patch has launched, you will be able to delete your character in-game via the ESC menu.
Much More
We’re still hard at work on this patch, and will be up until its release later this week. To see all the final features and changes, check back in on the day of the patch for the full patch notes. Thank you again for sharing your feedback, and we look forward to sharing more information with you all very soon!