Hello everyone!
Our next update is on tracks, its name: The Royal Wing Update, Part II.
No surprises there, it will include Act 5 (so new missions), new boss fights, new Ancestral Skills and an increased level cap. One important thing to mention is that it should be the last update containing a new Act / Missions. Once this one is out of the way, we will be introducing our last 2 endgame modes followed by various objectives and quests that should link the endgame altogether and lead to a glorious fight against the infamous Slormancer.
That being said, we’ve mostly been working on “side” stuff lately and things we’ve been delaying for a while because once we’re done with the main content of an update we tend to publish it as soon as possible without taking the time to rework past content or work on “secondary” features. So this time, we’re doing it the other way around.
New Feature: Loadouts
This is something that we’ve always wanted to have in the game since we want to encourage players to change their builds and explore fun and interesting options on the go.
The way it works is that you can take a snapshot of your current build, switch to another build that you’ve been looking to try (eventually save it aswell), and load back your previous build once you’re done. If you’re familiar with the Diablo 3 system, I believe that it is exactly the same.
So there now is a large Wardrobe next to the storage area with 5 Loadout Slots per character.
It is important to note that it is not a storage space. Items are not being stored, so you can use them in multiple builds (of the same character).
The tooltips of Equipment pieces will now display whether or not these items are being used in a Loadout Set. In the screenshot above, my Ring is used in Set I and in Set II.
We’ve also been reworking the “Storage Area” so you access everything faster. The top left chest replaces the Storage NPC, so you no longer have to talk to her. The top right chest, is the legendary chest and the wardrobe opens up the Loadouts menu.
Reworks
We have a few reworks coming with this update. I will not detail most of them right here mostly because we came up with solutions that are yet to be tested (so they are subject to change).
You can expect changes regarding: Legendary Equipment Scaling, Soul Eating Mantle, Runes: such as Thornbite Rune, and Activation Rune of Hagan, Silence in general.
However, we have a few changes coming that I’d like to talk about:
Armor & Elemental Resistance
(I’ll only talk about Armor here out of simplicity but the same changes will be applied to Elemental Resistance since they are identical).
Let’s be real, Armor does not work or at least, it doesn’t make much of a difference.
We’ve been looking at some numbers to figure out why Armor was not doing its job, and we actually found out that we didn’t know what job Armor was supposed to do exactly and where it was supposed to shine, so we had to start from there.
Currently, Armor is really only useful when you take light hits, the lighter the hit is, the stronger your Armor is. For some reason, it felt like the appropriate behavior to us.
Here are few numbers of the current Armor formula:
Assuming 10 000 Armor, which is a decent yet easily obtainable number.
A Level 70 (Wrath 5) Archer deals 486 Damage.
Your Armor will prevent about 91% of the Damage, resulting in about 43 Damage.
A Level 70 (Wrath 10) Archer deals 4 212 Damage.
This time, the same Armor will prevent about 16% of the Damage.
It is already pretty bad at this point. But it gets worse.
Some enemies hit MUCH harder than an Archer, and some Cataclysms and Forge Challenges push this even further.
Assuming a Level 70 (Wrath 10) Colossus (an upcoming enemy based on Act II Boss, Grotagrom), with the Gargantuan Cataclysm, and a Critical Strike from the Assassins Cataclysm:
He will deal 148 044 Damage.
This time your Armor will prevent 0,45% (!!) of the Damage.
It was actually quite fun seeing how wrong we were when doing all these calculations.
This is also true for when the player deals damage to enemies. Even enemies with high Armor values would just not mitigate anything from 100 000+ Damage (which is pretty common).
As mentioned earlier, we first had to figure where Armor is supposed to be useful. And we found out that it was cristal clear that it was supposed to be the opposite of what we were doing.
Given the massive difference in light and heavy damage at a given Level / Wrath (going from 4 212 to up to 150 000) we have in the game, we needed to have viable options for both.
Max Life combined with Life Regeneration and / or Life Leech are great to sustain light hits. But there are currently no proper options to sustain the massive hits that can eventually occur. Regardless of your Equipment, there is no way to sustain a 1-hit 150 000 Damage, except by somehow “cheesing” the game, which is what players have been doing (using Thornbite Rune, Primordial Aïondee etc…), and it is perfectly understandable.
Our rework goes in the way of making Armor the absolute best option to mitigate these heavy hits.
Basically, we are changing the Armor formula: Instead of being based on Damage, it will be based on Level + Wrath. We have yet to find the correct multiplier / value, but what this means is that 10 000 Armor (like in the previous example) will result in the same % of Damage being mitigated whether you’re dealt 500 or 500 000 Damage.
And instead of 0,45%, or even 16%, we want to be closer to 30-40% (for 10 000 Armor).
Given how bad Armor currently is, we don’t mind overdoing it.
And we’d rather see players being unkillable because they have tons of Armor rather than having lots of shield from Thornbite Rune because they have lots of Armor. It just feels more natural. :)
This also means that enemies’ Armor will now work the way it is supposed to and be much more efficient.
The Great Forge
To be honest, The Great Forge was never meant to be so heavily farmed. We expected players to reach the 100th Wave but given how long it takes, we didn’t expect it to be the default goal.
There are a couple of issues with The Great Forge (at least when you are properly geared / farming endgame content):
[*]It’s too easy.
[*]It’s too long.
The first issue is not related to The Great Forge so our goal is not to try and fix it here. We could scale everything up, but it would not make much of a difference. Instead, we should trust ourselves and the many balance passes that are yet to come that will eventually resolve the issue.
So our focus was to work on issue n°2: It’s too long.
I personally do not get to Wave 100. At some point, I lack the time and motivation so I actually leave The Great Forge, not because I feel like I can no longer sustain the upcoming wave (the way it’s supposed to work), but because I no longer have the time to get to the end.
We believe that even if The Great Forge was much harder or much longer, the goal would remain the same: complete Wave 100. Players simply don’t want to leave.
So we decided to embrace that goal and not try to go against it, and went with something that feels like a very simple yet elegant solution (at least to us).
Some Challenges will now have a new bonus tied to them, called “Fast Forward”.
It is pretty straightforward: when you pick up the Challenge with a Fast Forward option, you will ignore the next X Waves. This will allow to modulate the length of Great Forge runs: You can complete a quick Great Forge run (by picking up every Fast Forward, you should be able to complete a run in about 30-35 Waves) but you will skip rewards for a certain number of waves.
This solution adds up a new layer of choices to Challenges which is interesting.
But ultimately, it is almost just like before except it’s not. If you only have time / motivation to do 30 Waves, instead of leaving after 30 Waves and feel bad about it, you actually get to the end of The Great Forge before leaving. And if you happen to find a Legendary Reward that scales nicely, then you may feel tempted (and not forced) to slow down on the “Fast Forward” challenges.
The objective does not change, but you now have some flexibility to how you want to reach it.
New Player Experience
This one is an ongoing issue that we’ve been having. We want the game working in a certain way that prevents certain things during the early game.
Slorm Reapers
For instance, we love looting Level 1 Slorm Reapers. It is important for the experience that we want to offer that you level it from the start. But we understand that this completely prevent players from immediately equipping a new Slorm Reaper and experience stuff with it when they loot it. This is even more true for the first 2-3 Slorm Reapers you loot, since the vast majority of your DPS comes from your Slorm Reaper you cannot afford to switch immediately change it during the Story.
We’ve previously added a few things to ease the leveling process (such as Slorm Reaper Affinity) but it actually does not help new players at all.
So we’re introducing a new Item that you will be able to pick up when you unlock Pr. Geranium that will set the level of your current Slorm Reaper to the level of your Character (up to a certain point). This way, players will be able to quickly experiment their freshly found Slorm Reapers, until they no longer need to.
Early Game Sustain
We also love the fact that there are no potions in the game. To us, this mechanic often ends up into a spam-fest that is not fun. But we understand that it is really important in the early game and at least until you get your first Equipment with Regen stats, at which point the game switches to something much more enjoyable. But we’ve noticed how BIG of a difference the experience is for a player that loots an item with Life Regeneration early on, and the ones that don’t.
We’ve tried adding some base stats to sustain Life, but it actually didn’t make much of a difference.
So same as Slorm Reapers, we came up with a simple solution: players will pick up an item that has an Active Skill that acts like a Potion in the very early game and use it until they no longer need to.
On top of that, we’d like to experiment with “Life Globes” (a small globe dropped by enemies that regenerates a small amount of life when you pick it up). We like the mechanic and how it could add fun to early game fights. Life Globes would be available during the Story and in early Wrath levels, and slowly dissapear once you get to higher Wrath Levels.
That’s about it!
We currently have no release date to communicate for this update as it is too early in development. We’ll probably be able to give a proper date for our next Slormite Chronicles on June 6.
Cheers!