Instanced Story Quests
A massive issue this most recent European Season was the constant griefing by guilds when other guilds (or simply, Pick-Up Groups) were attempting to run quests. What used to be just the top tier guilds griefing eachother from completing high level content, became top tier guilds griefing random pick-up groups attempting low tier quests as well. This is when this became a serious issue we needed to resolve and not simply guild vs guild conflict anymore. After a full day of brainstorming with players from all stages of the game, we decided the best course of action will be to make all Story Quests Instanced.
Now, instead of running through portals to try to make sense of a very large Questing Room, you will simply use a UI interface to select the quest you wish to partake on. Players will have the option to Public Queue or Private Queue. Public Queueing will put you in a group finder, that will teleport you into a private instance of the quest once enough other participants have joined the queue. Private Queue (which will be more commonly used) will enter you into an instance of the quest you queue for with everyone in your party, but no one outside of that party. This will allow guilds, Pick-up Groups, Mentored Groups, or just small Groups of friends to complete story quests in peace.
Class Unique Buffs
Now when you join an Instanced Quest (Story & Heroic Quests) Everyone in your party will receive a 10% buff to a specific stat based on which vocations are present. Each vocation will have a unique buff that applies to everyone in the party. Multiple of the same vocation will not give you multiple of the same buff, as they are unique to 1, however you can obtain all 10 buffs if you have all 10 vocations present for the entire party.
Sorcerer: +10% Arcane to the entire party
Druid: +10% Restoration to the entire party
Archer: +10% Precision to the entire party
Guardian: +10% Vitality to the entire party
Berserker: +10% Strength to the entire party
Bard: +10% Intelligence to the entire party
Monk: +10% Runemastery to the entire party
Necromancer: +10% Focus to the entire party
Rogue: +10% Haste to the entire party
Corsair: +10% Brewmastery to the entire party
Poke Autochess Mini-Game
Our Poke Autochess was a very fun side project for us, and it is now prepared to leave closed Alpha and move into a public Beta stage. Come end of week 2, we will be releasing the autochess for everyone to play on NA on a fixed schedule for the Beta, meaning it will only be available for certain hours. We dont want to release this on launch as we want to ensure people dont feel torn between the early rush and trying the autochess! Once it finishes a beta-balancing phase (further balance from what we've done as a team) it will be fully released to play whenever!
Improvements to Handle The Very Large North American Playerbase
Duplicates of all spawns up to & including 450
spawns to handle player population
Last NA Launch every spawn was exceptionally crowded with people, some being fortunate just to find a creature to kill every 2-3 minutes for the first day, and then far too full spawns come the week after. We have added a duplicate of all these spawns, that can be accessed in the same spawn rooms, to help facilitate the increased population!
Many Spawns Revamped/Expanded!
We have expanded and/or revampped many quests, some being old/outdated/ugly spawns that we felt needed a redo, but also some spawns that needed expanding (such as undead dragons).
Client & Engine Optimizations
Our last NA season - While a massive success - we were very much limited based on our server capacity, achieving a 1300 concurrent player count on otservlist, but anytime we got near/above that, the server would have troubles keeping up. We've worked hard to optomize from future problems, hopefully allowing us to handle up to 2000 concurrent players.
Network Bandwidth doubled on our North American & European Servers
This will be very important for handling the increased North American Playerbase.
New Referral Program & Competition!
New Referral Program
Referral Contest!
Additionally, We are doing a competition for who can get the most referrals signed up by May 11th. This starts on Thursday April 18th! Any referrals from then to May 11th will be counted towards the competition! All referrals before April 18th (past referrals) wont count towards this!
We will be confirming the top 5 winners for validity, if one is caught abusing it, they will be disqualified. This contest is not available to our sponsored content creators, so you all will be competing on a very even field!
Rewards
1st Place - Your Own Unique Outfit Designed & Created for Only You! You will have this for both your NA & EU account (if you have an EU account as well! You will be invited to talk with our artists and come up with a unique outfit for yourself that only you will have!
2nd Place - Receive a limited edition companion!
3rd Place - Receive $200USD in Archlight Coins
4th Place - Receive $150USD in Archlight Coins
5th Place - Receive $100USD in Archlight Coins
Improving The F2P Experience
Item Essences Improved For F2P Players To Excel!
Item Essences have been reworked to no longer drop mundane equipment that is quickly vendored for little value. In replacement, Item Essences will now drop an assortment of progression items found in Archlight Crates, Legendary Crates & Quest Boxes.
Stat Stones, Large Stat Stones, Ancient Stat Stones
Upgrade Stones, Legendary Upgrade Stones, Awakened Stones, Relic Stones
Soul Stones, Awakened Soul Stones, Relic Soul Stones
Rune Stones, Awakened Soul Stones, Relic Soul Stones
We feel this will add a ton of value to those manually playing Archlight, and for those to excel without spending money.
New Free Mimic Scroll for Progressing Players
Players will now obtain free mimic scrolls while leveling, however while these are free, they can only be used on Greenscale, Relic, Heroic, Griffon and Renegade Equipment. This is for newer players to get to understand the mimic mechanic & be able to progress naturally through equipment.
Equipments Modified
Due to the Item Essence changes, the following changes have been made!
Greenscale Set - Level 75
Relic Set - Level 200
Heroes Set - Level 500
DHQ & Anni now both have an additional chest box that gives a piece of
Griffon Equipment
Elemental Quest now has an additional chest box that gives a piece of
Renegade Equipment
Equipment rewards have been removed from Dungeon Boxes due to majority of players agreeing they're shitty drops from Dungeon Boxes.
Outfits Passive Health/Mana Bonus Lowered To Address P2W Concerns
To help address some p2w concerns from outfits/wings/mounts passive bonus, we have lowered the amount of health & mana gained from all outfits, wings & mounts based on the following so that while still being relevant, they arn't as essentially significant.
Outfits/Mounts
T1: 0.25% > 0.15%
T2: 0.75% > 0.45%
T3: 1.50% > 0.90%
T3.5: 2.50% > 1.40%
T4: 3.00% > 1.75%
Wings
T1: 1.00% > 0.6%
T2: 1.50% > 0.9%
T3: 2.00% > 1.2%
T4: 2.50% > 1.4%
Bringing Back House Contests & Seasonal Events!
Something that we have noticed players enjoyed far more than we expected has been the house contests & seasonal events (Such as the easter event, christmas event, floral event, etc!). These we're also great ways for F2P players to obtain many shop items at a much faster rate! We will be going back to monthly house contests with very large prize pools this upcoming Season as well as making sure to have a couple if not a few fun seasonal events for everyone to enjoy and partake in!
Misc Improvements & Reworks
Player Vs Player Improvements
One large concern in the most recent European Season was how nimble lategame player vs player pvp was, where certain players would simply delete majority of players, as well as how quick pvp was over based on the low survivability of players in general. We have made the following changes to address this issue to improve lategame PvP substantially, as well as mid-game pvp.
All Class Health Pools have been increased by 80-90%.
All Total Health/Total Mana Scaling regen has been lowered by 40-60%, this is so that regen stays relatively the same despite the increase in health pools.
Soul Rune Scaling has been lowered from 10% per upgrade to 7%.
Attack Damage of Darksteel, Goldencrafted, Iceforged, Mastercrafted and Reforged Mastercrafted weapons has been slightly lowered.
Creatures + Bosses damage has been increased by 25%. Solo Dungeons have not been changed as players wont have healers there filling their increased health pools.
Richochet Enchantment
One large concern in our most recent European Server Season has been the lack of farming capabilities by primarily single target focused classes. To help address this, daggers, bows and pistols will now be able to be enchanted with a new richochet enchantment. This richochet enchantment will only work in PvE and not in PvP, and will allow attacks made by daggers, bows and pistols have a chance to bounce to 5 nearby enemies, each bounce dealing less damage than the previous. Higher tiers of this enchantment will have a lowered diminishing return on richochet bounces.
Catch-Up Experience Changes
In the past (for around 2 years) we had catch-up experience active since day 1. However, after some thought and feedback from the community, we ended up changing it so it wouldn't be active from Day 1, but activated a bit into a season. We have made some changes to the catch-up experience mechanic and have also decided it will automatically kick in after 14 days of a new Season. Catch-Up Experience previously was simply +300% Experience for any player outside of the top 33% of players in Awakening Levels. We have now changed it to be more variable, in where if a player is outside of the top 33% of players in Awakening Levels they will receive +150% experience, and if they are outside of the top 66% of players in Awakening Levels, they will receive +300% Experience.
New Poll & Player Voting System
We frequently poll our community to help us in decisions we are torn on, so we wanted to implement a more regulated and official system to do this, as often its only discord users who get the clear oppertunity to vote, now all in-game players will also be notified and will have a chance to vote! To avoid MC abuse on the votes, only awakened players can vote!
Guild Siege Changes
We spent alot of time discussing ways to potentially improve Siege Wars moving forward, and have made the following changes!
The Health of Siege Troll Neutral Spawns has been lowered by 30%.
The Amount of Free Supplies given to Siegers is significantly lowered after the 2nd Siege War.
Siege Weapons/Structures other than walls are no longer damaged by friendly Guildmates.
The First Siege War will occur on the Second Weekend of the new Season, instead of the 4th like previously.
No PvP Damage In Parties
You will no longer deal damage to party members in PvP, this is so you dont hurt your own teammates even if they are from a different guild in a PvP battle/war.
Task Window & Wild Boss Windows Revamped!
The old tasking window was very ugly and rather awkward for new players to navigate. We have fully revamped all task windows to be much easier to navigate and sort through. Additionally we have applied a very similar revamp to the Wildboss System making it also easier to view!
All World Bosses Loot & Monster Essence Buff
Now when any world boss is slain, not just Abaldar and Dracona, the entire server will benefit from 1 hour of +10% Loot Find & 10% Monster Essence Find!
Additional Tutorial Images
The new tutorial images have been a massive help to the new players to our most recent season, and with NA having not only a larger population, but a much larger influx of new players, we have made & added tutorial's for all the things that we found were missing after hearing from new players. While this isn't very relevant for many veteran players, this is very important for helping new players avoid having to spam the help channel all day to know what they should be doing.
Necromancer Variable Scaling
We have changed Necromancer Summon scaling to now be variable. The reason for this being where Necromancers struggle most is late game scaling, as 200 extra power at 8000 power is a large strength spike, however for necromancers, this amount does very little to strengthen their summons.
Necromancer Summons will now scale between 1-2.5x after 3000 power (higher multiplier at higher power brackets, up to 2.5x at 10,000+ power). Necromancer Summons Health will scale at an 80% rate of what damage will scale at.
Earth Rift Expanded
The bottom floor of the earth rift has been 4x'd in size!
Woodcutting Buffs
The amount of Experience Obtained by cutting a tree has been increased by 100%.
The amount of Logs Obtained from cutting a tree has been increased by 100%.
Woodworking Buffs
The Damage Enhancement Passive from Woodworking (Which was shared with blacksmithing) has been replaced by a 2/4/6/8/10% Cooldown Reduction.
Experienced Earned from Woodworking Recipes (Other than creating planks) has been increased by 50%.
New Dig & Climb Event
We have added a new non-pvp event called Dig & Climb! Dig down, Climb up, through a psudo maze to get to the finish line before others in the event!
Working on Cleaning Up Our Community
Unfortunatly, something we once felt fine with allowing the community to self police, we now feel we need to be more involved with. Moving forward, I, as well as other staff, are going to be more strict on policing purely toxic players, who's primary intention is to ruin the game experience for other players. Please understand, this does not include pking someone, that is part of the game, and will occur, same with players being "hunted". However we will be keeping a more aggresive eye on the way people talk in General channel, and punishing where we see fit. We will not be policing private channels, or anything outside of Default/Public Chats or our Discord Server, as it's too dificult to get entire contexts etc. Archlight has and has built an amazing community behind it over the last 4 years, and we want to keep it that way and weed out those we need to be.
Events Now Start Half Past The Hour
So they dont conflict with Rifts anymore!
Heirloom Points Scale
Awakening Levels
1-500 = 1 Heirloom Point Per 100 Levels
501-1000 = 2 Heirloom Point Per 100 Levels
1001-1500 = 3 Heirloom Point Per 100 Levels
1501+ = 5 Heirloom Points Per 100 Levels
Power
2001-5000 Power = 1 Heirloom Point per 500 Power
5001-8000 Power = 2 Heirloom Point per 500 Power
8001-10000 Power = 3 Heirloom Point per 500 Power
10001+ Power = 5 Heirloom Point Per 500 Power
Coins Ressurected From The Dead! - Time Table
1 Hour Before Launch - 2000 Coins Unlocked + 2 Promotion Tokens + 5 Heirloom Points!
48 Hours(2 Day) After Launch - 3000 Coins Unlocked + 3 Promotion Tokens + 7 Heirloom Points!
72 Hours After Launch - All cosmetic tokens given to accounts!
5 Days After Launch - 4000 Coins Unlocked + 4 Promotion Tokens + 10 Heirloom Points!
8 Days After Launch - 5000 Coins Unlocked + 5 Promotion Tokens + 15 Heirloom Points!
11 Days After Launch - 5000 Coins Unlocked + 5 Promotion Tokens + 15 Heirloom Points!
14 Days After Launch - 5000 Coins Unlocked + 5 Promotion Tokens + 15 Heirloom Points!
17 Days After Launch - 6000 Coins Unlocked + 6 Promotion Tokens + 20 Heirloom Points!
20 Days After Launch - 6000 Coins Unlocked + 6 Promotion Tokens + 20 Heirloom Points!
All points after this will be unlocked at an accelerated rate and be received by 4 days.