Patch 9.1.0 + Client Build 1.2.0
First off, we want to thank all of you for all your support so far on A New Dawn, this has without a doubt been our largest expansion ever, with a massive growth in daily unique players and all our social medias (facebook and discord) growing rapidly everyday.
Your support allows us to do what we do, and we always use it to improve Archlight for the future of the project. From taking a big stepping stone in developing our own standalone client, to the constant revamps of that client and the graphics ingame. We have always used our support directly towards improving Archlight, and continue to do that precisely.
Now to the big question, where is crafting and why wasn't it released yesterday.
I've been putting off responding to each message as I didn't want to repeat it 50 times an hour (quite literally), but I also wanted to take our time writing a reasonable post explaining why we delayed the release of crafting and gathering.
We could talk for hours about why, as our dev team has talked for hours about the changes.. but we will give you the short form.
Crafting System
We want crafting to feel like a true profession, this is your characters talent and his means of life. Not simply, okay I need to grind up this shitty system just to craft 1 thing I can use at the very end. We want crafting to become a dynamic part of the economy, and not just something you need a player for in the extreme late game and one time. We have learnt over the past two years that although players will complain when something isn't out in the short term, it's always better for the long term for us to take our times when developing something. What this means is careful planning on many aspects and not just finishing the code and releasing it. This has been a much bigger undertaking than we expected, trying to balance and adjust a progression curve for 7 different crafting activities is alot more time consuming than you would imagine. But that's precisely what we are wanting to do. We want to do it right from the first time, not play catchup on mistakes and adjustments to "mend" a faulty system. Our Mission Statement going into A New Dawn was any changes we make being with the intention of making this expansion the longest one yet, if not indefinite. With this expansion, our week 1 dropoff was extremely minimal compared to any other expansion, retaining the vast majority of new players who joined. We want to continue with this as a main focus.
Party System
Regarding the changes to the party system. We understand many of you are upset about the changes to the party system, but to be honest, this change had to happen. I want you guys to understand, as i mentioned, this was an immediate solution, and not the final one. It was neccesary to adjust the progress rate and way that players were leveling. We will be making neccesary changes to increase the rate newer and mid tier players level. This will include buffs to certain aspects of the solo-player game.
We will be posting a larger patch teaser in the next day or two. This will be for a new client build and massive content patch. This will include all crafting systems unlocked. This patch due to it's size will be 9.1.0. We do not have a firm ETA on the patch but are working aggresively to get it out as soon as possible. I have an ETA in mind but if I post it people will be upset if that is delayed due to unforseen issues (something that ye can happen pretty often in the game developement world).
New PvP + PvP-E System
Many have requested a pvp system that truely rewards and punishes players. So we took to the drawing boards and started planning a system that would reward pvp, punish losers, but also not be abusive. We will be posting the full details of this system in a patch teaser as well.
Developers Q&A - Friday After The Tournament
We will be livestreaming the pvp tournament, and right after the Template Character Tournament on Friday we will discuss all the details of the patch, and also as always be available to answer any questions. This is an oppertunity for you players to field your questions, and get a longer response from us as opposed to be text (which is generally a limited answer as it takes longer, and the question is usually asked by many people).