Read today's update for an update on our developer's progress with the security measures and obfuscation, and some information on our upcoming Developer Forums. Read more: Rise of Agon Update: July 8th
interesting. When you talk about the new authentication, you mean how it prevents modified clients from logging in, right?
Will the Dev forum get a nice pink skin to set it apart from the rest of the forums? Someone told me that @DestLocke really was getting his hopes up for that!
I just got caught up on the happenings of RIse of Agon. Firstly not much a fan of the founder only interaction maybe I'm bias considering I'm not really in a position to get a founder pack, but I don't like the idea that a sub set of players are the only ones that get to have input on the future of the game. What about after launch when hopefully founders are in the minority? As far as the QOL changes they are amazing, the bulk drag sort thing is awesome and much needed. I'm okay with the one click looting kinda needed to happen with the macros floating around. Can we select the destination or does it auto go to backpack? I don't understand why meditation is staying in the game at all, if you get the skill progression right it shouldn't be needed, it was added by a company that realized the grind was way way too much. And welcome to all the new team members thanks for the hard work to make this game a reality.
I wanted to post a suggestion to remove the ability to buy meditation points and just have like 1000 rewarded for logging on every day, but then I didn't want to ruin my chances at maxing out my character in 1 month instead of 5 or 6. The Developer Forms are just going to be a fancy Alpha forms only now you can read them. All the game changing topics are still discussed in the suggestion forums. The only point of a Dev form is to build Hype and give commentary to how life in Canada is working out for these poor guys. (I say that because most of them work for free, not because Canada is poor.)
Meditation is great for ppl that dont have alot of time to play like my self, they are doing it right on and offline meditation, new dawn is going offline only and the skillgains are so slow that its faster to lvl offline rather playing the game. I like thow that you can lose your meditation points in pvp
Thats what scares me people getting maxed out in a month. This game is great and all but honestly other than character progression the only thing you got left is pvp which depending on where your player skill caps out at is either great fun or not so great losing your stuff everyday. Everyone might as well start maxed if we are looking to bring the grind time down that low. I don't know I still don't get a paywall on the forums, there is a forum in place for everything already. If it's going to exists then yeah it should work online for sure. I just don't see how the two systems complement each other in my opinion it's one or the other, pull an Eve online and only time based or do the traditional. If you are playing enough to be able to afford meditation points then you can't really say you don't have time to play.
Eve mechanic for gain skills I think that is is ok because some months maybe you dont got time for play but you want have an active account for gain skill points... and when you get time for play another time... you have a little better char.... And another point is than you can not maxed your char... never... ^^
720 hours or 240 hours if you only put 8 hours a day. You only need 300 hours to be PvP viable before AV set skill gains to x20. Logically if BPG still had 20x skill it will take a smart Vet 15 hours to get the skills they need. The resource grind is what scares the crap out of me. I'll roll indestructible and quash trash hybrids within the first day, A lot of the upgrade features where never tested with new players and 90% of players just copy what they see on Youtube.
We're planning to maintain a longer leveling time still in the game, we don't want to make it so you max in a month. We're also adding in "front loading" or diminishing returns which will allow you to be competitive without finishing the "grind". Beta rates are going to be faster than what we expect on a live launch. We'll monitor the gains and adjust as necessary. Meditation is a great equaliser for casual players to stand a chance. We don't feel the game can thrive without giving casuals a fighting chance.
The term 'max' is subjective, no? While in Alpha we was 'max', there's a place before that in which you can be 'viable'. Do you think reaching 'viable' in a month is acceptable? So that you can choose to grind more but the effects of which would not be as hugely noticeable as the grind you've already done to become viable. I have a feeling you will be slower than DND's beta rates (which I don't mind), and you will receive a lot of shit for this, so be prepared.
We will be starting at around 8x gains(1/3 the end of DFO rates and I believe slightly less than DnD's gains) is the plan and front loaded skills/stats we're working on to get in for server open. Online meditation is already finished and additionally spells have been added to the system. We're starting slower and will ramp up if needed for beta as we don't want users to max out(All skills/stats) in a month nor do we want players to have trouble maxing out by the end of beta. Removing leveling is simply going to kill the game in its current state as people need a reason to be out in the world and leveling is a primary reason. The "viable" term has two different states. Viable means you can defeat someone through having more player skill. Competitively viable means you are close enough that even similarly skilled players will have little to no noticeable gap in power between completely maxed skills/stats and competitively viable skills/stats. The goal is to make viable happen very quickly within a couple weeks to a month and competitively viable in a moderate amount of time such as a few months of play. Maxed will still take many months to a year to achieve but our goal is to make maxing unnecessary so long term progression remains but is not required to complete to PvP at a high level. Progression makes attachment to character, gives value to achieving it and prevents cheaters from having a big impact. With increased logging coming up, improved GM efficiency to deal with cheaters and increased tools for detection it will make it that cheaters will have to keep making new accounts. We're focusing on enforcers taking care of cheaters because at the end of the day no system is full proof and a human can ban obvious Hackers within minutes. We are also considering multiple skills to be meditated simultaneously or a stat plus a skill. As well possibly diminishing returns in Meditation increasing the costs as characters reach certain levels of skills/stats. These things and more will be discussed in the dev forums as we continue throughout the beta.
@Andrew Thanks. That's the answer I was hoping to hear thoroughly. It's easy to forget that while we have our characters to level and wealth to accumulate, the players own skill at the game is an endless form of progression. You don't load up Quake for the first time and kick long term players ass even when you have identical characters. You have to practice and learn without a ding telling you good job. Also do you think we can get the Dev Blogs back? It's been a month or more now. I know you're busy but surely there's some design discussion left to be had. I'd love to hear more about your vision for the economy and gold sinks. Your new meditation will be a MASSIVE gold sink but I'm really concerned that when the core players hit 'max' that hyper inflation will run rampant.
The dev blogs should be back up and running every 2 weeks - security issues and such put us a bit behind on those - i believe @MWTaylor may have placed the last one in the wrong section - Dev blog #9 should be in the correct spot now. Thanks.
We stopped doing the regular dev blogs a little due to not having much content to put in them. We had to refocus the company, remove inactive members and pick up a few needed members in some areas. A lot of changes happened internally to our processes to allow us to control development better and include more documentation/tracking. We had the security features being worked on but it was a long tedious process so we had nothing to talk about unfortunately as we can't give any real info on the security changes to prevent giving hackers a leg up. Now that we've got a few new developers up to speed we've been able to knock off a lot of tasks recently with their added weight to the team. We've completed 24 game design tasks in the last month or so, another 13 are in various stages of progress from just started to final testing. There's another 49 tasks currently in the game design queue and with the velocity we're gaining that is going to start quickly falling into the done category! We will be utilizing the dev forums for more regular interaction on game design topics, @DestLocke and the other members of the game design committee will be looking at, asking for and responding to feedback there. As well our programmers will pop by and update on tasks here and there when we let them out of the coding dungeon every few days .
Front loaded skills will be fun it will give content for all, the people who just want to pvp as fast as possible and the folks that like to see numbers go up even after a year of playing. Stats were the longest grind so getting the front load right on them as far as HP and damage bonus is crucial.
