Launch Day +10: Shard Status and Progress

Announcements, updates and news concerning the Requiem project.
Post Reply
User avatar
Sic
Aeolian Staff
Posts: 368
Character: Isidor Abendroth

Launch Day +10: Shard Status and Progress

Post by Sic » March 14th, 2021, 7:02 pm

Good afternoon Requiemites. Sic here with your official post-launch development and community update. We have officially made it past the ten day mark in being open, and I’d like to take an opportunity to share with everyone how things are going and what is in store.

Community and Population

Thanks to you guys, we have seen great numbers for launch and beyond. Our peak has been 58 online at one time, and we are quickly heading towards 450 members in our Discord room. Most all of our traffic and new players have solely been from our awesome community going out there and recruiting new players as we have done very little official advertisement so far. Our current gaming community is strong and everyone is making a concentrated effort in making the Discord and forums welcoming and encouraging, and for that, we thank you all. Requiem is a project that is nothing without its’ community, and I have been floored and surprised with the outpouring of positive sentiments and helpful attitudes. The behavior and etiquette our community is showing to one another OOCly has greatly encouraged and motivated our staff beyond anything else, and we truly appreciate being a part of such an awesome experience. I implore you all to continue with the good vibes, as mutual respect within the community of players is the most critical keystone to making an enforced RP community actually work. The more trust we have in our playerbase to play respectfully and maturely allows us to incorporate more and more features and content that would otherwise not be possible without a community whom uses these sorts of tools and features responsibly. You guys have blown past our expectations and it shows that the vast majority of you want to see this project not only persist, but thrive. Thank you!

We want to continue to capitalize upon this positivity and awesomeness through Prelude and into full-launch, and we will be soon implementing referral bonuses for players whom recruit and get others involved with the shard as we move forward through technical hurdles and issues and feel more confident with advertising in a much larger capacity, so stay tuned for news on this in the near future. We will also be revealing our compensation numbers for our Content Development Teams and the Wiki Team, and re-opening applications to our Decorating Team.

Mechanics: Skills, Progression and More

Our behind-the-scenes metrics have given us a lot of great data in terms of seeing where players are at with skills and progression. We were able to identify some loopholes and potential abusable issues very early on in launch and were able to rectify these issues through patches and fixes without the need of elevating it further. We were also able to identify and curb some patterns of behavior, mainly AFK macroing, that we have traditionally not have had issues with. Due to having a larger player base and more diverse crowd, we have had to come up with new solutions to new problems, and at this point we have hit a good balance between protection mechanics (anti-macro, etc.) and not hindering our players needlessly to keep them from being able to make the most out of their time in game if it is limited.

Our reports have shown that the vast majority of our community has been playing fairly and honestly, and we have had VERY few instances that were blatant abuses of bugs, unintended mechanics or exploits. In the cases where we have found instances in which the use of these unintended mechanics were broaching the line into abuse we have taken a measured approach in addressing the issues head-on, with both in-game and out-of-game actions.
Skill gain and Infusion gain have been placed at pretty good levels versus that of Act V, and from our reports and numbers, we are feeling pretty good with the overall pace of progression (save for odd outliers here and there). All in all, character progression and skill gain is where we anticipated and hoped it would be at: at a far more generous pace than Act V, with early gains and progression far more expedient, but still taking a good amount of time to perfect skills in the upper echelons of value.

Mechanics: Faction System

The Faction system has been a focus of development in the past ten days, and we are on the last phases of testing and balancing before the last phases of the system are activated fully. We have caught numerous bugs and issues with the system that were simply not possible to account for with limited testing environments and populations. To all my Player Leaders out there, we would like to take a moment to thank you for your patience and continuing courtesy, as you guys have been awesome so far. In the coming week, we anticipate fully opening the system in it’s entirety through the addition of Conquest Nodes, a rebalance of purchase and upkeep costs of Conscripts, and allowing Factions to allow a few more members in the ranks.

Faction applications remain open at this time, however we would strongly encourage players whom are looking to get involved in this system to seek out pre-existing factions first to see if a group already in existence fills your character’s goals.

Spawns and In-Game Content

As we move from focusing on launch-critical bugs and issues, the majority of our team has been making the transition to addressing spawning and in-game content issues. The transition from V to VI has been fairly large, with numerous new mechanics and systems, and we are working tirelessly to balance mobs and loot appropriately as to account for many of the changes in VI. The majority of Prelude going forward will see our team nearly entirely focused upon spawning solutions, loot pack balancing, mob difficulty and the addition of more content in-game in the form of spawns. We were not expecting such a large population for launch and we are continuously attempting to adjust numbers to accommodate for the larger player base. We currently have plans to open a second “newbie” dungeon area situated close to Prae for purposes of low-level hunting, and will furthermore be re-introducing Treasure Chests and trap mechanics in the very near future. Spawning and in-game content is especially important to us and will remain so through the rest of Prelude and beyond, so please have patience in regards to this.

Bug Reporting, Feedback, Suggestions and More

We greatly appreciate the feedback and bug reporting information we’ve received thus far. We would like to take a moment to remind everyone of the relative triage of various situations as it relates to the tools available:

For GM Story-Telling Assistance:

We are still in Prelude and therefore will not be available to assist in any sort of storyline or RP event directly. Staff may, if available, elect to lend staff powers to help in a situation if and when time permits and solely at their own discretion – do not page or ticket for help in these situations, please.


For Character Approval In-Game:

Use the ticketing system in Discord.

For MECHANICAL Bug Reporting:

Extremely minor issues should be reported via the in-game menu system.

Minor, non-exploitable or non-game breaking issues are to be reported via the Bug Forums for easy tracking.

Major, exploitable issues or extreme situations should be reported via the Ticketing system in Discord.

For FACTION related issues:

Report to your Player Leader first before escalating any issue. Player Leaders are responsible for communicating to staff about any and all Faction issues.

Player Leaders have a direct means of communicating with the head administrator directly, and should opt to use the Player Leader channel for any and all issues unless it is of a serious/sensitive nature of which then a ticket should be used.

For ART, MAP and ASSET Bug Reporting (including NPC issues):

Minor, non-exploitable or non-game breaking issues are to be reported via the Bug Forums and the correct subforum for easy tracking.

Major, exploitable issues or extreme situations should be reported via the Ticketing system in Discord.

Post Reply