PATCH: March 15 – Town Struggle ELO, Bug Fixes…

Server Saves

• For the first 24 hours the server has been online, server saves will occur once every 15 minutes (same as normal)
• If the server has been online for 1 day or more, server saves will now occur once every 30 minutes
• If the server has been online for 3 days or more, server saves will now occur once every 60 minutes

Ships

Fighting Party Removal

• The Fighting Party mechanic for ships has been removed in its entirety, and now only the Ship’s Captain will be able to perform core ship actions previously available to Fighting Party members (such Firing Cannons, Steering, Repairing, Harmful and Beneficial actions, Begging Motivation, Barding Skills, etc)
• The Captain of a player ship (and their Followers) will now display as Orange to other players, rather than Grey, to provide a visual indicator they are the Captain of the ship
• Other non-captain players may still embark onto a ship as passengers, however they will not be able to perform any Harmful or Beneficial actions while on board, and will remain flagging as Grey to players on other ships
• Co-Owners of a ship will continue to be able to access the Ship’s Hold
• Co-Owners and Friends of a ship will continue to display as Green to other friendly members of the ship (and other “Friendly” ships)

• The Roles page of the Ship’s Menu has been removed (since this was previously used for assigning Fighting Party members)

Ship Crewmembers

• Fixed an issue where some outlier Ship Crewmembers had lower Max Damage than their Min Damage (players may need to dock their ship and relaunch to view corrected stats of NPCs affected by this)

Contested Bosses

• Recoded the handling on Contested Bosses so players will now only flag as Orange to each other if they have both left a Contested Boss Room within the last 2 minutes (players inside a Contested Boss Room will always appear as Grey to each other, as normal)

Player Corpses

• A player’s own corpse should now always display as Green to themselves (rather than Grey)

Plants

• The base Growth Period for Extremely Common plants/seeds is now 3 days (was previously set to same duration as Very Common plants/seeds)

Starting Clothing

• Fixed an issue where Starting Clothing (such as Shoes/Shirts/etc) that players receive on character creation, would not decay when placed on the ground or in a Trash Barrel, and instead would end up in player’s Bank Boxes

Outlands Menus

• Upgraded a large number of in-game menus to have a cleaner background/border style

Shadow Aspect Gear

• Fixed an issue where the Shadow Aspect “Vanish” Weapon Proc would sometimes provide its damage bonus to multiple backstabs within a short period of time (due to using Smoke Bombs) instead of just the intended initial backstab

Necromancy

• Fixed an issue where players using Poison Strike on a creature (often a Boss-type creature) would result in resolving more Poison Ticks than the intended maximum number of the ability (default max is 4 ticks)

Smoke Bombs

• Players will no longer be able to use a Smoke Bomb immediately after stealing from another player, and now must wait the normal 10 seconds skill cooldown after stealing from a player before they may use a Smoke Bomb
• Players can now type [SmokeBomb to search their backpack for a Smoke Bomb and double-click it
• Added an entry in the Paperdoll -> Help -> Commands menu for the [SmokeBomb command

[Password

• Added an entry in the Paperdoll -> Help -> Commands menu for the [Password command which allows players to Reset Passwords for their accounts

Stealing

• Any bonuses players receive towards “Special Loot Drop Rate” increases will now also increase the chance that Black Goods that they receive from Pilfering/Mugging creatures will be of higher Rarity levels (this includes Special Loot bonuses coming from Weekly Server Region Bonuses, Guild Favors, Mastery Chain Links, Fortune Aspect Armor, and so on)
• Fixed the handling when Grey Hand thieves attempt to steal from Blue (innocent) players: previously was “allowing” the attempt but it would have 100% failure rate and would result in several failure messages occuring (handling will now simply block the attempt and generate a single “unallowed” message for the thief)
• Fixed an issue where players were unable to leave the Thieves Guild if they no longer had 80 or higher Stealing skill

Guild Prestige Unlocks

• Added option for guilds to purchase a “Custom Guild House Revision” that will allow them to work with staff to redesign an existing Custom Guild House they have previously unlocked
• Added option for guilds to purchase “Guild Island Enhancements” that will allow them to work with staff to add visual improvements to an existing Custom Guild Island they have previously unlocked

Fields

• Fixed an extreme outlier issue where multiple monster-created Fields could exist on the same tile and damage players

Polymorph

• Fixed several entries in the Polymorph spell menu that had incorrect graphics
• Wildwood Guardian polymorph form should now work correctly

House NPCs

• Fixed an issue where House NPC Deeds (such as Dockmasters, Stablemasters, House Stewards) would only occur as Male characers

Dyes

• Basic Clothing Dyes (bought from NPCs) are now Stackable

Hunger and Food Satisfaction

• Players will no longer have a “Fill Factor” that would cause them to become full and unable to eat more food (i.e. players can now always eat food and upgrade their Food Satisfaction to a higher bonus type, whereas previously they could potentially become too “full” to do so)

Animal Lore Menu

• Players can now use the Anatomy and Evaluating Intelligence skills on creatures to view their Animal Lore page with displayed stats (rather than all stats/skills displaying as ?)
• Players on the TEST SHARD can always view the stats/skills of a creature even with 0 skill in Animal Lore, Anatomy, or Eval Int

Misc

• Fixed an issue where the Catch of the Week Reward Sack was listed as Strangelands Reward Sack on double-click
• The Macing Sunder stance should now have the correct description text (was listed at 2% Damage per rank, rather than 5% per rank)

—–Town Struggle Event Changes—–

Town Struggle Neutral Base (i.e Lobby)

• When players enter the green Battle Moongates that appear in every town before a Town Struggle starts, they now will be warped into a single Neutral Base, that will serve as a “lobby” for players to wait inside of until the event starts

The Neutral Base that serves as the overall lobby for Town Struggles

Teams

• We will be maintaining our existing Order vs Chaos team concept for Town Struggles, however it will no longer be entire guilds that are assigned to Order/Chaos, but instead individual players that will be autobalanced into Order/Chaos teams based on ELO Rating (explained below)

ELO Rating

• Every player will now have a Seasonal and Lifetime ELO Rating tracked for them for Town Struggles that begins at 800
• ELO Ratings for players will increase/decrease based on how many Reward Points they earn during the event
• Increases/decreases to ELO Ratings will also scale based on the Average ELO Rating of their opposing team
• Changes in ELO Ratings for players will be calculated after Team MVP Voting has completed (explained later)

ELO Rating adjustments will occur as follows:

• Players who earn 0-1 Reward Points will lose ELO Rating
• Players who earn 2 Reward Points will increase or decrease ELO Rating a small amount depending on their rating compared to Average ELO rating of opposing team
• Players who earn 3 Reward Points will have a moderate increase in ELO Rating
• Players who earn 4 or more Reward Points will have a substantial increase in ELO Rating

ELO Drift

• At the start of every week, every player who has ever participated in a Town Struggle will have their Lifetime ELO Rating perform a small “drift” amount towards 800 (i.e. players above 800 will drop slightly and players below 800 will rise slightly)
• ELO Drift is designed to prevent players from simply “sitting” on a high lifetime ELO rating forever and abstaining from the event, and conversely it will slowly return a low lifetime ELO rating player back towards an average rating, if inactive

ELO Balancing

• We will use a player’s Lifetime ELO Rating to autobalance teams: essentially players with High ELO Ratings are those who tend to perform well and players with Low ELO Ratings are those more likely to perform worse than other players
• The team balancing mechanic is designed to try to create opposing teams with roughly the same skill levels and equal likeliness to win against each other

Team Balancing via “Snake Draft” format

• At the start of the event, all participants will be put into a pool and organized from highest ELO Rating down to lowest ELO Rating
• The highest ELO Rating player will be initially chosen to the first team
• Then the next two highest ELO Rating players will be placed onto the second team
• Then the next two highest ELO Rating players will be placed onto the first team
• This will then repeat in pairs of 2 until all players have been placed on teams (this is referred to as a “Snake Draft”)

A group of 24 players (and their ELO Rating) are sorted from high to low ELO Rating and then placed into teams

• Team Balancing automatically occurs the moment the event starts, and players are immediately warped into a team base only accessible by their new teammates
• Players will then have a 60 second wait before they can spawn into the event, which is intended to give time for players to get familiar with their new teammates and potentially join Discord Voice Channels and discuss strategy (we will make Order/Chaos channels available for teams, similar to Stygian Rifts handling in Discord)

Team Sizes and Multiple Towns (Matches)

• Town Struggles are now set to split players into multiple Matches that will occur simultaneously at different towns (Prevalia, Cambria, Andaria) if participation numbers in the event exceed certain thresholds
• If the event has 1-24 participants, there will be 1 match that will occur in a single town
• If the event has 25-48 participants, there will be 2 simultaneous matches that will occur in two different towns
• If the event has 49 or more participants, there will be 3 simultaneous matches that will occur in three different towns
• Essentially, the system tries to make 12 vs 12 matches, and if the number of players per team would exceed that, it will split players up to use additional towns and then divide the players as evenly as possible amongst the teams need to achieve balanced numbers

36 players show up for an event, so the system creates 2 different matches that simultaneously occur in two differnt towns (Prevalia and Cambria)

50 players show up for an event, so the system creates 3 different matches that simultaneously occur in 3 different towns (Prevalia, Cambria, and Andaria)

• There are 3 Chaos Team Bases and 3 Order Team bases available (so each Match/Town has a pairing of Chaos/Order bases for teams)

Discord Voice Channels

• There are now 6 new Discord Voice channels that correspond to Order/Chaos teams for each of the 3 possible cities for Town Struggles that players can join into once they have been assigned a Town + Team for the event, so they can coordinate with their newly assigned teammates

Match Results

• Because there will now potentially be multiple Town Struggle matches occuring simultaneously, the Battle Records menu will now show “Previous Event” handling for Town Struggles on a per-match basis, with players able to use the Left/Right Arrow Buttons below “Displaying Town” to switch between the different Matches that occurred for each town
• If the player participated in that Match (town) the town name will will display in Green text and the Faction Stats will be displayed in Green (their faction) and Orange (opposing faction)
• In addition to Team Scores being displayed for each faction, players can also see the “Average ELO” Rating of each faction’s players for that Match (town)

• Players can now see their Seasonal ELO Rating and Lifetime ELO Rating in the Battle Records Menu

Reward Point Changes

Top Healer

• The player on each team that provided the most Healing to other players on their team will now receive a bonus Reward Point and Battle Commendation

Team MVP

• After a Town Struggle match ends, each Team (Order/Chaos) will have an opportunity to vote for a “Team MVP” amongst players on their team
• The player with the highest vote total will receive an additional Reward Point and Battle Commendation
• If an equal number of players receive the same vote total, the Team MVP will be randomized among them
• Team MVP is intended as a way for teams to reward a member of their team for doing “thankless” jobs such as Target Calling or other Support Roles
• Players can click the “View Event Battle Record” to launch the Battle Record page for their now finished match to see the stats for the match
• Team MVP will be determined once all players on the team have voted or if 5 minutes have passed since the event ended
• Once Team MVP has been determined for both Teams (Order/Chaos), ELO Ratings for players in the match will now be recalculated (since all possible Reward Points have now been distributed, and ELO Ratings are adjusted based on Reward Points earned per player)

After a Town Struggle ends, each player will be prompted to vote on a Team MVP for their team (Order/Chaos)

Players will double-click their vote selection to confirm it

Once all players on a team have voted, or 5 minutes pass, Team MVP will be determined for each team

Control Slots

• Players during Town Struggles will now have 0 Control Slots available to them (and therefore unable to command Tamed/Summoned Pets) and “Control Slots Used” will no longer display on the in-event Town Struggle Menu

Scoring Changes

Kill Base Score

• Kills now have a base value of 30 Points (previously was 20 Points)

Kill Score Stealing

• The Individual Score stealing mechanic for kills will now begin at 10% Score stolen per kill at the start of the event and will drop over time until it reaches 5% Score stolen per kill by the end of the event (previously was a flat 10% the entire event)
• The Team Score stealing mechanic for kills will now begin at 20% Score stolen per kill at the start of the event and will drop over time until it reaches 10% Score stolen per kill by the end of the event (previously was a flat 20% the entire event)

Control Zone Lockouts

• Once a player has earned the maximum points available from a Control Zone, in order to be able to earn points from any other Control Zone again, they must either contribute to a player kill or have 3 minutes pass (duration previously was 2 minutes)

Guild Prestige Changes

• Since teams are no longer “Guild” based and most guilds will typically have players in each event participating on both on winning as well as losing teams, we will simply reward any guild that has one more or players participating in any Town Struggle now with 2 Prestige Points

Event Disqualification / Kicking

• Players will be kicked from any Town Struggle and banned from all PvP events for 48 hours if they spend a cumulative 10 minutes total being Idle in a Faction Base (while not awaiting Respawn) or outside of the Event Region (this is the same handling as before)
• Players will now receive an overhead text and system message informing them when they have spent a total of 8 minutes being Idle in a Faction Base or outside of the Event Region