The cleric class has long languished - not because it was useless, but because until recently there wasn't a lot of reason to have a really high cleric level. Prior to the 2010 christmas expansion, there weren't a lot of cleric spells or skills above level 30; and many cleric spells didn't scale in power as you gained levels, like mage and necromancer spells do.
As a result, cleric has been a useful, powerful class - but not something you want to be your primary. Our future update to cleric aims to change that.
The biggest updates to the class aren't likely to be new spells and skills. Rather, we want to fix existing spells and skills that aren't up to snuff with the rest of the class.
Take for example the 'peace' spell. This could be a very powerful, useful spell - if only it worked differently. We're currently imagining room effects, duration effects, and a handful of other options to improve this.
Another spell that's long been on the todo list is charm. The current version of charm has basically been dented into the ground to prevent charm armies. With this update, we're planning to switch it to a control point system similar to necromancers. This should make charm a lot more useful while at the same time limiting "charmy" problems.
Other things that could use similar kinds of improvement are turn undead, the ward spells, curses, and the monitor skill.
All this said, we do plan to add more spells and skills. So far these hit most of the major groups - character buffs and enhancement, a possible brew skill, some new curses, new damage spells, and a new undead spell.
The schedule for this is some time in august, about a month after the thief updates of the previous post. After this, we still have a ton of things to work on, including elemental channeling for mages, god code, and a couple of new character classes.
Showing posts with label classes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label classes. Show all posts
Friday, July 1, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Future Plans - Thieves
Now that level 35 is installed and running in the game, I figure it's probably a good idea to let everyone know about the game's direction and where we're headed. Things aren't going to be static; there's a lot of really neat stuff planned out for this year.
The next major update is scheduled for some time around mid to end of July. The focus of this update will be the Thief class, which is currently the least played class in terms of high levels, and the class with the fewest skills.
At a minimum, the thief update will include an entire tree for shadow skills. I'm not a fan of traditional ninja skills though, so don't expect Naruto style effects. The basis for the shadow skills will be a type of channeling/synergy with the shadow plane, which has already made itself known with the Guildmaster Assassin in Jo'Kerin.
Also on the high priority list are a couple of miscellaneous skills ('untanking' in group combat, room analysis out of combat), and updates to lock picking to make it more incremental and less hit or miss.
For medium priority stuff that might get implemented, we have disguise skills, bribe improvements, and haggling (possibly for bulk purchases.) My guess is that at least some of this will get into the final build.
For low priority, we've been mulling over the idea of distraction skills, but the effects are pretty ill defined right now. We also really need to take a look at the way poison damage is done, to try to make poisons function in a reasonable way. It's pretty unlikely that either of these will be done for the update.
That concludes things for the proposed thief update. Again, we hope to have it out prior to August. I think it will address a lot of the shortcomings of the thief class, without necessarily making thief into another fighter class with differently named skills.
Coming up next - clerics get some love too.
The next major update is scheduled for some time around mid to end of July. The focus of this update will be the Thief class, which is currently the least played class in terms of high levels, and the class with the fewest skills.
At a minimum, the thief update will include an entire tree for shadow skills. I'm not a fan of traditional ninja skills though, so don't expect Naruto style effects. The basis for the shadow skills will be a type of channeling/synergy with the shadow plane, which has already made itself known with the Guildmaster Assassin in Jo'Kerin.
Also on the high priority list are a couple of miscellaneous skills ('untanking' in group combat, room analysis out of combat), and updates to lock picking to make it more incremental and less hit or miss.
For medium priority stuff that might get implemented, we have disguise skills, bribe improvements, and haggling (possibly for bulk purchases.) My guess is that at least some of this will get into the final build.
For low priority, we've been mulling over the idea of distraction skills, but the effects are pretty ill defined right now. We also really need to take a look at the way poison damage is done, to try to make poisons function in a reasonable way. It's pretty unlikely that either of these will be done for the update.
That concludes things for the proposed thief update. Again, we hope to have it out prior to August. I think it will address a lot of the shortcomings of the thief class, without necessarily making thief into another fighter class with differently named skills.
Coming up next - clerics get some love too.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Spells, skills, and class design
One of the things that takes a lot of time is tweaking the spell and skill trees to make the classes more fun to play. The various factors I have to balance are a lot more restrictive than you might expect:
1) The spells and skills within each group, for example "mage fire spells", should have proper dependencies. Greater Fireball should probably be dependent at some level on 'basic fire magics'.
2) The spells and skills within each group, for example "mage fire spells", should be separated by similar level differences, to spread the group out across a level range. If there's too much clumping, there's dead zones where you don't get a new spell for a long time, then suddenly get a bunch followed by another dead zone.
3) Spells and skills for the entire class should be evenly distributed across the entire level range, again to limit dead zones and make sure players have something to learn at every level. Necromancer is a good example of how to do this; every three levels, you get 5-6 spells and skills, from level 1 up to about level 28. Mage is a good example of how not to do this; there's 6 spells between levels 2-4, 12 spells between levels 12-14, and 4 spells between level 26-28. Mage is currently very clumpy and needs more work.
4) Low level spells and skills should be useful and interesting. Having a spell like 'ventriloquate' below level 10 makes no sense at all; newbies will think it's actually useful (it's not) and waste practices on it. It's ok to put useless stuff at higher levels, because high level players are more likely to do research before wasting scarce practices on something.
5) Really high level spells have to actually be useful, even if it's a specialized use.
The above generally result in me spending a lot of time staring at various views of the spell lists for each class. You have to keep an eye on groupings across level ranges, while making sure you haven't done anything dumb to the dependency trees for each group, and making sure you don't move useless things into the low level ranges.
And even though it may not seem that way, the above are actually really important. It seems to give you more to do, and you know that you get important, useful stuff even at low levels. I've certainly noticed a difference with my characters.
1) The spells and skills within each group, for example "mage fire spells", should have proper dependencies. Greater Fireball should probably be dependent at some level on 'basic fire magics'.
2) The spells and skills within each group, for example "mage fire spells", should be separated by similar level differences, to spread the group out across a level range. If there's too much clumping, there's dead zones where you don't get a new spell for a long time, then suddenly get a bunch followed by another dead zone.
3) Spells and skills for the entire class should be evenly distributed across the entire level range, again to limit dead zones and make sure players have something to learn at every level. Necromancer is a good example of how to do this; every three levels, you get 5-6 spells and skills, from level 1 up to about level 28. Mage is a good example of how not to do this; there's 6 spells between levels 2-4, 12 spells between levels 12-14, and 4 spells between level 26-28. Mage is currently very clumpy and needs more work.
4) Low level spells and skills should be useful and interesting. Having a spell like 'ventriloquate' below level 10 makes no sense at all; newbies will think it's actually useful (it's not) and waste practices on it. It's ok to put useless stuff at higher levels, because high level players are more likely to do research before wasting scarce practices on something.
5) Really high level spells have to actually be useful, even if it's a specialized use.
The above generally result in me spending a lot of time staring at various views of the spell lists for each class. You have to keep an eye on groupings across level ranges, while making sure you haven't done anything dumb to the dependency trees for each group, and making sure you don't move useless things into the low level ranges.
And even though it may not seem that way, the above are actually really important. It seems to give you more to do, and you know that you get important, useful stuff even at low levels. I've certainly noticed a difference with my characters.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Alter Aeon Christmas Event
Every year for Christmas (and for a bunch of other holidays), we do something special. Usually this amounts to in-game events to open new areas, or for special prizes, things of that nature. This year, in addition to the usual things, we'll also be adding something else: a bunch of new code.
For each of the five classes, we'll be adding a few new spells and/or skills. A lot of this stuff is high level, but it's also focused more strongly in some classes than others. Cleric is probably the class that benefits the most, but it's also been the class with the least amount of scaling. Necromancer doesn't get much new stuff, but it does get a few critical reworks of existing spells and skills that didn't work out as designed.
Adding new spells and skills like this is always a hassle. Coming up with new stuff is hard, because it has to be useful, interesting, and above all preserve the physics/theme of the game. There's no point in just adding a bunch of lookalike damage spells that are successively more powerful.
There's also the problem of integrating new things into the existing spell and skill trees. One of the major things about this release is that there's been a lot of reworking of the spell and skill trees for the various classes. Thief, warrior, and cleric have all seen pretty significant changes to their skill groups, primarily to make space for the new additions.
There are a few other things I'll mention, such as new achievements, but since we're keeping the actual spells and skills under wraps until Christmas morning, I'll stop here.
For each of the five classes, we'll be adding a few new spells and/or skills. A lot of this stuff is high level, but it's also focused more strongly in some classes than others. Cleric is probably the class that benefits the most, but it's also been the class with the least amount of scaling. Necromancer doesn't get much new stuff, but it does get a few critical reworks of existing spells and skills that didn't work out as designed.
Adding new spells and skills like this is always a hassle. Coming up with new stuff is hard, because it has to be useful, interesting, and above all preserve the physics/theme of the game. There's no point in just adding a bunch of lookalike damage spells that are successively more powerful.
There's also the problem of integrating new things into the existing spell and skill trees. One of the major things about this release is that there's been a lot of reworking of the spell and skill trees for the various classes. Thief, warrior, and cleric have all seen pretty significant changes to their skill groups, primarily to make space for the new additions.
There are a few other things I'll mention, such as new achievements, but since we're keeping the actual spells and skills under wraps until Christmas morning, I'll stop here.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Alter Aeon Necromancer Class
There's been a lot of talk on this blog and the Alter Aeon Forums about a new Necromancer class. Official work on it started about a year and a half ago, and up until about three months ago pretty much everything that was done was under-the-covers structural stuff.
Once all the infrastructure was in place, I started hitting spells and skills really hard. In the last three months I've implemented about 50 new spells and skills, some with rather exotic (compared to other spells and skills) features.
And finally, two days ago, the first ever Alter Aeon class expansion was officially unveiled. Necromancer is now live on AA!
Some of the available spell and skill groups for necromancers involve:
- creating animated entities of various sorts
- raising your own undead
- summoning demons for fun and profit
- using dragon teeth as powerful spell components
- blood skills involving your own blood
- controlling undead and demons
- soulsteal and other spirit-based spells
As always, a full spell at skill list can be found on the Alter Aeon Spells and Skills pages.
One of the crowning features of the new class is the minion system, which allows high level necromancers to create and manage several minions at once.
The class plays very differently from any of the others, and is looking like a great addition to the game. There's definitely still some balancing issues remaining, but for now it's looking extremely solid. Further, it's downright fun for me to play. I wish I had more time to do so.
Once all the infrastructure was in place, I started hitting spells and skills really hard. In the last three months I've implemented about 50 new spells and skills, some with rather exotic (compared to other spells and skills) features.
And finally, two days ago, the first ever Alter Aeon class expansion was officially unveiled. Necromancer is now live on AA!
Some of the available spell and skill groups for necromancers involve:
- creating animated entities of various sorts
- raising your own undead
- summoning demons for fun and profit
- using dragon teeth as powerful spell components
- blood skills involving your own blood
- controlling undead and demons
- soulsteal and other spirit-based spells
As always, a full spell at skill list can be found on the Alter Aeon Spells and Skills pages.
One of the crowning features of the new class is the minion system, which allows high level necromancers to create and manage several minions at once.
The class plays very differently from any of the others, and is looking like a great addition to the game. There's definitely still some balancing issues remaining, but for now it's looking extremely solid. Further, it's downright fun for me to play. I wish I had more time to do so.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Necromancer Class Open Beta
The necromancer class is officially in beta test on alteraeon.com, port 4000. There's basically no rules on this port, other than to respect others, and give testing priority over anything else. So if someone's trying to run a real test, don't screw with them. One additional note: pk balance is completely off, and I have no intention of fixing it until the mob balance is halfway sane. Don't submit bug reports having to do with pk balance issues.
Pretty much everything is implemented except for the Demonlore skill tree, and what I'd call four problem spells/skills:
Lvl 16 consumption
Lvl 16 bone wall - already have wall spells
Lvl 21 flesh wall - already have wall spells
Lvl 27 skeletal dragon - already have craploads of minions
Consumption was supposed to be some kind of corpse eating thing to recharge your undead, but so far with the way they're working out that doesn't make much sense. The wall spells are really problematic, as I have to come up with something very different from icewall for them to make sense. And for skeletal dragon, well, the last thing we need is an even more powerful minion.
The Demonlore tree is problematic because I can't really see any interesting way to make it different from the 'Raised Undead' skill tree. The both create various minions, using control and soulstones, and have the same kinds of skills. I really hesitate to just make a skill tree that's effectively a different mob type copy of some existing tree.
Beyond that, things appear to be going well. The class seems to be quite a bit too powerful for now, but at the same time all the testers are five-class level 33, so perhaps I'm seeing a side effect of that. I think in the long run, the only real way to get legitimate test data is to boot in the code and see what people do with it for real.
One thing I am really surprised about is just how terrible most people are at testing. I have one tester that typically sends me 20 messages overnight with comments and questions about the class; the remainder have yet to send me 20 questions total for the entire time the port has been open.
As a result of this, I probably need to rethink my beta testing strategy. Maybe the thing to do is to autoupdate everyone on login so that their levels come out in some mangled, pre-determined format; for example 32/27/22/17/12, with the classes picked at random. I think having everyone be 5x33 just leads to people seeing what it's like to have that many levels.
Pretty much everything is implemented except for the Demonlore skill tree, and what I'd call four problem spells/skills:
Lvl 16 consumption
Lvl 16 bone wall - already have wall spells
Lvl 21 flesh wall - already have wall spells
Lvl 27 skeletal dragon - already have craploads of minions
Consumption was supposed to be some kind of corpse eating thing to recharge your undead, but so far with the way they're working out that doesn't make much sense. The wall spells are really problematic, as I have to come up with something very different from icewall for them to make sense. And for skeletal dragon, well, the last thing we need is an even more powerful minion.
The Demonlore tree is problematic because I can't really see any interesting way to make it different from the 'Raised Undead' skill tree. The both create various minions, using control and soulstones, and have the same kinds of skills. I really hesitate to just make a skill tree that's effectively a different mob type copy of some existing tree.
Beyond that, things appear to be going well. The class seems to be quite a bit too powerful for now, but at the same time all the testers are five-class level 33, so perhaps I'm seeing a side effect of that. I think in the long run, the only real way to get legitimate test data is to boot in the code and see what people do with it for real.
One thing I am really surprised about is just how terrible most people are at testing. I have one tester that typically sends me 20 messages overnight with comments and questions about the class; the remainder have yet to send me 20 questions total for the entire time the port has been open.
As a result of this, I probably need to rethink my beta testing strategy. Maybe the thing to do is to autoupdate everyone on login so that their levels come out in some mangled, pre-determined format; for example 32/27/22/17/12, with the classes picked at random. I think having everyone be 5x33 just leads to people seeing what it's like to have that many levels.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Miscellaneous
It's been a long time since I updated here; I'd like to say that I've been busy working on things instead, but while I've been busy it seems little of it relates to Alter Aeon.
The first reason for this post is the mapper. I've built new area maps for the web pages! You can find these at the standard Alter Aeon Maps location. These maps include the level of areas, as well as a number of new areas that have been added in the last six months.
Speaking of new areas, we've had an awful lot of stuff come online in the last six months. It would probably have been more if I'd get off my can and worked on the west continent and the demon city of Qoorik.
Lastly, the necromancer class and skillset continues to make its slow and steady progress. I've got the spell and skill trees set up in what I think will make a good, solid class. Honestly, it's far better laid out than any of the other classes are; all the skill trees make sense (to me at least), the level spreads look good, and it's largely new techniques and behaviour. There's a lot of use of charmies and mob armies.
I'm stealing a handful of spells and skills from other classes though. Cleric will lose demon lore and probably undead lore as well as durhams, preservation, and animate corpse. Mage on the other hand, will lose fear and possession. Not huge losses, but enough that I'll have to do some grandfathering.
One thing that does concern me is the upcoming druid class split, scheduled for after necromancer. My current vision of druid has sky/water/earth skill trees, which may serve to simply gut cleric in regard to offensive capability. I'll probably have to rework these simultaneously, and it won't be pretty. It may be possible for me to steal more stuff from mage to compensate. I don't know yet.
Farther down the line is paladin, which I'd intended to be a specialized cross between warrior and cleric; basically a fanatic nutjob fighter with a direct line to his god. I'm not sure I can come up with enough stuff to make this a sane, standalone class.
My final goal is 8 classes, but there simply may not be enough variation in the game world to support it.
The first reason for this post is the mapper. I've built new area maps for the web pages! You can find these at the standard Alter Aeon Maps location. These maps include the level of areas, as well as a number of new areas that have been added in the last six months.
Speaking of new areas, we've had an awful lot of stuff come online in the last six months. It would probably have been more if I'd get off my can and worked on the west continent and the demon city of Qoorik.
Lastly, the necromancer class and skillset continues to make its slow and steady progress. I've got the spell and skill trees set up in what I think will make a good, solid class. Honestly, it's far better laid out than any of the other classes are; all the skill trees make sense (to me at least), the level spreads look good, and it's largely new techniques and behaviour. There's a lot of use of charmies and mob armies.
I'm stealing a handful of spells and skills from other classes though. Cleric will lose demon lore and probably undead lore as well as durhams, preservation, and animate corpse. Mage on the other hand, will lose fear and possession. Not huge losses, but enough that I'll have to do some grandfathering.
One thing that does concern me is the upcoming druid class split, scheduled for after necromancer. My current vision of druid has sky/water/earth skill trees, which may serve to simply gut cleric in regard to offensive capability. I'll probably have to rework these simultaneously, and it won't be pretty. It may be possible for me to steal more stuff from mage to compensate. I don't know yet.
Farther down the line is paladin, which I'd intended to be a specialized cross between warrior and cleric; basically a fanatic nutjob fighter with a direct line to his god. I'm not sure I can come up with enough stuff to make this a sane, standalone class.
My final goal is 8 classes, but there simply may not be enough variation in the game world to support it.
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