Introduction

Hello again everybody! It's been quite a while since my last developer blog. Now that we are approaching a "good" spot with class balancing, we're going to be changing it up by talking (mostly) about gear progression. These will be discussed in order of release (so Accessories 2.0 will released).

If you have any ideas of their own or add onto our current plans, please share them with me or any other Project Duck staff member on Discord!

Accessories 2.0

ETA: November/Early December

We've been using the same old accessories for a while now so we should probably be upgrading to a new system. That is exactly what we're doing. Introducing: Radiance Accessories.

What?

Radiance Accessories are going to be a line of evolving accessories that become more powerful as you get the materials to enhance them. They will be obtainable from Red Dragon Nest Hardcore and the materials used to enhance them drop from all end game content.

We do not have a set in stone layout of how the stats look yet. However, do expect to gain stats from obtaining/enhancing Radiance accessories.

Why?

Gear progression is an important part of player satisfaction. One slot in your inventory that you may find severely lacking in "satisfaction of progression" is your accessories. Most players use 3 pieces of Black Dragon Brawler accessories and their Downy accessory of choice. We could have just gave players access to Red Dragon Brawler accessories but the same problem is going to emerge down the line when we introduce Ice Dragon Nest. That being said, we decided to go with an evolving accessory line. This will provide a linear path of growth similar to the armor/weapon gearing path that all of you are familiar with now.

When future content such as Ice Dragon Nest is released, we can just create a new "tier" of this item by creating a new enhancement rank that requires a material that can only be obtained in Ice Dragon Nest.

Dragon Gems 2.0

ETA: January (?)

Releases with Ice Dragon Nest in Winter 2019/2020. We have been long overdue for new Dragon Gems as we have been using the same Quality Dragon Gems since the server started. These new Dragon Gems are going to provide a larger variety of gear pathways and give players more options to fine tune their stats to their gameplay.

Expect many options to make balance your offesive and defensive stats to exactly what you want

Spirits 2.0

ETA: ?

We want to create a new spirit obtainment system that will have various stat lines with a moderate amount of variance in stats. One idea that I would like to maintain is balanced stats. To elaborate, every spirit should have balanced pdmg and mdmg stats.

We also have some plans to tie this into content so it's not just RNG auj boxes and hope that you get the spirit of your choice. These new spirits will also have stats baked into them instead of enhancement stats (similarly to how our spirits are right now).

"Support" Class A/B System

ETA: ?????????

Creating more player option for their builds (yay). With this system players will be able to choose their playstyle and role in a party. For those who want to be a DPS saint, now is your chance. These will cost 0 SP and players can choose whether or not they want to learn them. We can’t do it to every class without destroying their core (ahem, Ice Witch/Avalanche).

  • We would have to do a rebalancing pass on some of these classes before we can grant them their “A/B”
  • Some classes may have more than one option

Here are some examples of what we can do:

  • Windwalker
    • Spirit Boost is no longer a party buff; gain X% phys
  • War Mage
    • Fast Forward is no longer a party buff; gain X% mdmg
  • Saint
    • Priest buffs are no longer party buffs, gain X% mdmg
    • Relics no longer heal or cure, gain X% mdmg
  • Raven
    • Sacrifice Crow no longer a party buff; gain X% phys
  • Destroyer
    • Battle Howl is no longer a party buff, Maelstrom Howl no longer debuffs enemies atk; gain X% phys
    • Howl Charging is only effective on yourself; gain X% phys

Conclusion

Fun things that may or may not be released in the coming months. These are just ideas that we currently have and none of it is really set in stone/finalized. I hope I was able to get your interest and provide a little insight on what is to come. Until the next one,