General
- Added Restless option in General settings, when ON removes and prevents Rested XP bonus, for new characters this will be ON by default.
By controlling the precise amount of bonus XP (now defaults to 0), it becomes easier to adjust renown gains and land players in a consistent RR range at CR40. Players alting while leveling now won't be punished with multiple levels of rest, and players wishing to rush to CR40 still have the option. - Shoulder and belt can now be hidden, same as cloak and helmet.
These items often stands out, especially on light armored classes. - Additional healing caused by bonus is now attributed to source of bonus (e.g. Blessing of Chaos adding 25 hp to DoK healing 100 hp, it will contribute 25 to the Zealot)
This would be a bump to mostly RP/ZL and ensure a better reflection of where the healing is actually coming from.
Quests
- Create a "Bolster" Beginner's Quest as a follow on after completing the lvl 16 mount quest.
Send players to talk to the Renown and crest merchants, detailing why equipping max gear, talisman and set bonuses is a big boon for stat scaling, then give them some gold to buy a couple rings.
to help players understand how the bolster mechanic work. - Create a "Cleaners wanted" quest granted after the "Bolster" quest.
1 part: Sends the player to the Sewer/Sacellum quest givers, and maybe gives some advice about /5 or dungeons in general (such as the ward also counts for pvp gear).
2 part: accept the repeatable boss kill quest
to help players understand how the bolster mechanic work. - Create a "Experienced Cleaners Wanted" quest granted after the "Cleaners wanted"/repeatable boss kill quest.
Sends the player to the BBBE/CT City dungeon Soulstone quest giver and tells them about Soulstones and how to equip in rings, then tells the player "I don't think you are ready, but have a peak inside and come back when you are".
Reward: 1 Soulstone after killing all bosses.
to help players understand soulstones and tease endgame dungeons. - Guild Coin quests in KaK/K8P now available at lvl 16.
it's a long quest in specific zone, would be nice to be able to start it early
ORvR
- Remove racial pairing 50% crests bonus and instead increase every lock by 20%.
It's rarely considered even race specific groups and your zone could now be locked for an entire day. It's a nice small flair but don't really think it drives any choices so ends up being just random bonus for random race. - Option 1: Add crest round-robin (can be as optional party/wb tick).
Or..
Option 2: Add War Crest shards automatically equally split like gold between each party member.
It's a small QoL, but just a little annoying seeing team getting 20 crests in a row and nothing for me. - Cache zone contributions before planned server shutdown.
Shutdowns happens usually once a week, some times more, each time wiping progress. - Give crests for defending keep tick or do not reset progress for zone.
I've done +100 kills keep defense and then gotten 4 crests from zone-lock after.
Fort
- Defiant Defender buff is now granted when AAO in fort is 20% or above, giving 1-80% increased outgoing and reduced incoming damage, and 0.5-40 morale per second and also boosts fort contributions and influence 10-800%, per 1% AAO between 20% to 100% AAO.
For example at 40% AAO Defiant Defender would grant:
20% increased outgoing and reduced incoming damage
10 morale per second
200% contribution/influence
Outside prime time, where most forts are not at all balanced, this will encourage defenders to go against the zerg and stand a fighting chance.
- Fort completion bonus bags and crests for Losing side now up 80% of winning side (number of bags increased, purple bag included and more base crests), based total realm contribution compared to winning side.
Currently even if you put up a close fight and lose, the rewards are barely getting trampled (at least for the time put in). This would serve as an incentive to do better and stay in the fight even if things are looking down. - Create new style of fort like Battle Zones (BZ)
City
- An additional stage end renown bonus is now granted based on number of kills, e.g. 100 renown per kill.
Currently losing gives 0 bonus renown per stage, even in close sweaty fights with lots of kills, this leaves a bit of a bitter tastes in the mouth of sore losers, this small bonus will encourage fighting on both sides and remove the feeling of missing progress doing endest of endgame content.
Ranked
- Pre-Seasons removed and seasons now last 4 months.
The lull and unavailability caused by Pre-seasons greatly outweigh the benefits of giving a grace period for balancing, if pre-seasons lasted only a week it wouldn't be a problem, but they often have stretched many weeks.
Increasing the length of the season will allow for changes to be made midway, as long as last month of each season do not see too many changes. - End of season the following MMR changes will occur:
> +1K MMR characters will be reduced to 1000 MMR
> Characters below 1K MMR keep their current MMR
This will reduce the friction of having known top players with 0 MMR annihilating new ranked players and getting a lot of their MMR for "free". It is akin to League of Legends silver/gold/platinum brackets, once you get in to them it's harder to get downgraded. - Triumphant Insignia changes:
> 1000 MMR requirement removed
> All Insignia costs doubled (e.g. ring now costs 100)
> Group Ranked now grants 4 Insignias for a win and 2 for a loss (gains doubled)
This should help reduce toxicity from having noobs ruining MMR and stress from not reaching 1K. It will also mean that even if you can't participate enough during each season or wish to play on many alts, as long as you win, you are making steady progress. - Gear Scaling, all gear are scaled to Item Lv78.
This is not particularly high on my list, compared to the other ranked changes, and probably the hardest to implement, but would be the final piece to put all on a more equal footing.
PvE
- Add Soulstone quest to GB and HV, if you are concerned with giving too many, just enable them after ward has been completed. The HV quest is timed.
These dungeons suffers from lack of incentives for players already finished with the ward to come help, this will be a nice little bonus (worth 75 war crests). Adding additional dungeons to Soulstone weekly farmers is also great, it also gives Order an option as fast as BBBE. - All Soulstone quests now require killing a number of unspecified end bosses equal to the listed before, rather than specific bosses.
This will help fill spots for HV in particular will also reduce the complaint that BBBE takes half the time of CT. - CH22 Stage 2 and 3 difficulty and rewards will now scale down to 6,12,18 man depending on how many are present at stage completion.
This it takes significant effort to put together a full warband for these, making these dynamic will make the content a lot more active - Increased reset timer for PQs to 10 minutes.
This is to encourage moving on to other PQs, rather than farming a single one repeatedly. And will reduce grinding for vials/containers (see Item 1. ,2.) - Bonus roll weights (+650-350) removed from Gunbad PQs (or all set to 0).
Who gets the bonus seems random and is just frustrating to finally get a good roll but still miss out because of low bonus roll. - HV gives 2 items per run, with ring as 4th timed run.
- HV bosses (except last) now has a chance to drop the contents of a green/blue/purple bag for all to roll on.
- Vale-Walker set now provides the Vanquisher ward
- Vale-walker ring switch hp/sec and %RAP with 3 morale/sec and now has a special talisman slot.
Further incentives along with the soulstone to run HV. - Add one-way 1:1 conversions for Golden Scarabs to War Crests.
The Jewelry is nice, but niche, so being able to convert one-way will bring War Crests progression to fort levels, which will encourage participation regardless of need for the jewelry. It will also be the only way of transferring War Crests to alts. All in all should be great incentive to keep. - Reduce lvl 200 potion vial to 100 RoR Crests and talisman container to 500.
- Rank 200 potion vial now always crits.
This will broaden the scope of using R200 vials not just to the new liniments below, but also normal ingredients. - New R200 Epic Vial/Master Ampoule liniment recipes, examples:
> Liniment of Grace: 60 wounds, 5% heal crit; Made from Primal Grace
> Liniment of Vision: 60 Int, 50 magic power; made from Primal Vision
> Liniment of Nature: 60 willpower, 5% heal crit; made from Primal Nature
> Other unused epic recipes or replicable with lv150 containers liniment, replaced with 30 min pie variants
These changes (along with the PQ timer increase) is aimed at incentivizing running PQs past acquiring Ruin, not necessarily on farm mode, but primarily for making "LFM for PQ" a bit more attractive. It will also make the Lv200 apothecary a lot more varied.
Scenarios
- Add 1 crests for total SC contribution, if you don't have a calculation for this already (e.g. contriubtion calculation for city/fort), I suggest the following: heal+protection+dmg+death blow*1000+objectives*10+resses*100.
Hybrids ("DPS" healers and tanks) will often do great damage/healing/protection but not top in any of them, this will recognize those, as well as BO runners. - SCs now grant 1 renown per point (up to 500) on completion.
Small incentive to keep fighting and taking BOs, even if your team is getting few kills and will lose, obviously this will also reward those winning more, but I feel like renown in general is a bit too slow and should be boosted also in RvR. - Weekend Event Advanced Reward now gives 4 Genesis Crests instead of 2.
Assuming 1 gc = 8 wc, first gives 25 wc and full gives 50, with 4 gc for second/advanced that would be worth 32 wc instead of 16.