DevBlog

Greetings folks,

This will be my penultimate entry to the series of what is currently cooking in Céidot’s kitchen. In this post, I will talk about the changes that will be made on the guild (optional) quests. Let’s see what the guild quests will look like after the big update which is soon to come.

Firstly, to understand this post better, please take a look at my post about the “New Itemization Mechanics” if you haven’t already.

 
The Armies Are Changing, So Do the Unit Limits…

One of the most important changes will take place on the army sizes you will be facing. Unlike the old design, you will not be fighting a pre-determined enemy. Your opponents will be generated randomly by the game picking one of the many possible variations. Due to this change, devising only one strategy for a quest and mindlessly following this will no longer be viable. We are making a strategy game after all, aren’t we? We don’t want people to stick to same tried and proven strategies; we want people to win by utilizing their creativity and tactical skills.

This doesn’t mean that you will be fighting enemies that are totally unrelated to each other of course. You will be facing armies consisting of unit types that are relevant to the quest description. For example, it is not possible to fight against Sai-Jeva during a guild quest about hunting bandits.

 

A screenshot of a new battlefield that belongs to the Ska Merchants guild
 

The power level of the army variations is more or less equal. You will not be fighting an opponent that is 3 times stronger than what you normally should fight against due to bad luck, don’t worry. We don’t want any luck based mechanics, especially in the tactical parts of the game. Of course, there needs to be and will be some luck based things that increase the fun (like item dropping rates); however, as we have seen in the past, adding luck to the combat parts of the game only leads to frustration. As our older players will remember, we have removed many luck based mechanics (like miss or critical hit chances) from the game due to this reason.

Another change is; both you and the AI armies will now be using much smaller armies. You will be fighting against army groups of 20-30 and sometimes 50-100 units. Your limits will also be close to these numbers. We have noticed that, the battles become more enjoyable, tactical and slow paced as the armies become smaller.

Only some of the Power Prodigies quests (as you can predict) will have high unit limits. There are only 1-2 quests like this, though.

Having smaller unit limits allow the players to enter guild battles more frequently and have a smaller amount of casualties after the battles. This way, you will not have to make huge investments to hunt for items; neither will you have the risk of losing hundreds of units in a single battle.

 
The Guild Relation Mechanic Is Changing

In the current design, as you may know, you had a chance of improving your relationship with the guild which gave you the quest according to a percent chance. We have decided that this was too frustrating and changed the system.

With the new system, your relationship with the guild increases by 1 point after each successful quest completion and thus, unlocking higher level quests becomes easier. However, you should remember that ever point of relationship gained for a guild incurs a penalty of one point with every other guild. This system will carry over without any change.

However, failed Power Prodigies quests will result in a penalty of one point with the organization. There isn’t such penalty for the other guilds, but the Power Prodigies will not accept failure.

 

A screenshot of a new battlefield that belongs to the Chaotic Symphony guild
 

Rewards and New Battlefields

As you know, the main reward of the guild battles is the items. In my previous post, where I explained the new itemization system, I had talked about which items would have a higher chance of dropping from which guilds.

As you will remember, each state has 4 guilds. One guild awards weapon rewards, one awards armor pieces, another one awards items from other categories and the Power Prodigies can award items of any type. This system will remain unchanged. The only difference will be, as I have explained in detail in the last post, the first five tiers of items will have a higher chance of dropping from normal guilds, or in other words guilds except the Power Prodigies. Although the Power Prodigies quests will unlock at rank 7 and award any kind of rare items, they still will not be the best choice due to their extra difficulty and incurred relationship penalties in the case of failure.

 

A screenshot of a new battlefield that belongs to the Ska Merchants guild
 

The Power Prodigies is a logical choice only for the players who are after the more advanced tier 6, 7 and 8 items. Though, I want to give a tip here; the items suffer durability damage after every battle now. Due to this reason, you may not be able to use a good item for a long while after obtaining it. Since repairing will also be very expensive, no matter what kind of a player you are, it may not be viable to constantly hunt for items through Power Prodigies quests. For example, if the rare items in your possession become unusable, hunting for items through Power Prodigies may become very hard if you don’t have decent replacements. At this point, you will need to visit other guilds before attempting Power Prodigies quests. Remember; failing their quests actually affect your relationship with the Power Prodigies negatively.

Guild quests also award the standard battle spoils (resource rewards; however, these rewards are not as big as the Pit fight resource rewards. Since you don’t use your own army in Pit fights, you definitely should prefer the Pit in the case of a resource problem). Guilds will no longer award Honor Points (HoP). Only Arena battles (PvP), enemy commander hunts and main quests will be giving Honor Points.

As you will notice from the screenshots, new battlefields have been added to the guilds as well. Or rather, the battlefields of the Chaotic Symphony (Galons) and the Ska Merchants (Pyrokans) have been redone completely. These two guilds had been made available by using various other battlefields as placeholders, but now they are here with battlefields more suitable for their own stories.

 
The Topic of the Next Entry and the Predicted Date for the Big Update

I want to share two bits of information with you as I am ending this post. My next post, which also will be the last entry in this series, will inform you about the Arena (PvP) mechanics and the alliance system (with the upcoming alliance feed) in the game. The post won’t only be about the upcoming features, I will be talking about the Arena and Alliances as a whole as if I am explaining these to a completely new player; for we observe that very few players are actually well informed about these two modules due to the game being constantly on a testing phase and especially the Alliances being under constant development.

 

A screenshot of a new battlefield that belongs to the Chaotic Symphony guild
 

And lastly, let’s talk about the question that everyone keeps asking; when are these updates coming?

I’m giving a predicted date of course: Interesting things may happen at the end of June.

It will be best not to act very mysteriously at this point actually, we are aware that you are tired of waiting. For this reason, we have made a plan such as this: The big update will come at the end of the month and the game will finally be reset. However, this update does not mean that everything will look fantastic and have a huge amount of polish. A few of the interfaces will make a return with their old look. The newer interfaces may lack the required amount of polish as well. However, the most critical modules will be here with their new interfaces and features, as the game mechanics will be updated in design and rebalanced. The new itemization system, the new guild battles, the alliance feed system and many other things will be implemented. While you provide us your feedback, we will finish the remaining works, resolve possible issues and finish the polishing process and get ready for the new period of the game.

In short, wait for my last post scheduled for the next week and the big update we are trying to finish until the end of the month. In closing, I wish to give you the good news of us getting faster now with our expanded team.

See you next week,

Erkan Bayol
Creative Director – Producer
Céidot Game Studios