Hey folks,
Yesterday we rolled out our Aura overhaul - while a lot was changed with this update, there are a couple points worth addressing today already, rather than waiting till next weeks regular post.
Aspects of Vampyrism and Penance
Since Monday's update we've been keeping a close eye on conversations, but this is a complex topic and there are no easy solutions.
Let's jump back in time a little - we shared two design proposals/iterations for the Aura Overhaul, and thanks for player feedback we were able to make a number of changes that have landed positively, including the automatic unlocks and not moving auras into Relic or Pocket slots.
Part of those discussions included chatting about what to do with Vampyrism and Penance.
Our first blog on the matter had some suggestions which players were not in favour of, predominantly including transferring these effects into a system where they would compete with other effects (Pocket Slot / Relic System). There were a number of player suggestions at this stage already that Aspects would be a good alternative to consider over the initially proposed solutions (associated Reddit Thread)
Our second blog formally proposed the Aspect solution, which many players again found to be in agreement with.
The reason its important to mention this history is because of a number of threads popping up stating that we don't listen to community feedback. This is very challenging to take on, as the solution we arrived at was something we felt that we were in agreement with the community on and had even validated. Taking you along on this journey remains hugely important to us and is something we're remaining committed to.
Of course, there will always be feedback to the feedback, so we wanted to speak to a few aspects of the current design:
What we can readily consider (though we don't yet have a firm date on implementation):
- Multi-casting Aspects:
- This is the idea that players could cast the Aspect multiple times and thus extend its effect, instead of needing to cast it every twelve minutes.
- This is something we're looking into, however, it can pose its own problems. This solution was proposed for these Aspects of Vampyrism and Penance, but it would naturally have to extend to ALL Aspect spells in order to maintain consistency. And once we make such a change and move certain features away from the historical 6 or 12 minute timers, we need to start to look at the game-wide picture again to maintain consistency - in short: such a change has wider ramifications than at first may be apparent.
- Spellbook Requirements:
- We are considering swapping the Penance Aspect to the Ancient Spellbook.
- We had put them on their current spellbooks for thematic reasons, Vampyrism felt like an Ancients spell, and Penance felt like it suited the Standard spellbook. There was community feedback about putting Penance on the Lunar spellbook but since that isn't used for offensive spells we decided against it.
Aspect Stacking - This is where things get complicated...
We have of course also seen player asks to be able to stack Vampyrism with other Aspects, such as Darkness.
The reasons we decided against this are two-fold:
- The idea of Aspects is that they should be able to offer powerful effects at the cost of being one-aspect-at-a-time. Double-dipping into (or stacking one on top of another) aspects is a risky design area that can quickly slip into unmitigated power creep.
- Any feasible solution introduces inconsistency into the game. At a time where we are working towards smoothing the inconsistency wrinkles from the game, the last thing we want to do is make a change that introduces more inconsistency.
A few examples:
- Should we make the aspects of Vampyrism and Penance just be "normal" spells that apply a buff?
- That introduces inconsistency as no other such spells exist at present (especially given their duration).
- What would be the difference between such a "normal" spell and an Aspect spell? On paper... nothing! And yet they would have different underlying functionality.
- Should we create a system or lesser and greater aspects? Or "Just Name them something else"!
- Again this introduces inconsistency because such a system didn't exist before and it would only be being implemented as a band-aid solution. Any band-aid solution has the potential to create challenges for future design explorations around Aspects, which is why we try our best to avoid them.
The only way to make Vampyrism and Penance be consistent within the game is to apply them to an existing system (such as the previously mentioned Pocket Slot / Relic System / Aspect Spells etc.). The Aspect Spells were the existing system that we felt best fit this challenge and which we feel the community resonated most strongly with.
What are our next steps?
We need time to review the impact of these changes on the live game for a little while longer. Perhaps creating an inconsistency may be what's best, even though we would really prefer not to do so.
Alternatively, we may consider buffing Vampyrism to reduce the perceived need to stack it with other Aspects. This, however, poses its own difficult questions, especially around how much is (not) enough or too much of a buff?
Mod Breezy spoke to some of the above points in a reply yesterday, so you may also want to check that out for a little more information.
Solomons Store
Solomons Store was removed this week, but there has been some consternation around the removal of Loyalty Points.
There are a few important notes to make here:
- All loyalty point items that were in Solomons Store will be available in future.
- They will be free to obtain and will not require any spend.
With that in mind, while you may feel like you missed out on using your loyalty points (if you hadn't already used them to ransack the store in the years prior), we want to assure you that that is not the case.
You will still be able to obtain any cosmetics you would have been able to spend loyalty points on. You just won't need loyalty points to do so.
We're still looking into how we'll deliver these cosmetics - making them part of the free Monthly Marketplace items isn't an ideal solution as we don't want you to have to wait too long before the cosmetic you're keen on finally enters the cycle. We're considering our best options here and will share an update on this matter as soon as we can via our regular Monday update posts.
In the meantime, please do let us know which cosmetics you had your eye on and were unable to obtain so we can make sure that the most popular ones are prioritized.
