Where Things Are At

So, initially we kind of had hopes of having the patch up and running already. The skill changes have all been made and are fully functional, but we realized there are some more things we want to test and some things that need to be fixed before we're satisfied enough to hand over rest of the testing to you guys!

First of all, Teddy is now working on improving the player experience when playing games with high ping as we realized some of the changes we made to the combat made things desync more than we'd like in high ping situations. Of course, it won't be possible to make it 100% awesome if you happen to play with someone really far away or with a bad internet connection, as some desync in those cases simply can't be avoided. However, there are things we can do to improve the experience and make it feel more smooth to play, even when it's having difficulties.

Second, we really need to get down and dirty with the numbers, balancing each skill so it doesn't feel too OP or too crap compared to the others. To help us with this we've created a document which documents exactly how much damage each skill does at different levels, and how much that is per second, per EP, etc:

In other words, this needs quite extensive research and several playthroughs with different sets of skills, to make sure it's as balanced as possible. We also need to consider what gear is available and how strong the enemies are, and make adjustments accordingly. Already, we've noticed some not-particularly hard to get items give the player quite the boost with these new edits, so we'll have to nerf a few of those to make up for the increased strength of the skills.

It's hard to tell how long these tests will take, but hopefully we'll have the new patch up and running within another week or two! Until then, I'll focus on more Arcadia stuff and testing these things out. Stay tuned!