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The Atos Update Thread

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by Chris, Oct 24, 2019.

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  1. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

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    Greetings avatars! In the old days I used to keep a somewhat daily blog. While this consumed a huge chunk of my time, I think it was mostly worth while. I now do 3x a wee streams where I share information and do QA which is awesome but a huge amount of your time to watch!

    I'm going to try and find a happy medium in this thread where I dump key information worth sharing. I'll keep it sticky and closed so it stays small...ish.
     
  2. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

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    First post. So some key updates from recent streams and extra bonus items.

    • BARDS! Yes, I spoke a bit about bards and revived the idea of a full tree of skills for them in the bottom skill tree. Existing instruments would give bonuses to some of these skills. Playing as a bard would largely be a dedicated support class though they would have some limited combat abilities. Likely "song weaving" would be limited to 2 effects, 3 with specialization. I haven't nailed down all the skills yet but a quick smattering would go something like....
      • Party movement speed
      • Party regeneration/focus recovery speeds
      • AE mez for animals/humans
      • Party combat speed (chaotic feedback light minus the negative parts)
      • AE damage, continuous but mild and HIGH aggro. How much aggro? Imagine playing Nickelback songs on an off key accordion
      • AE faster XP spending for faster training
      • Targeted animal frenzy (changes faction of one targeted animal to be attack everything)
    • Multishot is getting a boost for R71. Again, to help compensate from the extra pain archers suffered from the damage resistance on NPC fix. Already submitted and on the next QA but initial hit will do an extra 33% more damage. 2nd/3rd hits remain the same
    • Tartarus teleporter collision fix going live asap
    • Spicing up the Lord of the Isle bundles even more. One of the things I want to change going forward is the false perception that Shroud is some kind of crazy "cash grab". It makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit just to type that. :p While the players who have played more 20 million hours scratch their heads at this idea, having a big $$$ bundle on the front page is just bad press and does give a bit of the wrong impression to those wandering by. I'm going to make these more sexy (previous purchasers will get the bonuses too!) and cap the total number to probably just 3 more and then remove it. Then we can start trying to figure out how, where and when to get people together for a dinner with Richard, Starr, and myself! We know we have some backers with money who just look for opportunities to help us out financially and we'll find a way to make that happen but we'll make it less in your face for new people and also make it more clear that the bundles are for "Angel Backers" or something to reduce the impression that you have to spend a ton of money to play our game. Again, purely a perception thing but I do frequently see comments on stuff like this on some sites.
    • SOTACon 2020 shaping up. I'm just hearing stuff from the rumor mill so don't consider any of this final plan but sounds like SOTACon 2020 is likely going to be a hybrid SOTACon + Hobloth-ish + and Ultima Dragon event. Likely at Richard's property here in Austin but again, details are still forming. Depending on what the Lord of the Isle people end up wanting, we might even work in some royal dinner during that event to get rid of double travel times for people.
    • Tartarus level 3 maze wave encounters coming together! I worked out some more of the kinks in the wave encounters in Tartarus as well as reward options. These feel very different from most other wave battles and will probably needs lots of tuning that will go on during R71. These will go live with this weekends QA build. These feel different because the player triggers them by making it to the middle to each of the large mazes. Standing anywhere in the center areas starts it all. The waves spawn in the outer sections of the maze in multiple groups of 3 to 6 and slowly wander towards the middle and arrive at roughly the same time. This means that there are many ways to fight these. Players could leave one person in the center area and then go out to intercept groups as they wander in to limit the max number encountered at once or they might try and turn it into a crazy AE storm in the middle and take them all at once. There are 15 second breaks between waves but it can take roughly a minute for them to all wander through the maze. Chests unlock in the maze on each wave completion with significant loots and a chance for some of the new artifacts being added to Tartarus for R71. Again, lots more polish coming visually and also in wave strength. Final boss is still being worked on but I might have him live for the weekend QA. Again, lots of high tier fun and new challenges and things to think about. Also, all the creatures in these waves have more abilities and don't just stand and punch!
    • New team members! Ravalox is joining the dev team in a more significant way! While he has helped out with stuff from the sidelines for years, we're now bringing him in to help with some more game stuff. Expect to see him sporting a "Dev" tag in the forums and in game. Also, I will be setting up a new CS person this weekend! LONG overdue but they will be taking over shipping boxes and managing our support queue. Also, expect our support email system to change soon as our old provider is going away. We will be trying to keep old history but not 100% sure we will be able to transition everything. At worst, we'll still have the mail history to work off of but might lose some context in the swap.
    • As of this morning, I should have all the recent stream bonuses sent out. Someone on stream was a bit...grumpy :) because they didn't receive a bonus from months ago and I'll try and figure out why that happened and take care of them.
    • Working on a dispel effect for bludgeon. I know some want it added to crushing blow but I think that skill is already pretty powerful. Currently I'm leaning towards adding them to Break Weapon and Break Armor for Bludgeon Spec players. This would dispel effects on the target. Again, working through the implementation right now but will have obvious PVP implications but also some PVE implications as well. I'll make sure that it doesn't dispel stuff like rend bleeds and other effects players want to keep. Again, WIP as I'm typing this.
    • After talking to some of our fans at SOTACon, I'm going to try and get E to loot nearby but not targeted corpses. This has been a hot topic for a while but after talking to a few people with health issues that make targeting challenging, I've decided we can give it a try.
    • I'll also be re-evaluating Dig-in. It is a one of the least used and least effective skills. Expect to see some improvement for R71

    I'm sure there is lots more I'm missing but the more I type, the less I get done! :O

    I've had a few people ask how they can help and my answer is and always will be, BRING US NEW PLAYERS! I watched two new players on twitch streams last night. Both had never played before and both were having a blast. I of course cried a little tear (for multiple reasons) when one of them who was having a blast mentioned on stream that he wasn't sure why there was so much negative talk about the game.

    That false negative image the game has outside our community is the biggest dragon we have to slay to expand our user base. I'm working on lots of promotion options to get us in front of more users but I'm always open to ideas on ways to promote things and get word out on the game.

    A story with a title that suggests some project is screwing its users, near collapse, or that there is some nefarious and intentionally treacherous activity going on is always going to get clicks, comments, and attention. It's sadly just human nature that everyone loves watching a train wreck. I totally get that so our challenge is how to get people excited about a game that has released for 70 months in a row, hasn't had any significant down time, never lost anyone's data or done a rollback, never had a dupe, has a freakin' amazing community, and just keeps on getting a bit better each month. It is a great story but a tough sell to get a website to write about in a positive way. Negative speculation or explosive success? Sure, they'll print that all day long but month after month moderate success and perseverance, meh, no one will click on that.

    If anyone has any ideas on ways to get the media to print that second story instead of the first, LET ME KNOW. :p Also, if you are associated with any website and want an exclusive interview, scoops on stuff coming up, call me, I'm all yours!!

    On a positive PR note, HUGE shout out to https://theavatar.express/ for the great stuff they are doing! Keep up the good work!

    Ok, time to get a wee one ready for school. Thanks for reading
    Chris "Atos" Spears
     
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  3. Elgarion

    Elgarion Dev Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    Anpu and Alleine Dragonfyre like this.
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