OFFICIAL NEWS

There have been too many cats for a long time, but consumption is up considerably now that hordes of free to play folks have arrived. 90% reduction is way too much imo. 50% more closely matches current usage.

Creating catalzyers might relieve some of the upcoming shortfall, but we will have to see how much time is involved. And I doubt that many created cats will find there way into the hands of new arrivals from Silan.

So it looks to me like new players will level 1/2 as fast as before. I worry how this will impact new players sticking with the game. But perhaps the devs have decided 1/2 levelling speed will be better for the free to play crowd.

I know that the majority of old timers tend to disregard free to play folks as short termers who do not matter much. But the way I see it, half of the active player population is in this group. No one here seems to be thinking much about how this patch will affect them.

There are guilds and individuals with packers, apartments and guild halls stuffed with them because there has been such a massive over-abundance for literally _years_! Until these reserves have been exhausted outposts will remain by-and-large useless as there's little incentive to fight over them anymore.

The devs have fiiinally realised this and have taken action to counteract the problem with a 90% reduction. There's no reason why in the future they can't open the tap again if it seems necessary. Ideally now would be a good time to figure out some kind of balancing mechanism which controls the flow based on active population. (yeah I know, I've been banging on about this for years)

If it was me I'd go one step further and run a script to locate collections of > 30 stacks of the same quality cats and destroy the excess.

I was waiting for someone to bring this up, because this is probably the exact reasoning the devs used. It is incorrect imo. There is certainly a difference in effort expended and reward gained for clear space in a working vault vs. permanently emptying a storage vault.

Given the uncertainty surrounding future plans for cats, it is much easier and safer to just keep quiet and do nothing. Hopefully I will be surprised and old timers will generously return to donate their time and redistribute their vast hordes.

Final point: what does it matter if there are vast hordes when they are in limbo anyway? Devs just should have balanced production to current consumption and not made any assumptions about the future behavior of historical horders.

Both good ideas and imo proper solutions to the problem. 90% reduction is too unlikely to work.

We have had some welcomed feedback on the latest patch and wish to clarify some certain aspects of the new changes found in patch 1.12.

The enchantments:

Even though it's no longer possible to create sap crystals, it will still be possible to use those bought from the nation trader. Others ways to obtain crystals may also be introduced in the future.
Sap crystals that you have already created will remain usable while stocks last but will have however a weight of 1.

There seems to be some confusion about the system to recharge your enchanted weapon. The skill "Create sap crystal" will reload sap directly to the weapon in your right hand. It will be two times faster to launch, it will still be dependant on the "create sap crystal skill" level, and still cost the same amount of dappers. The crystallization of a spell does not change. You will be able to have a stock of crystallized spells.

Weapons will have a sap recharge max of 2500 instead of 1000, which allows to reload with the equivalent of 10 "250 crystals" and should allow to go solo hunting with enchantments in many cases.

Loot

It was not specified in the patch notes but it will not be possible to loot a Boss or named mob if a NPC or another creature damages it. So if you pull Bosses or Named mobs to a tribe camp and the tribe guards kill it you will not be able to loot it.

The loot of an animal killed by npc is only possible with the classic or titled mobs.

This modification will enable a future system of NCP recruitment to help to fight kitins nests and marauders, while keeping the ability to loot.

OP Production

As indicated in the patch notes, we decreased the production rates of outposts. The decline of 90% would have allowed a fast reduction of the number of catalysts on the servers over a short period of time, the production would then have been modified to a more suitable rate.
However, having taken note of the diverse feedback across all servers, the production rate of catalyzers and flowers will now be reduced by a flat 65 % of the original production. This will have the impact of extending the period of stabilization of excess product, the OPs rate will then be reassessed and modified to a more suitable rate.
This modification is effective on 3 shards(servers) (aniro, arispotle, leanon), patches being strictly identical on all servers regardless of the configuration of outposts or guild size.

Teleporters

All the pacts bought up to the patch will remain valid. However, if you have an allegiance to a faction, and only in that case, you cannot use a pact of the opposite faction, the pact will become useful only (reactivate) if you change allegiance or opt for neutrality.
This change will thus have no impact on neutrals.
The two pacts of Almati, further to an agreement between nations and factions, are usefull regardless of allegiance.

Miscellaneous

Although it does not appear in the patch note, a secondary static action bar will be available. It can be activated in the configuration window:



The second bar is a copy and contains the same actions and shortcuts as group No.1 of the main bar. To modify the contents of the extra bar, you will have to edit the first group of the main bar.
This will allow access to 20 actions on your desktop.

umm, bwark.

Good to hear.
Hey, that's somewhat exciting :)

I have no gamemechanics opinion on the sap crystal change, but I'll miss the 'flavor' that sap crystals offered.

I know that, you know that. But in the past it's already been tried several times to draw in more players from pvp oriented games, with no net benefit as the number of new players never outstripped the number of oldtimers leaving.
And if there's one thing that's sure to be tried again, it's a failed idea. History is full of it.

This is a change from the current system, making it more restrictive.
At current, such a boss can be looted as long as the player (or his team) did more damage to it than the combined npcs.
Will this remain or is a single hit by any npc now enough to prevent looting?

If so, there's some bosses that previously had some chance of being lootable (like Cherkin) that will become unlootable almost by definition as their paths lead them through npc camps where they're attacked but usually not killed.

I completely understand the reasoning to keep the configuration of all servers as identical as possible but this one-size-fits all system just isn't fit for purpose. It can never work on servers with different populations, we need a balancing mechanic.

Atys is supposed to be a dynamic world, so how about building in some dynamics?

Well speaking for Bunnies, I can say that's not the case. We still manage to give away an amount almost equal to our production. Our own usage for the most part is crafting related.

Are we talking new magic skill tree ?

Impressed w/ response to feedback on cats.

Did I say all guilds? And I would expect nothing less of a "neutral" guild. :p

Just to add in here GoJ, we have given away our cats also - and Amicitius and OOTN - frequently seen advertising in uni for all. Other guilds may have responded to an excess of cats by switching to op mats only. Overall gimping players did not seem a hot idea - strange way of improving a game by making it even harder for players to grind their way to a master * and yes, I know all the old players did it without cats, but for goodness sake* It just felt like a total manipulation of game

PS Anyone else have probs getting back into game after patch ...

Maybe because you tried just at the start of the patch window :)
There's still one hour until 10:00 UTC :\