Welcome to May. Between the crushing heat and devastating tornadoes, I’m kinda relieved to see April go. Besides, things get so much more fun here in May. We’re getting ready for several PTS pushes this month as we prepare for the release of Alpha County.

Our first PTS Push will take place early this month and focus on two of our most anticipated features– Progress Towns and Combat Revisions.
Features for the Early May PTS Push:

Progress Towns:
While they’ve been on the map for a while, Progress, Stronghold and Citadel will now be put to their intended use. Progress Towns expand further on the camp system by allowing players to clear hostile territory before building their own towns. All buildings can be crafted through the construction skill and will provide various benefits such as access to merchants, vaults, questors, mailboxes or buffs. Defenses can be crafted through various tradeskills to create landmines, guard bunkers and other barricades, providing protection against relentless raiders eager to reclaim their land.
To go along with this new feature we are introducing a new form of currency-- a PVE version of DeathToll—to reward players for capturing and building one of the three Progress Towns. This currency can be used to buy in-demand components and other rewards. In addition to rewarding player efforts in Progress Towns, this currency provides an additional method of rewarding a variety of different play styles.

Combat:
Since any changes to a combat system can alter game play, we’ve taken our time with the changes, experimenting on PTS and trying different solutions before settling on a course of action. There have been a lot of discussions, debates and some down-and-dirty brawls (Maenad totally fights dirty) over the system, but we have a design that fits the growth of the game as well as the necessary technology to really make combat in Fallen Earth what we want it to be.

One of the largest changes we’ve made is to the way minimum levels of skills are derived. Currently, the minimum level of skill lines such as Pistol, Rifle or Melee are raised by default when players put points into Stats such as Coordination, Dexterity and Endurance. This is changing so that only the maximum value of a skill is raised by increasing its associated stats.

With the changes, we will be raising the amount of AP given at each level from 20 to 30 and raising the spend cap from 25 to 35 per level.

We are making this revision to fix the imbalance that comes with players not having to invest points into a skill to gain the benefit. Additionally this will allow us to bring buffs and consumables in line with their intended purpose without having to design around the unintended and overpowering side effects. While this is a substantial change, it is one that we need to look at in order to further bring players into balance and to reward them for putting points into skill lines.

Along with this change we will be removing the skill requirements to wield Melee, Pistol and Rife weapons. These weapons will require level to use, however players using the weapon without putting points into the skill will see a reduction in the damage they do. In other words, anyone at level 30 can use a GA-15 Home Securer, but the player who put points in the skill will be much more deadly with it.

In addition to the changes to the existing skill lines we will be adding a new skill line for Heavy Weapons to allow players to get more out of their use. Because of the type of damage that these types of weapons will do, they will be the exception to the changes to the weapons skills-- in short, players will be required to put points into heavy weapons in order to use them.

Note: when these changes make the live servers they will be accompanied by the option of a full respec.

Past Alpha County:
While 99.9% of our focus has been on getting Alpha County finished and out the door, with the PTS patch looming, we’ve begun thinking of future systems and content. Following Alpha, the features we will be focusing on are:

Objective System: We’ve been working on a way to make global goals more apparent to players. For example, communicating to the world in general that a certain town is under faction control or which faction control points are being contested. This feature will allow us to fully implement…

World Events: We’ve been looking for ways to add more conflict to the world while providing dynamic content with significant rewards--Faction Control Points, Progress Towns and Scavenger Bosses are all part of this goal. The World Event system will allow special events to occur all over the map. The most common World Event will place a town or area under attack by hostile forces, but there are additional events being planned.

See you on the PTS
M