So the groundhog saw no shadow, looks like we're headed for spring and Alpha County; but first we've got a few more patches to get out to you guys.
The next patch, which will hit the PTS around the middle of February, will include skill and mutation changes, Scavenger Bosses, a large content area on the way to Sector 4 and several economy changes. Their appearance on the live server will depend on both internal and PTS testing.
Skill and Mutation changes:
In addition to new abilities (which I will get to in a sec), we have made changes to our technology which allows us to experiment more with effect functionality. One such capability allows use of prepared attacks with all weapons and also with the equipped weapons range.
For the skills themselves, we wanted to reduce the number of abilities in skill or mutation lines and create a unique feeling for each of them. We made some significant changes to the effects including renaming Telepathy to Illumination to better demonstrate the change in effects.
The new skills lines are:
Armor Use provides access to two skills in addition to its large passive bonus to resistances:
• Dreadnaught – This is a stance ability that increases Primary armor and decreases speed.
• Soak Elements – This is a stance ability that increases Secondary/Tertiary armor and decreases Primary armor.
Dirty Tricks offers:
• Dirty Steel – This is a prepared attack that reduces the target's armor and does damage over time.
• Kneecap – This is a prepared attack that reduces the target's speed.
Dodge gives a medium passive bonus by opposing the extra damage provided by the Precision, Power and Weapon skill lines. In addition to that bonus, it offers:
• Duck And Weave – This is a stance ability that converts a portion of damage taken into stamina damage.
Escape Artist is a defensive skill line that contains:
• Dash – A short speed increase.
• Shake It Off – This ability removes negative status effects and snares.
First Aid is a support set, with:
• Resuscitation – Resurrects your target.
• Stanch Wound – This heals your target and increases their health regeneration for an hour.
• Suck It Up – This ability will counter weak status effects and has a short cool-down. Multiple applications will remove stronger status effects.
• Renew – This ability will remove strong status effects and snares.
Group Tactics is also a support set, focused on auras:
• Give 'em Hell – This aura increases your team's Power.
• Offensive Coordination – This aura increases your team's critical chance and stamina regeneration, but reduces their ranged and melee defense.
• Combat Endurance – This aura increases your team's maximum stamina and gamma, as well as their stamina and gamma regeneration.
• Overwhelm – This lowers the target's armor, ranged defense and melee defense.
Melee, together with Precision and Power, determines your bonus critical chance and damage percentage when using Melee weapons and also offers:
• Charge – A short duration ability that gives a bonus to movement, speed and damage.
• Provoke – This ability will increase your threat and reduce your opponent's ranged/melee defense.
Pistol, together with Precision and Power, determines your bonus critical chance and damage percentage when using Pistol weapons and in addition contains:
• Smoking Sabot Round – This prepared attack adds a fire DoT onto your regular attack damage.
• Gunfighter – This toggled ability increases your Precision and Weapon skills, but decreases your melee and ranged defense.
Rifle, together with Precision and Power, determines your bonus critical chance and damage percentage when using Rifle weapons, plus:
• Agonizing Wound – This prepared attack slows your target.
• Bullseye – This prepared attack does additional damage.
Precision, together with the appropriate weapon skill, determines your chance for a critical hit and provides:
• Precise Hit – This is a prepared attack that does additional damage. It also reduces the speed of NPC targets.
• Perfect Timing – This is a short duration buff that increases your chance of a critical hit.
Power, together with the appropriate weapon skill, determines your bonus damage percentage and has:
• Attack Posture – This stance increases your damage.
• Dent Armor – This prepared attack temporarily reduces your target's armor. It will also stun NPCs.
Social, in addition to its financial benefits, is a personal aggression control set and has:
• Flag Of Truce – This stance prevents faction NPCs from seeing you as an enemy. NPCs who have already begun to attack you will not be fooled.
• Inconspicuous – This ability greatly lowers your threat from a targeted enemy.
• Diplomatic Immunity – While this short-duration ability is active, you are unable to take offensive action, but you have increased armor, melee defense and ranged defense.
Alpha Mutations are for players who do not yet have access to full mutations and will not continue to increase in rank once regular mutations can be unlocked. The available alpha mutations are:
• Disrupt – This targeted ability reduces your target's melee defense, ranged defense and save ratings for a short time.
• Patch – This is a self-only healing ability.
• Gird – This toggled ability raises your maximum health.
• Bolster – This toggled ability raises your maximum stamina and your damage.
Empathy is a support set with:
• Share Life – This combat resurrect ability brings a friend back to life faster than other such abilities, but it does so by lowering your own health.
• Benevolence – This is a direct healing ability which will restore health to you or a target, but the amount restored is greater when used on someone else.
• Restoration – This is a single target, short duration heal over time.
• Preservation – This ability removes status effects from the target. Strong status ailments will require more than one application.
Nano-Technology is an area of effect focused support set:
• Reconstruction – This resurrects friends in a cone-shaped area.
• Filtration – This ability requires you to aim at your target, but if you hit, it is a very strong status removal that also restores health.
• Vital Osmosis – This is a team-only heal in a cone-shaped area.
• Revitalize – This ability raises the health regeneration of all allies close to the caster.
Primal is a very physical mutation with:
• Primal Vigor – This toggled ability lowers your maximum gamma to raise your maximum health.
• Beast Might – This prepared attack costs health, but deals extra damage and has a short cool-down.
• Rampage – This ability raises your damage and health for a few seconds and then leaves you weakened.
Sonic is a damage-focused set with:
• Sonic Lance – This ability must be aimed at your target, but if you hit, it will cause sonic damage.
• Rending Vibrations – This ability sends out sonic waves that cause damage over time in a cone-shaped area.
• Catastrophic Dissonance – This ability does damage to those nearby.
Thermal is a damage skill set:
• Cold Snap – This will damage your target with cold.
• Hypothermia – This will cause your target to take cold damage every second for a duration.
• Napalm – This will cause your target to take fire damage over time for a short duration.
• Molotov Cocktail – This will cause fire damage to your target, but has a long cool-down.
Telekinesis is focused around aimed mutation attacks, with:
• Bend Metal – If you hit with this attack it will reduce your target's armor.
• Propel – This has a long cool-down, but does high damage if it hits.
• Always Armed – This is a shorter cool-down attack that does lower damage when it hits.
Suppression is a redistribution support set containing:
• Denial – This lowers your target's maximum stamina and gamma.
• Sap Stamina – This steals some of your target's stamina and adds to your team's.
• Siphon Energy – This steals some of your target's gamma and adds to your team's.
Patho-Transmission is a support set that debuffs your opponents:
• Sapping Sickness – This is a small targeted area of effect ability that reduces the speed of those hit by it.
• Wracking Pains – This ability lowers your target's regeneration.
• Debilitating Weakness – This causes those around you to suffer lowered Power and weapon skills, reducing their damage.
Illumination is a support line providing additional resources and regeneration:
• Endless Reserves – This toggle raises your maximum gamma and stamina, but lowers your maximum health.
• Meditation – This aura raises your team's stamina and gamma regeneration.
Enhancement is a support line with additional personal defense:
• Calibration – This aura increases your team's primary armor.
• Ablate – This stance raises your armor.
• Resilience – This aura raises your team's saves.
Scavenger Boss Area
A new area called Ruination will be opened up for players. This is a large area on the way to The Wall that marks the border of Sector 4. The Art team created a new ecosystem, several camps and encounter areas while the Programming and Scripting teams added new creature behaviors such as longer patrol paths, following a leader and barrels that explode when shot. The Content team has added a new Road Rally, missions and achievements. This area offers a preview of some of the new technology and methods that are being used to create Alpha County.
I've included some screenshots for your viewing enjoyment:
http://www.fallenearth.com/sites/def...fe_sotg_03.jpg
http://www.fallenearth.com/sites/def...fe_sotg_05.jpg
http://www.fallenearth.com/sites/def...fe_sotg_02.jpg
Economic Improvements:
We've started the overall changes to the economy by addressing the availability of certain resources as well as item costs. Some recipes were excessive chip sinks, while others were unbalancing the economy by providing far too many chips for the effort expended on them. We will be bringing these more in line with their actual cost to produce.
We are also working on adjusting node drop-rates as well as refining what components are dropped from specific nodes. We started by creating more nodes specifically for geological and botanical chemicals to reduce the chance that players would gather an unwanted resource from a node.
We've also lowered the component prices overall.
Social Channels:
We will be implementing more options for social chat, making it easier for players to find groups and socialize in the game.
February Events
We have a couple really fun Valentine’s Day events planned this year. The first is with some of my favorite people, the bad-ass chicks of Gamer Girls Radio. They will be giving away the Old Betsy rocket launcher, one of my new favorite items.
The second event is our Valentine's Day Massacre. We've got some fun missions that reward players with an item that is so very FE that I almost cried a little—The Heartbreaker. What better way to celebrate than to give someone your heart.
Thanks to our marketing divas, we have been given an exciting opportunity to include some of our favorite bands into the wasteland. With that said, we’re working on some big plans with our favorite heavy-metal record label—prepare yourselves!
Community Questions:
What happened to Progress Towns?
Progress Towns needed to go back to the drawing board for improvements. Looking at the schedule and the resources we would need to invest, we came to the decision that the Scavenger Bosses could be implemented more effectively in less time, which also gives us the opportunity to make the changes needed to the Progress Towns. We want to keep the focus on quality, not just quantity, of content.
How's the game doing?
We're steadily growing our subscribers. It's been very cool to see all the new faces in the game and to watch them learn the basics from our existing player base. We're very proud of our community and are working with the GM team to maintain a fun game experience for both veteran and new members.
What about faction changes?
We've started the faction changes by removing faction requirements from mutations and abilities. We are still working with the ways players earn faction and how we want to change those mechanics to benefit the players.
What do you guys do about players accused of cheating/griefing/harassing?
We take every accusation very seriously and investigate them thoroughly. Gathering proof that a player has been breaking the rules is a time consuming, but necessary process and once it's complete, if infractions are found, we take all necessary measures to ensure that the offending player receives the appropriate consequences, depending on the severity of the incident. We do not discuss these consequences with anyone other than the offending player. We will continue to do this to protect all parties involved and ensure Fallen Earth remains a fun, fair gameplay environment.
Marie
