Update of the Avatar #82 – 2014.07.18: PvP, Discourse Orb, Winged Helm, Crowdsourcing Music, Player Town Hangout, Flexible Placement Stretch Goal, and More!

Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

• Are You Ready for some PvP?
• Dev+ Early Early Release 8 Access
• Lord Reward: Noble’s Magical Discourse Orb
• Knight Marshal Winged Helm
• Row House Expansion
• Crowdsourcing Music Update
• Hangout of the Avatar Developer Roundtable ~ Player Owned Towns
• Flexible Placement Stretch Goal
• Alienware Sponsors 1000 Access Keys and Prizes for Release 8
• World Builder/Level Designer Job Opening
• Upcoming Events

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Are You Ready for some PvP?

There’s only 5 days left until Release 8 launches and all of you get to experience the PvP that’s been dominating the dev team’s attention for the past month. The team’s 30 minute PvP play sessions every morning are growing longer and longer as we’re having too much fun to stop (well, at least the ones that aren’t spending most of their time face down on the arena floor are having too much fun to stop)!

Here’s a recent list of PvP changes that Chris Spears posted on the Dev+ Forums:

• Improved combat tracking for damage source type (per spell/skill)
• Option to allow you to click yourself or click through yourself for better targeting control in close quarters.
• Casting bar added so spells that can be interrupted now show how far into casting you are
• Fix for losing target with right+left click move
• Focus regen changed to start 10 seconds after last ability that used focus instead 10 seconds after you leave combat
• Fix for locked slots not showing runes sometimes
• Added slow sliding out for runes over 2 seconds to give visual indications when they are about to vanish
• Added fast animation in for runes when they are dealt so they catch your eye
• Fix for having full bar of dead icons when re-entering combat after leaving it
• Fix to make runes useable while sliding/fading out
• Update to UI for locked runesto make them bordered
• Casting bar doubled in size for visibility during hectic battles
• Add focus cost penalty for Locked runes
• Make Locked runesstart in cooldown mode on combat start
• Add cool down penalty for Locked runes
• Stop movement when start casting an interruptible spell. (Can interrupt it and start moving by lifting and pressing again)
• Lengthened Healing Ray cast time
• Fix for triggering rapid attacks by moving in circles around the player
• Low ammo indicator on screen to show when you’re low on ammo (and in the future, reagents, damaged armor, damaged weapons, etc.)
• Added controls for card drawing speed
• Added controls for duration of runes before vanishing
• Added controls for size of hand (runes in play)
• Added controls for changing number of locked slots in use
• Added option to play with ALL locked slots to simulate older games for old people who think slow. Also known as “Dallas Mode”
• Fix for bug that caused runes to deal faster and faster over time! This was exciting…
• Allow for deck swapping during combat with focus use
• Slug icon added!
• Slug logic added to add slugs to fill out deck to minimum number of runes if the user doesn’t have enough runes.
• Added linking of gear to decks so that gear is saved with each deck
• Deck serialization to save on servers when online
• More additions to right click context menu
• Enforce skill prerequisites in skill trees (had been off for testing but needed to turn this on for our Devplus play test on Monday)
• Fix for secondary effects of fireball ignoring distance to target
• Added small focus use for jump
• Added chance for jump to break root/stun/knockdown. You can try twice a second with around a 20% break chance with the stats we’ll be starting players with. Pound away!
• Increase data send rate when in combat for faster reactions
• Removed corpse explosion for players….for now
• Added equipment requirements for innate skills
• New rune options for cost/effect tied to ongoing concentration time (example, life drain ray that goes as long as you let me continue to cast without interruption)
• Allow for unarmed combat if no ammo in off hand for ranged weapons. Punch is better than nothing
• Toggling autorun now breaks following
• Make dashes camera relative
• Added slug data to all armor
• Added fizzle data to all armor
• Added fire elemental for summoning
• Reduced fireball range
• Fixed Douse so it removes fire DOT
• Created new skill tree for focus related skills (swapping speed, hand size, focus pool size, etc.)
• Added full screen effect for stuns and roots
• Sped up auto attacks
• PLUS Enough little bug fixes and tweaks not listed here to make it an even Bazillion changes…

Here are some screen shots from the dev team’s recent PvP play sessions:

 

Darkstarr got stunned in this shot, hence the blurred effect (both Starr and I get a LOT of practice being stunned during these sessions):

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Dev+ Early Early Release 8 Access

To help us with bug hunting and PvP balancing we’re opening up Release 8 for a few hours to our Developer and above backers at 4:00 pm CST Monday, July 21st. So please get your game patched up and help us get R8 ready for its main release on July 24th.

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Lord Reward: Noble’s Magical Discourse Orb

One of the new Lord pledge rewards is the Noble’s Magical Discourse Orb. A mysterious object that grants you access to a Nobility chat channel. All Game Devs have Discourse Orbs as well and are on the same chat channel.

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Knight Marshal Winged Helm

Included in the recently added Knight Marshal pledge is this Winged Helm reward. A starting level helm that includes precious metals and jewels that can be used to enchant the helm. Comes with permanent enchantment of being a light source.

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Row House Expansion

Michael Hutchison and the world building team have begun integrating Row Home Lots (included in the Ancestor pledge rewards and above) into villages and towns across New Britannia. Here’s an example of the new Row Home lots that have been placed in Owl’s Head:

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Crowdsourcing Music Update

We’ve received some awesome music from the community, some of which you’ve already heard in the game or on AvatarsRadio.com. Lord British has completed the music assets list, which will help to provide more direction to specific pieces we need, as well as the payment per piece. Also, Gina “Firelotus” has been working with Holt Ironfell to further clarify the submission and review process. All the relevant information can now be found in the Bards of Poet’s Circle Forum area. Here’s an excerpt from the Music Submission Process thread in that forum:

Please follow this procedure when submitting your musical compositions:

1. Consult the Crowdsource Music Request List + Naming & Placement Guide to see if any of the pieces available capture your musical imagination.
2. Develop a sound sample (basic idea and/or chord structure) for the piece you would like to claim. Upload it to Soundcloud.
3. Send a PM to Holt with FireLotus cc’ed with the title “Music Submission: <category from Spreadsheet> <Title from Spreadsheet> <date>”. Include a link to the sound cloud file for your song sample in the PM request along a (optional) short description of your proposed idea.
4. Once the PM is sent, we will review your request and send an approval/denial notice (depending on if it has been claimed, not quite what we’re looking for, etc).
5. From that time, you have 7 days to complete and upload the final track. That track will be marked as “lockedout” on the music spreadsheet for those 7 days, or until completed and approved, whichever is sooner.
6. The final track will be reviewed, and if it meets our criteria, it will be forwarded to Richard and the SotA Team for final review and approval.
7. If the final piece does not meet the criteria needed for official review, the lockout will be lifted and the spot will be up for grabs again. You are welcome to continue refining the piece, but you must wait 5 days before requesting that track again. Once a lockout is lifted, anyone else can claim that track.

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Hangout of the Avatar Developer Roundtable ~ Player Owned Towns

Richard Garriott, Starr Long, and Chris Spears hosted another Hangout of the Avatar earlier today, where they had an in-depth discussion regarding Player Owned Towns. The community posted lots of great questions so if you weren’t able to attend then be sure and check out the video:

Player Owned Towns FAQ

We’ve recently updated our FAQ to include the following information on Player Owned Towns:

Will I be able to choose where the lots can be placed?
We will be building the player towns from templates and modifying them based on requests. Players can submit a general layout request and we will get as close as we can based on our starting templates.

Can players help design their towns, even what kind of biome it has?
We will be building the player towns from templates and modifying them based on requests. Players can submit detailed requests, like biomes, and we will get as close as we can based on our starting templates.

Can town owners select their NPC buildings? Will I also be able to decide where they are placed?
Yes, players can pick which NPC buildings they want (number of buildings based on town size). We will be building the player towns from templates and modifying them based on requests. Players can submit layout requests for the town including NPC building location and we will get as close as we can based on our starting templates.

Do we get to create the lore for our town and name the NPC’s?
Yes!

Can we pick where our Town is located in Novia?
Yes, players can request a location for their town. As stated in the Add-on Store, the location will be limited to roughly the “quadrant of the map”. Exact hex location will be determined by Portalarium. This is because we have to place and balance them around plot points, dungeons, and adventure areas.

Can a Town be upgraded? If so, how will that work?
For Episode 1, upgrading to a bigger town from an already established town will require replacing the old map with a new, larger map. This means players will have to store and move their houses from the old map to the new map

Does a town generate income for the owner? Do we get a part of the tax on used lots or make money from our vendors?
For Episode 1, we currently do not plan to have these towns generate income for the owner via the game systems. However players are free to earn income by renting the lots in their town to other players.

How will sieges effect player towns?
Though it was not in our origional design to have seiges impact player towns, but if players think this would be fun we could expand the sieges to include player towns. However, some PvP options will be available to Town Owner.

Can I flag my player town as an Open PVP Zone?
Yes you can! *cue wild west music*

When can I start my design session with the team?
We will be contacting town owners in the next few months to get this process started.

How will you schedule the design sessions and how will deal with conflicts of location and name requests?
We will be honoring requests based on town size and purchase date. Example: Metropolis owners will go first and they will be sorted by purchase date with oldest purchase having highest priority.

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Flexible Placement Stretch Goal

This week we’re adding Flexible Placement of Structures to the Stretch Goal Store. For this stretch goal, players will be able to place multiple structures on a single lot. Players can also rotate and move structures versus a fixed location. This will be a GREAT stretch goal that will allow player built towns to really look amazing. For example: On large central lots of town, guilds could build shared services and town squares, on castle lots, players could host an array of guest structures and services in their courtyards, even more modest lots could be built out as twin towers versus a single house.

The flexible lot placement items available for purchase are a small and large Knight’s tent, a garden shed, a greenhouse, and stables. Here are the items we currently have images for:

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Alienware Sponsors 1000 Access Keys and Prizes for Release 8

1000 members of Alienware’s Shroud of the Avatar Group have been granted early access to Release 8 (July 24-27). Hurry over and join the Alienware Shroud of the Avatar Group so you don’t miss out on their next Weekend Access Giveaway: http://na.alienwarearena.com/giveaways/shroud-of-the-avatar-release-8-key-giveaway

In addition, Alienware is sponsoring prizes to be given away randomly to players that log in to Release 8 during the weekend access period. Stay tuned to a future update for more details…

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Alienware Sponsors $20 Pledge Upgrade Coupon

Alienware’s powerful gaming rigs are a perfect match for Shroud of the Avatar! To show their support, Alienware is sponsoring $20 SotA Pledge Upgrade Coupons to members of their Alienware Arena community!

These coupons can be used to start a SotA pledge account (for new backers), or to add $20 to an existing pledge account. If, for example, you have a $90 Royal Artisan Pledge, you can use the Alienware coupon to bump you up to a $110 Virtual Collector Pledge.

Pretty sweet deal, right? So, hurry over to the Alienware Arena website and get your $20 Pledge Upgrade Coupon now!

[NOTE: Only one Alienware Pledge Upgrade Coupon can be used per account. Coupon does not apply to Add-On Store items]

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World Builder/Level Designer Job Opening

We currently have an opening for a mid-level to senior-level World Builder/Level Designer for Shroud of the Avatar. Qualifications for the “ideal candidate” are:

• Minimum 3 years industry experience (preferably on a shipped game)
• Unity experience
• Scripting ability
• Experience building, texturing, and decorating natural, terrain based exterior environments
• An eye for detail, with strong scene compositional skills

If you’d like to join the Portalarium Tribe working on the ground-breaking Shroud of the Avatar, please submit your resume to jobs@portalarium.com. Provide links to your work (if possible), either as actual game play or in document form including images, maps, and event descriptions.

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Upcoming Events

2014.07.24 – Release 8 Access
2014.07.30 – Monthly Video Hangout: R8 & R9 Discussion
2014.08.09 – SotA at synDCon
2014.08.21 – Release 9 Access
2014.08.27 – Monthly Video Hangout: R9 & R10 Discussion
2014.08.29 – SotA at PAX Prime Seattle
2014.08.29 – SotA at Dragoncon
2014.09.25 – Release 10 Access
2014.10.01 – Monthly Video Hangout: R10 & R11 Discussion
2014.10.23 – Release 11 Access
2014.10.24 – SotA at Captivate
2014.10.29 – Monthly Video Hangout: R11 & R12 Discussion
2014.11.14 – Duke & Lord of the Manor VIP Design Roundtable with Lord British and Portalarium Studio Tour
2014.11.15 – HoBLotH II: Legends of the Hearth
2014.11.20 – Release 12 Access
2014.11.26 – Monthly Video Hangout: R12 & R13 Discussion
2014.12.18 – Release 13 Access

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