Nov 30, 2018

Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark - 6 Eyes Studio

This week's build has our Intro Movie updated with awesome Voice Over. It sounds pretty great, give it a listen!

Other than that, we added about 50 new SFX to the game, fixed some bugs and made some small balance changes.

Here are the highlights:

Intro Movie: The intro movie has been updated with Voice Acting.
SFX: Adding over 50 new SFX.
Patented Usage: Doesn't work with Manastone anymore.
Loot drops: Many of the special drops had a wrong chance of dropping, which resulted in higher odds than normal. This is fixed, but it does mean that the current odds could be too low now. We'll have to monitor.

As always, the full change log is at the end of the post (as well as in-game in the Patchnotes section).

Progress Report

This week was our last week working on dialogues. All of the game's dialogues have been created, minus the ending, as we're still working out some details on that front. At this point though, we're pretty sure we'll have 2 possible endings.
That was a LOT of dialogue writing and we're glad to be moving on to something else, quite honestly.

Starting next week, we'll be splitting our time between console work, cutscenes and balance updates for the next month.

We also want to give a big Thank You! to the community for the great feedback and suggestions we've been receiving lately! Thank you very much for taking the time!

We have a TON of balance changes we want to get in from all that feedback, but it's going to take a little bit before we can get it all in.
Stay tuned :)

On the art front, we've been working on the "end game" maps (so we can't show them, too many spoilers) and new spell effects.
We've started work on our next "big scale summon spell" too. Here's the basic sketch of it:

It should be pretty epic when it's finished!

Change log:

11/30/2018 - Version 0.5.2

New Content and Features:

Intro Movie: The intro movie has been updated with Voice Acting.
SFX: Adding over 50 new SFX.

Balance:

Patented Usage: Doesn't work with Manastone anymore.
Monsters Resistances: Updated some enemies resistances to better spread elemental weaknesses and strength for the mid game.
Strangled Cove: Changing a Water Buldrake to a Fire Buldrake in a Patrol.
Plague Doctor: Changing Poison burst to be a Square rather than Cross. Reducing MP cost to 10 (from 14) and decreasing damage to 0.9x (from 1x).
Werewolf:
- Leap: Changed the cost to 8 from 6.
- Fetid Breath: Reducing Weaken's base chance to proc from 100 to 75%. Increasing damage to 0.95 from 0.75 and changing the ability from a skill to a spell (so it's now magical).
- Howl: Increasing damage to 1 from 0.5.
- Blood Trophy: Changing the range to "weapon range".
- Cunning Slash: Adding missing ability. It deals 0.75x damage to a single target in melee range, bypasses all counters and has 100% hit chance always.
Gadgeteer: Changing Surpriser-Plus to be single target, but do 0.9x damage with a 10 MP cost.
Kawa: Changed Swarm Strike to ignore flanks and have lower base damage, but higher damage for more allies.
Loot drops: Many of the special drops had a wrong chance of dropping, which resulted in higher odds than normal. This is fixed, but it does mean that the current odds could be too low now. We'll have to monitor.

UI:

Descriptions: Updating Blessed One and Focus description to make it more explicit if they work or not with items.
Dialogues: More dialogue cleanup.

Bug Fixes:

Blessed One: Fixing an issue where Blessed One would restore HP to the caster for restoring MP to another character.
Weapons Debuff: Fixing an issue where weapons with a debuff chance would use the ability's chance instead for abilities that make use of the weapon's debuff.
Godstears Waste: Fixing some issue with the Event on that map, as well as with some of the special enemies on there (ignoring Rebirth effects and not giving Injuries to dead units).
Worm Battle: Fixing an issue where Rebirth might not trigger when a character would be killed by certain abilities.
Menus: Fixed a minor visual issue when unlocking more than 1 class at once from learning an ability.
Kapawka Jungle: Fixing a bug where having your whole team die would result in a Victory rather than Defeat.

Hotfix:

Fixing an issue with certain save files where some of the later levels wouldn't appear on the map.

Nov 30, 2018

INTELLIGENCE ANNEX: THE DIVISION 2 SKILLS

Tom Clancy’s The Division™ - [UBI]Insulin

Agents!

Welcome to the third Intelligence Annex—our series of detailed development blogs covering all aspects of The Division 2. This month, we are covering five different skill categories: the Chem Launcher, Drone, Hive, Seeker Mine, and Turret. Each skill category comes in several variants with very different gameplay and effects. These are just some of the skills you can expect to see on March 15th, so prepare for more options and build customization! If you are new to The Division 2, skills are specialized abilities that change the way you play the game. They provide advantages in combat that directly affect the outcome of your engagements. Whether you want to specialize in offensive abilities or roll full utility, the choice is yours.

CHEM LAUNCHER

First on the list is a new skill that we are introducing in The Division 2—the Chem Launcher. As a grenade launcher inspired weapon, the Chem Launcher fires various ampules of chemicals in an arc that disperse into a cloud on impact and linger to cause unique and devastating effects. When you have the Chem launcher equipped, you can choose between four different chemical charges:

Firestarter

The Firestarter canister sends out flammable, near-invisible gas. These gas clouds can be ignited with any spark—bullet impacts, enemies firing their weapons inside the cloud, explosions or even enemies running into them while on fire. If you combine multiple clouds over a large area, you can create devastating chain reactions.

Riot Foam

This skill fires a canister with riot control foam that disperses on impact. This is the same riot foam as you have seen the True Sons use in the E3 demo. The foam is sticky, heavy, and it expands rapidly. Anyone affected by the foam is stuck in place for a period of time, but the hardened foam can be destroyed to break them free.

Oxidizer

The Oxidizer fires a canister that emits a cloud of corrosive chemicals. The chemical cloud lingers for a long time and efficiently eats away at enemy armor or any enemy mechanical items.

Reinforcer

The Reinforcer fires a projectile that detonates and disperses an armor repairing cloud. If this powder hits you or your teammates, it restores an amount of your armor. Powder that sticks on the ground grants armor restoration over time. You have the ability to heal your friends very fast, or even yourself over time.

DRONE

In The Division 2, we have drones! When deployed, the drones hover around your shoulder and follow you around. Depending on what drone you equip, it can stay passively by your side until assigned an order or it can automatically target your enemies and even friends in some cases. There are five different categories of the drone:

Striker

As suggested by the name, this is an offensive version of the Drone. Built for combat, the Striker possesses a turret that inflicts continuous damage upon its target. This drone can receive remote orders from its controller to attack specific targets.

Defender

The Defender is a defensive drone that protects its owner by utilizing an experimental directed emitter. It deflects incoming bullets with microwave bursts, creating an invisible barrier. However, each bullet deflected greatly drains the battery, and it is incapable of defending itself from enemy fire. It can, however, be ordered to guard friends or other friendly skill items.

Tactician

Built for intel, this utility drone flies to maximum elevation at a location of your choosing and spots all hostiles it can see, effectively highlighting their location. While deployed, it gives you and your party continuous information about the position of the enemies within your area. This is the Specialist skill for the Sharpshooter Specialization.

Bombardier

This drone can perform a bombing run across a long area. The drone flies to an area designated by the player and drops a barrage of explosives as it strafes from one end of the zone to the other.

Fixer

This defensive drone repairs armor over time. You can choose whether you want it to fly next to you and passively repair your armor, or choose a friendly target whose armor needs repairing, including other damaged skills.

HIVE

Also new to The Division 2 is the Hive—a group of advanced micro-drones that deliver special effects to their targets. You either place or throw the Hive, which affects targets within its radius. While most Hive categories are used primarily for defensive measures, there are offensive alternatives to suit all playstyles:

Stinger

Micro-drones swarm hostile targets that enter their range, inflicting damage and targeting weak spots, destroying them efficiently.

Restorer

When the Restorer detects missing armor on a friendly agent in its range, it deploys micro-repair drones towards the agent. On impact, an amount of armor is repaired.

Booster

The Booster sends out one micro-drone per friendly player that administers stimulants to increase combat efficiency—boosting weapon handling, movement and other physical capabilities of the agent.

Reviver

When deployed, the Reviver Hive can revive allies within a specific radius on the ground. If any of your downed allies are within the range of your Reviver Hive, you can manually order a set of micro-drones to revive them. However, you can also press and hold the button to charge up the micro-drones. The longer you hold the button, the more health and armor your ally revives with.

SEEKER MINE

Here is a skill every Division Agent should recognize — Seeker Mines! These spherical, self-propelled ordnance delivery devices are returning in The Division 2 with more features and abilities. These mines use sensors that allow them to target hostiles — or friendlies — as needed to perform various effects. You can activate Seeker Mines by dropping them to the ground or throwing them straight into the action. Each category offers something new to Agents in the field:

Explosive

This classic seeker mine chases the target, designated by the owner, and detonates with a staggering explosion. However, it can be avoided as there is a slight arming time before it explodes.

Airburst

This mine rolls to your designated area and then launches an explosive burst into the air at head height of the enemy when reaching proximity.

Mender

Similar to the Reinforcer Chem Launcher, this friendly little seeker mine releases repair chemicals. These chemicals form a cloud that repairs your armor or that of an ally. If you have not chosen a specific target for the Mender Seeker Mine, allies that lose all their armor are automatically targeted by the mine. This is the Specialist skill for the Survivalist Specialization.

Cluster

The Cluster contains a number of smaller charges in one package, each capable of propelling itself. When deployed, each of the smaller mines picks a target and sets off towards it. However, these smaller mines are easier to avoid as they do not have room for advanced tracking equipment and cannot adjust their destination if their target moves.

TURRET

The last skill on today's list is no stranger to Division players — the turret. This compact, self-unfolding device tracks and shoots designated targets. Turrets can be placed next to you with a quick-press of the Skill button or thrown a short distance with a long-press. Let's discuss turret variants:

Assault

Similar to the Striker Drone, this skill is designed with offensive players in mind. Equipped with a machine gun turret with 360-degree rotational capabilities, this skill attacks the closest target while you are in combat. Outside of combat, you designate your turret's targets.

Incinerator

If you enjoy crowd control, this skill is for you! Equipped with an incendiary tank, the Incinerator ignites fuel and fires it in a cone to deal area-of-effect damage. This turret can be toggled on and off when deployed.

Artillery

The Artillery is a specialized deployable that launches exploding ordinances at locations of your choice. Firing once per press, shells are launched in an arc at a target position. This is the Specialist skill for the Demolitionist.

Sniper

This long range, semi-automatic turret targets the same enemy you are engaging. While there is a slight delay on target acquisition, the Sniper can adjust its aim to match your own aim on the target.

Remember that the game is still under development and all the names and details are subject to change.

Which of these skills are you most excited to use on launch day? Be sure to join us over on the Official Forums or on the community Reddit to discuss today's article; we would love to hear your thoughts! We will be releasing these articles regularly, so remember to keep an eye out!

/The Division Dev Team

Nov 30, 2018

Producer Blog - State of the Game Week 7 - Part 2

Community Announcements - ColonelPanic

Dear Maplers,

As we have promised to share more details about the Sky Fortress, we are sharing part 2 of the blog today with more information on Phase 1 of the Skybound Expansion. The MapleStory 2 studio looked into progression as a whole and finalized the structure for the Sky Fortress content yesterday.

Not only that, but the studio has been actively reviewing the overall gear progression data for the past few weeks, and have finally confirmed one addition to the current dungeon. Please understand that sometimes we cannot disclose anything until we review and finalize details. Since dungeon changes can impact the overall speed of gear progression, which can impact the overall lifecycle of the game, the team here and at the dev studio have been pulling data and tracking gear score distribution every week to see the trend. And as of last night, we could confirm that we want to experiment with some things in the December 6th update.

Since everyone is really focused on the Hard Adventure Dungeon structure change, let me get to the dungeon change first.

Hard Adventure Dungeon Change

I wouldn’t call this particular part a change, but more an experiment to test the speed of gear progression in the form of an event. You’ll see this experiment in action from the newly added item in the reward lists of Hard Adventure Dungeons with the tag “EVENT”. Again, this is more of an experiment, but we decided to use the already existing “EVENT” tag for now.

Starting with the December 6th update, all the Hard Adventure Dungeons will be dropping an item called Toad's Toolkit Fragment (final name TBD). You will be getting 10 fragments per dungeon clear, and with 20 fragments, you will be able to create a Toad's Toolkit (final name TBD). This stone can be consumed instead of a copy of gear that you need to use when enchanting Epic gear. This stone essentially works like a wildcard, and can be used for any armor or weapon.

This is identical to getting 30 pieces of gear of your class and type (including weapons) which can be used for enchanting. This item was sold for NX in another region, but we are testing this in the dungeons as a drop to see how the inclusion of this item changes overall progression for the Epic gear.

This will be run as an event until January 10th. Before the event ends, we will evaluate how this change impacted overall progression and will announce the next steps after that.

This item was already in review by the MapleStory 2 dev studio for the past few weeks, and we’ve reached a decision and finalized the plan yesterday.

To summarize:

Newly proposed three-step Hard Adventure Dungeon will stay the same

We respect the MapleStory 2 dev studio’s design direction to get new players started in dungeons by letting players focus on the different parts of gear that they need step-by-step. This allows the community to go through a variety of dungeon contents earlier
This design will create a more structured flow to have players go through each dungeon and choose which dungeon to play based on their gear situation. For example, we are expecting players with high gear scores and Legendary gear will play the dungeons that have a shorter playing time to collect resources and players who need to focus on weapons to play the dungeons with weapons. Players who want to re-roll their optional stats for their already enchanted gear will play the dungeon with Re-roller fragments.

Addition of Epic Todd’s Enchanting Stone Fragments will be run as an experiment for over a month with the tag of “EVENT” to test the progression

Before January 10th, we will be reviewing the data and will provide information on the next steps
Depending on the data, we will be coming up with new system improvements or will continue with the experiment if we need more data points to better assess the gear progression design

I would like to emphasize that it is very tricky to make changes to intricate systems, especially when the game has been released and has already gone through a large number of changes. The development studio spent a very long time coming up with the specifics of MapleStory 2’s progression system, and as we work to improve it we need to make sure that the new models will work well.

We hope this month-long experiment can give the studio enough of data to make a decision on next steps, and create a better experience for the game going forward.

On top of this changes, weekly mission and Sky Fortress content will provide more things for players to work on to get the items you need for gear progression. Please see the details of Sky Fortress contents below!

Sky Fortress Contents

As mentioned in the previous blog, a new adventure is inbound and Maplers will soon experience Sky Fortress and faction missions! In today’s blog, we’ll give you a spoiler-free sneak peek at what the Sky Fortress is and the effect it has on Maple World!

Starting at level 50, you can begin your Sky Fortress adventures and gain favor from 5 powerful groups maintaining the safety and order of the citizens. For those planning to join the Alliance with Soul Binder using Level 50 potion that we are giving out, fear not! The Sky Fortress Epic Quests can be started at level 50 independent of previous Epic Quest progresses.

With the Sky Fortress, you can take on Field Missions, Daily Missions, and Weekly Missions for each faction. You can complete the following number of missions per faction:

Field Missions: 1 per day, 7 per week
Daily Missions: 5 per day, 35 per week
Weekly Missions: 3 per week

When you take the mission, you will be earning a reputation, and reputation will progress in the order of “Known” → “Trusted” → “Respected” → “Beloved” → “Revered”.

A certain level of reputation is required for you to participate in the mission as below:

Green Hoods: Available from the start.
Lumiknights: Available from the start.
Dark Wind: Available when your reputation for Green Hoods and Lumiknights is Trusted (Lv. 2). Achievable in 1 week.
Royal Guard: Available when your reputation for Dark Wind is Trusted (Lv. 2). Achievable in 2 weeks.
Maple Alliance: Available when your reputation for Royal Guard is Trusted (Lv. 2). Achievable in 3 weeks.

Also, by doing missions for each faction, you will be obtaining tokens that can be used to purchase items from the Faction Shops. You will be able to collect up to 1,260 Tokens per faction per week, and the items you can buy from each Faction Shop will include those listed below (a detailed list to be revealed with the patch notes):

Please note: you will be getting a weapon of your class when you purchase the weapon box from the faction shop. Also, all items will be Character Bound, except the Souvenirs)

Green Hood Shop - Green Hood Tokens

1,080 Tokens: Lv.50 Legendary Shoes Bonus Value Re-roller (1 per character per week)
450 Tokens: Exquisite Headgear/Gloves/Shoes Selection Box (Epic) (2 per character per week)
20 Tokens: Blue Crystal (2 per character per week)
20 Tokens: Green Crystal (2 per character per week)
20 Tokens: 100x Crystal Fragment (3 per character per week)

Lumiknights Shop - Lumiknights Tokens

1,080 Tokens: Lv.50 Legendary Gloves Bonus Value Re-roller (1 per character per week)
450 Tokens: Exquisite Headgear/Gloves/Shoes Selection Box (Epic) (2 per character per week)
20 Tokens: Blue Crystal (2 per character per week)
20 Tokens: Green Crystal (2 per character per week)
20 Tokens: 100x Crystal Fragment (3 per character per week)

Dark Wind Shop - Dark Wind Tokens

1,080 Tokens: Lv.50 Legendary Headgear Bonus Value Re-roller (1 per character per week)
450 Tokens: Murpagoth Warrior Weapon Box, Ancient Rune Weapon Box, MSL Onyx Weapon Box (2 per character per week for each type of weapon box)
20 Tokens: Blue Crystal (2 per character per week)
20 Tokens: Green Crystal (2 per character per week)
20 Tokens: 100x Crystal Fragment (3 per character per week)

Royal Guard Shop - Royal Guard Tokens

1,220 Tokens: Lv.50 Legendary Bottoms Bonus Value Re-roller (1 per character per week)
450 Tokens: Exquisite Top/Bottom Selection Box (Epic) (2 per character per week)
20 Tokens: Blue Crystal (2 per character per week)
20 Tokens: Green Crystal (2 per character per week)
20 Tokens: 100x Crystal Fragment (3 per character per week)

Maple Alliance Shop - Maple Alliance Tokens

1,220 Tokens: Lv.50 Legendary Top Bonus Value Re-roller (1 per character per week)
450 Tokens: Absolute Accessory Random Box (Epic) (2 per character per week)
20 Tokens: Blue Crystal (2 per character per week)
20 Tokens: Green Crystal (2 per character per week)
20 Tokens: 100x Crystal Fragment (3 per character per week)

This new content will provide players with a variety of different gameplay experience, while supplying a large amount of supplies to help overall gameplay progression. Please look out for more details on the Sky Fortress with the upcoming patch notes!

Meso Seller & Bots

I have been seeing feedback regarding the overall restriction putting into the black market and the Crystal Fragments. We understand the inconvenience players will be going through, but after a thorough review, we decided to pull the trigger after ensuring it does not impact the normal gameplay.

The vast majority of transactions under level 50 and 60 at the Black Market were used by Meso Sellers, creating or transferring mesos to the RMT buyers. I assure you, we do have all the logs from Black Market who sold which item at what price, and our filters can easily catch who is making suspicious transactions with meso sellers. Please refrain from purchasing meso from these sellers.

We will be reviewing more measures which can solve the issue without creating too much friction on the player’s end, and will provide more updates later on.

We look forward to see everyone in game with the Skybound Expansion next week. The team here is working hard to prepare everything for the update, and to ensure that we have don’t face any technical issues with the major expansion.

Cheers,
Jungsoo Lee & LAMBCOOK