IdleMMO v0.31.1-PB - 6th December 2024
Celebrate IdleMMO's first birthday with a unique birthday cake that is given to everybody in the game*.
To read more about the last year of IdleMMO, check out our blog post here:
https://blog.galahadcreative.com/idlemmo-a-year-in-review/
In this update, we’re focusing on addressing concerns about the effectiveness of equipment in the battle system. As noted in a prior update, the recent battle rework made enemies significantly stronger, which has highlighted a new issue - equipment feel almost ineffective. On top of that, players have been relying heavily on food during battles, turning combat into an unexpectedly costly action.
To address this, we are essentially buffing every single equipment by buffing it's range. The range is from the weakest to strongest. For example, if the range of the sword's Attack Power is 1 -> 250, then that means the weakest sword is 1 and the strongest sword is 250. All weapons within that range (for example, mid-level weapons) will also receive a boost. However, please note that this is strictly not incremental. This also means that equipment at the lower end of the spectrum will receive less "buffs" than those at the higher end.
Our concern with bows is that they were rendered almost pointless in the previous set-up - having pretty much zero utility and no reason to opt for a bow - they served very little purpose. In order to achieve our goal of giving each weapon type a different utility, we have decided to shift the purpose of the bow to be slightly stronger than a sword in outright attack, and to now marginally improve the characters hunting efficiency.
These changes give each weapon its own distinct utility, depending on the type of gameplay you prefer.
Swords: Although they don’t deliver the highest damage, swords are well-rounded. They allow you to equip a shield, offering additional protection against enemies.
Daggers: When dual-wielded, daggers offer similar damage output to swords. However, they have greater potential because each dagger can be upgraded individually, giving them a higher damage ceiling compared to their sword counterparts.
Bows: The best in terms of raw damage output, making them effective in battle. However, there is a slight trade-off as they occupy both slots, limiting additional equipment options. Their strength now lies in their hunting efficiency, offering an advantage outside of combat.
Instead of having a hard limit on upgrades solely based on item quality, we are introducing a system where the upgrade limit is tied to the item itself rather than its quality. This means that a stronger legendary helmet might allow for more upgrades than a weaker legendary helmet, even if they share the same quality tier.
We made this change to provide a stronger incentive to switch to better equipment. By allowing higher-tier items to have a greater upgrade ceiling, players have more reason to seek out and replace older gear.
Because of this change, any existing items that currently exceed their new maximum upgrade limit will be automatically downgraded to align with the new system. Any excess upgrade stones from this adjustment will be returned to your inventory.
This change in upgrade limits will take between 24 and 48 hours for it to take effect.
We will continue to closely monitor the situation and make further adjustments if we find that the equipment remains either underpowered or overpowered. Balancing is a difficult and ongoing process, and we appreciate your patience in this.
The changes to the stats may not take effect immediately, as they need time to propagate across the server. It could take up to a few hours for these updates to reflect on your account and impact battles. If you notice a delay, you can force an update by unequipping and re-equipping your equipment, which will refresh your character's stats.
Edit (28th November 2024): We accidentally deployed an change to the token cost for the shrine earlier than planned within this update. Instead of reverting it and reintroducing it later, we’ve decided to leave the change in place. As part of this update, the token-to-gold ratio when donating tokens to the guild has been adjusted to 150 gold.
We noticed that the guild raid cooldown felt a bit too restrictive, making it challenging for guilds to coordinate raids with their members. To address this, we’re tweaking the system to make it more flexible while still keeping the number of raids manageable. Instead of an immediate 6-hour cooldown, guilds will now have a limit of raids they can perform in a 24 hour period. This limit is set per-raid. Right now, the limit is set to 3 for all guild raids.
The level scaling previously failed to adjust enemy HP properly, meaning it was not true scaling. This bug fix will lead to a significant shift in how battles will play out after this update.
To address this change effectively, we are extending the testing period by another two weeks to gather feedback and make further adjustments.
One issue we have observed, and are actively reviewing, is that now, with enemies being significantly stronger after the battle rework, equipment improvements feel almost ineffective. The incremental boosts provided by each piece of equipment currently have little impact on the outcome of battles. Post battle rework, the balance has now shifted slightly too far in the opposite direction. Previously, equipment felt ineffective because enemies were too weak (and thus the equipment was too "strong" in a sense). Now, post-rework, equipment feels underpowered as enemies have become significantly stronger.
Because of this, we’re taking a closer look at the stats provided by equipment.
We've observed that the new interactive hunting mechanic, even though it's completely optional, can make you feel like you have to use it or risk missing out on experience points.
We get how that can create unnecessary pressure. While we can't entirely eliminate this issue without removing the feature altogether, our goal with this change is to keep the hunting interaction optional and help ease the feeling that you need to constantly watch the hunting page for enemies to appear.
The following changes have been made:
The "Power Hunting" mechanic is still in testing, and we greatly appreciate all the feedback you share on our Discord.