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Greetings,
There appears to have been a rather large battle today in the
lands of Raumdor. When the dust settled, the population of the
city of Vallaki seems to have been reduced, while the number
of undeads appear to be growing.
In plain English:
Yes, the by many anticipated nerf of Vallaki is here, and I am
to blame. This is what is changing in Vallaki:
- The human population is becoming smaller.
- The undead population is growing.
- The humans have become slightly weaker.
- The undeads have become considerably weaker.
- The smith has run out supplies and can no longer fix armours.
In addition, as many of probably have noticed, many of the humans
recently started carrying torches.
Note that there are no changes to the raids and the specific raid
NPCs, and no changes to the bosses or any equipment.
The reasoning for these changes is:
Vallaki was originally inteded as end-game content for supermyths,
with an unprecendented population of huge NPCs. When it was first
submitted to AoB almost a year ago, me and Ckrik felt that the
game really needs a place for legends and smaller myths to grow,
rather than another area for the already big to grow even bigger.
This is because we believe Genesis will be more fun if more
people are of similar size, and we felt that we were really
lacking "mid-level" grind content. Especially for goodies who
can't kill in Kabal. Vallaki could fill this need.
So, the Vallaki that was released was aimed at the "just below, just
above" myth player. Howwever, we missed the mark. Yes, it worked
well for those players, but it worked even better for the really
big myths. And not because the XP per NPC is anything special, but
simply because of the sheer amount of NPCs, who together with the
armour smith in the city allowed for almost endless grinding for
teams of very big players. This in turn made it harder for the
actual target group to successfully grind there. So, yes this change
is meant to make the area much less desirable for the big myths,
but it should remain a good place to grind for somewhat smaller
(but still big) players.
The second reason for the change is that the really cool faction
system never really worked. I remember from my talks with the
original creator of the area, Znagsnuf, that he wanted everything
to have neutral align and that players should be rewarded for
picking a side, rather than killing everything (which otherwise
happens in neutral areas). The idea was that people pick a side
because of RP/personal choice, rather than being forced because of
align. Unfortunately, this never worked because it was much more
rewarding, and easier, to side with the undeads and kill humans
than doing the opposite. But, from now on, the human and undead
population will be very similar, and offer very similar rewards
and challenges.
This means that while the number of human NPCs will decrease,
grinding undeads will now become an real option too. So, the
total number of grindable NPCs will still make Vallaki a very
large grinding area. With undeads and humans more evenly matched,
this should also make the raid events more fun, since it's now
much more possible that we could see players supporting different
factions join the raids. Which could open up for some fun RP or
even PVP.
The reason for the torches is also to make both factions equally
rewarding and equally challenging. The insignia wont work on the
neutral undeads, and therefore darkness shouldn't work on the
humans, since that would obviously make grinding humans the
better choice, which kills the whole idea with the factions.
Please note that these changes will take effect gradually. That
is, some things will only update as NPCs are killed and rooms reset.
So, for the area to be fully updated, either everything needs to be
killed or Armageddon needs to happen.
I realize players will never like nerfs, and it's never fun to be
the bringer of bad news. I hope you will understand the reasoning
behing the change, though. This isn't some knee-jerk reaction
either. I have spent several days grinding on test server to try
things out myself, and I have interviewed several players who has
been grinding in Vallaki since it opened. Me, the AoB team and
Nerull has also discussed various ideas back and forth. That said,
nothing is ever set in stone. We'll of course monitor what happens
and feedback is welcome.
Thanks Nerull for implementing these changes. Feel free to send
any feedback to both me and Nerull.
Cherek, Nerfer of Genesis