Darkfall: Unholy Wars Future Plans Explained
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With the custom roles patch and more fixes and balance tweaks behind them, the Aventurine folks have decided to lay out their plans for the future of Darkfall: Unholy Wars. The immediate plans include an economy rebalance, siege engines and quests, while later down the line we can expect a new grid-based inventory system, a fully customisable action-mode HUD, an alignment system, and the addition of enchanting to the gear customization options:
With the release of the Custom Roles patch, and several follow-up fixes and adjustments, now behind us, we would like to take this opportunity to share our current, and future, plans with you.
To start with our immediate plans, during July, we plan on delivering two patches:
The first, expected to be ready during the first week of the month, will focus on fixes and balance adjustments to address several issues that have arisen since the custom roles patch.
The second of the two patches, planned for later in the month, will (we're sure you'll be happy to read) bring a new crosshair, along with movable cast, breath and target-health bars to the game; this will be the first of two planned updates to the action-mode HUD, that will give players a far more customizable experience with those GUI elements that are most used and most visible (more on the second update below).
We also have plans to introduce several new service and (fluff) items for the in-game shop, as soon as possible; we will share the nature and timing of these items with you as soon as we are sure where they will fit into our schedule.
Alongside these, development is continuing on the other features we announced in our last (immediate plans) announcement , to recap, these are:
Economy Rebalance
Work on making the economy more robust and sustainable is an ongoing process. You may have noticed numerous tweaks and re-workings of monster loot tables, and we're certain you all noticed the changes to some crafting processes. We are not done with these tasks, they remain a priority for us, and you will see further tweaks and changes going forward.
Siege-Engines
Our current aim is to deliver the first batch of siege-engines, the siege ladders and the catapult, in early-to-mid August. Development on these new mechanics is progressing well, and we may, if possible, include a third engine in this initial batch. With the introduction of the siege-ladder we will also be increasing, considerably, the height of all clan city walls, to ensure that the ladder is truly useful in scaling them. We will share more details on these machines with you soon, as we are looking forward to seeing the impact they will undoubtedly have on the epic siege battles that take place in Agon.
Quests
With back-end systems to create quests for Unholy Wars now, mostly, in-place, we are focusing on the quests themselves, along with the art and world-building that will be required to support and immerse players in these journeys through the lore and history of Agon. As you have likely seen, now is the time that you can make your mark on the system, by entering our contest to write your own quest , and leave your mark on history. We are very pleased to have the chance to bring our wealth of lore to Unholy Wars and we hope you will all enjoy the experiences it will bring. Our current target for the introduction of the first group of quest-lines is early September.
As development on the features outlined above progresses, we are looking at where to apply our resources and focus next. We have been overwhelmed by, and very grateful for, the responses we received from you all with our recent (Future Development Survey), and have used this to guide our focus to the areas of development that you have indicated as your priorities.
Therefore, we would like to announce that the following features will be our development focus, as soon as schedules allow. While it's simply too early to give dates, it is our intention to deliver all of these features before the end of the year:
Inventory Management System
The single most-requested feature, we will introduce a new unified grid-based inventory system. Following the design of other recent improvements to our GUI, this will include a number of features including search, item grouping, and more.
Fully Customisable Action-Mode HUD
Following on from the cross-hair and bars that will be introduced in July, this second set of updates to the HUD will bring the player stat-bars, mini-map and other action-mode GUI elements fully under player control.
Alignment
In-line with Darkfall's philosophy of risk vs. reward, we agree that actions should have consequences. We are also interested in the numerous other game-play mechanics that alignment, and a functional flagging system, can bring with it to the game. One immediate impact of this will be the removal, or severe reduction in the size of, the safe zones.
Enchanting
Along with adding yet another layer of character customisation, on top of Custom Roles, enchanting will bring even more variation in equipment, armour and play-styles to players. Enchanting can also play an important role in boosting the world economy, through the introduction of highly sought-after materials.
To end, the features and focus outlined above are far from all that we are working on, we have many plans related to improving the experience of new players, and veteran players, balance updates for skills and armor, tweaks to enhance the in-game economy, adding more (fluff) items to the in-game store, and running or sponsoring community events and in-game activities. All of which we will share with you at the appropriate time.
We would like to thank you all for being a part of the evolution of Darkfall Unholy Wars,
The Darkfall Team
