mechanical-updates
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Dungeons & Dragons Online launches Game Update 20
The latest update for Dungeons & Dragons Online is out now, and it features a whole lot of new options for reincarnation. More than you might expect. If you feel you haven't incarnated nearly enough, this update promises to fix that. Sure, there's True Reincarnation, but now you have both Heroic True Reincarnation and Iconic True Reincarnation along with Epic Reincarnation and... you get the idea. There's a lot of new ways to go back to the beginning and start a life over, that's the point. These changes coincide with alterations to the amount of experience needed to level characters on their second lives, making it easier to hit 20 after reincarnation. There are also new quests and alterations to the quest experience rewards, changed so that longer quests are no longer less proportionally rewarding than shorter ones. Plus there are plenty of changes to Enhancements, a new Enhancement tree for Sorcerers and Wizards... you'd probably better just read through the patch notes. There's a lot going on. Too much? You can take a look at our preview of the update to help guide you.
Darkfall patches in new boats, a new dungeon, and other improvements
Maybe you've already been on a boat in Darkfall Unholy Wars, but you haven't been on the newest boats. You couldn't have been. They've just been patched in today, allowing players new ways to be unstoppable due to their aquatic mode of transportation. But that's just the least of what's been changed in the latest patch being deployed today. In addition to having new boats, the patch features a new dungeon known as Svartvann as well as the new Darkbrood family, infesting Svartvann as well as Aldan Enak and Grivendale. There are also some noteworthy changes to Primalist spell functionality as well as a new skill meant to disable perpetual blocking. And you can have a new ship module if you can't get enough of aquatic antics. If none of the above strikes your fancy, you can at least enjoy the requisite bug fixes and UI updates that should make the game more fun to play for everyone. [Thanks to LanMandragon for the tip!]
Face of Mankind rolling out major updates
Face of Mankind has been on the quiet side for a while now, but the game is gearing up for some major mechanical changes. A new developer blog outlines several of the large shifts, starting with several major improvements to the World Takeover system. Players at a high faction rank can take on special contracts to help take out the enemy presence, or they can choose to take part in a more secretive income-siphoning operation to discreetly hurt the enemy. The game is also removing the weight system, the quality levels system, and the factional restrictions on armor and equipment. This also has resulted in a change to the way that armor values are calculated in an effort to make more pieces of armor relevant to gameplay. And that's just the tip of the iceberg; current or potential players would do well to take a look at the full development blog to see all of the changes en route for the game's mechanics. [Source: Nexeon press release]
Lord of the Rings Online bringing in major stat changes
If you've played Lord of the Rings Online extensively, odds are good that you're familiar with the concept of stat caps. Functionally, stat caps are that certain point at which further increases to the stat in question will be wasted -- useful for balance purposes, but rather frustrating when players find new abilities and equipment useless due to the stat caps. So it's probably going to be a good thing when Rise of Isengard makes stat caps largely a thing of the past. That's not the only useful takeaway from the new developer diary, however, as the game's statistics are also undergoing further revision to make the game easier to understand at a glance. A new stat, Finesse, will be added to specifically reduce your target's ability to evade or resist attacks. Resistance, Mitigation, and Critical Hit will all be merged from their current state (so melee, ranged, and tactical critical hit will all become simply Critical Hit). Finally, there are some changes incoming in terms of interactions with primary stats. It's a short diary, to be sure, but the implications for Lord of the Rings Online players should be far-reaching.
The Mog Log: Pre-reaction
So Naoki Yoshida's producer's letter came just a bit too late last week for me to rewrite my column, which focused mostly on the dungeons and rampant speculation regarding same. This week, however, I can write about all of the things that came out of both his producer's letter and Akihiko Matsui's combat revision document, both of which provide a lot of meaty information for Final Fantasy XIV players to digest. Pretty much all of it is good, with only a couple of downsides here and there. Since there's way too much to possibly digest point-by-point, I'm going to hit the parts that strike me as having the most far-reaching impact and the most concrete data. A lot of this is going to pertain specifically to the combat revisions, as well, since let's face it -- the meat of the game is in fighting things off, solo or in groups. And it's with the battle revisions that one of the biggest changes is coming to Final Fantasy XIV, namely, the removal of physical levels altogether.
