Launch Plan

Questions and answers

Development

Reputation System



Reworked Item Enchanting



Anytime Ability Selection



Artifact Drops & Artefact Weapons Crafting



Improved Guild vs. Guild System



Dungeon Maps (Expeditions)



Open World Extractor Buildings



Player Island Improvements



Prestige & Power Rankings



Orchestrated Soundtrack & Improved SFX



Game World



Items

Guild versus Guild

Player versus Player

Player versus Environment

Technical

Crafting/Trading

Housing

Controls

Visuals

Testing

Hi everyone,video time! @Eltharyon is answering a large bunch of your questions on camera.In addition to that, here are the answers to the vast majority of the questions you asked in the last round. I have tried categorizing and sorting them a bit, but of course, there's always a bit ambivalence. But since you are a curious people, I assume you will read them all anyways.There have been a lot of questions about the launch plan. Instead of answering them one by one, here is a summary of our current plans:The Darian Update (released 18th May 2016) will be the last update before the in-beta wipe.Once we have finished the internal development work for our new game world , the beta servers will be wiped and we will be launching the second and final beta phase prior to release. We call this Beta 2.We are aiming to start the final Beta in July 2016.We are planning to have the final Beta run for around 2-3 months before releasing the game.The above dates are not set in stone, as we will always make adjustments if we believe they are best for the game and will not work to an artificial schedule if we believe it will impact the game’s quality negatively.You might want to use Ctrl + f to find your particular question or topics that are of the greatest interest to you.The key features which will be available at the beginning of Beta 2 are:Throughout Beta 2 we plan to introduce several key features:Note that these features represent our current plans and may change depending on feedback and observations throughout Beta 2.Not all of the features on the roadmap will make it into the game prior to release. Our plan is to keep developing and improving the game for years to come.With regards to fishing, we have created an awesome concept for this that we are really happy about. Unfortunately, it looks like it will have to wait for until after release for implementation.In general, we have a quite long game design backlog that contains enough awesome features and additons to the game to last for at least another year as it stands, and we keep adding to it. The hard part is to decide the order in which to do things. And here, we have to make sure that for now, while we are still in beta, we focus on the core game first and foremost.We will be releasing a separate video about the upcoming reputation system soon.We are overall quite happy with the number of active skills that players have available. Rather than adding extra skill slots, we are constantly aiming to improve the quality of the individual skills and make them for complex, synergistic, and useful in multiple situations. If you take into account that skills can be freely combined via gear, this creates limitless possibilities.We want players to be able to quite move around the world, while still making sure that trading and transportation remain a key part of the game economy.Fast travelling with gear and equipment will be possible as long as your route does not cross any PvP zones along the way.Fast travel through and inside PvP zones will be possible, but you will not be able to carry any gear and equipment while doing so.Albion Online is a hardcore sandbox MMORPG, thus players who like these games are our core target group. A requirement for a lasting hardcore MMORPG is to create a synergy between more casual and hardcore players, please see a detailed statement here A persistent and fully player-driven game world on a shared server is part of Albion’s core DNA and won’t be changed.Having said that, there are some aspects of the game that could involve seasonality: For example, certain guild-based challenges and rankings, arena seasons or - we like this the most - our Atlantis concept where a small island pops out of the sea to be exploited by players, only to disappear again 30 days later.Character names will be freed upon a wipe. And, as before, your forum name will be reserved as a character name for that account.Yes.We will continue to keep expanding on our lore, and also make sure that more and more of it makes it into the actual game world.However, we most likely won't add scripted dialogue or fixed story lines into the game.We have no plans for this right now. Also, it does not really fit into Albion’s lore.We will keep them concealed for now, as they are still subject to a lot of changes. Post release, once everything is more stable, we will look into making them public in some form.We do not have plans for this. Also, it would upset the overall balance of the LP system, as you could in theory focus the LP of more than one premium subscription onto 1 single character.The idea of player-created missions has crossed our mind more than once. However, as of now, it is not part of our roadmap.We want to avoid adding more stats to our already complex item system. On top of that, we want to keep items valid and also all members of a group to contribute to a fight. Finally, we do not think that resistance stats per se make for good gameplay, we’d rather invest that time and effort into the actual behaviour and abilities of the boss.We have no plans to do this currently.We will be adding ships to the game going forward. Whether those can be used for naval combat or free navigation is still subject to debate as it is not easy to do this well - and again, we are always careful not to take action away from the core game world.The new world, ready for the start of Beta 2, will roughly be twice as big as the current one.This is something we are actively looking into right now, in the context of our planned open world buildings feature.We are not happy with them. Making the open world is one of our top priorities for the remainder of this year.Yes, we are already working on new mobs for the different biomes. On top of that, we are working on new mobs in general. In particular, we are focusing on creating more boss encounters and making the existing ones more exciting.We are currently not planning to introduce a new faction to the game, though this will certainly happen in the future.We believe open world bosses perfectly fit into Albion Online. That being said, there are already some mobs that are sort of open world bosses in the game: the harvester, the Demon Prince, the Earthmother. We want to make sure they work properly before tackling new ones first.Yes, those will be added post-release.No. It would also not really work well together with our new biome concept.We will continue to expand on our biomes and dungeon styles for sure. Right now, our core focus is to finish the new game world first, before we can move on to other art/style-related things.There will be a full rework of the current item and crafting system, and we think it is going to be awesome. It will also feature genuine rare items with unique abilities.Yes, but more importantly, we are looking into creating more impactful passives that not only change a certain stat by a few percentage points, but really affect the gameplay. As we are currently working on the huge number of upcoming rare items (with unique abilities), it will take some time until we expect progress here.Each weapon line will see the introduction of special rare items, which will have at least 1 unique ability. On top of that, we are constantly adding more base abilities to item lines and are making existing abilities more versatile and exciting.Most likely yes, provided that the items you stack are exactly identical and at full durability. It’s quite a lot of development work to implement this, so other features have to take precedence at the moment - so it might take some time before we can make this happen.Dual-Wielding in Albion Online is implemented via special dual weapon sets. Post release, we might be looking into setting up a more flexible system where you can freely combine two one-handed weapons for dual-wielding, too.We have no plans for this right now, but certainly don’t exclude this possibility for the future.We have no plans for a fundamental rework as this stage, but we are always open to suggestions.We removed throwing weapons as they did not fit into our role based item rework project. Now that our overall item rework is maturing more and more, we will be able to take a fresh look at throwing weapons and might bring them back in some form.Yes.Yes, it is a possibility.We will start by analyzing what percentage of the player base comes from which time zone, and what the peak times at which they generally play are. Based on that, we will assign time windows to each zone in the game world in a way that fits the actual player distribution - i.e. given that around 50% of players come from the USA, around 50% of the zones in the game world will be based on the major US time zones.In practice, it could be the case that the Western parts of Albion Online correspond to the US time zones and hold about 50% of Albion’s land mass, whereas we would have EU/RU time zones in the center, with, say 40% of the land mass and Oceania time zones in the far east at 10%.Note that our game system is set up flexibly enough that we can always easily change time zones if we see a significant change in player composition.Territories are limited with many guilds fighting over them. Some guilds would love to have their own territory but can’t, because another guild has taken 20 of them. We really want to encourage guilds to only conquer and hold a territory if they are actually using it properly. Some sort of upkeep system is critical for this. Using food works great because it creates demand for the food market and also it’s possible for another guild, during a war, to try and interrupt another guild's supply routes, etc. These smaller scale open world encounters and guerilla-style warfare is something that we want to encourage inside of the game.We are looking at how we can implement something like this. However - and this is a key pointwe will do this in such a way that it does not interfere with the open world nature of the game.Yes, we are working on a guild-based power system. Guilds can earn power by controlling certain assets and doing certain activities in the game world. The power rating is used for rankings, and we might also tie certain rewards into it, as well. This feature is still in the early planning stage, and it would come after release, but it is quite high up in our backlog.The new game world will be divided into the King’s continent and the lawless continent. The King’s continent will consist of green, yellow and red zones and will be featuring our new crime and reputation system. The PvP experience on the King’s continent is designed to cater to solo players, smaller player groups and smaller guilds and will still feature ample PvP opportunities. Details on this will follow soon in one of our upcoming videos.There will no longer be claimable territories on the King’s continent.The new lawless continent will consist entirely of black zones, meaning that there is free-for-all PvP without restrictions. However, the continent will be huge, and will consist of zones and regions of different tiers. Low-end zones on the lawless continent would be great places for more casual guilds to settle, as these zones will not be interesting to high end guilds.We will also be reworking the GvG system, dealing with certain time slot and defender bonus exploits and solving the issue of having to fight at inconvenient times.Finally, we are considering to flatten the gear power curve for high tier/level items.Yes.We do not want to encourage weapon switching during active combat. It would run contrary to our role-based combat redesign system, and it would also put a huge burden on players to carry around different sets of gear at any point in time. Finally, as the game matures, it might be that players will all be equipped more or less the same - using heavy switching - which we’d consider boring.We have recently created a dedicated in-house team to improve the PvE experience. This means adding new mobs, reworking existing ones, creating smarter mobs with stronger abilities and making exciting and challenging boss fights. On top of that, our project to review and revamp our dungeons is well under way and almost finished. Finally, our new item system will - for the first time really - include very exciting mob loot for rare items that works alongside our crafting system.Towards the end of beta, we will conduct a full review of PvE difficulty and make changes where required. Our feeling is that PvE is too easy at the moment.Yes - we are already working on this!Yes.We are looking into this. It’s not simple though, given that Albion Online is one shared game world between all time zones. What we are looking into is having specific regions of the game world run on an Oceanic server, so that people from there get a great ping in these zones. There is however nothing we can do about, say, an Australian player’s ping on a US server.We have no plans to do this, in particular given that it’s not a great system to use for an MMORPG game with hundreds or thousands of players in a single world.Yes, the crafting system - alongside the item system in general - will see a significant rework and improvement. Stay tuned!Overall, we are happy with the way the market places work in the game - in particular given that they are fully player-driven. Of course, as a result of that, you will see market inefficiencies such as too low or too high prices. However, this is exactly what makes the markets exciting in the first place, as it allows players to make a profit through trading or filling a crucial supply gap through smart gathering and crafting.In addition to that, once the game is released, there will be much more competition over market places, and this is something that usually benefits the more casual player, meaning they will get better prices without having to do much research.On top of that, we are looking into ways to improve the calculation of “average prices” and are also considering to add some basic price history and charts to make the markets more transparent.We are happy with this change, as it makes farming more accessible and less of a burden to players. It also helps to discourage botting.We are aware that there are some players who want more “hardcore” farming though.We strongly tend towards “no”. Why? Resources, as opposed to mobs, are quite limited in Albion, i.e. they can actually run out / get almost depleted, whereas mobs have a very high respawn rate. We do not want to run the risk of players farming the lower end zones clean - not because they need the resources, but rather in order to grind fame.We have no plans for this at this time. Possibly interesting for post release.Yes, we are looking into adding more options for player housing, and in particular for more ways for players to skin and customize their player houses and islands.Provide more customization options for the island and different ways to upgrade it. Create more vanity options for the island. Add additional exciting activities that you can do on the island that do not really distract you from the open world, as you would only do them once per day at most.No. We removed furniture buffs as we found them quite artificial and did not add much to the game. Since then, consumables have taken over that role.No. We believe that the mixture of player islands, city plots and open world territories works really well for housing. Open world housing gives rise to tons and tons of issues which - as we see it - no game has ever been able to solve. It’s amazing in theory, but often terrible in practice.We will be looking into this - though what we do not want to do is shorten the time and effort it takes to construct a building in general.We are currently doing a rework of our control schemes, and as part of that, we will be looking at the targeting systems. This will include a tab-targeting feature as well.Yes. You will also be able to choose between different behaviors for the standard left and right clicks (such as “classical Albion mode”, “MOBA mode”, etc)YesBuilding customization is definitely something that we are looking into. When it comes to customization of non-vanity gear worn by the player, we are not too fond of it as it reduces the “readability” of the game, i.e. it will be much harder to tell what type of gear somebody wears by looking at them - this however is crucial for PvP.This is something we have not considered yet. Currently, it is also not really needed.No, as we believe that this would really take away from the excitement once the game is released.