As development on Citadel Studios’ upcoming sandbox MMORPG Legends of Aria chugs steadily along, the devs are continuously tweaking and revamping the game’s systems, and the latest to come under the knife is the game’s Allegiance system, which allows players to swear themselves to one of the game’s gods to take part in some jolly faction-vs-faction warfare, among other things. According to the latest dev blog, the team has two goals in revamping the Allegiance system: “The first is that [allegiances] should incentivize players to participate. Allegiances are an opt-in system, and currently we think we can do better to encourage more activity. […] The second goal is to provide more opportunity and incentive for players to engage in consensual, challenging, and rewarding combat.”

To those ends, the team is making some major changes and additions to the system. For starters, there will soon be a new Allegiance dedicated to Lord Ebris, which should “create more dynamic balances of power between enemy Allegiances” and “give players more ways to organize themselves with and against each other.” In addition, the ranking system is getting overhauled so that their favor and rank points “will no longer disappear when leaving an Allegiance or switching sides,” which should hopefully encourage players to “mix things up” and join up with the less-dominant allegiances. Allegiances will also be getting seasons that will “periodically reset rankings, allowing players a fresh start and a new landscape of competition.”

On top of that, the devs are also introducing Allegiance events, the first of which will be coming in the game’s next update. These “localized, periodic scenarios which pit Allegiances against each other to fight over a goal” will reward participants with Allegiance currency, with which players can purchase new, unique rewards “including everything from decorations and cosmetics to items which will prove to be valuable on the battlefield.” The dev blog says that the rewards “should feel meaningful and useful without negatively impacing the balance of combat,” adding, “Yes, there will be mounts.” For the full details on the Allegiance update, which should be hitting the experimental server “soon,” you can check out the dev blog in its entirety over on the game’s official site.