Developer Q&A

Dear friends!

We know we’re embarrassingly late in posting our answers to your questions. In our defense, we want to assure you that this is entirely because we did our best to give serious attention to as many of the submitted questions as possible.

We’ve done our best to organize all of your questions into a clear, readable format. Those that were written in other languages have been translated as closely as possible to the original text and meaning, so that nothing gets lost in translation.

Below, you’ll find the full list of answers. We’ve aimed to be as clear and transparent as possible in each response. Thank you for sticking with us and for sharing your feedback. It’s what helps us make the game better.

How realistic are going to be your answers and plans?

• We didn’t get this exact question, but like you, we've read/listened to countless answers from developers of various games. In our own responses, we will strive to be as objective as possible about our capabilities, basing them on the available man-hours in the team (even if staff expansion is planned). Many questions go beyond the roadmap, and we deliberately limited the roadmap to the medium-term scope.

Will there be changes to the karma/zone systems?

• The nearest upcoming change to the karma and zone systems is applying the "Aggressor" status for applying negative effects on another player. The new system is far from perfect; we would ideally like to see a "knock" system, but for this first iteration, it better meets the community's demands than the previous one. Our current concern is PvP becoming a problem too early for new players, even with the protective buff. We are considering options to shield players in their first hours from ganking in Yellow Zones without creating exploitable loopholes for twinks.

Is the current state of the "Chaos" weapon enchantment considered balanced? It provides comparable damage to full "Madness"/"Eclipse" sets, with the possibility of guaranteed peak damage.

• In the latest patch, we already introduced test changes to this system (bonuses for headshots and damage spread ranges for hitting different body parts). We will observe trends in weapon enchanting, builds, and average DPS over the next couple of weeks before making decisions on further changes to weapon enchantments. However, the final balance of weapon enchantments will need to be considered together with upcoming changes to armor enchantment—which will focus on enhancing the item's native base stats rather than providing absolute bonuses. The base physical and magical defense stats of items will also be revised.

Why are hybrid Vocations weaker than specialized ones?

• It's not accurate to say hybrid classes are unequivocally weaker. Unlike specialized physical and magical classes, they lack a clear focus that would allow them to achieve extreme values in either defense or attack.

Will there be Mantras?

• Mantras, as a new combat stance, have lower priority than finally completing the crossbow (with consumable bolts of varying characteristics), staves (as a method for delivering modifying powders), daggers, and dual-wielding for melee characters.

In what direction will the project's PvP component develop? The current roadmap doesn't give a clear understanding of its future.

• We believe the primary issue is balance, or rather, some clear definition of classes (as a sum of build, Vocation, and Vocational skills), ranging from movement speed to the long-term "Abilities 2.0" update. Only after that does the question arise—where to fight, what for, and under what conditions. If we've already discussed castles multiple times, including the upcoming "Capture for Destruction,"