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Sword of the New World: Correspondent - Surviving Nocturnal Sonata
Chris Illingworth, our Sword of the New World Correspondent, writes this new article reviewing some of the new features and tweaks to old features that come along with the game's Nocturnal Sonata update.
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Sword of the New World’s Multi-Character Control (MCC) system sets it apart from other massively multiplayer online games in a number of ways: firstly, a player must learn how to use his or her characters as a single unit, forgoing solo levelling in order to develop each family member’s individual skill set. This reliance on multiple characters allows for a unique approach to level design resulting in a complex and rewarding gaming experience. The Nocturnal Sonata patch (currently in its third stage) sought to add a whole new dimension to the game with new maps, a handful of unique player characters, and a host of new monsters.
One of the most important aspects of the online game is maintaining game balance, a concept concerned with eliminating overpowered players and opponents, and ensuring that the game is fair and accessible to everybody. The Nocturnal Sonata patch generated a great deal of controversy regarding several changes to the game's mechanics, not the least of which was an increased difficulty level in the low-level areas. It is these issues and their prescribed solutions that I intend to cover in this article:
The ‘Elite Mob’ Dilemma.
Prior to the Nocturnal Sonata patch, elite monsters provided the player with an occasional, but ultimately winnable, situation that rewarded their efforts with additional drops and a handful of extra experience points. These larger, more powerful mobs spawn in much the same way as ordinary opponents, but their increased aggression and hit points were enough to take even the strongest players by surprise. Fortunately, any pioneer worth his salt was unlikely to be swayed from his cause by an elite Box Octopus or Brown Buffalo.
The decision to even out the ratio of standard to elite mobs in the low-level areas (Al Quelt Moreza, Tetra Ruins, and Porto Bello) was met with a degree of concern by the active community. Players who had once breezed through the hordes of Phobitans in the Tetra Ruins found themselves fighting for their lives against gangs of elite monsters. Many players felt that the increased difficulty in these areas was detrimental to the balance of the game as a whole and sought to have the feature removed. For a number of weeks after the release of Nocturnal Sonata, the main forum was inundated with petitions and complaints from disgruntled players unable to survive in their favourite areas. A solution was forthcoming however, as the Sword of the New World development team had already engineered a novel solution to the problem: Ancestral Equipment.
A New Arsenal
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Ancestral Equipment, while far from being a new addition to the game, has only recently become available to the entire player base free of charge. Requiring only a supply of ‘polish’ to craft, this new arsenal provides the player with a whole range of sub-elite weaponry and armour with which to defeat their foes. In addition, ancestral equipment can be enchanted at a one hundred percent success rate ensuring that the pioneers of Granado Espada are well equipped for the dangers of the New World.
Polish has become a staple reward for the vast majority of story quests (along with experience cards and menial amounts of Vis) and any player who had completed said quests prior to the release of Nocturnal Sonata was gifted quantities of polish proportional to their progress through the game. These items, when given to the ancestral support soldiers standing on the periphery of the main towns, allow a player to equip their team with spears, shields, rifles, coats and many other items that will resist replacement for up to twenty levels.
Veteran polish (for characters over level 100) are much more difficult to obtain and often require participation in arduous quests that pit the player against dangerous monsters. The ancestral support soldiers waive their generosity when dealing with veterans and will ask for a payment of five Mysterious Powders in order to polish the item in question. Considering that standard veteran equipment is notoriously expensive in Sword of the New World (often running into the tens of millions of Vis), a few premium items is a small price to pay for quality equipment.
Employment Opportunities
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To help pioneers contend with the newly-abundant elite mobs, special employment offices were opened up in the city of Reboldoeux and in the Port of Coimbra. The soldiers within these back-street buildings offer pioneers the chance to gain a few experience cards and a handful of small jewels by eradicating large numbers of elite monsters from the Al Quelt Moreza, Tetra and Porto Bello areas. While the rewards on offer are small, a player can gain a great deal of confidence through contending with the more powerful monsters.
In addition, new pioneering memorials have been added to the Joaquin, Toubkal, Bahamar, Ustiur and Katovic regions. These new memorials give high-level and veteran players a chance to gain experience cards for dispatching a few hundred monsters.
Looking Forward
The polish items have helped to reduce the likelihood of overpowered characters by ensuring that everybody has access to the same type of equipment, and while many players will still strive to obtain the more expensive elite items it is reassuring to see that a great deal has been done to keep the game’s balance intact.
The release of Nocturnal Sonata continues throughout August and into September 2008.
While I commend them for the innovation of multiple npcs supporting the main character. The theme of a MMO is to supposed to be about play with others. Seems this game instead encourages solo play for the most part.
Contrary to popular belief Sword of the New World includes a plethora of team and raid based content. The general focus of the game is Faction Wars which is a weekly battle to claim Colonies around the New World.
There is also a ton of raids and raid bosses as well as group instances. In an upcoming patch we will be releasing even more of these and a more "traditional" dungeon crawl.
In addition to all that we have daily events like Faction Fight where players from both Factions race to finish a raid instance for a major Factional Buff. There are Clan Wars that can occur anytime between Clans of opposing Factions. There is Andre's Ultimately Fabulous Competition where players fight each other to gain the chance to concur massive raid bosses for excellent loot.
So while solo'ing is definately apart of the game, all of the above requires players to work together. The only difference is in Sword, players rarely need to spend an hour looking for a Tank and Healer. Chances are that if there are 5 people in a group at least ONE of them have one (or more) of each.
while there are some nice things to do post level 100... the majority of the early game where most of the players will burn out is mainly solo.
You can group... but your exp per hour goes down, and just isnt really that productive unless your fighting in an extremely difficult spot, which usually isnt worth it either.
Lack of a global chat system added on to a 7 day penalty for leaving a guild makes it extremely difficult to find active folks to play with, and if you happen to get in with the wrong group... your penalized for a week. Guilds are hard to determine if they fit you as a whole with out playing with them... and you really cant do that in SOTNW untill you join. If you pick poorly... its a week turn around till you get another shot.
Raid content and faction wars. I agree this is the main focus of the game. Unfortunately... its also its downfall. Sotnw is EXTREMELY gear based. Someone with +8 gear can take on 2 - 3 fresh vets with out breaking a sweat as the gear determins if you can hit someone, and how hard. They one shot you.... you can barely phase them if hit them at all.
This wouldnt be an issue, accept there pretty much are only 2 real clans on the server. Colony wars happen each week... and you can pretty much just watch those 2 clans take over the server.
They keep the raid bosses on lock down, gear up, and then once they are geared, sell of the spares at insane prices.... making it damn near impossible to compete with out joining one of the two "uber" guilds.
I like underdogs... I enjoy playing from the disadvantage... but when someone has 6-10 AR and DR on you... its not an underdog position, its a martial artist beating the hell out of a kinder garden class.
I really enjoyed SOTNW from 1 - 100... but once I saw how the end game played out, and the ones on top are pretty much guaranteed to stay there... pretty much killed it for me. Hopefully in later patches the designers will choose to add a global chat, reduce the penalty for leaving a clan, and come up with someone to let the lower end folks compete against the super guilds.
Game desperately needs some form of guild system similar to our antitrust laws for monopolies...
With the addition of the Ancestral Armor and the diminishing returns on AR/DR it really isn't as hard to compete than it used to be. Also as I said there are a number of new LOW LEVEL events being added before years end including several new low level instances.
In addition to that, Nocturnal Sonata Update #4 is going to include a new system that will give players a new way to level together, changes to the Colony Buffs and Faction Wars so that the underdogs get a chance (The King and Queen will be taking matters into her own hands... thats all I'll say about that) and even more server wide events (both PvE and PvP).
So again, we're looking at content from level 1 through 100 and beyond and adding a lot of stuff still :). That's the great thing about the game.
Well Mr Associate Producer, maybe it is time you and your staff go back and take basic MMO 1.01 again because I find it inexcusable that these exact same mistakes that have been made in prior pvp games time and time again are repeated in this game.
In a pvp game it is MANDATORY to not have big differences between levels, even a basic pvper knows such, you also need controls to prevent take over of the server by a one or two groups. Doh, you should hang your head in shame for making such basic mistakes. There is just no excuse for it whatsoever.
Next time play some of the other pvp games to understand the problems with the genre before embarking making the exact same mistakes.
Another case of clueless devs foundering their way through a game.
Why should he need to play other pvp game? We can all go over your post history, you hate EVERY game in existance, you never say anything positive about anything, so whats the point of trying to satisfy you when you're just looking for excuses to bash on it?
Gee, sorry I hit your sore spot. This is actually a fun game, but I have not reached the end game either. I was not bashing the game at all. The point of the my complaint, since you seemed to miss it, you can look at any of the previous pvp MMO's and these mistakes are just blatantly obvious, yet here we are again looking at the same problems in a newer game.
Just no excuse for repeating others mistakes, especially when they have been pointed out by the MMO community many times.
Well, we are the publisher, so unfortunately no matter how many times I say "that's not gonna work out right" the developer ends up with the final say. Fortunately, imcGAMES is VERY sensitive to it's player base and when something doesn't work they are more than willing to change. Unfortunately change usually ends with our team having to wait 4-6 months while they iron out bugs.
Ultimately, we agree with your statement. It's something I said MONTHS ago. In Update 4 there will be a major change occuring that will reduce the "power" of the dominate clans and level the playing field. If that doesn't work for us we have several other plans we can quickly roll out before the end of the year.