Greetings to all Taboreans and I wish you a happy 2024!
I hope you had a great New Year and arrived healthy in the Year of the Dragon. Maybe even with some new resolutions or goals for your character in Runes of Magic?
Since my last PM message in December, we have received a lot of feedback from you and there have also been some changes to our plans, which I would like to briefly explain to you. Let’s start right away 
Changes to summit experience points & requirements
Oh well, it’s going to be tough, get ready for something!
Background
We have already made some gameplay improvements to the 2023 release of Tomb City of Mirrors and are generally satisfied with this instance.
However, due to the way summit levels and your hit rate against enemies scale, we have a choice between plague and cholera with our previously announced plans for a summit 15 instance:
- We could leave things as they are and simply expect everyone to reach higher pinnacle levels (while accelerating experience growth and adding new pinnacle levels on top).
- We could try to change the way scaling works deep(er) in the code to eliminate the identified problems.
- We could adjust the required peak level for our Timeless Instances (both past and future) to get around this problem a bit.
We discussed this topic several times in the team and finally decided on the third option. This will allow more players to participate in current and future instances while scaling with our other changes to Summit Experience Points. We are aware that this is not a perfect solution and will only postpone the problem to a later date, but for now it is the best compromise.
Timeless I & II
Sooooo … before the above-mentioned “background” decision, our plan was as follows:
- Pantheon summit 5 (requires summit 1 for a good hit rate)
- GdS peak 10 (requires approx. peak 14 for a good hit rate)
- MA summit 15 (requires at least summit 21 for a good hit rate)
With our newly revised strategy, things are looking much better overall:
- Pantheon Summit 5: no changes
- GdS peak 7: Character with peak 5 (approx.) should be a good start.
- MA summit 9: Character with summit 11 (approx.) should be the target.
We are aware that this will make GdS much easier to manage – and although it was not our intention to “nerf” the instance, it is a side effect we have to live with this time. Maybe it will help some newer Summit players to join in too!
Summit experience points & summit step ascent
Next, we also want to improve the situation around reaching higher summit levels, which are recommended for the new instances. This means that whenever we plan new content for higher summit levels, we will try to publish changes in advance so that you can prepare for them.
One example of this is the upcoming release of Mystic Altar: It is balanced around peak 9 and requires around peak 11 to play well. With the anniversary patch, we will be making drastic changes to the required experience points per level up to and including peak 11.
Between the release of the anniversary celebration and the upcoming release of Mystic Altar players will now progress through the summit levels 1 to 11 more quickly. Summit 12 and higher will remain as they are for the time being and will only be adjusted as we approach future content.
TL;DR:
We hope that these changes will give us a little more time while allowing more players access to the new instances.
Both the GdS adjustment (summit 10>7) and the lowered requirements for summit experience points (up to 70% fewer experience points) are expected to go live together with the anniversary celebration.
15 years of Runes of Magic
Anniversary celebration
The 15th anniversary of Runes of Magic is fast approaching – March 19 is already marked in my calendar!
Get ready for a new mini-game with cool new rewards to unlock (e.g. a cannon mount). We are also organizing a series of community events where you can take part and win merch and other things.
Don’t miss out on celebrating with us!
Mystical altar
As mentioned at the beginning, there will be a number of changes to what we announced in December. In addition to the change to the summit level, the number of bosses and the playability of the instance will also be revised (there will probably be 7 bosses instead of 6 as announced). What we didn’t mention last time is the type of equipment being dropped here: a new accessory set!
All in all, due to the aforementioned problems with the summit experience points and the extended scope of the game, it is very likely that we will not be able to meet our target of mid-March for this release. It may be the end of March or even April, as Easter is very early this year.
This is very unfortunate, but it gives more players the opportunity to prepare. We ourselves try not to get too excited about this shift. We would have liked to target the 15th anniversary, but as many of you have also emphasized, the most important thing is that we take our time and don’t rush the instance.
Other topics
We are not yet able to provide any concrete information on the following topics. Just letting you know that we are aware of the feedback and will try to address it this year!
World bosses (Public)
After the release of Mystic Altar (and some subsequent fixes) the next topic on our radar is the problems with the world bosses (Public). We know that there are a lot of issues around how they work and interact with them. And we also know how frustrating it can be when you fly out, don’t get any prey or have similar experiences.
More summit changes
We would also like to take a closer look at the summit experience points (daily/x-hourly) in the near future and have a few ideas on how to create more choices there or avoid certain situations.
Balancing the classes
Since my relatively short comment in the last post, we have received many comments and suggestions from you – thank you very much! In the coming months, we will sift through everything and weigh up what is realistically feasible for us and how much we want to or can “get involved”. But we have understood that it is important to the community, so we will try to keep an eye on the issue in the future.
Equipment values
This is also on our radar, and we have some initial changes in the works, which will be published together with MA. We intend to offer purely decorative equipment that can be purchased at a lower price. However, we will look into this further, as this will probably not be enough.
A few final words
Once again you have followed my words over 3 pages of a well-known office software, even if I had to inform you about a delay … I hope I was able to give you more insight into the current developments and also share things you can look forward to!
We still have many improvements and adjustments to come, so it won’t get boring that quickly. Thank you for your continued interest and love for Runes of Magic, even in 2024 when we celebrate our 15th anniversary!
Patrick & the RoM team
0 Comments