The near future of EliteMobs

Hello everyone,

As we approach the public release of EliteMobs 8.0.0, I want to talk more in-depth about the planned content ahead of us.

EliteMobs 8.0.0 is a major rewrite of several core systems but is also the update in which a lot of new core content gets added to EliteMobs. In the heart of this system is the addition of instanced content, but also things such as a new currency, a new translation system, among others.

In the past, I aimed to release humongous updates which I would work on for months at a time, up to a year, without any public releases. Time has shown that this is a bad strategy to gather feedback, as well as a bad strategy to basically show the world that EliteMobs is actively still being developed.

As such, I vowed to make smaller, more frequent updates which everyone can access faster.

As of right now, several things about EliteMobs 8.0.0 have already changed. The item system has undergone a drastic remake, the dungeon packager system was completely rewritten, as has the persistent entity system.

After some consideration, I have concluded that the changes as they are right now sufficient to justify a public release, and much of the planned content will be added throughout the coming weeks in smaller minor updates.

I do, however, want to lay out the plan for the content that will be added in the very near future. This is listed in no particular order.

Without any further ado:

A) Instanced dungeons

1) There are two kinds of instanced dungeons (for now): Dungeons and Sanctums

Instanced content can only be done by one group at a time. Each group has a maximum and minimum number of players to queue up for the content.

Players in instanced content have a limited number of lives and can be revived by other players if they die. If all players die, they fail the dungeon and must start over from the beginning.

Every instance must be beat within a timer. The timer is necessary to make sure that players don't take up instanced space, thereby stopping other players from doing that content.

In higher difficulties, all mobs get higher damage and health multipliers, loot gets boosted and the timer gets shorter. There are two difficulties (to start with): normal and heroic. Mythic might get added later.

Initial instanced content will follow a storyline. To progress in the storyline, content must be completed linearly and with level sync on.

Dungeons are multi-boss multi-room linear or semi-linear challenges. They are similar in size to mini dungeons in the open world and are tuned to be harder than that content.

Sanctums are single-room single-boss challenges. They are like Lairs in the open world and are tuned to be harder than that content.

The main storyline content will alternate between doing a dungeon and then doing a lair encounter. Dungeons are longer but easier and lairs are short but very challenging.

A-1) Level sync

Level sync is a system which prevents player gear from surpassing the recommended level of the dungeon. This means that while they can take any weapons or armor that they have, the base damage and damage reduction that their equipment gives will not go over the maximum amount of base damage and armor reduction a player would normally have at the recommended level.

This only affects combat with elites inside of the instanced content. The objective of this system is to make instanced dungeons and lairs relevant long after players have acquired gear capable of stomping the bosses.

To reward players for playing with this handicap, once per day per dungeon, they will be able to acquire the new currency which they will be able to trade for powerful equipment or utility. More on that below.

B) New currency:

Problems:

1) Elite currency can be obtained through a very wide variety of means, several of which lean towards exploits.

2) Elite currency can be traded between players, even though that is disincentivized through the tax on transfers system.

3) Elite currency cannot be used consistently to reward players for completing a particularly challenging feat.

4) Therefore, elite currency cannot reliably be used to give players great items or utility.

Solution:

Introduce a new secondary currency which is not transferable and is only awarded in very specific and controllable situations (like completing instanced content).

In the first implementation of this system, this currency will be awarded once per day per player per instanced dungeon with level sync on upon the first completion of the day of that dungeon.

This currency will be used to purchase items from more advanced shops and roll for high level loot. They will also be able to purchase ways to enchant elite items. More on these systems in the items section.

C) Items:

1) Rebalanced item scarcity

Problem:

In the current system, items are very plentiful. This is because the system was originally modeled after games such as Diablo 2/3 and had to consider the fact that items would spawn with curse of vanishing, have no way to be repaired and could easily be lost. Furthermore, for a very long time, mobs would not drop elite coins, meaning that the only way of acquiring elite coins was through selling items.

Now the system has a custom durability system, items rarely spawn with vanishing curse and players are slowly getting incentivized to stick with a specific item for a longer period.

Solution:

By making item drops overall rarer, it will make each drop matter more and mesh better with the state of the current system in which players may find themselves investing more heavily into specific items.

2) New item quality system

Problem:

EliteMobs has always had a hard time qualifying how good an item is compared to other items at the same level. Now that Elite items use custom damage and defense attributes instead of sharpness and protection enchants and that EliteMobs disincentivizes creating items with very high enchantment counts it is far easier to estimate the quality of an item.

Solution:

Like how it did before, items will be analyzed for their theoretical maximum number of enchantments. If they are closer to the maximum, then they are judged to be of higher quality. If they are closer to the minimum, then they are judged to be of lower quality.

Beyond coloring the item name, a placeholder will also be provided qualifying the loot to make this system more visible.

3) Enchanting system for Elite items

With the drastic lowering of enchantment count on elite items and with the introduction of a new currency, the tools required to create a meaningful, useful, and non-exploitable item enchantment system for EliteMobs are now gathered.

This long-requested feature will require players to fulfill two different conditions: gather an amount of the new currency by completing instanced, level synced content and by gathering custom enchanting books containing the enchantments they seek. The books themselves will be rare drops from bosses. Players will then be able to combine the books and the currency to enchant an elite item of their choice with an enchantment they possess.

Players will additionally also be able to remove curses from items for a price.

D) Translations:

Principles:

1) Translations will be offered to admins by default without requiring additional downloads.

2) Translations will be offered for downloadable content

3) Translations will automatically warn users when the translation files are outdated

4) Users can pick the translation language they prefer, regardless of what the default is

Execution:

All languages will have their own file in the translations folder. Each file is customized individually.

It is possible but not mandatory for servers to allow players to pick which language they want to use. The language files will be pre-translated as much as made possible by community contributions.

Note: The possibility of professionally translating the first batch of files will be investigated once all of translation options are gathered.

The points listed above will be used as guidelines for development for the coming weeks. It is hard to estimate a specific span of time that this might take, as these are several large systems, but I estimate that if all goes well all points will be done, tested, and launched by the end of September.

Finally, please keep in mind that while the code part of things might be done at one point, the contributions by third parties might be done at a different time. I have no good way to estimate when I will have a complete translation for any language, and I can only guess when the instanced dungeons will be ready.

Feel free to give me feedback here or on Discord on the planned additions and changes to the system or ask any questions you might have.

Happy adventuring,

- MagmaGuy