Bogul and Shozen talk state of the union of Albion Informer and give a quick update on postings from SBI, before delivering part two of their interview with Red Army.
This episode is sponsored by StormLord’s Poetry Corner
Your Source for Real News in an Unreal World
Bogul and Shozen talk state of the union of Albion Informer and give a quick update on postings from SBI, before delivering part two of their interview with Red Army.
This episode is sponsored by StormLord’s Poetry Corner
This week we had plenty of official news posts on the official Albion Online homepage. Lets take a look.
Rookies of the Month (June 2017)
In what seems to be a new segment on the official website, UrzakeFrostgard writes a nice article, introducing three fairly unknown guilds: GoodFellas, Rangers of Celidon and Iron Bank. The GM’s of those guilds however, are no strangers in the community of Albion Online. While not many may have heard of RangerDovefalcan yet, Kutweer and Sharka are both veterans who have been playing Albion Online since early Alpha and are well known and respected in the community.
I recommend reading the nicely written spotlight, if you want to know more about those guilds. And good luck with your guild endeavours!
Guardians: An In-Depth Look
Enya does a nice writeup of the different open world bosses, which are called Guardians.
So far five different guardians exist, that are designed for 10 player groups:
“These big world bosses can be found in Tier 6 resource hotspots, and randomly respawn between 12 and 48 hours after being defeated. There is no way to know when a Guardian has spawned, so scout the area if you want to take one down.”
Check out the initial newspost for more details on HP, skills and more pretty screenshots!
Player Spotlight: Nausk
In what seems to be a new segment on the official Albion Online homepage, we get an interview with Nausk, who is most famous for his solo ganking Blackzone Tales YouTube videoseries.
Check out the link to the spotlight, if you want to know more about Nausk or the link to the videos.
The official servers recieve a ‘massive hardware’ upgrade & Hector Patch #2 live.
As announced by Enya and after an extended downtime the servers are back up with new and improved hardware. Let’s see if it will hold up on release! :)
// edit: appareantly the whole upgrade of the hardware was delayed and not just the downtime
In addition to that, Hector Patch #2 went live on the main server. We already posted a Patchnote Comment post about it yesterday.
Here is the link again in case you missed it.
That’s it for today!
We are still working on our next podcast episode which will feature the second part of the interview with KingMojo and Norzor of Red Army!
If you want to hang out and chat with us or if you have any cool things we should mention here or on our podcast, make sure to join our discord!
Hector Patch #2 just went live on the main server!
Let’s take a look at the patchnotes below.
Comment: This gives Caerleon its own special feel and atmosphere for the storage area. I am not sure whether or not I am happy with the look of the rather large entrance to the chest and bank areas. With an estimated large concurrent userbase in Caerleon come launch, seperate clusters seemed to be necessary. Let’s see how this turns out usability wise.
Comment: Sure, why not. They might just remove them again after launch, if they don’t need them anymore. I’ll have to find out though if the travel distance to a green city is the same one similar to the other starting areas. After a first glance on the map it seems like it is 1 more zone if you spawn in the new zones.
Comment: A lot of people complained about the BM and item drop frequency. Mind you in a state of the game with lower overall mob deaths due to end-of-beta fatigue and a bug that persisted where not all items dropped equally. I wonder if they overdid it, 45x faster? It will be interesting to see if the first person on the server after launch to hit T8 bags can sell them for 10m+ to the BM guy.
Comment: The ratio is 5 (current tier) : 1 (higher tier). With current expeditions being capped at T6, you need 5×5= 25 T6 sigils to make 1 T8 sigil. With 32 sigils needed for a T8 royal helmet and 64 for a royal chest, thats 800 or 1600 T6 sigils per T8 royal item. Which is quite a hefty price for T8 royal gear. I like it.
Comment: Some areas really needed the aggro reduction. Should make a lot of gatherers happy.
Comment: Heh.
Comment: No more quick-filling those T2 and T3 journals with T7 and T8 nodes because of the higher fame per tick. A move towards making trade routes between green and black more important.
Comment: Hey boss! This stupid animation is to hard to make work! — Uh, wait you realized that now after 3 years? Alright, fu** it. Lets just rename it.
Oh and while you are on it, consider renaming expeditions into ‘fishing’ as well.
Comment: Someone send me a screenshot of the difference pls. :P
Comment: Oh wow! Another (i’m tempted to call it major) change to resource distribution! Together with the journals another nudge at making the trade routes through Caerleon more important. Question: Will gankers be happy if they pop a transport loot pinyata and only get T3 resources?
Comment: Giggdy. Who abused this ? Heh.
Source:
— END —
have a nice day :)
Launch is one month away!
Are people still pvp’ing in final beta?
Lets find out.
Comment: [OOPS], [Sexy] and other clash late wednesday night for a respectable 6.17m total fame. Looking at the killboard it looks like as if [Sexy] and especially Betrayed Souls walk away as a victor from one of the more costly battles this beta. In our second largest battle this week [ML] with Vigilance and Millenium win a big fight.
Largest Battles – Week #3 of June 2017 | ||||
Started (UTC) | Players | Total Kills | Total Fame | |
14.06.2017 00:32:22 | 86 | 79 | 6.17m | Details |
14.06.2017 18:54:47 | 100 | 84 | 5.21m | Details |
14.06.2017 01:12:57 | 112 | 143 | 4.15m | Details |
18.06.2017 12:33:54 | 46 | 29 | 4.15m | Details |
18.06.2017 21:05:19 | 112 | 54 | 4.13m | Details |
Comment: Oh what? Thats right. Filemon and Sickfarmer are in the same guild – Gentlemen. What happened there? After some some research and the friendly folks on the official albion discord channel, I was told the duel bug still persists in the game: When you still have a dot after a duel in a teritorry it can lead do you actually dieing. Oops. I hope nothing trashed. Heh. 2nd highest and thus more legit kill is Hoba from Red Army dieing in 8.2 in a GvG against Betrayed Souls.
Top PvP Kills – Week #3 of June 2017 | ||||
Time (UTC) | Killer | Victim | Fame | |
13.06.2017 22:31:12 | Filemon [TY] | Sickfarmer [TY] | 2.06m | Details |
18.06.2017 05:03:32 | Zecareca [Sexy] | Hoba [OOPS] | 1.70m | Details |
16.06.2017 12:01:34 | Copoka [FAME] | Sohrab [OOPS] | 1.70m | Details |
16.06.2017 20:11:38 | Elthronn [OOPS] | Tyrul [TY] | 1.66m | Details |
18.06.2017 20:58:30 | samanthafox [ML] | Deana [Sexy] | 1.62m | Details |
Comment: Eh. Cmon guys. Just Red Army and 2 ex [Sexy], ex [Pk], ex (?) THE ABYSS. I think the ‘ex’ The Abyss and the two guys not being shown in a guild is the most important thing about this.
// Edit: After some research it turns out Lkuk is still in Grief and just left temporarily, but it shows like this for some reason.
Top Kill Fame (Player) – Week #3 of June 2017 | ||
# | Player | Fame |
1 | FLAIR [OOPS] – Red Army | 6.66m |
2 | Norzor [OOPS] – Red Army | 6.39m |
3 | Lkuk | 5.26m |
4 | Aggressor | 5.04m |
5 | Sohrab [OOPS] – Red Army | 4.81m |
6 | Derrick [OOPS] – Red Army | 4.74m |
7 | Marusia [OOPS] – Tea Party | 4.68m |
8 | KingMoJo [OOPS] – Red Army | 4.37m |
9 | Hoba [OOPS] – Red Army | 4.27m |
10 | GRRRRRRRRRR [OOPS] – Red Army | 4.16m |
Comment: Fame totals to get you into the top#10 are going down again as we head towards the end of final beta. No major changes, but everyone except for RA is below 30m.
Top Kill Fame (Guild) | ||
# | Guild | Fame |
1 | Red Army | 82.54m |
2 | THE ABYSS | 27.95m |
3 | Tea Party | 27.86m |
4 | Betrayed Souls | 25.31m |
5 | The Filthy Casuals | 25.24m |
6 | Echo of Silence | 21.60m |
7 | Jollibee | 20.64m |
8 | Tankui Russia | 20.30m |
9 | NoLife | 19.64m |
10 | KDS | 17.49m |
Comment: Is THE ABYSS is back? Also, 3 attacks to get you into the top#10? Ugh. I’m looking forward to release ;)
GvG – Most Attacks / Defenses Won – Week #3 of June 2017 | |||||
# | Guild | Att. won | # | Guild | Def. won |
1 | Red Army | 17 | 1 | Red Army | 19 |
2 | THE ABYSS | 11 | 2 | THE ABYSS | 10 |
3 | Infinite | 9 | 3 | Echo of Silence | 9 |
4 | Say My Name | 7 | 4 | Say My Name | 8 |
5 | Echo of Silence | 5 | 5 | Infinite | 7 |
6 | Memento Mori | 5 | 6 | Tea Party | 7 |
7 | NoLife | 4 | 7 | Chicken Kiss | 5 |
8 | KDS | 4 | 8 | Lads | 5 |
9 | Betrayed Souls | 3 | 9 | Mercenarios | 4 |
10 | Mercenarios | 3 | 10 | ES MEJOR | 4 |
— END —
have a nice day :)
In today’s podcast Bogul and Shozen take a look back at the early days of Albion Online discus how it has changed over the years.
Bogul still pines for QOL changes and Shozen tries to apologize for last weeks comments about the map.
Hector Patch #1 just went live on the main server. We take a closer look at the patchnotes below.
We also have a bit of official news on top for you this week.
If you have any comments, corrections, suggestions or things that I missed, hop on our discord and let me know!
Current Client Version: Hector Hotfix #1 / Version 1.0.324 - REV 88214 / 16 June 2017
Before we dive into the patchnotes, lets take a quick look at what went on in the forums and the homepage this week.
New Mounts coming with Hector
We get a nice bit of news that shows off the new mounts introduced with Hector, their stats and really nice screenshots and pretty videos.
Mount Hitpoints | 805 |
Move Speed Bonus | +85% |
Gallop Move Speed Bonus | +135% |
Comment: I highly recommend reading the post yourself on the official website.
Albion Armory: Buldozer’s “Catch Me If You Can”-Miner
This armory posts explains the mindset of a solo-gatherer and gives some examples of how to properly avoid open world attacks with your setup.
Comment: A ok read if you you need to polish up your solo-gathering game.
The build is Miners Gathering Gear + Bloodletter + Mistcaller Offhand
The Best Version of Albion Online
In response to a forum thread where people argue about ‘if the current game version is the best of what it could have developed into’ Korn shared this interesting bit of information:
Comment: I can not dispute numbers and metrics and I agree that those kind of numbers show a positive overall development of the player-base. But the follow-up statement ‘wipe just 1 month away’ seems to me to be part of the reason of higher numbers, comparing that to an alpha game that is 2+years down the road in development. Some of the arguments in that thread are on the ranty side of things, but this will be an ongoing thing we will see where ‘old’ players complain about the past with selective memory.
Potential Hellgate Population Issue and Infernal HG Soft-Cap
In a response to a thread made by HyperAgressive, where the complaint about a potential issue with current HG population is raised and in a different thread, Korn responds to both with bringing up the following points:
Comment: Now we know the reason for the weird behavior of the black market since hector with bags having much higher prices initially than any other items. The charge-up issue of the black market is compounded by the potential dropping playerbase at the end of test-phases. What stands out is the idea of potentially capping gear levels in HGs though. Also, lets face the fact that everyone is going to ignore the word ‘soft-‘ in their arguments to a degree. I am not sure if I like the reason given by Korn above for the cap is reasonable, but I don’t think we know the exact numbers yet. One complaint raised though, which is the potential issue of ‘splitting the playerbase’ has not been tackled as of yet. If you have an opinion I encourage you to voice it in the forums – as it is a potential hot topic for the future.
Focus Cost for Watering Crops
In another statement mate by Korn, we get some insight into the current intended balance of watering crops:
Comment: Some of the discussion and numbers brought up in the thread are interesting for future farmers to be. Yet as far as I can tell some of the arguments given contain issues, of which I might respond to later.
Community Manager Talion cautions players about buying AO keys through 3rd party sides
Comment: Don’t cry when you want to save a few bucks by using a potentially illegal channel, just to get scammed.
Comment: This patch mostly contains a lot of fixes for things that didn’t properly make it into Hector, but also some changes that are worth pointing out.
Comment: This is weird and I wonder where this change came from or why it was applied. Probably some differences due to food having different nutrition values initially? The big thing is that buildings do not have any food in them once built. All in all just a slight balance change to increase food use or tackling a deeper issue? Let me know if you have an opinion!
Comment: Too bad they didn’t say which ones. If you do castle content, better check your timeslot before you do any event planning this weekend!
Comment: A bunch of fixes, not too much to comment on here. Part of the last push to make the release version of Albion Online as good as possible.
Comment: What does ‘set up’ mean? Weird comment. Anyone know? Will investigate and edit.
Comment: Some players have been complaining that gatherers who skin animals can not solo T7 and T8 mobs. A fix towards this complaint?
Comment: Fixes to PvE content, that finally went up high enough on the priority list? To me this is good because it means we will see more QOL changes soon, if they have time to deal with this kind of content.
Comment: Finally! No more trolling. A log would have done a similar thing, .. just saying.
Comment: Yay! .. Yay? OH SH** FIREBALL
Comment: Shozen: ‘Silence falls’ ..
Comment: Rushing water silent. Small burning logs roar.
Comment: The offset areas seemed to just pop up with Hector. New or old issues?
— END —
that’s it for today folks
have a nice day :)
Shozen and Bogul wrap up the PvP events leading up to Hector.
Veton gets 15 minutes of fame, Red Army conquers all, and giants battles in this weeks run down.
Hector released at the beginning of last week, which led to a new landscape and new oportunities for PvP engagements. Lets take a look at the leaderboards and find out, if we can see any of that impact already.
Comment: Very low ‘Total Fame’ numbers compared to the previous months, with at least two out of the top#2 taking place before Hector went live. In our largest battle last week [OOPS] clash against [Sexy] for a measly 4.6m. I had hoped for more.
Largest Battles – Week #2 of June 2017 | ||||
Started (UTC) | Players | Total Kills | Total Fame | |
05.06.2017 01:35:55 | 81 | 45 | 4.60m | Details |
07.06.2017 21:48:57 | 10 | 7 | 4.31m | Details |
08.06.2017 02:24:14 | 10 | 6 | 3.72m | Details |
07.06.2017 20:14:11 | 10 | 8 | 3.57m | Details |
05.06.2017 01:16:12 | 10 | 7 | 3.34m | Details |
Comment: Norzor is back! He now holds #1 and #2 for largest ever recorded ‘Top PvP Deaths’. #3 is held by Snowlz at 2.76m. Appareantly Boo managed to spank Norzor naked during a GvG. A bug on the killboard?
Top PVP Kills – Week #2 of June 2017 | ||||
Time (UTC) | Killer | Victim | Fame | |
09.06.2017 20:05:43 | Boo – ZORN | Norzor – Red Army | 2.77m | Details |
08.06.2017 20:10:26 | Hoba – Red Army | Finale – ZORN | 2.41m | Details |
07.06.2017 20:18:17 | Mohicans – THE ABYSS | akunamatata – NoLife | 1.98m | Details |
06.06.2017 03:06:50 | Hallo – Red Army | ShinnoK – Envy | 1.71m | Details |
08.06.2017 20:09:54 | KingMoJo – Red Army | Boo – ZORN | 1.69m | Details |
Comment: 9.16m and almost everyone else close to or above 7m fame?! That’s a new record high! More and more people are bringing out their T7+ gear stockpiles to play. Aggressor‘s kills are a mix of open world and GvG kills against a lot of 7.1+ geared opponents. Others in the top #10 have high amounts of open world / hellgate kills, with the occasional GvG kill sprinkled in.
Top Kill Fame (Player) | ||
# | Player | Fame |
1 | Aggressor [Sexy] – THE ABYSS | 9.16m |
2 | reizerrr [Sexy] – THE ABYSS | 7.99m |
3 | Lkuk – Grief | 7.80m |
4 | Far – VenuM | 7.47m |
5 | Modestos [FAME] – NoLife | 7.36m |
6 | BIRAR [FAME] – NoLife | 7.32m |
7 | Copoka [FAME] – NoLife | 7.13m |
8 | akunamatata [FAME] – NoLife | 7.06m |
9 | KA1 [FAME] – NoLife | 6.91m |
10 | Dukes – Umbral | 6.89m |
Comment: Red Army still holding firm onto the #1 spot. I doubt we will see any changes to that during this beta. Lots of familiar faces in the top#10, if you followed the previous installations of this blog. We see however, still somewhat low total fame numbers, which can be attributed to ongoing end-of-beta fatigue. In case you wonder who Betrayed Souls is, they partly comprised of ex Articulo Mortis members.
Top Kill Fame (Guild) | ||
# | Guild | Fame |
1 | Red Army | 98.80m |
2 | THE ABYSS | 45.18m |
3 | NoLife | 41.44m |
4 | Tea Party | 36.36m |
5 | Chicken Kiss | 33.53m |
6 | Echo of Silence | 27.51m |
7 | Betrayed Souls | 27.00m |
8 | ZORN | 26.63m |
9 | Tetra-Phi | 26.20m |
10 | Umbral | 21.16m |
Comment: Red Army winning a lot more compared to last week. Did someone get conqured in the east? ES MEJOR showing up on the leaderboards out of no-where. A quick look on the mini-map didnt reveal anything appearant. I’ll take another look and report back later.
GvG – Most Attacks / Defenses Won – Week #2 of June 2017 | |||||
# | Guild | Att. won | # | Guild | Def. won |
1 | Red Army | 24 | 1 | ES MEJOR | 10 |
2 | Echo of Silence | 9 | 2 | Say My Name | 9 |
3 | ES MEJOR | 8 | 3 | Red Army | 9 |
4 | Betrayed Souls | 6 | 4 | Echo of Silence | 8 |
5 | NoLife | 6 | 5 | THE ABYSS | 7 |
6 | Say My Name | 5 | 6 | ZORN | 6 |
7 | Infinite | 4 | 7 | Betrayed Souls | 5 |
8 | Mercenarios | 4 | 8 | NoLife | 5 |
9 | ZORN | 4 | 9 | Chicken Kiss | 4 |
10 | Metatrone | 3 | 10 | Tankui Russia | 4 |
— END —
that’s it for this week again, let’s see how this Hector thing develops further!
have a nice day :)
Hector launched this wednesday!
We discussed the patchnotes here and will talk about our initial impressions on next weeks show.
Today I want to discuss some of the developer comments that were made in the recent days, mostly in response to initial Hector feedback.
Before I get started, a shoutout to AlbionOffline.com and their devtracker. While it does not capture all devposts it is a great help to get an overview about recent dev activity!
Since Hector was published to the live-server and is now what is officially called the ‘launch-version of Albion Online’ by community manager Axototl, the dev-team is busy gathering feedback and responding to various threads on the offical Albion Online forums.
Below I will highlight some responses and comment where I feel like I have something to add.
On a unrelated note before we dive into the devtracker, the Albion Online client seems to have recieved an update to its file structure which makes looking at XML game-data way easier compared to the past.
I expect the community to publish a lot more detailed info on mobs, spells, drops, loot chances and many other things that were previously somewhat secret due to that change.
I will also try to do a bit file-diff analysis in the future. The folder for the XML files is currently located at:
\AlbionOnline\game\Albion-Online_Data\StreamingAssets\GameData
I suggest you open the XML files with a tool like Notepad++ that will make the files much easier to read.
Comment: I know this has ethical issues and some people don’t like this kind of deep dive into the games code as it impacts the immersive experience and the mystery of the game. If you are this kind of person, treat this as a spoiler and ignore it.
Here is a little sample:
Focus Cost of Enchanted Items
Monochrome responded to a question by Sensei987 providing us with the formula to calculate the focus cost:
1.75^(LOG((itemvalue/#ofresources)/2)/LOG(2))*#ofresources*10
Comment: While not immediately useful to many, some will find the exact forumla helpful for their spreadsheets.
Item Power Soft Cap Scaling
Zog asked about the new item power soft cap scaling, in which monochrome gave a quick response.
However, in a follow-up post IamDigital linked a nice youtube video, where the table below is used.
Comment: For the alpha players: Blue zone = Green zone. Looking at the numbers below, we see how fast the scaling kicks in.
Performance Issues and Zone Phasing
Another hot topic that was brought up are current performance issues that likely are the result of some recent changes in the Hector patch.
Due to the centralized role of Caerleon some community members are worried about server performance and proper preperation for launch on SBIs side.
Bercilak made a thread about it and Korn released a statement on a slightly different but related topic: scaling plans. In case the amount of players in Caerleon should go beyond 1000 active players at a time.
In a different thread Eltharyon noted that they have been focussing on server-side performance for now, which makes it more likely that they will fix some of the performance issues on the client-side before release.
If you care about the details of their scaling and performance plans, I recommend you read the threads I linked above.
Comment: Releasing a new version with changes to the graphics system often results in performance issues for some part of the player base. We should see some fixes for that rather soon I expect. On the topic of scaling I am not sure what to think yet. 1000+ people in one city seems crazy, extremely overcrowded and unplayable, especially if people are allowed to duel. This actually happening seems unlikely to me though. But who knows. I am curious to see how the current map-design of Caerleon will support the concurrect active users of the city in the future.
Hanibal Dev Comments
Game Designer Han1baL also responded to some questions and had a few interesting tidbits of information for us.
Bercilak responds to criticism of ‘devs don’t listen’
In a new thread Bercilak opens a discussion on one of the age-old criticisms from the community if and how much the developers are listening to the community feedback.
He details how they approach community feedback, explains how he sees various groups of the community that all want their piece of the cake and how they approach those members of the community.
Comment: This thread is turning into a popcorn worthy one fast and I recomment you get yourself a drink or a snack and read it. It is pretty new but it might be one that defines future community interaction ideas of SBI. Make sure to leave a comment if you have constructive feedback to give. I mostly agree on his points made and it shows the difficulty of dealing with a large and diverse player community.
Content Updates
Eltharyon made a statement on large content patches vs quick regular updates here.
If we felt that weekly balance updates made sense we might consider them. We believe it takes longer for the impact of balance changes to truly come to light. Additionally, there’s a significant overhead in frequent releases- doing so would slow us down overall. We try to strike a balance and whenever we are convinced that a short term change is necessary, we will do it.
Mob XP & Farming Efficiency
Eltharyon responded to criticism of mob fame balancing with detailed table.
Check it out if you are into fame farming efficency stuff.
Quote:
Expected result: based on numbers killing elite mobs is the effective method to grind fame or drops.
— END —
Thats it for this week, corrections, comments or things I missed – please let me know on the forums or hop on our discord and send me a PM!
have a nice day :)