[Dev Diary] 20/11/2012

Dear settlers!

We’d like to give you an update regarding the current and future development of The Settlers Online.
The graphics are representative. The final design may vary.


15th of November/ 20th / 22nd of November

GUILD QUESTS

We kept an eye on topics related to this feature. After analysing your feedback, we decided to completely rework the guild quests feature.
Planned changes:

1. More quests, additional type of quests.

As promised some time ago, we will add more quests for guilds. Guilds members will receive an interesting possibility to cooperate with other in order to finish a main task and get nice rewards.

2. Required amount of guild members.
Many of you stressed out that 25 guild members is quite a lot, hence it forces you to recruit more players, even if you don’t want to. Basing on your feedback, we decided to lower the required amount of guild members to 10.

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3. New resource: Guild Coins.
You suggested that current rewards for completing tasks related to daily guild quests are not adequate. That’s the reason why we decided to adjust them. What’s more, we invented a brand new resource: Guild Coins!

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Guild coins will allow you to get various things, including:

• New buffs
• New deposit refills
• Adventures
• Specialist

More information will follow soon.

NEW CAMPAIGN SYSTEM “EVOLVEMENT OF YOUR KINGDOM”

1. [“New campaign system “evolvement of your kingdom”] for all levels.
Many of you already saw these changes on the test server – again, basing on your feedback, we decided to add a lot of new quest chains, in order to make game more interesting for you. While completing quests, you will learn useful things related to, for example, game mechanisms.

The following features belong to the “New campaign system”:


- 250 interesting quests, including quest campaigns with special rewards and their own story
- New NPCs
- Side quests
- Showing of aggro zones when attacking an enemy camp/using pre – combat feedback
- Reworked Tutorial adventure “Bounty Hunter”
- New help window system: Will explain you all features of the game with pictures and detailed descriptions - they will be opened every time you use respective feature/function for the first time, includes graphical assets: flying reward icons and highlighter interface elements
- Help window archive in which you can find lots of information


29th of November/ 04th of December / 06nd of December

CHRISTMAS EVENT

There will be a special quest chain, buffs and buildings for Christmas, presented by a new NPC. Also, you will experience “White Christmas” on your island.

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The recycling factory will be there and of course there will be presents, too.

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Details about the additional, brand new stuff will be announced in short time before the event.

FURTHER OUTLOOK – 2013


NEWS WINDOW

It will allow you to have a quick overview of what recently happened in your settlement. With a single click you will be able to refill a mine or to demolish a depleted one. Furthermore, the improved news window will show remaining times of geologists, explorers, completion of buffs and units.
As you can see, the access to information will be improved.


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ECONOMIC ADVENTURES

This new type of adventures will consist of challenges with less or no combat. They will contain critical challenges for traders and economists. Tightly balanced constraints such as starting resources, time limits and limited building licenses will provide the challenge. Reward will be available for the main goal, and bonus items for optional side quests

NEW MAIL WINDOW
We have been working on a new in-game mail interface. It will not only allow you to have a better overview of your messages, but also implement several interface improvements.

STAR MENU: FILTERS
This modification will help you to put things in order in your star menu. Finally, you will be able to filter away all the things you don’t care about.

SCIENCE SYSTEM

New production cycles will implement new resources which will allow you to earn talent points. It will be possible to spend these points on your home island talent tree or your specialists’ talent tree. This means that you will be able to customize your specialists and even specialize yourself in certain aspects (including production and/or military).

Important: please keep in mind that the images shown below are only drafts/placeholders.

The talent tree of the home island will consist of three different sub-section which will allow a focused specialization of your own island, e.g. in military.

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Each of players’ specialists can be skilled individually. This should make it possible to the player to train real experts, e.g. to search for certain goods.

As mentioned, talent points will become a part of the game economy, a separate production tree will be responsible for producing them.


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LEVEL CAP RAISE

The max level (currently: 50) will be raised. XPs that are stored as messages in the mailbox will be deleted before if older than 2 weeks.

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PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER

Many players are waiting for more details related to PvP elements that will be implemented to the game – you will find a short summary/key facts below. In order to prepare the game for PvP content, we think if we rework the current combat system.

1. Home islands will be protected

This information will calm down a lot of players: it will not be possible to attack home islands of other players – they will be protected from attacks.

2. Separate islands for PvP

New type of islands will be added to the game. Players who are interested in PvP will have a possibility to compete with other people in order to take control over valuable islands.

3. New possibilities to gain specified resources

With Player vs Player content, we will add new possibilities to gain precious resources. New sources of these will definitely help you to expand your settlement.

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Pictures of PvP content

• Espionage building

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• Watchtower & overview

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http://static2.cdn.ubi.com/F2P/TSO_U...mages/dd10.PNG


 
• New NPC

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More information about PvP will be published in the future.

Please keep in mind that the final version all things mentioned above can be different and that the dates are estimations and may differ.

The features have to fit our needs in terms of quality and technical aspects and they have to pass several test phases (one is the pre-staging test you’re welcome to participate in).

The TSO Team