A New World, an immersive game experience

Chapter 55: Update two

Continuing on with the announcement thread after having sent the messages Eldrian found one called [Adventurer Update]. Curious about what it was he started reading.

The starting statement of this post was that the game would officially enter its adventure mode.

A short hype paragraph was right after this, saying that the time for action and adventure has come. Training is done and players should now go out to enjoy the world.

'Yeah right, go out into hordes of monsters...' Eldrian mumbled to himself, finding this hype paragraph to reflect really poorly on the state of the game. Eldrian felt certain most of the kingdoms would soon enter a dire struggle for survival and player would be right in the middle.

'That isn't really going to be an enjoyable experience.' He thought to himself as he continued reading.

The first major part of this update was that players would now be able to resurrect in any place of worship, as long as the god or goddess was part of the Kalos races. A short description was given for this, stating that this meant any god or goddess whose religion was of a neutral or good alignment.

It was also added that all towns would have a place of worship for players to resurrect in. But not all villages would.

A short description was added for players to recognize which they were at. This description said that towns were far bigger than villages, often having over 10 000 people living in them. It would also always be walled and cover a massive area.

Villages instead are much smaller, almost always less than 1000 people. A village might be walled or not, but this wall would only cover the buildings and living space. This unlike with towns, the village's farmland and animals would often be outside.

'So now we have pit stops.' Eldrian thought after reading this. Finding that this would indeed make traveling much easier. As every town one passed should then be a point of revival. If you are lucky then you might even be able to to set one at a random village.

Reading on Eldrian found that the post had another major part. Being that players would be able to log out while exploring. The only requirement was that they ensure that they could log out for 5 minutes. During that time the player has to stay in a resting state, not entering combat or moving during that time. The resting state was simply explained as lie down and fall asleep.

The developers added that if this was done, then the player's avatar would disappear while offline, and reappear when coming back online. Seemingly this disappearance will be in a form where the player would turn into light particles, much like they revived in temples. Just the inverse of being created as they would be destructed when logging off. The same process would create their avatar when logging back in.

A side note was added at the end of this post, stating that players had to be careful when logging off. Saying that if a player logged in and something was in the place of the player then the player might die right off.

To soften this rule a spawning system was implemented, where a circle of one meter would be a valid spawning area for the player. But if the entire space was filled then the player had to either wait for it to empty or risk dying on logging in.

'Interesting system.' Eldrian thought to himself. Glad that his avatar would disappear if he decided to adventure. This was a major weakness for players as it had limited them to not log out in any unsafe area. Seeing as their avatar would be completely defenseless, making it easy for someone to rob or kill them.

Heck, they could even be captured, but this wouldn't do much since players could suicide if they wanted to.

Having finished the announcement Eldrian turned to the comments. Most were on the login process, many weren't optimistic. With players complaining about many things, but mainly the time needed to simply log out.

"Screw the devs, wanting us to stay still for 5 minutes when logging out. Why is it so long!?"

"Right, that is simply insane, why not just a few seconds?"

"They are probably trying to stop logging out as a way of avoiding a fight."

"Screw that, just add a cooldown on combat state or something."

"Yeah, that would be much better."

"Really, you all complaining about an addition?" One random player asked, feeling that the players were being overly negative about something which was added to make their playtime easier and more enjoyable.

Glancing over the rest of the comments Eldrian found that most of the comments on the revival part was surprisingly encouraging. Seeing as it was a standard thing in many games, only being able to revive in towns or some set locations. This seemed to have made it easy for players to accept, even when traveling between towns took at minimum around 5 hours.

Just as Eldrian wanted to turn of his PC to log into the game he got a message on his account. Opening it he saw it was a reply to his bug reports.

'That was fast.' He mumbled as he opened the messages.

The first one he looked at was about the pain scaling. The message started with the developer apologizing but also saying that it was not a but. The guy said he would make a post to explain how pain works in the game, and why some times the pain can be felt in its entirety.

"This is something we have realized and found during testing. We have been unable to remove it, please do try to limit the amount you feel pain. Try to find what causes you to feel the pain completely and try to avoid this thing."

On the second message, Eldrian received a similar answer. Except that this one stated that it was completely unexpected that anyone would experience the resurrection problem so soon.

"This death state you were in is something we speculated was possible. But none of our alpha or beta players had managed to unlock/enter it. You are the first, so we would also like to ask you if you would want to share your data."

"Thus we are aware of it, but it has been unconfirmed until now. We have taken actions to ensure no user would receive any physical damage from playing the game. But we can't stop mental traumas and would like to advice you to limit the amount of combat you enter. At least until we are able to release our cabins which we are working on."

"We are planning to announce them in a few months, but we want to inform you that the situation is being worked on. This is because headsets have an inherent limitation. Being unable to support players in a fragile state, thus you will be kicked from the game when it deems you are in a fragile state. The cabin would allow you to keep playing, but we are still developing them, wanting to ensure it up to standard when we do release them."

"From our tests and speculations, we believe this has something to do with how connected one is with their avatar in-game. Much like the affinity score indicates, but the score is just a rough outline. When logging back in please do check if your affinity is still the same as it was."

"We ask you to immediately stop what you are doing if you enter a state where you feel pain completely. We believe it is a requirement to enter the death state, but again we had no tester who confirmed this."

"Kind regards, Your ANW Quality control team."

'Wait, what?' Eldrian asked himself, blanking out for a while after reading this message. After which he reread it a few times to make sure he understood the implications.

'I don't understand, what do they mean they thought it was possible? But that they couldn't test it? And cabins, how the hell will I afford that?'

'And they want my data? How and what data? Does this include the magic crystal pain or is that something different?'

Eldrian sat quietly for a while, losing himself to his thoughts and the music he was playing. Only coming to after twenty minutes.

'I'm not planning on fighting again anytime soon, so I will play. I think I also want to test dying again. Just need to make sure someone can revive me after I do it.' Eldrian mumbled as he climbed onto his bed and placed the headset on his head. Wanting to see if it was a constant thing or something only happening under certain conditions.

He also wondered if he should use the magic crystal. But he decided to do it, if something happens then Dave would likely be able to help him.

'Let's go.' Eldrian hyped himself as he fell asleep.