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| 0s | Medium we think's in a relatively good spot. |
|---|---|
| 2s | It's just the other ones are pretty strong. |
| 4s | So we wanted to kind of like adjust where people are going to go with their equip loads and make a conscious decision on which one to use. |
| 10s | So we decided to increase the Dodge cost, uh, for the heavier equip load. |
| 20s | Welcome to Forged in Aeternum, where we talk about all things New World. |
| 23s | Today we have a very special episode of Balance of Power. |
| 27s | I'm joined by two combat experts here. |
| 30s | Uh, today is going to be my last Balance of Power. |
| 33s | Uh, I am making room for these two fine gentlemen to take over and, uh, sort of shepherd the ship here, so to speak. |
| 41s | Uh, I'm obviously I'm still in New World. |
| 43s | Don't worry about it. |
| 44s | I'm just, uh, transitioning to a slightly different role to make room for that. |
| 48s | I thought we'd start off by getting to know a little bit. |
| 50s | I mean, you guys have already done some videos. |
| 52s | The Flail video was a total hit with the community. |
| 54s | But maybe introduce yourself, Josh, and tell...tell the community a little bit about yourself. |
| 57s | Uh, hello, my name is Josh. |
| 59s | I'm a Combat Designer on the team. |
| 60s | Uh, previously mentioned I did work with the Flail in the past. |
| 63s | Uh, as well, I work with various other aspects of combat, including, uh, perks, um, all the weapon, all the previous weapons and their how, their weapon trees and how they all work out. |
| 74s | Um. |
| 75s | What do you what makes you passionate about combat? |
| 77s | I just love the the timing, the dynamics of it, how it's constantly changing, the overall kind of quality and feel of it, and how everything works together, um, how the characters move. |
| 89s | And it's kind of like a lot of combat, kind of in turn, the kind of like a dance, like a violent dance. |
| 93s | And I just love watching the characters kind of interact with each other, um, and dodge attacks, block attacks, um, dynamically exchange violence with each other. |
| 103s | It's a weird way to phrase it, but. |
| 104s | I like that the violent dance of Josh, uh, and JR, our Combat Lead. |
| 110s | Uh, very excited to have you sort of, you know, formally take over and shepherd the ship here. |
| 114s | JR, why don't you tell us a little bit about about yourself and what you like about combat? |
| 117s | Sure. |
| 118s | Yeah. |
| 118s | So, um, I've been with the team, uh, about a year now. |
| 122s | Um, and, uh, I, I really, like I fell in love with the combat in New World specifically because it's very much. |
| 131s | It's very much like, like singleplayer games I've played. |
| 134s | Um, and I haven't played another MMO that, like, goes this in-depth with the combat, and it has this many mechanics that all work really well over, over the network. |
| 144s | I guess, I, I really enjoy that aspect of the game. |
| 147s | There's just like how, um, uh, in this, in this role, I have, I guess the, the, the power to, uh, improve on that. |
| 156s | And, and really just like, uh, you know, build on it. |
| 160s | Um, there's this there's so many other mechanics that we could draw on from from other games and explore in our game. |
| 167s | Um, and, and do it in a way that maybe hasn't been seen in other MMOs. |
| 171s | Exciting. |
| 173s | Well, let's jump into some balance. |
| 175s | First, I want to talk a little bit about, uh, we released the 1/9 balance patch. |
| 179s | The January balance patch, uh, give me a highlight or two of some of the changes we made there and why we made those changes, Josh. |
| 187s | All right, so one of the bigger ones we did with adjust the equip load, uh, for the heavy equip load, which we initially were busy trying to figure out exactly what would you want to do if you want to adjust medium, adjust heavy. |
| 198s | Uh, but medium we think's in a relatively good spot. |
| 200s | It's just the other ones are pretty strong. |
| 202s | So we wanted to kind of like adjust where people are going to go with their equip loads and make a conscious decision on which one to use. |
| 209s | So we decided to increase the Dodge cost, uh, for the heavy equip load. |
| 213s | Uh, mainly because we don't want to go back into our Dodge spam meta, we remove some of the ATB's and other, um, things that made it so dodge were a little bit easier. |
| 222s | And so we increased the stamina cost. |
| 224s | Uh, we think that'll kind of give medium a little bit more value and tie in to some of the things we might look into doing in the future. |
| 230s | Awesome. |
| 231s | JR any any change you want to highlight from that balance patch? |
| 234s | Uh, that's one of them was uh, with the flamethrower, actually. |
| 237s | So we, um, we actually slowed down the speed when you're using flamethrower a little bit, make it a little less oppressive. |
| 245s | Um, because, you know, definitely, uh, having people chase you down with just, like, an infinitely going flamethrower wasn't too fun. |
| 252s | So. |
| 252s | And there was a change on, uh, fireball. |
| 254s | Right. |
| 254s | Like, just to reduce the little spiky-ness in damage. |
| 257s | I know that's something, uh, Josh, that you're looking at, uh, is that, like, we want to make sure that, you know, there aren't too many spikes in, uh, in damage, right? |
| 266s | Yeah. |
| 266s | So the change we did with was for the perk so that way it doesn't affect the overall usage of the ability just because the base ability's in a pretty good spot. |
| 274s | But the perk allowed it. |
| 275s | So if you were just using dots, you could kind of stack up the dots and keep it in power going for a long period of time. |
| 281s | And so we reduce the duration that that perk would remain active just to allow it to keep that extra power, but not kind of be cheese-able by players. |
| 290s | And so we could address it without having it affect the base functionality of it. |
| 294s | I think it's super important, like what you're looking at is sort of like eliminating some of those extremes, the power by but not sort of reducing the overall playability of the land. |
| 302s | Cool. |
| 303s | Uh, so something else I wanted to address was we do currently have two artifacts that are turned off. |
| 308s | Uh, I believe they'll be turned off and fixed by the time this airs. |
| 312s | But, uh, JR, why don't you tell us a little bit about why we had to turn them off and what's going to be fixed here? |
| 317s | Sure. |
| 318s | Yeah. |
| 318s | So, uh, we did have an issue with the Winged Leather Shoes and and then later the Boltcaster. |
| 325s | Uh, the case with the Leather Shoes was we discovered an issue where, uh, you could basically apply infinite haste. |
| 332s | Um, and that was really, you know, important to get fixed right away. |
| 335s | The fastest way for us to fix these problems is actually to turn, turn off the the affected items until we have a fix that we can patch. |
| 343s | Um, so that's what we had to do, unfortunately, with the Winged Leather Shoes. |
| 347s | And then the case with Boltcaster, uh, was, uh, an issue with the way that we do damage conversion. |
| 353s | Um, so as, as, you know, uh, we've been, um, adjusting damage for PvE upwards for our, um, our ranged weapons and then adjusting downwards, uh, back down in, in PvP modes. |
| 367s | Unfortunately, uh, there's an issue with, uh, the damage conversion where that doesn't actually take place in PvP. |
| 374s | Um, so that the damage doesn't get scaled down and Boltcaster has like the highest, um, conversion rate. |
| 380s | And it was just a real issue, so we had to disable that. |
| 383s | But we will have fixes coming for the, um, the January 24th update. |
| 387s | So we expect both of those to be re-enabled for that. |
| 390s | Awesome. |
| 391s | Uh, and then normally now we would spend the rest of the time talking about our February balance update. |
| 396s | Uh, we are actually filming this early in January because both of these two, uh, fine usually Seattle people were in Irvine. |
| 404s | Uh, so we don't have a ton of information yet about the February balance patch, so I thought we'd do something a little different, especially since we have the new Champions of Combat here. |
| 411s | Rather than talk specifics of February, I thought we'd talk a little bit about the future, the vision. |
| 417s | Uh, what you guys think about combat? |
| 419s | Uh, and I have a couple of sort of high level areas I want to talk about that. |
| 422s | I know you guys are going to be spending some time on. |
| 424s | Uh, so let's jump into some of those. |
| 427s | Uh, let's start out with you. |
| 428s | Uh, I think equip weights is one of the very special things about our game. |
| 432s | Uh, I know we did some balance patches, uh, some balance changes here recently, but I know more is coming. |
| 437s | Tell me a little bit about your thoughts on equip weights and where we're going here. |
| 441s | So one thing we want to do is balance equip weights so they have more of a universal kind of value for each one. |
| 447s | And our ideal goal would be each one is kind of like equally used. |
| 450s | Uh, which right now it's pretty heavily favored for the light equip load and heavy with a very minimal medium equip load usage. |
| 456s | So we want to try and normalize those a bit. |
| 459s | So one thing we want to start looking into is kind of having the medium equip load be like the default. |
| 464s | So there's really no pros or negatives on it. |
| 466s | It's just the baseline. |
| 467s | And then as you go into heavy or light you gain benefits or disadvantages based on those equip load. |
| 474s | So if you go to light you'll gain more damage or offensive ability, but you'll lose some more, some of the survivability or um, uh, defensive aspects of your, of your equip load. |
| 486s | And then same thing with heavy. |
| 487s | You'll lose some damage, but you'll gain survivability and defensiveness. |
| 491s | And so we want to start looking into like medium as just kind of blanket zero across the board, kind of a default equip load. |
| 499s | And then just as you go from there and as you increase or decrease your weight, that's when we start adding kind of unique characteristics of each one. |
| 508s | Now in equip loads, they each have a different dodge, uh, roll mechanic. |
| 511s | Is that's something we anticipate continuing and if so, why? |
| 516s | Uh, yeah, I think so. |
| 517s | It it is one of the, the, uh, the tells for your equip load is like how you dodge. |
| 522s | Um, and it's also, it is also another way that, you know, distinguishes them from each other. |
| 528s | Um, we have definitely talked about, uh, you know, other things that we could do with Dodge in the past. |
| 535s | Um, uh, but we don't currently have any plans to, to move away from that in particular. |
| 540s | Yeah. |
| 540s | I mean, I like that they're different animations and we've normalized a lot of the iframes and timings of that, right, Josh? |
| 546s | Yeah, there's the iframes. |
| 548s | They're all have the same amount, which we've discussed adjusting in the future. |
| 552s | Uh, and then they also have like there's a homing, uh, ignore homing aspect where you won't just have someone like home onto you when you dodge. |
| 559s | And we've kind of normalized those as well. |
| 562s | Cool. |
| 563s | Uh, another area that I know we're going to be working on that I'm excited about is the Life Staff. |
| 567s | Healing is a big topic. |
| 568s | Tell us a little bit about, like, your thoughts on the Life Staff and where we may be going with that in the future. |
| 573s | Uh, so the main thing we want to do for the Life Staff in the future is kind of separate the trees. |
| 578s | Right now it's pretty much just healing. |
| 580s | But the trees are broken up in the healing and protection. |
| 582s | So we'd want to lean into that more. |
| 584s | So the left tree would be just purely healing focused, and then the right tree would be more about, um, keeping players alive if they don't necessarily need a healing. |
| 593s | So we want to lean into that, which we don't really have all the specifics nailed down yet, but we'd like to basically make it so there's a proactive and reactive aspect of the trees. |
| 603s | So if you're like in an Expedition or all your teammates are pretty good on health, you can kind of overload them with a protection side and keep them, keep them ready to take those hits for once all the like the boss hits come in or the the big waves of enemies and then you can utilize that extra protection you put on beforehand to keep yourself alive before you pivot over to the healing. |
| 627s | Yeah, it's super cool. |
| 628s | Like, I know, uh, in high end PvE circles, they talk about over healing, right? |
| 632s | And like, protection is a way to avoid over healing and just use the healing to a maximum because you have protection doing the other side. |
| 637s | So yeah, all cool stuff, JR. |
| 641s | Uh, weapon synergy is something else I'd like to talk about. |
| 643s | One of the super special things about New World is we have two weapons. |
| 647s | Uh, any any plans or things you thinking about in the future to make weapons synergize better? |
| 652s | Yeah, there's definitely, uh, we've been talking about, um, doing things where, uh, more of the passive aspects of a weapon might carry over when you swap. |
| 661s | Um, so, you know, you might do an ability that that's like, right now, most weapons, the passives will end when you swap immediately. |
| 671s | Uh, we'll definitely have to do a lot of work with that if we do kind of lean into to the weapon synergies because a lot of those passives would be just like broken, like power wise, if we just flat out just said all passives, you know, exist when you swap. |
| 688s | Um, so we definitely have to be careful about that, but we definitely want to be, um, you know, like strategic and, um, looking for for the ones that can persist and maybe adding new ones or changing existing ones to, to work better with that. |
| 702s | I think it's super fun. |
| 703s | Like, I love, you know, the idea of having a almost a primary weapon that I do a lot of damage with and then like it can it can breathe new life into some of the support weapons, like give them a stronger role as a secondary weapon. |
| 714s | So it's cool. |
| 716s | Uh, something else. |
| 717s | Homing and translation is something we're gonna be working on. |
| 720s | First of all, uh, almost every one who watches as Balance of Power is an amazing combat expert. |
| 725s | But just in case there's 1 or 2, uh, Michael Lovins watching, uh, tell us a little bit what is homing, first of all, in translation and how does it relate to attacks? |
| 735s | So the homing is basically the kind of magnetism you get when you're in the middle of an attack that kind of pulls you either rotation, either your rotation or like the distance away from enemy to kind of make it easier to hit, especially in the MMO with online capabilities and server latency. |
| 749s | You want that extra a little bit to actually make sure attacks hit. |
| 752s | And so we're going to be doing a path through all weapons to kind of improve them, make them feel a little bit better. |
| 758s | Um, hopefully uh, remove some of the desyncs things and kind of issues that we have where some weapons can either feel like they attract too much or not enough. |
| 767s | And so we want to do a path through those and just make it easier to have those weapons feel like they actually, like connect when they should and don't connect when they shouldn't. |
| 777s | I'm asking for a friend who's a very heavy Void Blade user. |
| 780s | Will it be a part of this pass you think? |
| 782s | Definitely. |
| 782s | Well, just get is one of the one that gets called out a good amount. |
| 786s | Awesome. |
| 787s | Uh, another thing that I think is, is super cool about New World's combat system is, you know, there aren't a million buttons like in other games, but like each button has very specific uses with timing and distance. |
| 799s | And, and we also have the ability to do light and heavy attacks with one button, uh, heavy attacks though, you know, outside of PvE, maybe don't get as much usage as we want. |
| 808s | Tell me a little bit like, are there any thoughts about heavy attacks? |
| 811s | What are we thinking about with it? |
| 812s | Yeah, definitely. |
| 813s | Uh, heavy attacks are rarely used in PvP because of the, the commitment that they take. |
| 821s | Right? |
| 821s | Like you're when you're charging up a heavy attack, especially, uh, melee, you're, you're locked in place and, uh, and just the duration that it takes to charge is also variable based on the weapons you're using. |
| 835s | Um, so we kind of wanted to do a pass on heavy attacks, make them easier to use in a variety of situations, not just in PvE where your target is just standing still waiting for you to attack them. |
| 845s | Um, and you know, some of the things that we've been talking about, um, that are possibly expensive, uh, for animation costs, which is, you know, why we we have to be careful there. |
| 855s | Um, but, you know, maybe allowing for for movement while you're charging, you know, more like. |
| 860s | But yeah, that's definitely, um, an area that we want to, uh, to improve on. |
| 865s | Awesome. |
| 867s | Uh, magic is another one I want to talk a little about. |
| 870s | Uh, mana has sort of a weird positioning, I think, at the in the game right now, what do you think about the positioning of mana in the game, and where do you want to take it in the future, Josh? |
| 878s | Mana is in a weird state, mainly just because it's either ignored entirely or it's extremely limiting. |
| 884s | So it's, uh, very much so kind of a battle of attrition style meter now where you just run out of mana and you either can't do anything or you have to pop a potion to just get it back, and then you ignore it until you run out again. |
| 895s | And so we want to look into kind of making the flow of mana a little bit more dynamic, where we increase the regen-rate. |
| 901s | So you right now it's about 50s to regenerate mana from full if you don't have any modifiers. |
| 906s | And so we want to basically cut that to like a quarter of the amount of time. |
| 910s | So it's just it does regenerate pretty quickly, but you can also burn through it relatively quickly. |
| 914s | And so it's more of kind of a burst limiter. |
| 917s | Uh, something that if you do run out, you're not hindered for the next 30-50s until you eventually get it back. |
| 924s | Or you can maybe open up a slot to no longer have to worry about just having that mana on your consumable bar that hinders you getting something else. |
| 932s | And so to kind of make it one of the thing that was more dynamic and fun to interact with, instead of it just being an annoyance to work around. |
| 940s | It's cool. |
| 941s | I like the direction for that. |
| 943s | Uh, and I think last for you JR, any any sort of thoughts on maybe not directly combat related, but sort of like navigation and locomotion, uh, in the character, or is there work being done there and what are your goals there? |
| 954s | Yeah, absolutely. |
| 955s | Um, so I don't know how everyone else thought about the game when they first played it, like the first impression. |
| 964s | Um, but, uh, the first time I played the game, uh, the first thing I noticed was, you know, some of our just basic movement could use some work, right? |
| 973s | There's there's, um, we have, like, areas where maybe our systems don't blend well together or, you know, there's abrupt transitions. |
| 982s | Um, so this is something that we've been working with animation team to smooth out. |
| 986s | Um, and that's, uh, there's some really exciting stuff coming soon that really just, like, up to the polish of, of just, you know, moving around the world, which, you know, you're doing most of the time in the game. |
| 999s | So it's awesome. |
| 1001s | Uh, hey, well, thanks everyone, for sort of going through some of the vision of stuff. |
| 1005s | Uh, I want to make sure, you know, there's there's no time on any of these. |
| 1009s | These are things we're sort of working on, uh, in the background. |
| 1012s | It's sort of like over the next year ish, expect to see a lot of this stuff. |
| 1015s | Uh, nothing's sort of promised in the short term. |
| 1017s | But just to give you a sort of a glimpse under the the fur carpet, so to speak, of where we might be going in the future. |
| 1025s | Uh, and with that, I want to close, I want to say, hey, thanks, everyone, for joining us today. |
| 1029s | Uh, I do have a Community Question to sort of set you guys up for success. |
| 1033s | The Community Question is, you know, what questions do you have for our new leaders of combat on the vision of combat in the future? |
| 1040s | Uh, put any questions you have, any things you want to know about what they're thinking about combat, where we're going in the future, in the comments, and maybe in a future episode, we'll take those questions and start to, uh, dive into the vision here. |
| 1052s | Uh, with that, please like and subscribe, uh, all those things. |
| 1055s | Let us know you enjoy the show. |
| 1057s | Uh, and in the future, you'll be led by these two experts. |
| 1061s | Uh, it's been a pleasure doing Balance of Power with you all. |
| 1063s | And, uh, see you all in Aeternum. |
| 1068s | We're here today to talk about the year of the Dragon Micro event. |