Dragonica EU - Developer Grab Bag Answers!
Developer Grab Bag
Here are the questions that we submitted to Barunson Interactive, on behalf of the English, French and German Communities from Dragonica EU. We did need to create a short-list, as we never really expected such a phenomenal amount of questions. Therefore, we picked out the most relevant and most frequently asked questions and put them to a spokesperson for Barunson. Here are the responses.
1. When will we get the next level cap? How high will it be? And, will there ever be a higher level cap than 100?
We are planning to release up to level 80 within this year and are currently working on it. The scheduled release date is the 2nd half of 2010. Whether the level cap will go beyond level 100, this needs to remain a surprise we’re afraid.
2. What can you tell us about future changes like Drakos Tower and can you give us an update on when we can expect long promised systems like pet, marriage, housing and socketing?
We try to our best to improve pet/marriage/housing systems. Within this year you’ll see upgraded versions or final versions of all those systems you mentioned. The release schedule is not yet fixed but our teams are balancing the systems and working on each one.
3. About the pet system, we already know that 2nd stage pets will be able to fight with us and 3rd stage pets will be mounts but will players have some kind of direct control over them or will this just be a set usage / frequency beforehand and attacks being followed a fixed scheme?
We are planning to add the fighting pet system within this year as said. However, the fighting system will be AI controlled, which means that attacks will indeed follow a certain pattern.
4. Who draws the artworks for Dragonica? Is it one person or is it a whole team?
We have a team of people from various different backgrounds that work on the artworks.
Here is a small image to give you an idea of the design process for developing new artworks.
5. When will Europe receive the secret jobs and will they be developed at all?
We are working on the secret jobs now – they are not so secret after all apparently. There will be an update during the second half of the year 2010.
6. When will the CP system be reworked and when do the sets become available?
There is an update during the first half of the year.
7. Many players believe that certain skills/items that add a certain percentage (%) to a certain attribute (i.e. ATK, HP, INT, STR, etc.) are bugged. These skills/items only seem to be affecting the base value of the attribute and as such seem to be far too weak compared to how players feel they should be, because their attributes don’t go up by the stated percentage in the skill’s or item’s description, but much less. So, can you clarify once and for all if these skills are bugged, or are they not and intended to work like this?
For balancing reasons and considering the huge bonuses gained by enchanting, we decided to let skills and items only be affected by the base value of attributes. There are so many items and so many upgrade options in Dragonica that balancing may be nearly impossible if we’d not calculate with the base values. However, having said that, we’re positively considering any bug report being made to us that gives well researched and documented suggestions to change a certain skill / item. Many of the classes will receive an adjustment within this year.
8. Why do quests give so little EXP and when can we receive an adjustment? Why is there such a big discrepancy between English-based versions of Dragonica and Taiwan? And is this EXP curve still valid as shown here: http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/8382/tablem.jpg ? Are there plans for an adjustment to lower EXP in Europe, especially above level 40 which has an exponential increase in levelling compared to Taiwan?
There are no plans to change the experience curve in Europe. However, there are plans to considerably increase the EXP gained from quests, boss monsters and other not yet specified bonus systems. We’re quite aware of the player’s opinions in Europe regarding levelling and experience gain and try to adjust our game systems where it’s possible. Those changes will be made available in the first half of 2010.
9. Can you give us an idea of the process and time-line involved in fixing bugs – using examples of minor, major and critical bugs?
Most bugs are reported to us with urgent, normal and trivial priority levels and also with different grades, e.g. critical, major and minor. Bugs reported to the publisher first need to be verified by them before being submitted to us. In most cases, the level of detail in description and reproduction steps is the deciding factor for speed both in terms of verifying and fixing the problem. Therefore, we’d like to ask all users to help us with the bug reports and submit them with as much detail, movies and screenshots as possible to the publisher.
10. How and when do you plan to address the substantial lag problems, e.g. in PvP and Emporia?
While playing PvP, there’s much more interaction between users and therefore much more data needs to be processed between users and servers. We’re trying our best to reduce the lag.
11. Often, a reference to “Dragonica 2” can be found on the web. What is that and is there already a new game in development?
There is no plan for Dragonica 2. We are concentrating on an update called “Dragonica renewal” which involves a lot of balance adjustments and improvements. This may have led to confusion.
12. Are there any plans to develop a “mute” command to ignore a specific player?
There will be an update during the second half of the year 2010.
13. Are there any plans to implement different screen resolutions for Dragonica and when will this be available?
There will be an update during the second half of the year 2010.
14. Why have you decreased the probability to transform an item from rare to legendary and from legendary to artefact? It’s really too difficult now.
The probability has not been adjusted. Probabilities are what they always have been, statistical chances to gain a certain intended value in this case. You may be very lucky and
you’ll never hear from those lucky ones. Those unlucky ones however will feel that the system is not fair.
15. Will there be a revamp of the Guild system with bigger guild screen, more statistics on their members, more people with rights to invite members, more control options for the guild leader and guild notice windows at start up? The guild system is still very underdeveloped.
We are working on improving the guild system. We have scheduled an update during the second half of 2010 for this.
16. Do you intend to develop features related to existing content such as a giant octopus, a music-like floating structure and a hot air balloon or background stories about e.g. Captain Kalygon?
We can’t give you too many details I’m afraid. You can expect another continent however.
17. Will we ever see some kind of minigames in Dragonica like fishing, trading cards, pet fights, etc.?
There is no plan for it yet but we are discussing this very positively.
18. Does Barunson plan to add more contents to the already existing content in Dragonica? Many level ranges only have one spot to farm / grind your levels, e.g. 38-46 (8 levels!) with Chief Rocker or 56-65 (9 levels!!) with Chaos Ocher Forest which makes the game often quite boring.
We are currently working on new quests, mission maps and dungeons (with a surprise new feature) to increase variety and make the gameplay more fun. We’re looking at all level ranges and will develop instances or adjust quests where there’s a gap for players.
Thanks to gPotato for giving us this opportunity to be in touch with the community directly.
ackloggery
