The Totally NEW Team Corwin Thread

Our current plan is to finish Ravenloft, market that through social media channels which right now are much more effective for us that other advertising, and drive players to that content. Ravenloft will be level 10 and level 30+ so players at cap have stuff to do. We will have a special "veteran status" option during the launch of Ravenloft that allows players to create level 10 characters and go right there.

We have an adventure pack coming in the summer for players to play; we will be exploring the long term war between Dwarves and Drow and dabbling in the Underdark during this pack. Some of the dungeons look very cool. We are concentrating on dungeons with shorter play times; while Temple of Elemental Evil and the Slaver's series follow the maps and story of those modules, adhering to the source material kept those adventures fairly long so we probably want content that players with shorter play times can play.

One of our goals right now is to concentrate on content that extends the end game. Ravenloft will help, and sentient weapons will offer end game goals that we hope will be really cool. Even with that we are looking at ways to add legendary tokens to end game content and make it more rewarding to run end game Reaper as a way of giving capped characters more goals.

Some current state of the game notes.

~ I disagree that Korthos needs a full revamp; it teaches basic adventurer skills and if it went into character building then it would be too complicated. We have iterated on that content many times, even including outside consultants. The biggest reason for doing a Keep on the Borderlands would be more for existing players restarting characters rather than newer players. If I could change one thing about Korthos it would be to add a hireling and have a short section showing the player how to summon that hireling. I say that mostly because most builds made by anyone with a passing knowledge of how to distribute D&D stats can solo normal with a good hireling. If a player doesn't know to use them they will hit a wall trying to solo content somewhere around level 4-5.

~ It's okay to let players run around with sub-optimal builds. We have revamped the enhancement trees and randomized loot at this point to a degree that most people with a passing knowledge of D&D can stumble onto a build that can solo normal with a healing hireling.

~ We need a revamp of the grouping panel, and a revamp of the Adventurer's Compendium. Maybe even combining the two into something more intuitive. At the very least we need to fix some longstanding problems (particularly having the grouping panel not update to start).

~ We need some system that will lead players to appropriate quests when they log in; a "Quest of the Day" system that suggests appropriate content to the player. If someone comes back to the game there should be a more intuitive way for them to find something to do that remembering how to use the Adventure Compendium and trying to figure our where the location of the quest giver and quest entrance are without trying to piece out the "clues" that panel provide on where to go.

~ We have toyed with ideas for a Travelarium - some magical place that sends players to the location of various questgivers and the entrances of various quests directly, or as directly as we can. There are a lot of complications to it, particularly when many dungeon entrances are inside combat active adventuring landscapes and even dungeons. We've had to scrap two designs for it already. If the Travelarium has different wings or halls for certain level bands then players would naturally see other players there level gathering in that area in groups and new players would have a hub where they can choose content appropriate for their level. That assumes we can come up with a workable design that doesn't completely invalidate a lot of exploratory content.

~ We need a revamp of avatars. The game's use of color and the graphic are dated, but the characters are particularly in need of a refresh. Once we finish up our plans for Ravenloft we will look at some changes. Half Elves need a straight up revamp. Some of the other races need refreshed options or alternate racial choices. We don't want to change out beloved looks of existing characters, so one way we could do it is introducing alternate versions of the races - maybe Forgotten Realms versions of the elves, dwarves, etc. We'd have to solve the problem of how such races would start, though.

Sev~

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I wanted to wait until it was formally penned into the document, but it is now, so: Next week. Champion Hunter Week, May 25th through May 31st. Cloaks and Crowns and Bracers.

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