Hello, Solo-raiders! 👋
As most of you have probably already seen, we've partnered with Arc Games! And we're incredibly excited about it. Arc Games brings a lot of experience working on games like ours, and we're looking forward to seeing what we can accomplish together.
Also, remember when we talked about the Assassin spec? We recently did a video about it, check it out!
And with that out of the way…
One of the things we've been thinking about for a while is loot. More specifically, we've been looking at how gear progression currently works, and we're not 100% satisfied with where it is right now. The current system makes it very easy to focus almost entirely on power: you find a piece with better numbers, equip it, and eventually, anything above Heirloom rarity can roll an amplification of its modifiers. Once you get that perfect piece, there isn't much reason to keep farming because you've essentially reached the best possible version of that gear.
This is important to us because we don't want the loot system to be a simple race toward one specific item, or an endless hunt for increasingly ridiculous versions of the same piece. Instead, we want to give you more reasons to make choices. We're currently experimenting with a couple of ideas to make the gear system more exciting, with the goal of giving you guys more freedom in how you approach the game. Your specialization and playstyle should matter, but we also want the gear you find to influence those choices and let you take a ridiculous idea and actually make it work because of the items you've managed to put together.
One of the biggest goals of this rework is to make gear build-enabling. We want certain combinations of stats, bonuses, or other effects to push you toward completely different builds than what you originally had in mind. Maybe you find an item that makes you think, maybe there’s a more optimized, or even better, a more enjoyable way of playing this.
We're aiming for more variation between players, more interesting combinations to discover, and more reasons to experiment with the gear you find. Ultimately, we want the loot experience to feel deeper, give you more control over your choices, and create those "OOOOOOOH MY GOOOOOOD" moments where you immediately take a screenshot and throw it into the group chat.
Another area we've been looking at pretty closely is the late game. We want it to be more challenging, but at the same time, we want that challenge to feel more rewarding. For players who enjoy pushing their characters further, we don't want the late game to simply become a bunch of bigger and bigger numbers. There should be meaningful challenges to overcome, clear goals to work toward, and rewards that actually make you feel like your progress matters.
Right now, the design is a little more complicated than we'd like. We're currently working on bringing the three different Abyss systems into a more unified experience instead of having them feel like separate systems that happen to exist alongside each other. The underlying progression is something we're happy with, and the second tab is still intended to be a place where you can farm and prepare before pushing your progression further, but we want the overall structure to be much easier to understand.
One of the biggest things we're working on is making it much clearer where you are in your progression and where you're going next.We don't want you to have to figure out some complicated UI just to understand whether you're actually getting closer to your next goal. At the same time, we want to give players more agency over what they're farming. We're working toward giving you more ways to target specific items and rewards. Instead of simply hoping that the thing you want eventually drops, you'll have more control over what you're actually working toward.
The late game should ultimately be a place for people who want to challenge themselves, experiment with their builds and push the game mechanics further. Especially considering you guys are beating our current Abyss levels like they are nothing! That hurts our pride, y’know?
We'll be talking waaay more deeply about these changes over the next few weeks, including how the different progression systems fit together, how farming will work, and what we're doing to make your progress much easier to understand. For now, how about a little sneak peak to a new map?
Look at that, you made it to the end! Are you interested in participating in playtests and getting to know more about what the devs are doing? Check out our discord!
Thanks for the support and see you in the next one 😉