Good morning forums! Welcome to the first day of the Second Week of Discussion! Today the topic is going to be ironically not to do with the Empires update we are counting down towards, but instead the update afterwards. Planned to release a few months after Empires, Full Release marks a large step in AO’s journey. Two new story chapters are planned, along with Skyhall, various side content, new islands and more are all intended to be added this update.
At the moment, we are expecting two events, thanks to the help of Galaga and Xxael, which will be added to the game during the development of full release.
Remember the rules and have fun discussing!
A couple of discussion ideas:
The state of optimisation, balance and bugs.
Development of the AO team
New enemies (Minibosses, Legendary Ships, Non-Story Bosses, Enemy towers)
I’m gonna give my overview of the planned full release content here then see what everyone else thinks
The Dull Part
Bugs, Balance and Optimisation
In an ideal world we’d not have to worry about this but oh well. I personally think Vetex should, just for Full Release, do the bug/balance patches differently. I think he should release a small balance patch, (Along with possibly a few new abilities just to keep stuff interesting) with all the bug fixes and adjustments along with the two events. This means that we don’t have to wait potentially 5+ months for any changes. I believe Auction House V1 will also release in one of these small patches.
The Exciting Part
AO’s Dev Team
I believe Galaga is busy irl recently, hence the lack of a new Rapier skill, however we can hope to see him back and helping to improve the game soon, as I’m really excited for what he has to offer. For the rest of the development team, I believe that Tech and Vetex will be the ones personally working on Skyhall, Xxael likely will be helping with the story as she has done in the past (Along with the events), and I’ve heard rumors that JTN and Dreay might be learning how to make cutscenes soon. For the other builders and helpers, I haven’t heard anything specifically but I’m sure that if they are going to be apart of Full Release development they will absolutely cook with whatever they’re working on.
Vetex has also said that there might be a new tester wave at some point. There hasn’t been any development on this point though so I wouldn’t get your hopes up that much.
The Bosses
Bosses, bosses and even more bosses. One of the biggest things we will be seeing in Full Release is a multitude of new bosses. Side bosses for the Juraserva quest, mysterious people in Makrinaos, new minibosses sailing the seas with Spirit Weapons and Legendary Ships of the new generation of heroes and villains that we’ll be seeing. Hang on let me just count.
Development of the AO team
Vetex certainly has more help than he did before and it certainly helps speed up development progress, and also gives us higher quality stuff so its very nice to see
New enemies (Minibosses, Legendary Ships, Non-Story Bosses, Enemy towers)
I am very excited non story bosses specifically because the ones we know of sound pretty awesome
The Story
As a lore fanatic new story is always high up on my most anticipated content, and since the nimbus story is finally gonna start kicking into gear im excited to see what happens
Skyhall
Im intrigued to see how they make up for a lack of navy
New Fighting Styles // Spirit Weapons
I dont really use fighting styles but the whole vanishing and gunpowder ideas sound pretty cool, I am also interested to see how spirit weapons will function differently to magic, since so far all we have is spirit imbuement and a blast
Overall probably my most anticipated update yet, only thing im worried about is how long itll take
The new fighting styles are interesting, vanishing one is straightforward tho gunpower is very weird. Ain’t that just basically cannon fist? My current idea is that you put gunpowder on your fists so that they explode on punch, though if there will be a bar for it I can’t be sure or have a clue on it.
People say Ormolu is boring and forgetful but so far it’s my favorite boss concept, being as the final boss of the juraserva quest I really hope vetex doesn’t flop when making him. Maybe he will be something like the leviathan from dead space
or he will be just some unholy beast atlantean sized dude, which is the way more boring option
If I’m being honest, Full Release is too much for Vetex to handle.
Maybe the fact that it’s only a bunch of little tiny features will help, especially considering how quickly he got done with the meat of clan island building.
Is this gonna be a pattern where he bites off way more than he can chew every couple updates?
I can’t complain about Full Release though. I want to be level 175. I want to be an alchemist. I want to defeat two new boss fights. I want to mess up Averill after what he did to me in AR (In spirit, just any legendary ship will do). I want to jura the serva.
But Vetex, again, is gonna have to do a lot. We’re supposed to get Dusk, Leviathan, Hallbjorn, Ormolu, King Caesar, Sea Monsters, at least one Nimbus Sea side boss, and two story bosses.
That’s one miniboss, and a minimum of six whole full-on fully-scripted bosses.
I usually glaze vetex but I honestly cant disagree. Even with this update there were a few features that werent quite able to make it due to time limitations, and the things that wont be in this update will be carried over to full release which will add more to do. If we werent getting 2 chapters of story on top of everything else then id believe it can all be done but atp im not sure.
Luckily a bunch of things are already semi complete or wont take too long to implement such as fort castrum and the guide book
Six bosses is quite literally the amount that the game released with, not counting iris because she’s just a glorified basic NPC. And I didn’t even think about General Valerii.
I think its important to remember that there’s a difference between Minibosses, which are enemies with special equipment, and full Non-Story, Story Bosses or (Depending on how they work) Legendary Ships.
Full on bossfights need more balancing, hardcoded and new moves, etc, whilst a miniboss can be added as soon as their weapons/magics are complete.
