Global Moving forward in our mission

[ADMIN]

Hello,

Since 2021 is almost over and we're also reaching 6 years of OldSquad, I'm starting this topic to share with you our "road-map" for 2022.

2021 was a pretty good year, we've managed to both improve & add a lot of content in our project that opened us a strong foundation to work on from now on.

We highly believe that currently we do have ENOUGH content for a Season 6 server that can be consumed in long-term runs. If you want to do something actively - you'll always have something to do.

Because we don't want to have too many things but also enough for such low-season server, on 2022 we don't plan to add any new content unless it will REALLY be needed, which I personally doubt.

Instead, we plan to do major/minor reworks of what we currently have and also IMPROVE as much as possible everything that we do already have, one by one, feature by feature, system by system, both based on our ideas and your own input/feedback.

I'll start to talk a little about what we'll do with our next Phoenix, where we'll try one more time the non-reset server (which we always failed to sustain in the long run).

We plan to totally rework the concept of Phoenix, and some of the things that will be made are:
1. Abandoning the extra resets - while the idea was initially nice, it was pretty hard to sustain because you couldn't really level-up after reset and you always had to depend on others.
Ok, we remove the resets, but what are we doing then after level 400?
Well, instead of the resets, you'll be playing around with the quest-system (that will probably be improved / updated as well).
Basically, each quest will unlock you new Master Level limit and will also give you extra stat points.
Ok, I'll finish all the quests & ML, then what?
Well, if you reach the end-game, you'll be able to reset your quest counter and start the quests from 0 again and continue to get *a bit less* extra stat points for each quest done. You will be able to reset these quests for 1-3 times.

2. Having the breaks actually real breaks - the philosophy of breaks will be reworked. You'll actually be staying at least 7 days on the same levels (without depending on any top-player level), and during these 7 days any extra level you make will be transformed into a reward gained at the end of the break. We want you to enjoy more fights at different level-locks.
There are more things about this rework that aren't currently fully thought, but one of the things will be that the break start will be determined based on having at least 1 character from each class reaching a level threshold.

3. Hardcore - Midcore - Softcore (see what I did here?) periods.
One of the biggest downsides of Phoenix is that it is a spring-summer project. People are away on summer, on holidays or simply outside, no time for "hardcore" MU.
We're trying to address this thing by introducing game-periods.
- Hardcore period: Level 1-400 will be treated as hardcore experience/gameplay, with everything it does mean, from exp to drops, items & so on. Probably way harder than it was currently.
- Midcore period: After a certain condition (15 players reach level 400, as example) the Hardcore period will be over and we will have a transition to Midcore period. During this period EXP for 1-400 will be highly raised as well as some drops / items will be made easier to be obtained. More changes will be done but aren't currently set.
- Softcore period: After another certain condition (15 players reach 100-150 ML, as example) the Midcore period will be over and we will have a transition to Softcore period. During this period EXP for 1-400 will be really high as well as ML EXP will be highly boosted. Drops as well, and other ways of getting items.
This softcore period will be our end-game period designed purely for casual play with probably 2 CS / week, more Arena Tournaments / Brothers in Arms and so on. Basically during this period you won't have to level too much but purely focusing on doing end-game quests & pvp/pvm events.
With this system we aim to both offer a hardcore experience but also a reason to continue playing our Phoenix in the long-term since you won't have to tryhard/hardcore play all summer, but rather enjoy the game as it is. Also we're giving enough reasons for newbies to join later on.

That's it for Phoenix, for now, there will be more things about it but I'm just giving you a brief of what to expect.

Moving on with our overall work:

Our next major work (that will start from Inception but will have the most changes on Phoenix & on next Inception) is related to the economy ecosystem.
Our economy is based on very old ideas & content and it isn't up to date with everything we've added during these years.
This is the main reason why many of our things aren't attractive at some point and considered having "low rewards".
This will be a big rework from scratch of most of the rewards, drops, jewels and also new systems.
Our goal is to have a healthy, long-term economy where everything is valuable at any point.
One of the bigger things that will happen is a rework of Old Boxes.
They'll be transformed into only 3 boxes (Early Old Box, Mid Old Box & Late Old Box).
As their name suggest, each of them will be farmed on different content (early game content will give only early old box, mid content mid boxes and so on).
Their droplist will contain ONLY valuable items from their specific period, no jewels included.
Example: Early box will contain feathers/crest, backpacks, w1, etc. Mid box will contain tocas, flame of condor, PoH. Late box will contain broken horn, seeds, etc.
Each of them will have 8-12 items in their drop list, valuable for that content.
In order to keep them relevant for long-term you'll be able to craft 3 Early Boxes into 1 Mid Box and / or 3 Mid Boxes into 1 Late Box.
These boxes will be given with a chance during all of our events (both ingame and extras). 
There will no longer be "wasted" rewards like jewels/demons/kalima tickets and so on as part of such important boxes.
Then the entire philosophy of jewels will be reworked in a way that they will always be relevant (for example, we may add possibility to buy such boxes with a fixed price of jewels like 100b/100s/50c/so on).
Then we'll work with the PvM Points from PvM Rankings that will enable you to buy such boxes and even other kind of consumables with PvM points.
Another point on list is to reduce a little the RNG impact on things, not too much though.
We'll then have a look on how to better manage feather/crest / flame of condor / fenrir items farm to be more active farm oriented vs alt farm oriented.
And ofc, everything we'll do related to economy will also be made in a way that alts will have as low impact as technically possible, but also an economy where most of people should be part of, not only the top players to dictate everything.

Between this bigger rework we'll also start improving what we currently have and focus on it. 

One of the big-impact improvements will be related to our CS system.
Currently our system is a bit too predictable and we'll look for ways to make it more interesting and dynamic, offering different kind of strategies as well as more balancing kills vs reward.
For example, currently if you are a top killer and kill 60-70 players at CS, if you're killed you only "give" few points and lose few seconds of being away from fight (due to summons), which is too low for the value (& points) that you bring to your team. We're going to make the points lost / awarded for kills dynamic based on the value of the target killed (for example, a high-kill player will give way more points than an average EE/Support that you constantly kill). This should change the way teams focus when fighting FROM a "farm-supports" to "organize kills on valuable targets" and I believe it will change the dynamics of the fights and open up new strategies.
One other strategy we may open is related to summoner sleeps. We'll consider making the sleep actually spicy and impactful at CS by reducing its max duration to 1/2 seconds but preventing incoming damage on the players from SLEEP, basically, forcing the allied team to react & help vs the summoner and/or use the summon to save the player in sleep.
We'll also have a look on summon cooldown that may be increased.

And this is only a starting point. Not many things will be done during current edition as we're not doing major changes during an ongoing edition, but they may be applied at a later point from this edition and on the next editions. 
 

That's all for now, thanks for reading and we look forward hearing your feedback & any other improvements ideas you may have that we can use.
Keep in mind that our staff will be mostly inactive in the next period.

We wish you happy 6 OldSquad years, happy & safe holidays, & a great new year!

OldSquad Team,

#MakeMUGreatAgain!