Armour now grants lots of bonus life points and we know it’s annoying that they don’t automatically fill up when you suit up. We have not pinned down a fix for this yet (it needs to be a solution that absolutely can’t be abused for unfair gain) but the current favourite is some kind of ‘safe zone’ in which you will rapidly heal up. Stay tuned for further developments. Dungeoneering has already seen lots of fixes and some important improvements, such as the way bound armour interacts with your life points. We’ve got lots more on the table, first in the beta to make sure that EoC didn’t harm the game play, then as a further project afterward to make other improvements that have come up since it first launched.
Magic is suffering from some itemization problems at the moment, so fixing that should do a lot to redress the balance. We’re also hoping to have time to make some interim improvements to binding, although we’ve got a whole host of changes planned for the full project later. Definite answers to all the questions that Summoning poses aren’t ready yet, but it’s in the same boat as Dungeoneering. We’ll do what we need to make sure it works by the end of the beta, and we look forward to the opportunity for a thorough rework later on. We will be improving the presentation of the whole system, including targeting enemies, the daunting ability book, and ease of understanding the stats on equipment, and so on.
What I hope is clear from what we have done so far is that we are listening and we are determined to make the best game we can. Some parts of the old system didn’t survive the rework when they should have, but we’ve made such huge leaps forward in other areas that the right solution now is to find those weaknesses and bring them up to date or find something new to fill those niches. The best game we can make is the one that looks to the future, having an improved combat system but retaining the character of the game we know and love.
