Greetings Fellow Avatars!

Here’s what we have for you in this week’s edition of Update of the Avatar:

• The Making of Paladis Shardfall
• The Making of Dysborg Ruins
• Changes to Expired Patron, Navigator, and Developer Pledges
• POLL: All Content Available in Offline Mode?

The Making of Paladis Shardfall – Part 2

[From a Dev+ Forum Post by Esteben “SorcerousSteve” Zaldivar]

Hey guys, its SorcerousSteve once again, here to give you an update on the Paladis Shardfall!

At the center of the crater lay the ominous Obsidian shards now surrounded by alien life.

The confluence of the Fortus River and the Sanctus River, which come together and fall to the crater as one! Fortus (red) flowing from the West meets the Sanctus (blue) flowing from the East.

Located beneath this waterfall is the doorway to the Pool of Destiny. More about this upcoming scene and the adventures the Avatar will face there later…

The Shardfall Crater comes to life at night vibrant with emissive alien plants and glowbugs.

That’s it for now!
See you next time with a new map and a new adventure.

Esteben Zaldivar
Level Designer

The Making of Dysborg Ruins

[From a Dev+ Forum post by Richard Matey]

Hi guys, wanted to give you an early look at one of the new PVP zones, Dysborg Ruins. This map is an old historic Obsidian City that has been abandoned for hundreds of years and has fallen into disarray. The Obsidian shards have been warping the land slowly over time, bringing in unusual plant life and helping with the breakdown of the architecture.

Here is where Dysborg is located on the world map:

Gathering reference, I knew this was based on a rolling hills area, that had a coast line, one main road, Obsidian shard, ruined architecture, etc.

From there, I drew a small draft of what I envisioned for the land mass and the key focal points I needed to hit on.

Which, over time, turned into this:

I wish I had more progress shots to show you how this shaped up over time, but here are the nearly final images of the map for now.

Coast line:

Church-like building:

The east entrance road:

Obsidian shard courtyard:

Destroyed home:

Shards / vegetation:

Old docks:

Richard Matey
Level Designer

[NOTE: Keith Quinn pulled a late night last night and managed to get Dysborg Ruins spawned, ahead of expected schedule. That means we’ll be including Dysborg Ruins in Release 26. Yay!]

Changes to Expired Patron, Navigator, and Developer Pledges

During the Summer Expiration Event on August 31, 2015, Portalarium expired the Patron, Navigator, and Developer Pledges. Their intention when they expired them was that backers would only get the rewards for that expired pledge (and below) if you were at that pledge level on August 31, and you would not get the rewards of any higher expired pledges as you upgraded. For example, if you were at Patron on August 31, then later upgraded to Citizen, you would not receive the Navigator and Developer rewards.

Unfortunately, the way they worded those expirations did not make this clear to some backers. In fact, several backers that read our description interpreted it to mean that if they were at least at Patron level by August 31 they would be eligible to receive the Navigator and Developer rewards if they upgraded to Citizen or higher.

The dev team agree that the wording of those expirations can be interpreted differently than our intended meaning, so they are changing the delivery of those expired pledge rewards to match the interpretation of those that were affected by it. Therefore, any backer that pledged to at least Patron level by August 31, 2015 will also receive the expired Navigator and Developer rewards when they upgrade to Citizen or above.

POLL: All Content Available in Offline Mode?

Back in December, Executive Producer Starr Long (aka Darkstarr), posted a survey in the SotA Dev+ Forums about making all Add-On Store items and Pledge Rewards available to be earned or crafted in-game in Single Player Offline Mode. We believe this will greatly increase the quality and value of the basic game experience in single player offline mode.

There are currently 91% “Yes” votes out of the 635 responses from the Dev+ poll. Based on feedback in that thread, we felt it was important to poll our entire backer community, so we posted the same poll in the Public Forums earlier this week, which is currently running 96% “Yes” votes:

Please follow this link to the Public Forum Survey post and cast your vote.

Below is the full content of Starr’s public forum survey post:

Post by Starr Long

POLL: All Content Available in Offline Mode?

Back in February 2015 I posted about some unique items related to Single Player Offline. Item #4 of that post stated the following:

• Content: There are a few items that we are not going to sell in game in Online mode including the Castle and Keep sized lots. However we do plan to make those available in Offline mode along with a handful of other items yet to be finalized.

After reading about how negatively many backers (and external folks as well) view our Pledge structure and Add On Store we thought a powerful gesture would be to make ALL content available in Offline mode including ALL add on store items and pledge rewards. Players would still have to earn enough gold to purchase them or gather enough resources to make them in game, unless they purchased them which in that case they would start the game with them just like they do now.

Our only concern is that backers who did pay for the content might feel upset that content they believed exclusive was available to any player (even if only in offline mode).

Last month I started a poll in Dev+ to get some initial reaction from the group with the “most to lose”. That poll is currently standing at over 90% positive, so at the request of several Dev+ backers we have decided to expand the poll to ALL our backers (here). Thank you in advance for participating.

Notes:

• Earned/Crafted: As mentioned above all these item will have to be crafted or purchased with gold. The bigger items like LotM house will only be affordable after many, many hours of play. You will NOT just get them all at the start, unless you purchased them. That is the purchase value in offline: you start with items everyone else has to earn.
• Offline Firewalled: Offline mode has ZERO connectivity to online modes. Nothing can move between the two modes.
• Online only items: Some items have functionality that is only useful in online mode (ex. Fyndoro’s Tablet, Noble Discourse Orb, etc.). In most cases these items will be reduced to non-functional decorations but in a few cases we will try to make an offline function.
• Hacking: In Offline mode hackers will create mods that unlock all the content anyway

[VOTE HERE]

~Starr Long