THE STATE OF THE NEXUS (12/16/2021)

[BobGeneric]

Hello Nexus Denizens, it’s been 3 weeks since the launch of Breath 5! The development team thought we should take this time to communicate some expectations, incoming changes, and what to expect next in the coming year.

To start, we want to acknowledge that Breath 5 has had a bit of a shaky start. Due to the need to pick a point at which to fork the old code so we could update to modern PHP (and significantly rewrite a number of sections of code), some QoL adjustments made to the previous breath code following the fork were lost. In addition, some new bugs were introduced due to differences in PHP 5 (the old code) and PHP 7 (the new code). Furthermore, real life commitments made continuous work on implementing new ideas and making significant changes a bit spotty. However, we were very aware that Breath 4 had been going so long it had been stagnant for some time, and there was only so much new content we could push out in that breath using the old codebase - we felt the need to make sure we did not let “perfect” be the enemy of “good enough.”

So we launched at "good enough" rather than “perfect” knowing there will be some inevitable changes to how skills and classes work. We’d prefer you don’t consider the design you see now to be carved in stone - more like slightly moist clay; the general shape is the way we want it, but the details are still malleable. Please make your build choices with confidence that if there are any major changes to skills or classes, we will be communicating with the users as to how we will be refunding skills (ex. the recent Psychometry change). However, the development team also does not consider all minor adjustments of stats to be refundable events. For example, if we determine that an innate attack needs to be reduced by a point or two of damage, we will not be offering refunds. Likewise, if we determine an innate attack needs a buff of a point or two, we will not be offering refunds for competing attacks that now seem weaker by comparison.

While we are also working behind the scenes to refine mechanics, we appreciate the candor of our users in reporting bugs and discussing wiki inconsistencies with us. This is the first new breath for many players AND developers, and the sudden change from a game full of Level 30 demi-god existences, to a bunch of mortals in a crab pot has been frustrating for some. Please be patient! Each breath change is traditionally a time for assumptions to be reset and sacred cows to be made into steak. Please don’t assume that everything in Breath 5 can or should be operating the same as the previous breath.

[BobGeneric]

That all being said, there has been discussion over the increased amount of experience required in the game as compared to the previous breath. What is important to the development team is not so much the amount of experience required, but rather the time required to proceed through the game. People enjoy the game for many different reasons and we want to give each phase of the game some time to breathe, allowing players time to enjoy their favorite phases before settling into the inevitable final phase where nearly every character is either holed up in a stronghold or floating in the void.

Our expectation was approximately this:

Level 1 - Level 10: 2-3 weeks for ~50% of active characters to reach T2
Level 10 - Level 20: about 2 months for ~40% of active characters to reach T3
Level 30: about 3 months for ~30% of characters to Max Out

We are now 3 weeks in and ~38% of our population has reached Tier 2. This means we are running slightly behind expectations, so we are making some adjustments. One thing that was not adjusted alongside the general shift of damage into Tier 2 was experience points for some non-combat levelling methods. You will note adjustments were made to those methods in our recent patch. If these adjustments do not get us back on the track we are looking for, we will consider additional adjustments, including considering re-tuning the XP table.

Also, while we are monitoring the game and trying to make adjustments to ensure a good experience for all, we are also noticing some practices that are running afoul of Rule 5 (“Play Reasonably Fair”) and have expanded its scope to include some behavior we don’t agree with. We know many of you are competitive but we feel it a good time to remind everyone that this is a casual game and we ask that you make a good-faith effort to play within the spirit of the rules (we do not subscribe to "that which is not expressly forbidden, is permitted") and we are trying to do a better job of articulating the spirit of the rules - attempting to "game the system" to gain an excessive advantage is frowned upon.

Please review Rule 5 in the game rules here and please ask questions about this expansion of policy so we can provide as much clarification as possible - as noted there the expansion is still a work in progress https://www.nexusclash.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1

[BobGeneric]

On lighter topics, we have been working on many changes to the game to improve the T1/T2 experience and hopefully build a solid foundation of the game going into T3. Changes in progress that will be coming out soon are:

Rebalances of search tables and locations for Alchemy components. Repth and Nayru have been working hard on placing things into internally-described Gold/Silver/Bronze tier search locations for various components. There may also be some adjustment of the component list in the future and additional refinements made unannounced as we get a feel for the practical flow of components into the game.

Changes are also being made to the determination of the Catalyst (saved component) in the alchemical recipe to reduce (or eliminate) the need to re-roll recipes.

Changes we hope to implement over the course of the next year (this is just a partial list):

• a beta interface option while we play with changing the layout of the main screen
• Pre-stronghold era faction interplay (we have some ideas but welcome suggestions)
• Refinements to Spell capstones
• Refinements to Glyph Spells
• Clothing Enchantments are back, and do not require activation
• Armor Enchantments do not require activation
• Oils do not take up an enchantment slot
• Reimplementation of some mundane weapons
• Tweaking of mundane weapons
• Innate Weapon rebalance
• Rework of Seraph Class
• Rework of Doom Howler Class
• Learning what an Archmage is
• Exploring more planes of existence
• Additional faction activities
• changes to repair/crafting systems for more interesting skill choices
• A new mortal crafting tree (possibly, this is a stretch)
• Swim - just kidding, it’s still removed from the game
• nayru’s still here though so get chont and not bont
• chont nade buffs
• [REDACTED] SH’able

If you've made it this far, you've made it to the end of our thread. Thanks for reading!