Shroud of the Avatar - Release 10 Plan

The Executive Producer of Shroud of the Avatar Starr Long has a post on the games forum with information on the updated plans for release 10.

Release 9 was another large push forward on combat with over 50 new skills and a new PVP Team Mode. We were able to get a lot more data on combat, balance, and skills. Obviously we have a lot left to do to get balanced, but the framework is solid to work from so we are pleased with the progress.

As always, the community continued to create some incredible events like the PVP tournaments, Welcome Quests, theatre productions, mazes, and a host of other activities big and small. Again the foundation you are building shows what an incredible community we have with this game. Congratulations to all of you for that.

R10’s main purpose is stabilization, performance, polish and testing. Additionally some tasks that were pushed from R9 will get worked on. We will post a Q4 schedule update sometime after the beginning of R10.

RELEASE 10, September 25 - 28 2014:

• Stability: Updates to item architecture, characters, and other systems will hopefully improve stability and prevent characters from getting into bad states that prevent logging in or loading maps.
• PVP: The Team PVP arena and possibly the Open Team Arena will be modified to support spectators.
• Combat Skills: Players now will start with a default deck equipped that is the sum total of your “spent” skill points. You can modify this deck simply by adjusting your skill points, no need to open the deck building interface. Additionally a few more combos and a small handful of new skills will be available.
• Magic School Naming: Magic school names are changing to more thematic names:
  • Thaumaturgy (Life Magic)
  • Necromancy (Death Magic)
  • Atenism (Sun Magic)
  • Lunaism (Moon Magic)
  • Gaiaism (Earth Magic)
  • Theurgy (Air Magic)
  • Tempestry (Water Magic)
  • Sorcery (Fire Magic)
  • Omnipotence (Focus)
• Scenes: The Ardoris Castle areas will open up to make that city complete. We are also going to experiment with a Challenge Level to test scaling difficulty for combat against AI.
• Creatures: An updated version of the wolf and our first dog (the Rottweiler) will appear in the game.
• Crafting: Adjustments will be made so that characters who were scaled up or down during character creation will animate properly with crafting tables. We will also add another round of visual effects to tables that do not yet have any (Milling, Carpentry, etc.)
• Overworld as a Real Scene: The Overworld map will move to a real scene. This will allow us to easily add features like animating avatars, full user interface access, etc.
• Visual Effects Polish: We are going to work on various environmental effects (smoke, steam, falling leaves, etc.) to get them working better with lighting.
• Character Customization: At least one new facial feature will come online. Additionally an update to how we handle hair and facial hair will add layers, transparency, and animations.