Lost Eden Q&A 1

Lost Eden Q&A #1

How will the new PvP aspects of the expansion work?

The goal with the new expansion is to both provide new avenues for PvP and to improve upon the existing Tower Battles.

The Battlestations are new instances specifically built for objective based PvP. Players will sign up to join the fight on a battlestation. Players will be able to sign up to be transported aboard the battlestations to take part in the combat against the other factions (Neutrals can decide to fight for either side).

These instances are available at various level ranges so players are always fighting other players within a competitive level range. The objectives will be based on taking and holding key locations around the battlestation, holding these locations awards points to your faction until the first faction to reach victory conditions win the encounter.

Improving the Notum Wars tower battles is just as much a focus as the battle stations are, players will have access to new towers and new abilities to aid them in the battle for the tower fields, with the new mechanized units, new vehicles, new tower base installations like SAM turrets, anti vehicle cannons and anti-personal turrets

Throw in new strategic options like being able to call in bombing ships and orbital laser strikes and the tactics of tower battles change significantly. Tower wars will become much more strategic affairs. Players will be given the power to decide how to approach a tower battle. They will have the potential to take down towers faster with heavy vehicles, but likewise the defenders will have the opportunity to find the weak points of their opponents to improve their defense.

In this way the key for tower PVP should move from just grinding down your opponents in calling the target fights like we see today, to players having to come up with tactics to best use the hardware they have available to both attack and defend. An attacking force of heavy mechanized walkers could for example theoretically destroy a tower base very quickly, but what if the defenders have racked up on their anti-vehicle cannons? That would mean the heavy units could be just as quickly cut down.

Likewise pure weight of numbers might not be enough anymore as a large group of players huddled together will make the perfect target for an orbital laser strike if the defenders can target it correctly.

Basically our aim is to provide players with the tools to make the Tower Battles much more exciting and interactive then they are today.

The two forms of PvP will compliment each other and introduce new tactics and opportunities that we think will not just introduce more players to fun PvP but also invigorate the Notum bases PvP

There will also be a full PvP reward system that will allow players to gain new items and armor from PvP gameplay by earning new commendation tokens that will be available from fighting in the Battlestations and aboard the alien motherships in the PvE encounters.

What are the new research and character development options all about?

There are two forms of research in the expansion, personal and global.

Personal research allows players to decide to dedicate a percentage of their experience towards their research pool rather then their exp or SK pool. How much they decide to set aside for research is entirely up to individuals. As research points are earned players then get access to new upgrades and abilities that are unique for each profession.

Global research allows players to set aside a percentage of their experience towards a global faction goal. These research points go towards upgrades for the equipment that their side can call upon in PVP. Want the scout-mechanized walker to have better armor? Then you can give up some of your exp towards researching that goal for your faction! Each type of vehicle and installation will have various forms of upgrades available in this manner.

What area of global research you want to contribute to is also entirely up to each individual, so some of the people in your faction may be working towards an armor upgrade whilst you and others work towards new weapons, or you could come to an agreement and try to speed up research on one area by having as many people as possible dedicate their research contributions there!

If one side dedicates more research it will certainly give them an edge but I doubt we would see any one side dominate totally. Theoretically it would be possible for one side to control all notum bases and the battle stations, but just like the players maintain their own balance on the notum fields currently we would expect to see the same in Lost Eden, with a constant fluctuation of the balance.

How does the new Alien Mothership encounter fit into the expansion?

This is an area we really think players will appreciate. Whilst we set out to provide organisation based content in the last expansion (something we think worked really well!) we know that many players also wanted alien based content that didn't require them to be in an organisation or have many friends online.

Lost Eden allows the players to take the fight directly to the aliens by boarding the alien motherships. These encounters will be brand new ACG (Auto-Content Generation) areas that players will be able to visit much in the same way as team mission terminals work on Rubi-Ka. They will be able to converse with an NPC to get a mission to attack the mothership and then visit a Shuttleport to grab a trip up to the alien vessels.

These new areas will feature all new aliens and alien bosses in brand new dungeon styles that bring to life the interior of the alien motherships. These areas really are nothing like players will have seen before and will provide spectacular backdrops to your missions against the aliens.

Sounds like a lot of changes! Will we get any IP resets?

Yes! We know this is something a lot of players have been concerned about so we would like to put your minds at rest a little! We will be giving all players a window to do a complete IP reset around the time of the expansions launch. We will be making a few changes in the expansion and introducing new items so we felt that this was the right time to allow players to change their characters if they desire.

We might also consider an additional reset window a couple of months after the expansion once we see how people react and adapt to the new items, tactics and character development options.