...
Game Update for the upcoming patch – World Metamorphosis.
Shin skimmed through the title of the topic on the official website before continuing on reading the patch notes.
…
Battle Updates:
1. Wound State Status had been improved.
- During the battle, players would constantly suffer and deal with injuries. Focusing on this matter, the players would now receive wound status according to their current health.
For every 20% decrease in the player's health bar, a corresponding injured status would appear.
80% - Slightly Injured: Movement and action speed will slow down by 5%.
60% - Moderately Injured: Movement and action speed will slow down by 5% while self-regeneration will decrease by 5%.
40% - Heavy Injured: Movement and action speed will decrease by 10% and self-regeneration by 10%.
Affected with internal injuries – Attack Power decreased by 20% and suffer from bleeding damage.
20% - Gravely Injured: Movement and action speed will decrease by 15% and self-regeneration by 20%.
Affected with weakened status – Attack Power decreased by 50%, suffer from bleeding damage, and received cripple status.
5% and below - Fatally Injured:
Affected by paralyzed status – unable to move for a period of time.
Affected by extreme bleeding status - suffers fix damage over time until the injuries were healed.
Note 1: These conditions could be cleansed or totally/partially negated by certain skills and abilities.
Note 2: These conditions could be worsened by certain skills and abilities.
2. Fatal Attack: Players could instantly kill their enemies by dealing with a sure-kill attack like beheading, head blasting, body severing, heart destruction, etc...
Note: Such attacks could be negated depending on the overall defensive and special constitution.
3. Death Additional Penalty: Dying would now have a much more serious penalty. Dying once would automatically log out the player and be banned from entering the game for 1 day/ 24 hours (Real World time)
Upon reviving on the next day, players would suffer a weakened state for 24 hours (in-game time).
Weakened state: -50% on all of the stats and -50% on all experience points when hunting monsters and doing dungeons.
Note 1: This penalty would only be applied when dying in the wild. Dying inside an instance dungeon would be the same as before.
Note 2: This could be worsened by certain skills and spells that have specific curses when killing someone.
Note 3: This could be nullified by reviving skills and similar spells.
…
Shin could not help but raise his brows when he saw that set of information. The Fatal Attack effect was no longer surprising since most of the players already knew and could execute it. It was already a thing way before because of the overwhelming damage of the powerful players.
The developers just emphasized it now as a form of formality.
What really piqued his interest was the enhanced negative effects of the wounded state. With such effects, the battles in the future would be even more interesting.
The details on it might be a little simple, but the hidden meaning behind it gave all of the classes some indirect buffs such as Berserkers, who could become stronger the more they fought and the lower their health bar, Assassins, and other thief-related classes, who could deal constant status effects such bleeding and poison damages.
Some of the classes would also benefit from these new features, but those two classes were the greatest beneficiaries of the wounded statuses. The longer the battle, the stronger they could become.
These negative statuses also increased the importance of priests and other support classes in battle. They were already an essential piece in every battle, but with the wounded state statuses, it became impossible for any team to venture out into the wild or in dungeons.
Some of the people, who were too confident in themselves, would dare to grind in the wild and run dungeons without a healer – as long as they were careful enough and brought a lot of potions, then everything would be fine.
This was especially true for the grinding teams that were speedrunning dungeons with speed and maximizing damage. For them, bringing a healer during those dungeon speed runs would only slow them down. It might be risky but it could also be rewarding since they could clear dungeons in a much faster way.
But with the appearance of this new feature of the game, doing such risky runs would no longer be possible unless they were so godly that they could avoid their health bar from falling into a dangerous level.
In the meantime, the marksmen and mages would benefit a lot from the second feature. The former could eliminate their targets with a single shot as long as they were accurate enough at hitting the vitals while the latter could instantly blast their opponents with their powerful spells like usual but with a much high probability.
Overall, these two new features in the battle would force the players to be more careful during PvP and PvE. Their battle styles could also be affected, especially tanks since they now have to consider getting one-shotted despite their high defense if they were not careful enough.
Shin thought that this was even more fun since the battle became more realistic yet again.
Continuing on, he also noticed that fighting monsters and NPCs were also somewhat affected by these two new features, particularly the humanoid since both cases could apply to them in normal circumstances. As for monsters, it was also somewhat the same with the only difference was them having slightly different vital parts and weaknesses.
As for the third note, the death penalty, it would make the players play more safely when they were hunting in the wild. Such penalties would hurt their progress seriously and could even cost them being left behind by everyone, especially when dying more than a single time.
This particular further enhanced the importance of priests and support once again, especially the ones who had Revive and similar skills. It was already an important piece before, but the game developers were now basically saying – "You better bring someone with revive skill when hunting in the wild, or else, you will regret the consequence." –
Shin could not help but smile bitterly. He could clearly see what the game developers were trying to do. They were indirectly telling everyone that teamwork was important in this game. That was unless you were confident in their abilities on surviving in the wild alone.
After reading more and making sure that he did not miss anything, Shin continued to read through the rest of the patch notes.
…
Life Style changes:
1. Monsters would no longer drop any kind of items after dying.
- Players were now required to gather the corpses of the monsters and harvest the important parts, turning them into materials.
Note 1: This had to be done before the monster corpse 'decayed' (or turned into specks of lights).
Note 2: Corpses could also be preserved by using certain means.
- Certain monsters, such as humanoid creatures that wielded weapons, could 'drop' their items. As long as those weapons and items were not badly damaged, players could take them.
2. During dungeon runs, a chest would now appear at the end as a form of final reward. These chests could contain Blueprints, materials, skill books, weapons, and various items.
3. System Generated Set Items could only be gotten from the dungeon chests and equipment blueprints. It could also be dropped by some powerful humanoid monsters or NPCs.
…
Looking at these notes, Shin became even more sure that the developers were slowly turning the game into a second world. The realistic features that they were adding were becoming more and more similar to the real world.
With these new lifestyle changes, the non-combat professions would be getting more attention. At the same time, the players also needed to train their gathering skills as it now became a new core in hunting.
These changes were already been brought out before during the previous patch. But not a lot of players were focusing on it since they could still get the drops from the monsters even if they did not harvest the corpses.
Unfortunately, everyone was now forced to gather the monster corpses if they want to get the rare materials unique to those monsters.
Shin could not help but laugh after thinking about it. The game developers were actually getting ruthless. It seemed like they were trying to get on the players or something. Fortunately, his gathering skills were at a decent level of mastery.
Little did he know, he was one of the reasons why the developers were turning into heartless 'monsters.'
After recovering himself, he quickly continued.
…
Mystical Battle State:
- Players were encouraged to explore their potential more. There were secret mechanics within the game that could make everyone even more powerful.
1. Hyper Active Immersion: a state where a player could use their imagination to the limits and turn their in-game avatars into their 'ideal' self, especially in battle. In this state, anyone could turn their skills into a form of Martial Arts or Mentalism Techniques.
Historical Note: This mystical state was first introduced to the virtual world by the legendary group, the 'Irregulars'.
2. Reality Manifestation: a state where a player could summon their true 'self' from the real world to the virtual world. In this state, players, who were Martial Artists or Mentalists in the real world, could use their martial prowess in the game and use their character skills as the base of their real abilities.
Historical Note: After years of research, great scholars and researchers managed to get a glimpse of the truth behind Hyper Active Immersion.
In an attempt to control such a mystical state, the researchers discovered this special state as a new form of the battle state within the virtual world.
- These were only a few of the mysteries of the Virtual World.
- Adventurers of the fantasy world, your fate is in your hands and you are in control of your destiny. Embark into a new journey, surpass your limits, and discover a whole new world with us!
…
Even though Shin was somewhat expecting this information, he was still shocked that the game developers would directly disclose it this early in the game.
Even if they did not directly say the way how to enter those two mystical states, this set of information was still enough for those players who were talented enough to trigger it. And when he thought more deeply about it, this would instantly increase the gap between the average players and the real experts of the game.
There would be a clear dividing line between the players who were not able to enter such a state and the ones who could use it during the battle.
Moreover, it was also mentioned that there were also other states that were yet to discover. Shin was not sure why the game developers would disclose these two states but not the others. This piqued his interest even more.
And while thinking about that, he was suddenly reminded of his fight against Diablo previously. From what he remembered, that guy was in a state that was similar to his 'Reality Manifestation' but also different. Now that he thought about it, he discovered that it was most likely the so-called 'Hyper Active Immersion'.
This was his first virtual game, so he was not aware of it. But based on the 'historical note' of this mystical state, it seemed like it was already common knowledge among the players. And according to the information, it was first used by that legendary group, the 'Irregulars'. This made him more interested in this famous yet mysterious group of players.
After contemplating for a moment, Shin suspected that the reason why these two mystical states were revealed was because of his battle against Diablo. He might be wrong and it might not be the exact reason, but his instincts were telling him that they were somehow connected.
Shin fell silent for a moment as he digested the information in the patch note before coming to a conclusion. From this point on, the virtual world would enter a new stage.
This was going to be a new age of Virtual Games!
...…