I should at some point create a list of all my holozing related posts, but those of you who may be actively reading these, you may start to understand why in some ways the game is delayed as it has quite a lot of different aspects to it for a small team and 1 man gamedev to tackle. While this thing I'm talking about today may not be a lot to work on, it paves the way for the future development of the game and how we are preparing for it.
One thing I've mentioned in past posts, is that with the launch of the game there will be a limited encounter rate per account/healer. Let's say for instance that you on average get 10 wild creature encounters per day. We will have it set up that you can choose when these encounters happen, in time window based on your timezone, let's say for instance that I'd prefer to wait for my encounters between 6 and 9 pm when I'm off work and have the time to play when I get a notification of a creature being in my viscinity. The way the balancing will be is that these battles will usually cost healers quite a bit of mana, especially if players are going for the more challenging mode of attempting to level up their creatures to the max of their abilities. You may expect a healer to run out of mana every 1-3 battles depending on gear and time in between battles. This is where the next part comes in I wanna talk about.
[Illustration by @hadley4]
Healer mana regenerates, but not inside battles as these battles are turn-based and to make it "realistic" we can say healers are too focused to be relaxing and regaining mana during the battles themselves. Although there may be items in the future that may give healers mana every turn - not closing that window completely. Generally however, healers will receive mana every minute, this will depend on the gear they have equipped, talents they have chosen and the level they are on. The level is the least important factor here however as abilities level up and cost more mana upon each upgrade (this is to prevent high level healers farming lower level creatures with lower level healing abilities when regenerating a lot of mana due to level/gear/talents being higher).
The way we also have this thought out is that when your healer "rests", the time window you've chosen not to play/accept encounters, they will regenerate mana - not too much but enough so that if you have best in slot gear for those levels you can expect to regain most of your mana for the next day - if not, you may need to consume some water/mana potions/etc. Keep in mind that the play window can't be too small (minimum 2 hours) and if you miss an encounter due to irl stuff, that chance is gone.
Before the time window of wild encounters, healers will also get to choose which route they wanna take because when they're receiving wild encounters this means they're not at home anymore and resting, but that they're mobile, running around and exploring albeit you have to imagine this part for the early launch of the game. Healer mana will also generate slower when they're in "explorer mode" compared to outside of the encounter window.
The reason for the routes is because depending on the environment you may face different creatures, different gathering materials and different drop rates. For instance, if you're in a foresty environment, you're more likely to find herbs, berries, etc, than say if you're near a beach or hiking up mountains. This gives some more diversity towards your encounters and your daily experience, if you feel you've caught most of the creatures of a certain area, you choose a different route the next time, if you're not a herbalist however you may choose the route that favors your profession over what creatures you may face.
Aside from route diversity of creatures, we also have some seasonal events planned where certain creatures may have higher or lower odds of being encountered during a certain period. We may have different skins based on if it's day-time or night-time (or early mornings and evenings). Promotional skins based on certain events that allow us to commercially adjust creature looks for a limited time, etc. We're quite exicted about that!
[Illustration by @sephiwolf]
Now let's talk some things that alpha vial holders may be happy reading!
I believe I wrote in the last post about Holozing how the rarity of a capture device and capture ammo you have connected to it alter your chances of successfully extracting gathering materials in the wild and also increasing your chances of capturing wild creatures. and just to recount since we're going down this road, how the healer starter gloves will be account-bound items allowing players to use them on any healer on their account, let's now look at how a backpack and mount helps your healer out!
The mount will allow your account to set the encounter time window to the minimum available (2h) while also allowing you to encounter more creatures per day, since you're more able to explore more on a bike or hoverboard compared to just walking - duh!
While the backpack is important for your gathering professions and other items you may have with you during your daily journey such as, food, water, mana potions, elixirs and many more to come through professions and from beta vials!
We believe that this is the best way to prepare for a real adventure in the future of the game where you'll be able to move your healer yourself and explore the openworld on your own as much as you like (but with some healthy limitations).
Let me know what you think about these implementations! Thanks for reading.
