Failed Fate X: A New Era Of Chaos

Patch 1.18 letter to FF0/A/X fans:

So, we have a big patch coming. It’s going to add a lot of features. The features may not be apparent at surface, but I assure you, I’m quite literally rewriting the foundation of some of the systems in this game. Before I get into the juicy bits, I want to establish an understanding with you, the fans and players of the Failed Fate 0 lineage of games.

I love this game. Maybe even quite possibly just as much as you. I’ve played it since literally before puberty. I’ve been the top player/PVPer/Demon and held the position for weeks on end back on Dalze’s servers. I’ve seen the bugs, built the friendships, and grinded the hours many of you have. I had the same sickening gut feeling all of you hard core fans got when you saw what the one who won’t be named did to our beloved game. I was the one who stood beside INU and poured hours into coding in order to put up a server that put an end to his abomination. I get that the game is a beautiful gem that was abandoned in its prime. I really do love it, it’s why I’ve put over 40hrs into updating it the past couple weeks… That being said, the game is old.

Inuyasha and I really would love to see this game grow to a constant player base of 15-20 players again. We may even get 42 online at one time again (or more?). The market is in a good place right now for byond games. Several have claimed a place on Steam and have seen their servers crash from overload. I would love to see that which brings us all together in this spot get to that level of recognition. However, in its current state, that is just not going to happen. This game is FIFTEEN YEARS old and it shows. So what is it going to take to get it up to ~par?

Inuyasha and I have a vision. I’ve shared part of that vision with you. This vision isn’t going to align with the purest view of our beloved game. It’s going contort, modify, and change things in the game that we all know as foundational. I assure you, every one of these changes is made with a plan behind it. We are going to try our best to stick to the original formula and feel of what made this game fun, but in order to get it to where it needs to be, it’s going to have to go through some growing pains.

We don’t want to alienate you and we don’t want you to excommunicado us. We are putting our time, energy, and money into this project because we want others to experience a taste of the game we all loved as kids/young adults. We want you to help us, work with us, and join us in rebuilding this project. There are going to be mistakes. God forbid we ever Pwipe, we’ve tried in the past to avoid it at all costs. There will be blueberries, but hopefully never “specters”. If there are though, we hope you guys are sticking right there with us correcting us when we stray and cheering/enjoying the game when we succeed. All of your ideas, both veteran and new, are being considered.

We’ve pour literally hours of our lives we could of spend making our own games, software, and other projects and we plan to pour more, all for you. So please be patient and gracious with us as some of the changes stretch the game (and our skills as developers/designers) over the next coming months.

Ok now, some people have asked for some “Patch Notes”, without giving away spoilers…

Patch 1.18:
Core gameplay changes:
· Endurance effect on HP/SP per level decreased

o HP/SP now scales heavier based on level. This is an effort to reduce the focus on endurance for EVERY player if they want to be viable for late game and introduce variety into character builds.

· Endurance now has a modifier effect on Armor Class

o So we aren’t gutting endurance entirely. For those characters who want to keep an endurance or tank based build, they won’t be rendered worthless from hard dumping into endurance.

· Endurance now increases inventory space.

o Same line of thinking

· Wisdom is now more impactful as magic resist

o Magic classes have long been regarded as too stronk in FF. Wisdom builds now offer a potential counter for such builds.

· Wisdom now has a modifier effect on XP gained

o Wisdom has also been regarded as a waste stat for players. Trying to pump up its value by giving a nifty lil boon.

· Stat Caps Increased

o This changes the way the game is played. A lot of players recognize their class gets points in a particular skill, so naturally they try to pour into that skill before it caps off. I don’t know what changing this will do to the flow of the game. This may need lowered back down. This may need removed all together. Some people have tossed around the idea of capping maximums at certain levels to encourage more balanced characters… I hate it because any one of these choices will alter the behavior of the players indirectly. This is a subtle change that has huge impact on leveling and overall player experience.

· Equipment Enchantments

o This was the last piece of work I did for FF back in the day. It’s at least 6 years old and will need plenty of tweaking. Feel free to leave me feedback on this or any other change, remember your 5W’s (Who, What, When, Where, and Why). They will help me recognize the issue much better than “X item is broken, fix plz or uninstall”.

§ Example: I think the reflect(who) on armor needs nerfed(what). When getting attacked it is effective in decimating without any other item(why). I could see this being abused to level up in noob areas in combination with some sort of aoe agro method (where).

o OLD EQUIPMENT MAY BE BUGGED: Equipment currently saved may be bugged and need GM intervention. It’s what the GMs are here for, to help the play experience.

· Monster Champions now spawn randomly across the world

o A piece of the equipment changes from time gone by. Some of you may have remembered this greatly altered the play style of the game in a way I did not like. This was not because of enchants themselves, but because of drop rates for champions.

o Some enemies are just stronger than all the rest. Woe to you when you encounter them! Luckily (or not so), the strength these enemies possess is often accompanied by super natural enhancements…

· XP higher/lower

o FF follows the OLD SCHOOL MMO pattern of killing level 1 boars in the forest until achieving godhood. We’re looking to tweak this a bit to a more modern version. The reasoning behind this is that the actual most efficient way to level is to find a route of closely bundled enemies that can be one shot. While I’m a fan of this, it shouldn’t be the ONLY way to efficient pathing. By nerfing this method and rewarding those who seek higher level prey, we are allowing two different play styles for would be powergamers.

· Pet expansion

o There are new NPCS (and upcoming quests) that change the way we know pets in FF. Let’s just say if you got the funds, Fido no longer has to stay in the safety of your mansion anymore.

· Critical Hits

o Criticality has long been an interesting feature of FF. You could get the odds of landing a crit from a variety of ranged all the way down to 50%, before taking giant leap all the way to 100%. There was no in between. In addition, certain items could cause you to break your critical chance… Just a well-known/accepted bug among vetern players. No matter though, crit would add a meager amount of damage based on your training (with no care for your actual character stat). This is no longer true. We’ve reworked the crit system (for melee, still no spell crits).

o Crit will take into account several of your stats to make melee fighting a bit more deadly (in both directions). This change does a lot to the core player experience. It opens up a wider variety of character builds and itemizations. It opens up a wider variety of combat experiences. It changes the feel of melee combat.

o This change hits hard, literally, in that it makes melee leveling a much quicker experience. Some monsters hit harder, other monsters die faster, the age old non-endure builds will never be the same again. We recognize that itemization, damage values, and monsters will all need to be adjusted around these new values. Please, indulge us and take part. Tell us what you like. Does it feel good? Does it make the pacing of the game feel too quick? Does it slow it too much? We want to know what we can do to improve this.

· Agility now modifies crit.

o Agility is already one of the stronger stats. We wanted to be careful not to push it to uber-unbalanced. At the same time, we want to make the melee classes not feel like they are completely outmatched when it comes to PVM. This opens up builds and pushes melees into a more viable position, all without gutting casters.

· Skill now modifies crit.

o Skill always seemed like that passive thing we needed to kill a few select monsters, or take out Kiba when he was stalking us in bwen. (Legit, I once build a character just for hunting Kiba. Don’t worry, he’s still my friend). This change does more than let the stat be an agility counter, it now has valuable use in a variety of melee builds.

o Both this and agility need your reviews to help us balance. Let us know what you think.

Quality of Life changes:
· Contractor is looking to expand his customer base.

· Training now compatible with youtube.

· Pickup no longer requires you to mash the G key (check options)

· Interface has been updated. It’s different. Let us know how you feel.

· Bug fixes galore: Block Bug, House bug(s), Trap Creation/Use… to name a few





It took me about two hours to write these patch notes, but I knew you guys wanted to know what is coming in… 4 days? I could of spent this time coding…

-Iron