Albion Online's 11th Guild Season starts on Saturday, December 5. This season will bring major new features along with changes to existing systems. In our newest Dev Talk, Combat Designer Michael Schwahn discusses these changes and how they will affect guild warfare in Albion.
No time to watch or prefer a written summary? Then read on...
This Season introduces the 20v20 Crystal League, allowing all players to join fair and exciting 20v20 battles.
To make sure the Crystal League doesn't dominate the entire season at the expense of other activities, we're rebalancing its Season Point rewards and introducing a daily limit for Season Points gained via Crystal League. The limits are separate for 5v5 and 20v20 matches, and vary based on the amount of points available on a given day. This keeps high-level matches rewarding while ensuring seasons can’t be won solely via elite Crystal League squads.
To add high-value open world objectives, we have overhauled World Boss Raid Zones:
With Season 11, Castle and Castle Outpost timers will be the same for all clusters in the game. This means treasure spawning and scoring now occur independently of the cluster prime time.
We've also increased distances between Castles by removing tunnels and cluster connections to ensure they are always at least four zones apart.
These changes will put pressure on bigger power blocks to split their forces if they want to contest more than one objective. This will hopefully lead to fewer overcrowded cluster battles.
The Cluster Queue was originally designed as a tool to handle edge cases with too many players, but queued battles have become more and more frequent and many battles now revolve around this system. This is especially frustrating for players who might not get a chance to participate in the fight at all.
To improve this, players can now skip overcrowded clusters. You can now select any connected entrance to jump to, and find new battles instead of waiting outside as a potential backup. This essentially allows two battles at once: one in the overcrowded cluster, and another between queued players.
The queue entrance range will also increase, letting players travel further without leaving the queue. And if two clusters in a row are overcrowded, you can skip through both.
Finally, for Season 11 we will also roll out a combat balance update. This includes the new Axe ability Rending Rage, a combo where you swing your blade and then leap forward and root the enemy. This gives Axes a Q-slot option for mobility and crowd control. This patch also contains buffs for Axes, Spears and Arcane Staffs along with various adjustments to other abilities.
There are quite a lot of changes in Season 11, and we are excited to see how players interact with them. Hopefully we'll see some fierce competition for the top spots this season.
Thanks for watching!
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