Posted by Retroman 3 years ago (Source)

Hello players of Albion,

I am excited to announce the upcoming changes currently in development for Season 11. There are quite a lot of cool changes to look forward to.

20v20 Crystal League
With Season 11 we will introduce a completely new tier of Crystal League: The 20v20 Crystal League.
These high stakes 20v20 fights follow a similar structure to our current 5v5 Crystal League, but with the gameplay of the current city fights.



Some details:

• 20v20 tokens can be bought at the Energy Manipulator for Level 1 and Level 2
  
• The sign-up process and match schedule follow a similar pattern to the 5v5 League (see table below for more details)
  
• However, the actual match will have the same ruleset and similar map layout as the current 20v20 city fights
  
• Due to the high number of players needed per match, these fights will be less frequent
  

With the introduction of the 20v20 Crystal League we will also remove the 20v20 city fights. The reason for this change is, we were not happy with the dynamic around city fights and city ownership. Typically one guild, the one with the strongest 20v20 team, would control all cities for a massive passive silver income. This was a very elitist feature where the only entry point was via challenging the current champion. With the new 20v20 Crystal League, we will now be able to keep the exciting high stakes 20v20 matches and link rewards only to matches won, while also allowing for a much more open entry-level experience.

Crystal League Season Points
In Season 10, the mid-level Crystal League matches are giving out too many Season Points. This makes it possible to dominate a season primarily by winning many mid-level Crystal League matches. This is why we will reduce the Season Point rewards for these matches in Season 11:





Crystal League Daily Season Point Limit
On top of the Season Point rebalance, we will also introduce a daily limit for Season Points in the Crystal League. This cap limits the amount of Season Points a guild can get from the Crystal League per day. This limit should make it less desirable to accumulate all the best Crystal League teams in one guild and instead create an incentive for these top teams to spread across various guilds.

• This Daily Season Point Limit will depend on the matches available on a given day
  
• The Daily Season Point Limit for for 5v5 and 20v20 will be kept independent and separate from each other
  

Daily Limits in Detail:






Side note:
We will also have another survey about the Crystal League time slots, which will be sent out specifically to players who have participated in Crystal League battles. Depending on the result, we may adjust Crystal League match times for Season 11 too.


Skip Overcrowded Clusters
The Cluster Queue was originally designed to deal with the edge case where players were blocking a cluster completely. However, in the recent updates, Cluster Queue fights have become more and more frequent than we intended them to be. With these battles, a lot of players will have to wait in the queue and potentially never even get to participate in the fight, and end up idling as a back-up force.

That is why we are developing a new feature which allows players to skip through an overcrowded cluster. This allows the players who are queueing at one side, to directly attack the enemy reinforcements on the other side, which could lead to multiple fights at once (i.e. the battle in the main cluster and fights outside the overcrowded clusters).

However, this feature is still in a very early stage, so we can't go into too many details yet.

The basic plan would be:

• You can skip through a cluster, while still staying in the queue for it. You would just change the exit you are queueing from.
  
• You will get a shield bubble on skip-through, similar to a regular cluster change. You will also get a cooldown before you can skip through again.
  
• We may also have to increase the area you can stand in for the queue, to allow the backup forces to spread out a bit more in the cluster.
  
• Finally, there will be an option to skip through multiple overcrowded clusters in a row, so you cannot keep your backline safe by overcrowding two clusters.
  

Keep in mind some of the details will have to be fleshed out during development. But I think this is a good overview of another big change planned for Season 11.

World Bosses
For Season 11 we want to give World Bosses and the areas they live in more importance. We want these areas to become a high-risk and high-reward fame farming spot in the open world.

To achieve this, World Bosses will now respawn every 30 minutes. Additionally, the mobs in the area around the World Boss will become much stronger and spawn more frequently, while also having much better fame and loot. In this way we want to create an open world hot spot that is also contested by enemy guilds, leading to spontaneous mid-scale PvP in the open world.

• Season 11
  
  • T8 World Boss spawns every 30 minutes and rewards 20 Season Points
    
  • T7 World Boss spawns every 30 minutes and rewards 15 Season Points
    
• Season 10
  
  • T8 World Boss spawns every 24 hours and rewards 50 Season Points
    
  • T7 World Boss spawns every 24 hours and rewards 40 Season Points
    

Castles and Castle Outposts
And last but not least, we will also adjust Castle and Castle Outpost reward schedules. To improve the meta game around fight size and frequency, we will make all Castles and Castle Outposts become active at the same time, independent of the cluster prime time. With this change we want to have more fights simultaneously, putting more pressure on big power blocks to split their forces if they want to get more than one objective per cycle.

To have enough fights over the course of the day, Castles will now score every 8 hours and Castle Outposts every 4 hours. With the change to the Castle Outposts, we are encouraging more spontaneous mid-size fights, while keeping the weekly treasure chest for the big castles as an objective for large-scale fights.

• Castles
  
  • Season Points score now every day at: 1 UTC, 9 UTC, 17 UTC
    
  • Daily Season Point value per Castle has been multiplied by 1.5
    Example: An inner ring castle will score 360 season points every 8 hours. This means 1,080 Points per day
    
  • The Chest spawns every Saturday at 17 UTC (spawns once a week to keep its old loot value)
    
• Castle Outposts
  
  • Season Points score now every day at: 1 UTC, 5 UTC, 9 UTC, 13 UTC, 17 UTC, 21 UTC
    
  • Daily Season Point value per Castle Outpost has been multiplied by 2
    Example: An inner ring castle outpost will score 60 season points every 4 hours. This means 360 Points per day
    
  • The chest also spawns in the same 4 hour interval, but the rewards are scaled down to match the high frequency
    

We hope you are excited about all the new upcoming changes for Season 11. And like always we are also interested in your feedback about these changes.
Be aware all these changes are currently still in production and some details may differ in the final implementation.

Cheers,
Retro