News from blues! This morning, I got a transmission from blues!

Dear Players!

 

Long time no see :P

We all are pretty busy with the upcoming events and here are some news from behind the scenes.

 

Our Mecha buffing project is ongoing and next buff will go to the Hospital Mechas. Specials are ready, they just need coding and some testing. Next one on my list is the Westion Sheriff Mecha.

 

All the promised buffs for the Promo Mechas are also ready and await coding. They will be significantly better and I´m sure you´ll like them. You will see better damage, lower or even no rolls and some additional specials.

 

Next major project are the new House Mechas. I already have a plan and I´m working currently on the raw specials so that we can discuss them next week. The main themes will stay the same. Wolfs will be offensive with high damage, Hawks will be a defensive powerhouse with lower damage and Ravens are somewhere in between with more ranged attacks. Power will be around SCMM standard so quite good. It´s not possible to balance them exactly because they have different themes. So, when you love hard hitting Machines with a lot of damage, then Wolfblade should  be your first choice. And when you are more the chilling player who loves to have a good defense and nerf his enemies Runehawk is the House for you. In case your undecided, then Mystraven is always a good choice.

I talked with Vivi this week and both of us can´t wait to create the new House Mechas.

 

Aaaaand... better late than never (but I already did this via MSN) : Happy Anniversary Vivi!

I can´t believe that you are already coding for one year!

Working with Vivi is really fun and he always finds a way to get all my fancy ideas working. Kudos to him and all the best for the next Year!

 

That´s all from me for now.

Enjoy playing MQ, your weekend and as always: Have fun!

Early Release Today! All the stars and planets seem to have aligned nicely - tonight's release is Live already, so log in NOW!  

Salvage Quest: (See Joey standing in Soluna City, to the right of Tek's Mechs.) The Salvage quest has now been updated with chances for Back Arm weapons to drop! I don't want to give away too much yet, so I will just say that there are NEW Never-Before-Seen Back Arms for NSC, SC, and NG at every tier, plus some other "Oh I have one of those / OOh I was wanting one of those" Back Arms scattered among the possible drops as well.  Huzzah for Korin getting the new weapons all vectorized and animated and coloratizized, and grazie to bluesy for the specials designs, and to Vivi for codings - and yours truly set them up with all their numbers and descriptions and that sort of thing.

Star Captain Club Extreme Challenge: This new "Bragging Rights" option lets Star Captains battle the featured - and extremely tough - "Boss" - we are kicking this off by featuring the un-nerfed, super-powered, unleashed Teravolt! There was a little mix-up in the initial communication of specials planning for the Zargon Wormhole battle, so the original Teravolt came out as an opponent who was ... basically unbeatable by what I'm guessing would have been 999 out of 1000 players.  I haven't found my strategy for beating him in the Star Captain Club challenge yet, in fact.  (Feel free to discuss it on the forums, but please use spoiler tags if you come up with a way to defeat him before the end of this weekend...)

We're working ahead on Mogloween (MQ's Halloween) with some very cool plans - continued Mortis-related storyline with new animated cutscenes, all-new quests and in fact we are already working on the backbone for a "Trick or Treat" style quest!  Are you a Star Captain? Has Starbuck approved you for PvP (at the Stadium at GEARS University)?  If not, there is still time - the deadline is Thursday the 27th of October 6:30 PM Eastern time (Server Time)  You may submit your Character ID and Character Name on the forums in this thread so that players from all over the world (and from everywhere in the galaxies) can have the chance to visit your Starship this Mogloween!

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend - I know I will! I am getting IRC queries about having no Design Notes up yet, so I shall wrap up here and post them for you! I will be immersed in music and artwork when I am not doing home maintenance and not playing our games or visiting with you on our forums - and on that note... TTYL!

The Floorivator is Working! Go to Tek's Mechs in Soluna City and use the Tour button to get down to the party! Play the Scrap's Delight minigame to earn Golden Tokens for the merge shop - this year's Anniversary mecha model is the Golden Katana series. This classic design has been revamped - Korin added new features including head and body attack animations. Vivi tweaked the game engine (be sure to refresh your browser so that you have Gamma 3_9_8) to implement a much-improved Dodge.  The Golden Katana series body weapons have a built-in addition to Dodge - note that we are easing in to introducing the improved function, so we kept the numbers conservative.  Non-Star Captains get +8, Star Captains get +10, and Nova Gem models have +12. Blues designed the specials for these Katana mecha models. I made a gazillion versions of them so you should all have something either to use now or to level up and use soon.  Speaking of leveling up - Korin showed me how to implement the Experience and Credit boost feature in the engine, so enjoy that added celebration bonus this week!

*INCOMING TRANSMISSION* Vivi says:

Our upgrade to Engine 3.9.8 has brought a new function to the Dodge and Hit stats. They don't affect attack accuracy anymore, but now they will protect you from your enemy's status effects or make it easier to inflict your own statuses! The rules for these stats are simple:

1. They only work on statuses that would show up under "Resistances and Statuses" on your battle sheet. Things like Bonus Damage and Healing cannot be defended against.
2. They only work against statuses inflicted by your enemy, so you don't have to worry about dodging your own buff effect.
3. The chance a dodgeable status will be inflicted is [100-(Target's Dodge)+(Attacker's Hit)]%.

With Defense and Bonus fulfilling the same roles that Dodge and Hit used to, these stats have seen little use in MechQuest. After this change, expect to see them used a lot more!
If you think the Dodge bonus on the Golden Katanas is too small, don't worry just yet. While we're very excited to make use of our newly adjusted stats we're also making sure to ease ourselves into them to preserve balance as best as possible. Who knows what we might do with them in the future?

 Thank you, Vivi, for this fantastic update and for the added details explaining the Dodge feature's function!

Korin is working on brand-new weapons for the Salvage field, which we'll be updating again in the upcoming weeks.  He took the time to teach me the process of updating Soluna City to have the fireworks feature, That actually taught me a lot more than the one specific thing - it's always good to be able to do more.

Minar made us some new Starship items! Get a Confetti Cannon, Cake, Presents and Balloons while you're 'downstairs' on the Floorivator. I added the code to make the Confetti Cannon interactive (just run up to it and you'll see) and I also made this year's Yearbook (easy) and the Golden Katana Action Figure (amazed that I remembered all of Warlic's instructions since I couldn't find my notes).

Happy Anniversary! Party!!!11elevne

Birthday Mecha Model: Golden Katana! This year, the Katana is getting a huge makeover to celebrate MechQuest's four-year anniversary.  Korin is creating new animations for its new head and body attacks, and has updated the look and action of the arms and shoulder animations.  This model will have default weapons in all slots.  Blues has designed exciting specials with Star Captain and Nova Gem exclusives. I'm putting together the merge "recipes" for the NSC and SC versions and setting up the Nova Gem pricing and levels - there will be lots and lots of levels so there's something for everyone.  This year's NG models will be priced at 800 Nova Gems (previous years' models prices will remain unchanged) - so if you grab one of the 2000 NG packages you have a lot left over to use for commemorative Starship items, or Salvage quest weapons, etc.  Don't forget you can also use your Artix Points- you can still earn points via the Ballyhoo ads in Cinemech in Soluna City (or in the Dropship) and of course earn via the Portal where you can also purchase Points.

Another Anniversary: Vivi!  I haven't kept detailed records about the MechQuest team member dates, but a phoenix happened to scrawl a fiery message across my screen that tomorrow, the 6th of October, marks the one-year anniversary of Vivi's MQ coding debut! He's been an enormous asset to the team and in fact thanks to him, the Dodge function is getting an update this week!  Keep an eye on the Design Notes this week and don't miss the Birthday Celebrations for more about Dodge!  He's been coding all the weapons and mechas and also has been coding some of the quests - and now this update to the MQ Engine really marks another milestone.  Hooray for Vivi!

Fireworks, Birthday Boost, and More:  Friday will bring fireworks to Soluna - AND with the engine change for the Dodge update we're also going to roll an XP boost!  Star Captains will get NEW starship items, and you'll all be able to get mechas from the previous birthdays like last year.  

Also I wanted to mention that I have gotten a lot of questions about the ETA for the next SCMM - Arklen has been busy with the 3 new House Mechas of course, and that comes with the Level Cap raise to 50 - so we're estimating that the next SCMM will be sometime in November.  

We're finalizing plans for all the Fall and Winter holidays that come along so quickly - not just the MQ Birthday but also Mogloween, Turkey Day, and Frostval - along with all the permanent content updates listed in the Coming Soon section of the newsletter - so Korin and I have been working together on juggling it all to set down into dates for the team.  We have a lot of things in the works for upcoming releases.  Lyris is prepping for more of her awesome animated cutscenes, I'll be writing some quests, we'll be collaborating on some - blues has been working on updates to some of the older mecha models and the SC Xtreme Challenge - Vivi coded up a tough Boss version of one of our recent quest encounters so I will be setting that up as an SC Challenge... we're looking at your suggestions for Tek's Mechs and more - much, much more.  The year ahead is shaping up to be exciting already! We're excited to bring it all to you - log in Friday to kick off MQ's New Year with a brand-new mecha!

MechQuest is Four Years Old Today! The Gamma Launch of MQ was October 1st, 2007.  It's hard to believe it has been that long - I guess time really does fly when you're having fun! I am re-reading the Design Notes from the past anniversaries and also a wonderful birthday thread created by skyvolt666 on the forums. Follow the link to participate in the birthday discussion! What are some of your favorite moments from the past?

Let's Get The Party Started! (Soon!!) I had actually hoped to have a fireworks display in Soluna City last night, but there just wasn't time to add that to everything else we released yesterday.  We do absolutely plan to have a nice party when we get Tek's Floorivator running next week - complete with one of our classic Mecha models getting goldified and revamped for 2011's Golden Token merge shop. I will keep this short & sweet so that is all I'll say about the party plans for now.

On behalf of the entire MechQuest team I would like to thank you for believing in us - you are the reason we continue to bring out new releases and it is your support that keeps us going.  Thank you so much for playing MechQuest!