Regent Release: Possessions Open Beta

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Regent Release: Possessions Open Beta

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I’ve been talking about the road to open beta for a while now, but now we are officially there. Of course, it’s a short pit stop because now we have to get on a different road towards live.

Open Beta Goal

There are quite a few additional items we need to wrap up during open beta. However, where the membership help is needed is just to use the system as if it was live, and provide feedback and concerns. During this process is an opportunity for tweaks to the balances and fixes to the code so that it’s working as intended after launch. We expect this process to take at least four weeks but could take more.

Please provide feedback directly in response to this report, or email me.

Open Beta Use Notes

  • Salary: Everyone has had their credit balances reset, and updated using the latest logic. I’ve published this here on the DJB Wiki. There are still adjustments to be made, especially around CoJ and old positions, so live salaries will vary depending on how many times you’ve seen the Justicar and how many obsolete positions you’ve held. Note that you have until Possessions Launch to contact the MAA office in case you are missing any old position records on your DJB history.
  • Research: You can research what you want to buy from Item Prototype Overview, link here. It’s also in the navigation now under Resources > Item Prototypes (Beta). This lets you seek out and research the various items in possessions to decide what you want without going to a store and worried it might be in a different store or temporarily stocked out.
  • Stores: You can head directly to stores to buy items, link here. From inside a store you can directly buy the item you want and it will go into your inventory.
  • Aspects: Each item has a number of Item Aspect slots on it. I published a policy here to help everyone understand what can be approved here. As well as hundreds of pre-written Item Aspects to cover all the items as a general head start and basic concept. In general, these aspects modify an item while keeping the overall balance, they do not upgrade an item.
  • Item Admin: All members can rename items, review what they own, and administer the aspects on those items from their Administration menu under “Manage your Possessions”.
  • Loadout: From item admin, there is a separate tab to build, and fill a loadout. This will be where a member can decide what they have equipped. Eventually, these loadouts will be pushed to the Character Sheets after we go live.

Open Items (Close before Launch)

These items are still in progress. Keep this in mind as you give feedback and use the system. Most should not impact usability.

  • JM4 Trial of Acquisition; awards basic transport and Knight lightsaber
  • Clan Credit earning plan
  • Space Stations added for Clans
  • Prototype item graphics
  • Lots of guides and documentation

Dossier artwork/skins, character sheet loadouts and ACC integration will happen after things are live. Due to complexities of integrating a beta system with a live system, it’s much cleaner to integrate to live systems.

Conclusion

Please use the possessions system as if it’s live, so we can test the balance as much as possible. But, keep in mind that additional tweaks will be done and things will be balanced, such that anything purchased or done during beta could be reset before things go live.

In darkness,

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Awesome stuff, Evant! Go buy things and stuff everyone!!!

Hooray for capitalism! I've already become a good little consumer. :)

Description for Iron Legion Flight Suit says "The Iron Legion Flight Suit is a cheap and utilitarian environmentally sealed suit manufactured in mass quantities for the Dark Brotherhood. It consists of an enclosed helmt, chestplate, a life-support system, thermal gloves, and a coverall as well as additional full body armor with a flexible plate design. The base color scheme uses a grey and black aesthetic with white trim. "

However it is the most expensive of the Available Flight Suits.......

This is huge. Get at it. This is one of the bigger things to happen in club history. Do the thing!

Great work Evant and team.

I bought...so...many things...

REBUY ALL THE THINGS! (Of the things I thought were shiny, nothing seemed wrong/off about them...YET! MAUAHAHAHHA)

I'm so excited!!! Woot! Can't wait to start exploring.

Wow, this is very nice. Complicated when you first dive into it, but this will be very nice as we move forward with character building/editing and such. Love it!

Jac's dream of Rebirth is finally coming to fruition! Hurray for another DB Project coming to a timely completion! :P

Of note (has come up this morning): 1. It seems that the armory items were populated with no value. I've fixed the Item Prototype - so future instances will have a value. Unfortunately, everyone will be stuck with those items until we go live. At which point you'd be able to sell them for a minuscule amount of credits. 2. It seems Rank 9 and Rank 10 pay need to be adjusted, as they are swapped. The impact of this is 2,000 extra credits to members who reach Rank 9, but not Rank 10, in a society.

As a reminder - please check your histories and email the MAA staff if you need adjustments.

What, no Nssis Clawcraft?

Us Chiss want Clawcrafts.

Make them canon then, Brim. Then we can add them to the system.

This is most excellent news indeed, and you have my thanks for preserving so many aspects of the Expanded Universe with these items.

Probably also worth noting for everyone... this is more of a technical beta than it is anything else. Everyone is of course concerned about what items are and aren't available, but realistically, those things are list items. We can and will add more items as time goes on. If you're disappointed regarding a specific item not being present, track it, and prepare to make your case for it, but for the time being... Use the system as it is. Create aspects, play around with aspects inside of items. Create and modify loadouts. Test switching out loadouts. Buy items, rename things, sell the items. All of that is what we truly want to see people use. Dig in and push every button you can, because the more use this system gets in every way, the more data we'll have to help balance it and try to make it even better for when it completely launches.

Also, one final note... if you create and submit any custom aspects, save elsewhere before submitting. James is a bloody wizard, but sometimes crap goes wrong, and stuff may disappear. Having to rewrite things sucks :D

Not sure if this was mentioned in the news post but I was wondering if everything will be reset when Possessions goes live or are the things we buy now be permanent?

There is little chance that we will be able to move to live with a partial reset, so it's almost certain that things will be reset once we get the green light from Sarin to go live with possessions. From that point forward, everything will be carefully maintained for integrity by the Dark Council, but starting that properly will likely require a clean reset.

well being Thrawn and Chiss are now canon because of the Rebels show, and he did use a Charric blaster on Ezra, thought that was enough to make the Chiss info canon

Everything is in a case by case basis. If they introduce new Chiss starfighters, you'll be able to petition the Regent to add them in, as Yacko said in his comment.

Hi guys, I've got a question:

Rocket launchers, particularly wrist rockets, do not currently have separate 'rocket' ammo. What should we be using to represent that?

First off, amazing report! It is good to see that things are moving so fluently. We all appreciate you and your team's hard work. Can't wait to see the finished product, and I will continue to play around with the Beta to provide whatever insight possible!

There is a possible glitch in the Matrix! I cannot comment on the other societies as I have not reached XII in the others, but it seems there is a problem with the GMRG bonus at rank XI. At the moment it looks as though Rank XI is not getting awarded the 10,000 credits at all, and for Rank XII it looks like it's getting awarded with the trophy (working as intended I presume?)

Keep up the good work!

Like to say that years in the making of the possessions system, everyone who has/had their hands into, i would like to thank you for all your hard work. It is amazing what has been done and yet still more to come.

Now for some questions:

  1. Will there be a request form for things not on the list in the future, maybe something over looked that we think is cool?
  2. Since i am a big fan of the Fury class imperial interceptor and its like 3k years old so very hard to find, will there be a shop made for junkers or a "classic" ship yard that says some oldies but goodies?

oh sorry question number 3. will there be times when the stores have sales/discounts on items?

It's too hard to earn credits for things you want

@Brimstone - we will review and continue to add items, with some consideration given to demand

@Mateus - all the weapons come loaded already with an appropriate amount of ammunition so if you buy it, it has some rockets in it (simpler)

@Rulvak - because of the way GMRG works, with temporary ranks and only being rewarded once, it awards on the trophy as you noted. A similar payment should come from reaching GMRG Rank 11 (for the first time only) but not for actually achieving the rank

@Silent - will definitely add a request form in the future to gauge demand and keep a steady flow of new content releases once we're live

@Silent - with careful considerations for balance I haven't gone through yet, there are plans for temporary stores that show up time to time and sell limited quantities of certain items, or used items at reduced prices. Think - TIE/D with a salvaged title that doesn't fly straight at a 50% reduced price or something. This isn't fully sorted out but that's the basic idea.

@Silent - There aren't currently plans to provide discount periods at the moment. Where, you'd get the same item currently offered in the stores, at some variable cheaper price.

@Kyle - Please check out the Possessions Salary Policy for ways that you can earn credits. Promotions are balanced as a large source of income and you should see large jumps in your credit balance as you move through the Journeyman ranks: See: https://wiki.darkjedibrotherhood.com/view/Possessions_Salary_Policy

Follow up then Evant; will we know how many shots for the launcher we get in the ACC/can we get reloads, or is that a question for Later™?

@Mateus Question for Later.

Read Yack's comments, all. They are wise and very important for this experience.

@Rulvak - To elaborate on the GMRG XI issue - currently there's no trophy in place for anything but GMRG XII. Before launch, we aim to have a similar trophy for XI in place, and retroactively populated (I should still have all the quarterly e-mails in my inbox somewhere)

Awesome, good looking out James! <3

One other question to add to the others: will there always be a 1:1 exchange for buying and selling back the items (selling at the same price as it was bought for)?

@Alora it's planned that way, yes. However, if a price update occurs (for some good reason) ever to a prototype item, it might be offered for sale at a different price. However, the value of that item owned by a member would be retained.

Example: You purchase a sword for 200 credits (it's prototype value), that unique item has a value of 200 credits. Future-Regent-Jim changes the price to 150 credits (because they insist that's how the world should work when it comes to swords) all future instances would be stocked at 150 credits. However, your item is still valued at 200, and you could sell it for 200 credits. Then re-purchase it for 150 credits.

I really don't anticipate any price changes at all, and I fully expect any that do occur to be transparently reported out to membership with an explanation. Once we go live with this stuff.

Can you put a curved hilted saber (like dooku's) in the beta?

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