Regent Report: 2

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Regent Report: 2

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It’s been a few weeks since my last update, and I wanted to check back in and let everyone know where we’re at. Now with bonus less report proofing by Wally so you all get run on sentences, poor comma use, and train of thought syntax. Hopefully content makes up for delivery. I want to go through the big changes pending for us to get to open beta, share some screenshots and information, give you a much awaited link that everyone can use to research while we prepare, and go through the staff I’ve chosen to help me establish new standards of the office and give this whole thing a solid foundation for the future as an office. I appreciate everyone’s patience, and love discussing all this stuff on Telegram but less of me talking about it, more digging into content.

The Road to Open Beta

There are some milestones to complete, so that possessions is at a state that all major systems are functioning for full testing. Once we start open beta, the only activities that will be ongoing will be balancing, polishing, documenting, policy creation and setting up some of the final elements of the experience. So all major changes and updates will need to be tested and signed off as complete.

So what’s left to do:

  • Stores: Work on a UX for the storefronts and implement them.
  • Slotting: Finish the initial loadout coding, and complete basic testing.
  • Administrative: Add Regent functionality to administer manual credit adjustments, credit balance monitoring, and item decommissioning.
  • Items: Finalize the prototype items list by adding a set being developed for member experience. Setup all stocking rules for purge. Establish triggers for items.
  • Salary: New salary numbers are reviewed, and with the Grand Master for comment and/or approval. Once done, will need to update values and audit the credit balances to ensure accuracy (the dossier history can be messy.)

That’s it. Seems like perhaps a lot, but it really isn’t considering where things were at a year ago when James explained everything to me after he first gave me admin access to things and I took a stab at developing some blasters to see how it went.

Possessions Slotting

I recall publishing this a few places. But I’ll repeat again here. Everyone will be able to equip.

  • 1 Cybernetic Item
  • 1 Technology Item (Functional Item)
  • 1 Droid (Companion)
  • 1 Armor Item (Full set)
  • 1 Back item (Worn over or with armor)
  • 5 Weapons (Hands, 2 handed are 2 slots)
  • 5 Equipment pieces (Total, some equipment takes more than 1 slot)
  • 2 Accessories (Non-functional trophy like items)
  • 1 Land Vehicle
  • 1 Space Vehicle

Here are some pictures James provided of his test version of the site where he’s developing it. Disclaimer that this is all still beta and subject to change in as many ways as possible.

Imgur

Imgur

PDAWG

Link: https://www.darkjedibrotherhood.com//item_prototypes

Along the lines of the popular tool for researching Skills and Force powers, James has developed a tool we aptly just refer to as PDAWG to help members research what items they want for their characters. Instead of screenshots. I will just share the link here. Keep in mind this is beta and subject to change, but much of what is there is quite finalized. This collection of items and the attributes of them make up the body of work over this past year and form the content core of what is now the possessions system.

From this research tool, you can look at most items available, some are hidden but with good reason that your character cannot obtain them. It will give you a lot of information.

  • Name of the Prototype item
  • Category it is in, for aid in research and price
  • Type to note which slot it can equip into
  • Size, relative to other items and how many slots an item takes up
  • Rarity relative to other items, the more rare the more customizable or relatively powerful an item is, but also more expensive
  • Base price to show the suggested sale price at a store if sold for full price
  • Description to note the basic functionality of the item as it relates to the Brotherhood and other dependent systems.
  • Item Slots to show if items can be slotted into this item.
  • Source which in many cases will link to an outside source document for more information on it as far as Canon if applicable.
  • Item Aspect slots to show how much customization, cosmetic or functional an item can accept
  • Granted Item Aspects if any to show what Aspects an item has by default
  • Purchase restrictions if any that would possibly prevent your character from purchasing it in a normal store

Please let me know if there any questions or see any discrepancies or typos in this information across the system. There are thousands of words of descriptions and some typos may have gotten across.

Regent Staff

After reviewing all applicants to the Regent staff, I have made the decision to move forward and hire Dacien Victae di Plagia, Halcyon Rokir Taldrya, and Abadeer Taasii. The combined applications showing me what they plan to offer, their experience, and demonstrate initiative, will, in my hope with these choices, ensure that beta is launched, launched well, and done in a way that ensures that it will continue to thrive and grow as a source of Star Wars entertainment for all members. I look forward to working with all of them, and have already had some great discussions on information organization and how we will go about establishing brand new precedents. I’ve been through a few rounds of Magistrate hiring in the past, and this was one of the hardest I’ve been through with more talent and drive than I’ve seen for many former offices and for that I am very grateful.

Conclusion

Looking forward to taking the next steps and hope everyone enjoys looking through the research tools. I’ve had a lot of people approach me with specific questions as they prepare their characters for the impending launch of possessions and hope this will answer all of them. Looking forward to dropping an access link to the stores in my next report. Note: You can see all the store names from PDAWG because it lists where you can buy them but won’t go anywhere unless you have a Legendary Pravus ticket.

In darkness,

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Very rich looking graphics, and an awesome team! Looking forward to release.

Holy crap! Those paperdolls look awesome for loadouts! Everything looks awesome, Ev, really great work!

(Will always proof for you, bby)

With the ability to manually adjust credit adjustments will there be some sort of guidelines to when and why that is done? And does it mean we could give out credit prizes for competition placements or something along those lines?

Great work as always Evant!

Amazing! Good luck to everyone with their new assignments, and make sure you don't give Bubba the keys to the liquor cabinet!

@Malik I already believe there is cash attached to medals won. Furthermore, if we just willy-nilly added cash in whenever we wanted that would hyperinflate the market.

Very excited for Open Beta!

@Malik mostly manual adjustments will be down for administrative reasons (improperly awarded medals or invalidated comp entries etc.).

Credit additions will rarely ever be to members unless some admin error resulted in them missing out or something...mostly Clans for GJW results, etc.

Can we have loot boxes for big events that may contain certain items and/or credits? Maybe for top 10!

improperly awarded medals - like the credits still sitting in my bank from the 5 Golden Lightsabers I briefly possessed?

@Silent there are a lot of exciting possibilities that possessions enables. That being one of them. I won't say too much because it's all tentative but some exciting stuff (in my biased opinion).

@Zachary Yes. Great example of credits I would use admin access to remove. :p

@Evant, couple of quick questions, hopefully you can answer them. Firstly, has it been worked out how custom weapons will work with possesions? And second, if one were to change characters (which I do way more often than I should) what happens to the possesions we've purchased? Can we sell them back or are we stuck with them?

Love seeing all this. Will the staff be looking at expanding slotting options in the future or the ability to purchase an additional slot of any type? Are there still plans for NPC "slots" and will they have load outs and slotting as well, or be more like the droid companion as fsr as site side Possessions capacity?

@Raider - Assuming you mean custom graphics and not custom weapons? Since any item that has Aspect slots can be customized now. The short answer is no, but the longer answer is that custom graphics wise it's all cosmetic - and I've been discussing with Vyr (Herald) at length about how to handle them. There will likely be a specific prototype that is a custom weapon, with necessary Aspects to define its custom/unique form.

Regarding the sale of items, all items have an Item Category (noted on PDAWG) - and all stores will purchase items in certain categories. It's possible to also do this through your inventory management admin.

@Atty - We currently have no plans to allow members to purchase extra slots for their character. We discussed (and I think you brought it up actually somewhere if i recall) selling like extra satchels or backpacks or bags that equipment or small weapons could be slotted into. While this sounds like a sweet feature, in theory, all those slotted items are nested and now no longer show on a loadout. Just that you have a bag. So the downside was a lot higher than the upside functionality. I expect it will continue to be discussed as people push the limits of how much they can carry but no plans currently.

There are definitely plans to explore companions / NPCs, whatever you want to call your merry crew or entourage of things. I don't expect that to see an expansion on the load out, however, to make it work. Since your character doesn't personally use an NPC necessarily. Unlike everything else. Even droid is probably in a fuzzy gray area. It will be handled differently.

After we launch possessions the first steps will be to integrate everything into existing systems (CS / ACC / etc) since we can't do so while everything is still beta and subject to change. Once everything is integrated, I'll have a list of additions / improvements / expansions as it were, and look to my fellow DC members to help prioritize it because in many cases this is a collaborative effort that uses their time and energy as well.

Oh wow. None of this showed up on my phone. Awesome stuff, evant! Love the way the loadout screens will look.

Very interesting indeed, thank you immensely for putting so much work into this expansion of personal profiles.

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