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[Cryptite]

Announcing the Pale Reaches!
Dead are the Deadlands, here comes the Pale Reaches!
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Deep in the far southern reaches of Garama comes the Pale Reaches, a haunting successor to the Deadlands. Cloaked in shades of gray and white as far as the eye can see, this land is more than its color. Within its borders stretch vast forests, winding rivers, and a sprawling network of underground caves, each hiding secrets of their own. The Pale Reaches may greet you with an eerie atmosphere, but one question remains: will its haunting beauty drive you away or draw you deeper into its mystery?

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Featuring:

• 17 Total Territories
  • The 5 original Deadlands territories (62-66) have been reshaped and are now part of the Pale Reaches.
  • Savannah 102/103 & Mesa 60 have been reshaped to better accommodate the Pale Reaches.
  • Garama has been expanded by 12 additional territories, making for 17 total Pale Reaches tiles.
  • Significant underground portions, keeping with the original theme of the Deadlands a bit.
• Mobs:
  • The Creaking
    • Watch out, on Loka the Creaking does considerably more damage than vanilla!
• Restricted Resources:
  • Pale Oak Wood & Leaves
  • The Creaking Heart
  • Pale Moss
  • Resin Clumps & Blocks
  • Red & Brown Mushroom Plants & Blocks
  • All of these resources (minus the Creaking Heart) will also be produced by industries.

Launch Cadence
As we have done in the past, we will be releasing the Pale Reaches in two phases to allow players time both to explore the territories and plan ahead for where they might want to settle.

Initial Exploration
Land update: Tuesday, August 26th (Morning-ish)

Players will be able to access and explore the biome, but will not be able to set up new towns or take territories.

Available for Conquest/Town creation
Release: Friday, August 29th at 2:00 PM Server

At 2:00 PM server, players will be allowed to place towns and take territories. This is the peak time that US/EU players are typically online. Whatever shenanigans players choose to ensure they can place towns is considered fair game.

A big thanks to the development team, particularly @Mocc1, @Kotten, @Flgment, @z4nityy, @Thorgny, @FoxyBearGames, @koi0001, @Raddus_, and @SilentStormSix for the hard work put into this biome. From making schematics to playtesting to placing territory generators & inhibitors, this biome would not be possible without any of them. As always, if you're interested in making cool stuff like this for Loka, be sure to check out a Development Team Application!

And as always, Go Forth!

 

[Cryptite]

March Conquest Changes
No more Win Trading rule
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The key change to March is the removal of the Win Trading Rule (for Conquest, not ranked arenas). Despite it being a rule, and plenty of people being banned for it, too many players still do it it the valuable time of our admins. Too many constant, circular accusations (and bad faith interpretations of) the win trading rule has shown that it needed to be reevaluated. Further, we on Loka make a fine point of trying to reduce the amount of personal judgement calls that admins have to make. If the features of Conquest and Loka drive enforce how everything works - as opposed to a lengthy rulebook that everybody just "must magically know and abide by" - then admins can stay out of everyone's business and we all go home happier.

But we cannot just remove the rule and call it a day. As a result, the following small changes are being implemented to help make Win Trading a less viable option in the first place. It should also be mentioned that internally we did not even like it being named Win Trading (feeding strength is more appropriate) as we pretty uniquely only enforced it when it involved placing an attack with no intent to win. Every other "angle" of WT was not considered as such. At any rate, let's get into it.

• Vuln windows can no longer be chosen between the hours 12-8am server time.
  • The reality of these windows is that 90% of the time they were chosen only to prevent being attacked and were commonly part and parcel of attempted win trading.
  • The only legitimate use case for these would be a fully APAC (Asia Pacific) alliance. However, as Loka remains a US East Coast Server, we cannot prioritize geographically supporting the furthest and fewest players we have over a far more abusable feature.
• We have adjusted the strength calculation equation, lowering the scale factor from 400 to 250. Very plainlywhat this does is:
  • In the case of an upset (low strength beats a high strength collective), the strength gain is higher.
  • In the case of an expected win (high strength beats a low strength collective), the strength gain is lower.
  • In other words, it is less viable as a low-strength town to potentially try to feed strength to a top collective or vice versa (top collective tries to farm a small town).

To reiterate, we want a system with clear functions that everybody understands, and one that no staff member has to judge the outcome of. Even making the right call still pisses everyone off - it's a no-win situation. Because we terminated a fight at the end of the February cycle, it invariably chose a winner. In this case we elected to have no capital of Ascalon because of rampant win trading on that continent, but the fact that our judgement of Win Trading decided winners and losers felt bad and virtually all the Guardians and above felt equally annoyed/bad about it.

What does this mean for you? It means you will need to adjust accordingly, knowing your enemies could conspire against you. It means leaving small strength differences at the end of the month become far more risky. Make use of Conquest's systems. Remember that if you reduce an alliance to 0 territories, they fully cannot place for 48 hours.

We're open to suggestions and brainstorming for more ways to make win trading less viable, but it's worth reminding that Conquest has been around for 10+ years now and we've thought of (or tried) a lot of variations and so a lot of basic ideas have probably already been poo-poo'd. But don't let that stop you.

Ok Go Forth!