Now that our BugBash is out on Test I'd like to chat with everyone on more details on the content and systems we have started working on for Chapter 7. We have already mentioned the big bullet points a few times, Heroic Encounters, and Collections. However I haven't delved to much into what each means.
Heroic Encounters - We have chosen to advance the story of our good friends from the former Village of Aurilia. Apparently all the materials and effort the players contributed helped grow the Village into a Township. This Township will be our "nexus" or gathering spot for linking up with others to go on the Heroic encounters with, obtain buffs, or just hang out. Dropships to quickly transport groups from the Township to areas near the entrances to the encounter areas should be available here. There will also be a variety of new quests and rewards will be available for helping out the people of Aurilia.
As for the encounters these should all be tuned to 8 people and yield some fun surprises. I'm not going to reveal what goes on inside the encounters until we get closer to Testing.
Collections - The most basic form of collection all players have been collecting since the game launched, you just know them as Badges. We have come up with a slick UI and our artists are going through and adding Badge Icons to all old and new badges. You will be able to examine another player and look out their collections if you so desire. After Badges the next level of collection is the kill collection, represented in a different page in the Collection's Journal. Killing specific creatures/NPCs will yield collection credit and eventually rewards and further collections or badges. Finally we move into objects in the world inside buildings or areas that are clicked on to collect them or objects looted from creatures/NPCs that are clicked on to collect them. Each collection usually has a reward associated with it from credits, xp, titles, to more exotic custom rewards.
A good example of a collection is mousing over a crate in a starport you notice your cursor changes to a hand, clicking on the crate yields a message that the crate has been added to your crate collection. Looking in your collection journal you notice there are 10 icons, 9 are greyed out 1 has been colored in, representing the crate you just clicked. There are 9 other crates you need to find in the galaxy to complete the crate collection. Over to the right of these icons you see a bigger icon, and mousing over it you see that completing this collection will grant you a Structure Storage Increase Crate. The reward object can be added to a structure you own to increase the number of items you can place in it.
All the little pieces are looking like it should be a fun Chapter.
