TL’s producer, Jongok Ahn, published the seventh Producer Letter, this time he shares details about the Stat Integration and Siege wars. There’s also a small mention of the global version in the PS but nothing meaningful, so don’t go crazy.
You can find below the complete translation of the new producer’s letter, we apologize for any translation errors.
[Producer’s Letter Part 7]
This is Jongok Ahn, producer of THRONE AND LIBERTY.
How are you all doing, safe and sound, in the face of the suddenly bitter cold?
We hope you’re all enjoying a happy new year!
In today’s letter, we’d like to follow up on two things we touched on too briefly during the live broadcast and didn’t get to go into more detail about. First, we’re talking about the integration of melee, ranged, and magical stats coming in the 31st of January update.
Stats Integration
We’d like to start by talking about stat integration, which was briefly mentioned in our last live broadcast and was both welcomed and feared by many.
The reason we want to unify stats is to prevent the weapon combination system from becoming stuck. We’ve been noticing that combinations are becoming more specific based on the ranged, melee, and magic conditional stats attached to your gear, and with the addition of the skill switching system, we’ve done a complete overhaul of the core stats to allow for more variety in combinations.
As a result, we’re unifying the ranged/magic-related offensive options (hit, critical, heavy attack). The defensive options (defence, evasion, endurance) will also have unified stats, but we’ve decided not to change the gear options, as we feel that these are counter options to your opponent’s attacks and should be left open to ensure you have enough options to counter certain types of attacks. However, as hit and critical will be unified stats, we’ll be increasing the values of the corresponding dodge and endurance options across the board.
| Unified Stats | Unapplied Stats |
| Hit, Critical, Heavy attack | Defence, Evasion, Endurance |
The above changes apply to secondary stats for all weapons, armour, and accessories. Stats, including extracts, have also been converted to unified stats, meaning that enhancements to hit, critical, and heavy attacks stats are now compatible across all weapons, rather than requiring a close/ranged split.
However, there are some exclusions. Equipment skills are not eligible for unification because their abilities are based on the unique concept of the equipment. We also decided not to unify equipment set effects for the same reason.
As a result of this stat integration process, some pieces of equipment have ended up with nearly identical stats, even though they’re in the same class and the same area. In these cases, we’ve taken steps to change the existing stats to better differentiate between pieces of equipment. This is probably what many of you are concerned about.
However, for user experience reasons, we’ve decided to limit the stat changes to “high-end” tier gear and the “Sophia/Robert/Rutaine Rings” which have a distinct narrative concept that would be meaninglessly separated if they were simply unified. The single items in the Sophia/Robert/Rutaine Rings will have their options modified to defensive, but the critical effects that are granted when the set is acquired will have the option to be unified.
We don’t want long-time players to experience a drastic drop in gear value, so please don’t worry if you’ve been playing for a while. Currently, there are 7 pieces of changed gear confirmed: 1 High Grade Cloak + 3 High Grade Rings + 1 each of Sophia/Robert/Rutaine Rings.
We hope this will open up more weapon combinations. We’ll continue to immerse ourselves in your play and situations, think flexibly to find better alternatives, and strive to make your experience better.
Siege Details
Along with server merge, we’ve mentioned that Siege is coming soon, and it’s something that many of you are looking forward to, so we’ve been working hard on it. We think it’s easier to understand the rules and how to participate in a siege through a video than through words, so we’ve put together a YouTube video.
In the video and in this letter, we’re going to go into a little more detail about a tax that many of you have questions about.
Let’s start with the tax accumulation process.
When a trade occurs on the exchange, 20% of the trade price is processed and burned at the default tax rate, and 2%, which is currently set to the provincial tax rate, is accumulated as tax. These taxes are accumulated in Stonegard Castle and Vienta Town, and we show the amount of taxes accumulated in a tooltip. The ratio of taxes accumulated in Stonegard Castle and Vienta Town is approximately 9:1, and any decimals encountered while calculating the taxes are discarded from Vienta Town minutes and accumulated in Stonegard Castle to the nearest decimal.
Taxes distributed as rewards for a siege are allocated as a percentage of the accumulated taxes in the Stonegard, and the remaining taxes are carried over as rewards for the next siege and remain in the Stonegard’s accumulation. This rule is intended to prevent a single victory from taking all of the taxes accumulated over a long period of time when the owner of a castle is undecided.
This calculation determines the amount of taxes that can be distributed, a portion of which goes towards the siege’s final victory reward. The final victory reward is awarded to the guild or legion that captures the throne, and the legion that owns the castle may choose to distribute the reward to friendly guilds. The taxes allocated to each of these guilds are then distributed back to their members according to the guild’s internal rules.
This doesn’t mean that the winner of the siege gets to take it all, though. A unique aspect of sieges in TL is that the guilds involved in the siege can earn as much, if not more, rewards than the winner of the castle, depending on their strategy. The variables are the plunder zone and tax transport.
Capturing a Plunder Zone, which is distributed throughout the province, allows the capturing Guild to take the taxes allocated to it. The distribution of Plunder Zones occurs every five minutes, and the Guild that captures the Zone at the time of distribution is immediately paid a portion of the taxes allocated to it. If a Legion captures the Plunder and does not lose it, all of the taxes allocated to the Plunder will be added to the final victory reward and become the Legion’s share. Whether you give up a handful of pieces for the greater good or keep it all, it’s all in the eye of the beholder and strategic decisions that make the Plunder Zone system so exciting.
The Tax Transport is a struggle over the approximately 10% tax accumulated in Vienta. The taxes in Vienta are transported to Stonegard Castle by the Legion. If the Legion fails to deliver the tax, it will be taken away from users who participated in the event as an opposing faction. However, if they survive the onslaught and succeed in delivering the taxes, the taxes from Vienta will be added to the rewards of the next siege.
You’ll be able to experience the Tax Collector after the second siege, following the chronological system, and we expect the content to be as intense as the siege, with dynamic group battles that require you to utilise multiple terrains.
In addition, we’re also planning a number of in-game initiatives. We’ll be announcing our plans for more content soon, which many of you have been asking about. I’m not going to say too much because it’s still an ongoing discussion between the teams, but I wanted to let you know that we’re always looking at what you’re missing and thinking about it.
We’ve had a lot going on, but we’re grateful that you’re enjoying the game. You’re the ones that keep all of us motivated to do better.
I’ve seen a lot of comments in the community asking if we’re still doing TL, and as a producer, I feel a huge responsibility. I want to turn it around, and I want to make sure that you feel the excitement of welcoming newcomers, that feeling of paddling into the water, and I want to make sure you feel that, so stay tuned.
Stay safe on this cold day.
Goodbye.
Posted by Jongok Ahn.
P.S
I know there is a story that the global version of TL is different from the domestic version, and that it is a flat-rate service overseas. We would like to assure you that this is not true at all.
The domestic and global versions are still the same, with the same business model, and we have no plans to change that.
We don’t have any plans at all, but if we do, the changes will be common to both the domestic and global versions, and we’ll make sure that you’re aware of them before anyone else.
Source: tl.plaync.com
