What’s up, gamers? It’s ya boi. And I have just so much stuff to announce.

Post Count Requirement Changes:

First up, moving forward, Players are no longer required to reach 20 posts before closing a thread. 

I’m gonna just give ya a sec to let that sink in.

It is relatively obvious that a major pain point for the site is that to do anything, you must be willing to commit at least 3000 words to each and every thread you do. That is a large time commitment. And while we don’t mean to devalue everyone’s current efforts thus far, we feel that it’s time to reduce the bare minimum requirements to interact with the roleplay.

Now, we do have strings. I know, throw your bricks. Staff giveth, Staff taketh away.

All posts are still required to reach 150 words to be considered valid, for starters. Just a little minimum effort so we’re not getting one liners all over the place.

Furthermore, moving forward we need you guys to pay close attention to the Quest Requirements. Every Quest has them and they extend beyond “kill the boss.” If a Quest says you need to Roleplay Traveling to the Hot Dog Volcano, then you need to actually do that. It should be its own post and you must use a Post Label to indicate which requirement is being done. Something along these lines is more then enough:

Post Action | Traveling to Hot Dog Volcano

Additionally, we have a few quests that are mostly roleplay heavy and could, conceivably, be cheesed in a single post. We want to avoid doing that wherever possible. So the following Quests will remain under the old 20 posts, 150 words per post standard until such time as we can come up with a more elegant solution:

• Earning a Living (All variants)
• Challenge of Olympus (All variants)
• What We Fight For
• To Shine a Light
• The Traveler
• On the House
• The Gemini

We feel as if this is a fair compromise between allowing freedom to interact with the site and actually be rewarded without needing to commit 3,000 words to it while also not allowing complete cheese.

Experience Reward Changes & Group Factor Removal:
We found that the amount time it took to progress and a mix of different variables was making it take over a year to reach level 34 at a normal pace. As a result we’re changing the current EXP formula from:

(Word Count/10)*True Tier * Group Factor

to

(Word Count/5)*True Tier * Group Factor

There’s really not much to say on this one other then we are an RP site and bigger writing was worth less than hitting things. It’s because we love you.
In addition, you may have noticed that the Group Factor is removed. That's simply because being punished for having the audacity to roleplay with friends on your favorite roleplay site seemed counterintuitive and the opposite to what we want.  And also we love you.

New Content: Upgraded Support Packages:
Our goal with this little update is twofold. First we wanted to make interacting with our Progression System a little easier across the board. Second, we want to make it so newer Players are not pigeonholed into the “Pick DPS skill or suffer” cycle. In furtherance of the second point, Staff will be adding the following items to the General Merchant:

► Tank Beginner Booster (50 Col)
[Can only be purchased by players that had taken the Tank Starter Package upon Character Creation]
Effect: For the duration of a thread, gain your ranks of any Armor or Block Skill as ranks in an available Weapon skill of your choosing. This can only be used below True Tier 5.

► Support Beginner Booster (50 Col)
[Can only be purchased by players that had taken the Support Starter Package upon Character Creation]
Effect: For the duration of a thread, gain your ranks of the First Aid or Leadership Skill as ranks in an available Weapon skill of your choosing. This can only be used below True Tier 5.

► Scout Beginner Booster (50 Col)
[Can only be purchased by players that had taken the Scout Starter Package upon Character Creation]
Effect: For the duration of a thread, gain your ranks of the Searching Skill as ranks in an available Weapon skill of your choosing. This can only be used below True Tier 5. 

*Available in this case being you need to be able to buy it normally (I.E. Katana/Martial Arts)

In addition, The following Starter Package will also be added to allow for a Scouting type (+LD) to start how they would like out the gate:

Set E | Scout Package
Rare Trinket of choice
(3) Starter Healing Potions (Heals 50 HP)
2,500 Col and (10) Materials

Guild Upkeep and Rank Changes:
It was recently made clear that the upkeep costs for a Guild were prohibitively expensive and virtually no one was utilizing the system as a result. It made posting as a Guild feel more like a chore than anything else. So we’re removing it. To compensate, we will be increasing the cost to advance ranks as follows:

• 1 x Member Count | Rank 0 -> Rank 1
• 1.2 x Member Count | Rank 1 -> Rank 2
• 1.4 x Member Count | Rank 2 -> Rank 3
• 1.6 x Member Count | Rank 3 -> Rank 4
• 1.8 x Member Count | Rank 4 -> Rank 5

Signed but not forgotten:
The Glizzylord and the Crabman