Basics - [The New Age] PBE: Changes

This week the new Testing Server "[The New Age] PBE" launched and a limited group of people have the opportunity to test out new game mechanics and different game play.

Enroll for PBE

You can't enroll for PBE at the moment. There was a timeframe within which you could apply for it between July 26 and August 6 this year. If you were chosen, you received a message in game.

The server was meant to go live a few weeks ago, but got delayed and finally launched this week on Thursday, Aug 31. 

First Login

If you have been chosen as a tester, you can now use all your commanders and inventory from the account you used to apply for it and test the new game mechanics.

Basically your complete game safe was cloned for the test server and acts now independently from your main account.

Here is where you can log into the PBE server: it is listed in the server list options on your login interface when you open the game.

The "clone" for PBE will be deleted after the testing period. Any changes you make to this version of your account will be lost eventually. There will be no option to spend money on it, so no reason to worry about this.

Before we head into the changes introduced to the test server we have to clearly know one thing:

• This is not going to be the final version. Theoretically anywhere from everything to nothing could be implemented as final content.
  However, if we're being realistic, a good part will be implemented and we also know that these changes are not all the changes that are waiting for us.

At the end of the day, the status of current changes in test server will not be the final version. So everything should be taken with the knowledge that nothing is set in stone. 

What are the major changes in PBE?

1. Gear

The gear has been changed completely. The basic stats of every piece are changed, though somewhat resemble previous stats. The biggest change with gear is the refinement of special effects. In PBE there is no refining (currently we can also not strengthen any pieces). You received for every refine level the amount of pieces into your inventory that have been used for that level. Example: If you had a 5* refined Mirkwood Bow, this means you have now a 5* strengthened Mirkwood Bow with one random special effect from the new list plus additionally 9 Mirkwood Bows with random special effects from the new effect list - all of them in basic status. 

Let's have a look at the basic stats by example of the Mirkwood Bow.

 

As you can see, the stats changed. This is to cater to the new way of fighting (see more below).

But most important to know: You still have the same value/amount of items in your inventory, only with other effects. 

N.B.: I will release an article within the next days which lists all the special effects and some basics on how to read gear as well as how to use it. All of that would be too much for the scope of this article. - Stay tuned!

2. Commanders

Another big change affects the commanders. Or rather more than one change concerns them. Most important: also here all respect levels were retained, which means you still have the same value in your game safe. 

2.1 Skill Trees

Their skill trees have been completely overhauled, although the basic titles were retained in most cases from what I could see so far. Although some have changed title skills, which seems an improvement towards usability of the respective commander in the cases that I found (e.g. Hirgon's bottom R0 tree).

However, all the subskills were scrapped. Instead you can now level the commander titles (as usual 2x R0, 1x R3, 1x R5) up to level 10. Each level requires 3 points, which means to max out one title you need at 30 points from respect levels or experience levels.

By reaching level 5 and 10 respectively with your title you get another extra skill/buff for both milestones, depending the commander and title. See here a random example:
 =>

Hirgon's R5 tree and subskills to the left compared to the new R5 Title to the right

If you did your math along the way, you noticed how the maxed title requires now 30 pts. while the title plus both subskills mixed in the traditional version costs 29 pts. This is a change I personally am not fully happy with as I believe the cost per skill-level are too high. There is definitely some room for improvement.

2.2 Leveling your commander

The maximum EXP level for each commander that you can reach with PvE, scrolls or mind sharpener is level 40 in PBE. After that you can only gain more EXP by fighting in PvP.

2.3 Combat role of your commander

The Commanders are now active part of the fight, which means they take damage like troops (see more later). To enable this the commanders now have also attack, defense, HP etc. - like your troops do. Let's pick a commander that I have at the same level in both games to see the difference better. I stripped them both of their gear to show the raw stats at this level: 

* I imply that the effects of all stats are known for the traditional version.

In the descriptions for the commander stats in PBE you can see which stat affects a commanders formation (i.e. himself and his army) and how. 

What does the commander page look like in the game? - Pretty much the same, except that the stats are displayed additionally to what was there before and in line with the changes needed.

2.4 Unique Items

As you can also see, there is a 5th gear slot now. This is reserved for your commander's unique, which means that you now can make use of the gear piece even if it wasn't BiS before, now it will definitely be useful and for those who made "poor" decisions prior, they can now at least throw it in and put it to use.

Now, this can be arguably an advantage for spenders - and ofc for the game team. Though, considering how many complaints there were on how many uniques are not really viable to try them out, this feels like a good change for me personally. I am sure there are counter arguments available. 

2.5 Other Commander-related changes

Now, if you paid attention to the screenshots, you might have noticed two other things. 

One of them is definitely a grievance for those who had it on all (or almost all) their commanders: Impart Wisdom / Gear Familiarity. This is not a thing in PBE. It also means however, that the 4 skill points are lost. I wrote already a feedback to the game team on this one and I could imagine that many people might not be happy as we dunked a lot of gear into this.

Another point, might also be a grievance, though pure speculation at this point. The indicator is subtle and we cannot be 100% certain what it means: the arrow next to the respect level. It suggests, that the respect level will go beyond 25 in future. We do not know if that is going to happen, but many already predicted it to happen at some point and here goes my "well played" to those who collected the items already in preparation for this because I am almost certain a respect level increase will roll out into regular servers rather sooner than later. Personally I would not happy about this, others might. What it would mean for sure is that it could land Netease more money if the player base bites and actually works towards higher respect, which at least the big whales and kraken who keep playing are likely going to do. (* Disclaimer: This is speculation on my part.)

3. Army Formation

This is by far one of the biggest changes together with the gear and skill tree overhaul. These three changes also go very strongly hand-in-hand as they build on each other.

Your army in PBE looks vastly different from what you know. In short: your commander leads one army within his formation (= one single unit type/troop type). Your whole march is led by one commander who can lead up to three other formations, each with one commander and one troop type respectively. 

So the new setup of your whole march is:

• Formation 1: Leading commander + 1 troop type
• Formation 2: Supporting commander 1 + 1 troop type
• Formation 3: Supporting commander 2 + 1 troop type
• Formation 4: Supporting commander 3 + 1 troop type

To give a visual on what this looks like, here the reinforcement screen: 

What you now have to do is, find the best synergy between leading and supporting commanders as well as their respective troops and the gear they are wearing. I find it challenging, interesting and a fun thing to do. From what I understand however, I am not a majority speaker on this one.

To go into this topic in depth would be way out of scope for this article. However, most important take away are these points:

• Validation of your commanders that have been warming the bench because they just didn't cut it
• Racial synergy is going to be very important to have feasible combinations
• Army type bonuses are very important to synergize with your commander and their buffs towards their own and allied formations
• Gear synergy is very important now

At the end of the day the new game mechanics will require some new game play by players, thinking outside the box and the ability to adapt to the new settings.

4. Other Changes in PBE

4.1 Stamina => Energy

Another big change is the "merge" of Stamina and Ability Points. Your commanders to not have any stamina anymore and you also do not have any Ability Points anymore. Instead you have a big pot of Energy, which allows you to use this energy on your commanders or any other type of moves at your discretion. 

What this means is that you can path with whatever commander you use, it has no negative or positive impact on your commander's availability for fights. 

In below table you can see which action costs energy and how much. The original maximum of your energy is 300. By giving ring points you can raise this to 600 maxed. For testing purposes we get the cap raised by another 300 in PBE, which usually you would get only in the first 24h.

The energy replaces Stamina and AP. Accordingly also the level 10 Ring tree was adjusted. Where you would usually raise the cap for AP you now raise the cap for energy in the same way. 

This has different aspects to consider. You now have a limited amount of moves you can make. However, it doesn't matter with which commander you make these moves. You can just keep going with that one commander. This results in the fact that it doesn't matter if you're a lower spender and don't have as many commanders unlocked. You can still make the same amount of moves as a big whale who has every single commander unlocked. 

Endless tile wars will be significantly reduced - because it doesn't matter if you have 20 or 30 commanders sitting in your base while the opponent is trying to fight you with his or her 4-6 commanders. They have the same amount of moves available as you have.

4.2 Multi Queues

Quality of Life - multiple queues of the same troop. In short: I absolutely fricking love it. 

No more crutching on t2 troops or having to wait for ages to refill your queues with the risk of forgetting them. You fill four queues of the same (or different, just as you like it) troop type and a few hours later your barracks are filled with fresh and shiny new troops in a nice number, that let's you actually work with them. Especially those using DD with e.g. Guardians will be hyped about this. 

5. Changes unrelated to PBE ...

... that you might have missed so far. These changes are already in live servers, but some of you might never have seen some of them at play. That's why I'm mentioning them shortly.

5.1 The Mist

When you log in first, you see your settlement in a sea of mist. This mist can be dispersed at no cost (aside from your effort to click the buttons) and it reveals some map events that you have to solve similar to the "Surprise" gifts that have been introduced a while back. 

While the dispersing of the mist is a bit tedious, given the fact that it presents you with a bunch of resources, troops, ring power, gold, a mathom coin and a stamina potion - no complaint from me.

5.2 Exp Scrolls

Anyone still in a server that doesn't have this? I'll mention it in case you haven't.
This has been rolled out across all (new) servers a few weeks ago, so most people should already know about it: once your server has progressed to a certain level, every day at server reset you get a specific amount of mobs, which will reward you with EXP scrolls in your tavern. To get them all you have to kill 9 mobs of a certain level daily.

5.3 Map/Region Control

You don't start with one or more regions owned on server start, but rather have to take over keeps first and a capital to start "painting the map". 

Summary

To recap the changes introduced in PBE: complete gear rework, major commander skill tree changes, new battle mechanics the introduction of Energy pool in place of Stamina/AP as main changes and multiple conscription queues for same troop type, exp levels past 40, unique item as separate slot as the smaller ones. 

Please read Opinion - [The New Age] PBE-Changes for my personal take on all these changes and the uproar connected to them that is surging across the community.

* This Article is about the changes implemented in the test environment PBE server [The New Age]. Unless stated otherwise, these features are not available in live servers at the time of publication.

Article - Balanced Servers

When playing the game we all want to have fun. This is the ultimate goal for everyone - or for most everyone. 

Players'  Expectations

One part of having fun includes the ability to play throughout the whole season. While different players have different play styles and expectations to what they consider "fun" in the game, what is common to almost all players, is that they do not simply want to log in and do - nothing. Doing nothing is boring. Farmers want to be able to farm. Theory crafters and build testers want to craft and test builds. Fighters want to fight. Prestige farmers want to farm prestige. These may be different types of goals, but the common ground is: do something and not just sit around.

In order to be able to do something, you need to have access to the basic requirements. in all cases - whether it is farming, testing builds, PvP (fun or war) - you need access to one basic thing in the game: troops. And to have access to troops you need - resources!

Now, to accomplish the common goal, most people agree on one thing: the server should be as balanced as possible. And there we hit the problem. The question "what is a balanced server?" usually brings up huge discussions and often starts fights and the ever proclaimed "toxicity". 

Contributing Factors

There are so many different factors at play that it seems difficult to find a common ground on how to achieve a "balanced server":

- number of players
- strength of players
- experience of players
- activity of players
- server setup
- type of campaign
- (dis)advantages of factions
- availability of resources
- available commanders/troops per faction/alignment
- ... and so on.

How do you measure all these different factors? Which factors are (most) deciding? Which can be neglected? Opinions go in vastly different directions.

Excurse - Server Experiences

I started playing this game when it first got officially released after the Beta testing - on September 23, 2021. Currently I am on my 9th season with my main good side account. Besides this account I have several others, some bigger than others. Among these is one bigger evil account with also 8 seasons and another decent good side account with a total of 7 seasons under the belt. All in all I have seen about 30+ different servers across most seasons and campaigns.

With all this experience you would think there had to be a few balanced servers among the list. However, I have yet to see that one truly balanced server. There is also the reality that people perceive the same server very differently. Just as an example, there was this one server that I perceived as immensely stressful from day 4 when war started until roughly 4-5 hours before the countdown ended. At the same time another group found the server extremely boring. Given these very different perceptions about that particular server you guessed it already - the server certainly was not balanced.

Solutions?

Players tend to ask developers to do something in order to balance the game. The requests go from asking for separate servers for "whales" vs "F2P" to controlling the numbers of registrations per faction/alignment or experience of these players and whatnot.

We all can see that the developers try to tackle the problems at hand by implementing different systems and algorithms that are aimed to help the balance problem. We have seen them cut down numbers per factions, capping the registrations per alignment (good/evil), capping the amount of players per team and more recently in some registrations (campaign S4 - The War of the Ring) requiring a minimum ring level in the previous server to be eligible to register for the campaign. And last not least the newest feature that will be implemented with this week's patch: the creation of registrations for players who never won the "Ring". All this in order to try and attempt balanced servers and enhance player experience.

Most people want servers to be populated. More server population = more competition = more activity = more fun. This is the idea and in the majority of the cases this is certainly true. However, how do you get servers populated? The game team can hardly force groups into registering for a certain campaign against their will. Some groups wait for friends who are still stuck in servers and want to join them, so they wait. This makes it very difficult for the game team to really influence players' choices in a grand scheme.

So, what net? We end up on a server with differently populated factions. This is the basic reality. Within these differently populated factions we have different strengths. One faction may have higher numbers than the other, but still be weaker because of lower activity, higher percentage of F2P vs whales, etc.

We could start counting the numbers of players. Do we count all players in all listed fellowships/warbands? Or do we stop after the top 15? Top 20? Or do we count only groups with X amount of players? Do we consider how many "alts" or secondary accounts they have, which may not be played as much as their main accounts?

Utopia - The Perfect Scenario

Let's assume we have a "perfect" server with 4 factions that each have 2 full fellowships/warbands - 200 people per faction. For the sake of this example we will say the other factions are completely empty. Further, let's assume the four full factions are equally active and all have the same amount of seasons under their belts. All this should allow for a perfectly balanced server, right? Simply two factions vs two factions = perfect balance.

Hold a second! How do we factor the status of the individual players' developments? We will not have a homogenous group of people who are all on the same level of commander/gear progress. Even if all those players had spent equal amounts of money, they would not have equal amounts of luck with their chest pulls - those pulls are RNG based (as so many other factors in the game).

So, how do we measure the strength of the players?

- Do we measure it by how much they farm in the first week? We have seen great farmers who don't fight much, though.
- Or do we count how many commanders at R10 they have? Commanders have different strengths and different gear set ups etc.
- Does one "kraken" outweigh 3 (or 5 or 10) whales? How do you measure this?

We'd have this perfectly "balanced" server and again we'd struggle. Simply because of the difference in strength of players. Let's now add to this the different strength of commanders/builds/troops in the alignments good vs evil. Some builds work better against good, others work better against evil. People are set up one way or another - depending on what they played so far and even with the Elven Craftsman's Hammer we cannot dismantle whatever and whenever we want to. Those items are limited.

Conclusion

In my personal opinion and according to my experience it is impossible to achieve a balanced server. What is balanced for one (e.g. equal numbers of players) is not balanced for another because they consider something else balanced (e.g. number of factions per side). The "headache" of trying to make a server balanced is taking a lot of time from the actual fun in the game - playing it, i.e. grow your commanders, manage your resources, troops, etc. and then go fight and try to win or have another favourable outcome that you worked for.

Disclaimer:

All expressed thoughts are based on my personal experiences, views and opinions. They may not be shared by other players in this or a similar way. I do not claim to have the one right opinion or view on things, but merely share my take on things based on my own, personal experiences in the game.