The Matrix Online 2005 Halloween Masquerade
It's time for The Matrix Online 2005 Halloween Masquerade! Beginning with Update 37 (scheduled to release the week ending October 28), players will be able to participate in some trick or treating--Matrix-style.

The Trick
Through the morning of November 1, players will find special Jack-O-Lanterns placed around the Mega City. When activated, Exiles will spawn on each player near the Jack-O-Lantern. All your favorite "Halloween-style" Exiles will be there: Blood-Drinkers, Lupines, Succubi, and Nightmares. You must defeat all the Exiles that attack you to earn your treat.

The Treat
Once your opponents have been defeated, they'll leave behind a box that only you can open. Inside you'll find one of seven masks that can be activated to change the appearance of your RSI into a Blood-Drinker (male and female versions), Lupine (male and female versions), Succubus, or Nightmare. The seventh mask is a special rare-drop that will change your RSI's appearance to another Exile favorite.

Other Happenings
We all know how redpills like to party, so we'll also be dressing the Mega City hardlines and clubs up for the event. But what fun is Halloween in the daytime? From Friday afternoon through Tuesday morning, it's nighttime all the time for your Halloween celebrations.

After Update 37 hits: Jack in, dress up, and crank some tunes!

Featured Changes

• The Matrix Online Story Continues in Episode 3.1!
  The 3.1 Storyline missions are now available in game.



• 2005 Halloween Masquerade
  It's time for The Matrix Online 2005 Halloween Masquerade! Find the jack-o-lanterns around the Mega City and activate them to spawn Exiles. Defeating a wave of Exiles leaves you with a special treat: A box only you can open that contains one of seven possible Halloween masks.
  
  You'll also find that the hardlines and clubs have been dressed up for Halloween. And, beginning on Friday, October 28, it's nighttime all the time for your Halloween celebrations.
  
  The event begins as soon as Update 37 is available and ends when the clock turns over to November 1st.

Changes and Improvements

• The Archaeologist has moved his digs to the Historical District.
• Searching the Knowledge Base now displays the resulting article IDs.
• Rooting effects no longer prevent tactic changes and special moves in Interlock.
• Delete Upgrade 2.0 no longer displays a chat message for each bonus granted by each Ability it removes. It now sends one message per Ability.
• Flaming fists of fury are no longer so flaming or furious. (Energized Attack and Precise Blow have new effects.)
• Hyper Speed has new effects.
• Code shaper now has a 5-second reuse timer. (Reduces spamming area chat with Ability text.)
• All open UI panels now close when entering the Loading Area.

Bug Fixes

• The Stun 2.0 icon properly indicates that the ability is an Area of Effect attack.
• Simulacra no longer stick around after their master has unloaded the Ability that created it. (Fixes exploit.)
• Holy Water, Silver Bullets, and Wooden Stakes now sell for their appropriate values.
• Using the Assassin Mask Ability now aggros mobs and activates the user's pvp flag when it affects another player.
• Ginjiro has displaced George as the Silver Dragons' leader.
• Ability grant consumables are no longer craftable and no longer work.
• Silver Dragon gang Bosses no longer spawn as "Some Person" in the International District.
• Transmit Virus no longer lists a re-use timer in its description.
• Bug that caused the Head Butt chat text to display an error has been fixed.
• Restore RSI 2.0 now displays the correct version number in its effects when used.
• Description for Code Freeze 2.0 now correctly states that ranged damage may break its "rooting" effect.
• Players whose Crew or Faction data doesn't load correctly now have their reputation determine their Organization. (Fixes exploit.)
• Consumable models now appear in the center of the mouseover view.
• Detail information has been added for gang leaders without any.
• Player details now show Force Enhancer when the Ability is loaded, rather than Team Patcher.

Now that things are settled in—well, as settled as their likely to get—it’s time for a little revamp of The Other Side of the Looking Glass. Each week I’ll be giving you a little insight into what’s going on here, as usual. However, I’m also going to dedicate part of each article pointing out forum threads I find interesting, informative, or just generally amusing. As always, I’ll also be looking for some feedback on the forums.

Death of the Destroyer

First I’d like to thank everyone for their feedback on the Death of the Destroyer event. Knowing what the community feels were the strengths and weaknesses of this event will help us do better in the future. All-in-all, I think the team did an excellent job preparing for and running the event.

Yes, despite what some folks think, I was not sitting at my desk with six computers around me running the entire thing. DotD was a team effort from beginning to end, with a little extra effort from the following folks:

Death of the Destroyer

Storyline: Paul Chadwick

Event Design and Planning: Andy S. and Ben C. (Mission Designers)

The Cast

The Assassin (Days 1 through 4): Andy S. and Ben C.

The Assassin (Day 5):   Andy “AOK” Kaplan (Producer)

                                    Ben S. (QA)

                                    Dave (Art Lead)

                                    Erik “Archon” Krebs (Lead Designer)

                                    John (QA)

                                    Justin (Designer)

The Oracle: Ben C.

Seraph: Dan “Walrus” Myers (Community Relations Manager)

Agent Pace: Matt (QA)

Niobe: Andy S.

Flood: Dan “Walrus” Myers

The Merovingian: Ben C.

Engineering

The Matrix Online Team

And, of course, we’d like to thank all of you for joining in on the fun.

Content Reflow Clarification

I thought I’d take a moment to clarify some of the ideas out there about exactly what the District Reflows are all about. While part of the system includes an easier way for us to insert objects into the world, we’re not redesigning the world itself. At least, we’re not redesigning buildings or the physical layouts of the Districts.

The reflow has more to do with the NPCs you’ll find in the Districts. The “reflow” refers to changing the NPCs you’ll find in each neighborhood so there’s a more obvious progression from one to the next. As it stands, you may start out in an area that’s appropriate for the level of your character, but the next neighborhood over may be far too dangerous.

So the immediate issue is to lay things out so players move from neighborhood to neighborhood in a progressive manner. The larger plan is to better develop the storyline through the gameplay in these areas. However, that piece is one that will take much more planning and will be implemented as time allows.

The current plan is to release the Slums reflow the week of November 8.

Community Notes

There’s a lot going on in The Matrix Online community these days. As many of you noticed, we’ve got some new moderators on the forums. Say hello to my little friends: Mad_Hatter, Penguin, Root7, Ryujin, Serenity, and Steelrose. With the additional help, it leaves me time to work on other issues.

What other issues? I’m glad you asked!

It’s time for The Matrix Online Halloween Masquerade 2005! This Halloween weekend there will be a little celebration going on in the Mega City and some of your favorite Exiles are coming out to play.

The Trick: Beginning with the patch currently scheduled for Tuesday, October 25, you’ll find Jack-O-Lanterns placed around the city. You can activate them to launch a wave of level-appropriate Exiles to do battle with: Blood-Drinkers, Lupines, Nightmares, and Succubi.

The Treat: These special NPCs will be dropping a treat for those who defeat them—a box that only the people who had the waves spawn on them can open. Inside you’ll find one of a series of Halloween masks that will allow you to change your RSI to that of a Blood-Drinker (Male or Female), Lupine (Male or Female), Nightmare, or Succubus. There is also a rare seventh mask that these Exiles will occasionally drop.

We’ll also be dressing up the hardlines and clubs Halloween-style during the event. Then, for Halloween itself, will give you 24 hours of pure nighttime to celebrate the Masquerade.

On The Forums

You asked for it, you got it: There are now Events and Next Renaissance forums available for each world. I want to thank everyone for their well-thought arguments on having these on The Matrix Online forums. See? I can be reasonable at times.

With the new moderators online, that can mean only one thing: Sig Contest! I know many of you have already been doing sigs for them, but let’s make it official. If you’re interested in showing off your mad sig skillz, check out this thread:

http://mxoboards.station.sony.com/matrix/board/message?board.id=rsi&message.id=3286

Other Interesting Threads

If you haven’t yet, check out Traxada’s weekly (if he’s not ill) Community Caption Competition on the RSI forums.

http://mxoboards.station.sony.com/matrix/board?board.id=rsi

Did you just get jacked in for the first time? Do you like helping out newer players? Take some time to visit the Redpill Rescue forum.

http://mxoboards.station.sony.com/matrix/board?board.id=redpill

Organization Balance Discussion

http://mxoboards.station.sony.com/matrix/board/message?board.id=general&message.id=33719

Kaspanova’s “Design Your Own MxO Cover” Contest

http://mxoboards.station.sony.com/matrix/board/message?board.id=vectorgeneral&message.id=16157

Liliane Has Created A Player Events Calandar

http://mxoboards.station.sony.com/matrix/board/message?board.id=generalrecursion&message.id=11104

Beta Players Reunite on Syntax

http://mxoboards.station.sony.com/matrix/board/message?board.id=generalsyntax&message.id=1329

See you all on the other side of the looking glass next week.

Want to discuss this article? Head on up to Broadcast Depth.

 

Hello folks,
A lot has happened since my last journal. We've had several updates which added a number of features and improvements to the game. We've managed to cross a few of the items from my previous journal off the list, with Pandora's Box and anytime-use consumables out. We also implemented support for SOE Chat.

Though my previous disclaimer still stands, I am happy to say that our team is still driving forward with everything I touched on in the last journal. Today's journal will give you some insight into what it took to get Pandora's Box into the game, a few notes on combat revision, melee free-fire, and a look at a couple of new features.

Pandora's Box
You've all had some time to play with Pandora's Box and by all accounts the feature is a success. Thousands of box activations have occurred since we launched the feature in August. Pandora's Box was a challenging feature to design and implement, and we had to overcome a lot of hurdles to get it to you, the players.

Pandora's Box started as a bare-bones idea in a design meeting shortly after launch. The initial idea centered on spawning challenging encounters in exterior areas. The scope was small and not really all that involved, but it didn't stay that way for long.

Shortly after the initial design, I had second thoughts about the scope. I felt that by just adding the encounters the content would come off as being thin. I convinced my producer to push out the deadline so that we could concentrate on turning Pandora's Box into a fuller feature which would combine the best aspects of our existing game systems to present content in a new and interesting way.

After the change was approved I gathered my team and started setting design goals and requirements for all of us. We used those goals to come up with an improved design. There were a few goals that we had that were more important that all the others:

• Create an engaging four-part story with each part ending with an encounter designed for people of a specific level.
• Multiple reward loops, to give players a reason to replay arcs / encounters and to help their friends.
• The content needed to be challenging but not involve an overwhelming amount of grind.
• Most of all, we wanted players to find the experience of completing all four arcs fun and rewarding.

When completing the design there were some things that we looked at but decided not to go with. For example, we discussed scaling the level of the mobs but we felt using a target level would provide a more interesting and balanced encounter. Balancing these encounters for all level ranges would have been nightmarish and might dilute some of the feeling of accomplishment players get from defeating something they know was targeted at them. We wanted the Pandora's Box content to feel more handcrafted and less like the content in the rest of the game.

After the design was complete, my team started implementing the things they could while I made sure we got the needed art and programming support. Things got pretty rocky during the transition, but once we were settled in at SOE progress got back on track. It was extremely rewarding to finally watch Pandora's Box evolve into a testable feature.

In early August, most of the implementation work was complete and we were ready to move on to balance testing. Most of the dev team joined the quality assurance team to help test it. We spent the better part of two weeks testing the elements of the feature to make sure it was fun, challenging, and balanced for our target levels. We also checked at the end to make sure we had met all the things we set out to do.

Everyone on the feature did a great job and I think we succeeded in meeting our goals. The good news is that doing more arcs in the future is a definite possibility.

Clarifications
Why melee free-fire?
We aren't trying to make MxO like all the other MMO's. In a weird way, melee free-fire was needed to save Interlock. When you add additional opponents to Interlock, gameplay breaks. A fight where one Martial Artist has two opponents in Interlock takes around 10 seconds per round depending on the animations used. The net effect is that the Martial Artist has his DPS cut in half, since he only gets to act once per 10 seconds. Meanwhile, the opponents outside of interlock continue to act on a 5-second round. This situation has to be removed in order to balance damage between the combat modes.

Because of this, balancing multi-on-one Interlock has proven to be unattainable. This left us with two options: take away multi-on-one Interlock and not add a way for additional team members to attack, or take away multi-on-one and add a way for team members to act and create some new gameplay around it. Gameplay is good, so we chose the later.

When will Hackers be balanced?
The majority of Hacker balance issues should be resolved with the release of the combat revision. Part of the process requires that we update damage abilities, buff abilities, weapons, items, and stat caps. Design consideration has been given the final values to avoid nerfs to those that don't need it-no guarantees though.

The combat revision is a huge change for players. What sort of things are going to make it easier for us to adapt?
When we release the combat system update we will be granting an attribute respec to everyone and providing complete information about the effects of increasing your stats. I will provide you with more information as we make progress through the changes. I have already decided that the respec is absolutely necessary, but there may be a few other things that accompany it.

A "Dead Horse": Does MxO need one?
Yep, so here comes the first dead horse. I am not removing Hackers from the game. That said I am not opposed to balancing their abilities and toning their effects down. At some point in the near'ish future we plan to start making a pass at effects. The goal of the pass is to identify obnoxious effects and tone them down till they fit our game.

Omissions
The list of development items that I gave in my last letter was long but not complete! Ok, one was added after my last article but who's going to argue?

SOE Mail
We are adding a mail system to make your life easier. The mail system should be in the game well before the end of the year. More details as they become available.

Last words
As you can see our team is very busy. As always, I hope everyone in the community found something to like in the journal. The team is a making a concerted effort to address issues that the community feels are important, so we ask that you be patient as we work on the issues. I will elaborate on the changes we are making to the combat system in my next journal. Thanks!

-- Archon

Head over to Broadcast Depth to discuss this article.

Changes and Improvements

• Using the /bug command in game will open the customer service interface with Bug selected, while using the /ccr command will select Ticket.
• Upgrading to the Prison Mastery Device will now automatically unequip and trade the Prison Mentality Device.

Bug Fixes

• Article numbers in the CCR interface are now clearly labeled.
• Players now receive a warning when filing bugs that petitions marked as Bug are not seen by CS and cannot be responded to.
• Players can no longer use the /sit command to dismount from a pipe or ladder and stand in midair.
• Extraneous match percentage column removed from Knowledge Base Article search.
• Bug that allowed players to lock their health bars at 0 points has been fixed.
• Bug that allowed players to use a targeted Hyper Jump to move while remaining concealed has been fixed.