We’ve been working on changes to the perceptor system this week and have almost finished. Some settings still have to be adjusted and tests must be run, but all going well the changes will come on line sometime next week.

This element of the game has been a source of many woes for a long time and we felt that it was finally time for an overhaul. We wanted to make perceptors more fun and more agreeable and took the following as our main aims:

- Perceptors must not disturb players

Perceptors must not be attacked because they take from players, but because of the resources that can potentially be gained from them

Victories against perceptors must bring drops that merit the risk

Guilds should not be able to have perceptors with fully developed characteristics (a choice to be made, then!)

Guilds should be able to personalise their perceptors according to their style of play and their community.

Perceptors will no longer steal the players’ loot. They’ll come in as an additional player who is last to draw (no matter its prospection) when the loot is handed out (they won’t come in the actual fight). Their prospection will not be added to the group’s total prospection. The preceptor’s prospection will only help him with his own probability to gain an item.

Perceptors will no longer steal other players’ experience. They will win experience at the end of a fight just like any other player (the XP will be calculated according to the group’s level.) The experience gained by the perceptor won’t affect the one gained by other players. They will be able to increase their perceptors’ wisdom so as to increase the level of XP they gain in combat.

The theft of Kamas during fights and their sale as well as the theft of resources collected will be cancelled definitively.

Players will have an additional incentive to attack perceptors because the XP perceptors gain will be stocked on them. The owners of the perceptor will have to come and ‘harvest’ XP so as to distribute it within their guild. In this way, a guild that attacks a perceptor and wins will have XP to distribute among them also.

On top of this, and to increase the likelihood that perceptors possess a good number of items, we have decided that once players have removed either items or XP, the perceptor will be automatically removed from the map. It will therefore be disadvantageous for guilds to come and collect from their perceptors too regularly, which will add further to the potential gains in attacking perceptors.

The time constraints on the placement of perceptors and the maximum number that may be placed per zone will be retained.

Players can now increase the following stats by spending the points their guild gains when it climbs in level:

The maximum number of perceptors per guild - there will be one available at the outset but now guilds will have to spend points to increase this limit, it will not happen automatically when its level increases.
Prospecting of perceptors (to help it bring in more items)

Wisdom of the perceptor (so that it wins more XP in combat)

Number of pods in the perceptor’s inventory - their inventory will be limited to 1,000 by default. Players can invest points to increase this limit.

Perceptor spells (all levels of all spells will require no more than 5 points)

With this new system, guilds with lower populations which have difficulty protecting their perceptors will now be able to increase the number of pods their perceptors have as well as their prospecting or their wisdom to the detriment of the number of perceptors they can place.

All points won by a guild will be entirely redistributed when these changes come into effect on the game servers.