For the upcoming 2.6.0 version (which will be on the public beta test server in March) we worked on several improvements for the Kolossium, mainly focusing on solving players’ major issues regarding the rating system.

 Adjusting experiences rewards:

Experience rewards in the Kolossium are now indexed by the player’s rating rather than only their level. This modification has been made in order to encourage players to seek their true rating and deter people from artificially reducing their rating. A character’s level will determine the maximum experience that they could possibly win while his rating determines how much he actually wins per battle.
This adjustment means that the experience reward from Kolossium will be reduced for all characters whose rating is too low in relation to their level. This modification will not allow you to gain more experience than the current live version of the Kolossium.
 

Rating system changes: 

We’ve added several modifications to solve the problems of “stuck” rating that wouldn’t change, regardless of a high successive number of wins or defeats.

The system now accounts for an abnormal win and loss ratio (ratios that are too far away from 50%) in order to adjust the character’s rating to a more coherent value quicker. Thus, a character which easily wins all of his fights will see his rating quickly increase until his victory rate get close to 50%.
 
In addition, we’ve also worked on the issue of abnormal rating loss (losing ratings after winning a battle) and major rating loss (some character would lose more than 30% of their rating in a single defeat).
 
We’ve also developed new tools in order to analyse Kolossium fights logs, which allowed us to figure out the origin of major unexpected rating shifts, upward or downward. These happened in a very particular case (only one of the characters in the team had a really high uncertainty) and should now be solved.
Of course, character with a very high uncertainty (those who are at their first step into the Kolossium) will still continue to be the target of important rating variation in order to quickly reach their true rating.
 
We’ve also revised the upper limit for the maximum rating, which may now reach 2297 (with a minimum of three points of uncertainty). This modification mainly targets player that makes teams of 1 or 2 very powerful characters and 1 or 2 secondary character with a very low rating in order to artificially reduce their team rating (ensuring they’ll fight team they are certain to defeat).

Even by swapping the secondary characters often, the main character will keeps on gaining ranking points if they win their fights too often, and that new maximum rating value will compensate for the attempts to artificially reduce the team rating.
 
In addition, a lower limit has been added to all characters in relationship to their level. This very lenient limit only really matters to players attempting to artificially reduce their character rating.
 

Limiting number of fights:

We have implemented two limitations in regard to the maximum number of Kolossium fights (won or lost) that a player can do: 5 fights per hour and 50 fights per days.
We wants player to try their best to win their fight and not forfeit as soon as victory isn’t certain.
These limitations should only penalize players who forfeit their Kolossium fights too often and too quickly.
These values may of course be subject to changes in future updates.
 

Team creation:

The random team creation system has been improved. When 2 teams of 3 characters have been picked for a fight, the system will try additional characters combinations to try and create two balanced teams.
 

Improvement in the transition between combats:

The transition between PVM (Players versus Monsters), perceptors and Kolossium fights sometime forced the player to manually disconnect and reconnect in order to participate in the Kolossium fight.
We’ve identified the likely source of those issues and entirely revised how we handle transitioning between types of fights in order for players to experience a smooth switch to a Kolossium fight while in another fight without any problem.
 

Rating reset:

The rating of all characters will be reset in order to properly accept these modifications. All fighters will start their first fights in the Kolossium after this update with a high uncertainty that will allow them to reach their true rating more quickly.
 
The rating reset might cause reducedKolossokens and experiencesrewards during the first fights after the update (until the character’s rating stabilizes).
 

New maps:

For the Kolossium, we’ve decided to only keep the 12 Goultarminator (2011 Edition) maps and then created another 12 specially designed maps for the Kolossium in order to have a total of 24 different maps dedicated to PVP fights.

We’ll let you to discover those new maps in-game, but nevertheless, have a small “technical” peek.
 

Those new maps were all build around a central symmetry to prevent any team from having an environmental advantage.
 
The starting positions were designed to restrict the lines of sight on opponents during the initial turn. Those positions are also generally far across from one another (for the same team), in order to limit the use of protection spells, or area-of-effect allied bonuses on the very first turn.
 
Similarly to the old 12 maps of the Goultarminator, those new maps stray away from close- or melee-ranged starts (unless both teams both willingly picks to start within proximity of one another) in order to favor a tactical approach at long- or mid-range during the initial phase of the fight.
 

Increasing the value of Kolossokens:

With this update, the soul stones will no longer sold by NPCs (they will need to be crafted via using the pebbles from the Kolossium) and the Kolossium’s pebbles will also be used in some of the recipes for the upcoming end-game set. Those modifications should leads to an increase in the Kolossokens value.
Those modifications should solve the main issues that we’ve identified in the Kolossium system. We’ll keep monitoring its behavior and will adjust it if needed.
 
 
(*Many thanks to our volunteer translator for their assistance in getting this devblog out in a timely manner!)