Update 2.59: What Should You Expect? Maj - 2021-03-17 17:00

Doing maintenance on a game as large as DOFUS is a real challenge! The game has seen so many new features, new classes, and successive updates that taking the time to do some spring cleaning is quite liberating! This update – which is quite special in that it has no new content – had been boxed up for a long time, so we are delighted, for both ourselves and players, that we can finally put it into production.

This special update will have twice the beta period compared to what we can usually afford. Thanks in part to a Temporis that requires the development effort of a classic update, we can distribute the lifeblood of the production team differently.

The 2.59 BETA will last for one month, during which we will monitor players' feedback with particular attention, mainly to check that what was initially fixed and tested in our test environment actually behaves as we hoped for players. We will also pay close attention to any regression bugs, which are caused when bug fixes are applied. It may seem absurd said that way, but in a game that's been around as long as DOFUS (thanks to its passionate community and its team's hard work), it, unfortunately, happens often.

For this update, we are really focusing on bugs that affect the classes and combat experience. Just looking at the classes, some 300 bugs will be fixed. No classes are being left out; some require more work than others, but overall, players will notice fixes to their classes. And that's just when it comes to class bugs…

We are aware of your expectations for the Sacrier class in particular, so we can already tell you that the class will be modified in 2.59 and all the planned changes will be available in the beta phase. The full changelog of the changes made to the class will be available at the same time as the beta server opens.

If you haven't understood by now, we'll be more explicit: This must be the largest debugging update the game has ever seen. It's a huge amount of work, and we can't do it without you! Your feedback will be crucial in the beta phase.

Some of these fixes will also involve the damage preview and spell effects, which should become much more reliable.

One of the priorities after class debugging is the Well of Infinite Dreams. We are applying many fixes to both how it works and modifiers. Whether it's incompatibility issues between monsters, how modifiers work (dream, nightmare, and paradox), scoring, or sometimes mere translation issues, around 100 fixes are being applied that will greatly improve your journey through the WID.

The game client is getting a facelift; some things you'll see, others you won't. You regularly report client performance problems to us, so improvements will be made in 2.59. However, there is still a lot of work to be done on this point, and we are facing technical limitations that will be removed once DOFUS on the Unity engine has been released. On that matter, we don't have a release date for the time being, since porting only started a few months ago and it will be a lengthy project. As such, please be patient.

We are also aware of the great expectations for Kolossium matchmaking. Unfortunately, we cannot make any improvements to the system in 2.59. We planned on doing so in our roadmap, but too much work was involved for it to be achievable on time. We obviously know this news won't make anyone happy, but we didn't want to get your hopes up. We can though tell you that Kolossium matchmaking will be changed, just in a later update.

All this update's details, bug fixes, balancing, etc. will soon be available in the beta changelog. Changes will obviously be under consideration throughout the beta phase, so the final changelog (available in all languages) will only be published on the day the update is released.

Lastly, please ask any questions you may have about this upcoming update in the comments. For the first time ever, we'll be bringing the whole DOFUS Game Design team together to exchange with you and talk about the update.

To that end, we're organizing a special podcast-format Ankama Live on our Twitch channel on March 23. Interested in something particular? PvP, PvM, balancing, background, and quests: Take this opportunity to ask away, because we're listening!

We'll select some questions from this article's comments and address them during the live session. To your keyboards!