Right, so I didn’t fill out the poll because I don’t think any of the options truly reflect how I feel about the update itself. I think there are a good number of features that look very promising, while there are also a few changes that I think could do with a reconsideration. I am now going to list the changes in that last category, and also note how I think the situation could improve at this point.
Spell Progression
There are a few problems that I have with this new system. First of all, I dislike the overall idea of spell trees. Personally I've always liked the idea of being able to get all of the spells and I know quite a lot of people who have similar views. For these people, including myself, it's quite a disappointment to see that spell obtainability is going to be limited a lot with this new update. It feels like PW would be steering away a bit too far from its core idea, namely that it is a Harry Potter server. In the normal Harry Potter universe, there is no limitation to how many spells a wizard or witch can learn either.
The reason given for this change was to make players more unique and give them different playstyles, but I feel this would already have been achieved by giving players the freedom to choose which spells they use in a duel, rather than which spells they want to be able to use.
Something I also dislike about the spell trees is that it includes 2 of the mobility spells: tripudio and volo. This came as somewhat of a surprise to me, as I thought it was said that utility spells would remain accessible to everyone. I had hoped that the spell trees system would remain limited to the combat, defensive, crowd control and healing spells, but now it seems that I HAVE to choose at least the charms spell tree if I want to be able to move across the map slightly easier.
And then there's the spells that are going to be removed:
Spectrus
Impulsamentum
Engorgimus
Impervio
Oblittero
Restringo
Emendium
Lapiforma
Fumus (Not 100% sure about this one, couldn't hear what Flip was saying exactly :/)
Curego
Salvio Optime
Conflamora
Blizzix
Orchiflora
Colorovio
Meloformus
Obscurio
While I understand some of these would be removed, I feel like some spells are removed for the sake of removing unnecessary spells, which I think is a real shame. Take colorovio for instance, a spell that, in terms of gameplay, doesn't add too much, but I think everyone enjoys messing with colours every once in a while. The same can be said about meloformus, my personal favorite spell in the entire HP universe, that is now suddenly being removed for the sake of removing unnecessary spells, which I think would be a real shame.
I know Flip has said that the cosmetic spells have a bigger chance of returning to the game, but if that's already being considered a possibility, why are they being removed in the first place? To me, that just seems like unnecessary work.
Professions
Apparently, the professions prefixes will probably be removed.
This came as somewhat of a disappointment to a lot of players, including myself. We worked hard to max out a profession and we were promised that we could keep all of the rewards after the revelius update, but now that promise turns out not to be completely true anymore. I understand where this is coming from; the other rewards can easily be moved into the PW store, while the profession prefixes don't really fit in there. But personally I hope that there'll be some way for the players to keep their prefixes. Perhaps the prefixes could become some sort of reward for lvl 80's in the same way that lacerum incisis would: by having to make a really difficult profession item or do a really difficult quest. That way, the people who currently already have it can keep it, while the prefixes themselves don’t become unobtainable.
Profession levels are merging with normal levels.
I feel like with that change, professions are going to be moved even further into the background of the gameplay. While the profession items would serve as an important role in fighting mobs and bosses, I still feel like this might bring the risk of players being able to play PW without even touching any of the professions. While this may be the case atm, players are still motivated to do the professions because of the rewards at the end. But after revelius, those rewards will no longer be linked to the professions meaning that there’s no sort of motivation to actually do them. I don’t really have a good idea on how to improve this, but all I can say is that I hope the staff team will closely watch during the months that follow July 4th in order to see how, and if, professions are used.
Travel
There are a number of problems I have with how travel is going to be like after the update.
Fire dust will become a physical rather than a digital item.
In the Q&A, I asked to what extent this would bring the risk of this physical item being glitch-sensitive in the sense that people could easily duplicated. Flip had the following to say on that:
"Glitch abuse is against the rules so if anyone would do that, they'd be banned. So, I discourage doing that."
To me, that only seems to confirm that this has not been taken into consideration. Gold used to be a physical currency, but was converted completely into a digital currency in order to prevent players from duplicating it using glitches. Why then is revelius bringing a physical currency back into the server? This doesn't really make sense to me. Personally, I think that it'd make more sense for fire dust to remain a digital currency.
And I can understand that it would still have to be reset in order to move forward with the new type of fire dust travel. But I still think the server could benefit mostly from it being a digital currency, compared to a physical currency in order to fully prevent the currency from being duplicated by players using glitches.
Travelling is becoming much more expensive with fire dust becoming expensive, warp keys being extremely limited and brooms becoming craftable items.
My main concern is that I think this will massively discourage exploration. I asked what Flip thought of this, and he had the following to say to that:
"I mean, I don't think so? I think it actually promotes looking for more locations, because you'll warp to the great hall but then you can travel to a different location that's like quite far away and you're like 'wow I found this quite cool location that no-one knows about because it's so far away' so I mean, I think people will still explore. I think that it's just that there's just not as much like as much ease-up access to every location. And I think that's fine as well, it's just in order to make travelling mean something. Because if you can just warp everywhere on the map in an instant, what's the point of travel?"
With the current warpkey and firedust systems, players are able to go to certain areas relatively easily but will still have to look around themselves. This means that players will be tempted to explore, say, the Riddle manor and its surroundings, mostly because they are able to get there using cheap firedust. However, without the possibility to easily travel to this location, it will take a while before players are able to get there, and once they do, I simply do not believe that they will have the motivation to look around there. But that's based on the assumption that they got to the Riddle manor in the first place, while I think that most players will simply decide to stick around the safety of the great hall without actually going into the world as they don't have an easy method to do so. So personally, I think that this change will massively discourage exploration and will cause a great portion of the playerbase to keep sticking around the great hall.
Current brooms are going to become bound collectables.
I think a lot of people, including myself for that matter, are disappointed by this too. For many of us, it took quite a while to get enough gold to get a fireflash. Especially for relatively older players, who would have to get the same 2k before much of the inflation happened that led to the current economy. Making brooms bound collectables is seen as quite a disappointment for many people, as their brooms become practically useless. They can no longer be flown, while they cannot be sold either.
I understand the decision not to make brooms an unbound collectable, as that would allow players to get loads and loads of brooms right now and sell them for loads of gold in say a year or 2. But I still think that it would be fair to all players if their brooms could at least be compensated.
A way to do this that I think would be fair, would be for there to be an NPC similar to the one used to sell a time turner to when survival closed in 2016. This NPC would take brooms of every type, and give players a certain amount of gold in return. I think it would be fair for this amount of gold to be 50% of the brooms' current selling price, but I'd understand if this turned out to be an even smaller portion.
That was everything I had to say in terms of why I think the revelius wouldn’t be enjoyable in some areas. Note that this only talks about a few parts of the update, there are a great number of additions that I either think will be great or I’m just waiting until it comes along before I form an opinion about it. Like gear, for instance, I feel like there’s not really a good way to say anything about that until it’s fully materialised onto the server and people have had a chance to experience how it affects their gameplay.
and now you're gunna rob all their hard work off of them!