One of the coders and myself have been working on this project pretty much since becoming part of SOE. Diplomacy, as it is coded, is already a level-based system. A previous design team moved Diplomacy to a skill-based system which worked for a lot of applications we had for it. The reality of the system we designed works somewhat well as a skill-based system, but my Producers (bosses) and I agree that Diplomacy will "read" much better to a larger player-base as a level-based system.

What has impressed me so far is, since the original code for Diplomacy uses levels (for instance, when we built the experience curve we input it to the database by level, not skill), the changeover has been a lot of work, but not work that is full of surprises.

This all being said, we aren't going to push this change to Live (or even Test) without thorough testing. We're literally discussing each morning each and every aspect of Diplomacy that has a number attached to it to see how it will be affected.

What will this mean for you?

Most content will be easier for us to make. Most content will be much easier to debug and test. Diplomats will have more of a feeling of connection to other Spheres, for instance, you can now use the experience bar to gauge progress, to see that progress is being made. That carrot alone has been sorely missed from Diplomacy, and allows us to take part in other experience-based benefits (that stuff I will let my bosses announce :P).

Our goal is to make all of this happen in one patch, with no aspects of the system failing to change over. We've heard your concerns in the past about "half changes" and we want to ensure this not happen with this change. We also want to make this seamless to you - you log out a skill 410 Diplomat, and you log in after the patch as a level 41 Diplomat. Skill 411? You'll find that one bubble has filled after level 41.

I will be posting more on this subject as we close in on this patch. Personally, I'm very excited to be bringing this to you - and not just because it makes my job easier :P.

I can't talk now about how some of this works (I don't want to say something and have it get changed if need be), but I'll try to address any concerns this brings up.

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