Weekly Update 282 – New Map Interface, and addressing Community feedback!
Greetings, Warriors!
As we announced a few weeks ago, the User Interface of Gloria Victis MMORPG is being redesigned and improved part after part. It is a very important task to make the game better looking and more player-friendly. Our artists and coders are working hard to improve the visual aspects of the interface and to make it more immersive and convenient. The Social tab, introduced recently along with the Party Finder feature received very positive feedback, so we know that we are going in the right direction.
This week, we are proud to present a reworked Map window, adjusted to the new interface design. We believe that this milestone will be warmly welcomed especially when not only visuals have been improved, but also the layout and utility of the system. In addition to that, the respawn window has also been upgraded to the new layout and design. In the following week, we are planning to extend the map with additional data, for example, by marking safe zones on it directly.
Additionally, we are introducing some more polish of the Party finder window, some balance changes to the items and Glory Quartermasters, regarding Contribution points, as well, a lot of fixes and Quality of Life improvements. In the upcoming weeks, you can also expect first Character Development systems, and also a possibility to return to the character selection window.
The map is a very important and informative tool to observe the global conquest and plan your actions and gameplay. In combination with the Party Finder and Party system, the Map is helping players to group up, communicate and learn a lot about the game world.
With the new interface, it is more convenient to use the map, since players now can use it in two modes: Fullscreen mode is showing the map on the whole screen, improving its clarity and navigation in the interface. Exploration mode is anchored to the side of the screen, allowing playing with an open map. Players can switch between interface models using the [F5] key.
Both modes are equipped with all recently added systems of informative location tooltips and adjustable filters.
Since the respawn window is using the map feature, we counted its rework as a part of the Map overhaul task. The new window opens on the side of the screen and provides the same functionalities as before with the new visuals. There are small known issues that require some more time and work, for example when the respawn window is active, you cannot open any other window, for example, inventory or event stats table. The chat boxes also may temporarily not work correctly. We will do our best to resolve those bugs as soon as possible, and we are counting on your indulgence and patience regarding those.
Venture onto the adventure today!
Changes related to Contribution Points and Glory Shops
Contribution points are an ingame currency players are earning while participating in various events and activities in-game. Those points can be spent on useful items, recipes, and materials in Glory Quartermasters Shops. Some of the items to be available to be purchased require a proper Glory Level, and thanks to that, the whole system is helping players reach given goals and develop their characters. As we are currently working on further character development systems, one of the first and most important tasks was to balance the economy around Contribution Points. After checking the data from recent months, comparing the number of points earned and on what players are spending them, we decided to make some changes which will improve the game economy, by creating more ways to use Glory Quartermasters supplies and differ the costs/value and usage of various items available there.
To make it easier to spend your CP, Glory Quartermasters has been placed in the capital cities of each nation. From now on you will be able to find more items in their shops. Some of them have been added, some have been moved from regular shops or loot pools and become exclusive CP items.
Both crafters and fighters now can benefit more from spending their Contribution Points!
For example and among others, recipes for bulat, dziwer, and tanned beast leather have been removed from regular shops and greatly reduced in loot pools. Those are now available for Contribution Points in Glory Shops, with proper Glory Level requirements. The chances to find various meal recipes have also been reduced, and it will be more convenient to buy them for Contribution Points.
Recipes for old beasts butchering have been separated and added to Glory Shops supplies. In addition to that, you can now find a new old beast in the game world – Old Scavenger, which received its own butchering recipe (and is dropping some more beast blood!)
Prices of various items have been changed, for example, magnetite and siderite costs are now reduced: from 500 to 150 CP for magnetite and from 150 to 50 CP for siderite.
And last but not least, as we want to make Champion Armours a viable and accessible choice for players who earned the right to get their recipes, we are balancing their crafting cost, reducing it a little. This change should be warmly welcomed by crafters and players who like to stand out on the battlefield, as those armors will soon receive nation coloring, as you can see in the screenshot below.
Champion sets will receive nation coloring soon!
Addressing Community feedback
It is great to have such helpful and active community members that are helping us by reporting any issues, reproducing bugs, and sharing their suggestions and opinions. Today we are addressing your feedback and introducing some Quality of Life improvements and fixes based on your reports.
Quality of life
– From now on, after losing part of speed because of running uphill, horses will not regenerate it immediately but in time, to make speeding up progress natural and logical. At the same time, while running down from a high angle, the horse will also lose part of its speed (70% less in comparison to moving upward). – The first Ismir questline has been improved and balanced, to meet other nation counterparts, improve players retention, and lead the player better.
Fixes
– Fixed the issue causing it to be possible to hit friendly horses with ballista without friendly fire turned on. – Fixed the issue causing horses to receive normal damage while getting kicked, instead of kick damage. – Fixed a visual issue causing players in the party without party leader rank to see loot type change options, despite not being able to use them. – Fixed a visual issue, causing Notifications to show up one on top of another. – Fixed an issue causing labels in Party Finder to not change depending on party status. – Fixed an issue causing all dagger-wielding AI NPC enemies to use green powerbar timers on all attacks, which made them much stronger than they should be. – Fixed the issue causing the arch model in Balhammon to be moved to the side, which impacted the location's visual integrity. – Fixed the issue causing players to be able to get stuck into red and green interactive chest colliders after interaction with them. – Fixed the issue causing State of War timer could change if the token was placed during the State of War – Fixed the issue causing death in the Valley of Death tournament could be counted twice if the player got killed by one enemy while being stunned by another.
This week we are happy to introduce a lot of combat system improvements and changes, which were proposed some time ago and discussed with you on Discord. As you liked the propositions, we are looking forward to even warmer welcoming them to the game! We are honored to have such an active and helpful community, and it shows the best when we are able to additionally deliver a huge set of terrain, collision, and model fixes and improvements we made based on your feedback, reports, and suggestions!
While we are working hard on improving the game balance, new User Interface, and new systems of character development, some friendly, talented people are helping us to make Gloria Victis MMO a feast for your senses. World-class artists from MusicImaginary: Adam Skorupa (The Witcher, Green Hell, Hatred, Ancestors: Legacy and more!), Krzysztof Wierzynkiewicz (The Witcher 2, Bulletstorm, Iron Harvest and more!) and Michał Cielecki ( Shadow Warrior series and working with freakin’ Two Steps From Hell!), well known for their work in the AAA games industry, film and TV are working on new music for our game. The soundtrack of Gloria Victis MMORPG is already a beautiful piece of art, and with new motives designed to fill the capital cities of our world, the pleasure of listening to it will be extended. We may prepare some sneak peeks of their work soon, so stay tuned!
Another thing worth notifying is that we started work on additional translations of quest dialogues. As you know, as we officially support English and Polish languages, the game is being translated with help of our community to sixteen(!) others so far, and the only part that lacks proper translations is the quest dialogues. At first, we will focus on the languages we can do alone thanks to having a multinational team, so you can expect Russian, Turkish and Chinese translations of dialogues coming first and more after!
Check the details below and as always - see you on the battlefields!
And now the most interesting part of todays’ changelog for most of you. Combat extensions, changes, and balance! Most of the changes were already discussed with you earlier, and are partially based on your feedback and suggestions. It went pretty well in our opinion, especially when we know those changes will have an impact on the most reported issues our Community was reporting recently. Let's explain them one by one, starting with mounted and anti-cavalry systems!
Because we are changing a lot of combat aspects, including gear, systems, and skills, we are providing the free resets of character attributes and passive skills. each character in-game will receive one of each. You can find the options to reset those using the proper button in the Notification Center. Reset points will be available only for two weeks and will be removed after that time from the notifications.
Jousting
You read right. From now on, you can dismount the raider with a melee stab hit.
In the first iteration, jousting will be a simple dismount with a stun (2.5s). It can be done from a foot or while mounted with a stabbing attack with any weapon if you hit the raider properly. Three variables are counted into the equation – the angle of hit, resultant speed, and the modificator of armor type of hit player (counted using armor stamina modification and average tier of armor set). The heavier and higher-tier armored raider will be harder to dismount. The balance and further iterations of that system will be done after we gather some feedback from a bigger test group, so get on your horses, have fun and be sure to share your opinion with us!
Castle defenses versus mounts
Raiders were never designed to fight inside or under the castle walls. It is known that few raiders can also act as scouts and keep the location lit, and it is quite hard to chase them away or catch them. That is why we are balancing some systems in the game to help defenders fight back.
Ballistas will now be more useful against raiders. When the mount or a raider is hit by a ballista projectile, the horse will receive a stun effect and rear, in the same way as if the horse were hit with a spear from the front. Additionally, if the projectile hits the horse, it will deal double damage (600).
Terrain impact on mounts movement
As you know, the terrain angle on which footmen players are moving has an impact on the movement speed. This modificator related to terrain slope was not working for mounts, so we are finally implementing it. From now on, the angle of the terrain will have an impact on horse speed.
We also received a suggestion to increase slowing down after hitting the obstacle and adding animation/sound to such events. The slowdown had to be increased to make it more reliable, visible, and justified.
Mounts-related Skills
The first would be the balance of horse hitpoints regeneration. It was quite high, and the capacity of the horse hitpoints pool is big, so it was not needed to use stablemaster and his regeneration services, and even when the mount got hurt, raiders were able to return with full horse hitpoints after a very short time. The only way to chase away the lone raider was to kill his horse, and it was a really tough task. So we are changing some passive skills which had such negative impact:
Hitpoints regen buff from “Will to survive '' passive skill has been reduced, changing regen boost effect from 0,1% to 0,02% per point. Horse stamina regen from “Vigour” passive has been reduced, changing regen boost effect from skill from 0,3% to 0,1% per point. The cooldown for calling a horse after its death from the “Bound” passive skill has been changed. Each point in this skill now grants 10, instead 20 seconds cooldown reduction.
Stabs stopping the horse
We, and players, agreed that the 20 angle on the front is too low for stopping the horse with the spear stab, so after researching a similar mechanic in other games with medieval combat, we are extending it to 45 angle. Speed requirements to make such action possible have also been adjusted, and it will be possible to rear (stun) the enemy horse which is moving at a slightly slower speed than before.
Powerbar on foot and while mounted
We are changing the way attack power works in the game. From now on each attack while on foot, and if we have the stamina to perform it, will start on a yellow power bar, instead of a green one. If we are holding the powerbar loaded too long it will go back through the yellow to the green bar as before. If you are mounted, when the horse is in an idle state (not walking), the raider can load his powerbar only to green, but if the horse is not idle, he will be able to load a yellow powerbar. So, not staying in one place can ensure better battle efficiency.
This seems like a huge change, and let us stop for a moment to explain it. There are two variables clamping the potential of dealing with a certain number of attacks in time. The first is Power Bar, second is Animation Time. The setting of those both variables after lots of combat tweaks led to the situation, where Animation Time was always longer than the green power bar – which means that using the green power bar never led to faster attacks – and basically every potential usage of that power bar was debuffing attack greatly, without giving any positive to the attacker. That led to a situation, where beginner players not knowing were always in the worse position thinking they could attack more frequently with Green Power Bars, but that was not a situation with any of the weapons or attacks. For that reason keeping Green Power Bar in the game made no other use than increasing the difference between new and veteran players and we decided to remove them.
Just to make it clear – it won’t make combat any more “spammy” because animation timers will still be clamping the speed of attacks.
Due to recent changes to horses, we have allowed them to use Yellow Power Bar with much lower speed, to give heavy cavalry much more meaning and a possibility to fight.
Balance changes
Group fights balance
To prevent spamming swings left and right in group fights, damage that will interrupt the attack will from now put an attack cooldown on the hit player, as it works for blocking damage. It will create a time window between attacks so it will be possible to stop any attack spam much easier.
The system of limiting the damage, if an attack went through the ally was implemented to encourage players to be mindful of their surroundings and players around them. This system was working differently concerning cleave because it was not reducing the damage to 30% like in most weapon types cases. The damage while using cleave with two-handed swords was reduced to 60% at first and later to 30%, which lead to dealing still quite significant damage, and it was not working well enough to make players respect the ally system.
As we want more weapons types to be efficient in various scenarios, and we want to make group fights more balanced, changing the cleave mechanic to limit the damage delivered by it is needed and will have a very positive impact on the combat.
Damage delivered by second-line fighters by swinging through allies will be reduced compared to times before the change. It will be easier to fight bigger numbers, and one-handed weapons will become more efficient in fights since it is easier to deliver full damage hit with them, while not swinging through allies. The first line of the forces will have more to say, which gives better defensive options, as well more space for reasonable pushing.
Weapon changes and balance
Two-handed axes have been unified to a range of 8.2 units. Stamina cost for light axes has been adjusted to be the same as two-handed swords one, regular axes have it one point higher, and bardiches the highest, with 2 points difference.
Damage of bardiches has been balanced and put between halberd and axes ranges. It means they have slightly lower damage than before.
Two-handed swords now have their range capped at 7.56 units for the top ones, and lower tiers of this weapon type have lower range, with the lowest on the first tier – 6 units.
Spears balance
The recent spear changes worked well in regard to limiting their space control by holding attacks of those, and are still a viable choice in group positioning fights in chokepoints and buildings. We hear your feedback, that current spear mechanics feel too sloppy in the group fights, and we do not want them to lead to such feelings, at the same time not destroying the game balance. We are balancing the timers of attempt time of side attacks, back to armed and stab attacks so the weapon will faster “charging” the attacks. We are keeping the current release time, but the feelings should be much better with those changes.
Other combat changes
Stamina regeneration was possible to be sped up with entering walk mode. From now on the regeneration in walk mode will have a regeneration speed between run and iddle (so basically it won't be as fast as middle state, but faster in comparison to regen state). The part of the reasoning is because most veteran players ignore buffs for stamina regeneration, just because they can regenerate most of their stamina within less than 5 seconds just using walk during combat. Another part of the reasoning for that change is also done because so many players who play in our game for very long are not aware that they were able to regen with the same speed while staying in place and walking, once more, creating a huge gap between the part of users using that mechanic and most of the players without knowledge of that mechanic. We do understand that this change has a deep effect on the meta-gaming level, this is why we do hope to hear your feedback after trying it for a few days and how it affects the gameplay. Please also remember that part of equipment got their stamina usage decreased within this update.
We have also added minimal cost of feint (5 stamina) to prevent some builds not using stamina while feinting at all.
NPC opponents AI changes
Players fighting the NPC enemies, for example during questlines, were showing the tendency to ignore the incoming damage because the damage of their opponents is just small. Such an attitude was not helping to teach new players how to block or counter enemy attacks, which could lead to not preparing new players to transition to the PVP combat well enough. This is why we are changing the NPC enemies' behavior and making them hit players on red powerbars more often, which will encourage players to use block and other features of the combat, instead of smashing the attack button in uneven hitpoints trade.
Due to that change, NPC enemies will be able to interrupt our attacks, which will require more tactics and skill in fighting them.
Sword drop changes
Following the community feedback, we are limiting the access to Ancient Longsword and Crusher’s Sword. We want those two swords to be more unique and less popular.
Chances to find Ancient Longswords while excavating or in the crypt chests have been greatly reduced. The best place to get this sword will be loot from the Catacombs boss.
Chances to find the crushers sword in loot from Kargald NPC enemies has been halved. It is a very powerful weapon because of its improved overhead attack, and should not be that common. Rusted version of Crusher’s Sword has been removed from the game. This sword, like its regular version – could be too powerful with too little risk of losing it.
Quality of Life
– Description of the recommended nation in the character creation panel (when picking nation of the beginning of the journey in the game, so for the new players mostly) has been extended and improved, to show more details regarding the pros and cons of joining it, which in most cases is the nation that needs more numbers the most. Players are now notified that it may be more challenging to join such a nation and they can switch it once until a certain level. – Feinting with light weapons will from now work properly, since the minimal cost of feint has been added. – Adjusted some small interactives positions on the map that were partially overlapped over other models or terrain. – Improved the visuals of moss on the swamp tree models. – Improved the terrain in Basilea farm, which allowed people to jump behind the main building, which could prevent getting attacked and looted. Additionally, adjusted the position of resources spawns in this location. – Added the LOD group components to mostly used 3D meshes to improve the visuals of the game.
Fixes
– Fixed the issue causing players to not teleport back to the proper place after leaving the arena duel if they attended Sea Wraiths global event earlier. – Fixed over 60 minor terrain, colliders, and models bugs and issues reported by players around the whole game world. – Fixed the issue causing colliders of models in the Rite global event were not working properly, which led to being able to get under the models' textures. – Fixed the issue causing colliders of Ismir capitol building to not work correctly, which led to issues while moving to the higher floors of the building. – Fixed the issue causing one of the guards in Dunfen Lumbermill to be spawned as a Midlander when the location was in Sangmar or Ismir control. – Fixed the issue causing the wood logs and stone gatehouse traps to deal ten times the damage than they should (200 vs 20). – Fixed the issue causing the floor in the corner tower to be invisible for players with the lowest graphic settings. – Fixed the issue causing watchtower textures materials to be wrong. – Fixed the issue causing some NPCs around Seaclaw farm to have wrong waypoints and were traveling on the sea bottom to other locations. – Fixed the issue causing achievement “Items looted from enemy players' was counting for looted, not for the looting players. – Fixed the issue causing part of the trees in-game (mostly on marshes around Audunstede) to have inappropriate colliders, which lead to snapping characters when colliding with them. – Fixed the issue causing blocking the possibility of closing the report window with the Esc key if the player used it during filling the report.
Weekly Update 280 – Enhanced visuals, WIP insight, QoL improvements and fixes
Greetings, Warriors!
This week the game receives an improved models visibility system, which will greatly increase the range of sight and fill the horizon with more detail. The system already has and ultimately will have an even bigger positive impact on the game performance, ensuring the same or better behavior of the game systems and at the same time - greatly enhancing the game visuals.
We are also making some tweaks and improvements regarding newly added horse colors. We are very happy that those were so warmly welcomed and you are so pleased to find and train the mount you always desired! Speaking of training, new Mount Experience Boost Cards will for sure help you enjoy fully trained mounts longer since you are now able to reduce the training time!
Additionally, we want to tell you more about some of the upcoming features our team members are working on while the new game interface is being developed in the background. “Character development” is a work-in-progress name for a vast system that is being designed to give players more goals during the gameplay and extend the list of activities players can take part in the game.
As always, we deliver a weekly dose of Quality of Life improvements and introduce some fixes, reported and requested by the Community, so check out the details below and…
Throughout the development of any multiplayer / MMO game, player retention is perhaps the most important factor in developing a community. We are working on this all the time, carefully breaking down player activity as a factor - and while our retention at low levels is still quite decent, the players who reach the end game are the ones who very often stay in our game for thousands of hours. And this is what we are aiming for.
While reaching the "Midgame", when the players run out of quests (level 50-60), or simply just want to do something else, they can realize the difference in experience between them and other players. The depth of the combat system and amount of activities and features which players are exploring during their journey is being opened before them quite too fast and it may lead to overflowing players with information, discouraging or confusing them before they reach the endgame.
A very large part of the content of the Mid and End Game is defined by global politics, the current situation on the map, or even the hours in which we play - because it requires close cooperation with our guild or nation.
So what players and the game need is a system that will allow players to have smaller goals, in the pursuit of which they will be able to learn the new features, and gradually increase their skill and experience in them. A system that will reward the player for training specific skills - thanks to which he will be better and better at what a given person considers to be the most interesting in the Gloria Victis world.
The most important thing is that the player should be able to do it alone or in a smaller group. So thanks to that that, when finishing the previous game session, the player has a detailed plan in mind of what he will do the next day, and that he knows his plans cannot be disturbed simply by the fact that today his nation is losing on the world map or most of his guilds do not play during the hours convenient for him.
We want to divide the player's development into several trees (forestry, farming, fishing, etc.). By performing activities, in addition to experience points, the player will receive experience in a given profession or activity, which at various stages of development will allow for more advanced equipment and provide new opportunities or bonuses. We don't want to limit players in any way as a classless system and the possibility to be who you want to be in the game and change it anytime is a very valued aspect of our MMO. So you can become the master of every profession and activity.
We want to introduce such a large system gradually. This means that we will start with smaller systems such as Fishing and we will gradually change the next parts of the game based on players' feedback and data we will gather. We are counting on your support!
To sum up - we would like to introduce many character development activities that provide solo content regardless of whether our nation wins, or whether other guild members are active. In addition, by introducing such modifications in individual systems, we are getting ready for further development in areas such as forestry and archeology. We feel very certain that those changes are the lacking gameplay loop of our game, and every analytics we track for a long time seems to confirm that.
Cavalry changes
Additionally, our designers are working on some ideas regarding cavalry gameplay and balance. There are a lot of interesting ideas regarding those matters, including some provided by our Community in your feedback and suggestions. We are warmly inviting you to the discussion on our official Discord server!
Supporter Shop - look into the past
(And huge items sale!)
Gloria Victis MMO is a project created by a small independent team of Developers from Poland. At the beginning, the original team was working on their dream game overtime, as volunteers, and without any budget. In 2014, after months of hard work and reforging their unstoppable will into the project, Gloria Victis was introduced to a new system that allowed independent developers and creators to show their projects to the world – Steam Greenlight.
Gloria Victis MMORPG rushed to the first place of the top-voted projects, leaving behind over 1500 other games in less than 48 hours, and according to our knowledge, it is still an unbeaten Steam and world record. Two years later, with the original team of seven people onboard, Gloria Victis became available for players as one of the most unique and ambitious projects on Steam. After a successful Early Access Release, the team was able to establish an office and work together in one place, against all odds.
Game development since the beginning was covered only by game sales. We never had any investors or publishers. The game was always earning just enough to keep the current team and all extra money was pushed back into the project – buying or creating tools, assets, and expanding the team.
In 2018, partially because of community demand, and as a way to earn some money to expand the team and speed up the development, we implemented Supporter Shop in the game, which allowed small game monetization by introducing cosmetic variants of the top-tier gear, so players were able to customize their looks a little.
After introducing Supporter Shop, thanks to your help, we were able to double our team size which allowed us to improve our game much faster than previously. A great fact of our game growth is that within 3 years we have implemented more than 150 updates, and we are able to communicate with you on a daily basis. Enough said, without the Supporter Shop it couldn’t be possible, as our team is still at least a few times smaller than the very most MMO studios around the world, and most probably the smallest, but still one of most communicative and dedicated..
We are the only MMORPG of such scale that achieved what we did with the great help of our community. We cannot thank you enough for your assistance in this journey and you will always be the most important part of our team.
As a thank you for your support and help, we are throwing out a weekly sale for all non-skin items in the Supporter Shop! Following week is the best time to take advantage of the occasion and get some useful scrolls, cards, and packages! Re-customize your characters, get some experience boosters, and stock up on spare attributes and skills resets!
Changelog v.0.9.7.6 Beta
Quality of Life
Our graphic artists reduced the blinking of models observed from afar with the new visibility system and introduced the fading in and out systems for some light sources. This task will be continued and improvements will be extended to more models, characters, and light sources in further game updates. You can see the difference in how the same views looked before and after the implementation of this system on those examples: here and here.
Other improvements:
- Arrows in the quiver are from now on being fully restored after the end of the Valley of Death tournament. - Added a short interaction bar before opening Architect’s Table, because interaction with the table was not stopping the character movement and it could be opened by accident. - Reworked Ismir quests “Let Sleeping Wolves Die” and “Sea Invaders”, to match its counterparts in other nations and improve players' experience and retention. - Dunfen Mine has been transformed into Dunfen Lumbermill, to match the location counterparts in other nations' lands on the global map. - Changed the loading/firing on siege engines to recognize any attack and any block input, including directional attacks and blocks keybinds. - Added Mount Experience Boost Cards, available for purchase for Contribution Points in Glory Quartermasters Shops and for Ambers in Supporter Shop - Tweaked the spawners of the horses, balancing the rarity of some colors, and adjusted the color pools and timers. - Improved the sound of the horse's steps and the frequency of their playback.
Fixes
- Fixed an issue causing the message “Player protected you from looting your equipment” to be shown multiple times on the combat log after the looting was interrupted. - Fixed an issue that allowed progressing “Block damage with a shield during a siege” daily challenge with blocking by using two-handed weapons. - Fixed an issue causing empty parties to stay on the Party Finder list after the end of the Volcano and Sea Wraiths events. - Fixed an issue causing coins to be shown in the new line on the item tooltip window. - Fixed an issue causing one of the Wooden Main building floors to be transparent. - Fixed an issue causing some of the smallest buildings (i.e. henhouse) to have wrong models or shapes while observed from afar. - Fixed an issue causing the character controller to stop responding if the character teleported while holding the block. - Fixed an issue allowing players to keep sprinting without using stamina if their horse died during autorunning and under circumstance they had a skill “Will to Survive '' active. - Fixed an issue causing typing in the chat/bug reports text fields while using the Architect's Table were also controlling the camera. - Fixed an issue causing notification about leveling up was telling wrong numbers of Contribution Points granted for leveling up. - Fixed an issue causing the daily challenge rewards notification to be not removed after picking the rewards.
Weekly Update 279 – Mount colors & further Party Finder development
Greetings, Warriors!
You already had the chance to test the first part of it in the Party Finder system which you can find in the ingame Social tab through the recent week. We received very positive feedback about both - the grouping system and the interface, so we are very happy with the outcome and your opinions ensured that we are going in the right direction and encouraged us to continue our hard work.
Today we are introducing further iteration of the Party Finder, which will be an automated system of invites and requests to help players find the party and participate in events and battles around them more often and intuitively.
Additionally, we are happy to introduce some more color and diversity into the game. From now on, you can find and catch in the game world 11 different breeds of horses, and have the mount of your desire!
Raiders and horse tamers, ready up! From now on, you can find in the game world fully reworked spawners of the horses, allowing you to tame a horse with different stats and colors! Different areas (mirrored for every nation) are giving access to different horse colors and manes. Overall there are so far 11 different colors and 5 different manes, which are slightly randomized and can sum up to over 30 color and mane combinations! We are also planning to make horse customization possible, and it will be done as a part of a user interface overhaul.
Party Finder: Further improvements
The new system to help in the search for warbands or parties has been very warmly received by the community. We are very glad to see that and we’re adding further improvements to the Party Finder introduced to the game last week.
When something is going on in a location - there is a siege in progress, an event is ongoing, or someone is doing a quest nearby, which we have active too, the system will suggest players create or join a party and group up. The system will automatically create it after at least one player joins it. In further iterations we want the system to be a leader of the party during the event it was created for, to make the party more automated and intuitive.
If there are few parties in the area, the system will invite players to the open parties. If there are only closed parties, it will automatically send a request to the party leader. If there are few parties of the same type, the system will encourage players to join the biggest one.
Quality of Life:
Following community suggestions, we added a horse icon over the player's mount to make it easier to find your mount between others.
Slow of the mount is now shown on the Horse HUD
Disabled the navigation triggers on mounts window that could lead to opening it while jumping while mounted
Improvement of swimming detection code, which should help with all the issues were walking under the water was possible.
Adjusted the number of enemies in the sangmarian event “Kill the traitors”.
Fixes:
Fixed the issue causing players to be able to get into one of the spawns on the Valley of Death tournament.
Fixed the issue causing players to be able to bug the giant in the Volcano event using the ruins nearby. From now on the Giant can get inside them.
Fixed an issue causing mobs dealing damage multiple times per attack were dealing two or three times lower damage than they should.
Fixed an issue causing blocking crafting on foot if the player opened the crafting window at least once on some workshop and did not have enough money to craft the given item.
Fixed an issue causing the marksman skill to not refresh until the equipped weapon was switched.
Fixed an issue causing the stable window not to close even if the player would get away from it, which allowed the player to regenerate mount anywhere on the world.
Fixed the small visual issue, which was showing the guild leader/vice leader “SoW frametime updated” notification every time they opened the architects' table.
Multiple level design fixes, including among others places where players can walk under the water and some holes in the terrain.
Fixed an issue causing players were unable to change party type using the dropdown on the side party window.
Weekly Update 278 – Party Finder & addressing Community voice!
Greetings, Warriors!
We are delighted to introduce a feature we were working on for the last few weeks. Desired by many, helpful to everyone – Party Finder is finally implemented! From now on it will be much easier to find game content suitable for you, and group up to take part in the common activities or global conquest. That great addition to the game allows you to create and manage your party and friends list a lot easier, as well as increases the activity of players in all aspects of the game.
At the same time, to improve the game balance and prevent toxicity, we are addressing the Community voice after a record-breaking in-game questionnaire, in which 89% of active players agreed to the implementation of a cooldown on logging into different nations accounts from the same PC.
Additionally, we are improving our automated moderation systems, and delivering a lot of Quality of life changes and fixes, thanks to our precious Community feedback, reports, and suggestions!
The Party Finder is live! You can find it in the game under the “Socials' tab and test its functionalities already.
The system is a lobby, where players can create or join a Warband or party and manage their friends' list, and blocked/mute players!
Players who want to create a party can do it in a new way, using a dedicated button in the socials tab. During creation, we will be able to name it, provide information about the goal of the group, choose the party type, and mark if the number of players in the party should be public or not.
All the systems that allow you to create parties in the old way by inviting players by /request command or right-clicking on them are staying in the game, but you will be able to add parties created in those ways to the lobby list too!
From now on it will be much easier to know that something is going nearby and you can join the fight or event, players will not need to plead on the chat to find a group or request help. It will be much easier and convenient to find something to do in the game and be more united in the common conquest.
The minimap received a dedicated button, which will be showing the number of active parties in the area. Clicking the button or proper shortcut on the keyboard will open the socials tab with the lobby and friends list.
We hope you will find the new system helpful and it will be a great tool to share and improve your game experience with others. Please note that the system will be polished and iterated because there are still some parts of it that need to be polished and implemented. For example, when players will be in a nearby location where an event is ongoing or players who are participating in the same quest or event, they will receive a suggestion to join or request access to the biggest open party around or be encouraged to group up.
We will be thankful for your constructive feedback and opinions about it!
Automated login cooldown system:
While working on lowering game toxicity, and balancing the population in-game, we found out that almost all of the issues on that matter are related to abusing alt accounts that are being used for spying or trolling. While of course there are lots of players honoring the game rules, having fun, and not abusing the potential of having accounts in different nations, all you need is to have a group of players doing their worst to disturb other players' gameplay and make their game experience worse.
Almost all of the toxicity reports we receive are related to players using alt accounts in other nations, trying to unstabilize them. While it is technically impossible to moderate every case due to the scale of the game, and all moderation is a reaction after the action - we needed to find out the solution that will be fair for everyone, will not impact the honest and fair players gameplay, and will reduce the possibility of using the alternative accounts to disturb other players.
This is why, hearing the community voice, where 89% of players voted for "Rather Agree" or "Definitely Agree" when we asked if we should implement a cooldown on logging into different nation accounts from the same PC, we are delivering the automated system which will take care of that.
From now on, the game may not allow players to log in to other in-game nation accounts without a cooldown between logins, based on some circumstances.
Meet Michael, Robert, and Josh.
Michael has 2 accounts, both in one nation in the game. He owns his guild poster over his bed and he is playing on his accounts every day.
Robert is a casual, friendly, and helpful player, who is playing on all three of his accounts, each one placed in a different in-game nation, but he is respecting the game rules and favor fair play. He never received any warning or penalty for breaking the game or chat rules.
Josh also has three accounts. But he is a player who was using his alternative accounts to troll other nations and insults them using nation chat. He is suspected of violating the game rules, reported by other players, and has received warnings and short-term punishments so far, but the moderator does not have enough evidence against him to ban him from the game.
So what will happen when they will now switch between their accounts?
Michael is free to switch his accounts as he wants. Nothing will stop him from logging onto the same nation accounts. There will be no warnings and no cooldowns. The other two players are also free to switch between the same nation accounts.
When Robert, who was never flagged by any penalty, will login onto another nation, he will receive a kind warning, that system detects switching nations and he will need to play for at least 30 minutes on the currently chosen nation or wait one hour outside the game before he will be able to log in on another nation (so get back on the account he played before too). After confirming that he understands the information, he can play the chosen - different - nation right away.
That means players who are following the game rules will rarely be prevented from switching accounts and playing on them in different nations right away because according to game data, the average gameplay session lasts around two hours. They will be able to switch right away and get back or pick another nation after a very short time. Remember, that players can switch their nations following the general rules, so moving to a long-term underdog nation or removing their characters.
Josh, on the other hand, is a player who broke the game rules, got punished, and is suspected of griefing other players using his alternative accounts. He can also switch between his accounts, and he will also receive a kind warning, but the cooldowns for him will be longer. If he logs on to another nation account now, he will not be able to move back or play on another nation account before he spends 12 hours in-game on the chosen nation, or 24 hours outside of the game.
This will greatly reduce the possibility of account hopping and encourage players who are not respecting the game and chat rules to rethink their behavior and mind their actions in-game.
All accounts which had a penalty or are related to the one with a penalty are automatically a subject of longer cooldowns, and all players who were openly playing on alternative accounts using them against their nation were automatically tagged for longer cooldowns. Penalty tracker that was updated to help automate this feature, a new penalty table that is being prepared in the background, as well the karma system, which login cooldowns are part of, may impact many more aspects of the game in the future, and we believe those are good moves to improve the game balance and prevent toxicity.
Disclaimer 1: As developers, we are not encouraging players to have alternative accounts in different nations. We are not preventing players to have them, but we want to remind you that using alternative accounts to violate game and chat rules will lead to penalties shared between all punished player's accounts and can lead to all their account suspensions.
Disclaimer 2: The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this explanation are fictitious. No identification with actual players, guilds, and nations is intended or should be inferred. No chickens were harmed in the making of this changelog.
Quality of Life:
– Clicking a register to the Valley of Death tournament from now on puts the player into an interruptible state for 5 seconds before sending the request, and we have disabled the registration while the player is dead to prevent players abusing registration in the middle of the fight or while dead to prevent looting. – Reworked the global map legend. The legend is a list of clickable filters which players can use to show only the information and icons they want to see on the map. This is making the map adjustable, more clear, and convenient in use. It is still a work in progress, yet we decided it is much better than the previous one so we didn’t want to delay it. – Tweaks to mobs AI: Giants and Moas (scavengers) attack animations will not break on hit, but will be properly mixed up. The mobs will not be slowing down their movement while being close to the target, as they stop while attacking. Giants received two additional attack animations. – Update to resource node disintegration system. From now on all nodes have a solid, unbreakable core, which will indicate the exact place of the given node spawn. – The experience and coins buff for the underdog is not any more related to the depth of underdog status. From now on, the buff is fixed, to prevent players from exploiting and manipulating the game balance by observing the buff stacks. – Blockade for building on the castles now triggers on destroying the building, not hitting it, because of abusers shooting at the castles from afar to deny content and disturb other players' gameplay. Other building blocking variables did not change. – Balanced the materials required to craft Karleonian Pick and Karleonian Mace, to show more clearly, that mace is stronger than pick and unify the complexity of their recipes.
Fixes:
– Fixed the issue causing 4 events in the Basilea sector were not possible to complete. – Fixes for quests: The final touch, Blessing of the gods, Unexpected danger, and Sanctuary profaned. – Fixed the loot table of Veteran from South NPC. It still drops decent items, but no top-tier ones anymore. – Fixed the possibility to open a player context menu by clicking on his nickname on chat. – Fixed the issue causing siege engines rotation to reset after their spawn. – Fixed the issue causing old highlander miniboss to walk to the ocean and suicide after the spawn, which was preventing players to finish the global map event. – Fixed the issue causing raubritters to do the same thing as above in some global events. – Fixed the issue causing one of the windmills in the area north of Dunfen to have no colliders, so players were able to walk through its walls. – Fixed the issue where some NPC characters were misplaced around Lobart’s Farm, Greenport, and Seaclaw. – Fixed the issue causing one of the location guards on Basilea farm to spawn under the stairs. – Fixed the small text issue on the Nation selection screen.
Weekly Update 277 – New Glory Season Started and WiP insight - Party Finder!
Greetings, warriors!
Let us welcome you to the new Glory season! The top players of the just-ended season have earned their rewards and titles, so it's again the time to compete against the others and fight your way to the top of the ladder!
A little explanation for the new players: Glory is a season-based ranking which rewards you for activity in the faction v faction v faction PVP. The seasons last 2 months and are rewarded with unique titles, as well as gold. Also, every Thursday night you’ll get Contribution Points – an in-game currency used to purchase special items from the Glory Quartermasters. The amount of earned CP depends on your position on the leaderboard, so climb up it!
We also took an opportunity to reserve some more time to polish a huge QoL feature announced a week ago – the Party Finder. We are sorry for the delay, but such a vast and complex system requires a lot of testing and we want to be sure it will work properly to improve your game experience. But we can already share with you the idea that’s behind it, and as well some details about how it will work.
The screenshot’s authors have been awarded. MrGamerman1, and John – check your Ambers!
Work in progress insight: Party Finder, part 2
In the previous update, we shared with you some information about the current situation of the party and grouping features in our MMO. We believe it is about time to make it better, more intuitive, and convenient for players.
Since our game has tons of features and things to do when logged in, but it is not always entirely clear for players what they can do, and that they can do something together, we wanted to create a system that will help our community to gather together, find a common goal and enjoy the game with a company of allies and friends.
Party Finder was in our designers' heads for a long time, since they wanted to improve the warbands management systems and creating another layer of information which will show and give easier access to various features of the game, at the same time socializee community more, creating bonds between new and old players and improving the player's retention overall.
The game will leave Early Access later this year, and before that huge milestone, our team is working on refreshing one of the least polished aspects in the game – the user interface. Of course, redoing the whole interface is a huge and time-consuming task. To avoid locking our further work on the regular weekly updates, we will be updating the UI step by step. The Party Finder will be the first new system that will be done on the new interface, so you can already see how it will look, while the rest of it is being processed in the background.
The system will be a sort of a lobby, where players will be able to create or join a Warband or party, and also manage your friends' list and blocked/muted players!
Players who want to create a party will be able to do it in a new way, using a dedicated button in the (upcoming) socials tab. During creation we will be able to name it, providing information about the goal of the group, choose the party type (open / joining only via request / no leader: all the options you already know from the current system) and mark if the number of players in the party should be public or not.
All the systems that allow you to create parties in the old way by inviting players by /request command or right-clicking on them are staying in the game, but you will be able to add parties created in those ways to the lobby list too!
So it will be much easier to know that something is going nearby and we can join the fight or event, players will not need to plead on the chat to find a group or request help. It will be much easier and convenient to find something to do in the game and be more united in the common conquest.
When players will be in a nearby location where an event is ongoing, and there are any parties dedicated to that event in the lobby, players in the area will receive a suggestion to join or request access to the biggest open party around, or if there are no open parties, to send a request to the biggest closed one. If there will be no parties around, but there will be at least two players, the system will suggest and make it easier for them to create a party. In the same way, players who are participating in the same quest or event will be encouraged to group up.
The minimap will receive a dedicated button, which will be showing the number of active parties in the area. Clicking the button or proper shortcut on the keyboard will open the socials tab with the lobby and friends list.
We hope you will find the new system helpful and it will be a great tool to share and improve your game experience with others. Party Finder will be implemented to the game at the beginning of the upcoming week and we will be thankful for your constructive feedback and opinions about it! Additionally, the next update will also include a lot of other Quality of life improvements and fixes, requested and reported recently by the Community.
We wish you the best of luck in the new Glory Season, and as always – See you in battle!
Weekly Update 276 – Work in Progress insight and weekly dose of improvements!
Greetings, warriors!
As the core of our team is working hard on one of the biggest social and community-related features that will be implemented in the game soon, we are happy to introduce some quality of life improvements in the meantime. We are also sharing the result of the most recent questionnaire, introducing interesting changes to combat, and also following the results of one of the previous ones, and addressing your recent feedback, we are making a change in the horse's slowdown mechanic.
Remember, that this week is the last of the current Glory Season! New Glory Season will start on Thursday, the 1st of July. Also, we’d like to remind you that the last day of the season – Wednesday, the 30th of June – will be a dedicated day of the season's end. The top players on the ranking table will earn great rewards and nice titles, so it’s time to compete against the others and fight your way to the top of the ladder!
Gloria Victis MMO is a game with a focus on PVP and territory control. The game shines when you are playing it with some friends or allies and a lot of players in their feedback and reviews mentioned that the group fighting, huge open field battles and epic sieges, but also roaming around the map with a company of your guild and friends is one of the most joyful parts of the game.
As we already improved the party system itself, making its interface customizable, and by adding a lot of convenience features like map markers, order carousels, and adjustable party icons or medic mode. But one thing has not changed a lot – the way to find and join a party.
With the growth of the playerbase and having more and more players on the servers, the current system of finding the party has proven to be a little chaotic. Players do not know if any parties exist in the area at any given moment. It is not always entirely clear who is leading a group, and even sometimes it is not visible that even something is happening in the area.
Requesting access to a party was also something that could disturb the gameplay, forcing players to gather up before the fight and making it harder to manage the party during battle and fighting at the same time.
We want to make it easier and more intuitive to join the party and expand the possibilities to enjoy the game when it is fun the most – when you play with other players and create relations and bonds with them. We want to make searching and joining the party easier, more intuitive, and convenient for everyone. The game will be more dynamic, players will find more activities, challenges, and friends easier and faster, which will greatly improve the overall game experience.
But how will we achieve that? You will find out in the next Work in Progress insight next week! Stay tuned!
Results of ingame questionnaire #15 [17- 23.06.2021]
To the question asked in the most recent questionnaire - "Do you think that we should implement a cooldown on logging into different nation accounts from the same PC?" a record-breaking number of 86% of players voted for "Rather Agree" or "Definitely Agree". Excluding alt accounts used to vote, 89% of players voted for "Rather Agree" or "Definitely Agree" so for that reason, in the upcoming updates we will implement the proper solution. If you need any details, be sure to check the full questionnaire on our official Discord!
Changelog v.0.9.7.3 Beta
Quality of Life:
Weapons balance and combat improvements:
As the game combat controller is much faster than in the past, and can now handle even faster fights, we are able to improve the combat dynamics and introduce some weapons and game balance with one set of changes. Two-handed spears are now the push meta and the only weapon that can make possible hitting from the third line, so they do not require a lot of skill to be efficient in pushes and even viable in duels. One of the best perks of that weapon was a great range and very fast release time, which did not give almost any room to block the thrust with such a spear.
Two-handed spears will now have a longer release time and more proper animation. It will be easier to block a 2h spear stab attack observing the enemy, especially the attack release animation. Thanks to that change spears will be less viable in duels but will keep their place in group fights and choke points. Additionally, please remember that this change is affecting only two-handed spears and guisarmes, not bardiches and long axes, which have different animators than spears!
Another change that will make combat a little faster and skillful is a global reduction of hold times. From now on you will not be able to hold the attack long before releasing it:
Daggers have now 0.4 instead of 0.7 hold time,
1h weapons have 0.75 instead of 1 hold time,
2h swords have 0.75 instead of 1.5 hold time,
2h axes, 2h hammers, and 2h spears have 1 instead of 1.5 hold time.
This change will make combat faster, more dynamic, and skillful. We hope you will like the changes and we will be happy to receive your feedback after you test those for a few days. Keep in mind that combat will require getting used to after such changes, so please do not rush with your opinion. Thank you in advance!
Horses slowdown iteration:
Based on one of the previous ingame questionnaires (#13, 20.04.2021 - 26.04.2021), where 73% of players agreed with the proposed solution, we are introducing a change in horse slowdown. As you know, all red powerbar attacks are already slowing down the enemy horses. But without the top cavalry passive, a full powerbar while raiding the horse is yellow when loaded to full, so it was also not possible to engage enemy raiders from horseback. From now on, “full yellow powerbar” attacks while mounted will put a slow on enemy cavalry. You will be able to see a glow around the powerbar that will indicate the attack will slow down a horse.
Free nation change for new players:
Following the player's feedback and player retention statistics, we changed the ability to change the nation once for free that is given to new players. Previously it was possible to change a nation once until any character on the account reached level 40, from now on it will be possible until any character on account reaches level 70.
Other QoL improvements:
– Reworked the first Ismir quest, to match its counterparts in other nations and improve players' experience and retention. – Changed the icon of Flour to make it easier to check the number of items in a stack – Updated the icon of Herb Fruit to make it easier to differentiate it from similar icons of various seeds – Added a shadow to numbers of quantity in inventory for better visibility – Moved the numbers on hitpoints and stamina bars to prevent covering the current state of the bar on low hitpoints or stamina – Added the arena collider on training gates on the global arena. It will not require any more to practice on those gates using a duels system – Added a UI shadow to the damage indicators to make them more clear and visible.
Weekly Update 275 – Convenience improvements!
Greetings, warriors!
A new update is live! It always brings tweaks to the various systems, enchanting you with the game experience, bringing some gameplay improvements, and fixing reported bugs. But on top of that, this time we’ve focused on several convenience–related improvements, such as the first iteration of advanced AI for PvE monsters and animals! We hope you’ll love the changes!
In the game, players with a level higher than 70 will receive access to a new ingame questionnaire, where we are following the topic of multiboxing – a record-breaking number of 83% of players agreed that it should be taken care of so we are asking you now about the cooldown of usage of alternative accounts to play in more than one nation.
We are also ready to officially announce a date of the new Glory Season start so the upcoming two weeks are the last days to ensure the best position in rankings for you. Climb up!
This week, we have a questionnaire for you, to gather your feedback about multi-accounting. Based on your requests and answers in one of the previous questionnaires, where a record-breaking number of 83% of players agreed that it should be taken care of, we took care of multiboxing - due to the numbers of potential exploits and bypassing the game balancing systems, we believe that this change was a necessary step forward for our game, and in-game questionnaire proved it best.
While working on lowering game toxicity, and balancing the population in-game, we found out that most of the issues on that matter are related to abusing alt accounts which are being used as tools to destabilize other nations and to play without honoring the game and fair play rules.
We want to address that, to make Gloria Victis MMO a better place for everyone, that is why we want to hear your opinion about introducing a cooldown on login when logging onto alt accounts that are in different nations. We believe it can greatly limit issues related to griefing, trolling, and spying and the system of course will not have a huge impact on players who are playing the game honoring its rules. [Questionnaire has been sent to all accounts of level 70 and above]
New Glory Season
The New Glory Season will start on Thursday, the 1st of July. Also, we’d like to remind you that the last day of the season – Wednesday, the 30th of June – will be a dedicated day of the season's end. It will not be possible to earn or lose the Nation Points on this day and the scoreboards of other season-based rankings (Glory and Arena) will be frozen then. However, it is the last chance to donate your NP to your guild as the Guild Points. When the new season starts, the Nation Points collected by a player will count from 0 as the new season will begin.
A little explanation for the new players: Glory is a season-based ranking which rewards you for activity in the faction v faction v faction PVP. The seasons last around 2 months (depending on the current updates schedule) and the top players are rewarded with unique titles and gold. Also, every Thursday night you’ll get Contribution Points – an in-game currency used to purchase special items from the Glory Quartermasters. The amount of earned CP depends on your position in the leaderboard, so climb up!
Changelog v.0.9.7.2 Beta
Quality of Life:
Safeguard related to tokening own nation Guild Castles
The first bigger change in terms of QoL will be the improvement of the Civil War feature, which allows players of one nation to fight for guild locations. It is not a common situation, but still a possible one, and it lacked some clarity and solutions.
From now on, defenders can defend the token interrupting the attackers' preparations. Attackers who are tokening their nation castle will receive a traitor status when they are in the targeted location, allowing killing and looting their nation members in exchange for their reputation, and allowing defenders to kill and loot attackers.
When the token will be placed, both sides of the conflict will receive proper notifications, explaining the details. When the attacker will leave the location, the traitor debuff will be removed, the same in the situation of ending preparations with success or failure. Remember, that traitor status will remain if you have a negative reputation, and attacking allies will result in losing reputation.
Improved mobs AI - first iteration
– Second thing worth mentioning is the improvement of mobs' AI. Mobs should more fluid movement on the closer range, should collide better with fighting players and two of mobs received their unique special moves:
Giants' attacks cannot be blocked without a shield, they can interrupt attacks and now are dealing splash damage. Scavengers can now make a rapid series of pecks or charge in a line dealing damage.
We believe those special moves and differences in fighting with different opponents in the game world will bring you a lot of joy and fun, as well introducing some more tactical and interesting approaches to counter the enemy action. We are aware there will be easy tactics to counters their special moves now, but both of those mobs, and all others will be iterated in the next updates.
Stone Bastion Gate
And the last significant change is about the bastion gates:
On Castles, we have fast respawning guards on the last layer of walls, just before bastion. Thanks to them, it was possible to hold some longer on that last line of defense. In the past, these guards gave a chance to win against severely outnumbered defenders. Now in a fight, we usually have a lot more people than back in the days, and they just rush into the bastion, destroying its gate within a few seconds then going to cap the flag so the respawn of these fast respawning guards doesn't matter. Only one thing that can stop such a rush is shieldwall, but this also doesn't live long enough, especially when attackers can bring a catapult, and there is not enough time to destroy it using a ballista.
If it was not possible to stop enemies on the last gate, and there was no way to stop them in bastion gates, people were forced to give up the fight, get looted, or move to the capital.
To fix this we will add the same hitpoints to stone bastion gates as we already have on normal gates but additionally, we will add the burning feature to them.
Thanks to this, for a small party there should be the same level of difficulty to cap this flag (they will burn the gate, then defend until the gate goes down instead of being forced to ax this gate for a long time with guards hitting them).
Other QoL changes:
– Added a satisfying animation of the counters notification. From now on, when you gain gold, contribution points, or banked nation points, the counter on a notification will flow to another notification with the player's summary value (ex. total gold). – Changed the thickness of barricades - from now on characters who fell under the barricade will be reachable for medics. – Training NPC’s on the global arena now have proper rotations. – Reduced damage of quest mobs: Ageing giant (Sangmar Claretta questline) from 200 to 80, Biggie (Secrets of Dundrum/Ystad/Serai) from 150 to 100.
Fixes:
– Fixed Decius and Magistus dialogues in Sangmar questline, which were not working properly. – Fixed the bugged colliders in the tower and corner tower on upgrades 4,5 and 6. The model allowed to jump through the solid wall between the windows. With a fixed model, it should be possible to jump outside the tower through the window, but it should not be possible to jump inside the tower the same way. – Fixed the issue causing freebuilding gates missing the restriction to be placed next to towers. In addition to that, the main building description has been updated to give information that it cannot stand next to gates and towers too. – Fixed the edge case issue causing it to have more than allowed players on the volcano and sea wraiths events. – Fixed the issue causing some nodes in the golden pickaxe event could be spawned underground or outside the event area Fixed the issue causing the online/offline status of the newly joined guild member shown on the guild members list incorrectly. – Fixed the issue causing bosses in Ismirean questline to not spawn properly.
Weekly Update 274 – Addressing players feedback
Greetings, warriors!
Nation Points are one of the most prestigious resources you can collect in Gloria Victis MMO, since those represent your activity and battle effectiveness, but also are a foundation of the rankings in which all players are competing. The system has changed a lot through years of development, and received many improvements and upgrades, becoming more clear, less punishing, and even more engaging.
Players love to fight and be rewarded for their efforts, love to climb ranking tables to the top, and are working hard to secure their NP’s for their guild development. We are aware that being and feeling rewarded are great additions to our game. The ranking system became one of the features holding a lot of dedicated players in the game, allowing them to be MVPs of the battles and prove their worth on the battlefields.
But the system was still not perfect. Since the whole idea worked as a trade – the winner was taking points from the loser – it always created a big difference at the end of the fight, could be too punishing to losing nations and discourage players who lost some points to fight again or force winners to teleport back to the capital, where they could donate their points to their guild, and in this way, secure them.
Around the middle of May, we decided to present our Community with a list of ideas about improving the Nation Points system in the game on our official Discord server and started a discussion about them.
In this week’s update, we are introducing the New Nation Points system. We believe it will have a very positive impact on players' game experience, and the nation's balance. The new system is more rewarding, clear, and fair for players, and also encourages everyone to take part in the conquest and climb the rankings. Check the details below and see you in battle!
If your nation started to lose fights, you personally gained fewer Nation Points, or worse, you went back to the capital with 0 Nation Points, no matter how good of a fighter you are. This was the main problem with our old NP system.
Individuals who are good at PvP kill lots of enemies, whether they are in an underdog nation or not. But the difference was, that in underdog a player might die, for example, 10 times with 5 assists (0 Nation Points), while in a non-underdog nation that same player might die 1 time with 20 assists (5k Nation Points). It was simply easier to stay alive when you are not in an underdog nation.
When someone loses their source of enjoyment, they are forced to find this somewhere else, so eventually, they will try to find it in another game or they will switch nations. So our old NP system had the unintended effect of stacking vets in one nation because those who do not quit want to have fun gaining Nation Points. Both of these actions resulted in already weak nations becoming semi-permanent underdogs because they could not retain vets or newbies.
We were not forcing people to be killers but encouraged them to be achievers. However, only about 10% of the game’s population are the sort of people who like to rack up various achievements, so the NP mechanics were not really helping everyone. It was just a little too hard to earn Nation Points as an underdog. And thanks to our community feedback, this issue was brought to our attention.
New Nation Points System
We gained a lot of feedback and data to gain confidence and prepare proper changes to the system. We wanted gathering Nation Points to be still competitive and show “who’s the boss”, but we want to remove the reasons that can lead to nation switching and help balance the game in the long term.
In the New Nation Point system, you will be rewarded for individual moments of action where you beat the enemy. The ranking will still be competitive. Good fighters will gain a lot more Nation Points than before, and they still will be on top, and the best guild/groups still will be on top, but others will also gain because they do more in the fight before each death. There also will be more incentive for vets to join underdog nations because their individual performance will be more accurately measured.
Secured and Unsecured Nation Points
The new addition to the system is the introduction of two pools of Nation Points players have, and we call them Secured, and Unsecured Nation Points.
Nation Points from the new Secured Pool cannot be lost in the fight. Players can lose only a fixed amount of up to 500 NP’s from Unsecured Pool with every death (respawn), which are not transferred to and shared between the players who killed you in battle. If you had 200 unsecured NP’s, you would lose 200, you cannot go below 0.
With every death (respawn) all left unsecured Nation Points will be “secured” when you respawn. You still lose 500 NP for dying, but if you had anything beyond that 500, you will keep that “banked” on your account until you turn it in. Those “banked” NP cannot be lost in later deaths. Thanks to that you don't have to run to the capital right away to turn your points in because each time you die, after removing 500 of them as a death penalty, the rest of your NP are secured and you can turn them in at any time. Also, keep in mind that you are losing NP only when you die – If you get revived, you will not lose any NP.
You will lose 500 Nation Points for any death in PvP or PvE. This means that swimming out to drown yourself or dying to mobs to avoid NP loss is no longer viable.
We know that until now, some players were going back to the capital after almost every death or anytime they reached some NP they wished to turn in, then they went back to fight – or just stayed on the capital. We want to reduce porting back to the capital. So that the most NP you ever have “on the line” will be 500, because that is how many you lose when you die. We think the new system reduces the potential of losing momentum from party members teleporting to the capital.
Rewards
Using the already introduced, and warmly welcomed new assist system you will be able to get Nation Points for dealing damage, tanking damage, knocking out enemies, and healing and reviving your allies. The Nation Points reward for assists will be distributed when your enemy will lose consciousness.
Rewards and Loses of Nation Points are now counted as two separate things. Players are not exchanging NP’s between them anyhow. Nation Points are still account-wide, and you will receive diminishing NP rewards for killing the same player repeatedly.
Quality of Life:
– Buff from having 2000 Nation Points that was decreasing respawn time from now on will be triggered if the player will have at least 1000 unsecured Nation Points – Moved scripts that were starting new quests to a moment of taking reward for previous quests. Thanks to that, players won't miss the moment of taking a new quest so there are higher chances they will continue the whole questline – Added a button on the Location Window allowing players to open guild recruitment announcements of the Guild owning the Location if the guild is recruiting – Increased gathering bonus chance for the group to give more profit for gathering with friends. It is now more profitable and better in bigger groups – Added Help Wiki buttons to the ESC menu, in the “gear” menu near the Hotbar, /wiki command available on chat and hyperlinks under “?” icon in many interfaces in-game, leading to the proper sites of Gloria Victis Official Wiki – Changed the rewards for challenges (achievement window -> challenges, not daily!) from diluted wine, to Contribution Points – Sir Frederick and Skal-Ar took the place of General Commanders in the locations they were assigned to, which meant they would not be additional guards anymore – As the tent gives a possibility to respawn on it after death, and people used it as a teleport by suiciding themselves, to prevent them from burning their unsecured NP we added the possibility to teleport to your own tent. You can teleport to your tent and destroy it in the process using /tent command on chat or the icon of your tent on the world map. The teleport range is limited (around half of the world map size). – The mount icon on the map will now be scaling properly when zooming the map in and out – Known crafting recipes list is now scrollable – Replaced Sangmar Capital City Building models since some of their versions shown on given distances were not consistent with their counterparts shown at other distances
Fixes:
– Fixed the pink material in some objects in the game world – Fixed the position of a few levitating chests in the game world – Fixed the issue causing the “Select Mentor” icon were missing after reaching level 40 – Fixed the issue causing players were able to teleport to the enemy flag by leaving siege event – Fixed the Brother Tuck dialogue in Midland questline – Fixed the issue causing calculations dependant on the durability of tools and weapons were processed incorrectly (i.e. it was more profitable to chop wood with a low durability tool when it should work the other way)
Weekly Update 273 – Resource gathering and game economy – redefined!
Greetings, warriors, gatherers, and crafters!
As we announced a few weeks ago, our designers were working on the rework of an important part of the Gloria Victis MMO economy – resource availability and gathering systems. Looking at the data from the last months, it became clear that there are too few good gathering spots on the map and it limited the possibilities for gatherers and crafters to collect the resources.
That is why, after talking with the Community about the ideas to improve those aspects of the game and receiving your approval and feedback, we are happy to introduce a lot of changes that will make the resources system more interesting, rewarding, and conjugated with territory control.
We made the open world and nation castles resource spots more important and useful by introducing location specializations and made the gathering more clear and less random by exchanging random resource spawners to bigger and more efficient nodes and a new type of resource deposits – veins.
The user interface, the balance of the gathering tools, and the gathering system itself have changed greatly, and we are hoping that those improvements will be warmly welcomed.
As always, we are also delivering some Quality of Life improvements and fixes, so check the details below and see you in the game!
Flag specializations and resources balance on map:
We analyzed the map data looking at the spots where most of the resources in the game come from. The gathering was focused directly on just a few spots on the map – the biggest mines and biggest farms, which of course was leading to making other locations and resources spawns less important and visited much less often.
Since it would be great to make resources something worth fighting for, to encourage more fights for locations and important economical deposits, we are introducing location specializations. Thanks to that the game is getting more content for gatherers and provides a more sense of conquest and a reason to defend all these lower-tier flags. The placement of specializations and resource deposits is mirrored between all three nations, with slight differences dictated by the unique flavor of each nation's economy and crafting differences.
From now on, you will be able to find detailed descriptions of the economical aspects of the locations by hovering the mouse over their flag on the world map. This window will explain what resources you can find in the location area, the specialization of the given flag, and even more useful information, like the number of guards or inhabitants, available workshops, and Bastion data (Known issue - the guards counter is not accurate yet, there may be some guards that are not counted properly, but the numbers of guards on every flag in-game are same for every nation and fair.)
The most important locations will specialize in providing specified resources. It means that they will have a lot more of the given resources than other flags. It will be better to collect firewood on a dedicated flag (but not impossible on other locations) that is specialized in low-tier wood logs, and coal or siderite on another. To better indicate the specializations, you will be able to find a new type of resource deposits in the game – veins.
Veins
Veins are huge rock-type resource nodes containing even one hundred times more resources than the regular nodes, will require more time to be gathered, but are still more efficient and can be gathered by multiple players at once. To be precise, gathering them together with other players will give you a chance to receive bonus resources, and as a result and reward for cooperation - collect even more of them.
Regular nodes
The smallest, regular nodes will also contain about ten times more resources in them in comparison with old node spawners, which will lead to making open-world nodes more worthy of stopping by and collecting them. In exchange, their respawn time will be prolonged to balance the number of available resources in the game world. This means they will be exhausted sometimes, so gatherers can't just stand in one mine occupying it all day. They will need to go to another mine or start roaming to find the new nodes with 10x more looting resources in the open world.
Gathering system User Experience improvements
We are aware that having spawners that spawn random resource types instead of spawning the same material each time never had good UX and was hard to understand and predict. Because of this, we were receiving complaints that resources in other nations are unbalanced so we wanted to improve your experience and make the system much more clear and fair for everyone.
Random nodes spawners
The random spawners are gone. In exchange for them, we are introducing rare resources veins. These will make it possible to collect different rare resources from one deposit to ensure balanced access to all rare resources which will be much more convenient and rewarding.
Passive/active gathering tooltip
We are also changing the tooltip for gathering to inform players that we have two ways to gather resources – passive and active. From now on the tooltip will be “[E] or hit to gather”, which will clearly tell that there is a faster and more efficient way to gather resources by actively hitting them with your tools.
Nodes destruction system
The visuals of node gathering have been improved. A lot of players asked us for more informative feedback while gathering nodes, so we started the work on the system that will show destruction of the nodes and veins in real-time, which should be very pleasant for eyes and also will tell you in what part the node has been already gathered.
Other changes
There are also a lot of smaller changes regarding the economic overhaul, and here are the most important of them:
– Balanced the strength of the gathering tools, to reduce the difference between the worst and best tier tool – Balance resource deposits on locations to allow use resources collected in one gathering run to upgrade at least one location element – Updated the quest resources spawners (for example fallen trees) so they will not impact the game economy and have faster respawn – Improved resources respawn system to remember the last interaction, instead of starting a respawn timer on the first touch. It will prevent respawning the node while gathering, what looked bad – Balanced and unified farms size to be mirrored to their counterparts on the map – Updated the Pickaxe events on the map to use new resource nodes and veins
Quality of Life
– Animated next part of equipment models. There are too many to list them one by one. :) – Recreated two lost memorials in the game world
Fixes
– Fixed the issue causing input window for naming the horse were reopened on try to put too short horse name and that could lead to rolling horse stats exploit – Fixed the issue causing learning the recipe from item disassembling required a relog to recipe to be added to the player known recipes list – Fixed the issue causing players not to receive a notification when learned the recipe – Fixed the issue causing infinite swimming animation bug after arming a weapon on the mount while in water – Fixed the terrain in Blackrock, and many other terrain holes, texture bugs, and navmesh bugs – Fixed the impassable archway in the church model – Fixed the holes in a texture of Heavy Clan Shoes
Hotfix 28.05.2021
We are introducing a hotfix for yesterday update, addressing some more of your feedback and reports:
Quality of life:
– Experience for gathering is now given at the moment when the player gets a tick that gives items, not only when gathering has ended – Veins are respawning quicker – Regular resources respawn quicker but the respawn time can differ more now, since the timer is not fixed but drawn from a time range – A little longer gathering time on regular resource nodes, to keep the number of resources collected in a given time balanced – Adjusted the limonite drops in veins and regular nodes – Improved showing citizens professions in the location preview window
Fixes:
– Fixed the issue causing the Volcano event could be started twice – Fixed some minor localization bugs, including Sunflower description in polish language and \n instead of a new line in location others section – Fixed an issue causing veins were dropping much less items than they should – Fixed an issue causing experience and achievement for gathering resources progress were not counted properly – Fixed an issue causing showing wrong icon over players character related to guild placements in rankings – Removed the misleading non-loot icon on the Greatfall location preview window – Fixed the issue causing limonite veins were not counted on the Dundrum Village location preview window
