This patch is HUGE. We’ve been working hard for months and we’re very happy to present it for your evaluation. We’ve worked on way too many things to list them all individually, so here are the main updates in this patch.
Please use the Feedback button to update us on any new issues (in the Options Panel in game)
The World
This patch begins with population of large sections of the world with content to explore. We intend to deliver additional content over the next week to add more life to the world. The inner areas of the world (grassland/forest) are mostly populated with more being added next week in the remaining grassland and entire tundra areas.
[H1] 3rd Person View
After substantial player demand, we are happy to bring you 3rd Person perspective and hope you enjoy it. After testing it extensively over the last few months we feel it’s an amazing feature that we know players will love.
Improved Map & Minimap
The world map has been greatly updated (not final) to show a high level of detail to player surroundings. The minimap in world and the dungeons has been implemented. The dungeon minimap is a first pass and will be revised and finalized in a pass early next week.
Performance
Below is an Overview of performance upgrades:
• Upgrade Engine to Unreal 4.17
• Optimized Rendering Performance in the world and enabled multiple cascaded shadow maps (shadows will now vary with quality)
• Fixed multiple player mount bugs
• Fixed issues with foot surface detection (correcting sound as well)
• Prioritize asynchronous loading of player armor to smooth loading of characters
• Added global chat, /g as shortcut. This functions across the entire world.
• Character stat panels now update your stats more accurately.
• Improved UI for Player screens, Journal, and NPC interactions
• NPC interaction text now accurate.
Player Stats
Player stats have been revised and balanced. This should allow for players to have a more even gameplay experience in terms of combat. Prior to this magic damage would be mitigated twice (via armor reduction and magic resistance reduction). In the new system, spells will be reduced via Magic resistance (which is a new stat that provides resistance to all types of magic) and physical damage will be reduced my armor. Armor factor no longer has any effect on magic/spell damage.
Magic Resistance is a new stat that applies to all magics (some items may still have additional magic resists that would be additive to the base Magic Resistance stat for a specific type of magic). Players should keep in mind that abilities may have more than one damage type that is mitigated by different stats (i.e. Poison Arrow features an initial damage that is physical (armor mitigated) damage, and a damage over time that is Nature (magic resistance) damage).
In addition to this change, player stats will now more align with the classes they play. All player abilities now scale off a classes primary attack power. Melee Attack Power for Champions and Rogues, Spell Power for Wizards and Clerics, and Ranged Attack Power for Rangers. Players will no longer have to worry about a balance of all types of spell powers to affect the output of their abilities.
• New stats have been added to the game
• Glancing Blow, Deflection, Magic Resistance, Armor Penetration and Spell Penetration will now appear on items
• Glancing Blow allows a chance to avoid taking a critical hit from physical damage, the hit is reduced to a normal damage blow
• Deflection functions like Glancing blow but applies to magic/spell damage
• Armor Penetration allows for a chance for a physical attack to bypass armor mitigation completely
• Spell Penetration allows a chance for magical attacks to bypass magic resistance completely.
Abilities
Abilities have largely been refactored to work with the new stats. Some abilities have had their effects increased slightly, some reduced. The overall goal is for a more balanced contribution from the different classes offering a different style of gameplay.
• Ability Tooltips will now show players what they do at different levels of an ability regarding their specifics output
• Players can now Parry when they have a weapon equipped (like block)
o Parry will reduce all damage from an incoming blow if timed correctly.
The Inn
The Everdale Inn has been transformed and will no longer allow players to instantly queue for dungeons. This was a functionality that was largely a stop gap while we were fixing areas of the world to support dungeons being zoned into from portals found from player exploration. Players will need to explore the world to locate the dungeons.
Maps
Players can now find maps after completing dungeons in the world. Upon completion of a dungeon (killing the final boss) all players should receive a “map” for that dungeon. These maps will function like sitting at the Inn. Once a player has a map to a dungeon they can speak with the map merchant in town (Jeran Falstead) and he will function like the old tables at the inn. Only the group leader is required to have a map when interacting with Jeran to allow for instant travel to the dungeon.
Gameplay Improvements
• Graveyards have been added to the world allow players to respawn near their location rather than teleport back to Everdale.
• Multiple Bindstones are present in the world that the player can access or use. Players will gain a new teleport stone for each location and be able to use that teleport stone in your inventory to instantly travel to the Bindstone location in the world. This will function as a means for players to fast travel.
• New item tags (Quest, Unique, Soulbound (cannot be traded))
• Adjusted/Improved Player character animations (both 1st and 3rd person)
• Adjusted/Improved NPC movement (removed stutter and sliding of NPC’s)
• Added dynamic cloth (fixed bug that cause cloth artifacting)
• Adjusted timing of Melee combat to feel more impactful (in both 1st and 3rd person perspectives)
• Implemented Parry animation sets for 1st and 3rd person
• Harvest nodes for raw materials have been added to the world for ore and herbs.
• Animals now drop leather.
• The materials vendor currently only sells thread. Cloth, ore and leather availability will be increased in a patch early next week on NPC’s in the world.
• NPC’s in the world have only been added to the inner sections of the world (the grassland/forest area). The snow-covered areas of the world will have NPC’s added and patch mid next week.
• Time of Day has been increased to be approximately 4 hours for a full day/night cycle.
[H1] PvP
We made the decision to remove PvP gameplay from the game. As the game was built it largely wasn’t designed with balancing PvP gameplay for players, nor supporting the varied content needed to allow for PvP. We had always intended the game to be a PvE experience and for the time being are focused on finishing and improving that part of the game.
Quests
The initial quests have been added to the game in town. These represent only about 20 quests currently with a couple hundred more being patched in next week.
• Quest giving NPC’s will now have a green rim shader if they have a quest to offer a character. When a quest has had its requirements met the rim shader will turn yellow for the appropriate turn in NPC.
[H1] Founders Items
Founders Items are no longer available for purchase in game. If you have the items you can keep them but will not be able to purchase them in the game now or anytime in the future. We want to thank those that were earlier adopters for their support.
What’s remaining for launch?
• A “Heroism” system. This is an amazing end game system that allows you to specialize your class even further. This allows for progress well past level 50!
• Loot system revision (dungeon loot as well as crafting patterns and materials)
These two things are being worked on now and will be added soon!
Disclaimer Keep in mind Kings and Heroes is a massively multiplayer online game and as such we’ve tried hard to create a large, vast, living, breathing world. Even though we will be launching soon, we intend to add content since it is never truly “finished”.
Thank you for support…see you in game!
Friday Stream's are back on!
Stream with the devs!
Join us Friday, October 27 at noon PST/8PM CET on Twitch to see what we've been working on as we fire up the test server!
A quick preview of world content
We’ve been really busy adding a lot of content. Check out this shot of our world map. The post-its are all quests, NPC encounters, caves, castles and more to do. Stay tuned for a massive update later this month.
PvP Update! - Patch 54
Good Evening!
The patch this week adds new PvP content, item changes as well as some fixes to current issues.
Content
Players can now access three new PvP maps. Arena’s have been added so you can challenge other adventurers. Larger groups can try out the new Seige map which allows more players to try to take the castle! These may be accessed via the PvP building next to the Inn.
We have begun to balance and adjust player stats. The first adjustment moves armor from a fixed value system to a system where mitigation per point of armor declines as you near the cap. This will be the first of several adjustments to bring mitigation and damage values down to give a more manageable combat experience.
• Adjusted armor mitigation – Armor Mitigation now follows a curve and should no longer allow players to cap armor. Players near or at the cap currently will see their mitigation reduced by approximately 9%. Lower level players should see minimal change in their mitigation.
Gameplay
• Increased drop rate of Legendary items on bosses that drop them (Insane Difficulty Only).
• Fixed PvP post processing bugs
• Display more information if the client fails to connect
• Fixed bug that allows you to damage your own decoy
• Fixed health bar display of mounted players
• Added cosmetic fixes on destructible objects
• Fixed a crash when traveling with Map opened
• Fixed cases where Stealthed/Invisible players retain Invisible effect after leaving Stealth/Invisibility
• Fixed friendly unit check on Shield Wall
• Fixed persistence issue with ability bindings
• Fixed some cases where bosses get stuck at the beginning of fight
• Implemented currency cap
• UI Focus and Key Input prioritization based on UI layer
• Added Item Grade as an add-on filter
• Weapon auto equip prioritized by its type
• Added item will display quantity in chat
• Changed loading behavior of greaves/boot
• Fixed several items with incorrect icons
• Fixed Group Heal, Channel Heal and Teleport Icons
We have several updates planned over the next couple months and look to have our roadmap out within the next week or two. Thanks for playing!
John
http://store.steampowered.com/app/436560/
Patch 53 – Patch Notes
Good Morning!
We have applied a new patch to address several of the issues that were brought up following the previous patch. We hope to have the roadmap out to you in the coming weeks.
Gameplay
• We now allow for Item multi-selection
o Multi destroy/salvage/sale
• Fixed an error where the UI was not showing the correct tradeskill
• Fixed issue with joining PvP sessions
• Better handling of boss card splashes when in combat
• Fixed persistence of boss kills and quest completions
• Fixed crashes in new UI
• Fixed many broken salvaging stations
• Added Dungeon loading optimizations
• Fixed issues with changing graphics settings
Thanks for playing.
John
http://store.steampowered.com/app/436560/
The UI & The Frozen Caverns! – Patch 52
Good Evening!
We’re excited to bring you the latest Kings & Heroes patch. It’s loaded with upgrades. It also features our latest content update, the Frozen Caverns. In all, there were more than 600 changes made, most of which focused on making the game run better. We appreciate your patience.
The Frozen Caverns!
Deep in the frozen wastes of Sundaria reside The Frozen. This race of Goblins has been consumed by ice magic. They fight with a vengeance and use their skills with ice magic to destroy their foes. This is a ten level dungeon for experienced adventurers.
Performance
• Updated engine version (Improved stability and performance)
• Optimize network performance of character data
• Fix several network and performance issues with dungeons
• Less impact from loading/unloading floors
• Less network bandwidth utilization
• Optimize network performance of destructible objects
• Increased texture memory pool to utilize up to 90% of available GPU memory
• More high-res textures
• Less texture mip artifacting
UI
The UI in the game has been upgraded significantly in terms of performance and functionality. The improvements will allow further enhancement of the UI while maintaining optimal performance.
• Replaced UI system with Unreal native UI
• Improved performance
• Improved 4k support
• Better future capabilities (i.e. VR)
• More features (i.e. auto crafting, salvaging, multi-buying, group management, improved painter, trade dialog, etc.)
• Improved Tooltip and Merchant Interface
• Fixed several issues with UI scaling
• Inventory UI has added hints to let players know how they can interact with different items.
• Item Icons now display quality and elemental enhancement more clearly
• Improved the Options menu
• Each tab under the character menu has been improved to provide more information to the player
Chat
• Replaced chat system with multi-threaded system
• Improved performance
• Added the ability to kick players from group
• Better reliability of chat and presence
• There is a known issue: Locale presence of users and friends is
unavailable temporarily with this build, the feature will be re-enabled
in a later update
• Party chat is available wherever the party members go
• Chat functionality added to crafting and social tabs
[H1] Combat
• Fixed physics issues with destructible objects and the loot they may contain
• Made gamepad icon overlays optional (off by default)
• Optimized collision in Lair of the Damned.
[H1] Gameplay
• Improved movement of quadruped animals (wolves, rats, etc.)
• Fixed several world animals that did not move correctly on terrain
• Added APEX cloth to Cultist Robes
• Adjusted animation weighting on various armors
• Added descriptions to dungeons
• Changed behavior of groups so that groups persist through all map transitions
• Players can leave their group at any time to join another or start their own
• Crit box simplification and damage area changes
• Crit damage changed to 150% and only effective when hitting
targets head
• Body damage is no longer considered a Crit
• Limb hits only deal 80% damage
• Fix issues with player camera when climbing ladders
• Fix bug with AI that won’t die in Lava
• Fix collision issues with boss doors and projectiles/navigation
• Update audio engine to fix some minor bugs with voice
• Fixed player spawning and team reservation in groups for PvP
• Updated loading screen images
• Fixed several bugs with grouping, matchmaking and player travel
• Fixed pathing on NPC’s in town
• Fixed issue with NPC spawning in Lair of the Damned that would cause NPC’s to spawn in lava.
• Fixed issue where some Boss Cards would not display or log correctly in Journal.
• Improvements to several buildings in the town
• Improved collision on several objects in the town
Thanks for playing. We look forward to seeing you in game!
John
http://store.steampowered.com/app/436560/
Patch 51a – Patch Notes
Good Evening!
This is a small patch to fix character issues
Account Management
• Fixed an issue causing some players to not see all of their characters following the character migration.
Patch 51 – Patch Notes
Good Afternoon!
This is a small patch to fix some issues we were able to resolve.
Performance
• Fixed disconnect issues found in several dungeons
• Optimized network traffic of dungeon floors
• Fixed several occurrences in which destructible objects were not appearing until destroyed
• Fixed physics issues with destructible objects and the loot they may contain
• Made gamepad icon overlays optional (off by default)
• Optimized collision in Lair of the Damned
[H1]Gameplay
• The Frozen Caverns (Ice Caves) have been disabled until dungeon is active. We hope to have it available within the next two weeks.
Patch 50 – Patch Notes
Good Evening!
Thank you for your patience. The servers should be back online and the notes for the patch are below.
Combining Servers
In an effort to improve the overall experience for our players, we have combined server populations. During Early Access, we have found that we can support play from multiple regions and this should offer a better experience for existing and new players going forward. When you login to Character Selection, you will see 4 tabs with 6 character slots each. These 4 tabs will contain all the characters you’ve previously created. If you have not created the maximum number of characters, these will be empty character slots that you may use to create new characters.
[H1]Performance [/H1]
• Update Engine version
• Fix issues with destructible objects detecting damage
• Fix several crashes and disconnects in dungeons
• Adjust number of loaded objects in dungeons for a slight performance improvement
[H1]UI[/H1]
• Began process of replacing UI with native Unreal UI (Lobby only). All of the UI will be replaced for performance and maintenance issues in the near future.
• Replaced and upgraded many UI elements and images
• Character Lobby UI functionality increased. Players may now adjust settings from Lobby.
Gameplay
• Fixed Amarian locomotion animations
• Fixed tether issue of some NPC’s
• Fixed several dungeon issues with sections of the Lair of the Damned that would cause failures prohibiting dungeon progression
• Fixed issue with Boss Doors making them unable to unlock
• Fixed issue where boss door would not unlock when multiple bosses present.
• Updated projectile effects for arrows
• Fixed Darkspire NPC’s spawning with incorrect loot
• Fixed tooltips on several potions that were incorrect
• Improved inventory UI performance.
• Improved Merchant UI interaction and performance.
• Improved environment and NPC audio
• Fixed animation states on several NPC’s for being stunned and blinded.
