Multiplayer Progress Update

1. Ensuring our content, up to reaching End of Time, is polished and easy to play. A major system we are to begin on is Waypointing so players can play asynchronously more easily.

• We’ve made incredible progress here! We are now playing content together, starting from logging in from End of Time and using waypoints to travel across the eras. Quest and scene states are being polished and the town portal logic is working well. We’re still figuring out some of the logic of some side quests for example, but most work well and we’re happy with them.
  

2. Debugging our party system to ensure play is as smooth as possible. The last 20% is the trickiest.

• A lot of code that was written early on for the party system was simplified and optimized significantly this month. Parties are now fully functional.
  

3. Planning for earlier access to one of our endgame systems in order to extend multiplayer play to make it viable for wider testing.

• For July to August, we decided to go with the Arena system and have successfully implemented it. Playing the Arena in a party has a number of new considerations, such as the need for a voting system to progress to further waves, how to handle distributing rewards for multiple players before progressing, how a single player’s death will affect the part and ongoing arena run, and more. We crafted a voting system and are internally testing the Arena every week now in 2-3 hour sessions!
  
  Our highest group Arena ranking is currently Rank 53, which is very modest compared to leaderboard numbers. I imagine somebody will score a much higher ranking in this week’s playtest.
  
  How the Arena can work in a multiplayer environment is a very interesting discussion and I’m happy to field questions about it below.
  

4. Collecting data. We need to not only be able to monitor and track player activity to help inform good decisions, we need to be able to monitor all of our front-end and back-end systems if we want to provide you a high quality experience like other online ARPGs.

• Progress over the last month has been steady. There are so many data points a high quality Action RPG wants to collect, and how we collect and store them is as critical as the data itself.
  
  We are now storing our game server health metrics on a very popular and large scale cloud service. We also successfully added player data collection for things such as class, abilities, levels, and more. Adding more data points is fairly trivial for us to do - even for things such as items.
  
  Our work over the next few months will be focused on interpreting and using the data to maximize online stability, and gain insights about players.
  

5. Optimizing our server size in order to save cost, and this comes in two major forms: server optimization, and “netcode” optimization. We are profiling our server to reduce its size online in order to allow us to put more servers on a single machine. We are optimizing our “netcode” to significantly reduce the size of the data we need to send between the server and clients, as well as optimize our gameplay code to reduce the amount of computations we send to the server in the first place.

• In the last month we managed to reduce our server memory overhead by quite a bit (~30%). We are now in a range where it’s efficient enough to host our game servers at mass scale. We’ll continue to further optimize the server footprint up to release.
  
  We are constantly improving our game code to be more efficient, much in the same way we have done with our graphical performance. On this note, I may only provide updates in this department in the future when there are really significant finds!
  

6. Getting our idol and potion systems working server-authoritatively, so you can complete your character build (and survive!).

• We have fully implemented potions and they are server authoritative as well. Idols are still a work in progress, and it’s not so much an issue with server authority as it is the case that idol unlock slots need to be properly synced to the client, and then all the idol affixes need a heavy QA pass and Multiplayer playtesting.
  

7. Scaling up to approach the ability to test more widely!

• We doubled the amount of bare metal servers we are hosting, and are now successfully using emergency alternatives for potential sudden spikes in concurrent players.
  

What Are Our Goals For September?

• More testing and optimization of the Arena experience for multiple players in a party, and advance supporting systems noted above
  
• Convert the Idol System to be 100% server authoritative
  
• Collect additional server performance data
  
• Improve gamepad support for server-side multiplayer
  
• Start preparing to add Multiplayer to the Community Tester Program. This will involve fixing many “minor” bugs that we are used to internally but would not want testers to have to suffer through
  

One-handed Axes - Examples

Two-handed Axes - Examples

Darkness within the jewel of the desert...
Coming September 3, 2021

User Interface

• Fixed the chat window failing to scroll automatically in some situations.
  
• You can now search for attribute tags in the main skills window.
  
• Fixed searching for Minion or Totem not working in the main skills window.
  
• Fixed Shield Throw having the tooltip for Shield Rush in the passives window.
  
• Fixed a bug where Show + Emphasize loot filter rules would not emphasize items on the first attempt.
  

Skills

• Fixed a bug where attempting to channel a skill while already channeling another skill (or instance of the same skill) would cause the player to get stuck in a channeling animation.
  
• Fixed a bug where Sigils of Hope could in rare cases cause negative stats and a black circle around your character.
  
• Fixed a bug where non-stationary Assembled Abominations that could use Soul Reave would attempt to use basic attack while out of range after they used Soul Reave.
  
• Fixed Drain Life and Maelstrom’s tooltip DPS being increased by generic ailment chance stats. These only work with skills that hit, and these skills do not hit.
  

Monolith of Fate

Stability

• After considering community feedback, we felt that the 0.8.2g changes over-corrected the stability requirements, so we’re aiming to strike a balance.
  
• The maximum stability benefit from corruption has been increased by around 7%, so that echoes at the start of a 350+ corruption web give exactly 50 stability.
  
• Empowered timeline 3rd quest echo stability requirements now range from 750 to 900 (from all being 750).
  
• 2nd quest echo stability requirements have also been increased slightly for some empowered timelines..
  
• 3rd quest echo stability requirements for non-empowered timelines from Ending the Storm and onwards have been reduced by 50.
  
• The maximum stability for empowered timelines is still always twice the requirement for its 3rd quest echo.
  

Quest Echoes

• The state of a quest echo is now reset each time you enter it. This fixes various problems, such as objective indicators not appearing in a quest echo if you had previously abandoned the echo, or if you switched to empowered before completing the whole quest line.
  

User Interface

• Grand Blessings now replace standard blessings in the “Discovered Blessings” section of the blessings tab when discovered.
  
• The functionality you choose for left click is now saved between game sessions.
  
• The icon for left click now updates if you configured left click to use a skill.
  
• The search box when you first open the skills panel now works with most skill tags.
  

Chat

• Chat has been re-enabled with improved spam prevention. We still have more improvements planned.
  
• Improved the performance of the chat window. This will mitigate the game freezing if a very large amount of chat messages are being received.
  
• Chat messages can now be 280 characters long (from 220).
  

Controller Support

• Fixed a bug where using skills (especially movement skills) with a controller could freeze/crash the game in certain situations.
  

Monolith of Fate

• Beacon echoes can no longer spawn adjacent to each other.
  
• Holding ctrl + alt while hovering over a Blessing now shows its potential range of values.
  
• If you die in an echo and then complete it later, destroying a Vessel of Memory will now restore the echo's guaranteed reward.
  
• Fixed a bug where logging out or going to a different zone before unlocking empowered timelines would prevent you from unlocking them for that character. Affected characters can now unlock the timelines as normal.
  
• Fixed a bug where completing a quest echo would grant stability equal to the previous non-quest echo you ran (and also reapply some of its other on-completion effects).
  
• Fixed a bug where the timeline stability bar could be incorrectly filled when moving to a new timeline.
  
• Fixed “reduced corruption” rewards using the same icon as “added corruption” rewards.
  

Stability

• Completing the 3rd quest echo of a timeline now reduces stability by the 3rd quest echo's requirement, rather than reducing it to 0.
  
• The 3rd quest echo in empowered timelines now requires 750 stability (from 1000 in 0.8.2d). The stability requirement for the 2nd quest echo has also been reduced for most empowered timelines.
  
• Stability requirements for the 2nd and 3rd quest echoes have been reduced for higher level non-empowered timelines.
  
• Empowered timelines now all have a maximum stability of 1500 (so you can save up 2 quest echo runs, assuming no deaths).
  
• The amount of Timeline Stability granted by rewards at 350 corruption and above is 12.5% lower.
  

Spires

• The maximum number of spires in a single echo has been reduced to 4 (from 5).
  
• Fewer spires spawn on average in a spire echo.
  
• All spires have a 20% longer delay between attacks.
  
• Bone spires deal 34% less damage.
  
• Wengari Spires deal 30% less damage.
  
• Fixed the names of spire abilities (shown on the death screen).
  

User Interface

• Fixed various visual bugs related to fading between different tabs in the world map.
  
• Polished scrolling behavior in the world map while the quest list is open.
  
• Removed “Monolith of Fate” labels from waypoints in the End of Time map tab.
  
• The ladder now shows the Softcore tab by default.
  
• The fill on the floating ward bar above the player character's head now works the same way as the fill on the ward bar above the health globe.
  
• Fixed a bug where the ward bar above the health globe would only fill to 73% capacity.
  
• Fixed icons for Marksman skills in the passive panel not changing color when unlocked.
  

Skills

• Fixed a bug where attempting to channel a skill while already channeling another skill (or instance of the same skill) would cause the player to get stuck in a channeling animation.
  
• Fixed a bug where resummoning a Bone Golem with the Marrow Eater node active could break various other minion-centric effects.
  
• Earthquake’s Cataclysm now converts all base and added damage to fire (from just converting added damage, which was very low for the default melee variant).
  
• Earthquake’s Storm Rift now adds 50 lightning damage to the initial hit (from 30).’
  
• Fixed a bug where Entangling Roots’ nodes for buffing minions were not buffing minions.
  
• Fixed a bug where Flurry’s Shockwave could not trigger Kineticism on kill.
  
• Added sub-ability tooltips for Kineticism.
  
• Fixed the Enra’s Technique node for Hammer Throw granting too much crit when Hammer Vortex was also taken.
  
• Fixed an incorrect scaling description for Harvest’s Elements of Death node.
  
• Reaper Form’s alt tooltip now describes that excess damage taken in Reaper Form is dealt to your human form health.
  
• Fixed a bug where Thorn Totem’s Rotten Core node did not apply to Healing Totems with the Spiked Totem node.
  

Mechanics

• If you have a stat granting you "% of missing health gained as ward per second" levelling up no longer heals you to full (as this can be counterproductive for survival). Instead, you gain ward equal to your maximum health.
  

Enemies

• Updated animations for Zombie enemies.
  

Items

• Updated 2d art for all Shade of Orobyss uniques.
  
• Fixed a bug where alt text for various stat lines on uniques did not display (particularly on stats that can’t exist on normal items).
  
• Clarified that Flight of the First’s Ancient Flight can’t be triggered by movement skills.
  
• Increased melee damage and increased physical damage spawn more rarely on shields.
  
• Increased the value of the increased mana regen affix for tiers 1 to 4. Tier 1 is now 10% to 14% (from 8% to 11%).
  

Performance

• Fixed a bug where opening the Crafting Materials window would permanently affect performance for the rest of the gameplay session. This reduced fps by 20-30 in our testing.
  
• Still having performance issues? Try these steps while we continue working on improvements:
  
  • Validate the game's files.
    
  • Restart your computer and reduce how many apps are running.
    
  • Install any Windows updates.
    
  • Update your drivers or any other pending software upgrades.
    

Changes

• Reduced the damage of Ice Whirlwinds used by Wengari Spires by 37.5%.
  
• Reef Time Gates spawn more Stranded Sailors.
  
• Yulia's Husk deals 500% more damage with her Ice Mortar and 40% less damage with her Ice Vortex.
  
• Enemy healthbars now disappear more quickly when they die.
  
• Added additional details to the outskirts of the world map.
  
• The "total affix tiers of" loot filter condition now looks at the affixes you've selected in that rule instead of all affixes on the item.
  
  • To achieve the old functionality, make a rule that has all affixes selected.
    

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that caused leaderboard entries to be removed. Old leaderboard entries can’t be recovered, but this won’t happen anymore.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Shade of Orobyss could not use cold abilities on targets within melee range.
  
• Fixed a bug where it was possible for the world map for End of Time to get stuck, preventing you from panning.
  
• The notice for viewing additional quests now shows the map keybind instead of the old quest journal keybind.
  
• Fixed some outdated information in the Game Guide and loading screen tips.
  
• Fixed the “clear search” button for loot filters not working.
  
• Fixed Voidwing Nests not having an outline on hover.
  

Monolith of Fate

• Lowered the stability requirements of the 3rd quest echo for all timelines other than the first.
  
  • This reduction is smaller for non-empowered timelines.
    
  • The 3rd quest echo now requires 1000 stability for all empowered timelines (from 1000 to 1350 depending on timeline).
  
  
• “Slay enemies to locate __” is now listed as a separate objective in the quest tracker for echoes that use a delayed objective pulse (Bosses and Time Gates).
  
• Time Gates now also have delayed objective pulses like Bosses.
  
• The threshold for showing delayed monolith objective pulses now varies based on zone. It's higher than before in most zones, but lower in zones where going in a random direction may result in significant backtracking.
  
• The icons for unavailable echoes are now darker and less saturated to make available echoes more clear.
  
• Adjusted the position of the monolith reward object in Echo of a World.
  

Optimization

• Greatly improved the performance of hideable objects (things that fade out when they block the camera). This likely caused stutters or reduced fps in many zones.
  
• Players have reported that validating game files can help with performance or stability issues. We’ll continue investigating, but validating files, updating drivers / OS and restarting your computer are good troubleshooting steps.
  

Other Changes

• Updated 2d art for Aurora’s Time Glass and Flight of the First
  
• The Possess ailment deals 33% increased damage.
  
• Updated sounds for the monolith reward object in Echo of a World.
  
• Removed Detonate Corpse from the list of skills on Lich when creating a new character.
  

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that allowed gaining infinite amounts of gold.
  
• Fixed a bug where the spin attack used by Desecrated Flesh was not cancelled by killing or stunning the enemy.
  
• Fixed a bug where Puncture’s Mutilate node did not restore health.
  
• Fixed a bug where The Claw and The Fang would not summon all wolves at once.
  
• Fixed being able to click through the character stats window in some places.
  
• Fixed being able to click through skill unlock notifications in the passives window.
  
• Fixed the search bar for the Game Guide not having a cancel button.
  
• Fixed Dreamthorn’s 3d art being incorrect.