Hey guys, let's jump right in.
First and foremost - the game runs poorly for most of you (it does for me.) The very first thing we wanted to get done was get it running for as many users as possible. We spent some time over the weekend looking at it.
As I mentioned last week - at least some portion of the performance problem (probably/hopefully a lot of it) has been the sheer size of the map. We tested builds with incrementally smaller maps to evaluate this, and as suspected the game runs much smoother with a slimmed down map. (I'll add - the proposed size of the zone feels plenty large, and still takes ~1 minute to fly straight across.)
In testing, I noticed there still seems to be some "grit" (for lack of a better term) while moving that persisted no matter how large or small the map is. Initially this seemed like the last tiny bits of hardware chop, but the camera was reporting 60+fps and remained smooth throughout. Our hypothesis is there is still something in the dragon animation or player controller that is acting a little odd, and it was never really noticed until now - we'll be looking at that soon. (TM)
Overall - the above observation aside, I can report that the game is running smoothly again on the smaller map.
The next big step will be implementing the infrastructure for the overworld map; this is all new so it may take a little trial and error, but once it's worked out it should help us (eventually) create content faster. We started breaking ground on this already, but it won't be ready to patch in until it is fleshed out and working properly-ish; so this will take some time yet.
As far as the specific map - for now, we have used the "original" map and just disabled most of it; in the future we will be able to make new made-to-order maps for specific areas.
In addition to these major things, we have a pretty long list running that includes some tidying up and quality of life improvements; some remaining controls and camera tweaks, etc. I will post this list over in the forums, feel free to toss any requests on it that match the flavor (i.e. not looking for feature requests, just stuff that needs to feel/look/handle better.) We'll prioritize the low hanging fruit first.
At this moment in time, the next patch will probably just be the smaller map. I'm sorry it is not more exciting than that, but hopefully some of you that haven't been able to play will be able to get in and fly around smoothly for a change.
Later this week, I will status the overworld map implementation and our list of QOL fixes, and start to talk about plans for the next patch as the picture materializes.
-Laersk