Hello warriors!
This week we have something big for you! It’s not your average Gloria Victis weekly update – it’s really huge! There are massive changes to the controller and synchronization, redefined formulas for the Glory system along with the start of a new season, new questlines and…the return of first-person view! Read more below and enjoy the update!
Controller/synchronization – responsiveness redefined!
We’ve been carefully gathering your feedback, and we realized that over 80% of our negative reviews came from users who haven’t even spent 2 hours in game, while players with more than 5 hours on record gave us over 80% of our positive reviews. In effect these new players haven’t even had a chance to try our core features like taking a part in sieges or even engage in PvP battles. We were digging deeper and it became obvious that most of these negative reviews were caused by the feeling of client-side rubberbanding and an overall lack of responsiveness.
In order to address these issues, we’ve reworked the controller and synchronization system with a completely new approach in mind. It’s now much more responsive, so the issues with client-side rubberbanding and snapping your character should be much less frequent now. Of course, we’re aware there may be bugs, and we know that NPCs synchronization needs further tweaking. Most of our programmers will spend the next week or two on polishing this huge change. The goal is to improve first impressions, since it’s hard to keep new player in-game and progress to the end-game content if the first minutes just aren’t fun enough.
Also, the synchro and controller rework allowed us to add another big thing. Ladies and gentlemen…The first-person view is back!
Glory system redefined & new season!
We were also aware that the current Glory system had some issues. We’ve addressed them in this update – what has changed?
The current system you are familiar with had intentional Glory loss for being defeated by a lower-ranked enemy – but defeating a higher-ranked enemy was very rewarding. We had to implement this solution in order to give lower-ranked players any chance to pursue those at the top of the Glory board. However, it was discouraging for the best players to PvP in the open world since they risked losing lot of glory in every battle, especially considering the fact that PvP encounters aren’t and can’t always be even matchups. In effect, the reward for holding your ground was blurred by the rage factor caused by Glory loss on death.
From now on, instead of counting kills and deaths, the Glory system will reward you for open-world warfare activities such as capturing locations, completing PvP events, and defending your nation’s lands. At the same time, the new system doesn’t involve any kind of Glory loss, eliminating the rage factor mentioned above.
The new Glory formula includes numerous anti-exploit systems as well. First of all, capturing the same flag over and over will result in a diminishing amount of earned points. Also, the amount of points for capturing and defending a flag depends on the numbers of your enemy – attacking an empty castle won’t give you glory. Also, if your warband defends a castle and heavily outnumbers the attackers, there’s a chance you won’t get any point for this defense.
Don’t sit at home – go to war! In effect, the Glory ranking is now an actual open PvP ranking, honouring the legendary heroes and warlords whose names are written in stone. Become one!
Also, since Glory is now the open-world warfare leaderboard, it doesn’t count pure PvE. However, PvE is shown on a separate leaderboard so you can still climb up the ranks and do what you enjoy! Moreover, the weekly Contribution Points rewards will be given basing on the leaderboard in which the player has the highest position, allowing you to specialize in your favorite aspect of Gloria Victis. Speaking of rewards – a new season has just started! Take your rewards for the last season and climb to the top of the leaderboard – the season will end in about 2 months!
Last but not least – while kills and deaths are no longer counted in the Glory system, they will be moved to a separate arena duels PVP ranking system with the upcoming updates. It will offer you even match-making fights where your skill makes the difference. In contrast to Glory, this ranking isn’t season-based and is cleared once a week.
Some love for the questlovers
This update adds the second part of the starting quests for the Sangmar Empire! The new questline is as long as the first one and tells a story of pride, faith and… what? Check it on your own – the journey starts at Fort Serai!
We’ve also restored the mid- and end-game questlines taking place in the two villages set by a bridge and the Dead Raven Inn. Both locations have been moved to new places in order to fit the current world PVP balance. If you haven’t a chance to complete them yet, this is your chance!
Work in Progress insight – our plans for the nearest future
First things first – most of our programmers will spend the next week or two on polishing the synchronization system and controller. However, once this is done, we’ll finally be able to move to adding cool features. Our plans include: adding the farming system, expanding the sieges mechanics, AI improvements and so on!
Of course, all these brilliant features will require a lot of work, so we hope to be able to expand the development team thanks to the Supporter Shop which is going to come to life this month! You will be able to support the game’s development directly by purchasing numerous goods – none of which will give an advantage in PVP – such as abilities points reset, re-customization and nation change.
We’re also progressing with moving buffs to a new database system. Of course, we took an opportunity to improve them in the meantime, so you can expect not only fixes but also new cool stuff soon, such as special effects applied by specific weapon types, alchemy, cooking and the hunger system. P.S. - Tier V passive abilities are coming pretty soon, too. Stay tuned!
Also, as already mentioned, you can expect the arena system to go live pretty soon. You can already practice in dedicated arenas located in the main cities which we added in the last update, and with the upcoming patches you will be able to compete in ranked duels. Do you have what it takes to become a world-famous duelist?
We’re also moving ahead with translating the entire game to the core languages. We already have the background for translating the game interface, items, recipe names, and NPC speeches, and many languages already have them translated. Now the time has come for dialogue!
Enjoy the update and see you in battle!
Changelog v.0.8.1.0
Gameplay:
– Complete overhaul of the synchronization/controller system – we’ve put in a lot of work to improve the controller responsiveness and movement comfort
– Improved detection of steep slopes
– Reworked the Glory system formula
– Started new Glory season and gave rewards and titles for the last one
– Added reduction of player’s movement speed when moving up a slope
– Added first-person view – you can switch view modes with dedicated key (by default: N)
– Added second stage of the Sangmar Empire starting quests – they start in Fort Serai
– Added new type of daily events – killing enemy players, including assists
– Moved the Dead Raven Inn to new location and restored the questlines taking place there – now it’s placed in the middle of the link between Midland and Sangmar Empire; we’ll add additional locations with questlines soon at the 2 remaining links
– Moved 2 quest villages set by a bridge to new location and restored the questlines taking place in there – now they are placed closer to the halfway point between Baalhammon and Castle Audunstede
– Reduced the difficulty of upgrading locations at 2nd and 3rd level by replacing some materials with lower-tier ones in order to adjust the upgrading balance due to recent changes in resource distribution across the world – this change will help you to upgrade locations placed in your nation’s home lands
– Increased rewards for “The Cohort Strikes Back” events – now you can earn up to 7 wines/meads
– Added missing Sangmarian top medium and heavy armor (chestpiece and helmet) recipes to assortment of the Glory vendor in the Last Stand fort
– Added combat log notifications about player’s attack being blocked by an NPC enemy and performing body attacks (charge)
– Improved the reputation system background architecture
Fixes:
– Fixed an issue causing exiting the blocking state while holding the block key with 0 stamina which led to ghost hits with shield bash
– Fixed an issue which could lead to bugging out the player’s (new character) titles in case of titles with specified progress thresholds, like “take X flags”
– Fixed displaying players’ levels in the friends window – they weren’t being updated in some edge cases
– Numerous fixes to gameplay and level design glitches reported through the reporting tool