Hello warriors!
Two days ago, on Tuesday, we celebrated national Independence Day in Poland. Other parts of the world have celebrated Veterans Day, Armistice Day, Remembrance Day or other important occasions in memory of historical moments. Looking into the past with pride and looking with courage into the future, we are happy to say that some historical moments are also coming in for Gloria Victis MMO and Black Eye Games Studio.
Being a small independent game studio is a blessing because it is giving us more freedom, and we can be closer to our players. But it also obligates us to work much harder than other studios, give our whole heart to the project, be here for our precious Community, and sometimes make tough decisions. We set the bar high, and since releasing the game as an Early Access title back in the June of 2016 we delivered 246 weekly updates in 225 weeks! (Yes, I know, more updates than weeks, but that is true!) We made over 500 server-side updates, and we are on the last straight to leave the alpha stage of the project, move to beta, and shortly after - leave Early Access. Do not be afraid - the game already is and will remain fully playable during the process, which is best proven by the players with thousands of hours in-game!
As you know, most of the dev team is working on Freebuilding overhaul. We are almost ready to show it to you, but we decided to postpone today’s update. We want to run more tests so we will be sure it works as intended, is polished as well as it is possible, and to do further preparations related to engine upgrade that have an impact on the mentioned feature. Freebuilding overhaul is going to be released next week if everything will go smoothly.
We received a lot of great captures related to the announced Hussar screenshot competition, and it is great to see our Community more and more active inside the game and around the project. It is heartwarming to see our players dressed in red and white, putting polish emblems on the shields, and Wings of Glory on their backs. Let me remind you that you can submit your screenshot and have a chance to be rewarded with Ambers till midnight, today!
The screenshot author has been awarded. DoomCakes – check your Ambers!
Work in Progress Insight:
Freebuilding overhaul
Freebuilding is one of the biggest and most impactful systems of the game. When we introduced it into the game it became another layer of gameplay and economy and gave players a lot of freedom on the field of creativity and tactical aspects of the game.
We received tons of feedback about the system and gathered enormous amounts of data to learn the potential issues of the feature and to improve it even more. A lot of changes has been introduced in weekly updates, fixing some bugs, improved the user experience and balance of the locations. Overhaul of the system is addressing those aspects of the system that were harder to improve and required more time to introduce needed solutions.
Changes in Freebuilding will be released in iterations, since like it was pointed before – it is an enormous system with a lot of relations to other game features. We want to gather feedback from you and adjust everything to find the best compromise between your comfort and satisfaction.
All models of third tier wooden wall pieces
Models and grid
One of the most important changes that will be introduced is a total rework of castle buildings and walls. We changed every piece that was introduced earlier and added new types of pieces which will allow you to make your castles well-looking and will give you more options to prepare defence layout with better usage of locations grids. This change is not related only to Guild Castles – Nation ones are also receiving a full renovation.
Top tier corner wall model - take a closer look at the moss on the wall - this detail is changing depending on terrain - castles will look more integrated with the land and look different placed on snow or on the tropical area
Models of walls are now filling the grid more accurately and intuitively, removing a lot of issues related to chokepoints and encouraging players to make their creations look more real and comfy. In later iterations, we will introduce a highly requested system that will show you the grid of your castle and will allow you to design your lines of defence and location layout according to what you would like to achieve.
Renewed models are the great refreshment of the visual aspects of the game. Our designers and graphics team made an awesome work recreating the pieces with much more detail, integrity and optimization.
New grid usage of every buildable model. You can compare this one with the old system here
Tactical aspects of the game
Models are not covering only part and are not going out of the grid square. The previous system allowed to create very small chokepoints in the defences and in the new system it is impossible to make the passage narrower than half the diagonal of the grid, which is making the smallest possible chokepoint 13 times wider than currently.
The system will encourage you to build more realistic castles and spend your defence points equally around the grid. It is still possible to build more than one layer of the walls, but since the economical buildings will need more space and it will be not possible to clip them through other buildings – they will require some more space inside and it will be much better to upgrade the walls instead placing other lines of them. The terrain around the grid will allow enemies to walk around fortifications if defenders let them close enough, so it will be very important to make your defences well thought all around, instead of placing layers of walls only from one side.
We also introducing a lot of smaller changes like murder holes in gates and adjusting the model of the main building to prevent players from jumping on them from the walls. We addressed also every known bug, for an example with the wrong rotation of placed building in comparison to its ghost, but I will tell you more about that in the changelog next week. I hope you cannot wait to try the renewed system of Freebuilding and you will like the outcome of the changes!
One of the castles build during internal test sessions
Changelog v.9.4.X Alpha
An updated Client test session
Servers of Gloria Victis MMO are running on updated engine version for around a month. We are very happy with the outcome – we noticed performance boost and better stability. Now, we are starting a global test session of the game Client on a new engine, which will give us needed data to achieve better results in game optimization, performance and stability.
All you need to do to participate in the test session is to make few clicks in Steam options. Right-click Gloria Victis in your Steam library, move to options, choose the "BETAS" tab and pick Engine Update Test Version from the dropdown as it is shown on this gif.
From your side, the game will work as usual, but we would be thankful for keeping an eye and reporting to us anything that may be suspicious to you – any random crashes or other similar issues that have a slight possibility to occur. We are looking for any regression in any of the game systems, but we do hope that we covered everything in our internal tests. We are counting on your reports and feedback!
Test server for North and South Americas!
Since we are receiving a lot of feedback that players from North and South Americas would like to try playing on server covering both of those regions, we are launching new [NA/SA] Test Server. It should be able to ensure good ping rates to players from [NA] Aquilla and [SA] Monteverde servers that are currently running. For other testing purposes, we will host a PVP event on the new test server.
Important note:
Ping indicator on server list WILL NOT represent the real ping rates on the new NA/SA test server. It may show that ping will be worse than on Aquilla for an example, but ping indicator on servers list it will not display a real, meaningful result. We need data directly from the game!
Be sure to note your ping on the servers you are currently playing (Aquilla and Monteverde), to be able to compare it with a ping on the new NA/SA test server. We need your feedback with that specified information and the more players will send us their feedback, the better we would be able to find the best possible server placement and routings. It is also crucial to send us with mentioned ping rates your whereabouts and your internet services provider name. Send your reports using the ingame feedback tool!
PVP Event on Saturday!
In addition to a few days long test session, we are preparing a PVP event this weekend! It will start at 10:30 PM GMT (Saturday, November 14th).
Join us in the arena on the new [NA/SA] Test Server and fight for fame in 5v5 battles. We are inviting everyone, especially our new players! The winners will be immortalized on the in-game monuments, and everyone that will come will be rewarded!
Stay tuned and see you in battle!