Greetings, Warriors!
We are delighted to introduce a feature we were working on for the last few weeks. Desired by many, helpful to everyone – Party Finder is finally implemented! From now on it will be much easier to find game content suitable for you, and group up to take part in the common activities or global conquest. That great addition to the game allows you to create and manage your party and friends list a lot easier, as well as increases the activity of players in all aspects of the game.
At the same time, to improve the game balance and prevent toxicity, we are addressing the Community voice after a record-breaking in-game questionnaire, in which 89% of active players agreed to the implementation of a cooldown on logging into different nations accounts from the same PC.
Additionally, we are improving our automated moderation systems, and delivering a lot of Quality of life changes and fixes, thanks to our precious Community feedback, reports, and suggestions!
The screenshot’s authors have been awarded. xoTRIGGERox, Ghostickles, John and Chris
– check your Ambers!
Changelog v.0.9.7.4 Beta
Party Finder:
The Party Finder is live! You can find it in the game under the “Socials' tab and test its functionalities already.
The system is a lobby, where players can create or join a Warband or party and manage their friends' list, and blocked/mute players!
Players who want to create a party can do it in a new way, using a dedicated button in the socials tab. During creation, we will be able to name it, provide information about the goal of the group, choose the party type, and mark if the number of players in the party should be public or not.
All the systems that allow you to create parties in the old way by inviting players by /request command or right-clicking on them are staying in the game, but you will be able to add parties created in those ways to the lobby list too!
From now on it will be much easier to know that something is going nearby and you can join the fight or event, players will not need to plead on the chat to find a group or request help. It will be much easier and convenient to find something to do in the game and be more united in the common conquest.
The minimap received a dedicated button, which will be showing the number of active parties in the area. Clicking the button or proper shortcut on the keyboard will open the socials tab with the lobby and friends list.
We hope you will find the new system helpful and it will be a great tool to share and improve your game experience with others. Please note that the system will be polished and iterated because there are still some parts of it that need to be polished and implemented. For example, when players will be in a nearby location where an event is ongoing or players who are participating in the same quest or event, they will receive a suggestion to join or request access to the biggest open party around or be encouraged to group up.
We will be thankful for your constructive feedback and opinions about it!
Automated login cooldown system:
While working on lowering game toxicity, and balancing the population in-game, we found out that almost all of the issues on that matter are related to abusing alt accounts that are being used for spying or trolling. While of course there are lots of players honoring the game rules, having fun, and not abusing the potential of having accounts in different nations, all you need is to have a group of players doing their worst to disturb other players' gameplay and make their game experience worse.
Almost all of the toxicity reports we receive are related to players using alt accounts in other nations, trying to unstabilize them. While it is technically impossible to moderate every case due to the scale of the game, and all moderation is a reaction after the action - we needed to find out the solution that will be fair for everyone, will not impact the honest and fair players gameplay, and will reduce the possibility of using the alternative accounts to disturb other players.
This is why, hearing the community voice, where 89% of players voted for "Rather Agree" or "Definitely Agree" when we asked if we should implement a cooldown on logging into different nation accounts from the same PC, we are delivering the automated system which will take care of that.
From now on, the game may not allow players to log in to other in-game nation accounts without a cooldown between logins, based on some circumstances.
Meet Michael, Robert, and Josh.
Michael has 2 accounts, both in one nation in the game. He owns his guild poster over his bed and he is playing on his accounts every day.
Robert is a casual, friendly, and helpful player, who is playing on all three of his accounts, each one placed in a different in-game nation, but he is respecting the game rules and favor fair play.
He never received any warning or penalty for breaking the game or chat rules.
Josh also has three accounts. But he is a player who was using his alternative accounts to troll other nations and insults them using nation chat. He is suspected of violating the game rules, reported by other players, and has received warnings and short-term punishments so far, but the moderator does not have enough evidence against him to ban him from the game.
So what will happen when they will now switch between their accounts?
Michael is free to switch his accounts as he wants. Nothing will stop him from logging onto the same nation accounts. There will be no warnings and no cooldowns. The other two players are also free to switch between the same nation accounts.
When Robert, who was never flagged by any penalty, will login onto another nation, he will receive a kind warning, that system detects switching nations and he will need to play for at least 30 minutes on the currently chosen nation or wait one hour outside the game before he will be able to log in on another nation (so get back on the account he played before too). After confirming that he understands the information, he can play the chosen - different - nation right away.
That means players who are following the game rules will rarely be prevented from switching accounts and playing on them in different nations right away because according to game data, the average gameplay session lasts around two hours. They will be able to switch right away and get back or pick another nation after a very short time. Remember, that players can switch their nations following the general rules, so moving to a long-term underdog nation or removing their characters.
Josh, on the other hand, is a player who broke the game rules, got punished, and is suspected of griefing other players using his alternative accounts. He can also switch between his accounts, and he will also receive a kind warning, but the cooldowns for him will be longer. If he logs on to another nation account now, he will not be able to move back or play on another nation account before he spends 12 hours in-game on the chosen nation, or 24 hours outside of the game.
This will greatly reduce the possibility of account hopping and encourage players who are not respecting the game and chat rules to rethink their behavior and mind their actions in-game.
All accounts which had a penalty or are related to the one with a penalty are automatically a subject of longer cooldowns, and all players who were openly playing on alternative accounts using them against their nation were automatically tagged for longer cooldowns. Penalty tracker that was updated to help automate this feature, a new penalty table that is being prepared in the background, as well the karma system, which login cooldowns are part of, may impact many more aspects of the game in the future, and we believe those are good moves to improve the game balance and prevent toxicity.
Disclaimer 1: As developers, we are not encouraging players to have alternative accounts in different nations. We are not preventing players to have them, but we want to remind you that using alternative accounts to violate game and chat rules will lead to penalties shared between all punished player's accounts and can lead to all their account suspensions.
Disclaimer 2: The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this explanation are fictitious. No identification with actual players, guilds, and nations is intended or should be inferred. No chickens were harmed in the making of this changelog.
Quality of Life:
– Clicking a register to the Valley of Death tournament from now on puts the player into an interruptible state for 5 seconds before sending the request, and we have disabled the registration while the player is dead to prevent players abusing registration in the middle of the fight or while dead to prevent looting.
– Reworked the global map legend. The legend is a list of clickable filters which players can use to show only the information and icons they want to see on the map. This is making the map adjustable, more clear, and convenient in use. It is still a work in progress, yet we decided it is much better than the previous one so we didn’t want to delay it.
– Tweaks to mobs AI: Giants and Moas (scavengers) attack animations will not break on hit, but will be properly mixed up. The mobs will not be slowing down their movement while being close to the target, as they stop while attacking. Giants received two additional attack animations.
– Update to resource node disintegration system. From now on all nodes have a solid, unbreakable core, which will indicate the exact place of the given node spawn.
– The experience and coins buff for the underdog is not any more related to the depth of underdog status. From now on, the buff is fixed, to prevent players from exploiting and manipulating the game balance by observing the buff stacks.
– Blockade for building on the castles now triggers on destroying the building, not hitting it, because of abusers shooting at the castles from afar to deny content and disturb other players' gameplay. Other building blocking variables did not change.
– Balanced the materials required to craft Karleonian Pick and Karleonian Mace, to show more clearly, that mace is stronger than pick and unify the complexity of their recipes.
Fixes:
– Fixed the issue causing 4 events in the Basilea sector were not possible to complete.
– Fixes for quests: The final touch, Blessing of the gods, Unexpected danger, and Sanctuary profaned.
– Fixed the loot table of Veteran from South NPC. It still drops decent items, but no top-tier ones anymore.
– Fixed the possibility to open a player context menu by clicking on his nickname on chat.
– Fixed the issue causing siege engines rotation to reset after their spawn.
– Fixed the issue causing old highlander miniboss to walk to the ocean and suicide after the spawn, which was preventing players to finish the global map event.
– Fixed the issue causing raubritters to do the same thing as above in some global events.
– Fixed the issue causing one of the windmills in the area north of Dunfen to have no colliders, so players were able to walk through its walls.
– Fixed the issue where some NPC characters were misplaced around Lobart’s Farm, Greenport, and Seaclaw.
– Fixed the issue causing one of the location guards on Basilea farm to spawn under the stairs.
– Fixed the small text issue on the Nation selection screen.