17.8.1 is mostly a maintenance patch to address a few issues and fix the issue preventing us from deploying it earlier. We did add in an update to the anti-aliasing in this patch. If AA is at High or Ultra now it will use TXAA (before it was off or using FXAA, which is now Low and Medium). We found a few changes to make the TXAA acceptable to use with a lot less blur and streaking. We encourage everyone to check out the Ultra setting and see if that works for you. Performance hit for it is maybe 2-5% for modern video cards. TXAA should remove most of the jaggies and the shimmering, but it is slightly less crisp than no AA. It also enabled a few shaders that do not work without it enabled (the water for example looks much better).
The patch also includes adjustments from the 17.6.1 patch includes fixing the guild invite bug so you can properly invite a player to join your guild and includes a few input adjustments, a new loading screen, removal of VR plugin, and some animation adjustments.
Animations
- Blending adjustments were made to the following creatures: Calprates, Jabberbull, Lurker, Mubark, Drosera, Rhinoc, Rocharus
Miscellaneous
- Removed the VR plugins from the game. They were causing issues if you had a VR set plugged in and could reduce performance as well.
- Introduced TXAA as an option for Anti-Aliasing at High and Ultra. Performance hit is marginal so you might want to check out Ultra and see if you prefer it over the previous options.
User Interface
- Added a new loading screen plugin to display a loading screen between transferring between the menu and into the game.
- Fixed an issue with not being able to click on the guild invite prompts.
- You can now add map markers using the controller.
- There is now a gamma value in the options to adjust the gamma if the game is too dark or bright.