New Home Base
This patch introduces the first phase of the new home area. It will be replacing the watchtower and is meant to provide a less claustrophobic, and more versatile area to stage your defense of the Spirit Anchor.
The first change to the new staging area is spreading out the different mechanics to their own areas. Instead of being bombarded with many different items with complex interactions all around you, each station in the new home area has a particular purpose. You can go to the Reforging station to re-roll your items for better stats, or you can go to the Armory to change your current equipment.
For this first phase, we have simply moved all of the existing mechanics out of the watchtower and into this new area. For the next phase we will be improving on these mechanics so that each station feels unique and useful by itself without the previous space limitations of the watchtower (For instance a scrolling shelf full of items to chose from and place on the mannequin instead of switching through items with flat UI)
New Home Features
As we continue we will also be expanding the home area to include new areas and features. For example the new target practice range has a number of targets that can show you your damage output using various abilities if Combat Text is turned on in the Interface settings.
The new home area has a lot of room for growth as the game evolves, so don't forget to take a look around once in a while for new areas!
Scene Merging
In addition to the new and existing features being included in the new home base, the Target Range scene is being merged in to provide a single access point to all features without a loading screen. Not only will this give you more to do while waiting for friends to test out a new item or reforge their gear, but it will also let you play against each other in the Archery mini-game.
The tutorial will also eventually be merged into the base so that everything in the game can be easily accessed from a single place.
Bow Power Curve Adjustment
A few players have raised concerns about the accuracy of the bow draw-to-power ratio. Previously we used a logarithmic curve to give new players and those with different arm lengths a similar experience. However with the addition of more bow adjustment options and a few other tweaks, it is now more reasonable to use a much more realistic curve to model the bow strength.
This is the actual bow power-to-pull curve for a recurve bow, and here is our new curve (with the old curve for comparison). Hopefully this will improve the experience for those of you who are used to shooting bows outside of VR and will give everyone a more authentic archery experience.