Dear Aspirants!
v0.13 is now out! It took a little longer than I had hoped - post-launch has been very hectic to say the least! I wanted to start off right, so v0.13 brings a bit of everything - Many bug-fixes and balancing changes, but also new content and features. From items to new meta-progression, to balancing in every single area of the game (and the much requested / reported issues!) - it should have something for everyone!
This update affects the difficulty of the game quite a lot, so definitely let me know what you think. Trainee mode has been extended to 10 runs, so make sure you let me know which difficulty you are on when commenting on the difficulty/balance!
Early Access v0.13 - Full Changelog
New Content & Features
- Smart shop: the first two shop items will now be within 1 tier of your character, and all other shop items have a 25% chance to be within 1 tier of your character. (Update 2 will further expand on this - eg. removing duplicates)
- Added Rank up Reward: Permanent gold increase, up to max 5000 (all characters)
- Added Rank up Reward: Permanent fame increase, up to max 5000 (all characters)
- Added Rank up Reward: Permanent skills increase, up to max 10 (all characters)
- Added Game Option: wait with loading untill any key pressed (enable if you want to read loading screens if they are too fast)
- Iron Cuirass added (Masterwork)
- Iron Cuirass added to item pool of troop types Hanian Captain and Hanian Commanders
- Splitter Chaka added - new 2h axe
- Splitter Chaka added to item pool of troop types Pit Barbarian and Pit Boss
- Added iron greaves (Masterwork)
- Added iron greaves to late game troop types
- Added a new variation to 'City Center' map
- Small pit has 2 new map variations
- Added Maille Orucien Helmet (variant)
- New troop type: Executor. Look out for them in the mid game!
- Myrodon Troops now have extra shield variations. Myrodon Flailmen only have smaller shields.
- Added a quick save backup system (will be expanded further later, + cloud saving will be added)
- Camera panning adjusted to allow lower angle panning
- Camera zoom min and max adjusted slightly
- Stray / unequipped shields in the arena are now physical entities
Balancing Changes & tweaks
- The first (leftmost) battle option will now NEVER have shroud
- The first (leftmost) battle option will now NEVER be 1 v Many or Many v 1.
- Damage to weapon after shield hit reduced to 10% from 25%
- Shield AI health lowered at mid and high tiers by roughly 15%
- Added a chance to stun shield-user on all shield hits, based on damage dealt. (Player too)
- Added a chance to disarm shields upon all shield hits, based on damage dealt. (Player too)
- Hitting the shield also counts as a hit to the audience (in regard to audience favor)
- Minimum max stamina from skill is boosted by 10 (all backstories)
- Maximum max stamina is decreased by 75
- Minimum Stamina Regen rate is increased by about 15%
- Maximum Stamina Regen rate is decreased by about 5%
- Max Stamina penalty from being damaged is reduced by 10 at lowest level but increased by 30 at highest
- AI now also suffer Max Stamina penalty as they get damaged
- AI minimum Max Stamina reduced by 20
- AI maximum Max Stamina reduced by 50
- General armor decay increased
- All flails have received a big damage stat nerf (compensating for their higher velocity) and a slight durability nerf, as well as more accurate velocity/range stats (for price)
- Lowered the Thrill Seeker Civilian legacy reward a bit (no details - spoilers!)
- Trainee mode (gradual difficulty increase) has been spread over the first 10 runs instead of 5.
- added small skill increase on every rank up (1 on all skills)
- Training flat gain and learning rate at maximum training regime are reduced by roughly 15%
- Mysterious Malaise event now depletes less health and less max stamina
- Fixed balance on Many vs Many so it won't spiral into you fighting the enemy team alone nearly as often.
- Early game rate of leveling has been slightly decreased
- Aggression of all AI slightly increased
- Increased chance for villa maps to appear (for more map variation)
- Effect of weapon stat velocity slightly reduced (<10%)
- Added momentum damping on disarms (so significantly less chance to lose your disarmed weapon to the audience etc!)
Bugfixes
- Fixed bug with AI getting stuck in the floor after a teleport on Lion's Roar Arena
- Fixed bug where you can get a shield from an event even though you already have a polearm or 2 handed weapon
- Fixed bug where thrown weapons ended up having much lower momentum than they should
- Possibly fixed (likely reduced) crash after re-entering career menu, in particular in late game.
- Fixed (or reduced) corpses launching into the stratosphere on kill
- Fixed some shop items getting stuck/frozen in some cases (Needs confirmation)
- Maybe fixed issue where 2 backstories would sometimes have overlapping effects. (eg. play a Civilian with 50% gold tax etc.)
- Maybe fixed issue with cursor getting stuck (double cursor) after exiting ESC menu on tutorial, causing character not to rotate etc.
- Fixed issue where AI would not actually drop broken weapons once they hit 0 durability and continue to use them.
- Fixed Promotions and Fundraising reporting the wrong values
- Removed some old code that was sending out some data (may have caused a firewall error on startup first time, not sure if that was it.)
- Fixed bug where weapons would still take some damage during Insurance matches
- Adjusted some map corners / areas where AI can get stuck
Minor adjustments
- Reduced small pit light brightness
- Shield damage splinters now scale in size based on damage dealt for a visual cue
- Wooden weapons colour has been made darker (lower some confusion about them being trash wooden weapons)
- Fixed wrong wording on shop unlocks
- Renamed deprecated 'skip match' to 'reroll' match (oversight)
- Added shadow on italic text in events for readability
- Minor UI updates to shop item tier coloring
- Added warning to 'reset Combat Tutorial' that it will abandon your character
- Some minor spelling fixes.
- Added a changelog to the main menu. Should open on its own first time on a new update.
Performance issues (high end GPU's in particular)
I've had reports that in some specific instances with very high end machines (ironically) there is lower performance than expected. (eg. 40 fps instead of 120.) Seems some 30xx and 40xx GPU's are suffering this, but its not clear yet. It's being investigated.
There is also an issue where sometimes performance (increasingly over time) is impacted possibly when running razer apps and/or Geforce Experience, closing them may fix it.
Launching with launch option '-DX12' may solve both these issues and any other performance/graphics issues, however it could also be unstable. Update 2 will work towards a permanent fix / running on DX12.
What next?
Besides the obvious (continued bugfixing, balance changes), more and more content will be added each Update. I am planning to add one backstory for Update 2 already (and many more to come).
For Update 2 one major goal is to update the engine behind the scenes, which should hopefully solve the issue mentioned above, improve performance and fix a few more issues (eg. related to Full screen)
You can play the Sacrificial (experimental/beta) branch for early early access which will receive more frequent updates. Enable this under properties>betas>sacrificial branch.
I am also going to take it 'easier' for a few weeks during the holidays after many years of hard work (but still going to upkeep v0.13 if needed), and plan to start 2023 with full force - all focus on Update 2 first and then constant, frequent meaningful updates!
The current plan is also to expand the team and finally step away from the solo-development!! I'll be preparing and planning everything in the next weeks before 2023 so I can get this expansion going ASAP - very very excited about 2023 and on.
Fun Fact!
To end this update announcement, here's a fun fact!
The carpet featured in-game prominently (eg. in the main Armory) is a 1:1 recreation of a real carpet I own -- in fact most of the game was built on top of it!
We who are about to die salute you!
Jordy