Our next stress tests are scheduled for:
What's new?
This week brings improved experience rates for groups, improvements to ground torches, and some revamped audio! We have additional made some LFG/LFM tool improvements, adjusted a number of npc camp difficulties, and expanded potion making. @AdricLives is going on a much needed vacation this upcoming week so @sand32 and I will be hunkering down and working on some much needed backend improvements. In other words: content updates will be light for the next week or two but this should give us a bit of time to address some of the larger ticket items.
REMINDER: the servers will be open for 4hrs Wednesday evening. The servers will open again on Friday @ 12pm central and close on Sunday at 11:59pm central. See events in Discord for timezone translations.
Bug fixes / improvements:
Adventuring Experience Adjustments
When we recently revamped experience bonuses we focused on "balancing" them. Our idea of balance was that killing a white 1^ was roughly equivalent to what you would get as if you were in a full group killing white 3^. Thanks to the continued feedback and discussions from our community we have realized that this "balance" does not do enough to incentivize group play. We took a step back and revamped grouping experience once again to provide better incentives. Our "baseline" is a solo player fighting a white 1^ mob. In relation to that we have the following changes:
Ground Torches
Ground torches have received some love this week. Hopefully they become a bit more useful to you and your groups. The biggest change is that you can replace a currently burning ground torch to "refresh" the expiration. In order to do this, you simply place a new one within the vicinity of the old one and it will move to your current position and reset the timer. The rules for replacing/refreshing are quite simple:
Works in progress:
NOTE: the following two line items are still in progress. This past week I worked on the new dungeon content tech, this upcoming week will be spent ironing out the workflow to put that tech to good use. These tasks are taking priority - once these are complete I will swing back around to Stat Consolidation & Reagent Upgrades.
Stat Consolidation (timeline: ...)
We are planning to drop the per-damage-types for HIT & PEN which would clear up a number redundant feeling stats. The rough plan is as follows:
Reagent Upgrade System(timeline: ...)
Unity Upgrade (unknown timeline)
Unity finally got back to me about my bug saying that it is "by design". I honestly have no idea how that is an acceptable answer so I will continue bugging them about it. I may just have to suck it up and deal with macOS having random 10ms cpu spikes so that our product can move forward. I'm frankly sick of dealing with these kind of issues...
What do we get out of upgrading to Unity 2020/2021? Here are a few ideal gains:
Known Issues:
Wed. April 20th @ 8pm central
(Thurs. April 21th @ 1am UTC)
The developers will meet in Discord and test for approximately one hour. However, the servers will remain open for roughly 4 hours. The most up-to-date client can be retrieved via the patcher found on your account page.(Thurs. April 21th @ 1am UTC)
What's new?
This week brings improved experience rates for groups, improvements to ground torches, and some revamped audio! We have additional made some LFG/LFM tool improvements, adjusted a number of npc camp difficulties, and expanded potion making. @AdricLives is going on a much needed vacation this upcoming week so @sand32 and I will be hunkering down and working on some much needed backend improvements. In other words: content updates will be light for the next week or two but this should give us a bit of time to address some of the larger ticket items.
REMINDER: the servers will be open for 4hrs Wednesday evening. The servers will open again on Friday @ 12pm central and close on Sunday at 11:59pm central. See events in Discord for timezone translations.
Bug fixes / improvements:
- Tech:
- Making some adjustments to the connection process in an attempt to prevent "cloning" from happening.
- Fixing an issue with NPC alerts expiring immediately. NPCs who are notified via our call for help system will be much more inclined to investigate regardless of range.
- NPC behavior disable delay time (when everyone leaves a zone) has been doubled.
- If you change stances while looting it will no longer revert your stance upon closing the loot window.
- Adding a number of null reference checks to prevent client exceptions.
- Material category backend work has been completed. More to come at a later date.
- Audio:
- Cleaned up and consolidated footstep audio triggers for humanoids. They should be more consistent and no longer player multiple steps at the same time.
- Ensured that all attack animations had proper animation events to trigger weapon audio. Weapons should now "whoosh" properly when swung on a more consistent basis.
- Adjusted how "get hit" audio is played to line up more consistently with "get hit" animations.
- Target dummies now have audio controllers and will play audio when getting hit.
- Updated audio controllers with new audio clips for bat, bear, boar, wolf, rat, and spiders.
- Art / Environment:
- Adjusted animation layers so that Ability Animations take precedence over Auto Attack animations and both of these take precedence over Get Hit animations.
- Fixed Crossbow animations when moving backward and to the right
- Fixed Sword & Shield animations when moving forward and to the right.
- Adjusting far distance tiling parameters for Newhaven terrain texturing.
- UI:
- LFG/LFM tool level ranges updated to be more granular.
- Individual LFG entries now show the player's exact adventuring level
- Controller removed from the LFG/LFM tags.
- Fixing some issues where world space UI was sharing materials with UI space causing text to occasionally not render on macOS.
- Added some code to cleanup any leftover item icons in loot before they are populated. I'm not sure how this is happening, but this code should prevent it from happening again? Let me know if it does!
- Design:
- Hay piles are a bit itchier
- Webbed trees are a bit stickier
- Removing ember ring from the North Newhaven exile camp & in the middle of Dryfoot Stronghold. This is a friendly reminder that respawn points are always near an ember ring, but not every ember ring has to have a corresponding respawn point.
- Level appropriate threat added to abilities Weaken and Dread Bellows
- Significant threat added to Daze.
- Minimal threat added to Hidden Strike so that it could be used for pulling.
- Increased the threat for Halt.
- All mob spawns have had another pass. This includes changes to levels and difficulty ratings (chevrons)
- Crafting quality now starts at 50% instead of 2%. This results in bonus stats appearing earlier into a material's level range.
- Level 1 potion bottles are less expensive.
- Potion crafting now relies on different cost bottles. Costs increase as the potency of potions increase.
- Fix to banner required levels
- Various fixes to rats nest in the Central Veins. Moved away from walls, reduced the range that rats were called to defend it, and the rats now consider line of sight for defending.
- Tool merchant added to the first camp in South Newhaven (located between the bank and anvil).
- Reduced chance of encountering ranged mobs in Dryfoot Stronghold
- Carcass types and their refined leather have had their bonus types rearranged to be more intuitive based on their new naming.
- Deer antlers removed from loot tables
- Wolf, Bear, Crocodile, and Basilisk skinning no longer requires an additional +5 hunting skill until later levels. At which point the carcass type you obtain from them will differ from other animals.
Adventuring Experience Adjustments
When we recently revamped experience bonuses we focused on "balancing" them. Our idea of balance was that killing a white 1^ was roughly equivalent to what you would get as if you were in a full group killing white 3^. Thanks to the continued feedback and discussions from our community we have realized that this "balance" does not do enough to incentivize group play. We took a step back and revamped grouping experience once again to provide better incentives. Our "baseline" is a solo player fighting a white 1^ mob. In relation to that we have the following changes:
- 2^ mobs yield more experience than the baseline for groups of 3 or less
- 3^ mobs yield more experience than the baseline for groups of 6 or less
Ground Torches
Ground torches have received some love this week. Hopefully they become a bit more useful to you and your groups. The biggest change is that you can replace a currently burning ground torch to "refresh" the expiration. In order to do this, you simply place a new one within the vicinity of the old one and it will move to your current position and reset the timer. The rules for replacing/refreshing are quite simple:
- you can refresh a ground torch at any time, so be conscious of how much time is left before throwing another out there
- you can only refresh your own, or a group mate's torch
- you can only have 1 physical ground torch active at any given time. this means that if you place a ground torch, move far enough away to place another, it will destroy the old one.
- execution time to place a ground torch has been reduced to 2s
- cooldown on ground torches has been reduced to 60s
Works in progress:
- Zones: 4x additional overland zones have had an initial art pass completed
- Redshore - accessed via Meadowlands & Dryfoot. Large tree forested region. Mid level range (approx 25-40). Nearing ready for population
- Highlands - accessed via Meadowlands. Hilly region with sparse vegetation and water features. Mid level range (approx 30-40)
- Gorge - accessed via Dryfoot. Large canyon-like area. Mid level range (approx 30-40)
- Grizzled Peaks - accessed via Highlands, Redshore, and Gorge. Mountainous region with a number of tunnels. High level range (40-50). Has a one-way exit to Newhaven North.
- Dungeons: 2 additional "large" dungeons have been laid out. Before implementation we are working on a general method for spawning these rooms so that they can be populated far quicker than we were able to do previously. This includes NPCs and gathering nodes. This spawning tech is next on the list to tackle.
- NPCs: fully custom Bear, Elk, and Spider models are complete and integrated into the game. Spider is currently the only one implemented; elk & bear will come soon. Ashen creature varieties have also been integrated into the game but are not yet populating the world.
- Design: implement high level abilities, loot table adjustments/population, advanced crafting recipes.
- Considering giving a native "bonus" to each of the roles. For example, maybe a base defender gets +10% damage mitigation, and if you take the defender flavored specialization as a striker/supporter you get +5% damage mitigation. Still working through what the bonuses would be for Striker/Supporter/Controller.
- Quests: a number of quests are in the queue for implementation/testing
- Tech: npc improvements, npc merchants, smoothing out sit/stand animations.
- UI: quest dialog redesign, tooltip redesign
- New UI notification system is nearing completion. This will make it easier to notice friend requests, group invites, or any other potential notification.
- New clothing & armor is still in the works.
NOTE: the following two line items are still in progress. This past week I worked on the new dungeon content tech, this upcoming week will be spent ironing out the workflow to put that tech to good use. These tasks are taking priority - once these are complete I will swing back around to Stat Consolidation & Reagent Upgrades.
Stat Consolidation (timeline: ...)
We are planning to drop the per-damage-types for HIT & PEN which would clear up a number redundant feeling stats. The rough plan is as follows:
- DMG - split this up into 1H, 2H, Ranged, Ember, and Mental
- HIT - universal - applies to all damage types
- PEN - universal - applies to all damage types
Reagent Upgrade System(timeline: ...)
- NPC's will drop a single type of Ember Essence (name is a WIP) that will "fill up" a permanently equipped Ember Stone. The amount of essence per creature will vary and it will be automatically split amongst group members similar to how coin currently is. Specific ember creatures such as ashen variants will likely drop more of this essence than others.
- The ember stone is not something you traditionally "Equip" - it is a permanent fixture to your character that cannot be removed, traded, banked, etc. In order to obtain ember essence you must earn ember essence through adventuring.
- Ember Stone's will have a maximum amount of essence they can hold. Later on down the line we may allow the player to unlock/earn an upgraded Ember Stone with a greater capacity via questing or something similar.
- Ember essence can be spent at special crafting stations to upgrade your reagents. The current rough plan is to start with two variants: a) make the reagent do the same thing but more powerful, and b) have the reagent change in some way to provide a different "flavor" which will vary contextually depending on the ability. As time goes on we will add more variants.
- We are also considering allowing players to spend their Ember Essence on the following (please note that all of these are CONSIDERATIONS and still up for discussion):
- use ember rings and/or hollows as a summoning stone (which could be a summon from within the same zone, or maybe across zones depending on the # of people involved)
- hearthstone like ability that would return you to the nearest ember ring/hollow (which would come with a long cooldown)
- adding a temporary "aura" to ember rings that would provide longer-lasting temporary buffs for those near the ring
Unity Upgrade (unknown timeline)
Unity finally got back to me about my bug saying that it is "by design". I honestly have no idea how that is an acceptable answer so I will continue bugging them about it. I may just have to suck it up and deal with macOS having random 10ms cpu spikes so that our product can move forward. I'm frankly sick of dealing with these kind of issues...
What do we get out of upgrading to Unity 2020/2021? Here are a few ideal gains:
- Engine bug fixes
- Rendering bug fixes (black screen no more?)
- New decal tech
- New skybox tech
- (2021 only) New dedicated server build target. This lowers the memory footprint of the server which should yield better server performance.
- (2021 only) Potential for a native Apple Silicon build.
- Improved code & rendering performance
- Improved editor performance which would result in more productivity from the team
- Better performance analysis tools
Known Issues:
- Not all ember rings and/or POIs are proper map discoveries. This is especially true in Dryfoot & Dryfoot Stronghold. Discoveries and map uncovering is a WIP and will be revisited soon.
- Deconstructing crafted items returns junk 100% of the time.
- No, we are not yet entertaining a compass. There are some plans to help you navigate in a more organic way, but those are waiting on a new skybox that will come with Unity 2020/201.
- your screen may at times turn all black. to fix open the options menu, toggle reflections on OR off for a moment, and then toggle them back.
- cannot roll on loot while unconscious
- not all clothing/armor has visuals
- Dragging a group-nameplate in the group window will set the wrong pivot point for the group window and the whole thing will drag a bit weird.
- typing chat text may occasionally become invisible. unfocus your chat window and trying again a few times typically resolves this.
- Sometimes when you respawn you don't end up at the proper Ember Ring --> if this happens please report the position where you died via the "/report" command or "/debugposition" (if using debugposition you'll need to paste the value here)
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