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BETA TEST May 4th; what's new?

Undone

Undone

Codemaster
Stormhaven Studios
Our next stress tests are scheduled for:
Wed. May 4th @ 8pm central
(Thurs. May 5th @ 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.

What's new?
This week we are finally able to bring you a Unity 2021 build! Most of the kinks have been ironed out and things seem to be relatively stable from what I can tell. However, I need your help this week in determining if we move forward with Unity 2021 because once we make the switch we cannot turn back. So what I need from everyone is feedback on how their performance and stability feels compared to previous builds. This week we are also making some crafting adjustments to help widen the gap between crafted and dropped gear.

One thing I would like to ask the community to focus on, especially on Wednesday nights, is getting back to providing direct feedback on patch note line items. Feedback as of late has been a bit more general and not focused on recent changes. I am NOT asking you to stop providing that kind of feedback! :) I am just asking for a tiny bit more from you all in the form of feedback on individual line items. We implement small changes and sometimes get no feedback on them which gives us the impression that everything is fine when maybe it isn't.

FEEDBACK! (focused questions this week, in addition to the other misc. line items)
  • How is performance and stability compared to previous builds?
  • Are you receiving weapon drops appropriate for the content you are doing?
  • Do the new weapons help smooth the power transitions?
  • Do the weapon upgrades still feel impactful?
  • Is it clear that "basic" crafted gear is inferior to dropped gear?
  • Does the "imbued" gear feel worthwhile to pursue?

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:
    • Disabling hand IK for abilities that do not involve your weapon. This should reduce the issue where hands were going through your body when yelling, or bandaging.
    • Adding checks to prevent players from getting stuck in looping animations when quickly swapping to another weapon. This fix broke some other things so I reverted the code for now. I did however make some other minor adjustments so let me know if you continue to get stuck in a particular pose.
    • Increasing the mouse sensitivity slider range. Now goes up to 300% sensitivity.
    • Rats now have death audio.
    • Fixing nav mesh issues in Central Veins causing NPCs to run around in the ground.
  • UI:
    • Combat icon now properly decays to show how close you are to being out of combat.
    • Moving the version label to the upper right
    • When applying positive effects to yourself (i.e. heals) it now says "restores" instead of "adjusts".
    • Reagent toggles can now be triggered with key binds. They use the same binding as your consumable pouch; whichever pouch is shown will trigger when the key is hit.
    • "AFK" added to UI-space and world-space nameplates.
    • Adding tooltips to a number of options in the options menu (most are in the video options).
    • Adding tooltips to some stats on your equipment window.
    • Ability tooltips will now show I, II, III, IV etc depending on how far they've upgraded.
    • Ability cooldown overlay countdowns now account for haste adjustments. Cooldowns listed on tooltips do not yet take this into account.
    • Notifications now render on top of other windows.
    • HOTs/DOTs tooltips now show you how much heal/dmg is done per tick.
  • Design:
    • Increasing targeting distance by 5m. This also increases the range at which you can see nameplates.
    • Increasing the max distance of all ranged weapons. Short bow = 18m, Long bow = 24m, Crossbow = 14m, Heavy Crossbow = 18m
    • Npc alert investigation speeds now vary randomly per individual. Instead of a fixed 50% between between walk & run they now vary from between 30% & 70% between walk and run. This means that some npcs will be much quicker to investigate, and others will be a little bit slower.
    • Added additional dropped weapons to help smooth out leveling. Weapons can now be found with required levels of 1, 5, 10, 15, etc.
    • Some rare weapons were updated to reflect the above weapon update.
    • Humanoid and Chest loot tables updated to drop weapons relative to their own level
    • Fixed an issue where North Dryfoot spawns were spawning at too low level
    • From discussions on Discord it's been discovered many don't use Provoke making it more "utility" than we originally planned. To make Provoke more core to the role some of the threat from Threatening Strike is being shifted to Provoke, along with reducing Provoke's cooldown. We hope this will make it easier for tanks to manage threat without being in direct melee range, on CC'd targets, and allow for off-tanks to deal damage with Threatening Strike without generating too much aggro from the main tank.
      • Threat generation on Provoke increased
      • Provoke cooldown decreased to 10s
      • Threat generation on Threatening Strike decreased
New stuff:
Unity Upgrade
This week's build is using the latest version of Unity (2021.3.1f1). This build brings a large number of updates to internal packages and the rendering pipeline itself. This first test is to establish a performance baseline. Besides the changes listed in the patch notes most everything has remained the same; meaning we are not yet fully taking advantage of what Unity 2021 has to offer. What I need from everyone is a report on how the performance/stability compares with previous builds.

Some notable updates and/or issues you may encounter:
  • Road sign text has returned
  • Memory exceptions and crashes should be less frequent. Many internal packages have been updated so hopefully many of the bugs we found in previous builds are gone.
  • Rendering pipeline bug fixes. The black screen bug caused by reflections should be fixed.
  • Dense fog regions may appear differently because the new rendering pipeline handles 3d noise a bit differently.
  • Updated vegetation, terrain, and object shaders.
  • MacOS now uses instanced indirect rendering for vegetation.
  • MacOS graphics jobs are disabled via code (option in launcher does nothing)
IMPORTANT NOTE for MacOS users: I have recently found (today) that shadows from point light sources such as ember rings and torches cause a significant performance drain. It is recommended that you disable shadows (set slider to 0%) to smooth out the frame rate. For whatever reason in my limited testing I did not run into this problem, but after today's internal test it became clear that the game is unplayable near point lights with shadows enabled on macOS. I am actively investigating this issue as it is likely another Unity bug. This is actually a pretty major issue and needs to be resolved before moving forward. In parallel I will see if the problem presents itself in Unity 2020 as that is also a viable upgrade path for us.
From my testing today it seems as though shadow casting point lights touching vegetation rendered with instanced indirect is the culprit for the massive performance issues. New builds are being pushed that disabled instanced indirect to avoid this and hopefully make things a bit more "normal".

Away from keyboard changes
Some have expressed concern that players are able to stay logged into the servers after the login server is locked. The solutions to this problem were to either kick everyone as soon as the server locks or add an AFK kick. We are electing to go with the second option. Due to the wide range of player time zones we don't feel that turning the servers off at precisely midnight does us any favors with the community. If you are having a good time and would like to play for a few additional hours we honestly do not mind and want to allow for that type of flexibility. AFKing around the ember ring for days at a time however, is not something we want to encourage.

There are now two types of AFK: i) player set AFK via the social window, and ii) auto-AFK. Your character is automatically flagged as auto-AFK if you are away from your keyboard for 5 minutes. When you have been marked as auto-AFK for 15 minutes the server will boot you (20 minutes afk total for a boot). Regardless of which AFK you are marked as (manual AFK or auto AFK) your nameplate will update to show "AFK". Note that manually marking yourself as AFK does not impact auto-afk in any way; it is a separate system.

Crafting Updates
There have been growing concerns about how crafted gear stacks up to adventuring gear. Crafters want their gear to be better than adventuring gear and while out adventuring players want drops to be worthwhile upgrades. Satisfying both of those desires has proven to be quite the challenge. We are at a point right now where crafted gear is slightly worse than dropped gear. This leads to both crafters and adventurers coming away a bit disappointed as adventuring and crafted gear is roughly the same at the end of the day. In other words: if you are decked in crafted gear drops become an afterthought. The other issue at play is how relatively easy it is to obtain decent crafted gear, which detracts from what we feel is one of the most enjoyable parts of the game: getting new gear via drops. We have been discussing a number of potential improvements to alleviate the aforementioned issues which we will be introducing in the coming weeks.

The first improvement is splitting crafted gear into "Basic" and "Imbued" variants. A new resource called "Ember Flux" has been introduced into the adventuring loot tables. This resource can be used as an optional component for crafting equipment which draws out the properties of the materials used. The intended order of item "power" is as follows:
Basic Crafted < Drops < Imbued Crafted < Rare Drops
Click to expand...
The effectiveness of your current basic crafted gear has been reduced significantly to widen the gap between basic crafted and dropped.
  • New rare crafting resource added to adventuring loot tables called "Ember Flux"
  • All equipment recipes have a new optional component for flux
  • Without the flux component, crafted equipment is "Basic"
  • All current crafted equipment is considered basic and will not have any bonus status

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
    • 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.
    • Highlands - accessed via Meadowlands. Hilly region with sparse vegetation and water features. Mid level range (approx 30-40, likely to come after Redshore and Grizzled)
    • Gorge - accessed via Dryfoot. Large canyon-like area. Mid level range (approx 30-40, likely to come after Redshore and Grizzled)
  • Dungeons: All of central veins has been delivered from the art team and is now awaiting integration into the game. This includes the starter dungeon currently found in S. Newhaven, and a larger more difficult area for N. Newhaven. Spawning tech for dungeons is mostly complete so we just have to iron out the details in the spawning workflow.
  • 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. Quest data structure and likely needs a refactor.
  • Tech: npc improvements, npc merchants.
  • UI: quest dialog redesign, tooltip improvements
  • New clothing & armor is still in the works.
Quick preview of some new headpieces coming soon!
krMTgMC.png


Unity 2021 Tech
If all goes well with this week's test we can start to take advantage of new Unity 2021 tech. This includes a new skybox, decal fixes, apple silicon support, and more performance tweaks. These will come online slowly with my first priority being replacing the skybox & clouds.

Crafting Updates
We are working on tech that would allow each crafting profession to create a temporary "augment" for individual pieces of equipment. The idea here is for all crafting professions to create some sort of consumable leading to a more constant demand. Provisioners already have this going for them as players will always need potions, food, etc. Armor and weapon smiths however, have no such consumable (other than ammo). Some ideas we are currently discussing internally:
  • Weaponsmith could create "sharpening stones" that are either +DMG, +HIT, or +PEN. The player could then apply these to their individual weapon (only one augment possible at a time) and the augment would wear off after X number of successful hits.
  • Armorsmiths could create "armor padding" that would increase some defensive stat (avoid, dmg resist, etc) of a specific piece of equipment. That augment would last until some threshold of damage was taken by that piece.

Stat Consolidation (timeline: 1-3 weeks)
Last week we reduced HIT and PEN to be single valued. In the near future we will consolidate damage types into the following categories: 1H, 2H, Ranged, Ember, Mental, Chemical. Corresponding resists will become: Physical, Ember, Mental, Chemical, Bleeds. I also plan on merging the current set of "status effect resists" in with regular resists. We will also likely tweak how resists work on the back end. Currently, a single roll determines if the effect lands or does not land - we would improve this so that if the roll fails and the effect lands, the duration of the effect is diminished rather than applying at full force.

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
This design allows the player to collect ember essence naturally as they play. Capping the amount in which they can collect at any given time prevents hoarding and forces the player to make a decision on what to spend it on if they want to continue collecting. The considerations mentioned above would allow the players additional ways to spend their essence for the good of others which is something we are always striving to provide.

Implementing the actual ember essence drops should be relatively straight forward and take little time. However, giving the players something to do with that ember essence is the challenge here and requires some design time. Since we've had a truck load of other things to do in the mean time we likely won't be adding the first part until we have something for you to do with it.

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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Updated and finalized

-How is performance and stability compared to previous builds?

Hard for me to say with my limited testing experience in EA. The only time I noticed poor performance was at the very beginning of Worldbreaker when many people were right at the start point. This is somewhat concerning because my hardware specs are far beyond the requirements of this game and I'm hopeful that the player base will be significantly greater 24/7 in all areas when the game is live. I've run much more graphically intensive games with higher fps (older monitor caps at 60hz, don't really need more) and no areas of noticeable dips, always at maximum settings.

I believe I opted for 16GB of quality RAM with 32 being quite overkill
Dual M.2 SSD (one for OS one for games)
9700k CPU - triple 120mm fan self-contained liquid cooler
RTX 2070 GPU

No issues detected

-Are you receiving weapon drops appropriate for the content you are doing?

Took forever, but seems to be working as intended, just unlucky

-Do the new weapons help smooth the power transitions?

Playing Striker this time vs DEF is night and day for killing speed, so no comment

-Do the weapon upgrades still feel impactful?

Difficult to say when operating with such low integer values such that a 5% damage boost on early weapons (listed as +5 Damage, very misleading) is not noticeable at all if any form of rounding occurs. I see that there is going to be a consolidation of weapon parameters such as HIT/PEN and resists. Maybe this needs to be looked at too.

I need to experience more progression into the game and higher equipment

-Is it clear that "basic" crafted gear is inferior to dropped gear?

Speaking a bit early on this topic: It varies per craft skill. A HUGELY important part of armor is evaluating AC vs wt, and something like copper bracers crafted giving 8 AC for 4 wt vs the dropped version giving 10 AC for 5 wt both give the same ratio of AC to weight of 2:1. Often a player's greater limiting factor when armor is concerned is their weight limit, so it can be beneficial to have the lighter pieces with slightly less AC at the same ratio in order to juggle gear around and make the most of your budget without going over.

I've said this gripe many times in-game: The weight cost of the full suit of copper armor (or leather) is ridiculous for how little protection it provides. By the time you could manage to wear most of it, you are already onward to higher tiers of equipment and your current set is obsolete, so why bother with it? The weights of higher tier armors generally do not increase all that much.

There needs to be an appropriate amount of weight associated with the armor tier and plausible usefulness of the armor set for its intended level range. Wearing full copper at level 9 is grossly impossible. At level 10, you should be moving on to tin or other drops. Keep in mind, I am talking from the perspective of a DEF/Marshall, who does get an excellent weight limit (2nd best only to knight iirc, knight also can't full-equip).

I haven't ever had serious weapons crafted, but it seems that the uncommon drops are superior and every ounce matters where weapons are concerned plus there is no encumbrance to worry about like with armor, so there is no reason to hold back on hunting for the best weapon you can find and use at a given level range. IMO, weapon crafting is relatively weak/obsolete compared to drops vs armorsmithing where drops and crafting can be beneficial because you want a variety of options to maximize your weight limit.

Basic 'no flux' gear is indeed very bad now.

-Does the "imbued" gear feel worthwhile to pursue?

Absolutely required. Need something to get you going to hunt for improvements + fill in gaps when you can't find a particular item.

-Fixing nav mesh issues in Central Veins causing NPCs to run around in the ground.

*Will have to run CV again and check, I came across this during WB

-Combat icon now properly decays to show how close you are to being out of combat.

Looks good, shading from white to gray top to bottom. Easy enough to get an idea of the expiration time.

-Npc alert investigation speeds
-now vary randomly per individual. Instead of a fixed 50% between between walk & run they now vary from between 30% & 70% between walk and run. This means that some npcs will be much quicker to investigate, and others will be a little bit slower.

I don't quite understand here. My method for pulling was to throw a kunai from maximum range and immediately sprint away from the action causing AI to alert to the action. Linked agro would investigate the area. If successful, it is possible to only have hard agro on the target that I struck while any addition mobs would investigate the area I threw from and not find me in time to engage.

The target that I struck would immediately use sprint chasing after me (humanoid), other targets would more casually walk to the point of alert and then sprint at me if I was found (nope! gone). If some investigate at higher speed than previously, it may prove more difficult to ninja-pull single targets reliably and make things more interesting.

I don't seem to be affected by this, but it does seem like there is a variety of speed during investigation. Attempting to Leeroy through a camp of humanoids can be perilous now.

-Provoke Change
-From discussions on Discord it's been discovered many don't use Provoke making it more "utility" than we originally planned. To make Provoke more core to the role some of the threat from Threatening Strike is being shifted to Provoke, along with reducing Provoke's cooldown. We hope this will make it easier for tanks to manage threat without being in direct melee range, on CC'd targets, and allow for off-tanks to deal damage with Threatening Strike without generating too much aggro from the main tank.
-Threat generation on Provoke increased
-Provoke cooldown decreased to 10s
-Threat generation on Threatening Strike decreased

Ah, I can already talk about this one for sure: The primary reason I did not use provoke constantly (although it is always on my bar if needed) is because of the long cooldown. I always kept it as a 'just in case' reserve most of the time and specific utility. That utility being I find it extremely useful against a Halted target since provoke does not 'hit' for any damage and cause cc to break. Provoke would allow me to pre-establish agro on cc'd targets while continuing to tank the main target using TStrike, which made things easier when trying to deal with 4 targets at once. A 10s provoke will guaranteed see greater regular use as I will almost always have some threat skill ready and not be concerned with saving an emergency provoke now on a short cooldown.

Previously, I generally would not exceed the threat of the MT as OT (if that be the case) when only using TStrike vs the MT using TStrike AND provoke. Sometimes it happened depending on when and how the fight engaged, mob cc vs MT, MT having to split his attention to 2 targets, etc. Not really concerned with the TStrike generating too much threat, and should be ok with a reduction in threat with provoke appearing to more than make up for it now.

My biggest concern with this change is that STAMINA requirements will greatly increase if the skill is to be relied on for maintaining threat and used 3x? more often. Perhaps the cost of provoke may need to be reduced.

*Did not play defender/group content this session

-Road sign text has returned
I'm confused what this is about. During Worldbreaker, I saw text when hovering over road signs. What changed?
Ah, that's nice. The words are written on the sign and you don't have to hover-inspect them anymore.

RE: Ember Flux

Some food for thought:
What will a player who has 2 gathering skills spend Ember Flux on? (Assuming the topics listed under 'considerations' are not implemented yet)
Generally groups of friends will be established, many will gather, few will craft. Is every character going to need to have a crafting skill to make use of their flux?
Can flux be transferred from one player to another as in 'paying' a crafter to do jobs for you or is the crafter going to have to shoulder the burden of collecting mass amounts of flux?
What happens to a person's share of flux when their stone is full? Can it be distributed to other party members such that you are essentially compensating/enabling your group's crafter?
Will provisioner use it at all or is it only use by AS/WS?

Bugs:

Party member unable to collect from t1 logs (can pick flowers, issue resolved by relogging - no pun intended)
Chat text above head appearing very dark
Attempting to select auto-loot option from party bar menu is very difficult, erroneously selecting party bar behind the drop-down instead.
 
Last edited:
Xeen said:
*WIP* Creating a template to update later *WIP*

-How is performance and stability compared to previous builds?

Hard for me to say with my limited testing experience in EA. The only time I noticed poor performance was at the very beginning of Worldbreaker when many people were right at the start point. This is somewhat concerning because my hardware specs are far beyond the requirements of this game and I'm hopeful that the player base will be significantly greater 24/7 in all areas when the game is live. I've run much more graphically intensive games with higher fps (older monitor caps at 60hz, don't really need more) and no areas of noticeable dips, always at maximum settings.

I believe I opted for 16GB of quality RAM with 32 being quite overkill
Dual M.2 SSD (one for OS one for games)
9700k CPU - triple 120mm fan self-contained liquid cooler
RTX 2070 GPU

-Are you receiving weapon drops appropriate for the content you are doing?

*would have to start a new character and not seek aid from a crafter, generally I like to fight animals to progress skinning and earn reliable money. At the end of WB, I did strat a striker and did not find a weapon in ~10 thief kills. Will have to see how things are in the update.

-Do the new weapons help smooth the power transitions?

*would have to start a new character and not seek aid from a crafter, also difficult to say as a tank who doesn't really do much damage to begin with

-Do the weapon upgrades still feel impactful?

Difficult to say when operating with such low integer values such that a 5% damage boost on early weapons (listed as +5 Damage, very misleading) is not noticeable at all if any form of rounding occurs. I see that there is going to be a consolidation of weapon parameters such as HIT/PEN and resists. Maybe this needs to be looked at too.

I need to experience more progression into the game and higher equipment

-Is it clear that "basic" crafted gear is inferior to dropped gear?

Speaking a bit early on this topic: It varies per craft skill. A HUGELY important part of armor is evaluating AC vs wt, and something like copper bracers crafted giving 8 AC for 4 wt vs the dropped version giving 10 AC for 5 wt both give the same ratio of AC to weight of 2:1. Often a player's greater limiting factor when armor is concerned is their weight limit, so it can be beneficial to have the lighter pieces with slightly less AC at the same ratio in order to juggle gear around and make the most of your budget without going over.

I've said this gripe many times in-game: The weight cost of the full suit of copper armor (or leather) is ridiculous for how little protection it provides. By the time you could manage to wear most of it, you are already onward to higher tiers of equipment and your current set is obsolete, so why bother with it? The weights of higher tier armors generally do not increase all that much.

There needs to be an appropriate amount of weight associated with the armor tier and plausible usefulness of the armor set for its intended level range. Wearing full copper at level 9 is grossly impossible. At level 10, you should be moving on to tin or other drops. Keep in mind, I am talking from the perspective of a DEF/Marshall, who does get an excellent weight limit (2nd best only to knight iirc, knight also can't full-equip).

I haven't ever had serious weapons crafted, but it seems that the uncommon drops are superior and every ounce matters where weapons are concerned plus there is no encumbrance to worry about like with armor, so there is no reason to hold back on hunting for the best weapon you can find and use at a given level range. IMO, weapon crafting is relatively weak/obsolete compared to drops vs armorsmithing where drops and crafting can be beneficial because you want a variety of options to maximize your weight limit.

-Does the "imbued" gear feel worthwhile to pursue?

*Say what? I'm going to have to play and update this section. In general, BiS for a given level, area, time, situation, etc. is always worth pursuing.

-Fixing nav mesh issues in Central Veins causing NPCs to run around in the ground.

*Will have to run CV again and check, I came across this during WB

-Combat icon now properly decays to show how close you are to being out of combat.

*Insert feedback

-Npc alert investigation speeds
-now vary randomly per individual. Instead of a fixed 50% between between walk & run they now vary from between 30% & 70% between walk and run. This means that some npcs will be much quicker to investigate, and others will be a little bit slower.

I don't quite understand here. My method for pulling was to throw a kunai from maximum range and immediately sprint away from the action causing AI to alert to the action. Linked agro would investigate the area. If succesful, it is/was possible to only have hard agro on the target that I struck while any addition mobs would investigate the area I threw from and not find me in time to engage.

The target that I struck would immediately use sprint chasing after me, other targets would more casually walk to the point of alert and then sprint at me if I was found (nope! gone). If some investigate at higher speed than previously, it may prove more difficult to ninja-pull single targets reliably and make things more interesting.

-Provoke Change
-From discussions on Discord it's been discovered many don't use Provoke making it more "utility" than we originally planned. To make Provoke more core to the role some of the threat from Threatening Strike is being shifted to Provoke, along with reducing Provoke's cooldown. We hope this will make it easier for tanks to manage threat without being in direct melee range, on CC'd targets, and allow for off-tanks to deal damage with Threatening Strike without generating too much aggro from the main tank.
-Threat generation on Provoke increased
-Provoke cooldown decreased to 10s
-Threat generation on Threatening Strike decreased

Ah, I can already talk about this one for sure: The primary reason I did not use provoke constantly (although it is always on my bar if needed) is because of the long cooldown. I always kept it as a 'just in case' reserve most of the time and specific utility. That utility being I find it extremely useful against a Halted target since provoke does not 'hit' for any damage and cause cc to break. Provoke would allow me to pre-establish agro on cc'd targets while continuing to tank the main target using TStrike, which made things easier when trying to deal with 4 targets at once. A 10s provoke will guaranteed see greater regular use as I will almost always have some threat skill ready and not be concerned with saving an emergency provoke now on a short cooldown.

Previously, I generally would not exceed the threat of the MT as OT (if that be the case) when only using TStrike vs the MT using TStrike AND provoke. Sometimes it happened depending on when and how the fight engaged, mob cc vs MT, MT having to split his attention to 2 targets, etc. Not really concerned with the TStrike generating too much threat, and should be ok with a reduction in threat with provoke appearing to more than make up for it now.

My biggest concern with this change is that STAMINA requirements will greatly increase if the skill is to be relied on for maintaining threat and used 3x? more often. Perhaps the cost of provoke may need to be reduced.

-Road sign text has returned
I'm confused what this is about. During Worldbreaker, I saw text when hovering over road signs. What changed?

RE: Ember Flux

Some food for thought:
What will a player who has 2 gathering skills spend Ember Flux on? (Assuming the topics listed under 'considerations' are not implemented yet)
Generally groups of friends will be established, many will gather, few will craft. Is every character going to need to have a crafting skill to make use of their flux?
Can flux be transferred from one player to another as in 'paying' a crafter to do jobs for you or is the crafter going to have to shoulder the burden of collecting mass amounts of flux?
What happens to a person's share of flux when their stone is full? Can it be distributed to other party members such that you are essentially compensating/enabling your group's crafter?
Will provisioner use it at all or is it only use by AS/WS?
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You are posting comments about things you can't test yet as they were just patched just FYI.
 
@Undone character creation on Mac is acting wonky now. Can’t see what I’m selecting no matter what level of zoom it looks like I’m looking from inside the character
 
Issues I've experienced so far with this build:
- Weird 'glaze' on some of the text, for example the personal stash and experience bar 1651715878589.png 1651715964447.png
- Deconstructed a copper dagger and got a Tattered Carcass
- Chat Window Settings filters aren't toggleable anymore


Pretty sure this was due to my network acting up at the time:
- Abilities/Harvesting casting but not completing/nothing happens
- Longer than usual delays between the time the ability completes the cast and the animation


How is performance and stability compared to previous builds? Much better overall, GPU is much quieter, even with turning some of the shadows back up.

Are you receiving weapon drops appropriate for the content you are doing? Yes

Do the new weapons help smooth the power transitions? Yes

Do the weapon upgrades still feel impactful? Yes

Is it clear that "basic" crafted gear is inferior to dropped gear? Yes

Does the "imbued" gear feel worthwhile to pursue? Absolutely, especially with metal armor. The rarity of the flux is spot on.
 
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Rydogg said:
Issues I've experienced so far with this build:

- Abilities/Harvesting casting but not completing/nothing happens
- Longer than usual delays between the time the ability completes the cast and the animation
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is this happening all the time? or is it intermittent?
 
Undone said:
  • How is performance and stability compared to previous builds?
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For the 2 hours I played, no issues with performance or stability. Graphics seemed improved, night time was easier to see. I did have an issue with my UI size that when I resized it to match my monitor I had to log to fix it. The UI was fine, but the numbers for resolution were like 643x862 and I run at 2560x1440.

Undone said:
  • Are you receiving weapon drops appropriate for the content you are doing?
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We were doing NNH Exile camp. Weapons that dropped were unusable to any below level 10 due to lvl 10 requirement and barely an upgrade if they could use it even at their level (8-9)

Undone said:
  • Do the new weapons help smooth the power transitions?
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Didn't see any new weapons. I assume we are talking lvl 5 or 15 weapons

Undone said:
  • Do the weapon upgrades still feel impactful?
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N/A didn't see any upgrades
Undone said:
  • Is it clear that "basic" crafted gear is inferior to dropped gear?
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all my gear was dropped previous to today's test. Because of the location the group farmed, no gear was an upgrade for me.
Undone said:
  • Does the "imbued" gear feel worthwhile to pursue?
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Never saw any imbued due to fighting humanoids
 
  • How is performance and stability compared to previous builds?
    • It seems improved overall, but this will need to be tested further this weekend.
  • Are you receiving weapon drops appropriate for the content you are doing?
    • Dryfoot Camp, the drop was the same as last time, but it is at a good spot. Might need a few Rare mobs in that camp to make it really interesting.
  • Is it clear that "basic" crafted gear is inferior to dropped gear?
    • Yes it does very much.
  • Does the "imbued" gear feel worthwhile to pursue?
    • I did not witness myself, but it seems good from what i've heard.
Now on the Provoke changes:
I've tested it a lot tonight and it seems to be a bit too much powerful now. I'm super happy with the changes, but it will need a small balance on threat imo.

Note on brightness:
It seems with that build, that the sun is very very bright during the day (if shadows are off, its kinda crazy bright at sunrise) and the night feel too bright for my taste.
 
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FEEDBACK! (focused questions this week, in addition to the other misc. line items)
  • How is performance and stability compared to previous builds?
    Highly improved for me, I have a 1080ti, and I was running at 2k res, turning most of the stuff off it was using 90+% of my GPU. Now I have everything on max and full and it's only running at 70%~, both were at vsync 60hz
  • Are you receiving weapon drops appropriate for the content you are doing?
    Yeah I feel like the mobs are dropping weapons in the range I would expect them to drop. I got some level 20 weapons in Dryfoot Stronghold (basic drop) and on my other guy while leveling I got a level 5 (basic drop) off a mob in SNH.
  • Do the new weapons help smooth the power transitions?
    I feel like they barely do any diff and like not worth worrying about really (see below question)
  • Do the weapon upgrades still feel impactful?
    No, none of the weapon upgrades really feel that great. Going from a level 10 drop (basic) or a (imbued crafted) to a level 20 drop (basic) didn't feel like that big of a deal to me at all. I really feel like when you get an upgraded item that is that different, you really should feel lit. doing an extra 20% damage is hard to "feel".
  • Is it clear that "basic" crafted gear is inferior to dropped gear?
    Yeah I guess but at these lower levels I don't really notice. Rare named drops do feel good though from an imbued crafted to rare name item.
  • Does the "imbued" gear feel worthwhile to pursue?
    Not really for weapons, I wasn't able to check armor to much because I'm a level 28 weapon crafter only. But I just stopped worrying about crafting and going to just get a rare name drop or deal with -1 less damage over a crafted item.




    All in all I feel like there was a lot of great ideas in this patch. Provoke seems like it's really doing it's job, allowing for 2 DEF to be in a party and not stomp over each other. (One just doesn't use provoke)
    However, I also feel like provoke might be a touch too strong as it was really hard (pretty much impossible) to pull off the tank at all as a DPS 2 levels higher on white and blue mobs to me (dryfoot level 20/19 mobs) unless stopped using provoke (after pull) during the fight. I think with the low cooldown and higher threat, its doing its job but bit much. I think either increase the cooldown or lower the threat a tad.

    Noticed a massive difference on zoning into zones for me, went from about 30s to 45s to about 5s to 10s.

    Notifications update is nice, very helpful to see that pop up.

    AFK timer seems aggressive, maybe a sound beep 5mins before it kicks you off or something? I've been tabbed over a few times typing on discord or the forums and almost got kicked off without noticing.

    Road signs look cool, love them

    I did see some bugs, and I reported them with the /report or noticed they were already talked about in discord by Undone or Adric.

    I feel like nights are a little too light (not much) and the darkest part of the night is short and good to be that dark for a short time.
    Day feels really bright (this was said by Undone it was going to be fixed it was a known issue)

    The addition of the flux seems really cool, however, so far of what I see of crafting is just skip it as you can get better in drops or good enough. Would love to see recipe's for crafting dropped.

    With the added items (flux) and crafting options, I feel like inventory is extremely limited. There are a ton of parts you need to make and is in weapon crafting the mats and the new flux, we are just tight on inventory way to much.
    Another issue with this is we can't see what an item will turn out until we already crafted all the parts for it, I would like to see a better system for this rather than storing all these parts all the time.
    Maybe another inventory that will hold crafting items only or something?
 
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Client hot fix (patch at your leisure):
  • updating unity engine to the latest minor revision (bug fixes etc)
  • updating vegetation shaders (optimizations)
  • fixing hair issues on low/med quality
  • fixing rendering issues with alpha cut shaders (i.e. fur)
  • water should no longer flicker at the edges and have the proper transparency
  • text should no longer have artifacts around the edges (or at least should be greatly diminished?)
  • overhead chat text should no longer be dim
  • fixing issue with chat filter selection
  • fixing issue with selecting auto roll options
  • updating macOS networking library to be compatible with macOS 10.14
 
Undone said:
Client hot fix (patch at your leisure):
  • updating unity engine to the latest minor revision (bug fixes etc)
  • updating vegetation shaders (optimizations)
  • fixing hair issues on low/med quality
  • fixing rendering issues with alpha cut shaders (i.e. fur)
  • water should no longer flicker at the edges and have the proper transparency
  • text should no longer have artifacts around the edges (or at least should be greatly diminished?)
  • overhead chat text should no longer be dim
  • fixing issue with chat filter selection
  • fixing issue with selecting auto roll options
  • updating macOS networking library to be compatible with macOS 10.14
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Is this available? I'm not getting the update option on the launcher, even after the force check
 
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