QA September 13th, 2023

[Undone]

• Lots of behind the scenes work on the upcoming Alchemy system.
• Disabled project compression to reduce future patch times. This will result in a hefty download for QA but should make subsequent patches smaller. However, this does increase the footprint of the game on disk as data is no longer compressed (it is compressed when downloading). Still working on ways to improve this experience.
• Updated the project to the latest unity sub-version which has minor bug fixes / performance improvements. Most notably improvements to DLSS: "Improving DLSS ghosting artifacts a little bit, by using a better pre-exposure parameter. Fixing reset history issues on DLSS camera cuts."
• Fixed next two sunrise/sunset event times not accounting for time zone differences (Meadowlands, Highlands, Dryfoot, and Grimstone)
• Fixed a floating cliff in Grimstone Canyon
• Added sub-zone identification tech. /who, friends, group, guild, etc will now show any sub-zones that the player is in. This includes Ember Veins, Aquifer's Karst/Undercroft, and Redshore Ridge/Exile Freehold.
• Fixed animation delay on Sedation Dart
• Tooltips in text now change the cursor to the glove icon, or magnifying glass depending on the function of the tooltip
• Advantage/Disadvantage now roll two sets of dice for the hit roll and take the higher/lower value in addition to two sets of dice for the damage roll (which is all it currently does on Live).
• Added new visuals for the ant hill (see screenshot below)
• Inner armor (cloth) can now be dyed via the crafting system. Dye can be purchased from the Outfitter merchant in Newhaven City.

Combat Log Improvements

• Auto attack entries are now grayed out for better readability.
• NPC names are also grayed out for better readability. (likely removing this as it muddies things up with the auto attacks)
• The ability tier is now shown in the log for reference. This can be removed if deemed unnecessary; thoughts?

Please let me know if this helps!

Role Icon Improvements

• Duelist was using the same role icon as Striker; This has been corrected and is now a "scale" which can be seen in the /who screenshot below. This icon was chosen to match the description of the role which starts with Offense and defense balanced...
• Role icons adjusted to have a more uniform contrast.
• Role icons will now appear with a specific hue determined by their base role. Strikers show as red, Supporters as green, and Defenders as blue. This should help players more easily identify the base role of a character even when not familiar with the specialization icons.

/who Improvements

• /who results are now sorted and formatted more cleanly. Anonymous users will be first, followed by the results in level order.
• They now include a character's level, role, name, zone/subzone, AND guild. If any of those things "match" they will be italicized. For example: if someone in your /who results shows someone in your group, in your guild, or in your zone, then the name, guild, or zone would be italicized and colored slightly differently.
• /who results now show a character's role as an icon to save space. The icon has a tooltip of the full role name as well.

Here's a quick preview of some /who results. Note that this image does not include guild names because the social server on Live has not yet been updated to return them. We likely need to add some sort of delimiter between the player name and zone so any recommendations here on how to improve the formatting I'm all ears!

New Ant Hill visuals (more to come...just not yet!):

 

[Meeks]

Some more great enhancements and content... keep up the good work!

- The sub-zone identification tech is a welcome addition.
- The new ant hill model is interesting... makes me think of a stack of burger patties waiting to be tossed on the grill!
- Assigning a base color to each class is a great solution, offering the player a quick visual cue indicating which role each specialization falls under without taking up additional space.
- I generally err on the side of wanting more information than less. But in this instance, and in the spirit of streamlining/simplification, I think it makes sense to leave the ability tier out of the combat log.
- Conversely, I think the incremental value in including more information in /who results is worth the effort and additional space in the chat window. In terms of how to format it, I'm not sure there is a perfect solution. I might do something like this:
[3 ❤︎] Ned Nederlander <¡Three Amigos!> (Redshore Ridge - Exile Freehold)

If possible, I'd love to see some expanded /who functionality. Some examples of queries I'd like to be able perform:

/who (Dryfoot)
/who [Supporter] 28 35
/who [Knight]
/who <GuildNameHere>

Cheers!

 

[Grue]

Angle Brackets and parenthesis.

[30 ] Grue <Embers After Dark> (Grimstone)
[15 ] Blindwanderer <Embers After Dark> (New Haven Valley)
[22 ] Soandso <Cool Guild 1337> (Northreach)

 

[Grue]

Combat log

Grayed out text is too subtle to make much of a difference imo. Different colour all together would be easier to see at a glance, better yet, let players pick the colour of the text based on the source.

While I'm being unreasonable, I'd also enjoy the log being presented in table format. As a dork, spreadsheets make me happy in my special no no place, it's also easier to scan information when its presented in consistent columns.

Source	Action	Result	Target	Amount	Modifiers
your	Patch III	Heal	Undone	51	Heavily
Your	Auto Attack	Hits	Molebear	26	abs 7, dis
Molebear	Swipe	Miss	You
Molebear	Roar	Hits	Undone		daze
Molebear	Claw	Hits	You	75	Critical

So, combat with table formatting and custom text colours. Today is Wednesday... Have a look Thursday and let me know at Friday morning stand up what kind of time frame we're looking at, any road blocks you might have and any resources you'll require. Thanks

 

[Grue]

• Advantage/Disadvantage now roll two sets of dice for the hit roll and take the higher/lower value in addition to two sets of dice for the damage roll (which is all it currently does on Live).

Unless I have no idea how the combat mechanics work... I'm thinking this will affect gel'ing negatively, especially tanks.

 

[Undone]

Unless I have no idea how the combat mechanics work... I'm thinking this will affect gel'ing negatively, especially tanks.

How so? GEL boosts your effective combat level when it comes to determining if the NPC has an automatic advantage, so if you are GEL'd appropriately then this isn't of any concern.

 

[Grue]

How so? GEL boosts your effective combat level when it comes to determining if the NPC has an automatic advantage, so if you are GEL'd appropriately then this isn't of any concern.

Then I didn't understand the mechanic. I thought it only affected adv/dis when hitting mobs and did not affect mob's adv/dis on the player, i.e. the mob would have the advantage if they were higher level regardless if gel'd.

... If only there was some kind of combat log where we could view such things at our leisure and/or parse so we might better understand the combat mechanics... Nah... can't be done. Impossible they might say.

 

[Undone]

Then I didn't understand the mechanic. I thought it only affected adv/dis when hitting mobs and did not affect mob's adv/dis on the player, i.e. the mob would have the advantage if they were higher level regardless if gel'd.

... If only there was some kind of combat log where we could view such things at our leisure and/or parse so we might better understand the combat mechanics... Nah... can't be done. Impossible they might say.

Lol the incoming combat will show ADV or DIS if advantage or disadvantage is present