Greetings, Warriors!

This week the game receives an improved models visibility system, which will greatly increase the range of sight and fill the horizon with more detail. The system already has and ultimately will have an even bigger positive impact on the game performance, ensuring the same or better behavior of the game systems and at the same time - greatly enhancing the game visuals.

We are also making some tweaks and improvements regarding newly added horse colors. We are very happy that those were so warmly welcomed and you are so pleased to find and train the mount you always desired! Speaking of training, new Mount Experience Boost Cards will for sure help you enjoy fully trained mounts longer since you are now able to reduce the training time!

Additionally, we want to tell you more about some of the upcoming features our team members are working on while the new game interface is being developed in the background. “Character development” is a work-in-progress name for a vast system that is being designed to give players more goals during the gameplay and extend the list of activities players can take part in the game.

As always, we deliver a weekly dose of Quality of Life improvements and introduce some fixes, reported and requested by the Community, so check out the details below and…

See you in battle!


The screenshot’s authors have been awarded. Siegbert, ontuto, Chris, and Ghostickles
– check your Ambers!

Work in progress insight:

Character development

Throughout the development of any multiplayer / MMO game, player retention is perhaps the most important factor in developing a community. We are working on this all the time, carefully breaking down player activity as a factor - and while our retention at low levels is still quite decent, the players who reach the end game are the ones who very often stay in our game for thousands of hours. And this is what we are aiming for.

While reaching the "Midgame", when the players run out of quests (level 50-60), or simply just want to do something else, they can realize the difference in experience between them and other players. The depth of the combat system and amount of activities and features which players are exploring during their journey is being opened before them quite too fast and it may lead to overflowing players with information, discouraging or confusing them before they reach the endgame.

A very large part of the content of the Mid and End Game is defined by global politics, the current situation on the map, or even the hours in which we play - because it requires close cooperation with our guild or nation.

So what players and the game need is a system that will allow players to have smaller goals, in the pursuit of which they will be able to learn the new features, and gradually increase their skill and experience in them. A system that will reward the player for training specific skills - thanks to which he will be better and better at what a given person considers to be the most interesting in the Gloria Victis world.

The most important thing is that the player should be able to do it alone or in a smaller group. So thanks to that that, when finishing the previous game session, the player has a detailed plan in mind of what he will do the next day, and that he knows his plans cannot be disturbed simply by the fact that today his nation is losing on the world map or most of his guilds do not play during the hours convenient for him.

We want to divide the player's development into several trees (forestry, farming, fishing, etc.). By performing activities, in addition to experience points, the player will receive experience in a given profession or activity, which at various stages of development will allow for more advanced equipment and provide new opportunities or bonuses. We don't want to limit players in any way as a classless system and the possibility to be who you want to be in the game and change it anytime is a very valued aspect of our MMO. So you can become the master of every profession and activity.

We want to introduce such a large system gradually. This means that we will start with smaller systems such as Fishing and we will gradually change the next parts of the game based on players' feedback and data we will gather. We are counting on your support!

To sum up - we would like to introduce many character development activities that provide solo content regardless of whether our nation wins, or whether other guild members are active. In addition, by introducing such modifications in individual systems, we are getting ready for further development in areas such as forestry and archeology. We feel very certain that those changes are the lacking gameplay loop of our game, and every analytics we track for a long time seems to confirm that.

Cavalry changes

Additionally, our designers are working on some ideas regarding cavalry gameplay and balance. There are a lot of interesting ideas regarding those matters, including some provided by our Community in your feedback and suggestions. We are warmly inviting you to the discussion on our official Discord server!

Supporter Shop - look into the past

(And huge items sale!)

Gloria Victis MMO is a project created by a small independent team of Developers from Poland. At the beginning, the original team was working on their dream game overtime, as volunteers, and without any budget. In 2014, after months of hard work and reforging their unstoppable will into the project, Gloria Victis was introduced to a new system that allowed independent developers and creators to show their projects to the world – Steam Greenlight.

Gloria Victis MMORPG rushed to the first place of the top-voted projects, leaving behind over 1500 other games in less than 48 hours, and according to our knowledge, it is still an unbeaten Steam and world record. Two years later, with the original team of seven people onboard, Gloria Victis became available for players as one of the most unique and ambitious projects on Steam.
After a successful Early Access Release, the team was able to establish an office and work together in one place, against all odds.

Game development since the beginning was covered only by game sales. We never had any investors or publishers. The game was always earning just enough to keep the current team and all extra money was pushed back into the project – buying or creating tools, assets, and expanding the team.

In 2018, partially because of community demand, and as a way to earn some money to expand the team and speed up the development, we implemented Supporter Shop in the game, which allowed small game monetization by introducing cosmetic variants of the top-tier gear, so players were able to customize their looks a little.

After introducing Supporter Shop, thanks to your help, we were able to double our team size which allowed us to improve our game much faster than previously. A great fact of our game growth is that within 3 years we have implemented more than 150 updates, and we are able to communicate with you on a daily basis. Enough said, without the Supporter Shop it couldn’t be possible, as our team is still at least a few times smaller than the very most MMO studios around the world, and most probably the smallest, but still one of most communicative and dedicated..

We are the only MMORPG of such scale that achieved what we did with the great help of our community. We cannot thank you enough for your assistance in this journey and you will always be the most important part of our team.

As a thank you for your support and help, we are throwing out a weekly sale for all non-skin items in the Supporter Shop! Following week is the best time to take advantage of the occasion and get some useful scrolls, cards, and packages! Re-customize your characters, get some experience boosters, and stock up on spare attributes and skills resets!

Changelog v.0.9.7.6 Beta

Quality of Life

Our graphic artists reduced the blinking of models observed from afar with the new visibility system and introduced the fading in and out systems for some light sources. This task will be continued and improvements will be extended to more models, characters, and light sources in further game updates. You can see the difference in how the same views looked before and after the implementation of this system on those examples: here and here.

Other improvements:

- Arrows in the quiver are from now on being fully restored after the end of the Valley of Death tournament.
- Added a short interaction bar before opening Architect’s Table, because interaction with the table was not stopping the character movement and it could be opened by accident.
- Reworked Ismir quests “Let Sleeping Wolves Die” and “Sea Invaders”, to match its counterparts in other nations and improve players' experience and retention.
- Dunfen Mine has been transformed into Dunfen Lumbermill, to match the location counterparts in other nations' lands on the global map.
- Changed the loading/firing on siege engines to recognize any attack and any block input, including directional attacks and blocks keybinds.
- Added Mount Experience Boost Cards, available for purchase for Contribution Points in Glory Quartermasters Shops and for Ambers in Supporter Shop
- Tweaked the spawners of the horses, balancing the rarity of some colors, and adjusted the color pools and timers.
- Improved the sound of the horse's steps and the frequency of their playback.

Fixes

- Fixed an issue causing the message “Player protected you from looting your equipment” to be shown multiple times on the combat log after the looting was interrupted.
- Fixed an issue that allowed progressing “Block damage with a shield during a siege” daily challenge with blocking by using two-handed weapons.
- Fixed an issue causing empty parties to stay on the Party Finder list after the end of the Volcano and Sea Wraiths events.
- Fixed an issue causing coins to be shown in the new line on the item tooltip window.
- Fixed an issue causing one of the Wooden Main building floors to be transparent.
- Fixed an issue causing some of the smallest buildings (i.e. henhouse) to have wrong models or shapes while observed from afar.
- Fixed an issue causing the character controller to stop responding if the character teleported while holding the block.
- Fixed an issue allowing players to keep sprinting without using stamina if their horse died during autorunning and under circumstance they had a skill “Will to Survive '' active.
- Fixed an issue causing typing in the chat/bug reports text fields while using the Architect's Table were also controlling the camera.
- Fixed an issue causing notification about leveling up was telling wrong numbers of Contribution Points granted for leveling up.
- Fixed an issue causing the daily challenge rewards notification to be not removed after picking the rewards.