Greetings, Warriors!

We have great news for you today: We are happy to present refreshed visuals of the ingame HUD and further improvements and changes regarding interface overhaul, as well as, significant optimization changes, which should make the interface much more responsive and faster.

This is one of the biggest changes of the recent weeks and may require a few polishing touches here and there, so we are counting on your feedback. Let us know what you think!

Also, we would like to thank you for participating in the PVP event last weekend. It was great fun, we had hundreds of players on the tribunes, and 18 teams participating! The rewards will be delivered to the winners in the upcoming 24 hours. We are in the middle of the Glory Season, so we would like to encourage you to take part in global conquest and climb the ladders to receive great rewards at the season's end!

Last but not least, we are answering players' feedback regarding the balance mechanisms working between servers with different populations, and fixing some bugs, reported by our community.

Let’s check today's update details!


The screenshot’s authors have been awarded. Chris, NooB Hunter [Sams], and Neqster – check your Ambers!

Changelog v.0.9.9.1.7 Beta

User interface overhaul

Backend

First and foremost, as the visuals of the interface was changing for a few months already, we are introducing the rework divided into iterations, as it is the most convenient and reliable way to change such complex and vast systems of the game. The new windows’ visuals are warmly welcomed by our players, and thanks to your feedback, we were able to adjust our course to deliver what our community desires: Immersion, intuitiveness, and esthetic.

But despite the visuals changing upfront, the whole system was running on old backend machinery which also needed upgrading, to ensure the best performance of the new UI. Today is the day where our coders and testers were able to finish one of the most complicated tasks we had on our to-do list recently – full rework of the interface backend.

You should be able to feel significant improvement in the speed of loading interface parts, thanks to preloading them in the background, better impact on the game performance overall, and of course more responsive interaction with the game.



Minimap and quick access HUD

The ingame minimap was fully reworked and received so many fancy improvements. First, it was slimmed down, to be less heavy on the screen, and match the new interface visuals. The icon of the top right corner of the screen will show the zone status, so you will know if it is a safe zone or PVP zone. The events and quest markers are improved, and the closest event and quest will have a 30% bigger icon, to guide you even better. On the right side of the minimap, next to the zoom in and out buttons, you can find a new ping indicator and FPS counter below it, if you toggle showing FPS in the game options. The ingame time is shown on the top of the map. During the Deadly Harvest event, the time counter will be conveniently shown on the bottom of it.

On the top left side of the minimap, you will find a two squares icon, which is a new quick access list and will expand to the left when clicked. There, you will find all possible quick access windows and could see the keybinds that lead to opening them. This way, we are removing the huge button on the bottom of the screen, we can keep information in a better place, and we are planning some more convenient features for this part of the UI, like small notifications icons when there is something that requires players action.



New option: Inspect window

From now on, you can check your nation members and use an “inspect” option from the right click on the character menu. The window will show inspected player data, allegiance to guild, and achievements.

We believe that it is always nice to show off a little, and improving your “profiles” will become an additional small goal for our dedicated warriors, crafters, and adventurers.

Quick access bar

The "Hotbar" sometimes called a “Skillbar” received a new look. As we want to make the game interface more immersive, less impactful of the game visuals, but still intuitive and helpful, we removed the background of it and made it transparent. All information that the old version had is still there, so we have 10 quick access slots and the experience bar below. But reducing its opacity already made the game window much more cleaner and comfy.

Chat interface

The chat is receiving a visual rework. We want it to be more immersive and convenient, similar to Hotbar and minimap, as it is for some players an obligatory part of their interface. We are monitoring how players are interacting with each other through the chat, and we would like to test some changes which are aimed to improve the usefulness of ingame chat and support even better positive interactions between players, like teaching and helping newcomers, grouping up to play together or join the forces of a guild. As we are preparing the game to be released, and we expect a significant increase in players population, the chat form as we had it before could result in spreading potential toxicity on a greater number of players than it is reaching now, so we would like to focus on the strengths of the chat system, and reduce its flaws in upcoming iterations.

To make the system intuitive and convenient, we need to see how players are responding to changes on that matter and how quickly they can adapt to the new rules. So we are changing the chat tabs behavior and adding some other small changes. We are fully aware that some players may feel uncomfortable as they are used to the old chat system, so we are kindly asking you to give yourself some more time before getting back to us with your feedback and feelings. Please be notified, that a lot can change in the meantime and the current ingame chat form is not final. We will greatly appreciate your participation in the global testing session of the new chat features.

Other interface improvements

– Confirmation windows received a new look, fully adjusted to match the new Interface design.
– Arena Duel windows received a new look, fully adjusted to match the new Interface design.
– When you pick an item from any inventory via drag&drop, if it is equipable, the golden flashing frame on the right equipment slot will appear.
– If you are playing a female character, from now on, as the inventory character silhouette, the model will be a woman, not a man.
– Added a yellow/green leaf near the name in inventory, to remind players of their status.
– Added a “Drop to delete” field on the left of the inventory, so cleaning up your inv will be more convenient.
– Adjusted the background of items/nodes slots in inventory and character development trees to create a better contrast between empty/not completed and full/completed ones.
– Added a simple “Delete” option in the friend's list - no need to use the dropdown anymore.
– We updated the player reputation status icons, the ones that are shown over the player's head.
– Upgrade window icons (architect table), are upscaled to 4k now, which is making them better looking.
– Updated the first tutorial to be consistent with the new UI.

Changes in the balance systems between servers

A few weeks ago we implemented a system, requested by our community, allowing players to “bypass” the Main Server system if the target server is small enough, to help it get more active, and so improve the gameplay on that server. That allowed players from other servers to get access to features like looting or gaining Nation Points on servers other than their main server, while playing with higher ping outside their region, and in the end giving more action and gameplay on those servers.
Looking at the average numbers of players in each server this worked, yet it had its downsides, as the smallest servers have the biggest possibility of having balance issues.

After taking a closer look at the statistics and heatmaps of each server, we could clearly see that those smaller regions are being played very differently in terms of threatening new players and overall underdog nations by dominating nations. While on the bigger servers new players are not being looted for most of the time, we have found out that the ratio of camping and looting on new players from underdog nations is happening much more often on those smaller servers, the same time making a never-ending cycle of breaking the balance and fun for everyone (as the game gets boring for those who dominate, and frustrating to those who are being the underdog).

While those situations don't need to happen by any bad will of players, but due to servers being smaller which leads to less PvP action on average, we believe we have an idea how to help on that matter by iterating the above system, allowing players to join other servers which require help in terms of balance.

From now on, we won't be allowed to join a smaller server just based on the sheer server size, but we will also take into account whether there is a nation tagged as a "Long / Deep Underdog". Should there be such nation, this nations' players from other servers will be able to jump in and help this nation to fight against the bigger nations while having the option of gaining loot and Nation Points, as well as taking part in daily server activities (i.e. VoD, Volcano). This change should help make the server more alive, whilst helping it achieve balance.

To prevent abusing that mechanic, the debuff for having too many players from outside the server will still be triggered in case of any SoW.

Fixes

– Fixed an issue where after the tournament if the siege event could not start, the tournament counter was staying on “0 seconds left” status.
– Fixed an issue where even turning off some icons on the map via filters, i.e. vendors, was not working if the player moved to another location.
– Fixed an issue where the minimap arrow pointing to the player mark was not visible.
– Fixed an issue where the Amber currency amount was incorrectly shown in the inventory.
– Fixed an issue where it was possible to add development points to the mining and metallurgy profession, which was changed to a character development tree. This profession was removed from the professions available during character creation.
– Fixed an issue where some players could not progress one of the questlines if they started it before the addition of the new quests placed between the old ones.
– Fixed an issue where when a player joined a guild that already has an alliance, this player could not use alliance chat during this game session.
– Fixed an issue causing the skins tutorial to have the wrong resolution.