Greetings, Warriors!

This was a very productive week for our team, and we’re delighted to introduce the previously announced and exciting feature of Gloria Victis MMO: Cross-server Tournaments! Those global events always were popular among our players, unquestionably providing a lot of entertainment, so we are happy that we're allowing them to expand their reach and handle more players.

In addition to this change, which we will describe more broadly in the following section, we’ve taken the time to introduce improvements to a lot of smaller systems in the game; for example sound effects, siege engines controller, and - what may be very warmly welcomed - changes in wall-hitting which will have a positive impact on sieges balance, and remove one for the most frustrating aspects of fighting near walls or inside gatehouses.

Lastly, It is heartwarming to see that we’re receiving tons of constructive feedback and reports from you. Thank you for your opinions, suggestions, and reviews! We hope you will like what we prepared for you today and have a great time in the game!


The screenshot’s authors have been awarded. Erikson, X-Deep, NeoLuso*, and Meatskin Wagon – enjoy your Ambers!

Changelog v.0.9.9.5 Beta

Cross-server Tournaments

We're happy to introduce the cross-servers tournament feature. We know that people like to visit other servers and participate in VoD tournaments despite having slightly worse ping, so we want them to be able to do that, for example – to help with balance and ensure more fun for everyone.

Of course, it's impossible to simply forget about the reality and distances between servers, so there will still be a priority to join for players from VoD host servers, and every server tournament will be hosted on the original region's server at the same time like currently.

Every tournament on every server will be visible in “Upcoming events” in the “regular” tab, and the event name will tell you what server hosts it. The registration process is a little different when we want to join another server VoD. You can register for the event using Notification Center or Upcoming Events list, but other server Tournament registration will not be shown directly on the game screen.

We are keeping the queue rules, allowing greenleafs to have priority to join the tournament. This decision will help us to introduce further iterations of the system, as when Tournaments will have enough players, it will be easier for us to split players into two events ongoing simultaneously and have one for less experienced players, and one for veterans. But this is something for the future – for now, we are increasing the limit of players in tournaments from 25 to 50 per nation, so you can expect much bigger and more engaging fights.

We are making an exception in the softlock for Contribution Points, and you are now able to collect them as a reward for participating in Tournaments that are hosted on servers different from your main one. We believe it will be neat to meet other server players more often and test their combat capabilities, so join the events and have fun!

Side note: Along with implementing this feature, we have fixed some minor issues, and ensured that players will have access to depots on Tournament spawns.

Quality of Life improvements

Wall hitting changes

As you may know, it was quite unbalanced to siege a location and fight in the gatehouses or near walls, as the attackers stop their attack on the walls, inflicting damage on them and not continuing their attack, while the defenders were able to pierce the walls with the message that they cannot attack their own building and deliver hits on attackers. This was leading to a lot of frustration and misunderstandings, as well as discouraging players from fighting under enemy walls.

The change was needed here, so from now on walls will not stop the attacks of the players - both the defenders and the attackers. Any attack with a melee weapon that will go through the wall will inflict damage on one wall and will continue on, searching for an opponent. If you are using a two-handed weapon, the wall will not "eat" Cleave stacks.

We believe this change will greatly help in siege balance, greatly reduce bad user experience, and encourage both sides of the siege to search for more unique tactics and solutions to conquer the enemy.

Further Siege Engines tweaks

The new Siege Engines controller is already much better than the old one but required some additional tweaks and fixes which we are happy to introduce in today's update. We have also found some errors regarding terrain and bridges in the game and took care of them so catapults and rams should try to colonize Mars less frequently. :)

– Machines should not climb vertical walls anymore
– Machines should move slower when going uphill
– Fixed the bridge at Rodrock, which was stopping Siege Engines in the middle when moving uphill on it.



SFX improvements

Background music and good SFX are very important to complete the experience of playing our game. It is good to have SFX feedback when we are performing an action, as we enjoy the game not only with our eyes but our ears too. This is why we are introducing some new custom sounds today:

– Added custom kick damage sound.
– Added iddle sounds for chickens, gooses, wolves, and boars.
– Added sounds for 1H + shield “Show–off” emote: shield hitting and weapon swings
– Added body bump sound when player sprint into iddle and unarmed NPC or player

Other Quality of Life improvements

– Introduced new visuals of “My constructions” and “Stall” windows.
– Fixes and polishes of the new Market User Interface.
– changed the “Leave province” button to be better visible.
– Performance improvement on block indicators displaying.
– Boars received a new iddle animation.
– Adjustments to crafting taxes and technologies. As you may know, queuing i.e. 100 crafting actions were taking only tax for one item. From now on, each crafting item will be properly taxed (excluding the ones that are crafted as a bonus due to technology, character development, or workshop bonuses), and we are reducing the minimum tax from 25c to 5c. Additionally, instead of 15% of tax return, keeping the Sangmarian Official technology on a max level will allow you to receive an astonishing 45% return from taxes!
– As destroyed workstations bring back materials to market to “My offers” claiming their limit, we don't want to create an infinite deposit. we need to introduce security there. When our limit in the market is exceeded (eg. 21/20), we block the possibility to place new workstations. Trying to place a new workstation should show a proper error message. “My offers” limit still can be exceeded while the furnace gets destroyed
– We are adding titles and rewards for completing nodes in Character Development trees. You can now get Contribution Points as a reward in the Achievements [H] window, and receive unique titles for your characters!

Fixes

– Fixes to edge case of doing shield bash without having this skill (only client-side visual) if the player had randomized alternative animation for bow right before switching weapons.
– Fixed an issue causing shield bash animation not to be shown when the shield was equipped without any weapon in the other hand.
– Fixed an issue where one of the siege camps characters could be thrown into the air when leaving spawn.
– Fixed an issue that didn't allow horse stamina to be regenerated at stablemaster if horse health was full.
– Fixed an edge case issue that allowed spawn "Vile Beggars" while interrupting resources gathering.
– Fixed an issue where players could be spawned up to half-submerged in the ground in capitals.
– Fixed an issue causing problems with removing nodes in the Forestry Character Development tree on the client-side.