Glorious Companions News

Hello there, Companions!





We’re excited to announce that we have a new, big update for you! It addresses a lot of the core problems with the gameplay, balance and progression in Glorious Companions. To make it even better we’re coupling it with a -33% Weeklong Deal!

Let’s dive right into what the update brings into the game:



We’ve finally added a feature that we had been planning to add since the very beginning. Fog of War will serve as a vital component in every battle. Our initial intention in making the battle maps as large as they were was to provide enough room for this mechanic, which requires you to move carefully through the battlefield in order to first scout your opponent. The night shall prove to be a bigger obstacle too, as all units now suffer from reduced vision range when the moon is out above.

It took longer than anticipated, but with the Fog of War system you’ll finally be able to put all your tactician skills to use.


We’ve read a lot of your feedback suggesting that the current win condition (killing the enemy captain) makes battles boring instead of exciting (which was our intention). After a few discussions we’ve decided that while this mechanic serves its role in a competitive multiplayer setting, it doesn’t work quite as well in a single player experience when playing against AI controlled enemies.

But we also didn’t want to completely get rid of it. From now on killing the enemy captain won’t end the battle, but instead it’ll substantially hinder enemy morale. First of all, death of the enemy captain will trigger a Fear check among the party and each unit will receive a slight debuff that’ll weaken its fighting capabilities. That way aiming to take down the enemy captain will still remain important to win the battle, and yet it should also make for a more fun and balanced gameplay.

Oh, and letting your own captain die will still trigger an instant defeat like it did so far.



While we’re working on an overhaul of the Ability System, we wanted to implement a quick quality of life improvement into the game in this update. Till the next update is released you’ll be able to instantly learn your skills at Training Facilities (though the time will still pass while training) just like it was before for the captain unit. The training times were also significantly lowered. Of course you’ll still need the Learning Points and Gold, but you won’t have to say goodbye to your companions for multiple days each time you want to teach them a new ability.



We have a bunch of new and awesome illustrations for our Interactive Objects on the World Map. To spice things up we’ve decided to refresh the whole panel and implement some fancy fx on top. We’ve also added special sound effects for each of the interactives to convey the mood even better.
Expect a lot more Interactive Objects in the game when the new World Map Update is finally released!

Warning: Old saves won't work after this update!

[h2]Content:[/h2]

• Fog of War in battles.
  
• Changed the win conditions - now killing an enemy captain applies a debuff to their units instead of ending the battle.
  
• Added Escape menu in battles.
  
• Dynamic HP bars that hide and show up automatically.
  
• Overhaul of the Interactive Object panel.
  
• New Interactive Object illustrations and sound effects.
  
• Sight range is shorter at night.
  
• Added a confirmation popup on turn's end.
  
• Added adjustable outlines on allied and enemy units in battle.
  
• Added contextual tips / onboarding in battle.
  

[h2]Balance:[/h2]

• Tweaked the distribution of neutral enemy groups on the World Map.
  
• Temporarily made all skill learning instantenous, units no longer have to stay at a training facility to learn them. (We'll be reworking this system in further updates.)
  
• Rebalanced item prices as well as unit prices.
  
• Taverns will host at least one of each unit type available in the given city.
  
• Camp Training EXP now scales with the unit's level instead of Mind stat.
  
• Camp First Aid heal buffed, passive HP regen on the World Map nerfed.
  
• Buffed Poisonous Dart damage and poison.
  
• Lowered the required EXP for levels past 6.
  
• Lowered the required company EXP for all levels.
  
• Buffed the Leather Armor's resistance.
  
• Mystic Well gives more EXP on success.
  
• Destroyed Wagon deals less damage on fail.
  
• Abandoned Camp gives more gold on success.
  

[h2]Bug fixes and tweaks:[/h2]

• Fixed Knockback and Rain of Bullets being castable without ammo.
  
• Fixed displaying accuracy % for all abilities.
  
• Speed of camera scroll on the World Map now depends on the zoom level.
  
• Displaying damage dealt to shield with Farewell ability instead of '0!'.
  
• Fixed the range of Dragon Plague jump.
  
• Fixed the range of Vengeance replenishing.
  
• Tweaked the text appearance in the cutscene.
  
• Unaffordable items at Flea Market have their prices colored red now.
  
• The training facilities now show what you're lacking to learn an ability.
  
• Fixed aura effects healing issue.
  

We can finally share with you some of the progress that we’re making on the new World Map. Keep in mind that these are WiPs though!




Let us know your thoughts in the comments and remember to follow the game for more updates!

Hello there, Companions!



We've decided to lower the base price of Glorious Companions to $19.99, which will stay this way at least until the Full Release. We feel that this new price better reflects the current state of the game, especially that we're planning to stay in Early Access for another year.

Now when we're about a month away from our 0.5 update, which will introduce a lot of gameplay improvements, new features and a better progression balance, we thought that it's the best time to drop the base price of Glorious Companions.

We're glad for your support so far and hope that you understand our reasoning here ːlunar2020contentgoatː

Check out what's coming in the future updates in our recent devlog (including a sample of the new and awesome soundtrack): https://steamcommunity.com/games/1001040/announcements/detail/2224158720771427187



Let us know your thoughts in the comments and remember to follow the game for more updates!

Hello there, Companions!



We’re back with some fresh news and development updates. We’ll talk about our plans for the future of GC’s development, as well as the contents of the next update. To be frank, in the recent months we’ve thought a lot about the direction we’re taking with this game and we’ve spent a lot of time analysing the feedback we’ve received since our EA release.

We’ve decided that what the game lacks the most at the moment are not new races or abilities. Our biggest priority right now will be fixing and improving the gameplay foundations, and you’ll see the first batch of that in Update 0.5. We’ve come to the bitter realization that no amount of new playable units will make the game fun, when there’s little to do on the world map and the battles don’t offer enough challenges and/or variety after the first few.

Fortunately, based on the feedback we’ve received and our own conclusions we’ve got a solid plan on how to get the game to where we want it to be. It’ll require a lot of hard work but we’re confident that it’ll be for the best.


Anyhow, for now let’s go back to the upcoming 0.5 Update that will be released in the first week of June. Besides the QoL improvements, smaller features and bug fixes, here are the two biggest changes that we’re preparing for you:

[h3]Fog of War[/h3]


This is the biggest feature we’ve been working on recently and it meddles with a lot of other mechanics, especially with the AI and special abilities. We’ve still got a lot of testing, balancing and bug fixing to do when it comes to it but the core mechanic is already up and running.
We’re hoping that this change will make battles more interesting and thrilling. It should also allow for more intricate strategies and tactics to be used successfully on the battlefields.

[h3]Battle Win Conditions[/h3]
We’ve read a lot of your feedback suggesting that the current win condition (killing the enemy captain) makes battles boring instead of exciting (which was our intention). After a few discussions we’ve decided that while this mechanic serves its role in a competitive multiplayer setting, it doesn’t work quite as well in a single player experience when playing against AI controlled enemies.

But we also didn’t want to completely get rid of it. In the next update killing the enemy captain won’t end the battle, but instead it’ll substantially hinder enemy morale. First of all, death of the enemy captain will trigger a Fear check among the party and each unit will receive a slight debuff that’ll weaken its fighting capabilities. That way aiming to take down the enemy captain will still remain important to win the battle, and yet it should also make for a more fun and balanced gameplay.

Oh, and letting your own captain die will still trigger an instant defeat like it did so far.




Okay, so let’s go through the biggest features/changes that we’re planning for further development (as in stuff that we want to have in the game when we release the full version / leave EA).

[h3]Skills / Abilities rework[/h3]
We thought that it’d be fun to leave units at special training facilities so they can master new skills, but it turned out to be a lot more tedious than we expected. Additionally, it’s not very intuitive and some players might even completely miss that there are abilities to be learned in the game.

Instead, we’re working on a system where units will gain special skill points used to unlock abilities every few levels, and players will be able to use them right away in the Unit Panel. Thus learning new abilities won’t require time and gold anymore. We also plan to implement a lot of smaller skills that units will be able to learn besides the major abilities we have implemented at the moment. When maxed out, each unit will have 5 skills, of which at most 3 will be active abilities.

[h3]Story / Gameplay Direction[/h3]
Here’s the biggest news: we’ve decided to scrap the idea of going full-on sand-box mode with Glorious Companions. Rather than that, we’ll focus on implementing a main quest line so that players have interesting stuff to do from the get-go. We’ve realized that we simply do not have the manpower to ever get to the point where that mode alone would be compelling enough for most players. That doesn’t mean that we’re “downgrading” our vision. Instead, we hope to hook you with an interesting story and a mystery to solve around the continent, one that will require a skilled commander. We have something quite special prepared for that and it’s certainly a big topic, so we’ll be back to talk about it in more detail in future devlogs.



[h3]Dungeons[/h3]
We also plan to implement a Dungeon system, and with it a lot of unique enemies and bosses. There’ll be a total of 5 dungeons (one per biom), each with its own defenders and a tough boss at the end. They’ll be much more challenging than your typical world map encounters, as you won’t be able to heal up between ‘rooms’ and their defenders will come equipped with some interesting abilities of their own. You’ll have to put in some work to even find some of them, and then in the final room you’ll face a big ol’ boss that you’ll need to defeat to complete the dungeon.

[h3]New World Map / Cities[/h3]
We’ve already teased that a completely new world map is coming, but there’s still work left to be done before we can release it. Along with the graphical overhaul you’ve already seen, we’ll be adding a brand new soundtrack to fit the visual changes and the darker fantasy mood we’re aiming for, composed by Zofia Domaradzka. Here’s a little preview, a track titled “Restless Night Ahead” that will be featured in the new main menu screen. Check it out for yourself!

[previewyoutube][traczek zofii na yt][/previewyoutube]

The new world map will bring in more interactive events, objectives and encounters for you to face. Additionally, we’ll be rolling out a neat looking volumetric fog of war for the world map, as we strive to make exploration more meaningful and dangerous.

After the World Map upgrade we plan to change the way cities look and their UI.

[h3]NPC Interactions[/h3]
Last but not least, we will be reworking the NPC interactions and dialogues. At the moment NPC interactions along with the city UI are the most outdated and underdeveloped aspects of the game and we definitely feel the need to improve them before we leave EA. This will go hand-in-hand with our focus on the new main story within the campaign.



Let us know your thoughts in the comments and remember to follow the game for more updates!

Hello there, Companions!

Here are a few more fixes for the bugs you've reported and we've found ourselves.


- Fixed a bug with Baron's Knockback in Training Facility. (reported by CaptainSol)
- Fixed a number of bugs with Camping assignments. (one of them reported by MoonShadow)
- Fixed a bug with some abilities requiring firearm ammo to use. (reported by CaptainSol)
- Fixed Shamaness's passive and Power Drain's damage.
- Captain Call descriptors tweaked.

Hello there, Companions!

Turned out that the amount of new additions to the game in our 0.4 Update kind of impacted the stability of the build. To be honest it was one of the most thoroughly tested builds that we published, unfortunately we weren't able to catch some of the bugs before the Update's release.



Anyways, we've fixed a number of game-breaking bugs that you've reported and the game should be much more stable now. If you encounter anything else, please send us your Player.log and save files to [email protected] or post them on the Bugs subforum.

• Fixed mouse camera scrolling in Battle.
  
• Fixed a bug with the Sweet Revenge quest. (reported by Bristly Stranger)
  
• Fixed the Fur Armor texture on Walord. (reported by Bristly Stranger)
  
• Fixed a bug with the Trapper goal. (reported by madra)
  
• Fixed World Map loading bug. (reported by Rob'sEvilTwin)
  
• Fixed a bug on the World Map with the time still flowing after stopping the company's movement in some cases.