Valgrave: Immortal Plains News

Patch v1.2.8 & v1.2.9

Summary: Three new abilities! Projectiles are a bit on the weakside already and with the addition of the melee abilities Ice Nova and Spike Smash they need a buff overall to stay competitive.

A New Contest with Cash Prizes! Check out details here. tl;dr: Win some money by referring yourself and others then playing games. More questions? Want to find people to make matches with? Join DISCORD.

New Abilities:
- Ice Nova is a 15 damage, 4s cooldown spell that attacks in a radius around the caster and slows all hit targets by 33% for 3 seconds.
- Spike Smash is a 20 damage downward melee attack that can only be used while airborne. With a cooldown of 3 seconds, it will send opponents flying toward the ground and give you an upward boost if you land it.
- Water Orb is a slow moving short range projectile that spawns additional projectiles in a 360 radius around itself. Both the orb and its shards deal 20 damage a piece. Has a cooldown of 4 seconds.

Minor features:
- Zone now closes much quicker and does 25% less damage.
- Auto-exposure has been turned off so we can better make use of light particles on abilities. To compensate we've turned up the contrast and saturation. We'd love feedback on the new look.
- Camera no longer collides with other characters.


Balance changes:
Boomerang:
- DMG 20 -> 25
- CD 1s -> 2s

Cosmic Shards:
- DMG 20 -> 30
- CD 1s -> 2s

Fireball:
- DMG 17 -> 15
- DOT 1 -> 2.5

Forward Dash Attack:
- Collision reworked so it should be easier to hit.

Frost Arrow:
- DMG 25 -> 30

Kick Back:
- Should be much more responsive and not lock you out of using abilities for as long.

Laser Beam:
- DMG 30 -> 40

Spear Throw:
- DMG 20 -> 30
- CD 2.0s -> 2.5s

Super Jump:
- Now marked as a melee spell to better hint at its use.
- Now temporarily disables collision with other characters to prevent bouncing off of their head.
- DMG 20 -> 15
- CD 5 -> 6

Sword Slash:
- CD 3 -> 2.5

Bug fixes:
- Laser Beam and grounding wave should no longer cause permarooting on poor connections.
- Fixed the "rubber-banding" effect during Forward Dash Attack, Super Jump, and Sword Slash.
- Laserbeam should now work properly again.
- You should no longer get stuck in swordslash (let us know if its still happening as we cannot reproduce)
- Fixed an issue where you might become immune to launches from other sources (KnockupPunch, Bouncing pads, SpikeSmash, etc)
- Fixed an issue where your skin would show you as invisible if Steam was having server issues
- Made ForwardDashAttack on bumpy ground a little less likely to stop

Summary: Character chromas are live! Earn coins by playing and winning games and use them to unlock chromas for any character you own.

Major features:
- Chromas can be unlocked with coins. You will now be granted 10 coins at the end of every game and an additional 10 coins if you or your team wins. Chromas can only be unlocked for characters that you currently own. In the next patch, we will also be granting an additional daily coin bundle.

Minor features:
- Small improvements to movement and jumping. We'll be making small changes over the next 5-10 patches to not affect gameplay too much and give everyone time to adjust. This should open us up to being able to make some cool abilities.

Balance Changes:
Dragon Homing Missile:
- Cooldown increased from 2s -> 3.5s

Fire Rain:
- Radius increased from 512 -> 750

Blackhole:
- Pull strength reduced from 0.4 -> 0.2 (Super Jump and a couple of the weaker movements can escape now)
- Radius decreased from 750 -> 725
- Particle system flattened and lowered in order to reduce the obstruction of vision

Knockup Punch:
- Cooldown reduced from 6s -> 4s

Siphon Chain:
- Leash break distance reduced from 2000 -> 1750
- Cast range decreased from 1500 -> 1000
- Chain duration decreased from 4.5s -> 4s (Total damage reduced from 20 -> 18)

Sword Slash:
- Dash duration increased from 0.15s -> 0.3s
- Dash strength increased decreased from 2000 -> 1750
- Collision radius increased from 130 -> 160

Bug fixes:
- Fixed some bugs with the matchmaking system

Summary: Trying to increase the abilities that can escape Siphon Chain reliably and make it more profitable to break out of the chain. Bringing a lot of weaker abilities up by increasing their reliability over adding more damage to the game.

Balance Changes:
Arrow Volley:
- Time between arrows decreased 0.15s -> .10s
- Speed increased from 10000 -> 12000

Blackhole:
- Double the strength of the suction effect (you can no longer sprint out)
- Radius increased from 512 -> 750

Bouncing Bomb:
- Particle effects improved
- Bounce friction reworked (slows down fast upon bouncing making it easier to place where you want it)
- Size increased from 32 -> 50
- Now bounces off of Entangling Wall and Anti Projectile Bubble instead of exploding

Entangling Wall:
- Significantly increased the height, also should function a bit better on slopes

Forward Dash Attack:
- Damage increased from 15 -> 20
- Cooldown reduced from 8 -> 7

Frost Arrow:
- Slow reduced from 75% -> 70%
- Improved particle effect

Homing Spheres:
- Cooldown increased from 3.5s -> 4.5s

Hook:
- Speed increased from 15000 -> 17500
- Improved the look of the projectile

Kickback:
- Damage increased from 15 -> 20
- Increased range by about 50% but removed the ability to kick a person behind you

Rising Wall:
- Duration increased from 7s -> 12s

Tornado:
- Radius increased from 175 -> 350
- Initial speed increased from 500 -> 1000
- Maximum speed increased from 1000 -> 2000
- Acceleration increased from 100 -> 200

Siphon Chain:
- Cooldown increased from 7s -> 8s

Smoke Bomb:
- Range increased from 1500 -> 2500

Spear Throw:
- Damage increased from 15 -> 20

Super Jump:
- Damage reduced from 25 -> 20
- Height reduced from 2000 -> 1400 (this will just feel like the player is moving slower during super jump, distance and time are unchanged)

Sword Slash:
- No longer clamps velocity but prevents multijumping after casting if you are in the air
- Damage increased from 8 -> 15

Whirlwind:
- Movement speed multiplier increased from 25% -> 50%

Bug fixes:
- Fixed "Coins" showing up as a selectable character

Summary: Added a new ability and a handful of UI updates

Major features:
- New ability: Bouncing Bomb

Minor features:
- Modified logic that determines whether health bars are shown on enemies or not (more strict)
- All targeting reticles now accurately match collision radius (some were off by ~%30).
- Added a colored border around ability images based on ability type
- Updated ability pickup bubble material so that it does not overly and distort the ability image's colors
- Updated ability pickup text UI
- New ability slot border that properly scales with resolution
- Changed health bar colors on the UI to stand out more when health gets below 50% (yellow-orange) and 25% (red)
- Added a bounce sound to Boomerang

Balance changes:
- Bouncing Bomb:
- Cooldown: 1s
- Speed: 8000 (Cosmic Shards is 10000 for reference)
- Damage:
- Instant hit: 10 (doesn't bounce before hitting a character)
- Bounce hit: 25 (bounces at least once before hitting a character)
- Stationary explosion: 30 AOE (after the bomb stops bouncing)

- Fireball:
- Initial damage on hit increased from 12 -> 17 (total damage increased from 20 -> 25)

Bug fixes:
- Implemented potential fix for invisible Dragons
- Fixed a bug where sometimes SFX would play twice

Summary: Mostly bug fixes introduced by upgrading the Unreal Engine to 4.23 but also a few balance changes.

Balance changes:
- Arrow Volley:
- Speed increased from 8000 -> 10000
- Increased size of arrow model to better match collision radius

- Siphon Chain:
- Cast range increased from 1000 -> 1500
- Chain break distance increased from 1500 -> 2000

- Knockup Punch:
- Cooldown reduced from 7 -> 6

- Super Jump:
- Can now be cast in the air

Bug fixes:
- Fixed a bug where alt-tabbing would cause crashes in fullscreen mode
- Fixed a bug where vsync was always enabled in windowed fullscreen mode
- Fixed a crash caused by the initial cast of Smoke Bomb



Summary: Major movement based ability rework to allow casting abilities during dash and jump forces. Smoke Bomb is now targeted, and Arrow Volley has been buffed. We've also fixed a bug that was preventing players with special character in their Steam name from being able to connect to game servers.

Major features:
- Unreal Engine updated from 4.22 to 4.23

Minor features:
- Slightly increased the height of the crosshair to give a better perspective for ground target abilities
- Movement abilities can now be activated more quickly upon finishing another movement ability (tightened activation windows)

Balance changes:
- Forward Dash Attack:
- Now allows you to cast non-movement abilities during dash
- No longer locks your control rotation during dash
- Dash speed reduced from 6000 -> 3000
- Camera no longer lags behind during dash
- Improved collision behavior when dashing into very close objects

- Super Jump:
- Now allows you to cast non-movement abilities during jump force

- Sword Slash:
- Now allows you to cast non-movement abilities during dash

- Arrow Volley:
- Projectile speed increased from 4000 -> 8000
- Reduced delay between arrows from 0.2s -> 0.15s

- Siphon Chain and Blink Behind:
- Can now target lock through walls. This intends to make melee builds more viable and fleeing from unfavorable fights more difficult. This also attempts to solve the problem where in some scenarios you feel like you should be able to target lock, but the targeting reticle is just barely blocked by some object in the world.

- Smoke Bomb:
- Can now aim where you want to teleport to
- Has a targeting reticle to visualize where you will teleport to when holding down the activation key

- Ground Wave:
- Damage reduced from 20 -> 10

Bug fixes:
- Fixed a bug where players with special characters in their Steam name were not able to connect to a game server
- Potentially fixed intermittent bug where players get rooted permanently



Summary: ArrowVolley rework, damage indicators, increased tick rate of damage-over-time abilities, and toning down some "need-to-have" abilities.

Major features:
- ArrowVolley has been reworked. It now functions more like a machine gun (similar to HomingSpheres but without the homing). The projectiles are still affected by gravity and shoot 8 over a short period of time. All projectiles are launched in the direction you are aiming with a brief delay in between instead of 5 launched instantly in a fan orientation. Each arrow still does 5 damage.

Minor features:
- PlayArea no longer closes all the way and shrinks to a predefined size. To protect against players holding servers hostage, the server will now automatically terminate itself after 30 minutes.
- New higher resolution crosshair.
- Added a crosshair damage indicator upon dealing damage.
- Added a 2D sound indicator upon dealing damage.
- Added unique sounds on victory and defeat at the end of the game.
@here

Balance changes:
- Blackhole
- Damage:
Frequency: 1s -> 0.5s
Damage: 3 -> 1.5
Duration: 5s (unchanged)
- Total damage: 15 (unchanged)

- Fireball
- Initial damage:
- 0 -> 12
- Burn damage:
- Frequency: 1s -> 0.5s
- Damage: 5 -> 1
- Duration: 4s (unchanged)
- Total damage: 20 (unchanged)

- FireRain
- Damage:
- Frequency: 1s -> 0.5s
- Damage: 8 -> 4
- Duration: 4s (unchanged)
- Total damage: 20 (unchanged)

- SiphonChain
- Damage:
- Frequency: 1s -> 0.5s
- Damage: 4 -> 2
- Duration: 5s (unchanged)
- Total damage: 20 (unchanged)

- GroundWave:
- Root duration: 1.75s -> 1.25s

- InstantHeal:
- Heal strength: 15 -> 10

Bug fixes:
- Fixed bug where in rare cases, game sessions would stay active forever with no connected players.
- SiphonChain now properly ends on death of either the source or target actor.
- Death recap system will now properly give credit to the last damaging player when disconnected.



Summary: Matchmaking has been rewritten to eliminate unnecessary fragmentation of players. This is a system that is developed in front of our previous matchmaking system to hijack player placement. We now have a separate group of servers that we try to manually funnel all players into first. If all those servers are full or in progress, you will fallback to the old matchmaking system (which shouldn't happen until we have more players). The new system also corrects the unpredictability of getting a random teammate. For example, if 20 solo players get thrown into a game session, all 20 players will be on their own team. Once the 21st player joins, since there is only a maximum of 20 teams allowed, that player will get thrown on the first team with an open slot.