Weekly update 248 – Freebuilding overhaul and Combat movement update!
Hello warriors!
It is time to grab an axe, hammer and trowel once again and raise the walls of your own settlement! One of the most extensive additions in Gloria Victis history – Freebuilding for Guild Castles – just received a full renovation. You are getting brand new detailed models, new features, improved construction system, and even more will come in the near future, including a highly requested grid visibility system and destruction animation of fortifications!
But that is not all! Thanks to the full model renovation, Nation castles will also get a new look and improvements, so every player will be able to benefit from today's update.
Speaking about benefits for all, we also are happy to introduce a combat movement update, which will greatly improve the responsiveness of the combat movement, speed up the combat, and will give players the ability to change their position more easily in the tactical aspects of the game on the battlefield.
As positioning and having the possibility to improve your tactics on the battlefield is crucial for success in battle, we - as an independent game studio - are also focusing on our position on the world stage and market. Thanks to the recent update of the engine, which gives us a performance and stability boost, and thanks to the cooperation with our precious Community in fixing a lot of issues related to the moderation of the game, we believe that the time has come to leave the Alpha state of the project.
We will give ourselves two more weeks to polish the Freebuilding overhaul with you, and after that, on update 250, Gloria Victis will move to a Beta phase that will last a few months. In that time, our programmers will focus on using the tools given to us by the engine upgrade to improve stability, performance and optimization of the game, even more, to be ready for full release and new players. Of course, part of the team will work on bug fixes and new features, and we would like to address players' demands as well as take some time to prepare new mount colours and skins.
This introduction becomes a bit lengthy, but I should also mention Aquilla and Monteverde servers are merging with this update. As you know, we ran a NA/SA Test Server to check routings and performance of it. From people who sent us their reports about ping and performance, we can say that 90% of players that participated in the test session had a better ping on the new server!
You can find detailed information and a list of changes in today's update below. We are counting on your constructive feedback and help! Also, because you will be recreating your castles and may need some nice details - you can buy all the available decorations at special prices in Supporter Shop in the game!
See you in battle!
The screenshot author have been awarded. Sugarun – check your Ambers!
[h2]Freebuilding overhaul[/h2]
Freebuilding has been with us for a little over a year, and it is a system that allows every guild owning a guild province to set up fortifications and buildings on its own. Freebuilding is one of the biggest and most impactful systems of Gloria Victis. When we introduced it into the game, it became another layer of gameplay and deepened the player economy, and it gave players a lot of freedom in creativity and tactical aspects of the game.
Terrain, grid and models:
The area where fortifications and economical buildings can be placed is defined by a grid. Grids and terrain have been adjusted to new system assumptions. The terrain around the grid will allow enemies to walk around fortifications even if defenders build fortifications at the very edge of the grid, so it will be very important to make your defences well thought all around, instead of placing layers of walls only on one side. To achieve that, we had to push farms away a little at a higher tier of economic Guild Castles.
Inside of the new Skergard mine
Models of walls will now fill the grid more accurately and intuitively, removing a lot of issues related to chokepoints. The system will encourage you to build more realistic castles and spend your defence points equally around the grid. It is still possible to build more than one layer of the walls, but since the economical buildings will need more space, and it will be not possible to clip them through other buildings – they will require some more space inside and it will be much better to upgrade the walls instead placing multiple lines of them.
New grid usage of every buildable model. You can compare this one with the old system here
The previous system allowed players to create very small chokepoints in the defences, and in the new system, it is impossible to make a passage narrower than half the diagonal of the grid, which is making the smallest possible chokepoint 13 times wider than currently.
Gates received proper murder holes above the internal gate, which will greatly improve their defensive abilities and make them more valuable and comfortable in use as parts of the fortification layer. I am calling the new models more “ergonomic”, since the entrances, space inside and overall pathing of the way up and down have been improved and shortened. In addition to that, we are preventing buildings from being placed on the grid right behind the inner gate of the gatehouse.
New stone walls, towers and gates look amazing, do'nt you think?
With all these and other changes, we are aiming to reduce the death spots and choke points in castles.
We are addressing the ballistae density issue, with a system that is checking how many buildings with active ballista are currently placed around the particular spot and if there are too many, the system is not allowing to active ballista on the building.
Palisades have been changed, and now each tier of the wall has a space to move around on top of it. Every additional tier grants new or better layers of defences, like battlements and roofs. Each tier will have more HP with every upgrade and will be fire-resistant when it comes to tier IV, V and VI – the stone walls.
New models of pallisades around Skergard mine and farm
Fortification and Economical points:
The maximum number and level of fortifications are limited by fortification points - different provinces have a different number of available points. Each part of the wall, tower or gate costs the appropriate amount. Higher levels of fortification have a higher cost, so it is worth paying attention to the number of available points and adjusting the number of fortifications to the preferred level.
We addressed all known issues that were causing not giving back fortification points for removed ballistas and upgraded buildings. In addition to that, we found and fixed issues related to building and preview rotations, that could lead to misplacements and inconveniences in creating the layout of fortifications by placing the buildings facing the wrong direction.
Buildings such as some walls, towers, gates and the main building can be equipped with defensive systems such as boiling oil or ballista - these systems also consume fortification points.
Guild castles also have economic buildings. You can place, among others: workshops, crafting stations, stalls with merchants and the Market station like before, but mind that economical buildings cannot be clipped through fortifications anymore which will encourage you to create some more open and better-looking space inside your location.
Leaktown build by our tester LadyAngela
Upcoming features
Today's update contains the foundation for the introduction of further improvements. In later actualisations, we will introduce a highly requested system that will show you the grid of your castle and allow you to design your lines of defence and location layout with better planning possibilities. Anyway, to make it easier, for now, you can check every grid of the Guild Castles: Aquitania, Audunstede, Greatfall, Leaktown, Lublin, Norfolk, Original Faith Order, Skergard and Twinfall.
Example of the Guild Castle grid. This particular one is Twinfall
Updates of Freebuilding will be released in iterations since it is a huge system with a lot of relations to other game features. We want to gather feedback from you and deal with any possible issues that may occur despite our long and detailed internal tests.
Current main buildings on Nation castles have been pushed away from walls to prevent jumping on them from the top, but still have current models. We are preparing a new wooden main building model for further iterations, fully redone and more suitable for new walls models set visually and technically.
Concept art of the new wooden main building. Redline on the first picture is showing the ground level, so do not be mistaken - it will not be much higher than the current one
We are preparing a system of customisable gates and towers, which will allow you to close the defender's entrance to the gatehouse and gates walls entrances with portcullis. This system will give you another field for creativity since you will be able to create layers of defences that will not be lost after enemies claim the gate and receive access to walls thanks to such moves. In addition to that, defensive systems on gates like boiling oil tanks will receive a visual overhaul.
To fight the death spots and chokepoints problems mentioned earlier, we are also working on the improvement of fortifications destructions. In further updates, falling fortifications - with the addition of proper animation! - will deal the splash damage to surrounding buildings, so placing walls one directly behind another will be less effective and it will be easier to destroy "stacked" fortifications.
Models will receive even more detail depending on terrain - castles will look more integrated with the land and look different placed on snow or on the tropical area. As we have that feature almost ready, we want to focus on gameplay over visuals first.
Top tier corner wall model - take a closer look at the moss on the wall - this detail is changing depending on terrain - castles will look more integrated with the land and look different placed on snow or on the tropical area
Armistice
After today’s update, every Guild Castle will be cleared. We are introducing an Armistice that will give guilds time to test the reworked system and rebuild their castles in peace. Each Guild Castle will have a safe zone for the nation that owns a particular Guild Location which will grant immunity to damage and looting of players and furnaces. Be aware that players from other nations still can be killed and looted inside that zone. Attacks on predefined palisades that some Guild Castles have will not trigger attacks on locations and prevent construction.
Capture from last PVP event hosted by Developers. Kanath - thank you for making such awesome album as a memorial of that event!
[h2]Combat movement[/h2]
In today's update, we are also introducing a combat movement update, which will speed up the combat, improve the responsiveness of the combat movement, and will give players the ability to change their position more easily in the tactical aspects of the game on the battlefield.
– Increased combat mobility. Before, the character was very much slowed down while moving horizontally or backwards. Now, the horizontal movement has been increased to be pretty close to forward movement speed. Backward movement speed is also increased but is still slower than frontal and horizontal movement. This shall greatly help with combat positioning and "guerilla warfare" of smaller groups.
The exception is the Melee Archer. Archers, while starting to pull the arrow, will receive the "Slow" condition to prevent running backwards and spraying arrows avoiding being attacked.
We do know that people wanted to have a faster controller, but at the same time was afraid that increasing the backward movements will make players unable to kick. We had done some tweaks on kick - first, the kick was not doing hit checks on the full kick range until the very end of the kick, we have shortened time of doing full kick range hit checks (that of course, doesn't make kick faster, just more reliable against target running away from us) - also, when we start the kick while running forward, our kick range will be slightly longer. Both of that should negate any negative impact of movement changes to kicking.
– Walk speed has been increased by 30%
– Changed how the "Slow" effect works Before, the effect was similar to Combat Mode, clamping the max speed into the "March" speed, now it clamps the speed to "Walk" speed which is a bit slower than "March", for melee fighters. The change doesn't affect horse movement.
The slow effect applies to the horse when the horse is being hit by any melee hit, or arrow with the Red Power Bar (nothing changed on that matter, it will also still clamp the movement to March speed). For foot fighters there are two cases of applying Slow effect - the first is slowing down the archer when he pulls the arrow, the second one is leg shot which archers can apply to their targets.
– Slightly decreased the max volume of other characters and NPCs at the closest distance, which will provide more reliable distinguishing of your own sound effects to enemy ones, and so this should improve reconnaissance in combat. At the same time, we have a limit for the max number of potential audio sources playing at the same time (performance-wise). This led to big fights having no sounds being played in some cases. We made a system which determines the priority of those sounds related to the distance - and so the cases where sounds being cut should be happening much less often.
– We have run through the animations mixes to find those which might be not clearly visible, especially for the players with higher ping. For that reason, we have shortened up mixes of around 10 attack animations.
It is client-side animation visibility change only, and doesn't affect the server hit times in any kind of way, except for one attack - the one-handed weapon left attack, for which the "release to start dealing damage" time has been increased by 50ms because it was the only attack that had "release to deal damage time" lower than potential reaction time.
– Player indicator changes. After some discussions about the potential of players between two nations teaming up, most cases are possible because of the alternative player indicator, with the nicks and guilds above the player heads. We made that setting as an alternative, not the default one [the default one is using the "Diamond" HP graphics above the heads] a long time ago because those nameplates gave the "zerg" feeling even for small groups of players. That text can be very big and can confuse especially new players using that mode into thinking that the enemy groups are much larger than they really are.
For this reason, the nameplates using the "text/alternative" mode will be showing only above your nation’s players. While speaking about that change with our community, we do know that some players are so-called "shot calling", which is how top-end veteran players play. To make it still possible for them to give concise directions, we have changed how information about enemy players is visible when you hover the mouse above them.
First, we have moved the UI to the top of the screen, showing there their guild names - making it much harder for groups of players to cooperate with other nations, but it will still be possible to distinguish single players. To make that happen, we also made it so that fading out after losing the target from the centre of the screen takes longer time, making it easier to track the target name when it's moving.
We do believe that this change might take some time for players to get used to - but at the same time, it should stop most cases of teaming between nations and the feeling of being "zerged" all of the time due to big nameplates of enemy player names.
Another screenshot from most recent PVP event made by one of winners of our small hussar screenhsot competition - Kanath
[h2]New server for SA and NA regions[/h2]
Monteverde player base and rankings will be added to the new NA/SA Aquilla server but since a huge chunk of the SA server has already moved to the current NA server and is even holding one of the Guild Castles there, won last 5v5 PVP event and because we will be on the moment of Freebuilding overhaul introduction, which will lead to Armistice for a few days - the most reasonable option would be to keep castles from AQ.
And while just next week we will have Open SOW anyway - we will have the battles. But if servers will get merged and wiped, and we want to introduce the pretty much safe zones for a few days around GC's to make those castles being built - there's no real alternative, because merging servers, wiping flags, and making them "who takes the grey flag first he has it for next week because of the few days of peace as new Freebuilding came" would be the worst solution that can be proposed.
SA players are less than 5% of our entire Community and most of them already migrated to NA, when original NA players are around 30% of the whole player base, We can think of no other solution after the server merge than SA players playing together in the alliances with and versus NA players.
Because of that, Glory Rankings will be merged – top Monteverde players will be quite high in the overall rankings after that, and there will be a lot of time to catch up with the rest of the players until the end of the current season. It is obvious that on a new server the rankings will be more competitive, but you will have much more opportunities to get more glory and get on the better place in the standings.
At the very same time, we prepared some very special dedicated titles for current Monteverde players as compensation for the inconvenience, thanks for their suggestions and feedback that led us to the merge decision and as a memorial of the great and interesting history of the Monteverde server, it's guilds and players.
We are looking forward to seeing that new chapter, and we do hope that you will find a comfortable place on the new server, with many new friends and challenges.
I just wanted to drop here some nice view at the end, and our Community delivered - SleepyViking - enjoy your Ambers!
[h2]Quality of Life[/h2]
Bastion:
– Added crafting experience reward for donating items to Bastion. It will work similarly to disassembling bonus, but will not grant the possibility to learn the recipe of the donated item
– Changed the formula which enumerated the character experience reward for donating items to Bastion. It was little too easy to find a location where fulfilling the needs will grant quite a big character experience reward with few items, so from now on, players will be rewarded more accordingly to the level of difficulty of needs fulfilment
– Improved responsibility of user interface of Bastion and Construction window of the castles
– Added animation of opening and closing Bastion interface
– Refactor of the backend code for item slots of Bastion interface
Other changes:
– Improved the usage of construction and building interface. Building the castles will be more comfortable and intuitive since the guild window will remember the last opened tab and chosen construction
– Added possibility to move and zoom the top-down camera in construction mode. It will grant better visibility and gives space to add more icons and customization options for buildings in the future
– Improvements of the main user interface. Changed visuals of Hitpoints, Stamina and Hunger bar and added ability to move it around the screen
– Improved ability to move the buff bar around the screen. From now on you are able to move it clicking and holding it as a whole, not only narrow space between icons
– Added sounds to clicking buttons, dropdowns and toggles
– Added colliders to Arena that will prevent interruptions during PVP events
[h2]Fixes[/h2]
– Fixed all known issues causing not giving back fortification points for removed ballistas and upgraded buildings
– Fixed issues related to building and preview ghost rotations, that could lead to misplacements and inconveniences in creating the layout of fortifications by placing the buildings facing the wrong direction
– Fixed an issue causing fish traps to continue depleting fisheries after reaching their max capacity. From now on, only catching something have an impact on fishery depletion
– Fixed an issue causing not closing the guild ranks tooltip after closing rank selection dropdown
– Fixes of some shields models which could collide with the camera
So, yeah, there goes the award for the longest patch notes in Gloria Victis history. Thank you for reading till the end, and for your patience and support! Once again, we are waiting for your constructive feedback and opinions!
Have a great day!
[h2]Hotfix 2020-11-21:[/h2]
In response to the feedback/reports received from players:
Combat:
– Decreased the backwards movement speed by 10% [it was increased by 25% yesterday]
– Decreased the horizontal movement speed by 5% [it was increased by 30% yesterday]
– Strafing backwards (S + A, or S + D keys movement) is now clamped to backwards speed rather than horizontal speed
– Due to the issue reported yesterday with the shield bash stab being too fast, giving a possibility to stunlock a n enemy, was covered by increasing the duration of "Back to armed" animation stagefor shield bash stab – it won't make this attack land damage slower, but make it less spammable which should make stunlocks impossible
– Slowed down the horse rotation when the horse moves backwards
– Adjusted the terrain and freebuilding area at Twinfall to allow to block the pathway to the bridge in the middle of the grid by building fortifications right by the bridge
– Added an area excluding building tents and siege tents at the back of Twinfall to make it equal to other 2nd tier Guild Castles: Original Faith’s Order’s Keep and Leaktown
Guild Castles and Freebuilding:
– Fixed collision issues at the 6th upgrade of the gatetower which made it possible to go through the back door and caused the player rubberband after jumping down the murderhole
– Fixed a bug causing that the stone upgrades of towers were shorter than the wooden ones
– From now it’s no longer possible to jump into the stone Bastion model through the windows on the ground floor
– Fixed a missing button translation in the buildings selection window
[h2]Hotfix 2020-11-23:[/h2]
In response to the feedback/reports received from players, we are introducing another part of changes and fixes:
Guild Castles and Freebuilding:
– Fixed an issue causing preview of the building to not disappear after opening any window. Opening any window in preview mode while building should close construction mode
– Multiple models and visual fixes in models of Gate, 45R and 45L walls, towers
– A reduced scale of construction colliders of inns and well which caused visual issues and could lead to not showing players behind those colliders
– Multiple visual fixes to preview models
– Improved collider preventing placing siege tents “on the back” of Twinfall
– Deepening of rivers around Twinfall to prevent siege engines to cross the water
Other changes:
– Fixed an issue causing wrong displaying of hitpoints state on the “diamond” indicators if an option to show text players nametags was turned on
– Fixed an issue causing preventing interaction with a memorial near Aquitania
– Fixed position of levitating villagers workshop in Norfolk
– Improved translations of crafter quest dialogues
We are aware that there are some issues with moving at Corner Tower and Gates of top tiers. Simple jump allows to move further, yet we will most probably hotfix it today.
[h2]Hotfix 2020-11-24:[/h2]
Dear Community.
We are introducing another hotfix for Gloria Victis, addressing some more of your feedback and reports. Instead of making a detailed list, we will make a detailed explanation for everything we prepared for you today :)
Players from Monteverde had cooldowns of changing the main server and nation – we removed them as part of the compensation that was planned before the merge. It was the first server merge in GV history and execution was indeed a little roughly at the edges. Removal of cooldowns should have been done right away to avoid trapping players in nations from the old server and to give them the possibility to transfer to other nations with the normal rules (so switching to underdog nations without a base cooldown of 90 days after switching server, as their server switch was the forced one). We are sorry for the inconvenience and thankful for your patience.
Few players did not receive their materials from furnaces placed on areas of Guild Castles – we found a problem that caused that and fixed it. Missing materials from furnaces should be able to be picked up from the “bought” market tab. Also, there was an issue with weekly rankings for part of the playerbase, and we fixed that also. Weekly rankings should work correctly after the closest scheduled servers restart.
We are happy to announce that the Armistice state is ending today, and we are removing safe zones and non-loot zones around Guild Castles. Palisades and storehouses doors of Guild Castles economical locations once again destructible.
Besides, we found out that Gatehouses were not working properly and it was possible to place buildings right behind or in front of the Gatehouse. It should not be allowed by the system like it was mentioned in the Freebuilding overhaul announcement and changelog, and all buildings that were placed on the grids next to gates of the Gatehouses have been removed. Be sure to check your castles before upcoming SoW’s!
See you in battle!
It is time to grab an axe, hammer and trowel once again and raise the walls of your own settlement! One of the most extensive additions in Gloria Victis history – Freebuilding for Guild Castles – just received a full renovation. You are getting brand new detailed models, new features, improved construction system, and even more will come in the near future, including a highly requested grid visibility system and destruction animation of fortifications!
But that is not all! Thanks to the full model renovation, Nation castles will also get a new look and improvements, so every player will be able to benefit from today's update.
Speaking about benefits for all, we also are happy to introduce a combat movement update, which will greatly improve the responsiveness of the combat movement, speed up the combat, and will give players the ability to change their position more easily in the tactical aspects of the game on the battlefield.
As positioning and having the possibility to improve your tactics on the battlefield is crucial for success in battle, we - as an independent game studio - are also focusing on our position on the world stage and market. Thanks to the recent update of the engine, which gives us a performance and stability boost, and thanks to the cooperation with our precious Community in fixing a lot of issues related to the moderation of the game, we believe that the time has come to leave the Alpha state of the project.
We will give ourselves two more weeks to polish the Freebuilding overhaul with you, and after that, on update 250, Gloria Victis will move to a Beta phase that will last a few months. In that time, our programmers will focus on using the tools given to us by the engine upgrade to improve stability, performance and optimization of the game, even more, to be ready for full release and new players. Of course, part of the team will work on bug fixes and new features, and we would like to address players' demands as well as take some time to prepare new mount colours and skins.
This introduction becomes a bit lengthy, but I should also mention Aquilla and Monteverde servers are merging with this update. As you know, we ran a NA/SA Test Server to check routings and performance of it. From people who sent us their reports about ping and performance, we can say that 90% of players that participated in the test session had a better ping on the new server!
You can find detailed information and a list of changes in today's update below. We are counting on your constructive feedback and help! Also, because you will be recreating your castles and may need some nice details - you can buy all the available decorations at special prices in Supporter Shop in the game!
See you in battle!
The screenshot author have been awarded. Sugarun – check your Ambers!Changelog v.0.9.5.0 Alpha
[h2]Freebuilding overhaul[/h2]
Freebuilding has been with us for a little over a year, and it is a system that allows every guild owning a guild province to set up fortifications and buildings on its own. Freebuilding is one of the biggest and most impactful systems of Gloria Victis. When we introduced it into the game, it became another layer of gameplay and deepened the player economy, and it gave players a lot of freedom in creativity and tactical aspects of the game.
Terrain, grid and models:
The area where fortifications and economical buildings can be placed is defined by a grid. Grids and terrain have been adjusted to new system assumptions. The terrain around the grid will allow enemies to walk around fortifications even if defenders build fortifications at the very edge of the grid, so it will be very important to make your defences well thought all around, instead of placing layers of walls only on one side. To achieve that, we had to push farms away a little at a higher tier of economic Guild Castles.
Inside of the new Skergard mineModels of walls will now fill the grid more accurately and intuitively, removing a lot of issues related to chokepoints. The system will encourage you to build more realistic castles and spend your defence points equally around the grid. It is still possible to build more than one layer of the walls, but since the economical buildings will need more space, and it will be not possible to clip them through other buildings – they will require some more space inside and it will be much better to upgrade the walls instead placing multiple lines of them.
New grid usage of every buildable model. You can compare this one with the old system hereThe previous system allowed players to create very small chokepoints in the defences, and in the new system, it is impossible to make a passage narrower than half the diagonal of the grid, which is making the smallest possible chokepoint 13 times wider than currently.
Gates received proper murder holes above the internal gate, which will greatly improve their defensive abilities and make them more valuable and comfortable in use as parts of the fortification layer. I am calling the new models more “ergonomic”, since the entrances, space inside and overall pathing of the way up and down have been improved and shortened. In addition to that, we are preventing buildings from being placed on the grid right behind the inner gate of the gatehouse.
New stone walls, towers and gates look amazing, do'nt you think?With all these and other changes, we are aiming to reduce the death spots and choke points in castles.
We are addressing the ballistae density issue, with a system that is checking how many buildings with active ballista are currently placed around the particular spot and if there are too many, the system is not allowing to active ballista on the building.
Palisades have been changed, and now each tier of the wall has a space to move around on top of it. Every additional tier grants new or better layers of defences, like battlements and roofs. Each tier will have more HP with every upgrade and will be fire-resistant when it comes to tier IV, V and VI – the stone walls.
New models of pallisades around Skergard mine and farmFortification and Economical points:
The maximum number and level of fortifications are limited by fortification points - different provinces have a different number of available points. Each part of the wall, tower or gate costs the appropriate amount. Higher levels of fortification have a higher cost, so it is worth paying attention to the number of available points and adjusting the number of fortifications to the preferred level.
We addressed all known issues that were causing not giving back fortification points for removed ballistas and upgraded buildings. In addition to that, we found and fixed issues related to building and preview rotations, that could lead to misplacements and inconveniences in creating the layout of fortifications by placing the buildings facing the wrong direction.
Buildings such as some walls, towers, gates and the main building can be equipped with defensive systems such as boiling oil or ballista - these systems also consume fortification points.
Guild castles also have economic buildings. You can place, among others: workshops, crafting stations, stalls with merchants and the Market station like before, but mind that economical buildings cannot be clipped through fortifications anymore which will encourage you to create some more open and better-looking space inside your location.
Leaktown build by our tester LadyAngelaUpcoming features
Today's update contains the foundation for the introduction of further improvements. In later actualisations, we will introduce a highly requested system that will show you the grid of your castle and allow you to design your lines of defence and location layout with better planning possibilities. Anyway, to make it easier, for now, you can check every grid of the Guild Castles: Aquitania, Audunstede, Greatfall, Leaktown, Lublin, Norfolk, Original Faith Order, Skergard and Twinfall.
Example of the Guild Castle grid. This particular one is TwinfallUpdates of Freebuilding will be released in iterations since it is a huge system with a lot of relations to other game features. We want to gather feedback from you and deal with any possible issues that may occur despite our long and detailed internal tests.
Current main buildings on Nation castles have been pushed away from walls to prevent jumping on them from the top, but still have current models. We are preparing a new wooden main building model for further iterations, fully redone and more suitable for new walls models set visually and technically.
Concept art of the new wooden main building. Redline on the first picture is showing the ground level, so do not be mistaken - it will not be much higher than the current oneWe are preparing a system of customisable gates and towers, which will allow you to close the defender's entrance to the gatehouse and gates walls entrances with portcullis. This system will give you another field for creativity since you will be able to create layers of defences that will not be lost after enemies claim the gate and receive access to walls thanks to such moves. In addition to that, defensive systems on gates like boiling oil tanks will receive a visual overhaul.
To fight the death spots and chokepoints problems mentioned earlier, we are also working on the improvement of fortifications destructions. In further updates, falling fortifications - with the addition of proper animation! - will deal the splash damage to surrounding buildings, so placing walls one directly behind another will be less effective and it will be easier to destroy "stacked" fortifications.
Models will receive even more detail depending on terrain - castles will look more integrated with the land and look different placed on snow or on the tropical area. As we have that feature almost ready, we want to focus on gameplay over visuals first.
Top tier corner wall model - take a closer look at the moss on the wall - this detail is changing depending on terrain - castles will look more integrated with the land and look different placed on snow or on the tropical areaArmistice
After today’s update, every Guild Castle will be cleared. We are introducing an Armistice that will give guilds time to test the reworked system and rebuild their castles in peace. Each Guild Castle will have a safe zone for the nation that owns a particular Guild Location which will grant immunity to damage and looting of players and furnaces. Be aware that players from other nations still can be killed and looted inside that zone. Attacks on predefined palisades that some Guild Castles have will not trigger attacks on locations and prevent construction.
Capture from last PVP event hosted by Developers. Kanath - thank you for making such awesome album as a memorial of that event![h2]Combat movement[/h2]
In today's update, we are also introducing a combat movement update, which will speed up the combat, improve the responsiveness of the combat movement, and will give players the ability to change their position more easily in the tactical aspects of the game on the battlefield.
– Increased combat mobility. Before, the character was very much slowed down while moving horizontally or backwards. Now, the horizontal movement has been increased to be pretty close to forward movement speed. Backward movement speed is also increased but is still slower than frontal and horizontal movement. This shall greatly help with combat positioning and "guerilla warfare" of smaller groups.
The exception is the Melee Archer. Archers, while starting to pull the arrow, will receive the "Slow" condition to prevent running backwards and spraying arrows avoiding being attacked.
We do know that people wanted to have a faster controller, but at the same time was afraid that increasing the backward movements will make players unable to kick. We had done some tweaks on kick - first, the kick was not doing hit checks on the full kick range until the very end of the kick, we have shortened time of doing full kick range hit checks (that of course, doesn't make kick faster, just more reliable against target running away from us) - also, when we start the kick while running forward, our kick range will be slightly longer. Both of that should negate any negative impact of movement changes to kicking.
– Walk speed has been increased by 30%
– Changed how the "Slow" effect works Before, the effect was similar to Combat Mode, clamping the max speed into the "March" speed, now it clamps the speed to "Walk" speed which is a bit slower than "March", for melee fighters. The change doesn't affect horse movement.
The slow effect applies to the horse when the horse is being hit by any melee hit, or arrow with the Red Power Bar (nothing changed on that matter, it will also still clamp the movement to March speed). For foot fighters there are two cases of applying Slow effect - the first is slowing down the archer when he pulls the arrow, the second one is leg shot which archers can apply to their targets.
– Slightly decreased the max volume of other characters and NPCs at the closest distance, which will provide more reliable distinguishing of your own sound effects to enemy ones, and so this should improve reconnaissance in combat. At the same time, we have a limit for the max number of potential audio sources playing at the same time (performance-wise). This led to big fights having no sounds being played in some cases. We made a system which determines the priority of those sounds related to the distance - and so the cases where sounds being cut should be happening much less often.
– We have run through the animations mixes to find those which might be not clearly visible, especially for the players with higher ping. For that reason, we have shortened up mixes of around 10 attack animations.
It is client-side animation visibility change only, and doesn't affect the server hit times in any kind of way, except for one attack - the one-handed weapon left attack, for which the "release to start dealing damage" time has been increased by 50ms because it was the only attack that had "release to deal damage time" lower than potential reaction time.
– Player indicator changes. After some discussions about the potential of players between two nations teaming up, most cases are possible because of the alternative player indicator, with the nicks and guilds above the player heads. We made that setting as an alternative, not the default one [the default one is using the "Diamond" HP graphics above the heads] a long time ago because those nameplates gave the "zerg" feeling even for small groups of players. That text can be very big and can confuse especially new players using that mode into thinking that the enemy groups are much larger than they really are.
For this reason, the nameplates using the "text/alternative" mode will be showing only above your nation’s players. While speaking about that change with our community, we do know that some players are so-called "shot calling", which is how top-end veteran players play. To make it still possible for them to give concise directions, we have changed how information about enemy players is visible when you hover the mouse above them.
First, we have moved the UI to the top of the screen, showing there their guild names - making it much harder for groups of players to cooperate with other nations, but it will still be possible to distinguish single players. To make that happen, we also made it so that fading out after losing the target from the centre of the screen takes longer time, making it easier to track the target name when it's moving.
We do believe that this change might take some time for players to get used to - but at the same time, it should stop most cases of teaming between nations and the feeling of being "zerged" all of the time due to big nameplates of enemy player names.
Another screenshot from most recent PVP event made by one of winners of our small hussar screenhsot competition - Kanath[h2]New server for SA and NA regions[/h2]
Monteverde player base and rankings will be added to the new NA/SA Aquilla server but since a huge chunk of the SA server has already moved to the current NA server and is even holding one of the Guild Castles there, won last 5v5 PVP event and because we will be on the moment of Freebuilding overhaul introduction, which will lead to Armistice for a few days - the most reasonable option would be to keep castles from AQ.
And while just next week we will have Open SOW anyway - we will have the battles. But if servers will get merged and wiped, and we want to introduce the pretty much safe zones for a few days around GC's to make those castles being built - there's no real alternative, because merging servers, wiping flags, and making them "who takes the grey flag first he has it for next week because of the few days of peace as new Freebuilding came" would be the worst solution that can be proposed.
SA players are less than 5% of our entire Community and most of them already migrated to NA, when original NA players are around 30% of the whole player base, We can think of no other solution after the server merge than SA players playing together in the alliances with and versus NA players.
Because of that, Glory Rankings will be merged – top Monteverde players will be quite high in the overall rankings after that, and there will be a lot of time to catch up with the rest of the players until the end of the current season. It is obvious that on a new server the rankings will be more competitive, but you will have much more opportunities to get more glory and get on the better place in the standings.
At the very same time, we prepared some very special dedicated titles for current Monteverde players as compensation for the inconvenience, thanks for their suggestions and feedback that led us to the merge decision and as a memorial of the great and interesting history of the Monteverde server, it's guilds and players.
We are looking forward to seeing that new chapter, and we do hope that you will find a comfortable place on the new server, with many new friends and challenges.
I just wanted to drop here some nice view at the end, and our Community delivered - SleepyViking - enjoy your Ambers![h2]Quality of Life[/h2]
Bastion:
– Added crafting experience reward for donating items to Bastion. It will work similarly to disassembling bonus, but will not grant the possibility to learn the recipe of the donated item
– Changed the formula which enumerated the character experience reward for donating items to Bastion. It was little too easy to find a location where fulfilling the needs will grant quite a big character experience reward with few items, so from now on, players will be rewarded more accordingly to the level of difficulty of needs fulfilment
– Improved responsibility of user interface of Bastion and Construction window of the castles
– Added animation of opening and closing Bastion interface
– Refactor of the backend code for item slots of Bastion interface
Other changes:
– Improved the usage of construction and building interface. Building the castles will be more comfortable and intuitive since the guild window will remember the last opened tab and chosen construction
– Added possibility to move and zoom the top-down camera in construction mode. It will grant better visibility and gives space to add more icons and customization options for buildings in the future
– Improvements of the main user interface. Changed visuals of Hitpoints, Stamina and Hunger bar and added ability to move it around the screen
– Improved ability to move the buff bar around the screen. From now on you are able to move it clicking and holding it as a whole, not only narrow space between icons
– Added sounds to clicking buttons, dropdowns and toggles
– Added colliders to Arena that will prevent interruptions during PVP events
[h2]Fixes[/h2]
– Fixed all known issues causing not giving back fortification points for removed ballistas and upgraded buildings
– Fixed issues related to building and preview ghost rotations, that could lead to misplacements and inconveniences in creating the layout of fortifications by placing the buildings facing the wrong direction
– Fixed an issue causing fish traps to continue depleting fisheries after reaching their max capacity. From now on, only catching something have an impact on fishery depletion
– Fixed an issue causing not closing the guild ranks tooltip after closing rank selection dropdown
– Fixes of some shields models which could collide with the camera
So, yeah, there goes the award for the longest patch notes in Gloria Victis history. Thank you for reading till the end, and for your patience and support! Once again, we are waiting for your constructive feedback and opinions!
Have a great day!
[h2]Hotfix 2020-11-21:[/h2]
In response to the feedback/reports received from players:
Combat:
– Decreased the backwards movement speed by 10% [it was increased by 25% yesterday]
– Decreased the horizontal movement speed by 5% [it was increased by 30% yesterday]
– Strafing backwards (S + A, or S + D keys movement) is now clamped to backwards speed rather than horizontal speed
– Due to the issue reported yesterday with the shield bash stab being too fast, giving a possibility to stunlock a n enemy, was covered by increasing the duration of "Back to armed" animation stagefor shield bash stab – it won't make this attack land damage slower, but make it less spammable which should make stunlocks impossible
– Slowed down the horse rotation when the horse moves backwards
– Adjusted the terrain and freebuilding area at Twinfall to allow to block the pathway to the bridge in the middle of the grid by building fortifications right by the bridge
– Added an area excluding building tents and siege tents at the back of Twinfall to make it equal to other 2nd tier Guild Castles: Original Faith’s Order’s Keep and Leaktown
Guild Castles and Freebuilding:
– Fixed collision issues at the 6th upgrade of the gatetower which made it possible to go through the back door and caused the player rubberband after jumping down the murderhole
– Fixed a bug causing that the stone upgrades of towers were shorter than the wooden ones
– From now it’s no longer possible to jump into the stone Bastion model through the windows on the ground floor
– Fixed a missing button translation in the buildings selection window
[h2]Hotfix 2020-11-23:[/h2]
In response to the feedback/reports received from players, we are introducing another part of changes and fixes:
Guild Castles and Freebuilding:
– Fixed an issue causing preview of the building to not disappear after opening any window. Opening any window in preview mode while building should close construction mode
– Multiple models and visual fixes in models of Gate, 45R and 45L walls, towers
– A reduced scale of construction colliders of inns and well which caused visual issues and could lead to not showing players behind those colliders
– Multiple visual fixes to preview models
– Improved collider preventing placing siege tents “on the back” of Twinfall
– Deepening of rivers around Twinfall to prevent siege engines to cross the water
Other changes:
– Fixed an issue causing wrong displaying of hitpoints state on the “diamond” indicators if an option to show text players nametags was turned on
– Fixed an issue causing preventing interaction with a memorial near Aquitania
– Fixed position of levitating villagers workshop in Norfolk
– Improved translations of crafter quest dialogues
We are aware that there are some issues with moving at Corner Tower and Gates of top tiers. Simple jump allows to move further, yet we will most probably hotfix it today.
[h2]Hotfix 2020-11-24:[/h2]
Dear Community.
We are introducing another hotfix for Gloria Victis, addressing some more of your feedback and reports. Instead of making a detailed list, we will make a detailed explanation for everything we prepared for you today :)
Players from Monteverde had cooldowns of changing the main server and nation – we removed them as part of the compensation that was planned before the merge. It was the first server merge in GV history and execution was indeed a little roughly at the edges. Removal of cooldowns should have been done right away to avoid trapping players in nations from the old server and to give them the possibility to transfer to other nations with the normal rules (so switching to underdog nations without a base cooldown of 90 days after switching server, as their server switch was the forced one). We are sorry for the inconvenience and thankful for your patience.
Few players did not receive their materials from furnaces placed on areas of Guild Castles – we found a problem that caused that and fixed it. Missing materials from furnaces should be able to be picked up from the “bought” market tab. Also, there was an issue with weekly rankings for part of the playerbase, and we fixed that also. Weekly rankings should work correctly after the closest scheduled servers restart.
We are happy to announce that the Armistice state is ending today, and we are removing safe zones and non-loot zones around Guild Castles. Palisades and storehouses doors of Guild Castles economical locations once again destructible.
Besides, we found out that Gatehouses were not working properly and it was possible to place buildings right behind or in front of the Gatehouse. It should not be allowed by the system like it was mentioned in the Freebuilding overhaul announcement and changelog, and all buildings that were placed on the grids next to gates of the Gatehouses have been removed. Be sure to check your castles before upcoming SoW’s!
See you in battle!
The screenshot author has been awarded. 
All models of third tier wooden wall pieces
One of the castles build during internal test sessions
The screenshot's authors have been awarded. 
The screenshot's authors have been awarded. 
Hey, you! Yes, you. Wanna buy some bulat?