Gloria Victis News

Ho ho ho, warriors!

The Christmas time has come but Santa Claus has lost all the gifts and needs your help to find them. He’s generous though, and your efforts will be paid well – you can obtain some new skins for free!

Moreover, among many other changes, this update introduces a long-awaited feature: player-built decorations! Check them on your own and have fun decorating your favorite places – including the Guild Castles!

P.S. In response to the request made by our players, placing the tokens on Guild Castles will be disabled from December 22nd to January 2nd. This way you’ll have a chance to spend this special time with your families and friends without worrying that your Guild Castle will be burned to the ground. :)

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and see you in battle!



Christmas:

– Added a Christmas quest which allows you to obtain a new Christmas skin for “Stand” decoration, as well as its base version which you can build and material required to craft more decorations – the quest can be started in the capital city of each nation
– Added 4 Christmas events which allow you to obtain several precious rewards: a recipe for Christmas Gingerbread, good or top quality food and potions, several Christmas-only consumables, Decent equipment reinforcement, mid- to high-tier equipment and one of the top-tier Longswords or Master equipment reinforcement
– Added 2 Christmas skin for the just-introduced player-built decorations (read below for details): Christmas Sleigh and Christmas Training Target

Have fun with the Christmas content – ho ho ho!



Player-Built Decorations:

Always wanted to fill your guild’s castle with all the pretty things like fountains, garlands, statues, park benches and a proper Christmas tree? Now you can – with the player-built decorations!

– The decorations can be placed everywhere except for the major nation-controlled locations (castles, forts and temples), the central areas of the capital cities, world events areas or the building areas of enemy Guild Castles
– Decorations placed inside the ally Guild Castles building area will be protected from destroying by an enemy, except for the time of a launched State of War
– There are 6 categories of decorations: Furniture Large, Furniture Small, Garden, Special, Special Small and Stand
– To place a decoration, you have to own its item which can be crafted using Decorative Materials or Supporter’s Decorative Materials – the former can be purchased for Contribution Points from Glory Shop, while the latter one is available at the Supporter’s Shop
– Recipes for the decorations are available at Glory Shop
– Every character has received a bunch of free skins for all categories of the decoration
– For the optimization purposes, there’s a limit of decorations that can be placed at a given area and a limit of up to 5 decorations per character that can be placed at the same time

Time to get creative!



Valley of Death Tournament:

– Increased chances to select the recently added tournament modes compared to the chance of launching a classic VoD
– Introduced a new tournament mode: “Reinforcements”, where the losing nation gets help from the NPC soldiers once every minute
– Improvements to the tournament’s interface
– Updated the descriptions of tournament modes
– Temporarily disabled the “One To Rule Them All” because ending the tournament so quick was taken for a bug by the players – it will be restored once it’s improved



Quality of Life:

– We have learned from your feedback that getting no Nation Points as a reward for killing most of the players was pretty much frustrating. For that reason we added a system which guarantees the nation points, even if the defeated player had none, for the first kill on that player in the server session. It might seem a pretty small change but it should greatly improve the overall Quality of Life.
– Increased the number of NPC enemies using bows if they won’t be able to reach the player – it will be triggering mostly in the cases of players trying to attack them from the places they couldn’t reach. [Reminder: there are different types of NPC enemies, including those which prefer to use bows – we have increased the number of those who prefer to use melee but switch to bows only if they can’t reach the player.]
– Damage from the boiling oil no longer breaks the stuns, (it now works just like the bleeding effect regarding the stuns)
– Introduced additional tooltips and UI improvements for the crafting window
– As we received a few reports of players not seeing what hits them, while they were actually hit by an arrow, we have added a slightly different chat message while being hit by archers
– Improved detecting the diving depending on the camera angle to reduce starting diving randomly; at the same time, the player can use Spacebar to swim upwards
– Added prefixes for the names of items such as skins or decorations to make it clear to understand what those items are for.



Fixes:

– Lots of fixes on mobs/resources spawn places based on players in-game bug reports
– Fixed the issues Servant's Helm recipe
– Fixed an edge-case bug causing that players could get stuck at the spawnpoint for new players in the Midlanders capital city
– Improvements on mobs respawn times and places at Ismir Quests
– Improvements on AI shooting distance checking, previously they haven'tt been making any correction on the distance so on the longer distance they were shooting too low to hit the target
– Fixed an issue allowing to kick the main building object, while it should only be targettable via Siege Engines [fix was put live a few days ago to prevent exploiting ASAP]
– Fixed an issue which made player shooting at the full range without loading power bar if the arrow was shot without any loading at all
– Fixed an issue where “kill mobs” events/quests could be misplaced around the world not allowing players to calculate their kills and proceed the quest in some edge cases
– Temporarily turned off Valley of Death “One To Rule Them All” affix for further improvements and tests on our end
– Fixed an exploit which allowed to run around instead of following Siege Machine while using it
– Fixed an issue with a wall section in Dunfen which had different heigth on server and client, preventing players to go through a nearby tower
– Changes around the Twinfall which players reported as a potential exploit for jumping over the walls
– Fixed an issue where the players were snapped back because the server was finding some objects without collision [such as small benches] as potential colliders and pushing players back
– Fixed an issue allowing players to jump from the bench to bench without standing up
– Fixed a bug preventing players from opening the “Hearth” workshop by clicking on the static campfires
– Fixed a bug allowing the players to “eat” the “Privilege” item used to upgrade workshops in Guild Castles



Supporter Shop and Contribution Points balance changes:

As you may, or may not know our team doesn’t have and never had any budget or investor different than our very own personal money and the support of our awesome Community. After introducing Supporter Shop thanks to your help, we were able to double our team size which allowed us to improve our game much faster than previously. A great fact of our game growth is that within 2 years we have implemented more than 100 updates, and we are able to communicate with you on a daily basis. Another thing which makes us happy is that, in comparison to 2017, our average player numbers increased more than 4 times, and twice in comparison to 2018!



It is awesome and gives us the strength to work hard every single day for you!

Enough said, without the Supporter Shop it couldn’t be possible, as our team is still at least a few times smaller than the very most MMO studios around the world. Within the last few months, we have added a few new places where players gain CP, including levelling up your characters, or those which set your account as a mentor which gives up to 5000 CP for one single levelled up account. In the end, it made quite a disbalance between Ambers to CP prices ratio, and we had to do some tweaks on that matter.

The exact changes are:

– Prefixes: We have added 3 prefixes “Skin”, “Heraldic”, “Decoration” to proper item names. We made that to keep it clear those are just visual cosmetics and player can’t buy the weapon or the armour for real money.
– Market Limit Increase: From now, the increase of the limit is done by 1 (instead of 5 like before). Price in CP reduced from 5000 to 1990. Amber price reduced from 700 to 140. Gold price changed from 5 to 2. Players who had those cards not used will get them multiplied by 5.
– Unlocking slots: Reduced gold price of unlocking some of the last slots – both deposit and inventory. Overall unlocking all the slots is cheaper by 96 gold! Removed unlocking cards from the Glory shop. Changed mechanics of cards to unlock slots – from now, using the card won't increase the price of unlocking further slots. We have changed this mechanic to not let new players make mistake and “waste” the card for slot worth 1 silver.
– Experience boost cards: Effect time increased from 2 to 4 hours of logged in time. Reduced Amber prices from 100 to 50 and from 200 to 100. Changed CP price from 600 to 800 and from 1100 to 1475.
– Traveller's Pack: Reduced Amber price from 1100 to 800
– Sign Crafted Item: Reduced CP price from 400 to 365. Reduced Amber price from 60 to 20. Increased quantity of items in bundle from 15 to 50. We want to encourage you to show everyone your crafting skills!
– Attributes and Abilities Reset Reduced Amber price from 700 to 600. Changed CP price from 3200 to 7275.
– Fresh Start: Reduced Amber price from 1300 to 1000.
– Re-customization: Reduced Amber price from 1250 to 600. Changed CP price from 5600 to 7275. Updated description to ensure players that contains also gender change.
– New Life: Reduced Amber price from 4000 to 3500.
– Nation Change: Changed CP price from 10000 to 15620. Since we added this item, there appeared a single nation change for greenleafs and free nation change to the dominated nation.
– Character Cap Increase: Reduced Amber price from 1600 to 1100. Changed CP price from 12000 to 12560.
– Character Name Change: Changed CP price from 12000 to 10610.
– Guild Name Change: Reduced Amber price from 10000 to 7500. Changed CP price from 30000 to 37350.
– Introduction of items required to craft Decoration Item spawners both for CP and Ambers.
– Implementing skins for Decoration Items [all players have part of them unlocked by default]

Hello warriors!

A new weekly update is live! One of the biggest changes is the long-awaited improvement to the “Valley of Death” Tournament formula. From now on, every tourney will be different thanks to the several new game modes added to reduce the repetition – read below for details!

Also, there are further improvements to the combat system and controller, balance tweaks, quality of life improvements and various bug fixes. Check them out!

See you in battle!



Changelog v.0.9.0.6

“Valley of Death” Tournament:

From now on, every single VoD will be different – thanks to the new game modes! At the beginning of each tournament, a game mode will be selected randomly, preventing repetition. Each modifier has its own set of additional rules which will have impact on viable tactics, i.e. bonus points for controlling the central flag – or no central flag at all! Or modified respawning rules, or… many more, so check them on your own!

– Introduced new tournament modes – besides a classic tournament, there are 12 new modes which modify some of the tournament rules or add new ones, so every tournament will promote different tactics and playstyle; the mode is selected randomly at the beginning of each tournament from the following ones:
1. Classic: the good old classic set of tournament rules
2. Minor Flags Hunting: minor flags generate 2x more points
3. Killing House: Flags generate only 1 point but kills generate 5x more points for the nation
4. Tie Break: gain 200 points more than enemies to win before the time ends
5. Hold The Flag!: Flags generate points only if the defender is nearby but the maximum score is decreased to 300
6. King Of The Hill: Each nation's top-score player generates 3x more points for the nation for kills, killing the enemy top-score player generates 10x more points for the nation and the maximum score is increased to 500
7. Catch'em All!: capture all the flags to win before the time ends
8. Regroup!: all killed participants respawn at the same time, once every 30 seconds
9. One To Rule Them All: capture the central flag to win before the time ends but capturing time of the middle flag is increased by 30 seconds
10. Invasion: a random nation controls all flags from the beginning and receives 2x more points from them, plus this nation can move on the map before opening the ways but this nation can't re-capture any flags
11. Blood Bath: no health regeneration, bandaging or first aid – prove your real skills or die!
12. Wingman – there is no central flag but all the minor flags generate 1.5x more points

Other changes related to the “Valley of Death” tournament:

– Updated the tournament registration interface
– Updated one of the tournament respawn points, since it allowed players to leave the spawn area before the tournament has started



Controller & Combat:

– Introduced diving – when diving, stamina drain is doubled and movement is 25% slower
– From now on, the stacks of cleave effect are diminishing when hitting the friendly players, until having only the last one of them – thanks to this change, the combat will become more tactical and fighting in one big so called "zerg blob" will be less efficient
– Updated the damage values dealt by the NPCs when shooting bows



Quality of Life:

– Updated the player looting system in order to solve the reported problems causing that the looting time used to end sooner than displayed on the interface, which was caused by the multi-layer security preventing from exploiting this system – the scale of the problem used to increase greatly with the ping spikes on the player’s end; the entire system has been significantly optimized, so we hope to hear back from you that these problems are gone!
– Updated the collisions of player-built furnaces to prevent players from getting on top of them, which could be used to reach elevated areas
– Updated the resources available in the mines of Guild Castles, so GCs of the same tiers now have comparable mining resources (Leaktown, Twinfall and Order of the Original Faith’s Keep for tier 2, and castles Audunstede, Skergard and Aquitania for tier 3), which improves the Guild Castles balance
– From now on, the crafting events in the capital cities are available after reaching level 40 to reduce the information spam for new players who usually aren’t ready to complete such events
– From now on, the crafting events in the PVP areas are available after reaching level 90 to prevent a situation when a player would reach the high-risk areas before getting ready for it, and to eliminate an exploit when a player would reach the event area right as it starts with a character from an alternative account – this shouldn’t be a problem for actual crafters, since it’s an end-game content and most of the dedicated crafters have already leveled up their characters
– Improved the training arena by adding a path between the main arena and the stands at the 1v1 small arenas
– Restored the missing Guild Recruitment Board in Mereley
– Added the basic Food and Herbs Merchants to all nation-controlled farms and added the Novice’s Sickle to their assortment, so you won’t have to go back to the capital for seeds and basic tools when farming
– Removed the Bucket of Water from the assortment of Food and Herbs Merchants
– Increased the vendor price of the Bucket of Water to make collecting water from wells equally effective to purchasing them from vendors
– Minor server-side optimization improvements



Fixes:

– Fixed the reported bugs causing the quest markers being displayed wrong or not being displayed at all
– Fixed displaying the name and description of the player-build pots with boiling oil
– Fixed an edge-case bug which could prevent players from logging it
– Fixed a bug causing that a player hit by a battering ram received double damage
– Fixed a bug causing that unstucking wasn’t interrupted if it was started on autorun
– Fixed an edge-case bug which could prevent players from taking the quest reward from Haldor in the Ismirean starting quests
– Improvements to switching to the underwater effect
– FIxed displaying the informations about player-built barricades

Hello warriors!

This weekly update introduces massive improvements to the starting quests of Ismir nation. A brand new epic tale of war and vengeance, taking place in breathtaking locations, awaits you! The changes done to these quests are a part of the planned updates which will introduce a group of new quests – read below for details!

Also, this update introduces several significant improvements to the combat and controller which were requested by the players, and many other quality of life improvements. Check them on your own!

See you in battle!

Changelog v.0.9.0.5

Quests:

We’re following the plan of adding new questlines for Ismirs and Midlanders so they will have as many available quests as Sangmarian players do now. For this reason, we had to update the existing starting Ismirs’ questline to make space for new quests in their starting areas, the same way as the Sangmarian quests have been implemented.

Moreover, we took the opportunity to improve the overall flow of this questline and add, since it was the very first questline implemented with very little mechanics available back then, to add more variety to these quests. We also updated the locations these quests take place at. Since it was a complete overhaul, we had to reset the progress of these quests for all players who have started but not completed them to avoid potential technical issues.

However, we believe that these quests will be much more enjoyable now, so these players can get the best possible experience when playing them. Now we will work on adding a brand new questline for Midlanders, and then do the same for Ismirs.

– Updated the Ismirean starting questline (“Enemy at the gates”) and its locations
– Wiped the progress of the Ismirean starting quests for the players who have started but not completed them to avoid potential technical issues
– Updated the position of Ismirs’ training arena in the capital city, excavation site and Great Hunt events



Combat/controller:

This update introduces the improved detecting the blocks direction for keybinds. First of all, it solves the bug causing that the block wouldn't proceed while holding one keybind, then clicking another one and releasing the first key. It was making the clunky feeling which was not happening at any other part of the controller.

Second – there are two ways to start the block in our game, by mouse movement and by keybinds. The mouse movement requires moving the mouse at least a little bit to change the side of a block and clicking the block button. Because many users used to click the block button first, then move the mouse, it caused a misleading and confusing feeling. For that reason, since a very long time (literally forever) there is a slight delay (exactly 40ms) before applying the block with the mouse movement, so the mouse button input can be received before the mouse movement.

However, the keybinds haven’t had that delay, which made them a bit faster and – as many players have reported – a slightly better option in the end for that reason. The keybinds blocks will now also have a slight delay – a bit longer than the 40ms for mouse movement, to compensate the difference coming from the time it takes to move the mouse and balance the chances of players using both ways of blocking. The very most of players won't find any difference, but it will bring more balance between those two methods of blocking. Also, we have added another layer of the anticheat measurements in terms of trying to create any kind of an auto-block.

Another change which we will be testing [we tried to put it this update, but due to finding some issue its not in-game already], will be burning down the stacks of cleave effect on friendly targets, until having only the last one of them. Thanks to this change, the combat will become more tactical and fighting in one big so called "zerg blob" will be less efficient. We hope this change will be introduced in the very next update to be tested by everyone.

Quality of Life:

– Improved detecting the blocks direction for keybinds – first of all, switching between different blocks works better but what’s also important, this change improves the balance between blocking with keybinds and mouse movements
– Minor server-side optimization improvements
– Added the /socialmedia chat command which enables a notification with links to the Gloria Victis social media
– Improved the interaction detection when targeting various interactive objects



Fixes:

– Fixed a bug causing problems with detecting bow shots into the practicing targets – only the first few arrows during a game session were detected correctly
– Fixed an edge-case bug preventing players from collecting the daily activity rewards
– Fixed a bug causing displaying the Assists points as Deaths in the siege scoreboard window

Hello, warriors!

A new weekly update is live – from this day, you can build pots with boiling oil on the walls of your guild’s castle to fry the enemies! This update also expands the means of tanks and medics to gain Glory Points and adds several quality of life improvements, as well as bug fixes. Check them out!

See you in battle!

Changelog v.0.9.0.4



Quality of Life:

– Added a possibility to place the pots with boiling oil on maximally upgraded long versions of straight walls and outer diagonal walls in Guild Castles in order to give the defenders more variety, to diversify the viable castle layouts and to increase the variety of the Fortification Points distribution [known issue: the button to build the pot with oil is displayed on all upgrade levels, while it should only be visible on level 6]
– Increased the ballistas respawn time from 5 to 10 minutes to tweak the recent changes done to ballistas, which were required to allow defenders of the Guild Castles to place enough ballistas on walls to cover most of the deadspots, where attackers could easily break through walls and destroy the main building without any opposition, as Guild Castles can now be attacked from multiple directions
– Added the Glory assists for tanks and medics, recently introduced to PVP, when fighting against NPCs
– Updated stopping the fire on burning buildings and fortifications – from now on, stopping the fire is unified and requires buckets with water and now you can stop fire on every burning object
– Balanced the damage dealt by NPC enemies with shield bash to make it comparable to damage a player would deal
– Added a new tutorial explaining the dependencies between heavy armor and different weapon types and updated the NPC enemies at the starting quests to present this tutorial in practice
– Added increased regeneration of the Nation Points (if they are negative) when playing the dice game and updated displaying system messages during a game
– Improved the guild’s history messages
– Added displaying English names of locations on the flags tooltips on the map below the names in selected language to improve communication between players from different parts of the world
– From now on, notifications of the same type displayed on the left side of the screen are being stacked in order to improve the notifications UX
– Replaced the Olive Seeds currently owned by players, which were added to the game accidentally, with Olives (at 1:1 ratio) which will have 3 months-long expiration time
– Minor improvements to various interface texts and their translations
– Minor improvements to resources placement



Fixes:

– Fixed a bug causing display issues of some equipment models on lower graphics settings
– Fixed displaying the imposters of equipment models on video cards with Shader Model lower than 4.5
– Fixed a bug allowing players to get into the spawn chamber of stone main building in the Guild Castles
– Fixed collisions of the stone main building’s brackets
– Fixed a bug causing spawning a Sangmarian NPC guard in Castle Audunstede if it was controlled by an Ismirean guild
– Fixed a bug allowing to survive a few attacks from NPC enemies while having 0 HP when using specific potions
– Fixed a bug allowing a player to use the siege engines while displaying an emote
– Fixed the camera position when detaching from a siege engine
– Fixed a bug causing that arrows could go through specific models
– Fixed a bug causing that the church model had a slightly different scale depending on the currently displayed level of detail

Hello warriors!

Another update is live! This week we introduced the long-awaited optimization changes which should significantly improve the client-side performance in large battles – so get ready for the massive fights on the Saturday’s Open State of War!

Moreover, we updated the Glory assists system, so the tanks and medics will now be properly rewarded for their efforts in battles! There are also numerous improvements to the Freebuilding system and many fixes to reported bugs. Check out this update and good luck in battle!

Also, don’t miss the PVP event this weekend! It will start at 10:30 PM GMT (Friday, November 15th). Join us in the arena on [Europe] Eaglewood server and fight for fame in 5v5 battles. The winners will be immortalized on the in-game monuments and every participant will be rewarded – to arms!

(The event will take place on Friday to allow the European players to join it, as it takes place on EU this time. These events can't be hosted on Saturdays as they used to due to the Open State of War on that day, and they end too late in the night for EU players to run it on Sunday evening. However, the next event will be run on the American server and will take place on Sunday to allow its native players to join it.)

See you in battle!

Changelog v.0.9.0.3



Optimization:

This update introduces a huge optimization improvement for the humanoid characters, designed to improve the client-side performance – namely in the large-scale battles – by using an innovative technique for rendering the equipment models called “3D Imposters”.

The effects depend on the PC specification so they may vary quite a lot but our internal tests showed a significant performance boost (for both GPU and CPU usage), which scales with the number of NPCs and players displayed on the screen.

Since this optimization is meant directly to decrease the overhead from multiple characters, the biggest differences will be visible while being in massive fights, like the Valley of Death tournament or State of War battles on Guild Castles.



Glory Assists:

We’ve improved the Glory assists system. From now on, you will receive Glory Points points for more actions (“assists”) taken in combat, including not only dealing damage but also for blocked damage and reviving other allies. After reviving a player, the medic will receive a share of the Glory Points this player will earn for up to 2 minutes after the last combat action taken by such a player.

Thanks to this change, tanks and medics will now be rewarded for their efforts in battles as well as the other fighters which, as we hope, will lead to more variety of used characters builds.



Freebuilding:

This update includes several significant tweaks to Ballistas requested by the Community. Until now, these siege engines were very easy to take down with bows. It caused that the defenders could have lost one of the most important tools within the first few minutes of a siege. This update solves this problem, giving the defenders an actual chance to hold a castle for a while – although ballistas can still be taken down quite easily by a well aimed stone shot from a catapult. Read below for details:

– From now on, the main buildings have more ballistas slots available to turn on (+4 on stone keep, +2 on wooden one) – you can place more ballistas on those buildings when they are at level 2 and higher (we are aware that extra slots are being displayed and can be turned on at level 1)
– Updated the default gates permissions in guild-controlled locations so only the leader and vice leader of the guild owning given Guild Castle will be able to open gates, while the other members will teleport through them; the default permissions are now being set right after capturing a Guild Castle
– Doubled the durability of stone and wooden main buildings in the guild-controlled locations
– From now on, the ballistas have reduction against piercing damage so it will be harder to take them down with bows
– Increased the durability of ballistas by 50%
– Ballistas now cost 5 Fortification Points instead of 10
– From now on, ballistas have a nation set right after being built, so players from the same nation will not be able to destroy them without enabling Friendly Fire (which will be punished with the traitor status) anymore
– Fixed a bug allowing players to respawn their ballistas during the active State of War – from now on you can turn off a ballista but can’t turn it on while the SoW is going on
– Fixed a bug causing ballistas to disappear after server restart in some cases
– Fixed a bug preventing players from placing the main building in Guild Castles before 3 minutes have passed from its destruction
– Fixed a bug causing problems with generating resources by the workers in Guild Castles



Quality of Life:

– From now on, changing the nation will reset your ranking points – this change will encourage players to take part in their own nation’s ranking rather than switching nations just to get on top of the other nation’s ranking
– Removed a map render from the arena respawn window
– Improvements and fixes in two Sangmar questlines
– Halloween changes to world events has been withdrawn



Fixes:

– Fixed a bug preventing Mentors from receiving rewards when their proteges reach the 40, 60 and 100 level thresholds – you should now be able to take the rewards via the Notification Center
– Fixed a bug causing displaying the burning building indicator on the screen even after you moved the camera out of it
– Fixed an issue allowing players to set up their “respawn point” in once visited location using an arena teleport exploit
– Fixed a bug with displaying the English names of items under non-English translations which made it difficult to use the Market window’s search engine [Applied earlier in a hotfix]
– Fixed a bug causing economic points was not returned fully to the pool, when destroying workshops of higher than base level
– Fixed some edge cases bugs in Final Battle of State of War system
– Fixed a bug causing that a player could get stuck under the stairs when leaving one of the Valley of Death tournament’s respawn points
– Fixed a bug allowing players to get on top of the Market Keeper’s platform in Baalhammon
– Multiple minor fixes and improvements to localization and UI, including improved global messages regarding the completion of world events: Ragi, Brandon, Sirius and Catacombs