Vagrus - The Riven Realms News

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
This week, we return to talk about the recently updated Companion Combat targeting options that suit different play-styles. The changes include a number of options from the main menu that allow the configuration of the way you target your foes and friendlies during the fights in Vagrus:

• Using keyboard only? Aside from picking a Skill with the keys '1-4' (and '5' for Move), you can use 'Tab' to switch between available targets, and 'Space' to confirm the action.
  
• Are you fine with mousing over stuff while resting your index finger? Hover over the target and trigger the skill from the keyboard without ever having to click with the mouse.
  
• Want to do away with having to confirm? Sure, attack like a pro without having to click twice by switching off confirm in the options.
  

Visual Improvements

There are also visual upgrades, like Area Targeting boxes instead of the previous visual effects on the metal bases of the characters.



We also added visual queues about Move + Action Skills in the form of the 'foot' indicating where the character is going to move while the player picks the target of the second part of the Skill.

Overall we are quite happy with these changes and the visible improvements of Companion Combat and while there are still further upgrades planned, we hope you like them already and find the best combination fitting your play-style.



Let us know how you like the options, and which type of targeting is the most usable for you!

Stay tuned and conquer the wasteland,
The Lost Pilgrims Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660?utm_source=steam&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=website&utm_content=footer
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wanna see the full game released as early as possible with even more content? Please share our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). Appreciate it!

Fig | Website | Youtube | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Patreon | Discord

The greatest thing about running open development is receiving amazing feedback from players that helps improving your game. The hardest thing about open development is identifying what the actual problem is that your players are having an issue with.

The perfect example of all this is Crew Combat in Vagrus, which is an aspect of the game that players complained about fairly regularly. After adding the Flee/Appease option, it got slightly better but not as much as we had hoped. While digging for the reasons, we came to some interesting realizations. Whenever we heard someone getting irked about how they bled out against a much stronger enemy, we asked whether they tried appeasing them and they pretty much all said "No, 'Flee' implied losing big time".

So we renamed the button from Flee to Buy off/Lure Away to better indicate the appease options lying underneath it. It got slightly better again. Yet many players still ignore it. When we asked why, we learned that they had a bad experience with it. They used the Auto Offer function that gave away all their slaves, which in turn resulted in a workforce shortage and sent them into a death spiral. Boom. Never touched the option again.

The Auto Offer function was indeed something that we left unfinished. It only offered money and crew, but not cargo, nor items. Thus, it often proposed a deal that was far from being optimal. So from the player feedback, "Crew Combat is insanely hard" we got to "a small piece of the Appease feature was left unfinished and coupled with no explanation, it led players to fight unwinnable battles they should be just avoiding".

The good news is: the current build has Item Offers and improved Auto Offers in it. And hope to see more players get the hang of when and how to avoid fights that are way out of their league.

Item Offers

Items are a resource that is often overlooked. They have no weight to be considered in the cargo hold and can accumulate silently. Items looted from events or combat encounters can turn otherwise unfortunate ventures profitable - if sold in the right place.

It also makes sense that these valuables be traded or used during Crew Combat appeasing. They can even add new flavor, since the various enemy types are interested in different items - tribal folk in trinkets and charms while Necromancers in ancient tablets and arcane texts. We even decided to introduce beast lures and Undead charms that are highly effective against those kinds of foes.



Items are split into two categories. Well, more like three. The items listed in blue are the ones that will help the player the most to successfully Appease the enemy (or aid their Flee in case of Beasts or Undead). The second group lists the items that can also be used but with less efficiency. There is also an implicit third category of items that the player owns but cannot be leveraged in the given situation.

Auto Offer Improvements

With Item Offers added into the mix and considering the feedback we deciphered, we spent some time shoring up our Auto Offer logic, too. For one, now it offers cargo and items as well, though it does not apply advanced mathematics to optimize the offer, there is an underlying logic that takes the enemy's goal into account. It will offer Supplies and edible goods first to voracious opponents, valuables to looters, mounts to poachers, and so on.

We think - and hope - that these changes brought us one step closer to addressing some of the unintended difficulties players face in the game as we continue to improve other features as well.

As ever, we are immensely grateful for all the support and feedback!

Stay tuned and conquer the wasteland,
The Lost Pilgrims Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660?utm_source=steam&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=website&utm_content=footer
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wanna see the full game released as early as possible with even more content? Please share our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). Appreciate it!

Fig | Website | Youtube | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Patreon | Discord

Companion Combat is an important facet of Vagrus even though players have quite a lot of control over how much they want to engage in it. At the same time, it is the most complex part of the game when it comes to code, so whatever changes we make requires more time relative to other parts.

After we added Mercenary Tasks, our focus has moved back to improving Companion Combat, partly because a lot of players opt to enter it from Crew Combat, so it is our goal to keep these fights interesting for as long as possible. The current set of changes are thus aimed at spicing things up a bit: more movement and thus further emphasis on positioning instead of spamming Skill 1 while standing still. The changes include:

Push-Pull Improvement:

When enemies are pushed into or pulled into another enemy, instead of being damaged slightly and staying at the previous position, the two combatants switch places, potentially setting weaker targets up for attacks or messing with their available Skills.



Skills Involving Move Action:

These Skills no longer require a free position to move into. Instead, the acting combatant will switch places with the one on the target position. In the example here, Gor'Goro charges forth, switching places with Harvek in the front line.



Here, Harvek jumps back, taking Renkailon's position while throwing his dagger.



Multi-phase Skills:

Speaking of Renkailon, one of the changes is not mechanical but visual, namely that Skills that have multiple phases will now perform these during the same camera zoom clash animation as originally intended, making it much more pleasing to the eye.



Acrobatics Perk:

Acrobatics is a Perk that is typically used by certain very agile characters - and opens up a new mechanic for them. When a combatant with this Perk Evades an attack successfully, they do not move onto a random empty position but can choose where to Evade, even onto an occupied spot, thereby opening up new tactical considerations.



Diehard Perk:

This Perk essentially saves a combatant from becoming Downed 30% of the time. When successful, Diehard makes it so that the character stays standing. Although far from reliable, it can save you in a pinch.



Although that's it for now, more improvements on the way for Companion Combat.

Stay tuned, stay safe, and conquer the wasteland!

The Lost Pilgrims Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660?utm_source=steam&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=website&utm_content=footer
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wanna see the full game released as early as possible with even more content? Please share our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). Appreciate it!

Fig | Website | Youtube | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Patreon | Discord

[h3]Hey Folks, [/h3]

it was amazing to see how our latest patch was received. So many great new reviews and quite a few previously negative ones flipped to positive. We appreciate you all immensely for your vote of confidence! Especially as apparently we left a huge bug in the game that made the late game easier, instead of the early game, as we originally intended. So that's getting fixed but what else comes in this new patch, you might ask? Let's dive in!

Crew Combat Appease Improvements
Appease is a feature that is still not used by many players, though it often holds the key to avoid major losses. With better Appease conversions, the option to offer items going forward, and the improved Auto Offer function, hopefully more players will benefit from this feature. Have we mentioned adding Beast Lures and Ahskulite Charms to distract beasts and Undead from your fleeing forces? Yep. Those. too, are now in the game.



Companion Combat Targeting
Changes to targeting include making a number of new options to configure how you preferred to target your foes and friendlies:

• Using ony the keyboard? Beside picking the Skill with keys 1-4 (and 5 for Move), now you can use 'Tab' to shuffle through available targets, and 'Space' to confirm.
  
• Okay with mousing over things but want to rest your index finger? You can now hover over the target and trigger the Skill from the keyboard without ever having to click with the mouse.
  
• Want to do away with having to confirm? Sure, attack like a pro without having to click twice.
  

There are also visual upgrades, like Area Targeting boxes instead of the previous visual effects on the metal bases of the characters. While these changes are not final and there are further improvements planned, we hope you like this already and find the best combination fitting your play style.

Important Note: Considering the extent of these improvements there is little to no chance that we broke nothing in the process. Assume that we did not want to make anyone's life harder. If you see something amiss, please flag it to us using the usual channels, like the inbuild reporting tool (F1 button), forums, and our Discord server.

Now let's jump into the details:

--------------------------------------------------
[h2]Patch 0.6.20 - Codename: Target Acquired[/h2]

[h3]New/Updated Features :shiny:[/h3]
General

• Tweaks to the starting comitatus crew composition and beast type stats to enable an easier start
  
• New open-world starting tutorial added about the game being hard, and also Wasteland vs Dissonance Modes
  
• Dissonance Mode Heal (camp & event) boost
  
• Increased the workforce offered on a number of low-income passengers
  

Companion Combat

• Area targeting as an option (instead of having to click on the character bases)
  
• Area targeting visual update
  
• Previously targeting steps only worked in this order: Skill > Target > Confirm; now you can also do Target > Skill > Confirm
  
• You can switch Skills without having to select the target again
  
• Character selection refreshes the Skill bar to show which Skills can be used on the given target
  
• Change between targets using 'Tab'
  
• Confirm Skills with 'Space'
  
• Option to 'Target First Available' - after selecting a Skill, the first available target gets automatically selected
  
• 'Hover as Selected' option added
  
• UI, logic, and performance improvements to the new targeting features
  
• Unfocused enemies will fade to have a better focus on the target(s)
  
• Added SFX for a number of enemies
  

Crew Combat

• Item offering option added to Appease/Bribe
  
• Auto Offer functionality extended to offer Cargo and Items as well
  
• Beast lures and Undead Charms added in Events (mostly shops in settlements)
  

[h3]Bug Fixes :bug:[/h3]

• Supply price limit period (Late vs Early game) corrected
  
• The disappearing character UI during successful Evade with the Acrobatic perk fixed
  
• Maxed out Cargo hold vs Stash anomalies solved
  
• Vitality mod anomalies in Dissonance mode after combat & camping fixed
  
• The bug where market and events did not refresh after 'One more day' fixed
  
• Journal scroll bar no longer cuts into text/assets
  
• Exquisite Banner Renown modifier counts towards Event dependencies now
  
• Various Task/Passenger related validations and auto-repair jobs added
  
• Rare Discipline/Liberate crash bug fix
  
• Fixed when some Trade Tasks were not visible on the Chart
  
• Failed Escort Tasks and stuck Passengers are fixed
  

Known Issues:

• There is a rare bug where the skill selection with keyboard misfires. Planning to apply a hotfix once we are able to reproduce and resolve the issue
  
• The Companion Perk UI is buggy (lags). Planing to rebuild it.
  
• Long initial loading time - we will see if we have time to do something about it before 1.0
  

'Is Vagrus properly balanced now?' - Nope. 'Was it a step in the right direction?' - We think so. Please let us know how you find it.

[h3]Coming Up Next[/h3]
As we work on rounding out the content for the 1.0 release, we are also continuing our final UI upgrades: Crew and Settlement panes will come next.

Stay tuned, stay alive, conquer the wasteland!
- The Lost Pilgrims Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660?utm_source=steam&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=website&utm_content=footer
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wanna see the full game released as early as possible with even more content? Please share our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). Appreciate it!

Fig | Website | Youtube | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Patreon | Discord

What is this 'Dissonance Mode', you ask? Essentially, it is a game mode you can select when starting a new game, and that shifts the experience toward a more narrative route, easing up on the management and combat mechanics to transform Vagrus into more of an exploration game with a strong visual novel element for those that find the challenge too taxing.

We decided to include this game mode due to player feedback, but the decision to do so was not an easy one because we dreamed up Vagrus as a game that closely fits its setting: a cruel, harsh, merciless world that pulls no punches but once the challenges presented by it are conquered, the sense of accomplishment would be all the more satisfying. So if the world is presented as savage and unforgiving while the difficulty is lower, it can easily cause what is called ludo-narrative dissonance, which in the broadest terms means that what you are told in a game does not match what you play.

This kind of dissonance has been reported by a number of players in times when more experimental patches caused the economy to pour money on enterprising vagri. Most of this feedback described the lack of challenge and the resulting tension, which caused the dissonance, eventually leading to players to abandon a playthrough.

However, not everyone is looking for the same thrills when they play video games, and those players that do not enjoy the tactical combat or the strategy aspect of managing resources and logistics will ultimately feel that they want to delve into the world but not at the cost of a steeper learning curve. Well, Dissonance Mode is tailored for them.
In general, it comes with easier combat challenges and a more forgiving economy, allowing players to explore more freely. However, with the removed challenge comes the removal of Achievements, too. It is our hope that those who still wish to earn these badges will get practiced in Dissonance Mode and then go on to enjoy the full experience that we'll from now on call Wasteland Mode.

The list of what Dissonance Mode and 'an easier playthrough' exactly entails is not final yet and will probably change quite a lot until the final release. We'll see what to add partly based on future feedback.

Here is the list of impacts [effective from v0.6.20 going live (hopefully next week)]:

• Cheaper supplies
  
• Significantly distorted RNG in the players' favor
  
• Higher level Trade and Mercenary Task commissions available from the start
  
• Easier Mercenary Tasks (lower opponent combat stats)
  
• Higher trade-distance market premium (wider price differences between source and sell locations resulting in higher possible profits)
  
• Constant 'Favored' Property on Companions granting them extra Vitality and Accuracy
  
• Lower chances of Crew Combat encounters, especially in the early game
  
• Slightly easier Crew Combat encounters
  
• Lower defense rate requirements to guard your camp
  
• More allowing workforce rate requirements before the Severely Understaffed and Critically Understaffed states are triggered
  
• Healing chances are higher (both during Camp and via Events)
  

There is, of course, the possibility that a number of players choose a Mode that is not suited for them consistently, causing them not to enjoy the story without the challenge in Dissonance Mode or become disheartened by the cruelty of Wasteland Mode, but our hope is that in the end, more of them will find the right alternative in the two modes available.

Now that Dissonance Mode was added to the game, we are looking forward to your feedback on it. Until then, stay tuned, stay safe, and conquer the wasteland!

The Lost Pilgrims Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/909660?utm_source=steam&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=website&utm_content=footer
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wanna see the full game released as early as possible with even more content? Please share our pages and posts with your friends through your favorite social media channel(s). Appreciate it!

Fig | Website | Youtube | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Patreon | Discord