This time we are bringing another batch of changes that prepare us for the Gloria Victis 1.0 release that will take place... TOMORROW!
We would like to invite all of you to the New Beginning servers that will start tomorrow at 3 PM UTC! Join the new servers and start writing your history!
Even though this is the last day before that important date, be sure that for the next hours, we will be releasing a number of tweaks and improvements that will make us ready for the New Beginning! Be sure to join our Discord to receive the latest news and be a part of the daily discussions with other players and developers!
We would also like to present to you our Gloria Victis 1.0 Launch Trailer:
Be sure to like, comment and subscribe!
Today’s update brings a lot of important improvements and fixes as well as a new crafting UI, and a Guild Heraldry skin for horses!
Without any further delay, let’s see what this week’s update brings!
The New Glory season will start with the release of the game, on Tuesday, the 7th of February. Also, we’d like to remind you that the last day of the season – Monday, the 6th of February – will be a dedicated day of the season's end. It will not be possible to earn or lose the Nation Points on this day and the scoreboards of other season-based rankings (Glory and Arena) will be frozen then. However, it is the last chance to donate your NP to your guild as the Guild Points. When the new season starts, the Nation Points collected by a player will count from 0 as the new season will begin.
A little explanation for the new players: Glory is a season-based ranking that rewards you for activity in the faction v faction v faction PVP. The seasons last around 2 months (depending on the current updates schedule) and the top players are rewarded with unique titles and gold. Also, every Thursday night you’ll get Contribution Points – an in-game currency used to purchase special items from the Glory Quartermasters. The amount of earned CP depends on your position on the leaderboard, so draw your weapons and fight your way to the top!
New Crafting UI
This week marks a significant improvement in the crafting system, as we have implemented a new crafting window UI filled with quality-of-life improvements, updated visuals, and better optimization.
From now on, the crafting UI will have two slots for recipes to be displayed at a time, making it easier to craft the components required to craft the final item. We have also added a better display of the chance to craft an item of a certain reinforcement level.
What's more, from now on, if there will be over 10 crafts of the same material queued, these materials will be crafted in a bulk of 10 in one craft. This bulk craft will take the same amount of time as the sum of 10 separate crafts and give the same amount of materials and experience.
Reworked Crafting Quests (soon)
This week, we wanted to introduce reworked crafting quests, however, due to an unexpected bug we need to postpone their implementation till tomorrow. Unfortunately, this means that the crafting quests will be disabled today. We believe, however, that these changes will be worthwhile to wait for, as they will greatly improve the feeling of these quests as well as enable more players to participate in this kind of activity. Below you can read more about what will change in the crafting quests with Gloria Victis 1.0:
The crafting quests will now be moved to the questboard system, making them more accessible for all players. Upon collecting a crafting quest from the questboard and completing it, there is an 8 hour cooldown until another quest can be taken. However, we have divided the crafting quest into three regions: Pilgrim’s Rock, the outer ring of the map, and Capital Cities. Each region has its own cooldown, meaning that a player can take a total of three crafting quests (1 per region) before needing to wait through the cooldown. What's more, the Crafting Quests' rewards will also vary based on the risk factor of the area they are at!
Waking up the game world
This week our artists and level designers took some time to bring more life to the capital cities of all three nations. From now on, NPCs in these important cities will have more options of animations to play, as we have implemented yet another batch of new animations to the game. On top of that, as we have mentioned in the previous patch, this week brings the extension of the ragdoll system to animals! From now on, not only human NPCs but also animals will have a full ragdoll system implemented. Be sure to check it out! We believe that these changes will improve the liveliness of the game world, making it even more interesting and immersive!
New Horse Skin
We are also introducing another Horse Skin. Based on the feedback of our Community, today we are adding a horse skin that will pick up the colors of the Coat of Arms that the player uses on the shield!
Every two-week video contest
We cannot stress enough our happiness and gratitude to see such nice videos posted by our active community! This week, we have chosen a few combat videos, that will be rewarded with the main reward of 2000 ambers:
Quartermasters on Temples spawn without the need to upgrade any part of the Temple.
Adjusted the guild level for door control to level 50 instead of 80.
Adjusted the Glory level requirements for top tier recipes at the Glory Shop: Bulat, Beast Leather and Old Animal Tendon Bowstring change the required level from 70 to 35, and Dziwer recipe changes from level 30 to 20.
Adjusted the loot tables of certain low-level NPCs.
Changed how top skill for horse archers triggers. From now on it will be triggered upon releasing the arrow.
Increased the ammo capacity of a trebuchet in the starting quest area.
Tweaks to the new combat tutorial quest.
Added a new tutorial quest to learn about the depot system.
From now on, hints will automatically close after 2 minutes.
Adjusted the Battle Point gain during sieges for destroying ballistas.
Added Battle Point gain during sieges for destroying doors.
Improved the quality of textures on the painting in the Pride Long Forgotten Event.
Added Discord invitation link to the main menu.
Fixes
Fixed the bug where a player cannot take daily challenges if the timer ends while a player is online.
Fixed a bug where the tent's position would show in an incorrect place on the map.
Fixed a bug that caused a tooltip from the achievements window to stay on screen after closing the window.
Fixed an incorrect fishing animation on Sigurbaldur NPC in Baalhammon.
Fixed the issue with the loot zone on some siege camps near Castles.
Fixed the amount of health of NPCs in the ballista tutorial quest. From now on the NPCs will be 1 shot killed by the ballista.
Fixed a bug that caused the indicators on scrolls to show as too big in the stall UI.
Fixed an edge case that would cause stall UI buttons to duplicate in certain situations.
Fixed an issue with the new Guild Activity Rewards System not giving rewards to some guilds.
Fixed an issue that could cause one of the bosses in the Ismir questline not to respawn after being killed.
Fixed looting treasure chests with fast double click E not closing the looted box.
Fixed the visual bug that would sometimes make buffs not show on the UI properly.
With this update, we are bringing in one of the very last changes before the final release of Gloria Victis 1.0. We have taken our time to fix, improve and adjust the changes we have introduced in the past few weeks, as well we are bringing a reworked combat tutorial quest and introducing the core for a new feature of guild activity rewards — Guild Events!
We would also like to once again officially announce that Gloria Victis is going to leave Early Access on the February 7th! It has been a long journey, and we would like to thank all of you for your continuous support throughout these years, and we hope that you will stay with us for the new and thrilling episode of the journey after the release!
Without the goal of deactivating the weekly State of War, we knew that we needed to add an additional goal for guilds to achieve their weekly activity. Until now, the amount of deactivation points reached was converted to Guild Technology progression, but based on our Community feedback, we wanted to give the guilds an additional reward that gives a reward to guild members as well as a good way to gather all the guild members at one time to perform some fun activities.
With this in mind, we have introduced Guild Activity Tokens. These will be delivered to the Notification Center of the guild’s leader each week based on the guild's activity levels. These tokens will enable the leaders to launch special events on the map with better rewards!
Currently, the guilds will be rewarded with 2 types of tokens (“Key to Griffins Camp” and “Siege Token”), each one letting the guild start a different event:
Reward for 50% and 100% guild activity — a token granting access to a Griffin Company event with better rewards (3 new bosses with top-tier loot, additional chests, and crates with top-tier materials). This event is mostly dedicated to the smaller guilds. Deliver the token to a special event marked on the map to start the guild event.
Reward for 150% and 200% guild activity — a token granting access to a new “Show of Strength” event that is started by delivering the token to the siege camp of an enemy nation’s homelands’ castles (i.e Blackrock, Waterford for Midland)
A guild will receive all the tokens for their activity level and below, meaning that a guild with 200% activity will receive a total of 2 tokens for the Griffin Company and 2 tokens for the “Show of Strength” event.
We believe that this system will better reward guilds for their activity as well as make them an essential part of nation gameplay, as it gives guilds more chances to provide “content” for entire nations, even though these events can be started by guilds, whole nations can participate in them.
We would like to extend that system in the future by adding more events to it. We think that moving some of the events currently available on the map to this system could be a good idea, however, adding such events to this system would require us to disable them from being started in other ways. We were thinking about events like Catacombs of Temple of Doom, but decided not to implement them, as we would like to know your view and your suggestions for the future improvement of this system!
Redesigned Treasure Map locations
Another important to note change this week is the redesign of the treasure map’s treasure locations. From now on:
Tier 1 maps have treasures located on the capital island
Tier 2 maps have treasures located in the frontier region (on-sided non-loots)
Tier 3 maps have treasures located in the outside ring of the map
Tier 4 maps have treasures located in the middle of the map (loot zone)
Tier 5 maps are located in places far away from players’ homeland and away from any transportation links, making these expensive chests riskier to obtain.
We believe that this change will better fit the use case of the maps, enabling players to choose a region they play in and while doing other activities in that area, they can also look for the hidden treasures!
New Combat Tutorial Quest
We have taken another look at the starting quests for all three nations, with the aim of improving our combat tutorial. From now on, the first quest for each nation has been changed to a combat tutorial that lets new players learn the basics whilst fighting combat dummies instead of throwing them straight into the fight.
Quality of Life
Reduced the required Glory Level for Glory Shop rewards. From now on the max required level is 100 instead of 120. Items with lower level requirements have also been adjusted, to match the change in the max level requirement.
Some adjustments to armor’s damage reductions, especially lower-tier medium armor. This change should improve the survivability of newer players after the recent increase in weapon damage.
Increased the number of points that can be gained by performing PvE activities during a siege. From now on killing guards or destroying siege engines will award more points to the scoreboard.
Fixed the Guild Activity UI progress bar to now scale properly and show the entire progress from 0% to a max of 200%.
Fixes
Fixed a bug that caused ChD medium armor nodes of T3 and T4 not giving proper bonuses after unlocking mastery nodes.
Fixed an edge case in Abandoned Outpost events in the middle of the map that could result in fewer waves of enemies spawning than was intended.
Fixed the “Swamp Herbs” Questboard quest in the middle of the map. Herbs should be properly gatherable now.
Fixed an issue causing joining a Valley of Death tournament to duplicate tutorials.
Fixed a bug that prevented players from respawning in the nearest location to their death if a siege even was active nearby.
Fixed an improper rewards label for treasure maps
Fixed lists of lore and friends being duplicated after joining the Valley of Death Tournament
Today we’d like to share some big news with you. After months of hard and intense preparations, we can finally announce the date of the 1.0 launch!
It will be the most important moment in our company's history and in the history of your – and our – dream game! This wouldn’t ever be possible without the awesome support of our Community. We want to send you a big “thank you”!
Gloria Victis has been a passion-driven project from the very beginning when a team of ambitious folks assembled to create a game unlike any other.
Back then, we didn’t have any funds, investors or publishers. Those of us who founded the company had to find extra jobs so we could afford to officially register the company. Can you imagine a more rocky start to developing the hardest type of a video game possible?
Yet here we are – a small yet self-sufficient studio that created and released an open-world MMORPG! Now, after years of hard work, we can proudly share the great news:
Gloria Victis will officially leave Early Access on February 7th!
It’s been a long and difficult journey, but being passionate developers, we continued to support and develop the game together with our Community. Only thanks to you did we survive our Early Access launch back in 2016. A troubled headstart, issues with the Steam authentication (so dumb and annoying!), barely enough funds to set the required architecture and literally no marketing budget – and on top of that we were developing the game live, where all the players can see and react. We barely slept for about a week... But it was totally worth it!
Since then we applied almost 350 weekly updates (and we made a PDF of the first 300 updates which you can download here), about 3 times more small hotfixes and server-side patches. We did our best to prove that we love our game and that we have the deepest respect for those who supported us during the EA stage. We also tripled the size of our team and set up an office!
(Yes, this really happened in our office)
Gloria Victis has changed massively since the EA launch, evolving from a game similar to 64-player battlers with just a few locations to fight for, into a full-fledged MMORPG with open-world battles of hundreds of players fighting at the same time.
A lot of new features and content - click the image to display full size:
3x larger world,
Hundreds of new weapons and armors,
10x bigger server capacity,
10x more locations to capture
and much, much more!
We’d like to stop here for a moment to show you how Gloria Victis evolved over those years:
World map
Battles
Locations
Interface
For all this time, our Community was always the most important part of the game development. We’re gamers too, and it’s our philosophy to develop games with gamers and for gamers. Remember: it’s YOU who helped bring this game to life!
But can YOU contribute to Gloria Victis’ future success? Yes, you can! Spread the word, tell your friends, guild members, and family that your favorite game has reached its long-awaited 1.0 release! And be sure to tell us your feelings in your Steam review – it’s a great help to us as developers and great insight for potential new players interested in the game.
Or maybe you have an eye for great screenshots? Upload them to your Steam account, or share them on our Discord – if we use them in one of our weekly updates, you’ll be rewarded! And if recording gameplay is your thing, be sure to use always use #gloriavictis and #playgloriavictis hashtags in your video descriptions – once every two weeks we reward authors of the best videos!
And last but not least – be sure to follow us on our Social Media to stay informed about the development and updates of Gloria Victis!
In the upcoming weeks, our entire team will continue the final preparations for the launch. We’re working on setting up the infrastructure and the server solutions that will work for both current players and the new ones who will come on the 1.0 release.
Because Gloria Victis has been in Early Access for a few years, and we promised to not wipe player accounts or inventories unless something critical happened (and luckily, nothing critical happened), we decided that creating New Beginning servers at launch is the best solution. This gives players a clean slate and a chance to experience the rush of launch on a level playing field.
Players will be able to choose between the existing Legacy Servers and the New Beginning Servers anytime.
On the Legacy servers, we will not wipe any progress, and we will keep all characters and inventories untouched.
On the New beginning servers, we will create a different, fresh database allowing everyone to have a new start. Existing characters will not be able to play on New Beginning servers.
Current players do not need to create any additional account to play on either server type, but you will need to create a new character if you wish to play on the New Beginning servers.
Our game has a cross-server database. This gives players the opportunity to trade between servers, play on other servers of the same type (Legacy or New Beginning) to support underdog nations or do cross-server events like the Valley of Death Tournament.
New Beginning Servers and Legacy Servers do have some shared databases including: – Character names – Guild names – Alliances names – Unlocked skins and heraldry symbols – Ambers
This will allow us to add new servers or merge New Beginning Servers and Legacy Servers databases seamlessly based on population needs in the distant future.
With the release of Gloria Victis getting closer every day, our team is hard at work to bring changes that will make the game more enjoyable and rewarding. This week we are presenting you with a batch of changes in the economy and quality of life connected to economic systems that will bring more meaning to activities found in Gloria Victis.
We would also want to announce, that this week, on Saturday at 20:30 UTC +1, we will be recording a release trailer for Gloria Victis, thanks to the help of our Community member Komodor. Please join us on this day on a special server that will be launched for the purpose of recording the trailer. For more information please contact Coragon#2441 via Discord.
Without any further delay, let’s take a look at today’s changelog!
The screenshot’s authors were awarded. Komodor, Jorwet and Profeta – check your Ambers!
Changelog v.0.9.9.9.0 Beta
Contribution Points from Nation Points
We have added a feature that will reward players with additional Contribution Points for donating their Nation Points to a guild. This change should make taking up PvP activities more rewarding, and let PvP-oriented players earn by doing their favorite activities. We hope this change will also encourage players to join guilds to gain the full benefits of the Nation Points system, and get to see how being a part of a guild enriches the experience of playing Gloria Victis.
Reworked Glory System
The Glory System has been reworked, granting better rewards for sieges and fighting for locations. The new system will also reward players with scoreboard points in a more intuitive way similar to the Nation Points system and will reward them for more activities that help the nation during the siege like destroying siege equipment or killing NPCs.
Moreover, this change will encourage players to fight to the very last second, as the defeated side will also have a chance of getting a good reward for putting up a heroic defense or an attack!
The points gained for killing NPCs, and destroying siege equipment and buildings have diminishing added to them, in order to make sure that players don’t exploit them to achieve higher places in the siege scoreboards.
New Rewards for the Sieges!
With the introduction of the new Glory and siege scoreboard systems, we are also adding a Contribution Points reward for scoring during a siege. From now on, at the end of a siege players will receive a reward based on their efficiency on the battlefield, as the reward will be increased based on the score. We believe, that this change will make sieges more worthwhile not only for the winners but also for the losing side, as good performance on a lost siege can still be rewarding to these players.
Together with this change, we are upgrading the rewards for siege events. From now on, the rewards for active participation will be changed as follows: 3 stars: from 40 to 100 CP 2 stars: from 15 to 40 CP
Changes in the Auction House
This week we are changing the rules of listing items for sale at the Auction House. From now on, the market fee will be paid only if an item is sold. This change should make putting up expensive items for sale less risky as if an item fails to sell the owner will not be charged. Together with this change, we are also unifying the duration of all auctions to 30 days. We believe that these changes will make the Auction House more accessible for players, bringing more offers and better pricing of items!
We are also bringing back the option of selling damaged items on the market, as the recent changes made this type of auction viable again and safe for the games’ economy. The damaged equipment will charge a doubled fee, which makes sure that the games’ economy will not be broken, while still offering an easier way to sell looted items.
Reworked rewards for Valley of Death Tournament
We have replaced Contribution Points rewards with a new exclusive currency — Valley of Death Tokens as a reward for the Valley of Death Tournaments. This change enables us to provide better rewards and offer unique deals that can be only bought using the new currency. We believe that this change will make Valley of Death Tournaments an even more important part of the gameplay for all skill groups bringing more skillful and competitive gameplay to these events!
The new currency can be used to buy items from a Valley of Death Merchant that can be found at the centers of Baalhammon, Mereley, and Dunfen.
Ragdolls!
In order to make the combat feel more rewarding, we are adding the ragdoll effect to slain enemies. This change should improve the visual aspect of combat and increase the immersion of the game.
This week ragdolls have been added to players and human NPCs, while we are working on applying this system to animals and monsters. We believe that this feature will improve the feeling of reward upon killing enemies in battle!
Make sure to share your best ragdoll finisher gifs and videos with us!
Changes in the "Away from home" debuff
Based on the feedback from our Community, we have changed the "Away from home” debuff. From now on it will stack to a max of 73 seconds instead of 118 seconds. This change should let for more dynamic fights to happen even if a nation is attacking locations far from its homeland territory.
But, because of "Away from home" being nerfed, from now on extended stays at other nations’ one-sided non-loot will result in a “Lion’s Den” debuff being applied. This debuff will slowly reduce max health, max stamina, and total damage by 0.5% over time ticking each minute giving more stacks the longer players can stay in the one-sided non-loot of another Nation. The maximum value of the debuff is 30%, which is achieved after staying in the enemy's one-sided non-loot for an hour.
Leaving the one-sided non-loot zone of the enemy Nation will automatically disable the debuff, however, coming back to this zone after a short period of time will result in the debuff being enabled again with the appropriate amount of stacks.
While our Underdog system works with the margin of days of imbalance, we believe there's a need to make sure extended "camping" on the last zones of weaker Nations' needs to come with a risk that expands over time.
We believe that this change won't block such content, but make sure it will get harder for attackers over time, giving the weaker nation a chance to fight back. We will be monitoring the situation on the map and apply changes to this new system in the following weeks based on our Community feedback.
Changes in the cost of using the logistician
We are introducing back the gold sink connected with using the logistician’s transport feature. We have adjusted the values based on the feedback we have received in recent days and made them significantly lower than it was in their previous form.
Here you can see the comparison of the values between the first iteration, the current value, and the new value, that we are going to introduce today:
Price for “jumping” 4 links: — 1st iteration: 5 silver 20 iron — Currently on the server: 2 silver 60 iron — After today’s patch: 3 silver 40 iron
We believe that this change is important for the overall economy of the game, as the increase in rewards that we have implemented in recent weeks will fully compensate for this change.
Changes in Contribution Points gain from events
With today’s patch, as mentioned above, we have reworked the Glory and Contribution Systems. From now on, Contribution Points are more of a PvP currency, therefore, we have decided to adjust their gain from events around the map.
From now on: — Fully PvE events (i.e Frontier Pass) will no longer reward players with Contribution Points — PvE/PvP events (i.e Catacombs) will still reward players with Contribution Points but the amount has been reduced.
This change was much needed in order to balance out the Contribution Points system, and we believe that gaining more Contribution Points from PvP activities will enable PvP-oriented players to earn while performing their favorite activities.
Video Showcase
In recent weeks we have been making many changes in the combat system of Gloria Victis. We are happy to see many great fights taking place all over the map and decided to share some of them with all of you. We would like to thank the authors of the videos and reward them, as usual, with 2000 Ambers:
— Added new sounds that will play once a player opens or closes a chest — Added a new level design path around Norfolk, that should make running around the castle much more convenient. — Adjusted health and reductions of NPCs in order to prevent them from being one-hit after the damage changes made in the last week’s update. — Adjusted the damage of bows against NPCs to balance it with the changes in NPC’s health and reductions. — Added +0 crafting stations to the centers of Mereley, Dunfen, and Baalhammon in order to make it easier for players to craft basic items. — Increased the limit of Contribution Points and adjusted the Glory Shop prices to the changes from today’s update. — Contribution Points owned by players have been multiplied by 1.25 to adjust them to the new Glory Shop prices. — We have added blood of the beast, bandages, and monastic wine/mead to the Glory Shop — The drop rate of magnetite and blood of the beast from animals and monsters has been adjusted. From now on magnetite will only drop from Old Giants. — Adjusted the Glory Level requirements for certain items in the Glory Shop, to adjust the level requirements to the new system. — Frontier Guards’ and Champion Guilds’ Token exchange events have been converted into a shop. Talk to the representatives that stand by the Questboards to exchange the tokens for rewards. — Added a “Champions Guild Messenger” event that will show in a few places in the middle of the map. This event lets players refresh their Champions Guild Tokens decay timers. — Added new interactive training dummies to certain locations in the Capitals and arena. The new dummies will move accordingly to the damage strength and direction of the attack.
Fixes
— From now on if nobody finishes the interaction with the last chest in the Frontier Pass event in one minute, the event will automatically end, granting the rewards to all the participants. — Fixed the height of spawns on the Valley of Death Tournament map in order for players not to take damage after jumping down from the spawn. — Fixed issue causing the Supporter's Shop to not load properly in some cases. — Fixed issues with horse riding animations — Fixed a memory leak connected to the guilds’ UI — Fixed bug of powerbar that could lead to a false calculation of hold time and unwanted light/strong attacks — Adjusted the tags of the guild deactivation to guild activity.
Winners of the “Tell Your Story” Discord Contest
First of all, we would like to thank all the Community members that have submitted a story for the contest. We had a lot of fun reading the stories and it’s been really hard to pick the ones that will become a part of the game as lore monuments!
Please be sure, that even if your story has not been selected to become an in-game monument there will still be a chance of winning a prize of Ambers if we decide to quote them in a changelog or as a part of our Facebook/Twitter posts!
This week we are coming to you with the next batch of changes related to combat, the introduction of the questboard feature to the middle of the map, changes in the Nation Points system, a new and interesting recipe, as well as a few more skins for horses!
Without a longer wait, let’s see what today’s update brings!
Changes in the damage of the orange (red) powerbar attacks
We are happy that the changes in movement that we have implemented thanks to our Community feedback were warmly welcomed, and following your feedback we are now moving to another important topic - TTK (Time to kill) and the "green attack spam".
Decreasing the TTK is a very important change that decreases the advantage of a “zerg” against a smaller group of players. Not only does it prevent the zerg from “spamming” down their opponent with green attacks, as the smaller group can respond with fully charged attacks that will not only cancel the spam attacks but also deal significant damage.
What is more, with the TTK being lower, a smaller group of players will be able to win fights against bigger groups of less skilled, making the number advantage less important than the skill of the players. This will help a small, but skilled group to defend themselves against the zerg, as it gives a chance to kill one group of enemies before another part of the zerg arrives.
As these are very important topics, we didn't want to completely rework the rules of our combat in order not to destabilize the balance. We want the green attack to still be a viable part of the gameplay, letting players deal a quick final blow or perform a very quick attack to catch the opponent off guard, however, we also want to make it a less viable tactic for everyday use. This is why we have decided to significantly increase the damage dealt with the red (orange) powerbar. This change required us also to change damage values and some modifiers of certain weapons, as well as the armor reductions, as without these changes weapons that are already dealing big damage would become too strong.
Please note, that the above-mentioned changes will affect solely the melee combat, as the damage of the red (orange) powerbar attack for bows and throwables will not change.
Changes: — Changed the formula for the damage done with red (orange) powerbar attacks. This change should significantly increase the damage gap between green and red (orange) attacks. — Changed the overhead damage modifier for the Crusher's Sword from 1.3 to 1.25, as its damage would be too big compared to other weapons. — Changed the damage modifier of axes from 1.2 to 1.15, due to the damage balance between weapon types. — Slightly increased the slashing and piercing reductions for light armor. These changes will not make light armor users more "tanky", but rather adjust their reductions to the new damage model.
We believe that our solution will fix the issue with the "green attack spam" better than the old staggering mechanics, as the old solution was not user-friendly as the not-loaded attack that caused a stagger was actually of the same duration as a light attack that did not cause it. What is more, the old system caused random staggers to happen when players’ ping or fps worsened for a moment while charging the attack. The new solution is free of these problems and solves the “green attack spam” caused by removing the old system.
We would also want to thank all the players who participated in the testing session of this feature. Your help and feedback are very important to us.
More Nation Points in the loot zone
With the recent changes in loot and non-loot zones, we want to further improve the risk vs reward for fighting in the loot zone. In order to achieve that, from now on kills in the loot zone will grant 3 times more Nation Points than kills in the non-loot zone. But there is a small twist — you will also lose 3 times more Nation Points for dying in the loot zone.
Minor flags for new National Castles
Hearing the feedback from our Community, we are introducing minor flags to the former Guild Castles that have become the new National Castles. From now on, Norfolk, Lublin, Greatfall, Aquitania, Skergard, Audunstede, Leaktown, Twinfall and Order of the Original Faith’s Keep have their minor flags that need to be captured before being able to siege the main locations. This change also makes the area that makes these castles start "burning" on the map smaller, enabling the players to roam more freely without showing their activity on the map.
Questboards in the middle of the map
This week brings another portion of solo/small group content for the middle of the map — questboards. This newly added feature comes with a new type of token that can be exchanged for important recipes for renovation kits and the meteoric reinforcement, as well as exclusive rewards available only in the middle of the map — a recipe for crafting an Elite Quilted Canvas from scraps!
The newly added tokens will be different than their Frontier counterparts, as they will have a decay of 30 days, meaning that it will be important to refresh them by doing quests and events in the loot zone. We will be also adding special events that will let players exchange their tokens to their refreshed version in a 1:1 ratio. The catch will be that these events will be located outside of the safety of castle walls, making it a risky, yet rewarding deal.
The introduction of the new recipe comes together with a change in disassembling of the top tier armors, as from now on, items that used Elite Quilted Canvas in their recipe will give Elite Quilted Canvas scraps instead of the Quilted Canvas scraps.
The questboards in the middle of the map come with 18 new quests that change daily, as well as new events and adding the option to loot the newly added tokens from certain already existing events in the middle of the map!
Be sure to grab the new recipe and check out the new quests and events!
Tabard horse skin
Following the last weeks’ introduction of the horse skins system, today we are introducing 3 new skins. Be sure to check out these cool-looking tabard skins and ride to battle like a knight templar!
Every-two week Video contest
We cannot stress enough our happiness and gratitude to see such fantastic videos posted by our active community! This week, we have chosen a few combat videos that will be rewarded with the main reward of 2000 ambers:
Be sure to use always use #gloriavictis and #playgloriavictis hashtags in your video descriptions. It greatly helps us and others to find content based on our game, and increases your visibility!
Quality of Life
— Added safe zone at keeps’ upgrade 0 to prevent spawn killing. — In order to improve visibility, the SSAO feature now automatically enables Eye adaptation. — Stopping the player's regeneration after being hit by a horseman’s melee attack. — Tweaked walk speed when staggered. — From now on animals will not be attacking with the same attack twice in a row. This change will prevent i.e. giants from performing a staggering shout couple of times in a row. — From now on NPCs' damage output will not be affected by the RNG modifier. — Removed the Christmas event from the Capitals. — Added a button in the Stable UI window to remove the cooldown for calling the mount in exchange for a fee of 10 silver. — Added more variety of trees around Quilum Outpost to improve the visuals of the area. — Tweaked rewards for Questboard quests in the Frontier area from 3 to 5, and decreased the number of NPCs to kill in these quests.
Fixes
— Fixed issue with the player’s CoA not being visible on horse skins. — Fix NPCs walking from Lublin to Norfolk. Also other locations: Lublin, Skergard, Audun, Aquitania, OFO, Leaktown. — Fixed the broken icon for the “Return from arena” button. — Fixed Waterford's last courtyard terrain to prevent a direct attack on the keep. — Fixed positions of boss in the event "Challenge for the bold"
Hello Community! We would like to welcome you all to the New Year! Even though a new year is always a chance for something new, certain things never change — like the weekly updates for Gloria Victis! This time we are coming to you with a bunch of important changes to nearly all aspects of the game, with changes being introduced to visuals, level design, user interface, and combat!
On top of these changes, we are introducing a brand new system of skins for horses! Be sure to check this one out and ride into battle with pride!
So, without any further delay, let’s see what today’s update brings:
With the recent changes in the loot and non-loot zones, we have found out that without the fear of losing their gear, players are much more willing to fight for the territories, however, this has also the side effect of players paying less attention to the number of deaths their suffer, as there is no penalty to it. We hope that this change will bring more organization and discipline to the combat, while still not being as punishing as losing a part of armor due to looting. What is more, risking losing a portion of items' durability creates a risk vs reward type of gameplay, that brings more emotions to the fights, which is a much-needed addition to the loot-free fight in the non-loot zone.
In order to battle that issue, we have decided to introduce a small death penalty (Arena and VoD death will not be giving that penalty). From now on, a death in combat will make all pieces of equipped armor reduce their durability by 3%. What is more, this value is modified by Character Development, meaning that leveling your armor tree will reduce the death penalty.
This change is an important preparation for the incoming changes in gameplay, that will bring better rewards for roaming in the middle of the map (we've added two new events in the middle of the map this week and the next ones will be coming in the next updates), as well as better rewards for active players and guilds that earn high places in the rankings. In order to make place for these changes, we need a bigger "sink" of items and materials so that the new rewards will not flood the economy too much.
Changes to movement in combat
In order to make the combat more dynamic, we have adjusted the movement speed in combat, making backward movement faster than before and adjusting the forward and side movement to fit. This change should give more versatility to a player caught in a 1vX scenario, as the lone player will have a better chance of maneuvering between his opponents increasing the chances for survival or even a win!
Changes to horses in roaming combat
We have also looked at the usage of horses in combat. We have found out that horses are often used as an easy way of catching a solo player by a larger group of players. Getting hit by a mounted player would cause the enabling of combat mode, reducing the chances of escape to zero.
We found it to be a big problem for the solo/small group roamers and decided, that from now on getting hit by a mounted player will no longer put the player into combat mode. What is more, if a horse is summoned in the open world it will show up with no stamina, instead of half, which will make horses still viable in battle, but makes it harder for them to be used only to catch a solo player by a bigger group.
New events in the middle of the map
In order to bring more fun activities and a better reward to the middle of the map, we are introducing two new events that will occur exclusively in the loot zone. The new events will give a better incentive to roam in the middle of the map for small parties, as the gain from these events will be better for small parties.
Great Hunt
This event is a copy of the hunting event by the capitals. Now, this event will also show up randomly in the middle of the map, providing more valuable resources for players roaming in this area.
Challenge for the Bold
Challenge for the Bold is an event similar to the “Supplies for the Bold” event. It will show a location on the map that, after 60 minutes will be visited by a special event NPC “A Messenger with Supplies”, who will drop top-tier items and recipes as a reward! The event will only show outside of the nightlock, so be sure to get to him fast as, similar to the Kargald Champions, smaller groups will benefit more from the reward!
Better shadows
As these members of our Community who have already joined our Discord may know, we’ve been testing a new system of Global Ambient Occlusion, that significantly improves the game visuals in terms of how shadows are rendered. Today, after some testing done by us and our Community, we can finally release that system. It can be activated by enabling the SSAO checkbox in Graphical Settings. We are aware that there still might be some issues with the system (like some weird shadows showing for a couple of seconds after logging in or teleportation), and we are hoping for your reports so that we can find and fix the remaining errors.
We hope that with this addition, the atmosphere of the game and the overall visuals will look better than ever!
New Login Screen
Following the UI rework, our artists have taken some time to rework the scenery in the login menu! The new one is thematically connected to the previous one, but its graphics and fidelity are greatly improved!
New Achievement Window — Summary Tab
Today we are also releasing the last part of the Achievement Window rework — the summary tab. This new additional tab will show information on the closest achievements to be achieved, shows the overall achievement progress, and displays the most unique achievements players have completed. Be sure to check it out for yourself!
Horse Skins
With this update, we are also introducing skins for horses to the game! These new skins will come in a form of a consumable that can be applied to only one horse and will stay on that particular mount until the player decides to release the mount or apply another skin. After buying the skin it will be possible to apply it to a horse from the Stable Manager UI.
Be sure to check out the first available skin below!
Christmas ending on the island of Stoneholm
The festive period on Stoneholm is coming to an end. Gifts and decorations have been cleaned up, and just the Santa’s Helper will stay a week longer in the capitals to exchange the last sweets for rewards!
Quality of Life
— The option to show the legacy version of the powerbar is now displayed in options. Players can enable it in the Interface Settings tab. — Changed the number of controlled castles in the loot zone needed to get the highest buff from 4 to 3. This change should make it more realistic for nations to achieve that buff and have a bigger incentive to fight for the castles. — Removed the siege events at Ystad, Dundrum, and Eaglenest forts to prevent players from being looted in these territories. — Changed the maximum falling height without damage from 10 to 15 units. Jumping down from respawns should no longer deal fall damage to players. — Adjusted the cost of fast travel to the current gold value. — Added a small gold reward for fighting arena battles. — Further changes and fixes in the questlines in order to better balance the challenge for new players. — Adjusted the price of the Field Siege Engine Workshop to 36 silver and added it to vendors in castles and forts. — Added Market NPCs to castles and forts in the loot zone — Added a new model for the depot chest. From now on it will be more visible, thus easier to find for new and old players alike. — Added a blue star icon near the achievement tabs and icon where a player has achieved progress since the previous visit of the Achievements Window. — Added a dedicated location for the depot in Ismir capital. — Updated 5v5 tournament memorials on the arena. — Increased the food quality of cooked meals to make them viable alternatives for new players.
Fixes
— Small level design fixes around the map. — Fixed an issue with weapons not showing for the skeletons in Catacombs. — Fixed an issue with the clothes of Mundus NPC not showing properly. — Fixed the recipe scroll for Soldier’s Heavy Helm teaching a recipe for Servant’s Heavy Helm — Fixed rewards for Crafting Questline giving two pickaxes instead of an axe and a pickaxe. — Fixed an error with a Crafting Questline, where the dialogue with the Master Craftsman couldn’t be progressed in certain edge cases. — Adjusted the damage reductions of Faris NPCs to match the ones of Knights and Huskarls. — Adjusted the range of attack with fists to 3.5. — Fixed an issue where the notifications on the left side of the screen would block the option to click other UI elements.
As we have announced, today marks the arrival of a significant update to the game. This is the first step towards completion of the final milestone before we will release Gloria Victis 1.0! This update brings a lot of changes that, in our eyes, will introduce new and interesting strategies, and create new battlefields! We are also introducing a brand new Christmas event for you to enjoy during this festive period!
We have also released the very last Devlog this year, so be sure not to miss it!
Today’s update marks the end of another Glory Season. Even though it was one of the shortest seasons we’ve ever had in the game, it was also one of the most historic ones as its end means a start of a new chapter in the development of Gloria Victis. We would like to congratulate all players who competed for the highest spots on the leaderboards for themselves and their guilds.
As this season marks the end of the Guild Castles in their current form, we would also like to congratulate the guilds that were the owners of these marvelous castles on all the servers, whose guilds will be forever immortalized on in-game monuments located in the locations that once were the Guild Castles!
A little explanation for the new players: Glory is a season-based ranking that rewards you for activity in the faction v faction v faction PVP. The seasons last around 2 months (depending on the current updates schedule) and the top players are rewarded with unique titles and gold. Also, every Thursday night you’ll get Contribution Points – an in-game currency used to purchase special items from the Glory Quartermasters. The amount of earned CP depends on your position in the leaderboard, so climb up!
5v5 Tournament
We would also like to invite all of you to our 5v5 tournament that will take place this week, that is 17th of December at 12 PM UTC on the Dukla server! We will be giving out rewards to all who attended the event — both as viewers and participants. There will also be a special reward for the team that wins the entire event. Be sure to join us!
National Castles replacing Guild Castles
Today’s update replaces Guild Castles with National Castles in the middle of the map. We think it’s a good time to introduce this change, as normally this update would start the holiday grace period we have done each year, where State of War sieges are disabled. This year, however, will be a bit different, as instead of disabling the State of War (and in fact pausing the majority of PvP action that takes place in the middle of the map), we will introduce the updated middle of the map which will change the current Guild Castles back into Nation-controlled Castles.
Some of the players that keep supporting us in the development for years now might still remember the glorious fights at the old National Castles that will be back in an updated form! What’s more, these battle-hardened veteran players might find the new National Castle designs familiar, as we wanted to give these castles some part of their old charm!
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This is a much-needed change, as the current Guild Castles imposed stagnation to the map outside of the State of War periods, as the guilds could sit in their castles safely, just waiting for some action close to their castle. Not only did it enforce the “zerg” meta, as a big guild that controlled a castle could teleport to it and rush to the action in no time, but it also created inactivity on the map, as players felt urged by the design to sit in a safe place and wait for content instead of being encouraged to go for conquest. What is more, changing the Guild Castles to a clustered solution will greatly improve the performance and help us solve a number of possible problems, which is very important for us at the games’ upcoming final release.
With this in mind, we have decided to revert the castles in the middle of the map to Nation-controlled Castles, while giving them all the benefits of the Guild Castles, excluding just one – safety. Nation-controlled Castles in the middle of the map, just like any other Nation-controlled Castle, will be possible to be sieged at all times, making the defense and conquest of them one of the key features of the middle of the map.
The new Nation-controlled Castles will become some of the most important castles for a nation to own, as they will still provide +4 workshops, the highest quality farms, as well as mines, lumber mills, and even storehouses, just like the current Guild Castles! There will also be a 45 minute teleportation cooldown upon teleportation to a castle in the loot zone, just like it was with the Guild Castles.
The newly added National Castles will have a maximum level of walls as follows: Tier 4: Norfolk, Greatfall, Lublin Tier 6: Audunstede. Skergard, Aquitania, Twinfall, Leaktown, Order of Original Faith
On top of that, the new Nation-controlled Castles will become an essential asset during the Deadly Harvest event, as they will provide a high yield of points, greatly increasing the chances of winning.
Capturing these locations will also grant a buff for controlled locations, just like the Guild Castles did. However, now the rules for gaining it will change. The maximum buffs strength will depend on the number of castles that a nation controls in the loot zone: — 4 or more castles increase the max buff strength to 30% — 1 or more castles increase the max buff strength to 22% — Having no control over castles in loot zone gives a maximum value of the buff of 15%
This change should offer a good incentive for PvP content in the middle of the map, especially during the entire Christmas break, instead of the regular stagnation caused by the disabling of the State of War.
Worry not about the Guild Castles though, as they will shortly be reintroduced to Gloria Vicitis in a new, shiny form that we hope you will like even more because all guilds will be able to own their own piece of land!
Due to the changes in the terrain, furnaces placed in Guild Castles might be impossible to reach. In such a case, please destroy them using the “My constructions” window (default: [J]). The items inside will be sent to the market “My offers” tab.
Map changes
This update brings a vital change to the world map. We have been looking at the situation in the open world for some time, and the current meta was making roaming not a viable option. The meta also evolved into a very defensive playstyle — nations became more willing to defend their castles instead of trying to conquer other nations’ castles. We found out that one of the main factors reinforcing this playstyle is that the majority of the world was a loot zone.
Our data clearly shows that non-loot PvP events attract more players, which results in more challenging and interesting fights. This is why we have decided to change the entire outer ring of the map to a non-loot zone while the middle of the map, which takes up 30% of the total landmass, will stay as a loot zone. This change brings a better distinction between loot and non-loot areas and enables players to choose which part of the map better caters to their gameplay. We believe that the change will enable players to participate in big-scale PvP content on the non-loot areas while still giving a good chance of finding a riskier, yet more rewarding fight in the loot zone in the middle of the map.
The middle of the map will become an important place not only in terms of PvP but also a place with the best resources that are needed to craft top-tier items and more rewarding PvE content. Currently, there is a selection of unique events that occur exclusively in the middle of the map, and we want these events to be the most rewarding due to the higher risk factor. These events, range from regular PvE activities (Echoes of the Past, Pride Long Forgotten, Kargald Champions) to places to gather the top-tier supplies (Supply drops, Golden Pickaxes and Meteorites). Loot zone is very important to us, and we want the risk factor of the loot zone to be properly rewarded and we will be working further on balancing the rewards on the map to reward players for their activity.
After this change, the map of loot and non-loot zones will look like this:
The former Guild Castle Strongholds — Twinfall, Leaktown, and Order of Original Faith’s Keep are getting moved away a bit to the outer ring, joining the castles that will now be in the non-loot zone.
New Siege Camp
Unlike the castles on the outer ring of the map, the new National Castles in the middle of the map will have no dedicated siege camps. Instead, players will be able to craft a new type of siege camp — a Field Siege Engines Workshop! This new structure is a cheaper version of the siege camp known from Guild Castles sieges, which will let players spawn battering rams and trebuchets as an aid to siege the castles.
We believe that the introduction of the Field Siege Engines Workshop will let players come up with new and unique strategies for sieging castles that will lead to exciting battles taking place all around the map!
You can find both the recipe and item at the general goods vendors in capitals and castles!
Reworked Rankings and Achievements Windows
This week we are also introducing two newly reworked windows: Rankings and Achievements. These are one of the last big windows in Gloria Victis that needed to be reworked to the new UI system, and the work on the remaining ones is already in progress!
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Christmas Event
This year we are coming to you with a couple Christmas activities! Be sure to talk to Santa’s Helper in your Nation’s Capital as he needs your help! Fill the air with the aroma of special event gingerbread you can bake in your furnaces and later eat or exchange for unique rewards!
Lastly, don’t forget to look at the skies, as you never know when or where Santa’s sleigh might crash! The event will take the place of our meteorite event and will offer meteoric iron as a reward as well as special gift boxes with different rewards — including a full Santa outfit!
Every-two week Video contest
We cannot stress enough our happiness and gratitude to see such fantastic videos posted by our active community! This week, we have chosen a few combat videos that will be rewarded with the main reward of 2000 ambers:
We would also like to award WekizZ and voyager0ne for their gorgeous gif images with additional 500 ambers each!
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ voyager0ne
⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ WekizZ
Be sure to use always use #gloriavictis and #playgloriavictis hashtags in your video descriptions. It greatly helps us and others to find content based on our game, and increases your visibility!
Quality of life
— From now on tier 4 tools will also become base items for skins, meaning that tool skins will be possible to equip for tools of tiers 4 and 5. — Removed NPC and Guard markers from the minimap making it easier to read. — From now clicking on the “Escape” quick menu item (near minimap) opens/closes only the “Escape” panel, ignoring other opened windows. — Workshops and other small objects should be visible on the "Focus - player" zoom scale on the map. — Improved AI for the NPC enemies. AI will now have a slight chance to chase players by walking instead of running to allow players to disengage easily. Also if a mob lands a hit while performing a maneuver, it will try to pick a new maneuver immediately, which should make combat more fluid. — Hearing the feedback of our Community, we are introducing a rule, that after 180 days of inactivity (no characters in a guild have logged in during that period), a guild will be deleted, making the name available again. This rule is active since today, meaning we have made the first round of deleting such guilds.
Fixes
— Personal and Guilds’ COA can be now set on the Myrmidon's light shield. — Fixed a memory leak in the Skybox Renderer, which affected the game’s performance after using the architects' table
Sneak peek into the clustered Guild Castles
With all these changes just around the corner, we would also like to provide our Community, with a sneak peek at what can be expected at the very start of 2023. Next year will be very important for Gloria Victis, as we are just a few months away from launching Gloria Victis 1.0 and one of the remaining steps before the release will be the clustered Guild Castles, which will have their first iteration going live in January 2023.
The clustered guild castles will not only offer a chance to own a Guild Castle for smaller guilds but will also enable these smaller guilds to have a chance of building their own content around building and developing their Guild Castles. The Guild Castles will become a feature that will provide a space for guild gatherings, and give a better reason to roam around the map on the lookout for rare materials for castle building as well as fight to boost the Guild’s level. With the clustered Guild Castles, the importance of technology points will be greater, as guilds will have more technologies to unlock, as well as they will be able to develop more technologies at the same time. This change will make map roaming and participating in the new State of Wars a key to becoming one of the top guilds of a server. The newly added technologies will augment many aspects of the clustered Guild Castles as well as provide buffs and features that will help the guilds to compete at the highest level.
Another important change that the clustered Guild Castles will bring is a new version of State of War. While we think that the current State of War design is good, as it brings many memorable fights, we can see its drawbacks – Guild Castles are becoming more of a national asset making the guilds owning them reliant on the nation. This means that a shift of power between the nations may result in strong guilds losing their Guild Castles to weaker ones, but such that have a bigger support from the nation. Moreover, we have seen a number of toxic behaviors emerging from owning a Guild Castle, which is not a situation we are looking for. While changing the design of the State of War, we will be also looking for ways to keep the mass Nation vs Nation PvP in the open world, by adding new systems to the game.
The new State of War design is aimed more at Guild vs Guild, or Alliance vs Alliance, and everyday content. We want each guild to be able to adjust the castle to their needs, by tweaking the size of the battle they want to be having, and do they want to have the help of their allies or not. Moreover, guilds will be able to decide on the hour of the State of War as well as the frequency of the battles (as now they will be even possible to take place daily!). This way, fairer, and more challenging battles should take place. The new system will also get rid of the toxicity that spying, griefing or an unsuccessful State of War brings, as guilds will only lose points, not castles. The system will bring more rewards and fewer penalties, while still being a competitive feature giving guilds the ability to compete with each other.
What can be expected in the first iteration?
The first iteration should feature buying a guild island, teleportation to and from the island to the open world, as well as castle building and workstation placement. Once we get this iteration live we will be gathering your feedback to improve the clustered Guild Castles while working on re-enabling State of Wars in a new, reworked version that suits the new guild castle system!
Christmas wishes from the Developers
As this is the last changelog of the year, we would like to voice our best wishes to all our dear Players worldwide. We wish for you all to spend this festive period in a joyful atmosphere with a Christmas tree big enough to fit all the gifts underneath it. We would like to thank you for your continuous support and we hope to see you in the upcoming year!
EDIT to Update 345: Clash of Nations 20.12.2022
Adjusted price of the Privilege item
Listening to our Community’s feedback, we are adjusting the price of the Privilege item. From now on it will cost 300 Contribution Points instead of 1500. Players, who have Privilege items in their inventory will have the amount of the item increased, to meet the new price. Following this change, the Siege Engines Workshop recipe will now take 5 Privilege to craft, and the Field Siege Engines Workshop will now take 1 Privilege to craft.
Quality of Life
— Added a reworked version of the UI for Siege Camps. — Adjusted the farm quality to better resemble the risk factor of the zone they are at. — Reworked early game tutorial hints, to make them more intuitive and better visible for the new players.
Fixes
— Fixed tattoos on skeleton NPCs in the Catacombs event. — Fixed a case where the sound of getting a whisper would be played even though messaging is blocked between the players. — Fixed an edge case that would make a player’s weapon become invisible for other players. — Fixed the chances of receiving a Santa box from the meteorite event.
As you might know, we are preparing for a huge update that will be coming next week. This is a daunting task that requires all the team members to work hard in order to release it. Due to that, we have decided to skip today’s update and fully focus on the changes coming next week.
However, today we would like to make a few announcements and once again shed some light on the coming changes.
The screenshot’s authors were awarded. IsvRada, DDF and Pilot – Contact Coragon#2441 to receive your Ambers
5v5 Tournament!
We would like to announce that our Dev Team is preparing a 5v5 Tournament! The event will take place on the Dukla server on the 17th of December, 12:00 UTC. Be sure to join us for great rewards — both, for participants and viewers! The winners of the Tournament will receive a unique reward as well as be immortalized on the monument at the arena!
New Glory Season
The New Glory season will start on Thursday, the 15th of December. Also, we’d like to remind you that the last day of the season – Wednesday, the 14th of December – will be a dedicated day of the season's end. It will not be possible to earn or lose the Nation Points on this day and the scoreboards of other season-based rankings (Glory and Arena) will be frozen then. However, it is the last chance to donate your NP to your guild as the Guild Points. When the new season starts, the Nation Points collected by a player will count from 0 as the new season will begin.
Please remember that this is also the last week of the Guild Castles in the middle of the map! Guilds who will own the castles at the end of the Glory Season will become immortalized on in-game monuments located in the National Castles take will take the place of the Guild Castles! We would love to see your screenshots and videos of the last battles for these castles!
A little explanation for the new players: Glory is a season-based ranking that rewards you for activity in the faction v faction v faction PVP. The seasons last around 2 months (depending on the current updates schedule) and the top players are rewarded with unique titles and gold. Also, every Thursday night you’ll get Contribution Points – an in-game currency used to purchase special items from the Glory Quartermasters. The amount of earned CP depends on your position on the leaderboard, so draw your weapons and fight your way to the top!
Beginner Tutorial Video
We would also like to give a shoutout to one of our Community members - WekizZ for his awesome guide on how to make money. We think that this video will greatly help new players as well as the current ones, who would like to bring their money making to a next level! Be sure to take a look at the video and see if you can find something useful for yourself! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NRtbCosw30
What is coming next week?
Last week we have announced the changes that will be coming in the weeks to follow, with the first, significant batch going live next week! The changes that are coming required our programmers to rework many of our in-game systems, which will improve the server-side optimization resulting in smoother gameplay! We would still like to invite you to have your say about the changes on our official Gloria Victis Discord (link). We have a special forum channel #middle-of-the-map-feedback prepared for you to join, discuss and give us feedback on the changes! Have you missed the announcement? You can read about the coming changes in the last weeks’s changelog: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/327070/view/3619234952562206742
While the majority of our team is constantly working towards the upcoming release of Gloria Victis 1.0, we are doing our best to bring new features and provide Quality of Life improvements for you to enjoy every week!
This week we are bringing to you new skin, fixes, and QoL improvements, and a very important announcement about our plans for the weeks to come!
We are introducing a new cosmetic skin set to the game using a mix of heavy and medium items. The new “Myrmidon” cosmetic skin is waiting for you in the supporter’s shop (default: [K]).
You won't find a warrior more devoted to the team than Myrmidon. Their squad is like a family: they eat together, sleep together and go into battle together. Everyone has a partner for whom he is responsible and cannot abandon him, even if he lies dead on the battlefield.
Adjustment to the shield bash mechanics
Last week, we have implemented a new way of performing a shield bash, and in response to our Community’s feedback, we have decided to implement an option to bind a shield bash to another key than the default. From now on you will be able to find a field in the keybinding options. After binding a new key to the shield bash, it will be possible to perform this type of attack by clicking the bound key while holding a block with a shield. What is more, binding the new key to shield bash, will make the “kick” button perform just kicks, meaning that it will work exactly like before the last week’s changes.
Every-two week Video contest
We cannot stress enough our happiness and gratitude to see such nice videos posted by our active community! This week, we have chosen a few combat videos, that will be rewarded with the main reward of 2000 ambers:
Yotad, for his video highlighting the finest moments of his guild throughout the recent seasons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gLhlcXB1bg Ruffion, for a fine compilation of battles in a 2 man squad. Just look at that teamwork and combat awareness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNE_dSExZho Busegirly, for a great archer gameplay video. The accuracy and positioning are worth taking a look at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV3lq-V3sAI Be sure to use always use #gloriavictis and #playgloriavictis hashtags in your video descriptions. It greatly helps us and others to find content based on our game, and increases your visibility!
Quality of Life:
– Adjusted the values of damage reductions for heavy armor as a response to the Community feedback we have received. – Added character preview in the “Buy Summary” window – Reworked the Guild Recruitation Announcement window to a new UI style
Fixes:
– Fixed a bug that made it possible to perform a chamber with a fully loaded shield bash in certain situations. – Fixed a tag for the new Seasonal Deal Pack in the Supporter’s Shop. – Fixed a case where the title of the tutorial in the Lore Window would not fit into the space for some languages. – Fixed a bugged spear throw animation for the throwing player. – Fixed trimmed header caption label in option panel dropdowns – Unified the icon of the supporter shop for fullscreen and quick bar – Minor fixes and visual tweaks to the Supporter’s Shop – Fixed the coordinates tooltip staying on screen after closing the map
WIP Insight
Today we are coming to you with an announcement concerning the upcoming changes to the middle of the map. We announced this a while ago, but now, we are ready to shed some more light on what’s coming in the weeks to follow. The changes presented in this announcement may still vary slightly from the final version, and we are open to your feedback.
At first, when we were announcing the changes in the middle of the map and changes to how guild castles will work, we were expecting it to come all together in one big update, however, the scope has increased significantly since then and we have decided to split this huge change into parts.
The first, very significant, portion will be launched within the next updates, starting with the update on 15.12.2022, at the start of the Christmas and New Year holiday grace period we have done each year, where State of War sieges are disabled. This year will be a bit different, as instead of disabling the State of War (and in fact pausing the majority of PvP action that takes place in the middle of the map), we will introduce the updated middle of the map which will change the current Guild Castles back into Nation-controlled Castles (anyone still dreaming about the good old Original Faith’s Keep?).
This is a much-needed change, as the current Guild Castles imposed stagnation to the map outside of the State of War periods, as the guilds could sit in their castles safely, just waiting for some action that happens close to their castle. Not only does it enforce the “zerg” meta, as a big guild that controls a castle can teleport to it and rush to action in no time, but it also creates inactivity on the map, as players are feeling urged by the design to sit in a safe place and wait for content instead of being encouraged to go for conquest.
With this in mind, we have decided to revert the castles in the middle of the map to Nation-controlled Castles, while giving them all the benefits of the Guild Castles, excluding just one – safety. Nation-controlled Castles in the middle of the map, just like any other Nation-controlled Castle, will be possible to be sieged at all times, making the defence and conquest of them one of the key features of the middle of the map.
The new Nation-controlled Castles will become some of the most important castles for a nation to own, as they will still provide +4 workshops, the highest quality farms, as well as mines, lumbermills, and even storehouses, just like the current Guild Castles! On top of that, the new Nation-controlled Castles will become an essential asset during the Deadly Harvest event, as they will provide a high yield of points, greatly increasing the chances of winning. This change should offer a good chance for PvP content in the middle of the map during the entire Christmas break, instead of the regular stagnation caused by the disabling of the State of War.
The previous paragraphs may have you thinking about what will happen with the current Guild Castles and guilds that own them. The Guild Castles will come back in a changed form, somewhere at the start of the next calendar year, and the current Guild Castle owners will be rewarded with a memorial obelisk in the new Nation-controlled Castles. Only two guilds per server will be rewarded for each castle – the guild that holds the castle currently, and… the guild that will hold the castle at the end of the current Glory Season.
This brings us to the next announcement – the current Glory Season will be shorter, and will end on 15.12.2022 with the introduction of the new middle of the map. So, sharpen your weapons and head to battle for the Guild Castles and Glory for your guild to be forever remembered!
Let’s reveal some of the other important changes that will be implemented in this update:
Changes in non-loot and loot zones
We are aware, that currently, activity on the map outside of the siege events is low. We find the cause of it being the “zerg” meta which makes small groups of players unwilling to roam around. This issue is even more visible due to the loot zones – a small group of players gets overrun by a bigger group they have no chance against, they lose the gear, and because of having no hope of winning another encounter, they chose to stay away from loot zones, and wait for a non-loot event. We find this state of open world to be something that goes against our goal of developing an open-world endless PvP game, where fights are happening constantly around the game’s world. In order to encourage players to do more PvP, we have decided to re-adjust the loot and non-loot zones around the map. This change should enable more casual players to take fights in a safer environment of the non-loot, while still offering a high-risk high-reward PvP experience in the middle of the map, where looting will still be enabled, and smaller-scale PvP will be encouraged. Changing the arrangement of the loot and non-loot zones will help us to adjust the spread of valuable resources, events, unique animals, and key Nation-controlled Castles in such a way, that playing in the middle of the map will be more rewarding, while the outer ring of the map will provide a safer area. After the update of the middle of the map goes live, there will be a significant change to the loot and non-loot zones in the game. The middle of the map will remain to be a looting zone, while the outer ring of the map will become a permanent non-loot zone. The borders of loot and non-loot zones can be seen here:
Considered new approach to the middle of the map fights
Currently, the mixture of fast travel and horses makes it possible for players to quickly move between locations. While it is a good thing to travel between locations on the frontline, making the fights more dynamic, we have observed that it also makes roaming solo or in a small group almost impossible, as once engaged in a fight, the player can get quickly overrun by a group of mounted players and killed without a chance to fight or escape. We would like the reworked middle of the map to be a place for small groups to fight each other in a skill-based fight rather than the ones that are based on numbers.
We are still considering different options and approaches to that topic, as we would like the middle of the map to be a place where small groups can fight freely without the fear of getting overrun by a big group of mounted players that teleport to the nearest point and get into the battle in no time.
We would like to hear your feedback on that change, so please have your say on the newly added #middle-of-the-map-feedback channel on our Discord(https://discord.gg/gloriavictis).
New PvP tokens
The reworked middle of the map will also come with new PvP tokens connected to the local quest boards. These unique tokens will be earned by doing events and quests in the middle of the map, and the Ruined Temple Raid. There will be 7 new quest boards added, divided into 4 zones with over 20 new and existing events that will award the new PvP tokens, as well as over 25 new quest board quests! PvP tokens will be exchangeable for interesting new and existing items that are useful in PvP battles.
Sneak peek into the clustered Guild Castles
With all these changes just around the corner, we would also like to provide our Community, with a sneak peek at what can be expected at the very start of 2023. Next year will be very important for Gloria Victis, as we are just a few months away from launching Gloria Victis 1.0 and one of the remaining steps before the release will be the clustered Guild Castles, which will have their first iteration going live in January 2023.
The clustered guild castles will not only offer a chance to own a Guild Castle for smaller guilds but will also enable these smaller guilds to have a chance of building their own content around building and developing their Guild Castles. The Guild Castles will become a feature that will provide a space for guild gatherings, and give a better reason to roam around the map on the lookout for rare materials for castle building as well as fight to boost the Guild’s level. With the clustered Guild Castles, the importance of technology points will be greater, as guilds will have more technologies to unlock, as well as they will be able to develop more technologies at the same time. This change will make map roaming and participating in the new State of Wars a key to becoming one of the top guilds of a server. The newly added technologies will augment many aspects of the clustered Guild Castles as well as provide buffs and features that will help the guilds to compete at the highest level.
Another important change that the clustered Guild Castles will bring is a new version of State of War. While we think that the current State of War design is good, as it brings many memorable fights, we can see its drawbacks – Guild Castles are becoming more of a national asset making the guilds owning them reliant on the nation. This means that a shift of power between the nations may result in strong guilds losing their Guild Castles to weaker ones, but such that have a bigger support from the nation. Moreover, we have seen a number of toxic behaviors emerging from owning a Guild Castle, which is not a situation we are looking for. While changing the design of the State of War, we will be also looking for ways to keep the mass Nation vs Nation PvP in the open world, by adding new systems to the game.
The new State of War design is aimed more at Guild vs Guild, or Alliance vs Alliance, and everyday content. We want each guild to be able to adjust the castle to their needs, by tweaking the size of the battle they want to be having, and do they want to have the help of their allies or not. Moreover, guilds will be able to decide on the hour of the State of War as well as the frequency of the battles (as now they will be even possible to take place daily!). This way, fairer, and more challenging battles should take place. The new system will also get rid of the toxicity that spying, griefing or an unsuccessful State of War brings, as guilds will only lose points, not castles. The system will bring more rewards and fewer penalties, while still being a competitive feature giving guilds the ability to compete with each other.
What can be expected in the first iteration?
The first iteration should feature buying a guild island, teleportation to and from the island to the open world, as well as castle building and workstation placement. Once we get this iteration live we will be gathering your feedback to improve the clustered Guild Castles while working on re-enabling State of Wars in a new, reworked version that suits the new guild castle system!
FAQ
How long will it take for State of War to be back? We aren’t ready to announce the exact date yet, but we are aiming to release State of War on the clustered Guild Castles as soon as possible after the first iteration goes live.
Will it be possible to travel to Guild Castles of other guilds? Yes, this is a feature that we are planning on implementing. It will not be a part of the first iteration but will follow shortly after the first iteration is live. We want the clusters to feel like an additional part of the open world and not something separate.
Will it be possible to have PvP outside of the State of War on the clustered Guild Castles? Yes, each guild will have the option to set their Guild Castle as a PvP zone (either non-loot or loot) in order to gain some additional benefits. Traveling to a castle that has its settings set to be a PvP zone will make it possible to fight other players at any time. We want the clustered Guild Castles to feel like a part of the open world, thus we want them to resemble the rest of the map as much as possible.
Who will be able to claim a Guild Castle once they are moved to the cluster solution? Each guild of level 10 or above will be able to claim its own castle by paying a small gold fee. The entire process will be possible through the Guild Window, and each guild will be able to own one castle.
Will there be siege events in the new Nation-controlled Castles in the middle of the map? As for now, we are not planning to implement such events (neither loot nor non-loot event) in the new Nation-controlled Castles. We want the center of the map to remain a looting zone at all times, and a place where there is a chance for some small/medium-scale PvP.
Why are you moving the Guild Castles to clusters? Moving the Guild Castles to a cluster solution is essential for two main reasons: Currently, with just 9 castles per server, the fun of running a guild castle is restricted to a very small amount of players, with freebuilding being a feature that only leaders of the biggest guilds could enjoy. We would like these features to become more available for smaller guilds too. After the official release, we expect to have to add additional servers that may eventually be merged with others. The cluster solution will make it easier to merge servers, as no guilds would need to lose a castle in that process.
When the guild castles become national castles, what resources will be available there? The new Nation-controlled Castles will have the same mines and storehouses like current Guild Castles. This will make them the most important mines on the map, and the value of such a castle will greatly increase for the nations. This change will not only enable all players of the nation to use the mine freely but also create a potential PvP hotspot, as these castles will be key to defend against attackers.
Will the clustered Guild Castles have farms or mines? The clustered Guild Castles will have no mines, however, they will have a farming area, with ground quality ranging from 50% to 100% based on the settings the guild that owns the castle chooses from – for example, will the Guild Castle be loot, non-loot, or a safe zone (the higher the risk factor of a Guild Castle, the better the ground quality).
Will there be better rewards in the middle of the map because it will be a loot zone? Yes, the middle of the map will still be the only place with the most beneficial events (Kargalds, Catacombs, Pride Long Forgotten etc.) as well as the castles located in the middle of the map will have the best workshops, mines, lumbermills, and farms. On top of that, the castles in the middle of the map will provide the most points for Deadly Harvest and offer a speed buff for the workstations, making them a valuable asset for a Nation that controls them.
What will happen to the buff for the Nation that holds 2 or more Guild Castles? The buff will be now transferred to the new Nation Castles in the middle of the map. Owning these castles will grant buffs the same way as the Guild Castles do right now. The main difference is that the Nation-controlled Castles will be possible to capture at all times, making them a constant PvP hotspot.
Will there be changes to Pilgrim's Rock? No, Pilgrim’s Rock is a special castle, and its rules will not be changed. It will remain unchanged as it remains to be an important spot for the middle of the map PvP/PvE gameplay.
In today's changelog, we are happy to talk about the major update for the Gloria Victis MMORPG dedicated to combat system changes and balance.
Inspired by our player's feedback, and our own data we carefully noted and discussed various aspects of Gloria Victis' combat and found some matters worth addressing. As we are just starting a new Glory Season in the game, this is a perfect moment to introduce improvements and changes and fix some shortcomings of the combat balance. Watch the newest Dev Log for details!
On the other hand, we are happy to introduce the next part of our Game Interface overhaul by presenting a reworked Supporter Shop in the game on Black Week!
As you may also know, it is time again to vote for your favorite games in Steam Awards! We are counting on your nomination and vote in the Labor of Love category!
And now, let's check some details of the applied changes:
The screenshot’s authors will be awarded. Please contact Jesper#6555 on our official Discord to get your ambers!
Changelog v.0.9.9.7.0 Beta
Combat Changes
We set ourselves several goals we want to achieve: Balancing the two-handed weapons against each other, rebalancing heavy armor as it is rarely found in the meta-level gameplay as a full set, and improving shield gameplay, focusing on its most visible flaws.
Heavy Armor
Let’s start with one of the most significant changes in the latest update - the changes in heavy armor. For some time, we could observe that tank builds, using only heavy armor, were steadily falling out of the current meta. This was mostly caused due to high stamina drain and its fragility against blunt damage. These factors made it more beneficial to create builds that mix heavy and medium armor parts for smaller stamina drain and higher resistance to blunt damage, with the only tradeoff being sacrificing a small amount of slashing and piercing reductions.
In order to bring back full heavy builds to life, we decided to increase blunt damage reductions for heavy armor, while slightly decreasing the piercing reductions. This change should enable heavy armor users to become more resistant to all types of damage, making it the armor of choice for tank builds. We have unified the stamina mod for the chest and legs to avoid any situation where wearing a heavy chestplate will be unprofitable.
What’s more, the upkeep cost of a full heavy armor has been significantly higher than the cost for any other type of armor. Not only fighting on the frontline means that more repairs are needed, but also, up to this point the only viable heavy armor in terms of its protection to stamina drain and damage decrease ratio was the heavy armor of the highest tier. In order to change that, we have decided to increase the reductions of heavy armor of all tiers, making even lower-tier heavy items more efficient on the battlefield.
Two-handed axes
With the introduction of the recent changes, 2-handed axes have become a weapon of choice for many, as they provide many benefits like overhead damage and reach, with very few cons. We decided to reduce the slashing damage from side attacks slightly in order to balance out axes in comparison to other weapon types.
Two-handed swords
We have observed that the craftable 2 handed swords fall short of their special equivalents like the crusher, or ancient longsword. We have introduced changes in attack release speed and attribute damage modifiers for the craftable 2-handed swords in order to make them a viable option in combat and to create a hybrid subclass based on strength and dexterity – fully focused on swords.
Changes in archery
We have also taken a closer look at archery in our game. In connection with the heavy armor changes, we have decided to decrease the damage dealt by headshots, while increasing the damage dealt with hits to the body. This change will result in the max damage that can be done with a bow hit being reduced while narrowing the gap between headshots and body shots will result in dealing more consistent amounts of damage.
Passive shield block with a shield equipped in hand
Another important thing that changed with the recent update is the ability to block incoming arrows with a shield in hand! From now on, not only a shield equipped on the back but also a shield in hand will block the incoming arrows. This change makes it possible for shield players to block arrows with a shield even while charging an attack, simply by aligning the shield with the direction which the arrows are shot from. We cannot wait to see how this change will be used by our players in battle!
Changes to the shield bash mechanics
Have you ever tried to start an attack, but ended up performing a shield bash instead? We have heard the feedback of our community and decided to change the way to perform a shield bash. From now on, a shield bash will be only performed when a player holds a block with a shield and then presses the button bound to kicking (default Q). Holding these two buttons will result in the character holding a charged shield bash while unpressing the kick button will launch the shield bash. This change should improve the experience of fighting with a 1 handed weapon and a shield, and prevent unwanted shield bashes from happening.
It is worth noting that we have made those changes not only because of the above, but also to unify one-handed and two-handed weapons controllers, which have had various differences before which allowed us to unify attacks and feints speed. Timers for shield bash and “back to armed” state return have been tweaked, so it will be easier to land a fully loaded attack onto the enemy after a successful shield bash. Overhead and right-to-left attacks have been sped up.
It is quite important that you can now kick the enemy during your attack release, but you cannot do that when you are in the shield block state. All those changes will make kicks more interesting and give you the ability to master your timings and outplay your enemy.
Of course, chambering with shields and staggering after hitting a shield block is still present in the game.
Reworked Supporter Shop
We have finished work on the first version of the reworked Supporter Shop interface. Our game is being produced based only on the game sales and Supporter Shop revenue, so we are very thankful for your support and we hope you will like the improvements prepared for you. We introduced this change on Tuesday, to have an extra day to fix any possible issues, so thank you for helping us test it. In the game, you have received a notification, that due to the full rework of the skins system backend, we have to unequip all activated skins on your characters. You need to open the Supporter Shop hotkey [K] to apply your skins again! Here is the list of the improvements we made:
– Fully reworked and improved interface. – Removed the skin's window where you needed to activate the skin. From now on, you can check, buy and apply skins using only the Supporter Shop window. – Added categories to make searching skins and items much more convenient. – Grouped base items in categories to allow much easier switching between owned skins. – Grouped usable items like cards to make searching for what we are interested in easier. – Cosmetic skin sets banners are changed to vertical ones, showing the equipped armor. – The Preview section of the Supporter Shop became a sort of cart. You can dress up your character in the preview and after that move to the list of picked items to buy all of them with one click. – Skins that are not purchasable are present in the Supporter Shop to allow their activation. – After buying something as an item, the “Bought” tab is automatically opened. – From now on, each week you can collect a free gift in the Supporter Shop – it resets every Saturday.
We would like to warmly invite you to support our project and to check the offer of our ingame Shop and its new layout, and at the same time, we are happy to announce a series of discounts which will change every day throughout the whole next week! Happy shopping!
Quality of Life:
– Replaced Valley of Death tournament affix vote button to the new one. – Optimization of the map legend markers. It should greatly reduce any lag possibilities when opening the map window. – Added a possibility to remove owned cosmetic skins from the Supporter Shop cart.
Fixes:
– Fixed an issue in sheep shearing minigames where button interaction could not work properly. – Fixed the issue with the improper tag in the "No rest for the Wicked" quest where the player was asked to kill boars instead of wolves. – Multiple small fixes and improvements for the new Supporter Shop, addressing its performance and fixing visual issues. – Fixed the issue causing decorations, interactable objects, and throwables cosmetic skins to not work properly.