Oct 5, 2018

Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark - 6 Eyes Studio

We just pushed another big update to the game!
On this one, we've been focusing mainly on balance changes and there's a lot of them!

The full and lengthy notes are at the end of the update, as usual, but here are the brief highlights:

Significantly changed the Fellblade class.
Changed some weapons and abilities for Gadgeteer, Reaver and Templar.
Many changes to the Scoundrel abilities.
Lots abilities and passives got updated.
Lots of changes to the level caps for most story battles and patrols. The idea is to have a small amount of maps "tuned for very low levels characters" and most other maps tuned for higher levels characters, which will give more viable options for players wanting to run random maps. (We are also working on adding a lot of new patrols to maps, but that's not ready yet).
Enemies now have access to a stash of items, much like the player does. This is a pretty big change to their possible power, so we'll need to make sure things are tuned properly.
Lots of AI improvements were made and the AI should be even smarter now, especially around decisions involving buffs/debuffs
Adding a lot of sounds and visual effects.

Progress Report

In terms of progress this week, other than getting this update ready, we've been working on new maps and spells. We've also started work on the Difficulty Settings option. I think it should be ready next week probably.

I know the difficulty settings were further down on our Roadmap, but we've been noticing a lot of feedback about players wanting the game to be easier, or harder, as well as some people struggling with the injury system, so we decided to start on those settings a little earlier.

We'll have more information next week, but the basic idea is that the player can select between many different options for injuries, level scaling, enemy power levels, and a few more things. You'll be able to select between presets labeled easy, normal, hard or make your own custom setup by tuning those values as you want.

We think it should be pretty awesome :)

On the art side, here's one of the new maps we've been working on:

And the final in-game version of that big dragon spell we showcased before:

Change Log

Version 0.3.4
Including notes from hotfixes for clarity.

New Content and features:

Adding a lot of missing sound effects. The first temple scene specifically has now a lot more sounds going on.
Updating all songs with final remastered versions. We also updated the volume of all sounds to better match the music. Some volumes might still need tuning from this.
Adding new spell effects: Pulsar Generator (for real this time!), Blood Trophy, Spearvault, Barbed Blades, Mercurial Dance, Rally Howl, Diamond Form, Rally and updated many others.
Adding guest characters to many patrols. If they survive the fight, a small AP bonus will be awarded.

Balance:

Doing more adjustments to map level ranges: story minimum level was raised a bit in general. Patrols got changed so there is more "high level zones" in general. Starter maps (The Crossroads, Timber Roads, Alpine, Gyaum Tor) have their patrol levels kept low so they can be used to level up very low level teams. Other maps in general have higher level ranges.
Exchanging Vangal and Ercinee passives (Hallowed Body <-> Fortitude).
Increasing Life Font HP restored from 8 to 10 per step.
Rebalancing the stats and resistances of most monsters and associated bzil classes. Changes are too numerous to list, but in general: cleaning up resistances and lowering some stats that were too high.
Changing the Mirage buff to proc only on actions that deal damage (so it will not protect from pure debuff abilities anymore).
Knight lost Doublehand passive, gained Life Font passive.
Gunner lost Life Font passive, gained Concentration (formerly Arcane Sight) passive.
Sorcerer lost Arcane Sight passive, gained Eruptor passive.
Duelist lost Perfect Focus passive, gained Blood Mark passive.
Mercenary lost Heavy Blows passive, gained Health Expert (formerly Life Expert) passive.
Templars gained access to weapon: Scythe.
Reaver changes: the general idea is that Reavers have good offensive growth and a very versatile ability kit, so they shouldn't have access to the highest damage weapons as well (2H weapons), so they are losing those.
- Reaver lost Deep Wounds passive and gained Doublehand passive.
- Reaver lost access to Scythes and Mauls, and gained access to Swords.
Scoundrel changes: the general idea is to make scoundrel abilities more worthwhile to use in general.
- Changing Steal GP to also do some damage (0.75 ratio for now).
- Changing Fleet of Foot to a regular buffs with 3 turns duration, but reduced the bonus to +1 (from +2).
- Changing Exploit Weakness to act as Heavy Blows (+50% to critical damage).
- While Steal Items currently remains unchanged, you'll now actually be stealing items that enemies could use, so it should feel more impactful.
Fellblade changes: the idea is to make the class overall stronger and more interesting. They gained range/height on most abilities and their abilities are now more special, as they count as "regular attacks", which means they use the built-in weapon statuses and elements and benefit from regular-attacks themed passives. They might be a little too strong after this, so we'll monitor.
- The 4 basic Slices abilities now do Mixed Damage.
- They now have a range of 2.
- They now count as regular attacks, which means they can apply weapon effects and work with passives that work on regular attacks.
- Half of their abilities are Skills and the other half are Spells, so the Fell Blade won't be stopped by Mute or Cripple alone.
- Their vertical range has been increased to 4, so they are as long as 2H weapons.
- Health Siphon now does a lot more damage/healing with every debuffs on the target.
- MP costs have been adjusted upwards in general.
- Passive Versatile now also has the former effect of Exploit Weakness (on critical hits, some HP and MP is restored).
Gadgeteer changes: the idea is to make them a little less difficult to unlock and have them be a little more interesting as a main class.
- Changing requirements to unlock to Scoundrel-4/Wizard-4 (from Gambler-3/Wizard-3).
- Lost Daggers, gained Maul.
- Lost Life Expert passive, gained Perfect Focus passive.
- Increasing Mana Expert passive MP from 10 to 15.
- Slightly increasing def and speed growths.
AI will now have access to a list of gadgets based on their level.
AI will now have access to a list of items based on their level. Stealing items from them will deplete their stocks, etc.
Scout will now also grant the Crit Up buff to the caster.
Updating Ercinee AI to make it smarter and less prone to spamming Kamikaze right off the bat. Damage of Kamikaze was also lowered.
Enemies will now have a chance at using Scout if the player places some traps.
Made the enemies less likely to use a debuff that the target already has.
Made various AI improvements. AI should be smarter in general, especially around buffs and debuffs.
Adjusting the vertical range of most physical abilities that were mistakingly tied to the user's weapon vertical range.
When "actions that aren't doing anything" are taken (such as healing a character that's already full), there is no EXP granted anymore.
Cleaning up the Focus buff: won't proc from counter attacks and will proc on damage and heals. Description has been updated.
Bringing the level of special guest characters "in line with the party" so they can't be abused to earn massive EXP.
Adding Bandit Gloves as loot to the Banyan story battle.
Reducing the amount of EXP gained from using Double Cast to compensate for getting 2 actions. The base exp is reduced by 1/2 per action, but the kill bonus is unchanged. This makes double casting "as good as normal" for exp gains for the most part.
Reducing the cost of sorcerer spells to 24 for basic elements. This should allow them to use a "regular" 6MP attack once in a while to be a bit less 'idle'. Holy And Dark are now at 26 and Non-Elemental at 28.
Lowering the MP growth and starting MP of several classes. This should make your max MP a little more relevant at earlier/mid levels (not retroactive).
Adding missing passives to generated enemies list.
Increasing the damage per debuff of Opportunistic Bullet from 0.3 to 0.5 and lowering base damage from 0.9 to 0.8
Adding an option to GameOptions.txt to allow the setting of the maximum amount of units the player can field to be changed globally there, rather than just "per encounter" like before.

UI:

Adjusting rain effect to be a little transparent and adding a small full screen darkening. Looks better :)
Switching the names of Gamblers Wild Cards so colors are grouped for positive vs negative.
Updating many tooltips and descriptions throughout the game to be clearer and have more information.
Updating various tutorial tooltips to have better information.
After using Double Cast, the Double Cast spell list will come up again rather than the regular list.
Adding the Enter key as a default 2nd binding for the "confirm button" (so now by default Space and Enter will act as a confirm button). This only applies if you reset your key bindings/install the game for the first time.
Adding a menu button to the Guild and Shop for faster access.
Removing "Vsync" from the graphics options. It should really always be set to ON because the game's FPS is often too high. You can still manually change it in the Gameconfig file.
Adding options to control the worldmap gamepad-cursor speed and the worldmap scrolling speed. Moving the battle map speed into "graphics" from "gameplay".
Fixing a bug where Root and Bleed would always be part of a help description for abilities, regardless of their use in the ability.
Adding a version number to the GameConfig.txt file to better reset values that need to be changed due to code updates.
Resetting most volume values and vsync value in the config.
Characters with invalid gear will now have that gear unequipped upon loading a save file.
Improving the information shown in the Item list from the Menu screen to show the usual "full information".
Fixing various visual issues that arose from allowing the targeting of blocked tiles.
Showing the cursor "over everything and semi transparent" when using the mouse to select a tile that is visually masked by another tile. Should make it easier to use.
Changing the layout of the AP rewards screen to show a bit more information.
Realized the game doesn't show anywhere that Scythes give a bonus to Crit Damage. Now adding to their description.
Changing equip screen so that a shield can be selected while a 2Hander is equipped. Equipping the shield will remove the 2Hander (much like a 2Hander will remove the shield currently).
In battle, showing a red cursor rather than a green cursor when it is over a blocked tile.
On the worldmap, you now have to "stop directly on" optional battle maps to trigger them. This will allow people to "walk past" the graveyard (and other potential optional maps) without triggering the fight.

Bug Fixes:

Updating the volume of most sound effects to be "correct". This let us update the music volume as well to be closer to that of the SFX, which will result in better quality.
Fixing issue with Opportunist doing more healing on targets with debuffs.
Fixing issue where extra weapons sprites would get created upon leaving the menu from combat for some characters.
Fixing an issue where the "speed up" could get stuck and persist outside of combat.
Adding some code to make sure the game doesn't spin too fast if vsync is off.
Enemy peddlers will no longer use a strange version of "Patented Use" that uses no items and does damage.
Fixing an issue with Turkish locale and consumable items not playing nicely together.
Fixing an instance where a weapon would show above the water for a swimming unit.
Fixing an issue where one could revive characters on blocked areas.
Now correctly hiding visual accessories when wearing a "full hat".
Fixing issue in the visual customization screen where some layers where not always shown in the correct order for the sprite being customized.
Fixing the "there is a treasure here" note in combat showing on the Graveyard chest even after it has been opened.
Removing a stray Mastery star in the top left corner of the class change screen.
Fixing a bug where Life Font and Mana Font would restore values based on the distance traveled, rather than the amount of steps taken. This should make them a little better than before in general.
Adding a missing icon for PS4 controller icons (Up-Down Dpad icon).
Fixing a bug where enemies could go over level 99.
Fixing an issue where dismissing a character would leave an empty open slot in the menu that could cause various problems (such as eating your characters while manually sorting them).
Fixing a small volume issue with sounds played at the start of cutscenes.
Fixing an issue where walking to a tile with a trap and hitting a trap on the way there would trigger both traps instead of only the 1st one.
Fixing an issue with autosaves that might have caused problems for some users.
Fixing a softlock when not having any weapons equipped.
Fixing an issue when entering the menu for some rare users.
Fixing visual glitch when switching characters in abilities learn/set screens with a very large number of units.

Modding:

Adding the ability to spawn guests in patrols (faction:player).
Adding the ability to have enemies give some flat AP bonus if defeated (for enemies) or if kept alive (for guests) (apbonus:<amount>).
Adding a global value to change the maximum amount of units that the player can deploy. This will still be restricted by the size of the zone where allies can be deployed in some maps, but we'll work on updating those as needed.

Hotfixes:

Fixing issue with a Vangal passive being incorrect.
Fixing issue with Bzarro unequipping his 'natural weapon' when loading a save file.
Fixing issue with gear unequipping after loading a game if the gear was only equippable due to a passive.
Fixing issue with some characters being shown in cutscenes when they shouldn't.
Fixing issue where Bzil character gear would be unequipped upon loading the game after the patch.
Fixing issue where AP earned after battles would be 0 after the patch >.<
Reducing the amount of items enemies have access to significantly and fixing an issue where enemies sometimes had access to higher tiers than they should have.
Reducing the odds of an enemy using an item in general.
Adding the Bandit glove to save files that are passed that point in the story, so no one is missing out :)
Cleaning up the way some assets are cached internally, which could improve memory usage in a fairly minor way for some users.
Fixing an issue where players that started a fresh game on the new build would be using the new and not yet finished "Easy Difficulty Mode" rather than Normal.
Adding a new hairstyle (shortlaced). Thanks to Hector Velar for those!
Adding a Elf ears as a hat (making those a hat was the only way for them to show properly with our layering system). Thanks to Hector Velar for those!
Fixing an extremely rare bug where damage would be applied to a different target than the selected one.
Fixing an issue where killing someone with Forceful Strike could sometimes give them 2 injuries rather than 1.
Fixing issues where AI would ignore the odds of "not using an item even if it needs it". This should make make AI use less items overall.
Fixing issue introduced in earlier hotfix where some enemies would remain alive at 0HP after dying.

Oct 5, 2018

South Africans: Announcing Table Realms Support

Vicious Attack Llama Apocalypse - RogueCode

We just pushed a branch of VALA that'll make it possible to play with friends without needing extra controllers (by using your phone!).

Early Access

Table Realms, the tech behind this, has just launched in limited early access open to South Africans. The VALA changes we've made won't effect you unless you switch to the TableRealms beta branch on Steam, detailed at the end of this post.

Heartwarming backstory you'll want to skip

When I was a kid my parents would let me choose what to do each year on my birthday.
Every year I would choose exactly the same thing: Have friends over, rent a Playstation, and eat salt beef with a carrot stuck through it.
We couldn't afford our own console or TV Games, but the single video store in my small town had a Playstation 1 that we could rent for the day.

The video store had a memory card available to rent, however we weren't able to get that. I have both fond and terrifying memories of having to play Crash Bandicoot for the entire day without exiting because then we'd lose our progress. On one of the years we took a break for lunch and left the console on the carpet. When we came back we discovered that it had restarted, presumably because of overheating, and we had lost all progress.

They also had an extra controller on offer. However we always just got 1 controller and played in turns.
One year we were able to get a second, and playing Cool Boarders with each other was about the most amazing thing I'd ever done.

Fast forward to 2018 and a few things have changed, but having multiple controllers lying around for friends to play with is not one of them.
This was actually a big worry when we originally planned VALA, because we obviously wanted as many people to be able to enjoy it as possible.

Enter: Table Realms.

Fancy Controllerey Thing

Put very simply, Table Realms is a fancy Android (and iOS soon) app that will turn your phone into a controller for VALA.

Here is a video about it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2R4C4GC8TM

At the bottom right of the main menu in VALA you'll now see a QR code

If you scan it with the Table Realms app then your phone will connect to the game (over the fast local network). We were even able to match the phone menus to the game. For instance, when you're selecting difficulty and District:

And then once you've dropped in, you get a controller:

If you happen to be at the rAge expo in South Africa this weekend, come try it out at our stand!
We also have sweet llama fridge magnets for anyone (well, until they run out) that buys the game at rAge!

How to get it

To use TableRealms for the moment you'll need to switch to the VALA TableRealms branch in Steam. This is beacause Table Realms itself is in early access, and I'd consider our integration still beta.

Right Click on VALA in your Steam games list, then click Properties:

Then go to the Betas tab, and select tablerealms in the drop down:

After you close the window the game will update to be the version with Table Realms.

Now I'll end off with the worlds cheesiest photo for you to print out and put on pizza, stolen from the Table Realms site.

Oct 5, 2018

Several Important Topics to discuss

WWII Online - Hyoslvr

We have several important topics to cover today: Campaign 157 starts tomorrow and it'll have all access for the first week. On the 14th we have a live campaign event. We'll also provide some more information about two priority tasks we're working on, lag death and bomb performance. Many developments are in the works by CRS as announced in our recent Rat Chat and delivery of the roadmap remains the game plan. Lots of great things are happening here! Here's Soundcloud recording from Xoom if you'd prefer to hear this in audio format.

CAMPAIGN 157

Here's some important information about the upcoming Campaign:

Start date: Saturday, October 6th.
- Server will come offline at 6AM server time (GMT -6)
Spawn delay, set to a 10 second maximum
- This will alert players of when your side is overpop / opposing side is underpopulated
- 10 seconds is negligible and will give the defenders a slightly better chance, without generating frustration
Persona screen delay for overpopulated side doubled from 60 seconds to 120 seconds
- This will further encourage players joining to assist the underpopulated side
Factory Rebuild time: 48 hours
- The time it takes for a factory to repair itself from an attack
Re-Supply Timer: 15 hours
- The time it takes for a unit lost to being returned
Brigade Movement Timers
- Frontline: 60 minutes
- Rearline: 15 minutes
New Allied Commander-in-Chief: Hateract
New Axis Commander-in-Chief: Lafleur
All users this Campaign are requested to participate on the official Discord (voice comms) servers
- Join our official Discord by going to http://www.wwiionline.com/discord

Please support these new CinC's to the best of your ability! We want to encourage all of you to remain playing the game even when things get a little tough with the Campaign. The single most important thing for the game is to continue to login and have a great time. High Command officers and Squad leaders are especially requested to keep logging in / stay strong as you are the core leadership component of the game.

We also want to encourage all of our squads to make a point to meet up more routinely and re-establish your squad nights. It is vital to rally routinely and go into the game as an organized force. Squads working with other squads to create operations is also really integral. Rally up!

ALL ACCESS FOR ALL UNTIL OCTOBER 14TH

Many of our current Steam users have never experienced what it means to be a "premium" subscriber. Therefore we'll be opening up all access for the first week of the Campaign to generate interest in the premium subscription and help boost in-game population.

All current free players will receive full access
- This includes organic and Steam users
- This includes veteran accounts who currently have a Rifleman only
Rank requirements will all be set to "1" during this time
Premium subscription is available for all users, and we hope you love it so much, you subscribe!

So send your friends here to download the game!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/251950/WWII_Online/

STREAMER EVENT (SUN OCT.14) "RYMAN VS MITCH"

We'll be live streaming an event that is streamer versus streamer, and you'll be able to watch on our home page their perspectives.

Ryman will be leading the Axis forces
- Axis Sign up / Planning here
Mitchsw (The Bearded Mitch) will be leading the Allied forces
- Allied Sign up / Planning here

THREE PRIORITY ITEMS CRS IS WORKING ON

We wanted to take a moment here to acknowledge and indicate movement is occurring on three priority items that the community has been mentioning:

Lag death
- We are evaluating our auto-despawn mechanism and refining
  - For lower end connections, if packet loss is too extreme they are despawned
  - If you're experiencing auto-despawns...
    - Check this support article for tips / solutions
    - Several players have upgraded their bandwidth/personal ISP and have reported huge improvements
- We're communicating with our provider to check health of our ISP pipeline
- An internal investigation of network communications is in the planning
- Our internal packet management code is being audited and refined
- Code refactoring for CPU performance
Bomb performance
- Bombs are still being worked on, and are not considered yet complete
- Production team is prioritizing completion
- Historical accuracy remains the focal point
New town links causing issues
- Roye - hot fix prepared and standing by
- Collecting other .bug reports to verify anything else is showing up

The production team also wants to kindly remind everyone that the Bomb performance stuff is really important to get right and is not capable of being rushed without error. Your patience is appreciated what you have in-game at this time is not considered the final iteration.

We all plan to continue to communicate via official updates and in the forums. We know that these are some big changes that are highly requested, making the game and its ballistics / HE / damage models to be as accurate as possible. This means changes will occur and adjustments in your game play are bound to occur. CRS is equipped with extraordinarily accurate information that we're working to incorporate. Our guide post is historical accuracy, it is not favoring one side versus the other - we do not benefit from that, nor have we ever. CRS is unbiased and our goal is mission success for all participants of WWII Online.

As we develop new terrain and introduce it to the game, there should be some anticipation that some unforeseen issues creep up. We're monitoring things closely and Merlin51 is knocking out issues and documenting them / incorporating improved work flows to avoid things going forward. Terrain is pretty finicky, some grace and understanding is requested here. Let's just be glad we're seeing terrain development again and hey, Paris is on the map!

SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE THE CRITICAL FUEL FOR DEVELOPMENT

We wanted to provide a kind reminder that supporting our developments and progress. We know this may seem obvious but we hope to encourage you to either step up to a a subscription level. CRS has big goals to achieve this year and maximum backing is vital for us to see some of these development items through.

Become a subscriber by heading over to our main store page at www.wwiionline.com/steam.

Thanks for your tremendous support, let's drive this Roadmap to completion!

Subscribe On Steam Now!