Sep 15, 2022

Major update: Visuals & World Map Overhaul

Gloria Victis: Medieval MMORPG - GV Daimon Frey

Greetings, warriors!

Our MMORPG just received a major map and graphical overhaul! We have addressed the overall picture of the game, greatly improving the skybox and light systems, and allowing us to make existing and new models and environments look much better.

The new graphics is a huge step for us, as it may put Gloria Victis comparable to standalone titles like Mount & Blade: Bannerlord or Witcher III. We hope you will be as amazed as we are, looking at the new visuals of our game. And it is not our final word on that matter!

Along with the visuals update, we are introducing a reshaped game world, which is the completion of the first milestone we announced earlier, and the penultimate significant task before we will be ready to leave the Early Access stage of development and finally introduce you to version 1.0 of our MMORPG!

As always, we also have for you many fixes and quality of life improvements, as well as good news about other projects we are publishing: “Nadir, the Grimdark Deckbuilder” just collected 40k wishlists, so as a promised reward, we are introducing a unique skeleton-painted mount breed, temporarily available to be found and tamed in the game. Find more about that at the end of today's changelog.

As we would like to show you as much as possible of the new graphics of the game, we are not using community screenshots in today's update. Next week, we will announce a screenshot contest where you will be able to show your best captures of the new game visuals, with Amber rewards and an opportunity to win a placement in our gallery on the main game page on Steam.

And now, let’s dive into the breathtaking world of Gloria Victis!

Check our new Devlog video that sums up the last months of our work, and read the details below!

Important message from the Devs, before we will move to the changes list:

We have reworked almost everything around the edges of the world map, without touching the middle of it, and the next updates for Gloria Victis MMORPG will be focused on that area and redefined the approach to State of War and guild content, creating more space and giving more meaning for smaller guilds. We will give you more detailed info about upcoming changes soon, so for now, enjoy today's patch and stay tuned for more.

It is worth mentioning that It is not our final word when it comes to visual upgrades. Our artists will continue their work to make Gloria even more beautiful. We are reworking a lot of environment models in the background, and some you will find in game today, and some more in the following weeks.

It took us over six months to complete those huge tasks described below, and we did our best to test and polish them as well as possible. Yet in the face of such significant and complex changes, we are aware that some details could slip through our Quality Assurance net, so we are counting on your feedback, reports, and patience. We plan to devote next week to continue our work on polishing everything and address your reports as soon as possible if any issues will occur. At the bottom of this changelog, you will find a list of known issues, so please, read it carefully and allow us some time to take care of them.

Thank you for your continuous support and understanding. We are delighted to have you around and work with and for you on our dream project.

We would also like to thank your external testers for their support and time invested in testing today's update. Your help was, as always, invaluable.

- Gloria Victis Team

Changelog v.0.9.9.6 Beta

Graphics update

When you log in to the game you’ll notice a huge step forward when it comes to the visuals. Gloria Victis received brand new, dynamic sky and cloud systems, with greater resolution and quality. We have improved the Sun path in the sky too! Thanks to all that changes, sunrises, sunsets, and clouds movement are now even more eye-catching than before, and the sky is something that can now easily draw your eyes and attention, just asking to be admired.

As you can see, the lighting systems in the game changed for the better, and thanks to that, we were able to make the nights in the game look much better, darker, and more immersive.
The nights are dark and full of terrors but fear not – we have reworked the eye adaptation system, and given a purpose to belt lanterns and torches that will light the area around you.

And you will also see more around your character during the days! We have greatly increased the view range and added special visual effects related to atmospheric mist and horizon. It is a pleasure to look in the distance and be able to see so many details of our marvelous world.

Other than that, we are adding reflection systems to deep water, like rivers and sea, and improving the visual effects of lightning flashes during storms. Our graphic artists have also renewed the most used environment models, for example, collectible fallen trees, mushrooms, and wooden structures like palisades and stairs – increasing their quality.

We are very happy that we decided to make those improvements and thanks to them, breathe a new life into Gloria Victis MMORPG. It was a pleasure to travel through the island of Stoneholm with you, and we believe you will be amused to retake your journeys just to absorb a refreshed world by eye when adventuring. The lands of Stoneholm await you!

Reshaped game world

When you open the world map in the game, you will find out that the map of Stoneholm – an island that is the theater for our three-nation conquest – has been restructured!

We have moved the Capital cities to the sides of the map and created starter areas for each nation on separate islands. This change is very important for various types of our players, both – PvP and PvE ones. Players will have more space on the map and will be able to manage their risks and rewards better.

We have combined quests so they do not have breaks for teleports through the capital or are separated with long mileages, until quite late in the game. Also, the existing quests are now extended by local quest boards available in different areas, expanding the new players' possibilities to level up while exploring the game. It will help players to reach level 60 in a relatively safer space and better prepare them for the challenges to come. It also creates a neat transition zone, where questing new players will be able to meet more experienced players participating in events and other activities, which should help in mentoring and recruitment to guilds.

In addition, placing quests in such an area – around raids, quests, and endgame activities will make a lot of traffic in the area. This region will create PvE content in which newcomers will be in the middle from the beginning and will be able to get to know and participate in it. While we made space for the new players to learn the game, when they'll be ready to move on to the open PVP areas, they'll find new locations to be conquered: one fort per faction, each surrounded by a couple of smaller locations.

Move to Quest & Fast Travel to Quest location features

Thanks to reworking the questlines and separating them from the open world and PVP features, we are able to introduce a “Move to quest” feature, which will greatly increase players retention and allow you to save time if you would need to approach your early game in separate sessions, or would like to continue your questline after participating in other activities on the map.

Move to quest button is located on the quest side panel. After pressing it, a progressbar appears, and at its end, you are teleported to the quest location. Progressbar lasts for 30 seconds when in the lootzone/non-loot zone and 5 seconds when we are in the safezone. The feature is available when the player is progressing the main questline chain and is far from his quest.

Additionally, we are introducing a possibility to travel to quest locations after the main questline chain is completed. This feature will help experienced players to teleport to locations where various raids are placed in quest zones. Teleports are available from the map (on high zoom) and logistician window, progressbar lasts for 30 seconds when in the lootzone/non-loot zone and 5 seconds, and teleport costs 3 silver.

In general, both teleport methods will only allow you to move to the location of questzones, so they should not have a negative impact on the balance of PvP.

Questlines overhaul

On the occasion of moving the whole questlines to their new destination, we have reworked a significant part of them, especially the oldest, grindy ones, which strongly weaned the quality from the starting quests. Starting quests during the transfer were polished and received improved flow.

In regard to the above, we are completely removing all players' progress in quests - we want all of you to be able to experience the new layout of them and we are looking forward to your feedback. Additionally, we are taking this opportunity to perform the first stress test of the quest areas, as gathering data and feedback about them will be very important before the release of the game and the influx of new players.

In addition, we have balanced the experience coming from completing quests. We found out that leveling up too fast in quests makes too much information noise that it was a bad experience, not allowing the player to properly progress with his gameplay. We were doing some outsourced playtests and everyone indicated the same thing. This is why we made it a bit slower to not spam players with levels at their first session. We have also prolonged the solo and group content by introducing questboards, and smoothly showing dynamic events to players. As a result, the possibilities to gain experience are better and clearer, but there is no such noise at the very start.

New feature – Questboards

We are adding a new feature to the game – we added them initially only in the areas where the former Capitals stood. There are several quests to choose from, we can accept, execute them, and return for the reward. You can do these tasks endlessly, and more boards and quests will be introduced in the future. For the tokens you will receive for completing the tasks you will be able to get a brand new item: Tier V Spiked Mace – a unique one-handed weapon that attacks deliver piercing damage! Ask the NPC standing by the questboard to check the list of the available rewards!

Additionally, if you complete a few quests from the questboards, you may trigger some new events in the area, with boosted rewards!

Spawner control system

You must know that feeling where a quest boss has been snatched by another player right before your eyes and you need to wait for it to respawn. Say no more.

Quest spawners in our game have a very fast respawn time, to ensure that no player will wait for mobs to spawn while questing. But this can create another issue – a player questing alone can be overwhelmed by the enemies' spawn rate and being attacked by them over and over. So, for one player it was too fast, for groups of players too slow. It was not giving the feeling of the reward when you were supposed to clear the camp from bandits, since they were already spawned back when you turn to take one more look behind.

To address all those inconveniences, we are introducing a respawn controller system. Most enemies in the game are receiving quite a long respawn time, so it will allow us to not spawn them right away and save some performance. If a player is doing a quest and needs a given NPC to be spawned to progress his task – they will spawn. This will also work for groups of players, spawning quest enemies as long as they are needed.

Ferryman's

Starting islands are separated from the mainland with a natural water barrier. On the edges of each capital city island near the crossing, you will find a Ferryman NPC and a few boats, which will transfer you to the other shore. It is still possible to swim across the water, but that may be risky, due to stamina consumption and the distance. Of course, the fast travel system allows you to teleport to the destined locations linked with your place of residence as usual.

Borders

We want tour players to be able to differentiate between safe and risk zones across the map. We want the risky zones to be better visible and separated from the safer zones. It is reasonable to prevent situations where an unaware player leaves the non-loot zone and is putting himself at risk of losing his equipment. We are placing a temporary mountain range separating non-loot from the loot zone on the mainland. We plan to make it visually more wall-alike and add new passes between zones in the future.

New locations

In the areas where former Capital cities for each nation stood, we are placing three new locations. Ravenskull for Midland, Ironwolf for Ismir, and Blacklion for Sangmar Empire are brand new nation-controlled flags on the map. Each of those locations has three flags: Hold, Clay Pit, and Pass allowing the transfer between non-loot and loot zones.

Quality of Life

Shorter Crafting and improved Minigames

We have reduced the crafting time for tier 3 or lower weapons and armor from 10 to 4 seconds, on tier 4 from 15 to 6 seconds, on tier 4.5 from 20 to 8 seconds, and on tier 5 from 25 to 10 seconds.

Additionally, we have improved the power of the proper minigame interaction, and now, using minigames will usually result in finishing the interaction in most cases.

Crafting materials - from 20% of the progress bar to 50%
Planting Crops - from 25% of the progress bar to 50%
Watering crops (from 25% to 50%)
Fertilizing crops (from 30% to 50%)
Gathering crops (from 25% to 100%)
Gathering wild herbs and mushrooms (from 25% to 50%)
Gathering beehives (from 25% to 50%)
Gathering clay (from 25% to 50%)
Using a water/fertilizer bucket (from 30% to 50%)

Changes in crafting bonus buff after conquering locations

Extended buff for caping enemy homeland non-loot fort to enemy homeland castles. One location gives 5 stacks of the buff, clamped to 20 stacks. On the max clamp, it gives 20% exp, 20% craft chances, and 20% looting chance. It used to be 14% for conquering two locations of enemy nations, now you can conquer up to 6 locations (3 per enemy nation) to receive a stack of that buff.

– AI Shout attacks will now equate aggro for all nearby players. This means after shouting the enemy will attack the closest enemy unless someone will hit him in the meantime. Also, "chain shouts" should not happen anymore as mobs should not shout twice in a row.
– Moved misleading tooltips from carpentry and brewery User Interface to workstations using burning fuel.
– From now on nation change will wipe all quest progress.
– Polishes for animal husbandry system: fixed tags, interaction logic, and added the recipe for fodder to the game. From now on, there are three different “care” interaction types – feeding (requiring fodder), cleaning (requiring a bucket of water), and repelling insects.
– Tiles with event invitations can be closed by pressing RMB on them.
– Added the “release mount [X]’ button on the mount details panel.
– The mount status panel has been updated to be properly sized in 4K resolution.
– Added a new weapon: Spiked Mace
– For a week, added a chance to spawn a unique, skeleton-painted horse on black horse spawners.
– Improved tooltips for Brewery and Carpentry Table
– Tweaked collectible wood colliders and changed the minigame glowing spot disappear time from 3 to 30 seconds.
– Reduced the experience needed to unlock the main green character development node for weapons and armor from 2500 to 500 points.
– "Local" icons on the map are visible on lesser zoom.

Fixes

– Fixed an edge case issue where killing the guard in a tournament could block the ability to use the bow in an ongoing game session.
– Fixed event invitation feature - after closing the invitation now you should be able to join the event via the Upcoming Events panel if the event is still available.
– Fixed an issue where some NPC enemies could use their weapon as a different type of weapon, for example, hir players with a bow in melee.
– Fixed an error allowing to collect Character Development experience in a party without assists.
– Fixed the issue where it was possible to open the Building Details Window from a quite far range.

Known issues regarding today's update:

– Translations are incomplete in various languages, as a lot of them have changed, and some still need to be polished and updated in that regard.
– Titles and descriptions of the quests in the quest log may be outdated.
– Workstation placement was not changed, so some may be standing in the old capital city area.
– Monuments are temporarily not working properly.

We are sorry for those inconveniences and those will be addressed as soon as possible.

New Glory Season

The New Glory season will start on Thursday, the 22nd of September. Also, we’d like to remind you that the last day of the season – Wednesday, the 21st of September – 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 climb up!

Find a special mount in the game!

As you may know, we are providing publisher support for a group of young, talented developers working on a unique card roguelike game called “Nadir”. Clearly, it is a totally different game than Gloria Victis or Siege Survival, and it doesn't share the Gloria Victis IP, yet those guys are strongly connected to our team and are working next to us in our office.

The Nadir Team supports us on a daily basis, and part of them has been outsourcing things for Gloria Victis for years already. Also, we are learning so much from publishing Nadir, and this experience is helping us prepare much better for leaving Early Access with Gloria Victis.

We asked you a few weeks ago to help Nadir get more wishlists on Steam. Boosting the visibility of Nadir on the Steam platform is directly helping our MMO to get more attention too, so it is a win-win for everyone.

We have reached 40 000 wishlists for Nadir so as promised, we are adding to our MMO a unique “skeleton” horse breed inspired by Nadir’s setting and lore. Horse spawners in Gloria Victis are receiving a slight chance to spawn a horse painted as a skeleton. You have one week to find a special mount for yourself, and the next chance to tame one you will get when we reach 50k of wishlists for Nadir.

How fun would it be to raid Catacombs on a such hellish steed, or spread fear and doubt in the enemy ranks with its scary look, huh?! Click the link below, add the game to your wishlist and share it with others!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1535100?utm_source=discord&utm_campaign=mmo