Mar 21, 2024

Lil' Guardsman - Tirameowsu

Greetings to all members of the Sprawl’s City Council, Mages Guild, Guard Corp, and Goblin Liberation Army!

Thanks to our community’s amazing feedback, we have released an update that addresses a number of issues. We are so grateful to everyone who took time to share their experience and who helped us improve our game. This won’t be the last update, so please keep sharing with us as you play!

Bugs squashed:

Fixed navigation issue in Garby’s Alley that resulted in Lil getting stuck in the bottom right corner of the location
Fixed bug that caused Dwarf Tinkerer to ignore player after interacting with him in level 3 if you restarted using the level select function, making it impossible to fix the jukebox.
Fixed a bug where using a specific series of inputs between good and low-budget crystals you could soft-lock the game in the toolkit
Fixed typo in Bosco Hoolihan’s turn in level 8 that revealed to the world what our placeholder character sprite looks like (note: it looks like the MSN messenger icon!)
Fixed Spanish, German and Chinese localization for bullwhip upgrade description in Garby's Shoppe.
Fixed issue in Level 11 Meribella turn. You can no longer destroy her shell, and then discover it again.

Continuity Nips & Tucks:

Issue with Grumpkin T. Dankworth in level 8 & 10 If you reunite Grumpkin with Whelp and his end of day result indicates they run off together and he dies, you will not see him at the docks in level 10!
Fixed continuity error involving Julian and Gary Goblin in levels 4 and 6. If you jail them, you won’t see them at jail anymore during level 6 but instead at the Goblin Liberation Army Headquarters.
Fixed continuity error involving Gary Goblin in level 12. Fixed bug where if you saved Gary from turning to the dark side, he obviously won’t be in the final confrontation with Tyronius (and die).
Fixed continuity error with the Troll suspect in level 9. If you jail the troll, he obviously can’t be in the tavern with his human date!

- The Hilltop Games Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1924360/Lil_Guardsman/

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Mar 21, 2024

Laud the Looney and Earn Bonus Rewards During the Jester’s Festival Event!

The Elder Scrolls® Online - ZOS_Kevin

Abandon rationality and unleash your inner harlequin during this year’s Jester’s Festival in-game event!

Merry Mayhem Returns!

The Jester’s Festival in-game event makes its grand return on March 28 at 10AM EDT and will continue until April 4 at 10AM EDT. During this preposterous party, you can enjoy increases to XP gains while collecting ridiculous rewards after completing event-specific quests.

To receive admission to the festivities, head over to the event pavilions located within Ebonheart, Vulkhel Guard, or Daggerfall, and speak with one of the three jesters posing as an alliance leader. If you get turned upside-down trying to locate these event sites, open the in-game Crown Store and pick up the Jester's Festival Invitation Quest.

Enjoy frivolous fun!

Upon completing the introductory quest, you’ll earn the tasty Pie of Misrule memento reward, which can be located within the Mementos section of your Collections. However, unlike previous years, you will no longer need to obtain or use the Pie of Misrule to take advantage of the 100% XP buff. This bonus will now be shared passively to all adventurers participating in Tamriel’s wackiest holiday. That said, it doesn’t make the pie any less scrumptious!

Preposterous Prizes!

Throughout the Jester’s Festival, you can pick up various event-specific daily quests. For each one you complete, you’ll receive a Jester's Festival Box! Furthermore, the first Jester’s Festival daily quest you complete will reward you with one Stupendous Jester's Festival Box.

Each of these boxes can include the following items:

Festive Dazzlers
Cherry Blossom Confetti
Revelry Pies
Festive furnishings
Jester’s Festival provisioning recipes
Treasures that can be sold to vendors for Gold
Previous years’ style pages
One of the following:

A random unbound page for either the Broom or Bucket styles.
Regal Regalia or Second Seed style pages
A fragment for previous Jester’s collectibles:

Cadwell's Surprise Box memento
Sovereign Sow pet
Playful Prankster's Surprise Box memento

In addition to the aforementioned rewards, the Stupendous Jester’s Festival Box has a chance to contain the following goodies:

NEW: Jester's Seeker Suit outfit style page
Jester's Scintillator Runebox
Cherry Blossom Branch Runebox
Cadwell's Kitchen weapon style page
High value Treasures
Festive noise maker parts
Joke Popper fragments

Jester's Seeker Suit style

Impresario & Event Tickets!

During the festivities, you can collect three Event Tickets for the first Jester’s Festival quest completed each day. Participating in the festivities every day of the event can earn you up to 24 tickets total.

Note that the total number of Event Tickets you can carry at one time is capped at 12. Be sure to regularly spend those tickets and not waste any of this precious event currency!

Speaking of which, let’s take a peek at what goods the Impresario has in stock:

All three Molag Bal Illusion Imp pet fragments

Anchor Chain Fragment
Dark Anchor Pinion
Effigy of the Dominator

All three fragments for the Planemeld's Master body and face markings

Crematory Ash
Incandescent Brimstone
Seething Censer

Bound fragments for the Jester's Minstrel Daedroth costume

The third and final fragment of the Planemeld's Master body and face markings, the Seething Censer, arrives during this period. This is a great time to grab it, along with any other fragments you need to finish the set!

Planemeld's Master body and face markings

In addition to the above items, Nenulaure, the Indrik vendor, will offer the following items for Event Tickets:

Nascent Indrik Feathers
Dawnwood Indrik Berries
Spectral Indrik Berries
Springtide Indrik Pet
Haunting Indrik Pet

Lastly, the Impresario’s Assistant will sell the following items, also purchasable with Event Tickets:

Unstable Morpholith pet fragments
Doomchar Plateau house fragments

Chaos Reigns!

Spread mirth and mayhem during the Jester’s Festival! Complete event quests and gain fantastical rewards as compensation for spreading laughter to each corner of Tamriel. Let us know what rowdy misadventures you’re plotting during this event via X (Formerly Twitter), Instagram, or Facebook.

The Jester’s Festival in-game event begins Thursday, March 28 at 10AM EDT, and runs until Thursday, April 4 at 10AM EDT.

Mar 21, 2024

Forza Community Hubs Update #3 – Let’s Talk Cars, Tracks, and Features

Forza Horizon 4 - T10Yaachts

Over the past few months, for both Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon 5, we’ve been fully focused on developing new content and fixes based on your reports. Today we wanted to reflect on some of the additions to both games over the past half-year and celebrate those inspired directly by your posts on the Suggestions Hub and Troubleshooting Hub.

In our previous blog last July, we had 239,000 votes cast. Today more than 470,000 votes have been counted across both Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon topics. That number breaks down into 450,500 votes on the Suggestions Hub and 19,500 votes on the Troubleshooting Hub. Thank you for participating in these topics – your feedback is invaluable and helps make Forza games better for everyone.

Car Voting

Cars are the most popular forum in the Suggestions Hub! One primary reason for this is because there are so many cars to vote on – after all, we all have our favorite cars that we would love to see in Forza someday. Out of the 14,800 topics on the Suggestions Hub today, over 9,500 of those available to vote on are car model topics.

Here’s a look at some of the most notable vehicles we’ve introduced in Forza Horizon 5 recently:

2012 Nissan Tsuru was the most upvoted topic in Community Hubs history with 4,086 votes before it was added to Forza Horizon 5 in October 2023 with the Dia de Muertos series update.
2023 Aston Martin Valkyrie was the 16th most requested with 826 votes when it was gifted to all players as part of the Secret Santa event in December 2023.
2022 Gordon Murray T.50 was a top 50 requested car with 451 votes when it was gifted to all players as part of the Secret Santa event last December.
2017 Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio reached 761 votes when it was added in August 2023 with the Italian Automotive series update.

There are 15 Forza Horizon Car Voting topics with over 1000 votes each. These include some of the newest and fastest cars on the market today, as well as 1990s JDM cars, hot hatches, and cars seen in previous Forza games.

Always keep in mind that highly voted cars on the Suggestions Hub aren’t guaranteed to be added in future updates. Community input is just one aspect we consider when introducing new cars or features to Forza games. There are many steps required to introduce a new or returning car to Forza, from licensing agreements and sourcing of a pristine model to 3D scanning and modelling work – all necessary steps before integrating a vehicle into the game.

Forza Horizon 5 has reached a total of 823 cars over 129 manufacturers and counting. Manufacturers like Rivian, Automobili Pininfarina, Elemental, Czinger, Lucid Air, and Gordon Murray Automotive all debuted in Forza from September through December. Forza Horizon 5 has the most makes of any Forza game in history with the largest roster of production and racing spec models.

Forza Motorsport also recently added the Aston Martin Valkyrie (and AMR Pro) and Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio, however Motorsport players are showing a strong interest in racing-spec models. Forza Motorsport responded to community requests for a focus on racing with 50 new racing models released across Showroom, Race Day Car Pack and Car Pass, including the following cars:

Vintage to modern prototypes like the 1970 Porsche #3 917 LH, 1983 Porsche #11 John Fitzpatrick Racing 956, 1999 Nissan #23 NISMO Clarion R391, and 2023 Cadillac #01 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R.
Touring cars like the 2020 Hyundai #98 Bryan Herta Autosport Veloster N.
Factory race cars like the 2019 McLaren Senna GTR.
Trans-Am series cars like the 2018 Chevrolet #23 Ruman Racing TA Corvette.
GT3 cars like the 2019 McLaren #03 720S GT3 and 2018 Mercedes-AMG GT3.
And finally, the 2019 Ferrari #62 Risi Competizione 488 GTE was added as a top 30 requested car with 143 votes in January 2024 with Update 4.

Forza Motorsport also debuted manufacturers BRM, Ginetta, and Oreca, as well as new-to-Motorsport Gordon Murray Automotive.

Track Voting

On the topic of Forza Motorsport, let’s talk tracks! We've added four tracks since the launch of the game, starting with Yas Marina in November 2023.

We knew the Nürburgring-Nordschleife was a top community request and took the time to make it look great. Initially announced for Spring 2024, it was released in February 2024 with Update 5.

Daytona International Speedway was the 7th most requested track when it was released in January 2024, with 572 votes. Following the addition of Daytona, players requested a revision to the pitlane exit, quickly making that the number one topic in the Environment category with 241 votes; we included that change in Update 6 this month. Meanwhile, Hockenheimring was ranked 11th with 448 votes when it was added to the game in December 2023.

The current top requested track is the iconic Interlagos Circuit (Jose Carlos Pace) in Brazil, with over 1,750 votes.

As a reminder, community voting is one element considered when a track location receives the green light for Forza Motorsport, and like cars, there are several steps required before it can be considered final and introduced to the game. Track development milestones include licensing approval, laser scanning and photogrammetry, environment art and 3D asset creation, as well as the integration of track limits, AI driving lines and other gameplay features.

Horizon Features

With all the cars introduced to Forza Horizon 5 over the past few years, players naturally wanted more storage space for their vehicles and UGC creations.

Italian Automotive increased tuning and livery save slots to 1,000 each. With 451 votes, this one was a top 5 feature request for Forza Horizon 5. We also increased garage space to 2,000 cars, an important quality-of-life update which had 204 votes on the Suggestions Hub.

The European Automotive Series update in February 2024 added the full list of classes to Rally Adventure Rivals. This was the 7th most requested Forza Horizon 5 feature, with 98 votes.

Top Forza Horizon 5 feature requests are typically focused on car customization; in the American Automotive series released in November 2023, we added 3 Forza Bodykits to the 1987 Pontiac Firebird Trans AM GTA, 2016 Shelby GT350R and 2017 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. This was accompanied by 27 new rim styles from aftermarket wheels brand HRE.

We see you asking for additional building types in Horizon Mexico, and Partnerships with popular convenience store brands. With the addition of EventLab 2.0 features in the Horizon Creatives series, players now have a petrol station prop and the ability to use prefabs from other players to create unlimited immersive landscape features and events.

Motorsport Features

One of the top 20 feature requests we saw at the launch of Forza Motorsport was FOV (field-of-view) positioning, with 146 votes. We continue to see voting for seat position.

Following the launch of the game, we saw multiple topics suggesting changes to Car Progression, with one of them reaching the #2 most requested spot. We believe the changes to Car Progression in Update 6 satisfy most of these requests.

Currently the most requested Forza Motorsport feature is Proximity Radar at 448 votes in place of the arrows currently available in the HUD, for awareness of other cars.

We're continuing to work on improving Forza Race Regulations and Drivatar AI behavior to help address issues around contact with other cars, and more of the things you care about.

Troubleshooting Hub

Each content update released for both Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon 5 introduce new fixes to improve overall game stability alongside experience improvements that make your gameplay better.

At launch, Forza Motorsport players experienced an issue with the game freezing after applying car upgrades. This topic was the top voted topic in Troubleshooting Hub history with 657 votes before Update 1.1 fixed the issue.

Update 5 introduced the ability to save Short Race replays. Work to improve replay save length is ongoing. Currently when racing against a full grid, short races should save most replays, while medium races will not save full replays but will save up to 11 minutes. This update also introduced PC-specific optimizations to improve framerate consistency and added the option to Skip Practice in the Career mode pre-race menu with save points for already completed practice sessions.

We review issues posted by players in the Troubleshooting Hub regularly and deploy fixes based on these reports with each update. Check out the Forza Motorsport Update 6 release notes which includes fixes and improvements for the Livery Editor and AI.

Most recently we deployed Hotfix 6.1 to address HDR flickering for PC and Xbox console players under certain framerate conditions and decrease the sensitivity for Livery Editor decal movements.

We’ve crossed the finish line of this Forza Community Hubs Feedback Update! We will continue to track all your Suggestions Hub ideas and Troubleshooting Hub reports, so please keep them coming. Be sure to upvote any issues that you are also encountering in our games, and cast your votes on the cars, tracks and features you would like to see us include in the future.

GO TO SUGGESTIONS HUB – GAME IDEAS AND CAR VOTING

GO TO TROUBLESHOOTING HUB – BUG REPORTS AND GAME ISSUES