Difference between revisions of "Patch Notes"

Revision as of 02:24, 5 May 2017

Below you'll find information on each major playtest release, including what's been added/changed. As we move forward in the testing schedule we will eventually switch to a more traditional versioning system.

May 5, 2017

Welcome to the second OrbusVR Closed Alpha test! If it's your first time playing, please be sure to consult the Getting Started guide. There is not yet a full in-game tutorial, so it's important to review the guide before starting, otherwise you will have a hard time playing the game.

Major New Additions

• Runemage levels have been reset to Level 1 for all characters. In addition, all inventories have been reset.
• The Runemage class has been greatly re-worked and expanded, including dozens of new spells, the Runemage Super ability, the Resurrection ritual, additional Portal destinations, and more. See the Runemage Play Guide for all the latest information.
• The "activate spot" on the Player Compass has been widened, so it should now be much easier to make sure that you are talking to your party.
• You can no longer use nav jump points (such as going across bridges or down stairs) from a long distance. Instead you need to be fairly close to trigger them.
• The Resurrection menu will now follow you around if your location changes significantly (such as if you had your headset on the floor when you logged in and you were already dead).
• The XP system has been completely re-worked. Now XP is granted based on your contribution to killing a creature, and player groups receive the largest XP bonuses. Read more about this on the blog post.
• The 300% global XP bonus has been re-instated.
• The Player Menu will now always open in the same place regardless of where your finger is when you swipe downward. In addition, the Menu button on the controller will no longer open the Menu when you are in combat. Finally, swiping downward while the Player Menu is already open will have no effect, which should prevent you from accidentally closing the menu when preforming actions such as deleting items.
• Healers now generate aggro on monsters when they heal a player that the monster was already attacking (or planning to attack). Aggro for healers has been tuned such that they can heal twice as much as the damage output of a DPS class before pulling aggro.
• The attack potency of the Warrior has been increased by approximately 35%.
• The server-side collision system has been reworked to be more performant, which should aid in better detection of fast attacks such as Warriors quickly swinging their swords.
• The Warrior's shield will now regenerate its hitpoints when the Warrior is out of combat.
• The Dungeon Rock Golem Boss's base damage has been re-adjusted to be in-line with the correct tuning. It was previously around 10x too low. In addition, the Boss now has an animation to show when it is in a weakened state, and the length of the weakened state has been increased to 10 seconds. The boss's HP has been increased accordingly.
• The groups of enemies in the Dungeon have been re-tuned to account for the new ability of the Runemage to polymorph an enemy.
• Glowing crystals have been added to some parts of the Dungeon so that only the beginning area is truly covered in darkness.
• All boss monsters (currently, the Rock Golem Boss and Crab Boss in the Dungeon) will now always drop at least one piece of loot upon dying. They have also been granted their own loot table with items that can only be gained by killing the bosses.
• Runemages can no longer begin rituals while in combat. In addition, taking any damage while in the process of completing a ritual will cause the ritual to end without success.
• The long-range grab indicator will now be hidden when you are holding an object.
• Fixed a bug which was causing enemies to float in the air when coming down a slope toward you. They should now obey the laws of gravity.
• The Harvesting system has been added to the game, which allows you to equip a Harvester tool (currently a pickaxe) to gather flowers and herbs out in the world. See the Harvesting page for more information.
• Added a "quick slot" system to the game which allows you to equip up to two tools to your toolbelt. The tools are only visible when you have at least one free hand available.
• Inventory items can now stack on top of each other. The herbs and flowers which you can harvest will stack to 100.
• The damage numbers in the game have now been separated, so that your own numbers appear in red, and other's damage numbers appear in yellow. In addition, your critical hits will now have a special visual effect where the number goes up instead of down and grows larger than normal.
• Healing spells in the game can now critically hit for double the healing, just like damage spells.
• The World Boss, Elongata, has been re-tuned. The explosion effect which occurs has been changed to be better reflect the attack, the minion's levels have been increased, and it should now not be possible to attack the boss without receiving damage from a far away place.

Major Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where the Warrior's sword throwing ability did not work correctly if you were using the Front Facing setup option to turn around.
• Fixed a glitch where when you were fighting the World Boss, Elongata, there was a constant loud noise coming from the boss.
• If you somehow manage to die while inside of your Player Housing, you should now resurrect at the front door.
• Fixed a bug which was causing the left hand to appear all yellow instead of only outlined in yellow when it was highlighted.
• Monsters will no longer turn around in-between charging and performing their red-area attacks.
• The Musketeer's Frost orb now correctly slows monsters.
• Runemage portals should now be more reliable in getting you to your destination.

April 21, 2017

• The PvP Arena is now available for play.
• There are some new hidden easter eggs for you to find in the game world...
• Added additional logging to catch errors in zone transitions.
• Fixed performance of lights in the dungeon.
• The Golem Boss and Crab Boss in the dungeon now have larger radii that they can travel to before resetting to make fighting them make more sense. (server-side patch)

April 20, 2017

Welcome to the first test of the OrbusVR Closed Alpha! We're thrilled to have you back with us in-game. From here on out things are going to move very quickly. If it's your first time here, please be sure to review the Getting Started guide. There is not yet a full in-game tutorial so it's important to review the guide before starting otherwise you will have a hard time playing the game.

If you're coming back after participating in a previous Stress Test, here's what's changed:

Major New Additions

• Re-tuned combat to be more appropriately challenging, especially for solo adventurers at lower levels. Generally speaking, a same-level monster should be a challenge for a solo player but beatable, and solo players should have a hard time taking on 2 on 1 or more. An elite should require 3+ adventurers to defeat. Note that some classes (such as the Ranger and Musketeer) are inherently easier to solo with than others -- in particular the Runemage is very challenging to solo unless you can consistently cast your spells accurately nearly every time.
• Re-did underlying network architecture to be more reliable for spotty Internet connections.
• Added grass to the ground
• Added the Player Compass to the game, including Party Voice chat.
• New icons for the inventory screen that actually match what they're for.
• New launcher which will auto-update your game files to make sure you're always on the newest version of the game.
• Introduced day-night cycle which is now synced to the server, so all players will see the same sky.
• Added first version of Player Housing to the game. You can enter your player house next to where you start the game in Highsteppe. There's nothing to do in your house currently other than enter it and exit it, though.
• The Warrior class has been re-worked. Now your shield can actively block all attacks from enemies and has a separate health pool which will cause to temporarily "break." Blocking attacks also generates aggro.
• Added support for long-range grabbing of items such as loot bags. If you see a white circle in-game, hold your hand toward the item and the circle will widen, then you can use the Grip button to grab the item.
• Added basic support for currency in the game. There's not really a way to get any yet, though.
• Added new Character Creation screen, which allows you to customize the skin tone, eyes, and mouth that are used for your Character in-game.
• Introduced the official Naming Policy for the game.
• In-game health bars will now always face your position, rather than face toward the direction the creature is looking.
• There is now an in-game line which will appear when another player is teleporting to show you where they are going.
• Added the new Guild City to the game world.
• You can now reach M'aat's Keep in the game world by going through the cave near the bridge to the Guild City. The entrance to the cave dungeon has moved to where the Pigmen spawn.
• There is now an indicator in-game which appears next to the player's name to show who is talking. Eventually the player faces will animate to show this as well.
• If you are using the Front-Facing setup, you can now use the thumbstick/touchpad to turn left/right in 45-degree increments without holding down the Grip button.
• If you wipe on the Rock Golem boss in the dungeon, the key mechanic will now reset so that you can attempt it again without needing to reset the whole dungeon.
• The Ranger's damage output is now dependent upon how far back you 'draw' your arrow before firing it. This is to combat the "Rambo firing" approach from previous tests.
• You can now no longer change your Combat Discipline (class) while you are in combat.
• The "Back to Start" menu option has been renamed to "To Graveyard", as it now just kills you and lets you respawn at the closest graveyard.
• The "Bug Help" menu has been moved under the Settings menu and is now called "Bug Fixers".
• The positioning of the "hand" models has been changed so that they better reflect the natural positions of your hand when holding the controller. Instead of starting "palm downward" then are now "palm sideways."
• You can now scroll through the list of nearby players if there are more than 10. Just use the scrollbar to the right of the list by selecting it with your pointer and moving downward.
• Pressing down on the thumbstick or sliding down on the trackpad while Trackpad Locomotion is enabled will now cause you to slide backwards.
• When you are in a party, you can now gain a Chain XP Bonus. The bonus begins at 1.1x and can go as high as 1.5x. You have a limited time between each subsequent monster kill to keep the XP chain going. Your current bonus is shown under your XP Bar when you look up. Only monsters that are one level below you or higher will trigger the bonus.

Major Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue preventing you from picking up loot sometimes.
• Fixed LOD issues on housing models in Highsteppe.
• If a monster is unable to path to a player, it will now immediately reset instead of getting stuck running in-place and becoming unattackable.
• Fixed missing death animations for some creatures such as the Sheep and Wolf.
• Runemage rune detection has been loosened so it should now be slightly easier to cast spells successfully.
• It should now be much less likely that you will get stuck in combat after killing monsters that use status effects (e.g. spiders).
• Fixed a bug where the Warrior's sword couldn't hit things even when it was drawn after teleporting around (server-side patch).
• Fixed a bug where some monsters would get stuck and not take further damage. (server-side patch)
• Fixed a bug where if you used the Runemage's portal spell to transfer between zones you would get stuck in-between zones and nothing would sync.
• Fixed a bug causing performance issues client-side.
• Fixed a bug causing over-logging of errors due to the voice chat in the game.
• Fixed a bug causing the Wenderwood trees not to show up properly.

Known Issues

• Although there are multiple graveyards per zone, you only currently resurrect at the same graveyard each time you die, rather than the closest one.
• Monsters that are on hilltops will "float" toward you instead of walking along the ground to reach you. This doesn't affect your ability to attack them but it is weird and disconcerting.