Pagan is Online – Patch 1.0
Greetings Pagans,
Today is the day! The culmination of a three year long journey - the release of Pagan Online!
Our pure passion and your feedback drove us to improvise, adapt, overcome. It helped us bridge the gap between the demo and this new hardcore beast of a game that is Pagan Online.
It’s been a hell of an experience for every single one of us. Every texture, every animation, every piece of user interface, every line of code has a developer behind it that is grateful to have the opportunity to share it with you all. Those of you who joined us in closed tests and then in Early Access, you have made us better developers.
We will continue to listen and improve with every iteration. We have a lot of plans for the future of Pagan Online and a lot of cool ideas that we’re excited to share with you in upcoming updates.
With great pride we present to you: the release version of Pagan Online!
- The Pagan Online Team
HEROES
We recognize that players want more variety in their starting hero choice so we did something about that – now ALL heroes can be picked in the tutorial as your starting hero!
Heroes remain one of the pillars of Pagan Online and our goal is to always think of new and unique heroes to bring to the Pantheon. We like to experiment with playstyles, combat mechanics and visual appearances. We want to keep it fresh and cool and for this patch we bring you just that, two new heroes. Meet Elden and Hector!
- Elden - The Frozen Soul
“When he first awoke, there was only ice and snow. He walked for days, lost in the swirling winds and frigid tundra before he realized it was not hurting him - it was empowering him. His essence has become frozen, his body and soul ice incarnate. The Igman tribesmen have called him Elden, but that name is all he has. He still struggles and searches to remember his past, and his present is a constant flurry of slaughtering demons - the creatures seem to loathe him with a passion… but the feeling is mutual. His future should be that of answers, of murder and revelation - for though the Frozen Soul does not truly know his purpose, deep within he feels he is destined... for something more.”
Elden is a quick and nimble dual wielding frost construct with high attack speed that slows and potentially freezes enemies with each slice or javelin-throw.
- Hector - The Rebel Fighter
"The ruling elite of Valence lord over their technological society with an iron fist, but they have but one fear - that the dejected Abandoned Ones - a rebel group created from the lowest of their society, attempts a coup. To them, the Abandoned Ones are but unorganized rabble, living on scraps and remains - like rats. What they do not know is that the Abandoned Ones have a champion. He has no mercy for demon nor despot. He is no leader, but he gets things done. He is Hector.”
Hector is an agile scrapper who specializes in everything fire. His weapon of choice is the blunderbuss and he uses dirty tricks to set the battleground ablaze.
- All Heroes can now be picked in the tutorial as a starting hero.
Ability Tree
Passives have been added to the ability tree. They are always active, similar to primary attack, but they can also be leveled up and have single branches of bonuses and one special modifier. We are also adding some quality of life improvements like Loadouts.
We plan to expand the current system with more abilities.
- All heroes now have their core passive abilities as a part of the ability tree
- Loadout support added – you can now save build loadouts
- Potency Point counter improved
- Ability hover info improved
- UI - new VFX added for different levels of activated abilities
- Ability Tree can now be previewed from both Starting Hero Selection and Hero Forge
- Abilities that are fixed and can’t be leveled with potency points now have different UI.
STORY
As things begin, they also end. We are very happy to add the conclusion of our epic journey, that started long ago with a hero’s death on the battlefield. We also did some polishing and made fixes to the acts that are already in the game.
New Content
- Act VII narrative and quests implemented
- Act VIII narrative and quests implemented
- Two new bosses await you!
Fixes and Polish
- Act I - Ognya cutscene polished
- Act II - some VFX polish
- Act III - camera fixes and visual polish
- Acts IV and V - level design and VFX polish
- Act VI - cutscene at the end of the act finalized.
MULTIPLAYER
Co-op play remains one of the priorities for us, so we did some work with optimization and quality of life.
- Latency and network optimization
- Hero movement abilities improvement for co-op
- Ping system implemented – ping anywhere on the map to give a signal to other players (default bind: “G”)
- Waiting for players screen - players icon visible on the loading screen.
PANTHEON
We made some improvements to the social hub. Quality of life and user experience has never been better, but we will continue to make sure this system is the best it can be.
- Test the Hero - added the option to test a hero before unlocking it
- Hero Selection/Hero Forge - all graphics and info for all abilities are present
- Hero Selection/Hero Forge - removed gameplay video for separate abilities and replaced it with longer gameplay videos which showcase a hero’s play style
- Party Screen - friend status added (login, online/offline, in a battle)
- Vendor improvements - Dukat now has “mark all” button for easier selling.
Battlegate Improvements
- Enemy tooltip info improved
- New visuals for nodes in act VII and VIII
- Rewards window enlarged.
ENEMIES
We already had a lot of different enemies in Pagan Online. So just for kicks we decided to add some new ones too! They can be found in Acts VII and VIII. We also did some improvements to a certain undead king.
- New enemies can be found in Acts VII and VIII.
Furun the Soulsmith
- VFX polished
- Animations improved
- Soul Siphon Ability fixed
- Speed increased
- Chance of melee attack increased
- Hammer Throw now works differently.
King Vukashin
The good king has been with us for a long time. He was the first boss we ever created and his AI behavior was a bit outdated. We decided to show him some last-minute love and make him more interesting. He has a new fight phase and some new nasty surprises.
CRAFTING & INVENTORY
Our goal is always to have crafting not overshadow the chase for drops, and we are happy with the mechanics as they are now. In future iterations of crafting, we plan to re-introduce crafting levels in a more meaningful way.
- When placing a recipe inside the Drevna Kutia, you can use CTRL to preview different levels of that recipe so you can see what to expect when using different levels of base items with it
- Inventory panels (Stats, Stash, Gear, Inventory) can now be opened/closed with F1 - F4 keys
- Item sorting options added as a button in the lower right corner of Inventory
- Four Materials tabs are now combined into single tab
- Rebalanced some legendary weapon Ability Level Boost stats.
AUDIO & MUSIC
Sound and music are vital components in the Pagan Online experience which we will always continue to add to and improve on.
- The volume of intro splash movies has been reduced
- Voiceovers implemented for all NPCS in Acts VI, VII and VIII
- Environment sound effects for all battlegrounds greatly improved
- Sound effects for many NPCs polished and expanded
- New music tracks added to all battlegrounds
- Mixing of audio elements (voiceovers, sounds and music) improved
- Some UI sounds have been reworked
- Audio assets loading optimized.
CHAT
In-game chat is one of those pesky features that requires a lot of technical problems to be solved, but we were able to expand on this feature for release.
- Item Inspect: items can now be linked in chat by dragging an item from the inventory to the chat text box. A maximum of 5 items can be linked in a single message
- Color coding for names and items added
- You can invite players to your party directly from chat by clicking their names
- Help options in chat (/help)
- Chat can be opened by pressing “Enter”
- Chat, when minimized, will go behind the UI of screens such as Inventory and Battlegate.
OPTIONS
Adding more options is one of those things that always happens along the way as features develop. For release, we focus on controller support, rebinding, loot filters and more.
- Gamepad rebinding implemented
- Controller sensitivity sliders added
- Added dark background on options screen
- Close confirmation windows implemented
- By popular demand, there is a first iteration of the loot filter
- Hide/Show UI added as a keybinding in the Keyboard Controls tab.
GENERAL & QUALITY OF LIFE
- Victory Screen received some additional work
- The map, inventory, and options are closed during cutscenes
- Main Menu can now be opened at the end of the Battle, per popular request
- Client Versioning message added.
