The Spectacles Update v0.45 changelog
Ave Aspirants! Here's a quick new update!
We put a lot of effort into upgrading Draft, since everyone seemed to really like the idea. We'll do more with it in future but you can now enjoy quite a list of improvements and expansions already.
In this update we are introducing a brand new culture, the Dormorii. This culture of warriors, based in Dormorum, known for being a fishing industry hub. Between land disputes and control over the river Terant, the Dormorii are a long-time enemy of the Empire of Hania and routinely raids their border around the city Terantia.
For now these have gotten some basic equipment, enough to create a new faction for Draft! We will expand the Dormorii later. Can you spot the inspirations of real life cultures we mixed together? Drop a comment!
The second major goal in this update was combat balancing, especially the new dominant strategy of just holding sprint and backtracking, to avoid almost all possible damage.
The new dynamic combat is working out great, but obviously too strong: anything overshadowing other playstyles is not great - it makes even dashing pointless for example. So we did a list of changes to both AI and player to bring some lethality back into the game.
We also did quite a bit of general balancing after all the great feedback on The Spectacles Update, and of course, as usual, many bugfixes.
Draft
- Draft now has reinforcement based spawning
- New Draft Faction: the Dormorii
- New Draft unit: Captain
- Main Draft units split into 2h and 1h/Shield
- Visual overhaul of Draft field battle map (the city background, grass and foliage overhaul, lighting and scene improvements)
- New Draft variation: Sunset
- New Draft variation: Rain
- New Draft fortification/ballista variation
- The battle area in draft is wider, reinforcements spawn closer
- Draft now has a better intro sequence with a camera fly-over
- New waves on Draft are indicated with a text prompt
- Audio improvements on Draft
- Draft no longer rewards fame for combat performance
- Draft equipment per faction has been balanced more, some adjustments
- Drastically reduced memory footprint of Draft map
- Made the map border indicators a bit less... ugly
Ballistae
- General improvements to ballista efficacy (likely still to improve later)
- The ballistae now also auto rotate down and upwards
- The range of the ballistae on Draft is increased
- The range indicator decals for the ballistae are removed on Draft
Balancing / Other
Combat balance - Player
- Your character now immediately and continuously rotates to the camera aim when attacking, improving aim (esp on Spear, but everything)
- Fixed bug where when targeting the forward attack aim was way off to the left (oops)
- Reduced up and down aiming min and max (esp on Classic)
- Reduced the minimum speed debuff going backwards (so moving backwards you are now faster, both sprint and walk)
- Increased the range of the "backwards" debuff, so now when moving sideways you are slowed down quicker
- Slightly increased stamina cost for sprinting
- Stamina Regen minimum (at 0 skill) is increased slightly (meaning more Stam regen the start of a run)
- Attack stamina cost is now scaled more with attack speed - attacks cost less than before when at low stamina
- Slowed down skill experience gains to compensate for longer fights and to make training gear more useful
Combat balance - AI
- AI will now sprint more (using the new mechanic as player, also a bit more dynamic)
- AI will now sometimes continue their movement towards their target during an attack reducing attacks that got nowhere near you (harder to just backtrack and be safe)
- AI will now aim predict further on left moving targets to compensate for their weapon being in their right hand
- AI will back off less often when in attack range
- AI will now have a cooldown for picking up shields so they don't run off immediately and there are more openings for the player
- Reduced friendly fire damage
- Prophet fight now has 2 additional minions
- Owakhan Twins now wield slightly better weapons but have slightly lower skill (to give a better reward for a difficult fight)
- Added new item: the Dormorii Daka (A falx like 1h sword)
- Added new item: Dormorii shield
- Added new item: Dormorii Kalas Helm
- Various small tweaks to existing equipment (Myrodon Mace, Bong mace is now a Dormorii mace, ...)
- Destroyed weapons are now removed during the fight, optimising the game
- Early- and mid-game maps have a chance to re-appear on bracket levels 20 and more
- Removed the 50% cut on the bet rewards for the Slave backstory
Bugfixes
- Fixed an issue where on 2h weapons, the physics state did not reset properly (causing undesirable very floppy attacks sometimes)
- Fixed issue where shield could disappear after a Uniformed matches
- Fixed a bug where Wildcard was not properly increasing in level
- Fixed a bug where the AI sometimes walked to their target instead of running
- (most likely) Fixed bug where your armor could still take damage during Uniformed (Draft) and Insurance matches
- Removed some of the NPC movement/rotation jitter
- Polearm bash no longer drains a lot of stamina
- Multihits no longer cost much more stamina as regular hits
- Fixed issue with the ballistae where the loaded weapon would not allign correctly
- Fixed issue where the ballistae would continue to shoot after the fight
- Fixed issue where player could not navigate to certain scolo upgrades with gamepad
- Fixed issue where enemies in the Great Pit could not get passed certain points in the map
- Fixed issue where event Unforeseen Damage damaged weapon when coming back from a battle with battle uniformed trait
- Visual fixes on the Great Pit
- Fixed issue where return button could be pressed multiple times after battle
- Fixed issue where the bet win with x% amount of favour would not pay out
- Fixed issue where the bet 'surviving allies' was not registering on tournaments
- Fixed issue with battle trait impatient crowd where it would use a different time than communicated on the battle panel
- Fixed issue where audience favour was locked after round 1 tournament
- Fixed bug where the player feet would sometimes continuously rotate in place when targeting
As usual, probably missed stuff, so go find out in-game! :)
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We who are about to die salute you,
Jordy
Bonus! We Who Are About To Die is set in a new universe I created years back for a roleplaying campaign. The original version was closer to the middle ages, but for WWAATD I started exploring that same world in its antiquity.
Here's a first look (ever) at the full(?) world map. The red marked area is the main landmass of the Empire of Hania, and the arrow points to the city of Terantia - city of wine and games, where the entire game takes place. Draft battles -- for now -- happen just outside Terantia.
