Progress Report on 2/20/09 Patch
Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 11:05 am
From the AoC website:
"Hey Guys, things are super busy for the team lately, so the preview thursday's have come to an end. Right now we're in our revamp, polish and bugfix stage. At this point pretty much all of the developers and testers can't wait to release and we're all very anxious and excited to see what you guys think of all our work over the past few months.
As a team we know how important some little things can be, and that's why this week i wanted to let you guys in on some of the smaller changes in terms of workload we've made, but these little tweaks can have a huge impact on gameplay and we believe we've got a winning combination here and that you should see the servers a little fuller after CR1
.
A large portion of time has been spent optimizing previous and new maps to make them play smoother and try to lower the demand level of our maps, we've actually managed to produce significant FPS improvements on the vast majority of our maps and we're really excited about this so anyone who was having issues with the game before should defiantly give us another shot and should see some improvements there.
We've also made the standard movement in the game faster, you will get across the map faster and have some more freedom in your evasion tactics and we've worked out a system that should see a lot more variety in terms of how different people move and fight ingame. Another little thing we've done is called "traveling time", what this means is that after first spawning you will be able to sprint for a period of time at no stamina cost- getting you to the battle faster and not forcing you to rest before engaging.
We've tried to eliminate some of the less natural aspects of the game that seemed popular as well, you will note that in various situations you will no longer be able to bunny hop and do these sneaky little jump or crouching things to avoid your opponents swings because that's not what we want our combat to be about so we've made it a whole lot harder to abuse the combat and movement system in that regard which should come as a relief to many players.
A big change we've also made is parrying speed, its now much more a reflex game because your actions respond faster to your commands, so you have to make split second decisions on your toes to stay alive and it makes it very exciting. Additionally we have made all the parry speeds the same time, and the result is incredible, before it was only truly possible to have duels when you met another player of a similar class, now in CR1 you see epic duels taking place everywhere, between all the different classes and its a much more enjoyable experience.
The biggest change that's been clear to us in the combat is that the overheads and stabs now play a crucial role, weapons such as the halberd and spear have devastating stabs and can no longer rely on their slash to do near as much damage, so you have to be smart with these types of weapons. Basically on the field now weapons and classes play different, distinct roles and it has added a lot of flavour and variety to the game that we are very pleased with and hope you will be too!
The next week or two might be pretty silent from our side but we have a few things lined up for the future to keep you guys up to date with the progress so hopefully you've all got a big red circle around the 20th of February on your calendars and are as excited about this release as we are!"
Discuss.
"Hey Guys, things are super busy for the team lately, so the preview thursday's have come to an end. Right now we're in our revamp, polish and bugfix stage. At this point pretty much all of the developers and testers can't wait to release and we're all very anxious and excited to see what you guys think of all our work over the past few months.
As a team we know how important some little things can be, and that's why this week i wanted to let you guys in on some of the smaller changes in terms of workload we've made, but these little tweaks can have a huge impact on gameplay and we believe we've got a winning combination here and that you should see the servers a little fuller after CR1
.A large portion of time has been spent optimizing previous and new maps to make them play smoother and try to lower the demand level of our maps, we've actually managed to produce significant FPS improvements on the vast majority of our maps and we're really excited about this so anyone who was having issues with the game before should defiantly give us another shot and should see some improvements there.
We've also made the standard movement in the game faster, you will get across the map faster and have some more freedom in your evasion tactics and we've worked out a system that should see a lot more variety in terms of how different people move and fight ingame. Another little thing we've done is called "traveling time", what this means is that after first spawning you will be able to sprint for a period of time at no stamina cost- getting you to the battle faster and not forcing you to rest before engaging.
We've tried to eliminate some of the less natural aspects of the game that seemed popular as well, you will note that in various situations you will no longer be able to bunny hop and do these sneaky little jump or crouching things to avoid your opponents swings because that's not what we want our combat to be about so we've made it a whole lot harder to abuse the combat and movement system in that regard which should come as a relief to many players.
A big change we've also made is parrying speed, its now much more a reflex game because your actions respond faster to your commands, so you have to make split second decisions on your toes to stay alive and it makes it very exciting. Additionally we have made all the parry speeds the same time, and the result is incredible, before it was only truly possible to have duels when you met another player of a similar class, now in CR1 you see epic duels taking place everywhere, between all the different classes and its a much more enjoyable experience.
The biggest change that's been clear to us in the combat is that the overheads and stabs now play a crucial role, weapons such as the halberd and spear have devastating stabs and can no longer rely on their slash to do near as much damage, so you have to be smart with these types of weapons. Basically on the field now weapons and classes play different, distinct roles and it has added a lot of flavour and variety to the game that we are very pleased with and hope you will be too!
The next week or two might be pretty silent from our side but we have a few things lined up for the future to keep you guys up to date with the progress so hopefully you've all got a big red circle around the 20th of February on your calendars and are as excited about this release as we are!"
Discuss.
Perhaps I'm reading the update news wrong. Are they nerfing the overhead and stabbing attacks or the slash?