Recent content by DatBoiCV93

Userre said:

A quick note concerning the Vlandian noble line; new shoulder items were JUST added for the vlandians, and it's rather unsightly that the noble line don't have proper shoulder armor. It might be pertinent to swap that out ASAP if you could please, it's been a withstanding dream of mine that my favorite culture gets some decent shoulder armor

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Duh_TaleWorlds said:

Warriors of Calradia,

It is time to share another update on some of our current singleplayer related works with you.

Stability and performance will continue to be a top priority for us. Beyond that, you will find a number of our other efforts listed below. Please note that this includes both broad and specific, as well as, shorter and longer term items.

Near Hearth & Home

• Cutscenes
  • Cutscenes or “Scene Notifications” were first teased in our future plans’ post. Since then we have created a number of these animations for different story and world events to add more weight to them. They presented a multi-disciplinary challenge (to Design, UI, Art & Animation, Engine, Campaign Gameplay, Audio and QA), but we are quite happy with how they have turned out so far.

• Scenes
  • Over the course of development our focus shifted away from smaller locations and more towards ensuring greater variety and quality in core gameplay areas. As such, we have been working hard on creating the remaining town scenes, which will offer new siege challenges, as well as additional battle terrains to cover further regions of interest. Naturally, we also continue to improve our existing scenes.
  • As this concerns a particularly large body of work, it won’t all drop at once but there will be continuous updates.

• Sieges
  • Sieges represent one of our most complex gameplay experiences and we continue to polish the many pieces that make up this puzzle. To give a recent example, we overhauled the way that both AI attackers and defenders use troop transfers (between formations) in sieges. This was done to reduce transfers at inconvenient times, in quick succession or with poor overall oversight, which could lead to large numbers of soldiers being transferred from opposite sites unnecessarily.

• Battles
  • While combat is certainly one of the game’s strong points, there are always things to be improved upon - and one of them is the way in which reinforcements enter the battlefield. Specifically, we have been working on means to prevent cases of “spawn camping” and troops suddenly appearing in the middle of an active fight.

• Armor Effectiveness
  • This has been a topic of passionate discussion and we are happy to let you know that we are close to releasing an adjustment aimed at making armor more effective. This will not adopt the warband system, but it will go towards stronger protection.

• Main Hero Battle Death
  • Given all the extra armor, it may be time to raise the stakes.

Spoiler

Yes, it's optional.

• Combat Mechanic Improvements
  • We have gone over the combat mechanics for knock down, dismounting and push back and removed the random factor to allow for a more reliable and predictable experience for players. Among other things, we also introduced a new resistance variable that is derived from character skills. This allows us to make some troops and heroes less vulnerable to these mechanics and will allow players to develop their characters to become less vulnerable as well.

• Army AI Improvements
  • In recent months, we spent quite a bit of time reviewing, adjusting and testing the army AI. In essence, we set out to address the following items:
    • Less Patrolling, More Sieging
    • Less Starving, More Sieging
    • Less Recruiting, More Sieging
    • Better Cohesion Management, More Sieging
    • Other trickery to the same end
  • We also don’t like peacetime armies.

• “Party Templates”
  • The idea of parties that reflect their leader’s preferences has gone through some iterations since we originally shared it. Nonetheless, we still intend to pursue the approach that weighs recruitment and upgrading according to this preference. The initial, releasable implementation is close to completion and we hope to soon evaluate it further based on player feedback.

• Disorganized State
  • We have gone over the conditions and effects of the disorganized state, which temporarily weakens parties and armies after a recent challenge, to make it more meaningful and consistent.

• Item variety
  • What's a warrior without their weapon? In an effort to increase the general variety of equipment, we have been working on a number of new crafting pieces as well as making some of the existing pieces available across additional weapon types.

• Crafting Unlock Overhaul
  • With this broader pool of crafting pieces, we also had another look at how crafting works. We don’t really like that all crafting pieces are unlocked from the same source. Instead, we want to provide more of a sense of specialization. Thus, future smiths will, for example, need to craft axes to unlock axe pieces.

• Simulation Health
  • Economy
    • While this has always been a point of importance to us, we set out to review and address two issues in particular in recent months. For one, some items were too profitable in general while others didn’t have enough regional price distinction. This made trade much less engaging than we would like it to be. Similarly, due to the same market dynamics, workshops were suffering as well. If you bought the right one, there was little reason to engage with it again and more often than not “the right one” came down to the same small set of options. The changes we made to supply and demand have had promising results so far.
  • Recruit balance
    • Calradians have seemingly always been happy to join a good fight. However, recruits are not just plentiful but oftentimes overly powerful. This has been raised in the community before and we also recognize it as an issue and have made according adjustments to the way notables develop their troops.
  • AI Prisoner Management
    • It is not just recruits that are plentiful but also prisoners. So much so that calradian dungeons would overflow as time passed. We have been looking into a solution for this and will likely share it with you soon.
  • Child generation
    • Despite our previous adjustments to the adult population, there was still a problem with an initial generational gap. To address this, we will likely generate additional children with different ages at the start of the game for any clans that fall under a given member limit. As an extra, this should also make such clans more viable.

• Character Respeccing
  • With the multitude of perks that the game offers, it can be difficult to find the character setup that is just right for you. Fortunately, it will soon no longer be required to wait for your heir to take over or to start a new game to try out another character build. Instead, you will be able to change the perks of your characters and clan members as you play.

• Skill experience gains
  • Character development is an important aspect of the game that follows the principle of learning by doing. While this generally works, we feel that some skills don’t yet offer an adequate progression. Fortunately, the aforementioned economy changes should help with trade. Additionally, we have also been working on more tailored adjustments for all combat skills, leadership, roguery and engineering. We look forward to your feedback on this.

• Immersion & Quality of Life
  • There are many adjustments that relate to this category in some way. Below you will find a few of the ones we thought interesting.
  • Additional AI Offers
    • We were quite happy with the reception and impact of AI ransom and peace offers to the player. These new notifications make the world feel more alive and we want to build upon them. For this purpose, we are exploring marriage, mercenary and vassalage offers.
  • Encyclopedia Information
    • The all knowing encyclopedia is not just a challenge to immersion, but also inconsistent with our scouting mechanic. To address this, we are working on similar limitations to the encyclopedia that will create a form of “Fog of War ” for those that are outside the reach of the player or their agents.
  • Party Management Options
    • Clan members can, at times, be a hassle to track down and manage. To address this, we have been exploring new options to send, recall and exchange them.
  • Civilian Scenes
    • Our towns and castles have a range of NPC characters that can partake in numerous activities to give the location life. However, castles, in particular, were still a bit underpopulated. This should be improved in future versions of the game as we increased the population and their use of animation points in a number of settlements.
  • World Map & Associated Visuals
    • Much like scenes, the world map can make or break immersion. We therefore decided to allocate some time towards resolving issues with party teleporting, floating and rotating among a number of other tweaks. Of course, we also always continue to polish the actual map.

• Audio
  • Improved UI sounds
    • We added new sounds all around the UI and revised some existing ones for coherence. To provide an example, you will now be able to hear audio feedback when a persuasion attempt goes awry or pleasant.
  • Horse sound revisions
    • As a constant request, we have been working on improving the audibility of approaching horses and fixed some bugs in the occlusion system that prevented some sounds from being played. This is an ongoing work, and more improvements will arrive as time passes.
    • We improved horse physics sounds to make it more impactful when they die.
  • Ambient upgrades
    • Quad ambiences were another topic in our future plans post. They are a great means to make scenes sound more believable and our work on them is ongoing. A few of the ambients have been updated to Quads, and we fixed some crucial spatialization bugs while we were at it.

• Localization
  • The localization effort also continues. Even though we have now released translations for Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish (Latin American) and Russian that does not mean that we are at the end of their journey. We greatly appreciate all the feedback that we have received on this front and are working with our partners to process it. We are also happy to say that German is close to being shared as well.

A ways ahead

As the attentive reader will surely have noticed, there are some topics that we haven’t covered yet. In our future plans, we spoke about Banner Bearers, Claimant Quests, Sally Outs and Vocalization. These are all areas that we are still pursuing, but they will require some time yet. Once we have made more progress on them and other topics, we will be happy to share further details.


Please keep in mind that the items discussed here are neither all-encompassing nor set in stone, and we will adjust them if the need arises.

Spoiler: Prior Topics

Statement regarding Plans for Singleplayer and Engine III

Warriors of Calradia, It is time to share another update on some of our current singleplayer and engine related priorities with you. Just like before, stability and performance will continue to be a top priority for us. Beyond that, you will find some of our other goals listed below. Please...

forums.taleworlds.com

Statement regarding Plans for Singleplayer and Engine II

Warriors of Calradia, Today we will be sharing an update for some of our current singleplayer and engine related priorities with you. As a general note, stability and performance will continue to be a top priority for us. Beyond that, you will find some of our other goals listed below. Please...

forums.taleworlds.com

Statement regarding Plans for Singleplayer and Engine

Warriors of Calradia, Today we will be sharing some of our current singleplayer and engine related priorities with you. Since the release of the game, we have been hard at work to improve stability and performance for our players. This will continue to be a top priority for us. Naturally, we...

forums.taleworlds.com

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