Release 46 is the first release where we are starting to truly focus on our Top 10 Priorities for Launch. While we were able to make considerable progress on our targeted work of scene rebuilding, side quest creation, new creature addition, and more, we also began to spend more time on performance than ever before.

Load Times:  After three weeks of focused work, we were able to reduce load times on even the most complex maps to approximately 30 seconds, even on platter drives. We have many more optimizations planned in the next quarter for our city maps (which are still problematic) to further reduce load times.

Worldbuilding: Once again, a huge amount of work went into worldbuilding and scene polish this release. Seven different scenes along the paths of Truth and Courage were either rebuilt, polished, or adjusted this release, including a massive rework of the Blackblade Pass area. Additionally, we created the final outskirts map: Highvale Outskirts. This new scene represents hours of new user play time along the Path of Courage.

Quest Polish and Side Quests: In addition to scene polish, we spent significant time creating and polishing quests along the Paths of Truth and Courage. We added nine new side quests, including some that reward players with new virtue banners that were created this release. We also completely reworked the Malice dungeon, where the finale of the Love path takes place.

Stealing Rework: We have done a major rework of the Stealing System. The fines associated with stealing now escalate in cost each time you are caught and start much lower than they did before. Also, the number of times you are caught is now recorded by each town’s Magistrate so they can determine these escalating fines.

Halloween Content: This is one of our favorite times of year! To help make it extra special, we have added several spooky new items to the game, including a new prison home, pillories, prison cages, jack-o’-lanterns, and an incredible Headless Horseman Grim Reaper statue.

Content retrieved from: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=77732.

Weekly community letter – Optimizations and fixes

Dear exiles,

Welcome back to the weekly community letter. In case you missed our first letter you can read it right here to catch up on what we talked about last week.

This week will mostly be about fixes and optimizations, but we also have some things to show that we think you’ll like. We know we do! Like the things we’re going to show you.

There are about 6 months left of Early Access. We’re currently mapping out the timeline implementation of the features and content that remain before full launch in Q1, 2018. There’s still a lot to do, of course, and we will keep you updated.

Current state of PC

We patched PC last week! Version 67264/13947 went live and introduced a lot of changes. The biggest was the update we did to the repair system: From now on you won’t be able to repair an item unless you already have the recipe. This change was made so we can increase the value of loot drops in the game – now we can give you a cool weapon earlier in the game, safe in the knowledge that you can’t completely circumvent the crafting system.

We’re going to do further iterations on the repair system such as adding a time cost to repair (to avoid cheesy stuff like instantly repairing weapons in combat), and adding items like repair kits and whetstones, which will provide the ability to make minor repairs even without knowing the recipe.

The light radius on torches and light sources were also increased. We did this for optimization reasons, because we’d like the game to run well. Brighter torches means fewer point lights, which in terms will help with framerate.

After the patch we released two hotfixes to correct some additional issues, like making sure that thrall recipes work properly, and removing an explosive jar duplication exploit.

Content retrieved from: https://blog.conanexiles.com/en/weekly-community-letter-optimizations-fixes/.

Camelot Unchained explains its guild and group philosophy for beta one

Mark Jacobs and City State Games have a big surprise for Camelot Unchained followers in this week’s dev blog: a major update to the beta one document focused on guilds, groups, and all the social organizations in between. And bigger. Really, this game is going to have a lot of different types of groups, with every niche from soloers to small crews (Warbands) to big guild-like crews (Orders) and even some formations that are more like raids, but nothing so big that little guilds or lone wolves need to panic. The document is lengthy (nothing new there, right?), but no matter what kind of group you’re in (or aren’t in), it’s worth a deep-dive to understand how the game’s community will be structured in a PvE-less RvR MMO because while it shares a lot on common with games like Dark Age of Camelot, it’s also got a few tricks I’ve never seen done before (like permanent groups that aren’t quite guilds and specialty mega-groups that are more about project management than fighting).

Content retrieved from: http://massivelyop.com/2017/09/23/camelot-unchained-explains-its-guild-and-group-philosophy-for-beta-one/.