In the last two months, we have implemented quite a few changes to improve the player’s experience. Some are fun additions; others are Quality of Life improvements. Here is a partial list, as some are too small to mention here.
There is a big new rez platform next to the hospital. You and your fellow heroes will be rezzed there if you die in the city. After you land at a random location on the platform, you will be touched by a beam of energy that will almost make you wish you could die again. Almost…
We understand that sometimes, you want to challenge yourself, and other times, you want to do something very easy. Players can now select their level of difficulty between -2 and +3. The default setting is 0. This setting is found in the game menu. If you join a team or raid, your personal setting is overwritten by the team leader ‘s or raid leader’s choice.
We have been working on raids and using this experience to stress the servers and communications between server and client. We are making successive, incremental changes to improve performance and reduce lag when playing with many characters and NPCs. Our objective is to enable as many players as possible to have a positive experience in our raid.
As we are testing, we are also keeping an eye on areas we could improve. For example, we have updated the map markers in raids to show the league leader and team leaders in their team color, matching the raid UI color. Team members who are not leaders are only shown for the player’s current team. Your character is marked by a yellow frame around its health bar in the UI.
We are continuing our animation upgrades to include enemies. Nagdellian enemies have now discovered multiple ways to die; they don’t all fall to the ground in the same way. The Berserker, their oversized and intimidating monster, now shows how hard he is to kill with a satisfying death animation.
We will be testing the Berserker Invasion under NDA. If you are interested in participating, please register. You will also need to have signed as a tester under NDA.
In the crafting and trading area, we have added an auction house where players will be able to trade their drops and crafted items. Crafted infusions and augments will be more powerful than those purchased from infusions and augment vendors.
Ship of Heroes will launch with a tutorial mission and that mission is approaching completion. Many tutorial missions are boring. Ship of Heroes’ tutorial is part of the story and full of surprises in keeping with the rest of the game. Even if you think you do not need a tutorial, we hope you find it enjoyable to play on its own merit.
TECHNICAL NOTES
• MMOs have a lot of communications going on between server and client. The larger the number of players and combat NPCs, the greater the number of communications. The multithreaded chat server does not just host chatting between players, it handles most of this communication.
• Lag can be caused by the speed of the internet connection, other programs sharing this connection, physical distance between the server and the client, or how the communication is setup in the chat server. We are doing our best to eliminate the latter as a cause of lag.
