Gloria Victis, the Free-to-Play MMORPG from Black Eye Games, continues to make strides as it continues along its development cycle. The game is poised to change the way you look at F2P MMOs, promising to bring open world realm-vs-realm warfare, sandbox-style crafting, and non-targeted combat to compliment the expansive medieval setting.
Over the past month, Black Eye Games has been hard at work on the game, squashing bugs and tweaking new features for the game. With this latest patch, the design team has introduced some sweeping changes designed to help realize their final vision for the game. What all has been changed, and what new features have been added? Keep reading to find out!
Territory Capture
When you enter the world of Gloria Victis, you will join one of four feuding nations. To keep these nations at each other’s throats, Black Eye Games has introduced a new Territory Capture mechanic to the game. Now nations can invade each other, capturing territories and taking control of the vital resources in the area. This mechanic is intended to pave the way for large-scale Player-vs-Player events between different nations moving forward.
Case in Point: One of the designers was taking part in a player-initiated attack on the village of Mereley. Their nation, the Midlanders, forced their way through the town until coming against a wall of opposition from the Ismir defenders supported by the village guards. The battle was fierce, and though the Midlanders were eventually driven from the town in defeat all participants enjoyed themselves. This feature will continue to be tweaked before official events are held, but the early feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
Two If By Sea…
Another big addition to Gloria Victis is the expansion of the playable area. In addition to completely reworking the city of Dunfen, new areas of farmland and seashores now surround the city. What this means is that the two major player hubs (Mereley and Dunfen) are now connected by a sprawling ocean, which also opens up a new opportunity to attack your rival nation.
Ships!
Players can now traverse the seas by boat, opening an entirely new way to attack. This is one of many features that will be expanded on as development of the game continues.
Other Patch Notes
In addition to the loads of new content that have been introduced to the game with this path, there are even more bug fixes and quality of life improvements. You can find a full list of their patch notes on the Gloria Victis website. The patch notes include bug fixes for crafting and looting exploits, UI hiccups, and general responsiveness. A few of the highlights are listed below:
- Fixed an issue with leveling points not distributing correctly.
- Fixed a memory leak issue with Windows 8 that caused the game to crash.
- Fixed issue where world bosses would spawn at incorrect times.
- Changed upgrade costs to better reflect statistic leveling.
- Added Main Menu “Options” screen.
- Added keybindings for Crafting, Map, and Jump functions.
- Added information about world boss spawns.
The patch also introduced a new dynamic tile processing system; a graphical improvement which increases texture resolutions without any loss in performance. This, along with some other under-the-hood improvements, allows for Gloria Victis to run while using much less RAM than before, and also decreases loadtimes ten-fold.
As you can see, the designers at Black Eye Games continue to make sweeping changes to the game as it progresses through its pre-Alpha phase. As the game evolves, through its Alpha and Beta phases before seeing its first release candidate, you will be able to track the progress and see the game expand. One way to find information on the game as it continues to improve is through the Gloria Victis Wiki, which will have information on the different nations, character types, cities, regions, and much more. You can also follow the game’s progress through the Gloria Victis website, where you can learn more on its Steam Greenlight campaign, how to become a supporter of the game, and even how you can influence the future of the game’s development by having your voice be heard.