Hey guys,
I've got many different changes and updates ready for today. Please take your time and read through them, especially our spooky Halloween event!
HalloweenI've added a new miniquest for the event! Talk to Roddeck in Draynor's Manor. I won't spoil you with any details, but here's a screenshot of Muncher:
Who's Muncher? You'll find out during the quest.
DPS and AccuracyI've added your current dps and accuracy values to the attack style tab. These values depend on current enemy you're fighting, so don't be upset if your dps becomes lower on bosses! In detail: The last enemy you've hit. With this update, I've also tweaked the accuracy formulas a little bit to make sure you're not constantly hitting 0s on your enemy. This also affects the accuracy of enemies though. This change is only felt in situations where you or your enemy are be really tanky, so boss fights or high level PvP scenarios. Your weakness is no longer protecting you literally almost completely from damage. It also makes sure that your minimum hit chance doesn't fall below values where you're basically not going to hit anything anymore.
I've also furtherly taken a look at the current dps values and found quite a few flaws in the system, especially with how bows and crossbows work. Bows are in general faster than whips and staves, so their max hit should be lower.
Here's a summary of what combat balancing changes were done:
- Thrown weapons were nerfed, because they were outclassing other ranging weapons by far. I've reduced their strength bonus and accuracy by about 15-20% to make sure they are in a spot where they are useful, but won't be overperforming. They are more useful against low defence targets, but will get inaccurate against stronger enemies and thus less effective.
- Morrigan thrownaxe special attack buffed.
- Spirit shields: They are just way too strong. I've reduced their offensive bonuses from 15 to 10 and strength bonuses from 10 to 7. In my opinion a shield with defensive bonuses and a useful operate option shouldn't straight up outclass defenders.
- Arrow strength reduced by 25%.
- Bolt strength buffed by 20%.
- Special attack of magic shortbow and seercull has been nerfed, the 2nd hit now deals 60% of its original damage. This change was necessary to ensure your opponent cannot 1 hit you by just pressing on the special bar. Fast weapons have their strength in speed and not special attack.
- The accurate ranged style now gives 20% bonus accuracy instead of 10 additional accuracy. You give up 0.5s of attack speed when using this attack style, so you should really benefit from it.
- Dark bow special attack max hit buffed. With the nerf previously done to arrows, this needed to be adjusted.
- Accuracy bonuses of Dharok and Guthan increased from 121 to 138.
Engine updates:- Shadow angle has been adjusted. Before the patch shadows were drawn as if it was sunrise or sunset, whereas now as if it's noon. Please bear in mind that this doesn't mean that game times are possible. There's still a lot of lighting work required for that to work well.
- Further improvements to ground textures. The game now detects more different kinds of grounds.
- Major adjustments to the maploader have been done. Alpha and non-alpha models are now correctly separated and rendered. This increases performance on slower computers and ensures correctness of what's behind windows. I've also identified quite a few problems when new regions were loading, such as mispositioned npcs and/or objects in the scene. I've intensively tested and fixed everything that I could come across. I wasn't able to reproduce npc or object misplacements anymore, but please let me know if they still occur to you! Most reports I've seen came from Emps-Wars or Pest Control.
- Resting animation no longer shows particles and weapons/shields.
- Local teleporting (no new map is loading) no longer refreshes the player list. You'll feel this change especially in crowded agility areas or at boss fights where you can be knocked back.
- Shadows of roofs or terrain above you (Slayer tower) is now correctly casted without having to reload the upper structure. This is basically a small bugfix for shadows.
- Music player overhauled. New songs now buffer while the current song is fading out. Resulting in a smoother transition between old and new songs. Quickly switching between songs will now also cancel out old ones and only play the new one.
- A bug was fixed where animations could completely cancel out on slower machines, e.g. mining.
- Fixed an issue with items being dropped while the map was loading. This could rarely bug out items and make them invisible.
Game changes and fixes:- Poison purge aura has been fixed. It now heals correctly.
- Effect Restoration code for leaving special areas (houses, duels, minigames, etc.) has been changed. You'll no longer lose all potion effects and stat restoring now depends on the situation. Leaving houses will no longer restore your prayer points or clear poisons. However leaving minigames will still do so. I've reviewed that part carefully and picked situations where negative effects should be cleared and where not.
- Shop value for colored max capes increased.
- Following monsters now also get the Slayer helm damage bonus on their minions: General Graardor, Kree'arra, K'ril Tsutsaroth, Commander Zilyana, Nex, Glacors, Smoke Demon Champion, Nechryael and Chronozon. The effect was already working on minions in fight caves, but I'll mention it here nonetheless.
- Nex combat has received slight adjustments to ensure that all of her important animations are shown. Phases are now checked once every attack cycle and thus cannot cancel out some of her attacks. Moreover, aoe attacks now freeze Nex for 2 seconds instead of 1 to ensure everyone can clearly see that a dodgeable attack is incoming.
- Items lost at the Smoke Demon Champion are now dropped outside of the boss room.
- Inferno Adze can now be used while being in your inventory.
- Godswords attack speed decreased (buffed) by 0.5 seconds. This has been a bug for a long time that I haven't ever noticed.
- Attack speed of gladiator maul decreased (buffed) by 0.5 seconds.
- Wilderness obelisks are now teleporting correctly again.
- Certain music areas have been expanded (dungeons, GE, etc.)
- Nex is now dropping a pet version of herself.
ModellingI've created a custom model format for emps, which allows us to import and create models from 3rd party programs. We've created a mini nex version and flying pet dragons:
Oldschool Emps-WorldI haven't really found time to develop it besides the current game and also probably won't in the future. I'm going to drop the project, because it won't be worth the time and effort. Creating a completely new game is imho a bad decision and would split the community apart. We've also recently grown and I'd like to continue developing what's proven to be successful. Nonetheless, I'll have a look at optionally enabling an oldschool look in the game for a more classic feeling.
I hope you enjoy this update! Let me know what you think of it with a reply below. I'm also sorry for not releasing a new boss by the end of October as promised, but the Halloween event, combat rebalancing and dps investigations were quite a hit on the development stack. I'll see to get it done as soon as possible. However, I am revealing some details of the upcoming bosses: It will be a similar challenge to Nex and 6 new weapons are planned; 2 per combat style. The requirements will be 85 in the respective combat skill and the weapons are coming as 1h and 2h variant. My aim is to make those weapons rather accurate than strong, so that they'll be useful in PvM but mediocre in PvP.
All the best,
Thomy
Fixes and Changes of 28th:- I've taken a closer look at spirit shields and their equipment alternatives and reverted their bonuses back to their original state. However, with this change, I'm also adjusting the ice shield: It now has the defensive bonuses of a tier 80 shield, but has its strength bonus changed from 10 to 5. I do realize that this is quite a big change, but it effectively can't just be a power-up to a spirit shields. I would like to keep spirit shields in their current state of being power shields. Meaning that they are giving you good offensive bonuses at the cost of defensive bonuses. This only works if other shields don't follow the power shield trend and thus the ice shield had to be adjusted.
- Doors in houses are working again.
- A bug with obelisks in the wilderness was fixed, which could get you stuck.
- Certain pets can now be used as non-members: Muncher, Raven, Pet dragons and Present imps.
- Pet following formula has been updated. Pets won't disappear anymore when teleporting and won't get stuck after using stairs.
- Maxhit tooltip for magic shortbow and seercull updated.
- The bolt ranged strength buff of 20% is a little bit too much. I've adjusted it to be 15% of their strength before the update, so it's now a 15% buff instead of a 20% one.
- A bug was fixed where teleport graphics would flicker.
