June 2023 - Printable Version

June 2023 - Printable Version

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June 2023 - Roomy - 06-11-2023

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Hey everyone! This month's Development Direct should be less sweeping than the last, with mostly more of what you're already fans of. We've got new features, new maps, new content, and more cosmetics to discuss, so let's take a look!

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New Races

One of the things we've been most excited to share with you all are the new races. We've differentiated the Wildkin more (so they have a specific Fox subrace now, among others), made each type of Draconian into their own individual subrace rather than a collection in one, created a whole "Starchildren" category of races... and more. Today, we'll be discussing Starborne and Homunculi, two of the races exclusive to Galvia.

Starborne
Herald of Reflections
At Galvia's peak lies the Reflecting Well, a large pool of whirling astral fog and cosmic dust that seems to peer into the endless Sea above us all. It's Galvia's primary connection to the world beyond, and despite the dragons' restricting of all extraplanar travel, the Reflecting Well remains as a prominent tunnel to the Astral Sea. To Galvia, it is precious- a source of magic, technology, and faith to all.

... Yet this is not without consequence. Those that've tended to the Well for generations have found their offspring invariably changed by the process. Hundreds of years have led to the rise of the Starborne, a race more connected to the Astral Sea than any before. They're notably aloof, but also less prone to injury and accident when venturing through the stars; for better or worse, they've become the dedicated acolytes of the Reflecting Well.

What they choose to do with this connection is their own path to forge.

Homunculi
Herald of Briars
In the depths of Galvia's ruins, the materials to craft humanity itself lie in wait... or so the artificers of the past believed. Homunculi are the final evolution of artificial life: a race almost indistinguishable from true humanity, but so hindered by that lingering "almost" that they'll never achieve what they were originally created for. They are the perfect replica, but only a replica indeed.

They're incredibly few in number, with most having been created dozens of years past in laboratories forgotten to most. Above all else, they crave to be truly human, and to this end, they have a knack for imitating the most genuine traits of humanity. Each has a sin they fixate on, developing around their most coveted aspect in the pursuit of finally becoming real.

Whether they believe they've succeeded in this pursuit or if every step is yet another failed imitation is up to them to decide.

We'll be revealing more about the races at a later date!

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Player Handbook

As many of you are already aware, Verdict's struggled in the past to have an effective tutorial. When we finally got around to adding tutorial island, it didn't do much to stem the flow of players that expected the game to be something it wasn't, nor did it (for the most part) actually educate real newbies on how to play & thrive in Verdict.

Not only will we be including a brief, Court-specific tutorial for each of the six Courts, we'll also be including what we're calling the Player Handbook, which will contain dozens of extensive articles on everything you could want to know about in the game. You'll get a free legacy token for reading each one, too, with particularly important pages giving a little more.

This is paired with the Codex, which includes all relevant lore from the forums such that new players won't need to track down our website to know who Amada/Karrador/Oberon/etc. is. We believe these two systems in conjunction with each other will facilitate better learning for newbies and help keep everyone on the same page about what is and isn't canon.

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Guilds

We've mentioned them off-handedly before, but guilds will officially be present in Verdict: Descent, and in far better shape than they've ever been before. We've taken extra care to make sure the menu not just works, but is also displayed clearly and in a way that makes sense to the player. This is only one menu, but from here, you'll be able to do all you could with the previous guilds (handle rank permissions, view players, etc.) but with the addition of announcements, announcement history, general guild configuration, and more.

Along with this, if a guild owns a plot of land, they'll also be able to access the build menu from here, which behaves similarly to the decoration menu you're already familiar with. As you can probably guess, this lets you place down buildings inside the guild territory. These cost resources (wood, stone, ore, etc.) rather than just coin alone, meaning these items should stay in circulation a while longer. All guild buildings come with an associated upkeep cost as well, which pulls from...

... your guild's bank, a small, shared inventory between all members with sufficient permissions to access it. For those worried about hoarding, it prevents storage of items with a given rarity or above (in other words, no, it can't be used to hide uniques and similar).

Persistent Weather

Along with things we've mentioned in the past, weather has also seen a substantial tune-up. As already announced, weather will exist separately from map regions... in other words, the volcano only ever getting ash rain is a thing of the past. On top of that, though, we've also added what we're calling persistent weather.

Certain spaces of the map will almost always have a given weather looming overhead. For instance, the desert will always have a sandstorm of varying intensity. The swamps have a constant fog. The mountains have a drastically higher chance to snow in all seasons but summer... the list goes on. Along with seasonal weather in general, these factors should combine to make the world look different every time you play.

Additionally, when weather is severe enough, it'll also impact combat in very minor ways. Heavy sandstorms wear down Armor and Resilience, blizzards can impede Move Speed minorly, and thunderstorms reduce Crit Chance.

Instanced Maps & Housing
One of the more boring (but still very important) changes we've made is to how Verdict handles instance maps. If you aren't familiar, most MMORPGs have something called "instancing" that allows them to run 1, 2, 6, etc. copies of the same map at the same time. This means every player could be running their own version of the same dungeon simultaneously.

We've implemented the very same mechanic, which, while similar to how housing worked before, means our flexibility with what's possible is dramatically higher. We can instance caves, event maps, and more, which is a big component of what led to prior Verdict's constant performance leak issues. We couldn't unload maps when no one was using them, so our memory was devoured.

More Cosmetics
We're also going to show off some more cosmetics, too!
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As always, expect more to come... especially this month going forward.

In the next few weeks, we will be introducing more lore on Galvia and its Courts. Please look forward to it!