Lords of the Fallen patch verbetert performance en past New Game+ aan

Eerder deze maand verscheen Lords of the Fallen, een sequel/reboot van de gelijknamige soulslike-RPG uit 2014. De algemene consensus was dat het een prima game was, maar dat er wel nog best veel (technische) problemen te spotten zijn. De ontwikkelaar heeft sinds de release niet stilgezeten, want er is vanaf nu een uitgebreide patch beschikbaar die veel zaken zou moeten oplossen.

Naast technische verbeteringen, is ook het New Game+ systeem wat aangepast. Wanneer je het spel uitspeelt, kan je nu kiezen of je met je bestaande personage een New Game+ file aanmaakt (en dus moeilijkere vijanden zal tegen het lijf lopen) of je reset de wereld zónder naar New Game+ te gaan. In dit geval behoud je al je spullen, maar de moeilijkheid zal niet aangepast worden. Ideaal dus als je even wat Trophies wilt behalen zonder al te veel moeite te moeten doen. Alle patch notes werden gepost op Reddit, maar je kan ze hieronder ook bekijken.

Patch v.1.1.222 (1.1.224)

Vestiges in NG+

We hear you. And have decided to roll out some fundamental changes to ensure everyone continues to enjoy the NG+ experience, including both those who have relished the no-vestige challenge and those who would rather they were still present throughout the world.

From today’s patch onward, when you complete your initial playthrough, you will be presented with a new option before embarking on your next playthrough; you can either progress directly to the next consecutive NG (i.e if you’ve just completed NG+1, you would move onto NG+2), or you can replay the current NG at the same difficulty, albeit retaining your character, items, and progression, but resetting the entire world, including NPCs and questlines. This will allow trophy hunters and completionists to seek out any outstanding tasks without having to contend with increased difficulty, should they so choose.

A further patch this coming Thursday will see further updates made to the NG+ mode; instead of removing all vestiges (as it does currently), NG+1 will only see a few disappear while keeping the key locations intact. In NG+2, a few more will disappear, and then in NG+3 all but the main HUB (Skyrest Bridge) and Adyr’s Shrine vestige will disappear. This way, our initial vision remains intact but is more of a gradual adaptation, awaiting those who seek increasing levels of challenge.

Lastly, as a follow-up to the popular announcement made during last week’s stream, we can confirm we have started designing the “NG+ modifier system”, allowing players to fully customize their NG+ experience, whether that’s retaining all vestiges, keeping just a few, or removing them completely. It will also include other fun modifiers like a “hardcore” mode (1 death = permadeath), item randomizers, enemy randomizers, etc. The feature set is yet to be fully defined, but our current intention is to release the modifier system before the end of the year.

Enemy Density

Today as a means of helping with enemy density, we’re improving our ‘leashing’ system, further limiting how far enemies will pursue players from their spawn point. This helps prevent large crowds of enemies from relentlessly pursuing the player when rushing through a level.

We aim to have further refinements in Thursday’s patch, including reducing the number of enemies present in areas where players most struggle. These enemies will be removed in your initial playthrough but will remain in NG+, in keeping with the more challenging experience players seek.

Additionally, we are going to tweak some crowd behaviors so enemies will not swarm players as often; multiple enemies will no longer land hits at the same time, while enemies will also be a little less aggressive when swarming the player in greater numbers.

Crossplay

As we explained in the Q&A stream, we are targeting to deploy this ASAP for all platforms, but we want to ensure certain GPU stability levels for PC players before this happens.

We are pleased to confirm we are activating crossplay on consoles this coming Monday, with a plan to activate it on ALL platforms this coming Thursday.

Xbox Series X|S & PlayStation 5

Mob Density

• We’ve activated a leashing system in which enemies will stop following you after X meters (case-by-case scenario). To avoid crowds of enemies on you, if you happen to rush through a section of a map.

NG+

• Added a new option for NG+ which resets the game world – allows to restart with current character level in the same world

Crossplay

• Crossplay has been enabled between consoles, and PC players will join as soon as it’s stabilized.

3D Photo Mode

• Sometimes the camera of a saved 3D scene in 3D Photo Mode was in the wrong position. Added failsafe for this not to happen.
• Fix door state (opened/closed) and other interactables not being saved in the 3D photo.

AI

• Fixed enemies that could sometimes be spawned in a T-pose at the lower part of the manse.
• Tweaked the navmesh on a small section of Lower Calrath to help AI navigate better in that complex environment setup.
• Trapper’s traps can now be destroyed with ranged options such as arrows, grenades, magic, and more.
• Ruiners now have a higher chance of triggering their fearful charge.
• Ruiners now aim their shield fire attack at players more accurately. Beware!
• Parasites now follow their hosts more quickly to prevent them from straying too far when the player pulls the host far away. If they are blocked, they will teleport to the host to aid players who are siphoning them by staying close.
• We found an issue where Pilgrim’s Perch pilgrims could sometimes shoot through certain structures. This issue has now been fixed.
• Crossbowmen have undergone additional adjustments to their behavior in order to make them smarter without increasing their difficulty. This should result in a more engaging and balanced gameplay experience when encountering these enemies in the game.
• A navmesh in the cistern has been adjusted to assist an invisible archer in targeting the player more efficiently.
• The aggro ranges of the Deep Sparrow, Infernal Enchantress, and Mendacious Visage have been revised to prevent them from pursuing players after losing sight.
• The Abbess and the Conflagrant Seer will now refrain from using their abilities against the player if the player is not in plain sight.
• The worms spawned by the Mendacious Visage can now be dodged more easily.
• There was one instance of a Pilgrim at Pilgrim’s Perch who could see the player from a very far distance. Now, he will only notice the player when they get closer.
• A fix has been implemented for archers to keep the arrow in place while applying vertical offset. This is a visual fix for archers that, when aiming at you from slopes, the arrow was being incorrectly displaced. The most visible impact was on the Holy Archer, particularly in the women’s area section.
• An update has been made to the “LookAt” behavior for NPCs to prevent neck snapping when the player gets close to them. This improvement aims to create a smoother and more natural interaction between the player and NPCs.

Audio

• We’ve added a new (slightly sexier) sound when pressing “continue” in the main menu.
• The Exclusive Section of the Collector’s Edition now has a specific song.

Balancing

• Flame Funnel spell from the Remembrance store has seen its price adjusted.
• Fixing buyable items in the shrines missing skipinventory bool being set to true.
• Adjusting social shrine goals based on progression and forecast.
• Temporary change at the Umbral Shrine to sell 999 Umbral Scourings, instead of one, while we wait for a proper “infinite” implementation.
• Balancing pass on NG+ for bosses and regions almost end-game NG+ (the curve was too steep).
• Molhu decided to lower the price of the seeds in his store from 2’500 vigor to 1’200 vigor.
• The Parry Guard protection has been increased to 80%, as announced in today’s stream with Fightin’ Cowboy. It also avoids receiving any elemental damage or ailment.
• The amount of poise damage inflicted by enhanced throwable items has been reduced.

Boss

• Parasites in Crimson Rector now do not trigger a heavy reaction in the player.
• We observed an instance where Reinhold’s stab attack was propelling the player in a random direction. This issue has now been fixed.
• Menacious Visage will now react correctly with the camera if the player is positioned between the boss and the camera.

Collisions

• Collisions on some umbral platforms in the cistern have been fixed to improve the navigation of certain enemies.
• On the Fief, during our gardening day, we’ve improved trees that needed better collision detection.
• We’ve covered a ground hole in Pilgrim’s Perch that was causing players to fall through it. It wasn’t visible enough and felt unfair.
• We’ve fixed the collision of a small wood platform in Lower Calrath that was causing Bringers of Stillness to fall through it instead of lurking from the shadows.
• Changed invasion area gameplay sublayer to match the surrounding Art sublayer. This fixes the invader spawning under the ground at the start of the invasion.
• Fixed chase farming spot in which he would fall over the world on his own for every spawn. Now if you go take a coffe for your character to farm on his own, you might find your character dead when coming back.
• Players may get out of boundaries and fall out the world at the Abbey of the Hallowed Sisters
• Fixed small collision bump that could lead AIs to get stuck near Agatha’s vestige.
• Fixed missing Umbral navmesh in CSC Main East
• Fixed a small ground
• The collisions of two umbral walls in Lower Calrath have been reviewed and updated.
• Various ramps and staircases that didn’t offer smooth navigation have been improved.
• Two ground tiles that were causing issues with Delyth’s attacks, preventing her from reaching the player, have been fixed.
• Collision issues in the Deep Forest have been addressed to prevent enemies from getting stuck in certain situations.
• Collision issues in the Deep Forest have been fixed to improve player navigation and prevent invisible blockers.
• Collisions in Upper Calrath have been adjusted to provide smoother player navigation and eliminate small steps.
• Collisions in Lower Calrath’s Alehouse have been improved to better support jumping gameplay and prevent players from falling off on the other side.
• Multiple collision fixes in Lower Calrath have been implemented to ensure the AI’s navigation mesh functions correctly.
• A rock that previously lacked collisions now has proper ones.
• Two locations in the Forsaken Fen have been tweaked to prevent creatures from getting stuck under certain combat conditions.
• Players can clip through the floor at a specific spot in the refractory of the Manse.
• The camera could clip with the statue in the Leprosarium.
• Improved the navigation of “drones” in a secret “room” within Bramis Castle.
• Added an additional collision box for AIs to prevent them from falling through a hole at the Tower of Penance. Players can still push them through.
• Fixed a collision issue in Lower Calrath that could prevent players from stepping on it without using a jump.
• Collision fixes and optimization in the area around Lower Calrath’s orphanage have been implemented.
• Corrected hidden landscape collision on Manse Supply Road to prevent thrown objects from getting stuck.
• Players were not dying properly due to the Void volume being too low on Pilgrim’s Perch.
• A collision issue between a rock and a wooden structure has been fixed to prevent players from getting stuck under certain conditions.
• A wrong collision setup that made it difficult to pick up an item in Lower Calrath’s Smelter area has been fixed.
• A collision bug that occurred on a specific bed at Bramis Castle has been fixed.
• Players could get stuck on a collision in the Sunless Skein.
• Fixed a hole at Fritzroy’s Gorge that could cause players to fall through it.
• Fixed a collision on an asset that could cause players to get stuck when rolling in a certain way.
• A misplaced collision could cause players to fall through the ground in the tutorial area.

Customisation

• Removed root bone influence from the Stalker’s Hunter body and legs to improve the visuals.
• The Holy Archer character model has been adjusted. These changes include removing the belt from the torso, shortening the cloth on the head, and modifying CLPs to accommodate these alterations
• Swelling on the skirt part of the Marksman Armour has been removed to improve visuals and physics.

Gameplay

• Fixed Soulflay attack to prevent falling from ledge when taking a step back just after it.
• Fix wrong orientation of the player while interacting with NPCs and trying to move around.
• Updated Retrieve Vigor anim to be faster, interruptible more quickly & added iframes until retrieving the Vigor
• Adjusted “Empty Sanguinarix” anim to be faster and interrupted sooner
• Fix wrong behavior of the player while interacting with NPCs and vendor screens which could lead tro weird poses.
• Modified Vestige interactions to allow camera movement while interacting with the vestige.
• In some instances, when using the lamp to traverse certain platforms in Axiom, falling would trigger the fall animation twice. Now it only triggers once as intended.
• Fixed controller vibration and camera shake from some level elements that ignored if the player turned that option off in the menu.

Level Disign

• A puzzle involving umbral platforms at the Empyrean could be exploited by using soulflay on one of the platforms from a specific angle.
• A streaming volume has been adjusted in Pilgrim’s Perch to ensure that some assets don’t appear too late for the player.
• Revised the obstacles in one of the shortcuts to no longer force the player to go through the Umbral fully; now it can be crossed by simply raising the lamp.
• Slightly adjusted the backstab tutorial to prevent the enemy from sometimes going through the fence.
• Fixed an issue where players could interact with a Soulflay Chain from the ground in Skyrest Bridge, bypassing one step of the puzzle.
• An invasion area at Pilgrim’s Perch could be easily abandoned with a simple jump. To address this exploit, we’ve added an additional “moth-wall”.
• Fixed an issue where players could interact with the Soulflay Chain from the ground in the Swamp area. This fix prevents players from bypassing one step of the puzzle.
• Lock-on targeting has been re-enabled for ambush enemies in the following areas: Forsaken Fen, Fitzroy’s Gorge, Cursed Fief, Redcopse, Sunless Skein, and Manse of the Hallowed Sentinels.

Multiplayer

• Revised multiplayer timings and pings to prioritize good connection between players, instead of connecting fast with higher pings.
• Deactivated the Orian protector feature so we can bring it back with a more interesting loop in it. Orian protecto was entering a player being invaded to help out on the fight. Was confusing to players and reported as bug. So we’re redesigning it.
• Fixed an issue where the audio from the host could sometimes not be heard by the client when in spectator mode after dying.
• Fixed an issue in which the client could lose the ability to move under certain conditions.
• We’ve detected an issue in which clients leveling up in vestiges could lose their progress under certain conditions.

NPCs

• Sparky got some additional lines of dialogue.

Optimisation

• The 4000 books on the shelves at Bramis Castle now lack collision to reduce memory usage.
• It was gardening day on the Fief, and several trees have been optimized.
• Certain UI textures have been optimized to load more quickly and reduce their VRAM usage.
• Revised some global textures to reduce memory usage without any apparent loss in visual quality.
• Collisions within a secret arena at Bramis Castle (with a group of enemy drones) have been optimized and adjusted.
• We have heavily optimized the game thread for calculating navmesh, adhering to a maximum processing time budget.
• Umbral eggs have been optimized to check for player position only after they’ve been opened.
• Collision optimizations in the Lower Calrath storehouse surroundings.
• Several additional collision optimizations have been implemented to free up memory and improve the game’s performance.
• The navmesh has been optimized further to avoid potential hiccups and micro-stutters.
• We’ve started a rework on how the animations of complex enemies are calculated to gain additional performance without compromising quality.
• Skyrest has undergone further optimization of its walls to improve performance.
• Ruiner’s totems have been optimized.
• Parasites have received an additional optimization pass.
• Improvements have been made to shadow cost and overdraw in the Skyrest bridge area.
• A slight animation budget optimization has been implemented to ensure that hidden enemies do not blink. Why would they blink? Instead, they will keep their eyes wide open, waiting for the player to appear, allowing for a more effective ambush.

Performance

• Adjusted Soulflay texture sizes and materials to be easier to handle by GPU.
• Reworked some UI elements to free some memory.
• Reduced environment interaction memory allocation to free memory (~16MBs).
• Anchor images are now loaded only when interacting with vestiges.
• Fixed several textures used “everywhere” to reduce video memory (~10MBs)

Quests

• In one of the character’s quests, there was a big door that would disappear. Now, when it disappears, it does so with style, as we’ve added moth particle systems to the disappearance.

Stability

• Fixed crash that could happen when interacting with an NPC character and somehow the NPC character actor is not ready
• Fixed crash that could happen when opening the inventory and an item is removed from it when filtering the categories (DLC items that no longer exist in player’s inventory)
• Fixed crash when trying to set the description of an item that no longer exists (DLC items that no longer exist in player’s inventory)
• Fixed crash that happened when soulflaying certain entities
• Fix for crash not clearing a c++ timer for the foggates
• fix for crash when trying to know which ammo slot we have selected while not having a valid inventory component
• Adding a check to make sure we have a player pawn on the client before trying to disable interactions.
• Fix a very rare crash that could happen when picking up, and the item might be gone while playing the montage.
• Make sure the payload in the trigger event is correct and end the ability otherwise.
• Fixed crash that could happen when an NPC was talking, under very specific conditions.
• Fixed a rare crash that could happen when enemies were targeting players for their abilities.
• Fixed a rare crash that could happen when interacting with certain interactables.
• Fixed a rare crash that could happen with some niagara particles that left a trail behind them.
• Fixed a rare crash that could happen when running out of ammo and trying to do an action that consumes ammo.
• Fixed a rare crash related to player spawning in multiplayer by the host, when the client is still not fully ready.
• Fixed a rare crash that could happen when resurrecting in an anchor.
• Fixed a potential crash when being invaded by a player that disconnects at the right frame.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when the soulflayed character is destroyed while the player has not yet finished the soul flay pull animation.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when the GameThread timed out waiting for RenderThread after 120 seconds.
• A failsafe has been added to prevent an access violation crash in DirectX. The suspicion is that the RHI texture is deleted before FD3D12DynamicRHI::RHIAsyncCreateTexture2D returns.
• A sneaky bug has been fixed where lower supported AMD cards could crash when using 32-bit wave operations in shaders instead of 64-bit.
• We’ve are now calling TerminateOnGPUCrash() when the GPU has actually crashed, not when it’s unresponsive, to get better information on Sentry in case of crashing.
• Fixed an issue where the wrong descriptor was passed to the d3d12Resource constructor, resulting in asserts when getting resource allocation info for shared buffers.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when an actor in the process of being soulflayed was destroyed before the player could finish the pull animation.
• Fixed a very rare crash that occurred when continuously hitting walls. Occasionally, the wall would take revenge and crash your game.
• Fixed a crash that could happen when interacting with the vestige, under very specific conditions.
• We fixed a crash that could occur when enemy AIs used their abilities in specific conditions.
• Fixed a potential GPU crash caused by the initial cinematic resizing the viewport. Now it fades to black until we resolve the ratio-changing engine hiccups on some GPUs.

UI

• Fix for the skip cinematic button not appearing when any key is pressed
• Modified max length for online session passwords to 8 characters. We see people online usually goes for 4-6 long character words.
• Splash screen now has some additional sounds.
• now if you equip an ammo or spell that cannot be used, we show the (X) also in the widget
• Fixed a bug in which the character name pop-up could not be closed with the gamepad if spamming (A) or (B) while opening.
• we reverted the “any button shows (A) to skip” in cinematics as we saw that on some devices this wasn’t working well. Will come back tomorrow.
• Fixed a display issue for stackable items sold in vendors, where it could show a higher number than the actual available purchaseable amount after going through an anchor once.
• Improved navigation on Faction Shrines with a gamepad, so you don’t have to go all the way down to move from tier to tier.
• Increased the password limit for multiplayer to 8 characters.
• Removed a prompt warning of the presence of an umbral path from a boss arena, and it now only appears after the fight is over.
• Interact prompts sometimes were not displaying the correct keybinding, depending on the chosen key.

VFX

• Adjusted banners FX angle that could sometimes be rotated too much.
• Poison and Umbral Mist reworked to look better after seeing it pixelated on some streams.
• Dart Fan optimized
• Steps VFX now disappear when off-screen, instead of being frozen (yet still calculated)
• The lightreaper jump attack needed another pass to make it more spectacular.
• Cleric’s weapon now doesn’t have skinnin issues.
• Crossbowmen now have more noticeable and perdurable arrow trails to increase visibility and directionality

Visuals

• lower lod2 and lod3 cloth was missing on the effigy of scorn
• Several armor sets, including the Marksman Armour, Sin-Piercer belt, and Condemned chest, have been adjusted to address minor clipping issues that occurred when using extreme character sizes (strong or thin).
• A few fire decals in Lower Calrath have undergone further optimization and visual enhancement.
• Fixed an issue where a bush was clipping through a wall in the Manse of the Hallowed Brothers.
• Camera vibrations on some elevators have been adjusted to reduce exaggerated camera shakes.
• Fixed a soulflayable spirit that was hard to hit due to the art surrounding it.
• The LOD (Level of Detail) settings of the Strider have been updated to address an issue where the jewelry would behave unexpectedly when transitioning from LOD1 to LOD0. This update should result in a smoother and more visually consistent experience with the Strider character in the game.
• Fixed a torn skirt by resetting the bones to their reference pose. This was discovered while cleaning her abp for optimization.
• Fixed some ground artifacts in the Forsaken Fen.

Xbox Series X|S

Optimisation

• Multiple performance improvements on XBOX Series X and XBOX Series S

UI

• Fixed the bosses health bar to be better centered on screen.

PlayStation 5

Optimisation

• Multiple performance improvements for PS5.

Visuals

• Fixed a nanite mesh on the 3D gallery background that had a glowing light