January 2025

Fridays Testing

So, once again we’re very close to being ready and are very close to being finished. To test, we’ve decided to open the server for Fridays (in UTC). If you know the times the server had free friday enabled, it’s the same times but the server will also be open then.

So, what’s changed through the month of January?

New

Let’s start with some brand-new stuff! That’s always the most exciting after all

Assault

As mentioned in our previous blog post this is a map mode with lives. Don’t let your team’s run out! The three assault maps will be making it into the map rotation for testing to make sure they work as they should with more players. We’re also carefully looking at balance, so teams start with the correct amount of lives.

/support

A new command to ask for help! Making a ticket on our Discord, or sending an email isn’t a quick procedure. What if someone’s hacking right now, and it’s spoiling the game? Well, drop a /support command with a message, and it will be sent to all staff in-game, and then also shot right across as an issue in the Discord server for staff to see. This lets us respond to the issue much faster than we might have previously.

Flags sidebar

Icons for flags! Some flags are little more special than others, and we didn’t have a way to display that information before. Now we do:

• 🔒 means the flag can’t be captured, either because it’s been fully captured or it’s a static flag.
• ❤️ means the flag will grant bonus lives if fully captured (assault only)
  • Only granted to the team not in control at the start of the map.
• ⏰ means bonus time will be added to the clock when fully captured by the attackers (charge only)

Restarts are a thing of the past

When the map rotation ends, no longer will you get kicked and have to rejoin when the server’s loaded. Instead, you’re taken to a lobby area until the maps have been reloaded ready for the next cycle! You’ll automatically be teleported into the first map when it’s all ready.

Changed

• Updated the server to 1.21.3.
  • Thanks to viaversion you should still be able to join on any version 1.9+
• Removed misleading lighting in Halls of Moria
• Renamed Hall Of Hercules to Hall Of Herakles to match Greek naming (Hercules was Roman)
• /togglerank now saves your preferences for when you next join
• Significantly improved logic for declaring a winner
  • There are some special cases where it will be draws where there could have been a winner, but writing the logic for that is quite complex with little return.
• Changed the MOTD
• All map modes can now enable & disable recapping of flags
  • Previously this was charge exclusive. All charge maps work as they previously did. Some assault maps have this enabled. It is clear if this is turned off/on with the new flag icons.
• No longer grants coins for winning
• Horn sound now plays when the map starts (so you won’t hear it when loading in)
• When swapping teams (either through switching or map end), if you can keep your selected sign kit, you will

Map Rotation

New balance changes means a new map rotation! We’ve updated the map rotation to focus on maps we need testing, with a few others mixed in for fun.

• Abrakhan - Camel Rider Kit
• Annakarl - Testing assault with two teams
• Contario
• Conwy
• Fantasy Madness - New-ish map
• Halls Of Herakles - Name Change & new-ish map
• HelmsDeep
• Hommet - Charge
• Kaer Morhen
• Lakeborough
• Halls of Moria - Destroy the Core
• Pirate Ambush - Map wasn’t played enough
• Rumrage - New-ish map
• Skyhold - Now Assault
• Soldier’s Peak - Testing lag & assault
• Toumont

It will also be the first time the map voting system gets proper testing, so be sure to vote on any map you play!

Advancements

Sadly our previous implementation of advancements was flawed. It wasn’t as easy to edit as we’d like, we didn’t grant level rewards correctly and many rewards weren’t implemented. So we’ve removed all previously earnt advancements (the V4 cosmetic has not been removed, but you may earn the advancement again when joining) This means we’ve also gone back to the drawing board with our advancements, looking at what we actually want them to be, rather than just an implemention to see if they work.

Our first target was level advancements. Every level up from 1 -> 20 will grant an advancement and some reward(s) depending on the level obtained. There’s kits (as before), coins, boosters, and a title just in those four levels! There are also advancements for 25, 30, 35 & 40. The first three grant a big coin bonus, while level 40 gives a title and a chat colour.

We also decided to lock some features behind levels. This is an experimental change, so we may change it later.

• Level 3 - Unlocks /switch allowing you to switch teams. You can still be forcefully switched by staff if required before level 3.
• Level 4 - Unlocks buying kits. Before level 4, you won’t have saved up enough coins to afford your first coin kit. Instead, we limit this to allow players to save up their coins and encourage the purchase of a global coin kit. We don’t want to force the choice of kit purchased, but we feel for a player’s first kit, getting one they can use on all maps is better.
• Level 7 - Unlocked bounties. This was previously implemented and we chose to keep it. Before level 7, not only can you not dish out bounties, but nobody can place a bounty on you either. This should grant newer players a bit of protection as they learn the game (and save up coins to bounty others too)

Please let us know what you think of these rewards. Advancements will be central to progression and teaching of the game so we want to get this right!

Balanced

Horses are now affected by all damage sources in the same way players are. Previously horses took significantly reduced damage from anything that wasn’t direct damage from a player. They now do.

Fantasy Madness has also had a few tweaks. It’s still a brutal map, we didn’t want to make it too easy before players got a chance to earn it, but certain jumps were made easier. Specifically, two routes were designed as Blitzkrieg routes and were made even time wise to get from one starting flag to the other. Spawn points for each team’s starting flag was on a different island from the flag. They are now on the same island as the flag.

Fixed

• /topmatch not displaying captures
• Removed Training Ground from Kaer Morhen’s wool map (the flag was removed previously when the map was made into a charge map)
• Fixed bad name for Kaer Morhen’s outer gate ram
• Spectating
• Charge flags being recappable

Upcoming

• Fix for voting
  • This one’s proving to be a bit more problematic than we’d like after moving to the new host. It’s being worked on, just taking longer than we’d like.
• Battleon map (featured image), built by marcoiscool
  • Map is fully built, just need a mapper to implement
• Floating Maze, build by Greenfoot5
  • This one’s got big goals for its implementation, so may release much later than ideal
• Tutorial
• More advancements!
  • Stat tracking advancements maybe?

From last Friday

For easy finding, here’s a list of what’s changed since the last play session!

Changes

• Now get a confirmation when sending a support message
• Some of the formatting when boosters are activated for better clarity
• Reduced the lives on all assault maps (both starting lives & flag granted lives)
  • The plan is to make these values from online players, not sure if I’ll get time this week to implement

Fixed

• Fixed the game getting stuck when starting the 2nd map when players were online
• Map votes are now correctly saved
• Fixed group chats showing to everyone (i.e. team chat)
• Fixed formatting in /msg
• Fixed Maceman’s stun message
• Fixed null leave message
• Top deaths/kills titles being unequipped on relog