Patch 23: Optimization, Stability, Balancing and Bugs

Fellow Nians!

Patch 23 will bring some more gamma optimization and fixes to the server along with a couple balance tweaks and bug fixes:

Bug Fixes:

• Fix for boss announcer: Killing boss before announcer announces will no longer produce a spawn announcement after its death (only until its next spawn)
• Fix for Portals not spawning: they were immediately despawning
• Fix to NPC-EP lookup optimization (concurrency issue fixed)
• Calibration lab for gamma was bonked.  Now fixed.

Optimization:

• Pre Computed EP for faster loading when killing multiple npcs at a time OR when multiple agents are killing 1 NPC

• Robot-entity update loop optimization – This cuts the cpu load in half for each Agent/NPC.

Stabilization:

• Fix to Robot initializations: For those equip and unequip bugs and load in perform increase
• Fix for roaming Red NPCs, if you see wonky things happening let us know.  They shouldn’t be hiking through the mountains anymore ignoring terrain.

Balance:

• We heard you the Data shard grind sucks.  We get it.  We have buffed their drop rate by 250% and will increase the threshold of drops from 150% – 350%.  That means if it drops 10 of the items, it has a chance to drop 15 to 35.  We have buffed ALL three bosses that currently drop the Data shards.
• Daidalos and Hermes got their stats back.

We know its not Gamma, but we are working as hard as possible to get Gamma out the door in an enjoyable and playable state, these patches are crucial to a successful launch.

-Ville