Hello, everyone! We are back with another Dev Blog for late June to summarize what we’ve released and what is coming up in the next development cycle!

We’ve recently released a double feature TLC update with the Megalania and Amargasaurus, which included the new climbing mechanic, new quests, water VFX, audio updates and more. We also have a few new features releasing in the near-future including new interactive quests, exciting new game modes (updates coming soon!), UI improvements, and the continued work on Climbing for not only upcoming dinosaurs, but mods as well.

New Dinosaurs & TLCs

Several upcoming TLCs are in progress, as well as development on new Dinosaurs to expand our playables list. Upcoming TLCs will include familiar improvements like new models and textures, animations, refreshed skins, and new mechanics such as Megalania’s Climbing. Due to possible delays and schedule changes we can’t give exact timelines, but we will be back to the regular frequency of TLCs. Keep an eye out for our update videos and game patches for the latest releases.

Dinosaur Balance

Stat and Ability Adjustments

We’ve been monitoring the feedback for a number of the dinosaurs following the release of the patch and seeing how players play around with the updated characters. Some of the feedback that stood out was Eotriceratops as a whole. While it is much stronger than before while fighting larger dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus, its match-ups against smaller dinosaurs have seen too much of a drop. Eotriceratops will be getting updated in a future patch to use a 50/50 split between raw damage and armor piercing damage, similar to Hatzegopteryx’s Stab ability. This will allow us to boost its damage towards smaller dinosaurs while having a less impact on its peers.

Anodontosaurus is another dinosaur we’ve received a bit of mixed feedback on regarding its general strength. While it is more manageable for groups of smaller dinosaurs to attack, as was intended, this came at the cost of taking too much of a hit in other areas of survival. We’re currently looking into future changes to Anodontosaurus like boosting fracture damage, movement improvements, and adjustments to Cruel Swipe to boost its AoE attack damage to smaller dinosaurs. That being said, we have also seen feedback regarding its abilities feeling more streamlined to use, and we are glad that seems to have landed well!

Hunger and Thirst

We’ve been keeping an eye on the adjusted food drain and water drain values to make food and water more of a resource to be actively managed. While we are happy that this is having the overall intended effect on larger dinosaurs, becoming especially noticeable when they are in larger groups, we are going to be continuing adjustments to specific struggling dinosaurs. Additionally we are wanting larger stronger dinosaurs, like Tyrannosaurus, to have a higher maintenance cost gameplay-wise to help offset its overall strength level. Dinosaurs that are weaker than it such as Allosaurus or Ceratosaurus will have a much easier time surviving due to lower food requirements to be kept alive. We will be continuing to monitor feedback with these changes, and making adjustments to balance.

Matchmaking Update

The Matchmaking Update is still in the works with the next goal of getting character creation working properly. When this feature is ready, we’ll be running a test on Riparia as the default mode and make improvements based on player feedback.

Chat Update

The upcoming chat update will have improved moderation systems like Real Time Filtering and retroactive deletion for chat messages. It will also be available in matchmaking lobbies, the main menu, and character creation screens.

Chat will be a different, unified, hosted service, so you can easily message your friends and ask them if they want to play from the launcher, outside the game, or from a different server.

Character Transfers

The focus on Character Transfers have been put on pause until after the Chat Update ships, resolving some server and moderation issues currently affecting the game. The Character Transfers, however, will include a system to allow players to have the same dinosaur play across different maps, but we want to look closely at how we may merge existing dinos, have them transferred, or activated and deactivated.

Nat Punchthrough

Self-Hosting and NAT Punchthrough work is progressing, with the first iterations working on Windows and testing coming to Linux, before moving on to console support. When these are released, hosting your own server will be much more accessible on most devices, excluding low performing mobile phones.

Dinosaur AI

AI dinosaur work continues with a lot of behind the scenes progress. They can now spawn, move around in the world, and attack nearby players with standard abilities. We're currently working on complex evasion behaviors as we move onto passive herbivores. They need to be quite intelligent to fight as a player would, knowing when and where to attack, predicting player-movement and attack range while still being server performant. These AI will enable us to create more dynamic quests that we can’t achieve with critters alone.

Quests

Quest work in general is ongoing with more of a focus on map interaction and social quests. Environmental hazards will start to appear on the main pathways connecting the POIs, requiring different items to help clear them, pushing players to explore the area and tying quest items and POIs together. Other environmental quests will hinder the interaction of important items requiring you to clear the hazard before continuing.

Aggressively over-hunting critters of a specific variety may now draw the attention of an Alpha Critter, who will appear in the area. Take on the challenge of finding and defeating the alpha for a reward, if you’re successful.

Areas of the map will also become infested with a dense critter population and their dens. Clear the critters and dens to stop the invasion and restore balance to the location.

The herbivore quest giver will also soon be arriving, giving the herbivore players a chance at exclusive quests. These quests are still being worked on, with the initial goal of finding objectives and destroying them to collect items.

New quests continue to be added to Riparia with upcoming improvements to Tallbrush Coasts, East Passage, Big Tree Overlook, and Cliff Edge Falls. These will bring more unique items better suited for each POI’s biome adding to the experience and diversity of these different locations.

In addition to these, we also have the following:

• A new social interaction quest to replace Honor The Dead.
• Some Quests will feature hidden objectives to leave more room for exploration while decluttering the quest UI and reducing popups.
• Quests that require additional steps like damage based attacks, delivering, or even dropping things from the sky.
• New objects that provide marks and a small buff when interacted with.

Quest Particle and Sound Effects Improvements

We are also working on additional visual effects for interacting with quest items and quest objectives, such as puffs of dirt, cracking wood splinters, bubbles and more. While they are subtle, they help ground your interactions with the world and give important visual feedback to ensure players know their actions are making an impact. These will be rolled out over time with each upcoming patch, so keep an eye out for them!

Audio

A few audio fixes were completed recently including some improvements to flyer wing flap audio, specifically smaller flyers and babies, as well as an update to a number of placeholder vocal calls being used on baby dinos. Lastly there is a broader ongoing effort to clean up and improve audio attenuation accuracy, basically how audio sounds and behaves at different distances. Stay tuned for updates in each dev blog as this work progresses!

UI / QoL Improvements

More UI Quality of life improvements are also coming soon, with the ability to customize which elements are visible while playing. The quest title will now disappear along with the quest list when disabled or empty. You'll also be able to disable nearly everything like Hide abilities, status effects, hunger, thirst, growth, stamina, oxygen, and even health, letting you instead use visual queues so you can enjoy the cinematic quality and beautiful vistas without visual obstruction.

We are also making the player list easier to navigate, now you will always appear at the top with friends on the server grouped up below you. No more struggling to scroll and find your friends in the long list of players on the server. Your friends will also be easier to find on the map as well. In the group social tab, each player will have a new designated color, which will match the arrow color on the map. This will allow you to distinguish your friends from one another at a quick glance, to know where each friend is.

Replay Bug Fixes

The Replay Tool is also getting some attention with overall animation improvements, proper audio and animation pausing, and improved camera settings so you can dial in those perfect shots.

Climbing & Mantling

Climbing and mantling, which came with the Megalania TLC, will continue to be improved as we receive player feedback. They will also be available for modders as well to help bring them to your favorite wall-scaling creatures. Mantling is its own movement mode, available to any climbing creature and utilizes bezier curves to smoothly pull the dinosaur up and over ledges. It can be auto-triggered, or controlled manually by turning off auto-climb in the settings. Part of our focus on these mechanics also led to existing movement bug fixes and inverse kinematics fixes for quadrupeds.

And that brings us to the end of this Dev Blog! We wanted to let you know that the Solstice Skin Pack is out and available for purchase. Sales like these help us continue development and updates like these to Path of Titans. Thank you for watching; and we’ll see you soon!