New Server Beta

After months of work, a new server has been developed from scratched and is ready to be tested in a new beta. This is going to be a slightly special beta and will last a bit longer than most because basically the entire server related portion of the game has to go through a full regression test. All rank/renown/rcpd in the beta has been completely reset. This is not permanent. I believe we will be able to port all current rank/renown/rcpd data from the old server to the new, and a later beta might include that ported data. But for now, I want to go through a full test of the ranking up process, so everyone will start "fresh" in the beta. There are currently no plans to change how RCPD / Rank / Renown work compared to how they worked in the old server. What's new with the server?

• Stats / Achievements

• Leaderboards

• Settings Syncing

• Talents (soon)

• Medals (soon)

Stats / Achievements Around 60 achievements have been added to the game, with a system in place to easily add more achievements. Achievements are split into roughly 3 kinds: Stat achievements, which basically just keep track of damage/kills/healing...etc; Minor achievements, which are one off progress indicators like Win a Survival; and Challenge achievements, which require some unique thing accomplished like winning without a death (and these have ranks on them to indicate the highest difficulty the achievement was accomplished in). Each achievement contributes to a players' "Achievement Score" based on the rank of the achievement. At the moment, all achievements' ranks are worth the same (10, 15, 20, 25, 30) points, but this may change. The server can also keep track of a variety of stats for each player. Right now, the game will display the total games played, the wins in each difficulty, and the time played for each class (have fun, monty!).

Leaderboards Each match submitted now automatically updates the leaderboards and you can view these leaderboards in game. Each difficulty is given its own category with two leaderboards in each category: an All Time leaderboard and a Recents leaderboard. The all time one will include games from all versions (unless a version is considered broken for some reason and then it may be stripped). The recents leaderboard will be automatically reset roughly every 2 weeks and will also be reset whenever a new (non-beta) version is released. The recents leaderboard will hopefully allow more people the ability to get on a leaderboard, even if it's just temporary. At the moment, all leaderboards require a victory. There may be an Extinction leaderboard (which tracks progress even for failures) and a Solo leaderboard (which lumps all difficulties together, but puts precedence to harder difficulties before comparing times).

Settings Syncing A new settings panel is available in game, which provides a nice GUI for setting your pool, view, and other options. Additionally, you may optionally sync these settings to the server. The next time you load into the game, these settings will automatically be set for you (except Unit Sharing, which is always defaulted to off).

Talents The server is more or less ready for talent unlocking. The current plan will be roughly every 100 achievement points, a player will unlock a random talent they don't currently have. The client still needs some work in order to actually display talents (in RCPD, character info spots) and the actual talents functionality in game, but it's close and will almost certainly be in before a release. Medals Medals could also be coming shortly now that the server is in place. I'd like some ideas on how people would like to unlock them, though. I'm thinking that there should be some challenge achievements in place to unlock the medal. Each medal may be tied to a specific class instead of the player itself as well. Any suggestions on how medals should be earned would be appreciated. Watchman Watchman is currently in development right now as well. He will require several challenge achievements to be completed before the player will unlock him. ------------------------------ What can you do? Just please play the beta a bit to rank up and just watch your general progress. Please let me know if you believe any issues happen like the wrong character ranking up or lost progress or not earning an achievement. Please report confirmed (ideally reproducible) bugs here instead of the discord so that I don't accidentally miss them. ------------------ Disclaimers The new server is being hosted on a potentially unreliable computer right now which may go down or have connectivity issues. Please report if you believe the server is down in the discord and I'll try to get it back up. All achievements, stats, and leaderboards in the beta may curated or removed at any point as well. Any earned rank/renown/rcpd will not be saved once this is released (as the currently released versions' data will overwrite any on the beta). Ideally, I would actually like to allow your stats/achievements to carry over from the beta to the released version, but unforeseen issues could require me to wipe the data. It is a beta afterall. Leaderboards will most likely be wiped once the official version is released in the effort of fairness, though.