We're excited to announce that Hero Siege "2.0" is arriving today on October 2nd, 2023!

As some of you may know, we've been hard at work on a major game overhaul since Q4 2022, and we've named the project "Hero Siege 2.0" or just "HS2.0." Please note that the game's actual name remains the same; "2.0" is just a project name to distinguish it from the previous version. It's been nearly a year of dedicated effort to improve the game. In this post, we'll highlight the most important changes to the game. You'll find a link to our Devlog at the bottom for more detailed information about these changes. First and foremost, Hero Siege 2.0 is a free update that will replace everything currently in the game. This means all your previous local and online game saves will be wiped clean. This is necessary due to significant changes in the game's data structure that would cause conflicts with existing saves. To ensure a smooth experience, we're starting fresh! The seasonal counter will also reset, beginning with Season 1 again. Previous seasons will be referred to as "Legacy Season N" in the Season Rewards section. It's important to note that all your rewards from previous seasons, as well as any DLC or Tokens you have, will remain unaffected in your account.

Art & Zones

We have recreated nearly all of the art in the game from overworld zones to dungeons, enemies and bosses. With this new update, we get a more streamline art style for the whole game that feels natural to the theme of the game. HS2.0 will see much more dark and ominous visuals than before, creating the perfect atmosphere to battle hordes of various creatures the players may encounter in their journey. Map generation has been reworked from scratch for better and smarter generation eliminating possible errors, along with the hand crafted dungeon layouts and visuals. Have fun exploring all the eye candy out there! Beginning with 2.0, Hero Siege now utilizes a 720p resolution. This enhancement provides players with the ability to see a bit further, resulting in sprites, UI elements, and the overall game appearance looking significantly crisper and more appealing.

Inventory & Stash

Large changes were made to the inventory, it will now be visibly more pleasing to look at and you will be able to see all your gathered loot at once as well as use the new charms system. Instead of being able to equip one charm, you can now place them into the golden slots on the right side of the first page of your inventory to equip up to 20 charms at once depending on their size. With the addition of a large rework to how the inventory system works in Hero Siege, items now take up a certain amount of inventory slots, reflecting the size of the item while it is in the player's inventory. We also made these sizes smaller than other ARPG games usually do to make more available space for collecting loot. The four empty slots under the belt & rings is the new place youll be able to store your Relics that you find on your journey to protect Tarethiel against evil. Up to five relics can be equipped at once and they can grant the player Stats, Passives and Active skills but have now been reworked to be more unique and powerful than before. Relics can also be upgraded by picking up the same relics again up to a maximum level of four, increasing their effects with each upgrade. Just like the Inventory, the Stash has also been updated to work the same way. Now you can view all the items in your stash with ease. The stash is divided into personal and shared tabs. Personal stash tabs are bound to a specific character, and their contents can only be viewed and accessed by the character currently in use. Shared tabs, on the other hand, contain items accessible to all of your characters. Previously, during a season change, stashes were wiped clean. However, personal tabs now retain their items and transfer them to the next season. It's important to clarify that Seasonal characters still become off-season on season change, so you cannot retain items between seasons. Shared tabs are still cleared during a season change.

Servers

Previously, we have had most of the multiplayer functionality spread out all over the world. But when it came down to saving your online data or logging in, all that traffic happened via our main server, here at the PAS office located in Finland. This has caused issues for a couple reasons: Scalability and latency. Due to our optimization, security and validity of the online communications, the game often needs to wait for a valid response before continuing. That added up with the latency or poor connection, equals problems. To battle this issue, we are introducing account regions with HS2. The default login region to start with is EUROPE. After the initial login, existing accounts get to use one (1) free migration to whatever region they wish and new accounts have to choose one before creation. We highly recommend that you pick the region that is as close to you as possible! The regions are: Europe (PAS Office Server) Americas (Cloud) Asia (Cloud) Its important to mention that no matter what region your account is, you can still play together with anyone else. These regions also do not have their own Market economy, but rather the Marketplace will be global. Along with the region changes, account ID will change a bit to comply with that. You can see your account ID with your username in chat messages, or at the top left in character selection. Guilds and Mailing are also cross regional, and mailing now uses Account ID!

Guilds

The guild has had the same system for quite some time, so we decided to give the much needed love to this feature! Guilds will no longer be hero bound and the new guilds will now be Account bound instead, and can contain a total of 32 players! Players can create a new guild in the Town of Danethorpe from Guild Master Kranosh! Guilds will now have levels. Guild experience can be acquired by simply playing the game while belonging in the guild! Guild has 3 permission layers, starting from the Owner, to Officers and Members. The names for these ranks, along with guild colors and logos are customizable! Guild levels give Guild Perks! Every 10 levels will give a new perk to everyone in the guild, motivating even more to level up your guild! Guilds also now will finally have a shared stash as a unlockable perk at level 20, so everyone can easily contribute and directly help your fellow guild members! Stash access permissions can also be managed by the Owner easily from the Guild UI, opening by default keybind of B!

Classes

We have completely overhauled and rebuilt each of the 19 classes in the game from the ground up. Every class now boasts enhanced and innovative unique talents that seamlessly align with the new direction of HS 2.0. These talents have been meticulously designed to synergize with one another, reshaping the overall gameplay experience. We're moving away from relying on chance-based passive abilities, DOT (Damage Over Time) builds, and high attack rates. Instead, we're placing a spotlight on a refined skill system in which active talents take center stage, complemented by meticulously crafted passive abilities.
With the launch of 2.0, we're also introducing the winner of The Community Design Challenge: EXO! EXO will become the 20th Hero to join the roster as DLC! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2556720/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2596130/

Combat & Stats

We are seeing a shift towards a more traditional ARPG combat system with active talents being the main focus and passive abilities to support them. Players have the option to bind up to 6 different skills to binds of their choosing, and 2 more to the mouse buttons! To bind skills, players can click either left or right slot on their HUD to reveal all the available talents, and then simply hover over a talent they want to bind, and just press the assigned button. Button assignments can be changed from the Settings, and are Q,W,E,A,S and D as default. Stats in general has gone under a complete rework. Most notably, you now have 4 attribute points per level in addition to talent points to spend! Damage types have also gone under major changes, but to keep this post short and smooth, those who are interested can read more in depth from our [devlog]

Items & Crafting

Items have all been completely revamped from scratch. While some satanic+ items have retained their unique thematic elements, many have undergone significant changes to align with class and stat reworks, as well as the introduction of new systems. One of our primary goals when designing these new items was to make them more unique, enhancing the excitement of finding the perfect one for your character. Item roll ranges are now unique per roll, meaning that once you've acquired an item, its stats are fixed; there's no option to reroll an item's stats until you achieve perfection. An important point to note is that items no longer have levels or quality ratings to worry about. Instead, all items are categorized into tiers: D, C, B, A, S, and SS. Satanic+ items have a fixed tier, while common to mythic items have a random tier based on difficulty. This tier will determine the potential stats and their maximum values. The drop system for different tiers has also been completely overhauled, accompanied by a newly designed loot filter that enables you to select which rarities and tiers of items you want to see. Satanic+ items can now be destroyed into dust, which can be used for crafting items of the same tier. Dropped satanic+ items are now unidentified, concealing their stats. You can identify them by right-clicking the item. Unidentified items cannot be equipped but can be traded. Common to mythic items have been improved, to the extent that a mythic item with a good roll might be more valuable to you than some satanic+ items. Legendary items have been removed, leaving commons, superior, rares, and mythics. Rarity no longer reflects the power of the item but rather the potential for stats they can possess. Many items in the heroic tier have been shifted down to the satanic tier, and the remaining heroic items can now drop anywhere in Tarethiel, with an increased chance in specific zones. Runewords have also undergone a rework. They are now accessible much earlier in your journey and are designed to be more diverse and unique. The minimum requirement for items to serve as runeword bases is now determined by the crafted item, taking the highest level of the rune used or the base item. Angelic keys have been completely reworked. You can now obtain "Angelic augments" that can be applied to your chestplate when visiting the angelic realm. These augments provide unique passive bonuses, such as more projectiles, increased size, or complete changes to how a skill works. Angelic keys are now dropped by ancient monsters with the "fallen angel" Affix. Uber bosses have been adjusted to drop one of their unique items 100% of the time, but the specific item you receive is still subject to chance. The responsibility for crafting has been transferred from Blacksmiths to the Crafting Cubes located in each town. These Cubes feature a small grid that serves as your crafting hub for creating recipes. Additionally, Prospectron RX9000 is a new machine found in all towns, allowing you to grind up any destructible items, from Angelics to collected ores, to obtain materials for Crafting or Jewelcrafting. Don't forget to check out the updated Journal for the latest recipes!

Tarethiel Marketplace

We're making some significant changes to the Tarethiel Marketplace. Firstly, the market merchant has been relocated to the Village of MosArathim. We've also decided to do away with Ruby as a currency, replacing it entirely with Gold, making Gold the sole currency in use. We've given the marketplace a user interface (UI) makeover to enhance the clarity and user-friendliness of listings. Last but not least, alongside the use of gold, players now have the option to set runes as a price for items. When listing an item, players can utilize 6 slots to select a rune and specify the quantity they want for the item. It's worth noting that market taxation does not apply to runes.

[ 2023-10-02 11:08:14 CET ] [ Original post ]