Patch Notes - 2023-02-01

Hello ROSE fans!

We are excited to share with you our latest update for ROSE Online. Unfortunately the update was delayed for a few internal reasons but we are continuously working to bring these update There are a mix of features and bug fixes in this update.

Group Crash Bug

We have identified and fixed the group crash bug causing the client to crash for certain groups. This was largely impacting the game arena experience as once a player has disconnected from a game arena they are unfortunately unable to re-join. Allowing people to re-join an in-progress game arena is something the team is looking to address in the future.

Skill casting bug

We have also reverted some of our changes to the skill code that was meant to combat the "skill stacking" exploit. This should resolve the "skill is casting bug" which caused players to get stuck casting their skills,

Party Changes

We have made a few changes to parties to address some issues with the abuse of the party mechanism and questing. We added a new level gap limit that limits the maximum level difference between the highest and lowest party member to 19 levels. For example: A level 1 player and a level 18 player will be able to party but a level 200 player will not be able to party with a level 220 player.

First hit

We have made some adjustments to the "hitting" rules for determining ownership of a drop. Currently only first hit is used to claim ownership of a drop, i.e. only the person who hit it first can get the drop. Unfortunately this is quite imbalanced as someone can simply first hit all the mobs and sit and wait for someone else to kill it before picking up the item. We have changed this process so both the first hitter and the player that does the most damage ("overdamage") has a chance of claiming the drop.

Game Arena Limits

We have temporarily reduced the limits for game arena's to promote more PVP play until more of the player base has reached max level. The new limits are:

• Akram Arena: 5v5
• Crystal Defender: 5v5

Additionally, we have enabled per-IP limit for game arenas. We are aware this might be penalizing for players who share a location or who use the same VPN as others but we are applying this limit as a temporary measure to curtail some abuse of game arenas that we have observed. In the future we plan to implement a more sophisticated system. Please provide us with your feedback on this, if we find it impacts too many players negatively then we will disable this restriction.

Shop Changes

We have added some new options around shops, it is now possible to enable an option to hide all shop names in game. Additionally, there is a new option that can be enabled that will fade a shop once it has been visited in game.

Drop Item Status

We added a new option to make it easier to pickup your own drops. If you enable the "Show item pickup status" then an indicator will appear after the drop name showing whether you can pick it up or not.

NOTE: This feature is not currently working in all circumstances, we recommend disabling it for the time being until the next update.

Wipe Rumors and the economy

We have been alerted that there is a rumor circulating in the community (based on doctored screenshots of staff member messages) that we are planning to fully wipe the server. This emphatically not true, we have no intention of ever performing a full wipe of the server as we don't believe in erasing player progress. However, we are acutely aware of the current issues within the economy regarding the proliferation of materials and the devaluation of many items including uniques, epics and more. While we may set our sights on the economy and directly intervene in the future, we will not do so until we have resolve the systemic issues that caused the problems in the first place (drop tables, quest rewards, bugs, content abuse, etc.). We also would not implement drastic changes without communication and coordination with the community.

Stats update on existing bugs

While this patch addresses some critical game bugs (group crash and skill casting bug) there are still a few major bugs we have not resolved yet. We are focusing our entire efforts on these major bugs going forward:

- Player disconnect issues
- Inventory bugs ("item loss") and character rollbacks
- Fossil sanctuary
- Clan functionality/friends list

We will be providing a more technical deep dive of these issues for our Ko-Fi supporters in the future but the root cause of these issues are due to fundamental (perhaps even "catastrophic") technical issues in the code base that have accrued over the years. While over the past year we have remedied many issues with these legacy systems these issues went under our radar as they require a critical mass of players to trigger them. There is good news though! Thanks to some assistance from an outside expert we have narrowed down the root cause for these bugs and have a plan in place to address each of them. However, as they are deeply technical we ask for some patience as the team implements these fixes during the coming patches.

Updates:

• Game Arena:
  • Added a fix for clients sometimes crashing during a game arena
  • Modified the player requirements for several PVP game arenas
  • Enabled IP limit for game arena
• Gameplay:
  • Added overkill factor, first hitter and player that did the most damage have the chance of getting the drop
  • Added party gap limit, the maximum party gap is now 19 levels
  • Arumic Valley
    • All crystal respawn times have been set to 30sec
  • Changed behavior for stackable items when adding to storage. Adding a stackable item to storage will now fill up an existing stack before creating a new one
  • Adjusted default clan permissions for each rank
• UI:
  • Fixed chat prefixes being removed after sending the message
  • Allow minimap to be zoomed out a little further
  • Fix highest performance setting ignoring user selected camera smoothing value
  • Stop client from closing if connecting to login server fails
  • Show status effect of target under their center HP bar
  • Added an indicator for items that can be picked up by the player
  • Added back hotkey (ALT) to temporarily see names of dropped items
  • Added option to hide shop names
  • Added option to change the shop name style once it has been visited
  • Added option to disable WASD
• Quests:
  • General:
    • Fixed and reworked Looking for a Mate / Check Mate quest on Hebarn side. Talk to [Ikaness Staff] to continue your quest.
    • Added option to buy and appraise items to Pabel during quests
    • Added the missing quest dialog indicators to Pabel and corrected the wrong ones
    • Fixed quest tracker objective for Luna Gangsters
    • Fixed quest tracker objective for Akram Arena: Stand Your Ground
    • Fixed quest tracker objective for Akram Arena: Claiming New Ground
    • Fixed quest tracker objective for Crystal Defender: Stand Your Ground
    • Fixed quest tracker objective for Crystal Defender: Claiming New Ground
    • Fixed quest tracker objective for In Need of Repair
    • Fixed quest tracker objective for Arg Scavenger! (2)
    • Fixed quest tracker objective for Supplying the Expedition
    • Modified the color of Sikuku Delivery (2) on Quest Tracker to be less confusing
    • Corrected all quest icons and dialog icon for the Flying Ship Quest Suite (Rosemary Doll / Sonnet of the Galaxy)
  • Shady Jungle
    • Added missing quest dialog indicators for all NPCs in Shady Jungle
  • Sikuku Ruins:
    • Added quest dialog indicators for Kojo and improved dialogs
    • Added quest dialog indicators for Hope
    • Added quest dialog indicators for Akuku
    • Added quest dialog indicators for Maria
    • Added dialog quest indicators to Bennett
    • Added dialog quest indicators to Redford
    • Added dialog quest indicators to Catherine and modified some dialogs
    • Added dialog quest indicators to Gilbert and modified some dialogs
    • Corrected wrong quest indicators for Sikuku Delivery for Catherine
    • Corrected wrong quest indicators for Supplying the Expedition for Gibert
    • Corrected wrong quest indicators for Sikuku Delivery for Redford
    • Corrected wrong quest indicators for Supplying the Expedition for Bennett
  • Xita Refuge
    • Added quest dialog indiciators for Harold
    • Added quest dialog indiciators to Oscar Patrick
    • Added some quest dialog indiciators to Darka Khan
    • Added quest dialogs to Peppie
    • Fixed some random mistakes in various dialogs
  • Oblivion Temple:
    • Added quest dialog indiciator for Jorgus
    • Added quest dialog indiciator for Starburner
    • Added quest dialog indiciator for Serenity
    • Corrected quest dialog indiciators for Bond and modified some dialogs errors
  • Orlo Quest:
    • Corrected all NPC Quest indiciators to be the right color, they were all incorrectly showing the grey exclamation mark
    • Added quest dialog indiciators for the NPC that were missing it
    • Fixed Methio not showing indiciator progress at all
    • Some other minors corrections to make the dialogs less confusing
• Misc:
  • Added new terms of service dialog when logging into the game
  • Updated saturunes to give 100% refine chance
  • Fixed bug where a player can get stuck in "Skill is being cast"
    • NOTE: We are reverting some changes we made before so there might be side effects to this change. We have done some testing but please share with us your experiences.