Full Invasion: Osiris 1.3 - The Juicy Details news

Greetings everyone! For these holy days, during which we have to stay inside anyway and as promised in the previous article, we'll be discussing the plans we have for the next major version of Full Invasion 2: Osiris 1.3! Though we are quite happy with the way Osiris works in version 1.21, and we initially intended for that to be the final version of Osiris, circumstances changed (as mentioned in the previous article)! So, we decided to take another look at the main drawbacks of the current version of Osiris, and see how we can tackle them.

Generally speaking, the changes we plan to introduce can be divided into these categories:

1. Improving the mod's balance
2. Stirring up the meta
3. Changing features that prevented fun
4. Improved admin features
5. New additions

So, let's get into it!

Improving the mod's balance

The changes in this area won't be very massive. We're planning to change the stats on some outlying items (super light-weight armour with pretty good armour values, for example) and classes. We're also looking into changing the anti-staggering mechanism that bosses and large enemies use right now. As it stands, this feature hinders melee players the most, and greatly increases the danger level for anyone in melee range of a boss. While the anti-staggering mechanism serves its purpose nicely (making bosses and large enemies a bigger threat that can break stalemates), the impact it has is much larger on servers with a smaller playerbase and punishes unprepared new players severely.

Keep in mind that we are making another change (more on that below) that might also alleviate these issues with the anti-staggering mechanism, so we're awaiting that before we make any other changes to this mechanism in particular.

Stirring up the meta

By now, a lot of our veteran players will be used to the idea of what options are the best to pick in what scenario. Use these particular stairs in Brytenwalda, stock up on legendary shields, et cetera. While we don't want to take away any options currently available to our players, we do want to add a few more viable alternatives, and perhaps tone down some aspects of the mod that were overperforming. This means we're adding new classes (in all categories, but Elites most of all) to multiple defender factions.

One of the main things that causes an established meta, is players knowing exactly what to prepare for. So what if we introduce something that... cannot be exactly prepared for? That's why we're adding:

The "Full" Invasion!

That's right, we're adding a new invasion faction that is completely random. Every group of bots that spawns is drawn from a random different invasion (current wave appropriate, for the most part). This means you may be fighting Snagas and Greek soldiers at the same time, or Pride Demons, Chaos Knights, and Uruk-hai! Every playthrough of this invasion is unique, and will test your preparedness in different ways, especially since every bosswave is unique too.

Changing unfun features (AKA: new respawn system)

The largest drawback Osiris currently has is the fact that respawning takes a long time. Under the best circumstances, you may respawn after a minute or two, but if you die at an unlucky moment late into the invasion, you may have to wait up to 20 to 30 minutes. That's way too long to be fun to anyone, and it's a severe roadblock for many new players. So we're changing how the respawn system works. In short, the new system we have in mind works like this (keep in mind that the numbers will probably change):

• Players start the game with 2 lives.
• Players receive an extra life for every 2 defeated waves, up to a maximum of 5 lives.
• If a player dies, they will respawn after 60 seconds (not sure on the amount of time yet).
• Players can choose where to respawn, to prevent them from spawning in the middle of a group of enemies.
• If a player is out of lives, they must wait until they receive an extra life to respawn.
• If all players are dead simultaneously (regardless of any remaining lives), the invasion wins.

Additionally, we are considering removing the gold loss when you die (unless you're a hero class, in which case you'll still lose 50% of its cost like you do now).

We believe these changes will help alleviate the roadblock mentioned before, making it easier for new players to enjoy the mod in the process. This change will make the mod a lot easier, so we'll have to compensate in other areas...

Improved Admin features

We will also introduce some much requested quality-of-life changes for admins, including:

• The ability to enable or disable any class or subfaction in a faction (for events or other purposes) with a simple checkbox in the class selection screen,
• More custom maps (with names that are easier to remember),
• Adding new props that simulate ground textures, to make certain new map features possible.

New Additions

We're also adding some new stuff, just to make it all more interesting! As can be seen in the gif at the top of this article, we're (finally) readding fire arrows to the mod. These will be available to (almost) every archer class in the mod, and can be shared between players just as easily as regular arrows. Other new additions include:

• A new LOTR subfaction: The Armies of Isengard! This subfaction will include playable Uruk-hai and Isengard Berserkers.
• New elite classes and heroes for the Crusaders and Saracens.
• New legendary items.
• Swinging your (two-handed) firearms as melee weapons.

All these changes will make for a nicely proportioned patch, in our opinion. As it stands, we have several months worth of development and testing (testing most of all) ahead, so this patch won't be released for a while yet, but we think it'll be worth the wait!

If you wish to discuss this article with the rest of the community and us developers, join our Discord server. For now, we hope you all have a wonderful 2021!