Official Nosgoth Forum Post

Patch Notes 17/12/2015 - Nosgoth Launcher - Phase 1

Posted on the official forum by Oghamsmith on 16 Dec 2015

​

Denizens of Nosgoth, 

Today's update sees the release of Phase 1 of our Nosgoth Launcher deployment. If you're wondering what the Nosgoth Launcher is, and why we have built it; you can check out this article for full details. 

What does this mean for me? 

Today's release takes the first (and one of the most critical) steps towards release of the final Nosgoth Launcher - ensuring that the player account systems are fully working and functional in the live environment. What this means for you as a player depends on whether or not you have linked your Steam account to a Square Enix Membership account. 
 

If you have already linked your accounts, then you won't need to do anything. The Nosgoth Launcher will automatically associate your Steam progress with your SEM account and log you in without issue.

If you haven't linked your accounts, then you will need to create a Square Enix Membership account if you don't already have one, or log in with an existing Square Enix account, which will automatically link said account to your Steam profile.

You will then be ready to dive back into Nosgoth and enjoy that delicious nectar or the apes. 

Oh...and don't forget to log into the game before the 21st in order to get your free chest key!

P.S. We are very much aware of the intermittent lag issues that are occurring across some of our servers. We have a game build in the pipeline to address that issue. We're targeting a release for that build within the next week.

​

​

Official Nosgoth Forum Post

Nosgoth Launcher - Bringing blood loving gamers together, all around the globe

Posted by Oghamsmith on the official forum 10 Dec 2015:

​

Denizens of Nosgoth, 

While our game teams at Psyonix and Square Enix Montreal continue to crush bugs and bring new updates to the game, we’ve had a team at Square Enix London developing a new platform upon which Nosgoth will grow. Introducing the Nosgoth Launcher. 

A New Platform? Why? 
Good question! With the Nosgoth launcher, we’re looking to achieve a few things: 
 

Flexibility – Choose How You Play

Smaller Game Updates

Improved communication – Especially for languages other than English

Increased Design Flexibility

Flexibility – Choose How You Play
Nosgoth currently runs on one platform – Steam. Plenty of PC gamers around Europe and North America are happy with that as they already use Steam to play other games. That’s not going to change, we love offering Nosgoth on Steam and it’s here to stay. 

However, we want to provide more choice when it comes to HOW people play Nosgoth. This applies to regular PC gamers, as well as gaming portals around the world. These portals are looking to bring Nosgoth to new players in their regions; in some cases, Steam isn’t necessarily as popular there. 

Eventually, you will have the option to run Nosgoth via a standalone launcher that doesn’t require Steam whatsoever. This increased flexibility allows us to introduce many more gamers around the globe to Nosgoth, which will lead to a larger playerbase and improved matchmaking results. 

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, let’s look at what else we’re looking to do with the launcher first.

Smaller Game Updates
Steam and Unreal Engine 3 interact in quite an odd way when delivering updates, which means that much more duplicate data is being delivered than really needs to be. This is an issue that nearly all UE3 games on Steam face. With the Nosgoth Launcher, we’ll be looking to rectify that.

The Launcher gives us more control over the data delivery pipeline, removing that weird interaction, allowing us to deliver smaller updates. We must point out that on occasion, we will still need to push out game updates that will end up being large; however update sizes will generally be smaller than they have been to date. 

Improved Communication 
The Nosgoth Launcher will provide us with a window through which we can give you the latest news and info about Nosgoth. This will be particularly useful for non-English speakers as the launcher will allow us to deliver this information in more languages than is currently possible in-game. We’ll delve into more detail about the specific languages as that phase of the launcher rolls out. 

A new game update has been released? You’ll have a link to the full patch notes in the launcher. A new game event has launched? We’ll let you know right in the launcher! A new item has been released in the store? We’ll let you know there. 

Multi-Phase Release
The Nosgoth Launcher will release over multiple phases, with each introducing its own set of features. As Phase 1 is nearly upon us, we’ll take a deeper look at that first. We’ll publish follow-up articles containing more information as we approach the release of each phase.
We’re currently putting the Launcher through an intensive course of testing. This is our target date for the rollout of the first phase. Should any large bugs be identified, we are happy to push the release back.

Phase 1 – 16th December: 
This release focuses on doing the basics right. There’s a lot to take into consideration when rolling out a new authentication system to potentially millions of players, and so our first release will focus primarily on nailing authentication…baby steps .

You’ll also see the first phase implementation of launcher news, which will initially be quite basic; but will give you an idea of the kind of content you can expect there.

This phase of the release will still require Steam in order to work. Oh, and yes; if you want the launcher to remember your login details so that you don’t ever have to type them again, there is an option to make that happen.

Future Phases
We’ll go into greater depth about future release phases as we approach them, but for the time being, these are the key changes that you’ll see via future updates. It’s important to note that these features may be subject to change.

Standalone Desktop Launcher 
Will allow you to launch Nosgoth without Steam.

New Friends System
To ensure that non-Steam players are still able to play with everyone else, we’ll be moving Nosgoth’s friend system over to our own purpose built environment that’s powered by the Nosgoth Launcher back-end. Initial functionality will be similar to Steam’s basic Friend functionality. 

New Avatars and Display Names
Again, as we’ll be moving away from a reliance on Steam, we’re developing a new avatar and username system. We’ve stocked the avatar library with a wide selection of Nosgoth art for you to choose from, while your Username is now entirely independent from your Steam name, allowing your display name to be perfectly tailored for blood sucking purposes. 

Smaller Game Updates
The Nosgoth Launcher will allow us to roll out smaller updates for the game, something that plenty of you have been asking about for quite some time . 

Last Chance, Link Your Account! 
If you haven’t already done so, now is the time to link your Steam and Square Enix Membership accounts to earn 150 Runestones! By linking your accounts, you’ll pick up the 150 Runestone reward and have your account set up and ready to log in when the Nosgoth Launcher rolls out to Steam.

We will be saying farewell to the reward for linking accounts on the 15th of December, so make sure to do so before time runs out if you haven’t already!

Nosgoth Launcher Early Adopter Reward
As a thank you to everyone who helps make the transition to the Launcher as smooth as possible, we’ll be granting a free chest key to everyone who logs into Nosgoth after the first few days of the Nosgoth Launcher’s release.

To be clear, the free keys will be distributed between the 16th and 21st of December. Be sure to log-in as soon as the launcher is up, so that you don’t miss out! 

FAQ On the Way
I’m sure plenty of you have a ton of questions about the introduction of the Nosgoth Launcher. We’ve got an extensive FAQ on the way, we’re just confirming some additional details. In the meantime, please feel free to ask any questions that you might have, and I’ll try to get back to you with a response as soon as I can. 

Let us know what you think of the Nosgoth launcher. Will you use the standalone version of the game when it's ready, or are you a happy fan of Steam who's going to stick with that?