Your game is dying because your server settings don't work.

[Brother Mungus]

@Developer (I apologize to the grammar pedant, i wrote this at 5 am, on no sleep and i was hyper frustrated lol.)

First off, regardless of it being an EA title, in a game that's built around hosting a server locally or dedicated, and tailoring the settings to fit you and/or your community's play style. Shouldn't working server settings, be the bare minimum?

If they don't work, then what meaningful experience can server owners create?

Instead of balancing the game for the players. Fix the settings for server owners, so they can do the job for you, by balancing their servers.

Anyway, onto how I stumbled across this.

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I've been renting a dedicated server for almost 2 weeks now.

When it peaked at 40/40 players, i realized something needed to be done about the "CastleBloodEssenceDrainModifier". because non-returning players were on the server, taking up room with castle hearts that take up 30-40 spaces.

I looked through the server settings, and found the aforementioned modifier.

With default essence drop rates being so high, level 1 hearts would take 2d 15h-ish, to reach decay.

With default resource drops, players can progress to level 2 castle heats, within an hour, but now took double the time (5 1/2 days) to reach decay.

I tried modifying the CastleBloodEssenceDrainModifier to fix this. WELL! It doesn't work.

I even tried making a private game on my computer, using the built in server creator. Guess what!? It didn't work either, but i kept trying.

The workaround was simple; half resources and blood essence drops, cost of buildings, and crafting/refining recipes, as well as, half the stack sizes from 500.

Welp... Blood Essence/Resource drops, and stack sizes being halved, did the trick... but, crafting and refining recipes did nothing, no matter the range i put into it. So i'm literally back to square one, waiting for a fix.

Server owners could potentially change everything in the settings, including the health/damage of bosses and mobs.

So, why would you balancing the game for players, instead of spending the time fixing the server settings for the owners, and let them do your job for you? lol. It seems counter intuitive.

(before anyone asks: Yes i saved server settings, yes the server was offline when i made the changes, yes i tried repairing it, yes i tried deleting save files and restarting it, yes i tried using the built in server hosting inside the game client)

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Side note: Why can't you interact with anything as a server admin? Shouldn't the server admin be exempt from their own server setting? Regardless of the game mode and/or settings? Especially when you toggleobserver 1 or 2? (I can understand 0 making you a normal player, i obviously want to enjoy the game on the server i'm hosting like anyone else)

Shouldn't, "god mode", allow you to interact with mobs? I can't swing or kill anything in one shot or w/e it's intention is.

The only difference between the two modes is, one makes you "invisible"(more on that lol). The other, makes you a being of light, that should be able to smite anyone, right? and neither do exactly that lol.

As far as the invisible mode goes...

Blood moon buff, garlic, and holy debuffs makes you visible with the red, green, and yellow outlines. Garlic actually stacks when in observer. AND! Your footsteps can be heard by people. You can't even walk/run faster than the worst horse in the game! Lol. What is that?

This game is essentially finished for the casual player, that enjoys playing, "a game", so i do honestly want to say, great job on that aspect and i can't wait to see where it goes.

But, the game is a functional mess on the server's back-end. I have to reiterate:

Why would you spend time balancing a game for players, instead of fixing the settings that allow the player/renter to balance it themselves?

Edit: or apparently mislabel everything lol.

[KillaBuns]

This post was painful to read. The EA rage is real.

[dustin1280]

Couple of things OP.
1. CastleBloodEssenceDrainModifier -- does not work, something broke the last patch they made
2. Pretty much every other setting in the game DOES work if you do it properly. Including crafting and refining

Refining unfortunately also impacts the castle heart -- I assume this is unintentional

TLDR:
Only CastleBloodEssenceDrainModifier is broken, your doing it wrong.

[Brother Mungus]

Originally posted by Pinto:

This post was painful to read. The EA rage is real.

Yeah, sry, I wrote this at like 5 am after getting so frustrated trying to find workarounds.

[Brother Mungus]

Originally posted by dustin1280:

Couple of things OP.
1. CastleBloodEssenceDrainModifier -- does not work, something broke the last patch they made
2. Pretty much every other setting in the game DOES work if you do it properly. Including crafting and refining

Refining unfortunately also impacts the castle heart -- I assume this is unintentional

TLDR:
Only CastleBloodEssenceDrainModifier is broken, your doing it wrong.

Please explain, "doing it right?" With crafting and refining. I'm so frustrated with it.

[Brother Mungus]

Originally posted by ZER0 %K:

if you want the blood to drain faster you need to change refinement rates to max. Because castle heart "refines" blood. But it will also speed up furnaces, tanning etc

That's probably unintended. I'll check that. Thank you.

[dustin1280]

Originally posted by Omnisapient:

Please explain, "doing it right?" With crafting and refining. I'm so frustrated with it.

I host my own dedicated server so I can only explain in in terms of hosting my own server, you will likely have to talk to the support team for whoever is hosting your server for complete resolution... But this is how it works for my server:
There are three important files involved here:
1. Batch file to start server
2. ServerHostSettings.json
3. Your custom preset settings file


* The batch file to start the server looks at two key factors:
1. Server name
2. Save name

* The ServerHostSettings.json has they key factors:
1 . The same save name specified in the batch file
2. The "GameSettingsPreset" entry, here you specify the name of the custom preset settings file above which is located in (...VRisingDedicatedServer\VRisingServer_Data\StreamingAssets\GameSettingPresets)
- Said file has all the server configuration tweaks and rules, this file is VERY particular about spacing and formatting.

So you run the batch file, it loads your world name and your save file, then looks at the ServerHostSettings which confirms your save file and tells the game where to look for server configuration file (GameSettingsPreset).

As long as everything is properly setup in that chain of data, all config rules work except for CastleBloodEssenceDrainModifier

[Brother Mungus]

Originally posted by dustin1280:

Originally posted by Omnisapient:

Please explain, "doing it right?" With crafting and refining. I'm so frustrated with it.

I host my own dedicated server so I can only explain in in terms of hosting my own server, you will likely have to talk to the support team for whoever is hosting your server for complete resolution... But this is how it works for my server:
There are three important files involved here:
1. Batch file to start server
2. ServerHostSettings.json
3. Your custom preset settings file


* The batch file to start the server looks at two key factors:
1. Server name
2. Save name

* The ServerHostSettings.json has they key factors:
1 . The same save name specified in the batch file
2. The "GameSettingsPreset" entry, here you specify the name of the custom preset settings file above which is located in (...VRisingDedicatedServer\VRisingServer_Data\StreamingAssets\GameSettingPresets)
- Said file has all the server configuration tweaks and rules, this file is VERY particular about spacing and formatting.

So you run the batch file, it loads your world name and your save file, then looks at the ServerHostSettings which confirms your save file and tells the game where to look for server configuration file (GameSettingsPreset).

As long as everything is properly setup in that chain of data, all config rules work except for CastleBloodEssenceDrainModifier

Yeah, I'm hosting through gportal personally. But I'll need to contact them and ask if they have access to these things for the renter or if I need them to send it to me.

I really appreciate this dude! Thank you!

[dustin1280]

One more tip, this is what my Server config file looks like:

"GameModeType": "PvE",
  "RelicSpawnType": "Plentiful",
  "CastleHeartDamageMode": "CanBeDestroyedOnlyWhenDecaying",
  "CastleDamageMode": "Never",
  "BloodBoundEquipment": false,
  "Death_DurabilityFactorLoss": 0.25,
  "Death_DurabilityLossFactorAsResources": 0.0,
  "DeathContainerPermission": "Anyone",
  "CanLootEnemyContainers": true,
  "TeleportBoundItems": true,
  "InventoryStacksModifier": 1.0,
  "CastleDecayRateModifier": 1.0,
  "CastleBloodEssenceDrainModifier": 0.5,
  "BuildCostModifier": 1.0,
  "RecipeCostModifier": 1.0,
  "CraftRateModifier": 2.0,
  "ResearchCostModifier": 1.0,
  "RefinementCostModifier": 1.0,
  "RefinementRateModifier": 1.0,
  "ResearchTimeModifier": 1.0,
  "DismantleResourceModifier": 1.0,
  "ServantConvertRateModifier": 1.0,
  "RepairCostModifier": 1.0,
  "AnnounceSiegeWeaponSpawn":  false,
  "SunDamageModifier": 2.0,
  "ClanSize": 10,
  "DurabilityDrainModifier": 0.5,
  "DisableDebugEvents": false,

  "CastleStatModifiers_Global": {
    "TickPeriod": 5.0,
    "DamageResistance": 0.0,
    "SafetyBoxLimit": 1,
    "TombLimit": 12,
    "VerminNestLimit": 4,
    "CastleLimit": 2,
	
	},
	
  "UnitStatModifiers_Global": {
    "MaxHealthModifier": 1.0,
    "PowerModifier": 1.0
  },
  
  "UnitStatModifiers_VBlood": {
    "MaxHealthModifier": 1.0,
    "PowerModifier": 1.0
  },

}

I originally modified the CastleBloodEssenceDrainModifier in the file thinking it would do something, but that broke in one of the recent patches so it no longer works.
If you increase the refinement rate speed, that will also increase how quickly your castle blood essence gets drained, so keep that in mind.

BTW my file is customized specifically for the commands I might want to tweak at some point. There are actually numerous server configuration settings that I don't even have in my config file, because I have no intention of ever using said settings.

EDIT:
Looks like this weeks patch fixed the refining issue with bloodessence drain? good to know.

[tassadarsf]

Messing with private games, I've found that crafting and refining cost adjustments simply don't work at all or as intended. Crafting cost reduction DOES WORK, but only for the player crafted items via the tab menu.

Refining and crafting speed adjustments do work. Prior to this week's patch, refining speed adjustments also effected blood essence use on the castle heart, but they fixed that.

It appears that blood essence drain and castle decay speed adjustments do work as intended.

Notably, this is for me playing personally on a private game (not a dedicated server) using the settings menu in game before starting and messing with the settings file in the save folder.

While I'm fairly confident the settings in the save are a duplicate of that used for dedicated server settings, there may be plenty of other things wrong on the server backend that are interfering with other things.

Edit: One thing I did notice messing with the settings file. Individual objects in game have their own instance of settings application. I noticed this with equipment. I made a bone sword, had about +5 physical damage. Exited the game and adjusted the equipment strength modifier to 5.0, went back in and found the damage modifier unchanged. However, making a new sword had the increased bonus of about +25.

What this might mean is that, for castle heart decay changes, changes to the settings file made after creating a particular castle heart might not impact that particular one, but it likely will impact newly created castles.

[ferncamper]

I must agree with the post creator. And for all those of you who try telling that other server settings work just fine you are wrong. Once creaated a local private server I noticed that it start beeing more work than fun to play this game TONS OF USELESS GRIND!
Oh and before you complain blablaiblub... and so on... I already easen the settings and increased harvest stettings and loot settings because from my long years experience I know that games are not designed any longer for having fun and/or for people who do work ... they are mostly designed for workless freaks without RL goals complaining after one week playing thata there isnt anythhing left todo.... so... I always tweak my servers to more worker friendly settings so that I dont feel like a working slave after a 10h day.
But even with this corrected settings the game feelt horible grindy and many of the bosses are redicoulsly hard or even not possbile to kill solo, only if you are 15-20 level hihgher which should not be the sense of the game.... so I tried to edit the settings again ...

First horible thing was to find the serversettings... and beleve me there are plenty of them in several different locations... very chotic like someone comming directly from university without programming experience has desinged the folder structures... i found at least 3 server-setting files....

When I then start to figure out which one is the right one I didnt found any good documentation of it which is also very bad at least the developers should havae a web-site for server administrators with very good and detailed guides hof to modify the server settings... but i only found web-sites which clearly are only desinged to throw advertisments at the viewer instead of giving helpfull information.

At least I try correct the following settings in all 3 files i found:
- Helath of the character
- physical and cast power of the character
- health and power of the v_bloods
- harvest multiplier

None of them worked. It seems that once the server has started all settings are burned in stone and are not any longer changeable...

Very bad

[dustin1280]

Originally posted by ferncamper:

...None of them worked. It seems that once the server has started all settings are burned in stone and are not any longer changeable...

That is a private server issue and there is a specific way you need to resolve private server (not dedicated) configuration changes.

https://steamah.com/v-rising-how-to-edit-your-private-server-settings-correctly/

[Brother Mungus]

Originally posted by dustin1280:

Originally posted by ferncamper:

...None of them worked. It seems that once the server has started all settings are burned in stone and are not any longer changeable...

That is a private server issue and there is a specific way you need to resolve private server (not dedicated) configuration changes.

https://steamah.com/v-rising-how-to-edit-your-private-server-settings-correctly/

Dude you're seriously a godsend for providing this information. I literally can't thank you enough for the help, and providing info that a lot of us are having issues with. I've honestly received more help from you than GPortal over this issue.

I haven't had time yet to be able to fix my server's issues, but i will definitely be trying it later tonight. thank you!

[ferncamper]

Originally posted by Omnisapient:

Originally posted by dustin1280:

That is a private server issue and there is a specific way you need to resolve private server (not dedicated) configuration changes.

https://steamah.com/v-rising-how-to-edit-your-private-server-settings-correctly/

Dude you're seriously a godsend for providing this information. I literally can't thank you enough for the help, and providing info that a lot of us are having issues with. I've honestly received more help from you than GPortal over this issue.

I haven't had time yet to be able to fix my server's issues, but i will definitely be trying it later tonight. thank you!

Wish I could say the same but this was one of the useless guides I already found because i was not sure which setting-file i should modify ... i followed this strange path, which is, like I already mentioned a total rng one , why isnt that like with any other software all under the steamapp/common ? Or at least if its user based in the user/document ... but no it needs to be a completely chotic random choosen paath.... but dont worry other developers did the same... for no reasons.... to make it short... modifying the file mentioned under the link doesnt do anything for me at all...

[dustin1280]

Originally posted by ferncamper:

Wish I could say the same but this was one of the useless guides I already found because i was not sure which setting-file i should modify ... i followed this strange path, which is, like I already mentioned a total rng one , why isnt that like with any other software all under the steamapp/common ? Or at least if its user based in the user/document ... but no it needs to be a completely chotic random choosen paath.... but dont worry other developers did the same... for no reasons.... to make it short... modifying the file mentioned under the link doesnt do anything for me at all...

Except the guide is accurate and works (for private servers)

If it didn't work for you, there is a good chance you did something wrong.

[Uzmari]

This is one of the biggest problems, no one wants to be on a dead server, after 2-3 days servers die rapidly dude to new players not being able to find building plots, at least that’s how it is on pvp servers. Even with the 1 hour immunity I’m not able to find building plots