Response to Closed Beta #1

HALP HALP!!!

Okay here it is.  The following are various changes we’re going to implement in the next closed beta weekend based on the various feedback and bugs we saw.

Interface & Matchmaking

  • Better user flow in matchmaking menus
  • More information. To be honest, there wasn’t really much before 😛
  • You’ll be able to see avatar names on top of their heads, so you should know who’s on your boat and if they’re AI or not.
  • Chat colors will be associated with your team color
  • We’ll hopefully bring in match info (TAB function in other games like TF2)
  • Many many matchmaking fixes
  • Better team indicators for ships, but also not making them entirely obvious because we heard many of you enjoyed trying to figure out who was on what team… but at the same time not making it impossible (e.g. blue on the junker’s balloon was just too hard to see)
hipster filters go!
Just some lines and boxes here, move along.

Repair Game
A lot of people told me that when they first saw the repair game they were dubious but ended up liking it quite a bit.  However, I have to mention that a lot of stuff just wasn’t in and there were definitely things that were broken.  Here’s a breakdown on all the forthcoming changes:

  • Instead of 3 hull lives (some of you may have noticed you can’t repair above 2/3 or above 1/3) we’re going to do shields/armor.  Think of the Protoss.  You can repair their shields but you can’t heal HP.  This will give us some interesting opportunities to further differentiate weapons and have ones that bypass shields.  That’s cray!  This also means only 1 hull point instead of our planned 3.
  • We hope to get fire effects in.  The flamethrower may not make it so that means explosive damage has a % change to cause a component to catch fire.  Fire causes damage over time and spawns more fire damage and fire health over time.  Basic fire does not spread from component to component though (that’s for later 😀 ).
  •  The fire extinguisher basically does damage to fires.  At the beginning of a fire, it might be a small one so you can leave it alone without too much worry.  If you ignore for it too long, the fire might be huge.  The longer you wait, the longer it will take you to extinguish the flames.
  • Rebuilding components was just plain broken.  It was too easy.  When a component is broken (0 hp) you will need to sit there and whack it (TF2 style).  Each component requires a number of whacks.  The engineer’s Pipe Wrench will be more effective than the Open-Ended Wrench and everyone else’s Repair Mallet.  What this does (perhaps with extinguisher too) is allow multiple people to rebuild a component.  Just imagine your entire crew crowded around the balloon repair point trying to bring it back to life.  This recreates the experience in the original Guns where you had to repair engines while your cargo hold (non-repairable) took damage—that feeling of helplessness, panic, inevitability.
  • Ships will have variable HP based on its own unique characteristics instead of by size class (the original plan for small, medium, and large class)

Guns

  • Several pieces of criticism on the guns.  What we’ve tried to do is make each one as unique as possible by creating a new description matrix of Burst or Sustained fire vs. range (close 0-150m, short 150-500m, medium 500-1300m, and long 1300-200m).
  • Until we balance the guns we already released, we will not be releasing any more.  I hope we can at least get 2-3 more but we’ll see where we are early next week.
  • More effects fixes
  • Better hit feedback both for your own ship as well as hitting others
  • Some indication of enemy ship/component health.  We’re thinking to show this through our spotting mechanic

Captaining

  • Adding in wind flags so you know if your ship is moving, direction, and speed
  • Fixing the altimeter
  • Adding back our wind effects (something wrong with our quality settings that kept this disabled)
  • Redoing the helm wheel a little bit so you know when it has returned to neutral position

I probably missed some things but that’s the gist of the million things we’re trying to get in.  Oh god.