For the past couple weeks we’ve talked about some of the changes we’ve made balance wise and the issues we’ve tried to tackle.
The big part when we make these changes is we have to go back and make sure we didn’t break something.
SANITY CHECK ASSUALT
First on the docket was making sure all of the changes and tweaks to the director didn’t create any oddities on one of favorites: Assault. Despite some interesting tactical choices, we were able to muddle through on Normal while still facing a challenge. Very happy with those results!
We lost Every Single Friggen’ Match
In testing today. Sometimes we do tweaks and try things and the difficulty is just absurd. This is what testing is for. We failed fast this time and toned everything back for next week’s test. In exciting news, I’ve snuck in some shots of the new Yeshan ship!
NEW YESHAN SHIP
With 2 heavy guns and 2 light guns, the new Yeshan ship is a joy in the skies. This is definitely a work in progress shot, but I am in love with the helm area and the design. It doesn’t have a name yet, but stay tuned next week as we show off even more of the latest ship to grace the skies!
This is Week 2 of us reporting what happened in our internal testing! This week has some super rough around the edges gray boxed items, but we wanted to show you the path we’re embarking on as we test ideas in addition to showing only the more finished work.
This is as behind the scenes as it gets!
NORMAL VS HARD
We focused on testing the scaling between Normal and Hard difficulties. It’s always one of the most difficult areas to balance between the intermediate players and the more experienced. Strangely enough, with our tweaks for this internal test, we died twice on Normal and didn’t die at all on Hard! More testing is needed to make sure we have this right before the update and open period at the end of the month, but we did learn a lot about the tension controls that caused the swarm that overwhelmed us for Normal. This was also a bit of what people experienced during the last open period, so we’ll be ready to make some adjustments for the next update.
We wanted to start a new idea where we show what we’ve been testing. As we get close to Alliance release, we have a lot of cool things to show off and tease! We’ll be posting these up every Thursday. The format and timing may change, and let’s see what everyone thinks!
AMBUSH
First match was Ambush. This is a completely new game mode where you have to ambush enemy ships as they try to rush and sneak to your base. Despite the fiery death at the end we were able to squeeze out a solid victory!
The current balance features a tankier enemy “VIP” ships designed to overwhelm player bases. It’s perhaps a bit too tanky, but the over tension felt very satisfying.
Many new players, many new experiences, and a lot of new data!
Hello everyone,
A huge thanks to everyone who took part in and gave feedback for the December Alliance Open Session.
Also a big welcome to everyone from our Steam notification and feature. It was great to have so many new pilots, engineers, and gunners experience Alliance.
In total, over 35,000 players came in throughout the week to fly in our skies. Between all those players, a total of almost hundred thousand hours of Alliance were played, making this open period our largest one yet!
We’ve been working hard at Muse HQ to get prepared for our next test phase with a bunch of new content and some major balance changes to make a much smoother Alliance experience. Two massive heavy weapons are coming to the skies including the very requested Heavy mine launcher! We also have a screenshot contest we’re really excited to invite everyone to.
This session will be shorter than last starting on December 27th and ending January 3rd, so make sure you get in early and leave your mark on the history of Icarus.
Follow the jump to See all the notes and see the requirements for our Screenshot Contest!
A quick snapshot of some of the action we saw over the beta
Hello Everyone,
It’s been little over a week since we put the planes, bosses, and faction fleets back into the hangar, and that’s given us time to go over the feedback and data, start making changes and prepare for the December open period! The data allowed us to go through matches from close to 20,000 unique players who helped us test, 40 million effort points spent, and the turnover of 320 territories. We received a few hundred direct feedback from people, and over 150 responses from our survey. From a data collection and feedback standpoint, this was the most successful testing period we’ve had for Alliance.
A big thanks to all the players who took the time to play, test, give feedback, and fill out surveys on our expansion. That data and feedback drives us to improve the game and pushes us in the right direction.
Follow the jump to see what we learned, the parts we’re proud of, and the parts we’re improving. Also, please go to the fixes section for not only a recap of all the issues and experiments during the test period, but also for a few fixes that we’ll patch in today. We’ve moreover added a draft of the post war lore for the open testing period that we’ll add in game. Continue reading “November Alliance Test Period Post Mortem”
Now is your chance to get to see the best Icarus has to offer. Teams have been training for the chance to prove themselves to earn exclusive prizes, an opportunity to name an in-game AI and $200. This all starts tomorrow, December 3rd, 7:00pm UTC/2:00pm EST.
With so many games in this double elimination we’ll be casting across multiple streams. Watch them all here.
Your contenders to watch, learn, rise and fall with are:
Thank you everyone for a highly successful test of our war system. It was amazing to see and hear players fighting it out in a vicious fashion. What we need right now though is your feedback! Click here and fill out the survey to let us know how to improve Guns of Icarus Alliance.
We Also have some lore for the war, this is just preliminary as we analyze the mountains of data and information generated by everyone during the beta. Follow the jump to see! Continue reading “Alliance Beta Ends, WE NEED FEEDBACK”
