Version 1.3.8 Hotfix 2 Release Notes

[Grixis]

Charity Tournament Update!

The battles are done and the dust is starting to settle. So far we’ve raised $15,848 for four great causes.  If you’ve like to see the battles, check out the teams, and check out their charities: click here!
We’ll keep you up to date on how much we’ve raised for charity!

Changes:
- Novice levels have been changed to level 1-7.
- Non-novice players will no longer be sent to novice matches, regardless of wait time. This means novice matches will no longer be turned into normal matches.
- When novice players wait in queue for more than 2 minutes, they will have the option to join normal matches. If they do, they may get into any normal match. If they don't, they may need to wait, but will not face non-novice players.
- Matchmaker will now value balanced matches more, as well as some additional balance enforcements. Players will be less likely to be sent to unbalanced matches, unless we deem that they have waited too long.
- System made matches (including custom matches that recruit from queue) will have an upper limit of 3 rematches, which will down by per rematch. If there are no more rematches, the end match vote will be replaced by an alert message, and everyone will return to lobby as crew forms. This will give the queue more people to draw from while still allowing players to rematch against great opponents.
- Player level in chat message will be the max level (of 3 classes), rather than current class level.

Fixes:
- Some base system changes, which would allow the bounty event to show up again.
- Bug fix that caused captain in queue to be sent to crew slot or to a full lobby.
- Teaching achievement 8 was bugged, players should now be able to to track and earn "play X minutes with level 1-12 players" now.
- Ship theme objects stuck in the air randomly are now gone.
- Wrong language in Andrew Howell (Fyraxis) voice pack has been fixed
- Image for Desert Scrap has been fixed
- Custom match list scroll bar now scales proportionally to number of listed matches.
- Spotting visibility check reverted to less restrictive 1.3.7 behavior (yes it’s still occasionally weird)

[GeoRmr]

Good job adding another thing that NOBODY ASKED YOU TO, NOBODY WANTS, AND THE MAJORITY WILL HATE.

- System made matches (including custom matches that recruit from queue) will have an upper limit of 3 rematches, which will down by per rematch. If there are no more rematches, the end match vote will be replaced by an alert message, and everyone will return to lobby as crew forms. This will give the queue more people to draw from while still allowing players to rematch against great opponents.

'we'll let you have some fun with friends after organising your own lobby with "great opponents", but this time we'll dump you back into the cesspit of matchmaking to play shit games again.'
Recruit from queue was your one saving grace from the last patch.

FORCING PLAYERS TO JOIN THE SHITTY NON-WORKING MATCHMAKING QUEUE AFTER THEY'VE PUT TIME IN TO MANUALLY CREATE THEIR OWN GOOD LOBBIES IS NOT FUN. I DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO REMAKE A LOBBY EVERY THREE GAMES GOD DAMN IT.  IF YOU ARE GOING TO ULTIMATELY FORCE YOUR BROKEN MATCHMAKING UPON THE PEOPLE WHO NEVER WANTED IT AND THE PEOPLE WHO WARNED YOU IT WOULDN'T WORK BEFORE YOU EVEN STARTED THIS VENTURE I'M SURE THEY WILL STOP PLAYING AND STOP RECOMMENDING THIS GAME TO THEIR FRIENDS. YOU WILL LOSE THE FEW PLAYERS YOU DID MANAGE TO KEEP PLAYING AND WILL BE LEFT WITH A NON ACTIVE COMMUNITY OF COD PLAYERS THAT ONLY JOIN WHEN YOU CUT THE GAMES PRICE DOWN TO NOTHING AND LAST NO LONGER THAN A WEEK.

DON'T BE SHORT SIGHTED, just because you dump us out of the lobby doesn't mean for one second we're going to join the pleb tier queue, all you're doing is pissing us off by forcing us to remake games. Thanks.

Good job IGNORING US and not displaying the levels in lobby again.

FFS Muse, why are you trying so hard to make people hate this amazing game?

[Michael Wittmann]

- Spotting visibility check reverted to less restrictive 1.3.7 behavior (yes it’s still occasionally weird)



So when will EVERYTHING be reverted to less restrictive 1.3.7 behavior?



heh slowly but surely becoming EA tier

[Squidslinger Gilder]

[GeoRmr]

Oh cool, you made the custom game button the same size as the others! thanks =)

[Mezhu]

I like these changes.

[Hoja Lateralus]

Firstly, pretty much what Geo said, +1

- Novice levels have been changed to level 1-7.

Why so low? That's barely a bit more than an old lvl2. Has game became so much easier? I don't think so. Please change it to more-or-less pre-1.3.8 lvls so 12 or at least around 10-ish.

- Non-novice players will no longer be sent to novice matches, regardless of wait time. This means novice matches will no longer be turned into normal matches.

"Only" three weeks after release. *sigh* About time.

- System made matches (including custom matches that recruit from queue) will have an upper limit of 3 rematches, which will down by per rematch. If there are no more rematches, the end match vote will be replaced by an alert message, and everyone will return to lobby as crew forms. This will give the queue more people to draw from while still allowing players to rematch against great opponents.

Similar to Geo I think this is unnecessary change and it will mosty cause frustration because people will still want to play together and they're be forced to make new lobbies. Exactly the same thing as with hiding levels.

- Player level in chat message will be the max level (of 3 classes), rather than current class level.

Why?

- Spotting visibility check reverted to less restrictive 1.3.7 behavior (yes it’s still occasionally weird)



So when will EVERYTHING be reverted to less restrictive 1.3.7 behavior?

This made me giggle. I kinda agree.

[Indreams]

I don't mind most of the fixes. I think the matchmaker needs work, and this is a step in the general, right direction.

What I'd like to address is this.
When crews are made by the matchmaker, players barely know each other.
When that crew of strangers is placed into the crew-formation, there is no incentive to stick together, and most players leave.
Players than join another stranger crews. The cycle continues.

Guns of Icarus is a team game. Purpose of the matchmaker and the crew-formation should include easing player-to-player cooperation.

As the matchmaker stands now, it doesn't seem to achieve this purpose too well. The limit to the number of rematches is a limit to this purpose.

To be fair, game lobbies rarely rematch to more than three games, and player-to-player cohesion is marred by many other factors than match making. But the match maker is still a factor.

In conclusion, I think the matchmaker could use more improvement, and the three-match limit should be reviewed. Other than that, I'm glad I won't be placed in novice lobbies all the time.

[Wolfprints]

I agree with the above, being forced back into the queue is NOT a desirable change.  Once players get a good, balanced, friendly lobby going, we want to be able to stick around in it for quite a while.  This is especially true for a group of more than 4 people who are trying to play together.  If we have 6 people playing, we don't want to be forcefully separated every 3 matches. As it is, players can choose to return to crew form if they don't like the lobby, and I think that is even the default behaviour.  Please let us keep the choice to stay in a lobby that we like. Finding and playing with fun people is important to the enjoyability of this game, so don't force us away from people we like. We already have the ability to leave if we want to.

[Sammy B. T.]

No amount of "balancing" and swapping people around will be better than finding a good team to play with and against which is progressively getting harder and harder with automatic shuffles and now automatic re-queuing.

[Keyvias]

Let me take a moment to explain why the rematch changes are there.

As I stated in another thread.  Rematch takes people from the queue.
As matchmaker is trying to create a match with 20 people in queue, if a match rematches and people leave (which happens all the time.) That lobby takes people from the queue which now means the next game created has less people (and less opportunity to balance) due to having people removed from the queue.

If requeueing it taking a lot of time, let us know and we'll do our best to find ways to lower that .

We'll definitely keep an eye on the changes, but I promise they're there with the goal of improving the system for all.  We will never say any system is perfect and we'll always be looking for ways to improve the system.

[HamsterIV]

Guilder, your fascination with anime girls smacking boys on the head with some sort of solid object is starting to worry me. Is everything OK?

Also I am not opposed to going back to crew form more frequently, however sometimes the person "in charge" of the crew form doesn't or can't start a new game search and we have had to start a new crew form. I would like an easier way to invite people I just played with into a new crew form. Perhaps a button to create a new crew form as crew form host and automatically invite the 3 other people from the ship I am currently on.

[sparklerfish]

If a lobby is fun enough for me and everyone else in it to want to hit "rematch" three times, we sure as hell don't want to be torn from it and put back in the queue.  Please no.  Continuity with players is important for teaching, for making friends, for not getting frustrated all to hell and having to stop playing...

[Wundsalz]

Regarding putting players back into the crew formation after matches:
Can you please stop tossing the entire fleet you've been with in the last played match into the queue? I'd rather like you to put the players back into the crew-formations they've entered the lobby with. Not only does this spare us the work of recreating the initial crew-formation, but it also should be easier to handle for the match making system. This way you don't have to find huge slots for entire teams which might already have a strong mmr-deviation within their own ranks, but you could distribute single players and smaller crew formations across fitting matches.

[Mezhu]

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