Version 1.4.6 Release Notes

[Lu Lu]

Is there any way at all to revert the hud? This new one is just very clunky, and it ends up blocking the component healths.  This is of course disastrous as an engineer.

[Keyvias]

@Luharis,
Trying to figure out why new hud elements were introduced.

To confirm we're seeing a different compass, pilot skills, and possibly gun and hull health. Is there anything I'm missing?

[Lu Lu]

No, that about sums it up.  The actual information it provides is nice, but HUD itself looks very awkward and takes up too much space on the screen, especially as an engineer.

[BobDoleReigns]

...After typing up yet another rant and deciding to delete its inappropriate for some of us to care so much about the game when you all (muse) don't I'd like to go a different approach... Keyvias, why don't you and a couple of the other muse people take a break, set aside a few hours some random night/day/whatever and go slumming (playing random pub matches) with the Jedi (lbh, regardless of what people think of his personality nobody will deny that nobody cares as much or is as scientific/logical about goi) and experience the grievances firsthand?

[Schwalbe]

Keyvias, imagine a situation, where the side with your friends is full in a moment of you accepting the invitation.
The invitation is sent when there's a free space left, only to be filled by matchfaker (pun fully intended) with some punk ass with voice chat disabled (because "12 year old kids", boo-hoo) or whatever nuisance.

do
{
You are getting in a lobby against your friends.
The nuisance ignores the swap invite (most new players doesn't even know they can block people individually, I wonder why), instead - getting out of the lobby. Natural way of getting to your friends is going there through spectators, but now its impossible.

So you are leaving the lobby, and either using the same invite, asking your friends or requeuing in hope for the best.

The thing is, all these three options take time, during which matchfaker may put another player - probably the same nuisance, because when not on sale, there's like 3 to 5 lobbies, and I wish I was kidding - in this spot.
}
while ( !getting in spot with your friends && ! match started && ! "fuck this shit, fuck this game" )


In case you haven't noticed - there's an infinite loop potential there. Though it's infinity is rather from perspective of time spent on fighting with this system compairing to just simple swapping through sodding spectator.



The point is, there's potential of more frustrating the player than anything else, really. People won't stop stacking and debalancing the lobbies, because of that - they will more likely be frustrated by more elaborate procedure, instead of dropping it, thus increasing the chance of ragequit.



As for the new HUD: recently I was battling with WPF. Which is an absolute bollock of technology, 2/10. The HUD currently in game looks like some shitty student like myself put to many Fill="Stretch" attributes on WPF controls. Which gives me both cancer cause it looks horribly, as well as PTSD because fuck WPF, fuck this shit who the hell in window application framework takes away the refresh command from developer to hide it beneath all the shitty event triggers and perma-references.

[Lanliss]

Muse, I want to let you know, though I am sure you already do, not everyone thinks the game is now ruined. I like the update, and can see the reasons behind the changes to spectate swapping. I loved the new tutorials, and foresee them helping a lot. Of course, all of this is coming from a guy who only ever solo queues. I occasionally used the swapping, for noble purposes of course, but I can live without it, and don't really understand the rather violent reaction to it.

Have not tried VIP, but look forward to it, although I wouldn't mind the ability for a team to vote for who gets VIP, or for someone to volunteer as the VIP.

[ZnC]

So I played VIP with the Gents last night and thought it was a fun yet competitive mode.

For those who've tried it - does anyone else think that when the VIP kills an escort, they should score 1 point?

I discussed this with a comp pilot and we noted a few things:
-In the current rule set, escort ships are expendable
-The only incentive for VIPs to be aggressive is to kill the enemy VIP
-Most of the time VIPs are too busy trying to stay alive against expendable ships

If VIPs score 1 point by killing an escort:
-Escorts are no longer expendable
-It would be more efficient for the VIP to be a kill ship
-This creates a dynamic where action is focused on assisting the VIPs
-In 2v2, a one-sided engagement can potentially be 3-0 (VIP kills VIP, then kills escort)
-Thus, games might end in 2 engagements without giving opponents chance for a comeback
-However, it can also potentially go 2-1, 2-0, 1-1, or 1-0
-Needs testing to see if victory condition needs to be increased

[Atruejedi]

So I played VIP with the Gents last night and thought it was a fun yet competitive mode.

For those who've tried it - does anyone else think that when the VIP kills an escort, they should score 1 point?

I discussed this with a comp pilot and we noted a few things:
-In the current rule set, escort ships are expendable
-The only incentive for VIPs to be aggressive is to kill the enemy VIP
-Most of the time VIPs are too busy trying to stay alive against expendable ships

If VIPs score 1 point by killing an escort:
-Escorts are no longer expendable
-It would be more efficient for the VIP to be a kill ship
-This creates a dynamic where action is focused on assisting the VIPs
-In 2v2, a one-sided engagement can potentially be 3-0 (VIP kills VIP, then kills escort)
-Thus, games might end in 2 engagements without giving opponents chance for a comeback
-However, it can also potentially go 2-1, 2-0, 1-1, 1-0, or even 0-0
-Needs testing to see if victory condition needs to be increased

I just got done with a VIP dev match in which I was the VIP as a Squid. I cheesed my way out of combat and off the map the entire game. We won 1 to 5 after losing 0 to 1 at the beginning. This map mode is extremely open to abuse so I emailed Muse about it, but then I figured I'd demonstrate. How do I propose we fix it? I'll paste you what I emailed Muse yesterday...

5. VIP scoring is awful. I tried to help my allies get VIP kills for the beginning of the game, but when I realized they weren't really interested in helping, I just flew around the map the entire game, evading and dodging hwatcha and artemis fire. I lived. I ruined the match purposely by refusing to fight, but I know how to fix it. After countless allied deaths they eventually whittled down and killed the VIP enough for us to win. And that's stupid. We didn't deserve to win. We had no team work. How do you fix it? Easy. EASY.

[This is based on a 3 vs. 3 match]
Make killing the VIP worth 3 points.
Make VIP on VIP kills 5 points. [and please refer to my previous email where I address kill-stealing]
Make killing non-VIP ships worth 1 point.
Set the winning score threshold to 15.

These numbers basically align to your originals, i.e. 5 vanilla VIP deaths will still end the match. But now it won't stalemate because of dicks (like me!). Seriously. Easy. Fixed. Fun. Now I can't avoid the fight for the entire match and still win. I only did it to prove it's going to happen all. The. Time. For 4 vs. 4, you could just change the winning threshold to 20 instead of 15. And I still say get rid of 2 vs. 2 VIP, but you could make that threshold 10. Most people I talked to tonight did not enjoy it***. I mean, it can't hurt keeping it in-game, but the frequency has to be lowered or restricted to custom games. [also, please refer to my previous email about more lobby-creator control in custom matches; Chaos needs to be able to CHOOSE maps and map modes if we're going to keep this fresh; we'd love to have half VIP and half normal matches, but we need to be able to select very specific maps and modes in sequence; please? This benefits everybody! Also, please add names to lobbies again [like the old days] so players know if they've joined a stacked lobby that was opened to the public but is actually a custom lobby.... those bastards).

***I wanna point out that I was saying most people didn't seem to like 2 vs. 2 VIP, but it's popping up constantly. People seem to like the larger VIP modes; I love 3 vs. 3 VIP, and 4 vs. 4 would be wicked cool as well, but we've got to address scoring.

[Richard LeMoon]

We had a talk about Rabbits (runner/hider VIPs) and what to do about them if it became a large problem. It seems that it can be abused (as expected), but is it worth putting in extra mechanics to prevent the practice of a boring win? What percentage of VIPs will end up rabbiting?

Since VIP, to me, still seems like an arranged honor fight more than a chance encounter, there really should be more of a penalty from running away and hiding. Once again, using capture point mechanic may be feasible. If one team's VIP leaves the capture area (much larger than the current areas) for so long, they give the enemy a point. If both VIPs are MIA, no points are granted.

On the other hand, perhaps a VIP killing an escort might remove a kill rather than gaining a point. Though this would not prevent rabbiting, it would prevent unearned grind wins. Granting a point removal may be too much, though. Perhaps VIP would gain permahull for killing escorts. Once again removing the grind win. The only sure way to prevent rabbits and grind wins would be to make only VIP on VIP kills count, though that sounds a bit miserable to play.

And most certainly remove 2v2 except as a custom lobby option.

[KitKatKitty]

For those who've tried it - does anyone else think that when the VIP kills an escort, they should score 1 point?

The initial VIP that we created had rules to try to prevent rabbiting, the Sweep Win. Granted, having 2 ways of winning like this was would be a nightmare to create and is understandably why there is a simpler version Muse went with. But having some way to include escorts kills or buff VIP for killing would decrease rabbiting.

- 2 ways to win: 1) 4 Kills on the enemies VIP ship
                         OR
                           2) Sweep Win: The VIP ship kills the enemy VIP two times and the other 2 ships - one time each. Making a total of 4 kills.

However, rabbiting can not be completely eliminated. Some people will want to hide and no amount of game mechanics will prevent that. Just like in Death Match, some people just like to run and/or hide. There was quite a bit of discussion on different ways to reduce rabbiting or changes to the Muse VIP found HERE and HERE.

For the majority, I am pleased with this patch and the way they implemented VIP. I agree with Richard on this:

And most certainly remove 2v2 except as a custom lobby option.

This is something I've recommended a few times...2v2 VIP just doesn't really work well and is why we never would host a 2v2 VIP lobby when hosting these event.

[Dementio]

What percentage of VIPs will end up rabbiting?

I can't talk for others, but for me the current percentage is 100% of my enemies as of now, but I didn't play that many VIP games yet. The only way I managed to prevent them from doing that, is to send my own VIP ally Squid in to hunt them down while I suicide charge the non-vip ally to great effect.

I thought about something similar to what Atruejedi propeses. Dying should always give a penalty, even if it is a small one, and I say that because Muse introduced that train of thought into capture mode, therefore in every other gamemode you don't want to suicide. The VIP is the golden snitch, but non-vip kills should still give a reward somehow, you killed them after all.

I also like the idea of forcing the VIP into certain areas or into one large area through some capture point mechanic, so it can't run into every corner of the map to escape, which may actually promote more Hwachas. And a Squid doesn't really need to run that far away in order to survive...

[Richard LeMoon]

Other ally?

Sounds like you were playing 2v2, which does not work for VIP at all and should be removed as soon as possible.

[Kadetti Lola Ellpuu]

I agree that 2v2 VIP would be only available through a custom lobby, the gamemode is fun as a 3v3, but is rather annoying as a 2v2.

The HUD changes seem unnecessary to me, again some stuff is increased in size so much it looks kinda weird. Instead of that you should maybe look at the chat and its scalling across resolutions (I don't think there's any atm) as it can get totally unreadable using lower resolutions.
(http://imgur.com/XKO31tV friend's old screenshot I used here before, try reading chat)

Good job on the tutorials, they were long overdue. They still can see some improvement as was mentioned in this thread.

[Daft Loon]

In game voice chat icons/indicators seem to be missing in some cases.

Captain could see them for all of us but as crew we could only see the indicator for our own voice chat (myself and another crew member) even when the captain was clearly speaking.

When visible the new voice chat indicator looks better to me than the old one.


A possibility to allow proactive balancing via team swapping - Allow swapping onto any team rated as underdog, preferably directly and with a yes/no confirmation to avoid mistakes (clicking on a player just as they leave etc) since it would leave you unable to swap back.

[Schwalbe]

Voice chat indicators seem to be missing when you are not the one using the chat.