Messages

496

Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Duel at Dawn Invisible Wall

« on: February 26, 2013, 02:50:18 pm »

We don't have the manpower to change the map boundary mechanic.  I'm also not going to change the level layout because that would necessitate redoing lightmapping which also takes a chunk of time our tech artist needs to do other things like making the game perform better for lower end machines.

The wall is not invisible, it is clearly indicated on the map screen.  You fly outside (and you can even see your ship icon float outside sometimes) and you will start to get pushed back.

Although I will reexamine the map itself.  I was given incorrect instructions many builds ago and have needed to go back and reformat the map images.  If there is a problem with the image, it will be patched next round.

497

Gameplay / Re: Balance Concerns & Questions 1.1.4

« on: February 24, 2013, 02:26:52 pm »

Every repair tool adds a different amount of HP and has different rebuild power, both being discrete numbers (never scaling).  The number of rebuilds required scales with HP of the component.  That's why the balloon takes so many rebuild hits because it has to much HP.

Medium guns are about double the HP of small guns so they'll require more rebuild hits.  If you have the small wrench (most rebuild power) you won't notice the difference between small and large all that much.  With the mallet you definitely will.

498

Gameplay / Re: Balance Concerns & Questions 1.1.4

« on: February 23, 2013, 02:49:17 pm »

More than one person can rebuild stuff.

Make sure your Captain is coordinating with the other ships on your team.  Your own fault for being ganged up on   If you're alone, it's pretty devastating unless you're really good at hanging back and picking people off.  I played an awesome match where all 3 captains on my team were flying in formation and wiping the floor, finding solo ships to pick on.  I was a ramming ship and my teammates would help bait ships towards us and then I'd go in for the ram. 

The 'C' chat key is valuable.

Either way, I have my eyes on the hwacha but I'm still unconvinced that it needs more nerfing. 

The small guns SHOULD be rebuilt faster than medium ones though.  Perhaps after the doubling, the gap has been reduced.  I'll go test that later.

499

Gameplay / Re: State of the Community

« on: February 23, 2013, 02:45:41 pm »

The solution to mid-match join is easy.  Just disallow it.  However, we never went that route because the community wasn't big enough to fill up to 16 players on a basic 2v2.  That's why mid-match join is valid.  Not until the community grows can we move away from mid-match joining.

Maybe after this sale we can... but a lot of it is in the hands of the players to bring people in.  We're always doing our best to support the community from a day to day basis.  Come on, we release patches every month

Language barrier is a tough one... time to start learning some Russian!

500

Gameplay / Re: Balance Concerns & Questions 1.1.4

« on: February 22, 2013, 05:12:11 pm »

Why did loch rounds get changed where it now locks the gun in place once loaded?

We were basically already there.  It was to tone down persistent long range abuse with Field/M.Flak.  You can still do it, of course.  Just harder.

501

Gameplay / Re: State of the Community

« on: February 22, 2013, 05:07:53 pm »

You've brought up a good one.  You've also presented the best solution:

Form teams with new players.  Be accommodating and invite them to the forums. 

It's only obvious in this game is because we have a very small community.  The more players we have, the less common the upper tier players will be.  You see the same kind of behavior in schools with the formation of social cliques.  This is nothing new.  It's just how hard you want to work at keeping those cliques closed from the outside.  It's hard for us as developers to mix the player base up, we can't force you to play with people you don't want to.  I mean, we're a team based game, you should be able to choose a very good team.

So really, what I'm saying is that the ball is in your court.

Perhaps you can split up your crew of 4 into 2 ships and take on new players in the open spots on your ships.  This is something we want to promote as much as possible.  The community is already pretty accommodating to people who come in.

And this isn't just to point fingers on you personally.  Everyone can do their part to make this community as inclusive as possible.  Hopefully this new forum format will help.  Everyone's forum name is their in-game name.  It provides a 3-tier communication platform (1st being in-game, 2nd being in Steam).

502

The Lounge / Re: Introductions!

« on: February 22, 2013, 04:09:55 pm »

My name is Eric.  I designed most the systems like the engineer game and stuff.  I balance all the weapons all of the time.

Yeah

503

Gameplay / Re: Balance Concerns & Questions 1.1.4

« on: February 22, 2013, 03:31:37 pm »

Well I'm going to keep pushing my luck on questions I wouldn't normally ask. How influential on your decisions was the Fjords tournament?

We already knew there was something up with the flak.  The tournament pushed those suspicions to its tipping point.  The thing is, I really hate balancing just one for one player base.  Expert players, especially in a tournament setting (more conservative in tourney DM), will use a specific strategy.  It will really boil down to the circumstance.  The tournament was competitive, so people are conservative.  The tournament was DM, so there it devolves to DPS fights.  What happened made a lot of sense, and you can still do it.  Hang back and Field Gun/Flak people.  It's much harder now, sure.  The main issue we solved was bringing back close to midrange combat back into play.  More options on the table.

When did you introduce that? Im just curious if I was using the updated Hwacha yesterday or not.

I did it at about 1pm today (2/22/13).  Check it out and let me know what you think.  Original Hwacha shots from yesterday felt fine but with Burst is was a little much.  Do the math, with Burst Rounds you'll be back to yesterday's Hwacha but nothing more

504

Gameplay / Re: Balance Concerns & Questions 1.1.4

« on: February 22, 2013, 02:44:27 pm »

I know in a previous blog post you said you didn't want to talk about why you do certain things, but I'm going to ask anyway. Can you explain the decision making process you went through for this last patch?

Also, should we expect any hotfixes in the next few days that adjust anything other than stability, or is this a final release?

Well a lot of things changed in this patch in regards to balance.  Fire has been something that we've been wanting to play with for a long time and finally got the bandwidth to do so.  That was the biggest.

The other issue was that disabling components was not meaningful.  They were rebuilt too quickly to make any sense.  So the change to that was an obvious one.

I've already hotfixed the Hwacha (spread 6 from 5 degrees, AoE 7m from 10m radius... very minor changes to test out).  It was far too effective with burst rounds (Zill, that's because of you ).  It's still a very dangerous gun (as it always has been, just overshadowed by the ease of use of medium flak).  However, I don't believe we're in OP territory yet.  Just because you lose with it (patch has only been live for 24 hours), give it a couple more shots and figure out a counter.  Hwachas have a large spread degree so keep that in mind.

And because disabling is more meaningful now... you should give it a shot in your Hwacha counter strategies.

505

Gameplay / Balance Concerns & Questions 1.1.4

« on: February 21, 2013, 01:41:55 pm »

Just to track everyone's concerns and questions.  I'll be fielding answers as best as I can.

Remember, I have a strict policy against revealing meta or any kind of strategy.  I will just give you the facts.