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Messages - Keyvias

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31
Release Notes / Re: Version 1.4.6 Release Notes
« on: May 24, 2016, 10:01:21 am »
@ BobDoleReigns
Hello!
You've put in a lot here and definitely thank you for the specific use cases (which I'll get to in a second.)
The major reason that spectator swapping existed was we used to not have a system swap option. So if we didn't have the spectator swap you would have to stay there. It was basically a bug that we let become a feature because we didn't build a better tool until later. With ship and slot swapping in game though we wanted to remove something that is OFTEN abused for making balance worse and stomping. You are right sometimes people use it for noble ends, but that is not always the case, but hopefully those people will use slot and ship swap for the same end.

1.) You can use ship or slot swap, all it adds is one of those players agreeing to swap, which if the lobby was full already you'd have to anyways.

2.) If this is the case, yes, or use custom game to instantly join a lobby

3.) If there's a slot on his team open, you can simply rejoin on him and it should choose his team (in order, his ship, his team, other team.) If that's not the case then its a bug.

4.) Again, ship and slot swap are there.

5.) Oddly specific situation. You could swap yourself or one of your friends over with the swap slot feature or add the new player as a friend, quit the lobby and join on him.

6.) Yup, sometimes you're going to play the other color.

7.) Or he adds someone on the other side as a friend and joins on them after leaving the lobby. Thus saving Johnny from his apparently lonely and depressing life he didn't make it through.

8.) And that's your right. You are free to think that we have ruined the game for closing a loophole, that you may have used well, but was being abused by many players. And if spectator swapping was all that kept us from being a "piece of shit," then I apologize, we believed, as I listed above, the way to still have a use case for those situations, but if there's any I missed. Please let me know.

32
Community Events / Re: Guns of Icarus VODs
« on: April 25, 2016, 10:25:32 am »
Hey guys,

Wanted to come in and give a quick explanation of our decision to have our own VoD list.
Originally when the VoD list was frist brought to us as an idea and asked to be pinned, we said this would be a great idea and the only stipulation was that we were going to edit it to be able to make sure A) all information is correct and B) The post was fair and informative.
This was readily agreed to.
Once the post was made live we quickly something that was going to be and did become a huge point of contention, major vs minor events, which was not explained and had the feeling of impropriety to people who put in a lot of hard work and then were listed as minor.
We edited the post to simply say events since we didn't feel it was too cluttered to find a single event you were looking for with both of them combined.
This was changed back by Urz, who we gave the power to edit his posts for longer than the 30 minute period due to the nature of the amazing work he put in.
When we tried to talk to Urz about this, were we rebuked and told basically that VoD post would have this major and minor split despite the earlier agreement.
With this frustration, I made the decision to simply have our own Vod post, we even delayed in the hopes of avoiding drama that comes all too often. I will admit it was my own annoyance and frustration that didn't lead me to think to add credit to Urz for the base formatting, which if Urz would like, I would be happy to add onto the post.

Just wanted to explain some of the behind the scene drama and let you know why choices were made. I'd definitely be happy to discuss them as always the best place to reach me is keyvias@musegames.com, but I'll do my best to answer on thread if that's where people want to talk.

33
Community Events / Guns of Icarus Vod List
« on: April 13, 2016, 02:39:42 pm »
Community Event VODs
    No Videos for these events (Please let us know if you have links for any of these events)
    • 2013/09/14 - The Cogs Season 2
    • 2015/08/22 - Aerodrome Season 3
    • 2015/10/24 - TimmyB Tournament Season 2
    • 2016/06/26 - Monday Munker Madness (weekly)
    • 2016/09/23 - Sprocket League
    • 2017/07/15 - Sunset Blitz
    • 2017/09/06 - Alto Party

Twitch streamers for Guns of Icarus events:


If there are any casters/event vods that have been missed please contact competitive@musegames.com.

34
General Discussion / Re: Are You a Troubadour?
« on: April 07, 2016, 10:25:06 am »
Hey Savvey,

Sorry for the delay, I don't know why you didn't receive the last email, but I've resent, please let me know if you see it.

35
Feedback and Suggestions / Re: Level requirement to create clans
« on: March 24, 2016, 10:42:40 am »
Hey guys,
Let's tone down some rhetoric here, we can definitely disagree, but lets try to take a step back overall.

On topic though.
I think Luharis is right.
There is definitely a double standard, but I think it's easily explained. When a novice starts venting, getting salty and making stupid comments, they leave.
I mean I know I can't name the "bad" novices (though I've definitely seen many)
but I can tell you the names of the "bad" vets.

So it's easier to be frustrated with you can know basically X vet is a trouble maker and always has, whereas yeah there are frustrating novices, but the ones I saw are already gone.

I mean even we all still roll our eyes a bit in the streams we do or when we get the question "so when will you add boarding." We definitely don't think "what fresh insight"

I'm personally against a level requirement to make clan because I think a group of friends should be able to start making their mark and name as a clan whenever they're ready. I can't say I know the backstory of every clan, but I doubt all of them were "and now we are experts and will spread that message."

As far as 4 packs, their clan would dissolve after a week, you need 5 people to keep the clan going. We chose that number because we wanted it above a four pack. So the 4-pack guys actually have to make friends or recruit at least one other guy.

For names and tags being used up by inactive clans, if this is a huge issue now we can look at ways to solve this (clans with no active members) have their tag up for grabs until a person from the clan signs back on.

36
General Discussion / Re: Are You a Troubadour?
« on: March 23, 2016, 02:27:08 pm »
Yup, going through the final contenders today. Just wanted to come here and personally apologize for the delay. As you can guess a lot of work in the office around balance and making sure we caught everything.

37
Release Notes / Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove" V2
« on: March 21, 2016, 01:40:13 pm »
The carro definitely needs to be looked at and we got a great email from MightyKeb that once we nerfed the loch (because it needed it due to gatling) the light carronade and heavy carronade would go back to being much less effective. We are temporarily sacrificing the light carronade with this hotfix to stop the monster that was gatling.

We definitely want to test changes for it and basically keep a better ongoing conversation about balance (no 6 months lulls then sudden massive changes to try and catch back up.) The only reason these changes were made without testing is the effect from them was crazy too large and hurting people's enjoyment of the game.


38
Release Notes / 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove" V2
« on: March 21, 2016, 01:01:39 pm »
-----------------------------------
Lochnagar
-Increased clip size reduction to 60% (from 50%)

Spire
-Reverted turn acceleration to 15d/s2 (from 10d/s2)
-Reverted top turn speed to 12d/s (from 10)
------------------------------

3 days and a bunch of feedback later we have a couple changes to make on the fly to this patch. The biggest problem was lochnagar which we were observing being used to MASSIVE effect and players reported the same thing especially on Gatling and Light Carronade.

With this change, on 2- and 4-shot guns (the heavy flak and heavy carronade), there should be no change; they'll still go to clip sizes of 1 and 2.  1-shot guns (the mine laucher) also won't change.

The two raised problem cases are the light carronade (clip size 5) and the gatling gun (clip size 82)

Light carronade:
-50% clip size takes it to 3 shots (2.5 rounds up), for 135% base damage per clip
-60% clip size will take it to 2 shots, for 90% base damage per clip

Gatling gun:
-50% clip size takes it to 110% base damage per clip, with 41 shots
-60% clip size would take it to about 90% base damage per clip, with 33 shots

These are changes we feel were critical for the enjoyment of the game and important for further data and feelings of the patch.

This is not to say that balance is done or we're going to leave it alone for any large amount of time. This patch was simply to make sure things that were broken do not remain that way. For ships that are underperforming and overperforming in their roles, specifically the spire and the mobula. We have some ideas we want to tackle, but we want to test them with you guys first. The Lochnagar change especially we felt was too important to delay for even a day more. We will be checking on this ammo as time goes on to make sure it is getting use and performing as well as we hope.

As always, your critical eye on these changes and everything in the game provide us amazing feedback to tweak and improve the game.
Thank you everyone!

39
Release Notes / Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"
« on: March 21, 2016, 04:02:56 am »
Hey Guys,

Just wanted to say we're having a meeting the second after the morning scrum ends and we're going to look at serious problems to get them fixed asap (LOCH)
We're also going to look at what we want to test next and slower. As people said it definitely felt like we, at Muse, were all quiet on balance and then suddenly large changes. Thank you to everyone who tried out the patch in production.

Second shout out to Atruejedi for the dissertation filled with great information, evidence, and his own experiences. That document is going to play a heavy part into tomorrows discussion.
I highly recommend you put that on an open google doc and show off your work with everyone.

40
Release Notes / Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"
« on: March 19, 2016, 01:13:40 am »
Jub Jub does bring up a very interesting point on Competitive vs Casual.

Guns of Icarus is not balanced solely around any one group, competitive or casual. There are definitely some ships that shine more in the highest level of play and some that shine is the simplest of novice games. No amount of changes can make everything the perfect Novice weapons or the perfect Pro weapons, but I do think you hit the nail on the head with we are all having different conversations.
The highest tier of play is very interesting, it has great games, but it does not define the way all the ships and guns work.  It is something to always be mindful of same as with a novice player. How will a novice player use a hwacha, how will a pro use the lumberjack.

Some things we couldn't trust a novice to use and were removed completely.

I don't think making the heavy flak have 4 shots makes the ceiling less.
As an example:
If a novice gunner has a 25% hit rate
Old Flak: There's a good chance he hits nothing.
New Flak: Statistically, he hits once.

If an expert gunner has a 75% hit rate
Old Flak: A good chance he hits both.
New Flak: Statistically, he misses one.

So I don't think this change sacrifices our expert gunners. People may like the feel of the old 2 shot better, and they definitely can feel that way, but I'd have a hard time believing that the weapon can be just as effective in lesser hands due to this change.

I don't know if all our feedback is from competitive players, but I would agree that a majority of it, especially on the forums does. It is something we could definitely explain better, such as with the spire numbers. Numbers wise, that ship is the most effective at winning, does that make it the best ship in the game for expert level matches, no, but it does provide a lens we look through when making changes.

41
Release Notes / Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"
« on: March 18, 2016, 09:44:13 pm »
@Untested changes
Definitely want to know which ones we missed. I'm pretty sure they were all caught and tested.

@Loch jitter
Fixed, good catch, copy paste error.

@Feedback
We get a crazy amount of conflicting data. Showing everything means people do what happens on the forums already which is someone points to another person saying it as proof that it is fact. We've tried showing numbers before and we were told "how dare we care about the numbers we should focus on what the players are saying."
Going through the data takes a lot of time already from sorting the data for every ship and gun usage to having meetings internally about decisions we've made. Putting out all the data and then having to defend the way we see that data is another step that doesn't earn us anything because there will be people that massively disagree with our interpretation.
You can believe that your feedback doesn't have any effect, but I name 11 changes specifically that would've been in this patch if not for feedback. Is that enough for you to keep testing? That's your decision. As I said I want to improve this communication because honestly the noise between good feedback and bad feedback is very hard to filter.
Do I think we listen to the right feedback perfectly? Of course not, but remove your own feedback from the mix read all the forum threads, then double that and add in people who aren't talking to each other and just on their thoughts. Who do you listen to?
I am not asking for slack or trying to make excuses. At the end of the day a decision has to be made on these things, we have to try to estimate the interactions between the changes to four ships, three guns and one ammo. Do I think we made the right choice? I am sure enough to try it in production, but it can be changed on the fly. If by tomorrow the spire is broken, unusable, and useless, we can change it. We can give it 400 more health, double how fast it moves up and down, make it the fastest ship in the game, or return it to how it was yesterday without closing down the servers for a second.
We want to be more active in balance, we want to finely hone this game, and we want to improve it.
And we're going to get it wrong.
We have before and that's going to happen, but we want to be quicker on fixing it. We want to find better ways to filter noise and get the right people saying the important things.

If we lost some of you for testing or some of you lost faith in Muse Games. I am sorry. Our purpose wasn't to annoy, frustrate, or ignore. It was trying to improve the game. We will keep trying and keep doing everything we can, including improving the testing communication and system.


Examples of data (for Spire)
Spire Winrate by all non-novice pilots: 58.38% +3.16% of the next highest (mobula), +7.88% of the ship average, and +10.24% of ship median.
Spire Winrate by all pilots over the level of 31: 71.52% +1.86% of the next highest (mobula), +4.32% of the ship average, and +5.65% of the ship median.

Examples of emails (for the arguments side not being said here)
"I just checked out dev app for changes and noticed Loch is now '-50% clip size' and back at '+125% damage'. This is a better solution than the ones I proposed! I think you guys are really close to having it right."
"Hwacha, It didn't feel like it wrecked the entire ship as often as usual. This is good."
"First off; Lochnegar viable on light guns? Finally. It's a much needed change"
" Turn decreases will definitely make it easier to dodge behind while brawling. Increasing armour slightly would be a nice change so it can at least survive a little while longer while flanked, especially with the Squid buffs."
"I was already a fan of using the rear pair of guns on the squid so i like the idea behind turning the rear gun sideways"
"You are one step away from making it (Pyra) a good ship"


@Changes made directly by feedback from players (number of changes we made over the weeks of testing so week 1 testing vs release)
-Gravity changes removed
-Hwacha autofire removed
-Mobula's arc changes scaled back
-Spires turning changes scaled back (was much higher)
-AI should not fire the harpoon
-Pyra mass increased
-Reduced screen shake
-Squid front gun arc put back in its proper place
-Squid rear gun moved slightly
-Lochnagar went from 65% back its normal 125%
-Hwacha got slower and almost lost range because of this, but was changed.

42
Release Notes / Re: 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"
« on: March 18, 2016, 06:58:36 pm »
Hey guys,

Just wanted to comment on a few things.

First and foremost, this is something we're constantly monitoring and are going to be very active on. There was definitely a lot of time between the last balance patch and this one. We'll be releasing the final plans for that communication later. As I hinted on during the fireside stream even a player "elected balance president" to be the singular voice was brought up (and shot down, have no fear.) To help us cut through noise and provide better two way communication. We have a couple plans we're working on and will be introducing to try and make that communication path better.

These decisions mark a new starting point for us to look at in player feedback, win rate, and personal experience. These are not the final point, these changes are large and I have no doubt outlying cases will arise, but tell us the second you feel them. Tell us when the squid was untouchable to the goldfish or the flakfish has taken over every single game you play (just random examples)

Second, a big shout out to many people who tested and gave us feedback, Atruejedi, in particular, I know you may disagree with some changes, but you stuck with us through 3 weeks of testing and never failed to give us very specific feedback (which is a major reason many of these changes were scaled back.) It's definitely easy to say "screw you, muse," but it takes a lot of effort to explain where we screwed up and we truly appreciate it. I hope you test these changes in live and let us know if we pushed it in the right direction or if we need to go back to the drawing board.

For the pyra changes. They've been in for weeks, but they've been under a slightly different name.
-------------
Pyramidon hull health increased to 700 (from 550), mass increased to 300000 from 200000 while preserving all other steering characteristics.
-----------
Because we increased the mass the propulsion had to be increased. It moves no faster or slower than before.
I will take full blame for the change in language. The pyra was getting a lot of hate despite the buff and I thought releasing the full stats and having players do the numbers would make it go over better. It did get called overpowered so I guess the language achieved that goal, but it made you guys feel like something went in that wasn't tested and for that I apologize. I promise 100% tested that was definitely in.

On the mobula, those are the numbers after being reigned in after Saturday's test which you guys are 100% right didn't go over greatly. We have hopes that some other changes should make this ship play out differently in-game, but we'll be happy to eat our words if that's not the case.

On the spire, players have already suggested new flak will make it overpowered as all get out, some people say it's a terrible ship. It does have a definitely weakness to hades especially. We have some plans if the changes we made don't change team compositions. (side note, highest ship winrate in the game before this patch.)

For Hwacha, the changes have been in the trunk and we thought we felt them while testing. The data looks like it was, I double checked to make sure, we even got some feedback on it. I don't know where the miscommunication happened on it, but I deeply apologize. We'll keep a close eye on it.

Maybe we aced this patch, maybe we 5/10'ed it, or maybe we bombed it completely. Please let us know how it plays on production.

43
Release Notes / 1.4.5 New Balance Changes "When Ambush Comes To Shove"
« on: March 18, 2016, 05:04:46 pm »
Balance Changes

Mobula
-Outer top guns fanned out 5 degrees
-Inner bottom guns fanned out 10 degrees

Spire
-Reduced turn acceleration to 10d/s2 (from 15)
-Reduced top turn speed to 10d/s from 12

Squid
-Back gun turned inwards (towards right side of ship) 40 degrees (from 0)
-Increased forward/backward acceleration to 8m/s2 (from 6.66)

Heavy Flak
-Damage moved to direct hit for a 70/30% split between direct and AoE (from 45/55%)
-Higher clip capacity to 4 (from 2)
-Damage per shot reduced (115/50 explosive, from 150/180 explosive)
-Increased RoF of 2 shots/s (from 0.8 )
-Reduced reload time of 4.5s (from 5)
-Reduced camera shake

Lochnagar Shot
-Reduced clip size reduction to -50% (from reduction to 1 shot)
-Reduced rotation speed reduction to -80% (from -90%)
-Changed damage-to-gun model so that is deals proportional damage per shot until gun is destroyed (e.g. if gun has 2 shots then each shot deals 50% damage vs a gun that has 4 shots were each shot deals 25% damage)
-Changed to -60% (from 100%)

Hwacha
-Reduced projectile speed to 250m/s from 400m/s
-Decreased camera shake

Harpoon
-Added right click and hold to reel in
-Increased harpoon force to 1,500,000 (from 230,000)

Pyramidon
-Hull health increased to 700 (from 550)
-Ship mass increased to 300000 (from 200000)
-Ship propulsion increased from 283500 to 675100

44
Dev App Testing / "When Ambush Comes to Shove" -Week 3 Possibly final testing?!
« on: March 11, 2016, 01:08:37 pm »
Hey everyone,

We are testing all this weekend and we will be doing a blind and non-blind test.
Balance changes are live in the dev app.
After the test is completed we'll release the notes here!

March 12th
11 am eastern- Blind Data Test
Affected Systems

Mobula
Spire
Squid
Heavy Flak
Harpoon
Pyramidion
Hwacha
Lochnagar Shot

March 12th
1 pm eastern- Change Notes Released

March 13th
12 pm eastern-  Informed Data Test

A big thanks to everyone so far, we've made a lot of changes based on your feedback and we think we've gotten it to a very good place, but we want to put it through you guys to let us know how well we did (or didn't do.)
Show up for testing, give us your feedback and let us know what you think!

45
News and Announcements / Guns of Icarus 1.4.5B Alliance Release Notes
« on: March 04, 2016, 05:27:12 pm »
Hi everyone!

In this new update, we’re excited to unveil another big batch of new and major things for your testing enjoyment! In addition to a new map in the retrieve mode family, we’ve also added a new faction ship and 2 more faction weapons. Another major system added is dynamic weather and time of day effects that vary across different map climates. Bases are now more threatening, with defenses and a more dynamic weak point design.

We're now hosting regular group test sessions every Saturday at 12pm EST, and we'll be collecting feedback afterwards. If you have questions or issues with the update, you can always email us at feedback@musegames.com.

If you haven’t pre-order Alliance yet, you can do that on the Humble Store, and we’re working on getting pre-order up on Steam as well. Thanks for supporting us!

Once you pre-order, just send us an email at feedback@musegames.com. We'll give you a code to join us in the prototype, and you can have an exclusive first look at everything yourself and give us feedback!

Follow the jump to see everything we've added!





NEW FACTION SHIP:  Chaladonian Shrike

The Order of Chaladon have been known as peaceful and reclusive, but the pull of war and the planet’s dilapidated state are starting to change traditional Chaladonian values.  Being the mad scientists, the Shrike uses heavily modified balloon gas technology in order to support the ship’s heavy armaments on such a small frame.  If you look closely, you may see some of this gas leaking from various pipes on the ship—a common issue with this new substance.  The Shrike’s movement is and durability comparable to that of the Squid’s but with additional firepower.



NEW MAP:  Oblivion Approach

Similar areas like this one lay scattered across the world, but no route is more deadly than Oblivion Approach.  Its deep ravine cuts a narrow passage that’s too risky for most traders to fly in.  The low traffic and multitude of nooks makes it an ideal place for marauders to hide or even be used as an escape route.  There have been tales of robbers successfully making their getaway through the approach, using the jagged terrain to lose their pursuants.  Must feel terrible to get robbed and crash your ship in a single day.  Hope that doesn’t happen to you anytime soon.

 



NEW BARONITE WEAPON:  Heyoka Guided Missiles

The Fjord Baronies have always had a distinct flair to every aspect of their culture from their attitude, dress, and even weaponry.  Taking a cue from this tradition, the Heyoka Guided Missiles not only provide a spectacle to behold but also excellent support capabilities.  The missiles’ movement are known to trick enemies into thinking that shots have been missed, but with a guided aim the missiles will travel to its intended target despite taking a few detours along the way.

Use its unique aiming mechanic to dodge obstacles and hit enemy mechanical components to disable them.  If the enemy’s armor is down, the Heyoka Guided Missiles also do substantial damage to hulls.

 



NEW CHALADONIAN WEAPON:  Charybdis Gas Mortar

Even though Chaladonian researchers tend to not exclusively focus their work on war applications, many of their experiments have unintended side effects.  When trying to find new ways to disperse aerosols, and new environmentally safe pesticides, something went awry.  The dispersal method worked fine, but the pesticide didn’t work as intended.  Instead of killing deadly insects, it was better at corroding metals and gunking up intricate mechanical parts.

When the specially designed shells make impact, chemicals are released in the form of a deadly green cloud that will slow down any ship that gets caught.  The cloud will slowly eat away at metal armors, engines, and weapons.  There’s even a handy early detonation function on the shells too.

 



New Features

  • Improved visuals and behavior for dynamic storms. Sky and lighting changes give a clue to coming weather, and storm behavior varies across different map climates - dust storms on desert maps, thunderstorms on wet ones, snowstorms on cold ones.
  • Time-of-day lighting variants for some Alliance maps (Parous Glen and Devil’s Eye)
  • Escape Pods now escape!  Catch them for bonuses before they disappear.
  • Enemy outposts and bases now have weak points arranged around their structures.  Keep an eye out on which is active to deal damage to them.  Watch out for mines!
  • Tip for how to pick up and drop off Barge
  • Travel sound effects (wind noise) for bullets/projectiles/airplanes/destroyed airplane parts
  • Oblivion Approach now features breakable walls.  Choose your shortcuts wisely!

Balance changes:

  • Apollo Lens Array: Reduced range to 1500m (from a lot) and added damage falloff starting at 750m range at a rate of 1% damage reduction per additional 1000m.

Changes:

  • Better AI plane maneuverability to handle narrow spaces
  • Change flavor text to bulleted objective list on Loading Screen
  • Faction switching at match startup

Issues Fixed:

  • The brief version of debug overlay disables the "prototype" banner
  • Debug text is under the gradient background on the match end screen
  • Beam cannon fire sound effect doesn't have 3D positioning
  • Match end UI is zoomed in way too much
  • Hand positioning on the beam gun
  • End match sequence failed on Parous Glen
  • Directional hit edge indicators in the new ui get stuck center-screen
  • Misplaced smoke on boss ship
  • AI ships don't deal with mines well in clearing them
  • Boss Ship Guns Particles missing for destruction
  • Captain command UI looks too stretched on structures
  • Deploy screen effect remains on screen
  • Medium gun factory is missing Stand, and Launch Point for config
  • Exit button on loading screen doesn't work properly
  • Numerous performance improvements, particularly with regards to enemy aeroplanes</ul>

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