
Hello Everyone!
We have a busy week ahead of us but we thank you for joining us on another Development Update!
Our minor update for January was released last Tuesday so make sure you take a look at the patch notes if you missed them. We’ve also seen some questions surface about the matchmaking changes and I think this post by community member MexichanMan is an excellent explanation from a user perspective, so our thanks to him for taking the time to write that up!
We monitored the updated matchmaking system closely and made a quick hotfix on Wednesday to address the issue of some players having a harder time finding matches. We tweaked the new player handicap and the pilot ranking threshold to have more matches available but this brings with it the trade off of a potential greater variant in pilot skill within a match. Remember that pilot level is not an accurate representation of skill, so there is always a chance you might see a lower level pilot matched up with a higher level one. While the higher level pilot may have a slight statistical advantage due to tuning points (an issue addressed in our next update) matchmaking is working as intended provided they are equal in skill. As always, we’ll continue to monitor the situation so we can tighten up the experience in preparation for our next major release. Speaking of the next release...
We are targeting the middle of February for the release of our next major update and as of today we are still on target. Content lock took place on January 13 and that leaves us a few weeks for bug fixing, polish and stabilization before it’s completely handed off to QA for final testing. Since we are all hands on deck right now for this update, new development is on hold and will resume on February 3. Last week alone the team squashed 196 open bugs which is an awesome number for us and will really help contribute to a solid update! Keep in mind though that not all of these bugs will make an appearance in the patch notes since many are associated with features currently unavailable to players. Full patch notes for the update are still a few weeks away but we will be posting some articles in the coming weeks to provide more details on the bigger changes you're most interested about.
The List of Major Functional Additions and Changes Coming Next Month (we will discuss content we're releasing separately):
[*]Progression Changes
[*]Full Game Balance Pass (updated numbers and details to be provided in an upcoming post)
[*]Return of Mech Test Drives
[*]Access to the Garage Between Rounds
[*]Recent Players List
[*]Pilot Emblems
[*]Countermeasures Become Co-Op Only (plus new ones added)
[*]HUD / Reticle Update with Basic Customization (select which corner you want your radar in etc.)
[*]US-West and US-East Return as Separate Regions
[*]Performance Optimizations (client, server and platform)
[*]Squad Match Search (6v6 only quick match)
[*]Improved Team AI Co-Op Behavior
[/list]
As a small taste of what's coming, here's a look at a couple of the unique pilot emblems that will be available.
http://i.imgur.com/sUavNh4.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/9Pg3Jxf.jpg
You can catch me making a guest appearance on Wednesday’s episode of The Cockpit, so visit this thread if you have a question you’d like to see addressed and we’ll see if it bubbles to the top of their questions list!
Thanks everyone and we’ll catch you again on the next Development Update!
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