
Hello Everyone!
 
Here we are again with what's intended to be a weekly development update! Which day will these posts be released on? Will they move to Monday? Wednesday? Maybe Friday? You could cut the suspense with a knife (well... maybe not).
 
So what’s going on? In short, we’re getting ready to release the October update and wrapping up development on the November update. Actually, since we’re getting close to the release of this next patch let’s talk about patch notes.
 
Patch notes go through multiple revisions and usually aren't finalized until the day they go live. The last few days leading up to the release of the notes is mostly about phrasing, while the week prior is about updating them based on development progress. Our QA lead Tracie spends a good amount of time compiling the first draft based on the work checked in since the last update and maintains the list until it’s time to pass it off to others for review and approval. ZamboniChaos spends lots of time on the notes in those last few days, chasing down little bits of remaining details and following up on last minute inclusion or revision requests. Moving forward, we’re going to try and put a greater focus on explaining why certain design decisions were made and share more specifics around value changes so hopefully you will get a bit more out of the upcoming notes than you have previously.
 
So where are the notes?
 
I mentioned on another thread here that the next patch was planned for a Tuesday release (10/29) but that we were shooting for Thursday (10/24) as a stretch goal. We won't be able to reach that stretch goal so you'll have to wait just a little while longer for the update. The notes are almost approved for posting and revisions were being made as recently as last night. ZamboniChaos will be able to keep you up to date with note progress but we'll post them as soon as we are able to.
 
Last week at the studio we had more people than expected working for longer than expected on our October release. There’s no question team number balancing was… how shall we say… out of whack and we were very much aware. It took a very dedicated network engineer almost a week and a half of working on very little else to solve all the edge cases surfacing related to that functionality. I explained on another forum post a few weeks ago that we can't just add a Switch Teams button due to changes that have taken place to the platform recently. While it may have worked “better” previously, these platform changes were necessary in order to pave the way for the introduction of future social features like parties, clan support and other competitive focused pieces of functionality. The platform must grow along with the client.
 
We will be watching very carefully once the update is released to see how the team number balancing changes are holding up.
 
So I think in light of this recent state of team number balancing, I’ll take an opportunity to briefly talk about the status of the game. The discussion of removing the BETA tag comes up quite often in questions and I can appreciate why since it can easily be used as a barometer for the community to gauge how close we are to achieving our goal. Now while we were targeting to remove the BETA tag this year we aren't going to do so until we feel it’s ready and that is looking like 2014.
 
Development happens.
 
Priorities change, things break, systems need to be revised and dependencies get revisited. We don’t look at the BETA tag as something to hide behind. In fact, we embrace it and what it stands for. It’s not some sort of thinly veiled blanket term for us to take lightly or something to be used as a net. We see it rather as an opportunity to iterate upon what’s there and introduce new ideas. Many other games don’t get that opportunity and we don’t take it for granted. It’s an especially important process with our limited resources, being a small team and not having enough QA members to completely fill a match on their own.
 
I’m very proud of what this team does on a daily basis but we aren't done and to show that, as a very high level view (in rough order of importance) these are the priorities at the studio for HAWKEN right now. These are not the company priorities but the priorities for the studio:
[*]MATCHMAKING IMPROVEMENTS: Get players into balanced and even matches quickly
[*]BUG FIXES / ONLINE PERF: Make sure what we have is polished and improve the overall online experience / performance
[*]IMPROVE ACQUISITION / RETENTION: Get as many new players playing as possible and keep our current players playing
[*]GAME BALANCE: Ensure weapons, items, mechs and maps are balanced
[*]MORE GREAT CONTENT: Modes / Mechs / Maps
[/list]
Now some of these aren't possible to address immediately and there is work to be done that applies to multiple of the above bullet points but this is what everyone is working towards. As mentioned these are very high level and while I won’t dive down into the details right now, I do hope they’ll give you some insight on what’s important to us.
 
Oh, and as a reward to see who stuck with it and read this far, we’ll (finally) be rewarding the Vanguard Cupcake chassis pieces to those that own them as global items in the November update.
 
I didn't focus a lot on what’s actively being worked on for November since the focus right now really is about getting the October update out there to you. This week is the final week of development for the November patch so next week I’ll talk more about its progress since we will have passed the content lock date by then. We also hope to have some big website functionality updates to share with you soon.
 
We move as fast as possible, each team member wearing multiple hats and give it everything we have to make the game better each day, each week and each month. It was great to see the positive response to the posting last week and I hope you get something out of this one too.
 
Thanks Everyone!
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