- All the Trials are Champions! Give them a try if you missed them the first time around! You have to buy them to get the XP boost though.
I echo previous comments on how much this was needed. About time.
- Weapon tuning and Bug fixes round out this patch.
This is probably the best part of this patch.
Gameplay
- 12 players pre-made group launch is 1st Person View only.
- Match making ELO and Weight Class thresholds narrowed down. NB: These changes will not affect 12 player groups.
- The longer a match took to kick off, the broader the range the MM uses in terms of matching ELO and weight class.
- This reduction means that the MM will no longer search as broad a spectrum over time (still increases but in a narrower range). It will be much more refined in terms of how much variance will be given in matching players and 'Mechs.
- Match making timeout increased to 3 minutes.
- This allows the MM more time to find players before terminating its search.
Any matchmaker adjustments for pugging are greatly appreciated. Hope it works well when we go live.
Weapons
- AC/2
- Heat scale multiplier reduced from 1.0 to 0.6.
Will have to test this in game. Otherwise does not seem like it will do anything to fix the actual bug besides a bandaid to lessen the impact of the bug.
- UAC/5
- CD changed to 1.5 (same as AC/5).
- Jam rate increased to 20% (up from 15% but still down from 25%).
Expected and predicted by most of the forum. Nice that you listened, but still would be cool if you could have given it a burst fire like many people wanted to make it more unique.
- Flamer
- Range increased to 90m (up from 64m).
- Heat impulse balance so target takes more heat than player (heat generated on target increased and self generation decreased).
Great! Love that the flamer is receiving some positive treatment. Hopefully we will be able to make an enemy shutdown instead of only being able to get them to 90% heat in the near future. Will have to test to see how it is in terms of heat generation though.
Front End
- Added a credits button to the login screen.
Nice that the founders have something to show for now besides their founder mechs. Will be interesting to see how many people founded this game.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue where users are experiencing severe heat from the center volcano area in Terra Therma.
Weird. I thought this was intended. Maybe you should revert this to make the central lava pool more of a hazard than just another puddle to walk over with minimal damage received. Will have too see whether the heat decrease is too much before I comment any further.
- Fixed an issue where the lava in Terra Therma is causing unintentional damage to Mechs.
Could you explain this a little bit? Do you mean that more damage then necessary was being added to mechs? Were they getting damage in unexpected places beyond the typical areas (legs and center torso i think)?
- Fixed a number of stuck bugs in Forest Colony, Frozen City, and Terra Therma.
Always great to fix these bugs. They always are annoying, great job on this one.
- Fixed an issue where the 3rd Person drone appears to have weapon collision to the user firing.
Interesting. Never have seen it happen before. Anyone have a pic of this happening? Anyway, nice that this is fixed.
- Fixed an issue where the spectator will remain in 1st person view when spectating a 'Mech in 3rd person view.
Your kidding, right? You said right from the beginning of the 3rd person view discussion that a spectator would always be stuck in first person view whether or not the pilot was using it to avoid spectators from calling out people's position without the pilot having to look themselves. Now, a pilot could just stay in 3rd person view and have a spectator on their team help them out with spotting. I guess PGI felt that spectators would get no benefit from spectating in 3rd person so they went back on their original position once again. Hopefully I am wrong and this won't get abused as much as I think it will.
- 3rd Person drone will no longer spawn in Testing Grounds for the dummy 'Mechs.
This probably is so the newbies that visit the testing grounds won't shoot at the drone thinking that it is destroyable. Good move until PGI makes the drone destroyable. Whether or not this will ever happen is debatable.
- UAV should no longer interfere with the 3rd Person camera by snapping camera back and forth when launching an UAV.
This is a nice bug fix that should help with some of the camera snapping besides the general movement snapping
- Fixed an issue where PPC is still colored yellow when aiming at a 'Mech below 90m.
This might help with some confusion on when a mech is inside the min range.
- Gauss Rifle will no longer charge when out of ammo.
Was fun to spam the charge bar for the funny sound effects clipping, but this was needed.
- Fixed key hold repeat issue for Backspace in chat windows.
Awesome! This will help immensely with accidental chat spam, especially in combat. Wonder how hard it was to fix this because it wasn't supported by Cry engine ...
- Fixed chat messages being cut off in chat windows.
Great! Very annoying if you had a list of mechs in one location and half your message gets cut off. Hope it works as advertised now.
- Fixed the Hunchback Founder 'Mech colour.
Doesn't really affect me, but I'm guessing that the founder people will be happy with this news.
- Fixed an issue where users could not colour all three channels on the Hunchback Founder 'Mech.
See above.
- Fixed an issue where shooting a specific point on the destroyed actuator of a Blackjack's side torso will damage the opposite side torso.
Always nice to see fixes for hitboxes. Wonder how on earth hitboxes for the other side of the mech could exchange damage to the other side if they aren't touching. I'll probably look into blackjack hitboxes later.
- Fixed an issue where certain users were seeing blue tree sprites in the Forest Colony maps.
Will improve new players relations that are going through the tutorials massively. Nice to see this fixed.
- Fixed an issue where shadows would flicker depending on the angle of the camera.
Any flicker reduction is appreciated. Great to see this fix.