This update to Fantasy Strike is available on Steam right now.

Disastrous Matchmaking Problem — Now Fixed

For the last year and half, an insidious matchmaking bug has killed our online population, and we have only recently discovered this and deployed a fix. The problem is that if you would be matched against certain kinds of bad connections, the match would not be made (that’s good, you wouldn’t want to matched then anyway) but you would be secretly removed from the matchmaking queue, while appearing to still be in it on your screen (oh no!) and you were given no indication that any of this happened.

In other words, a single player with a bad connection could “poison the well” by causing more and more currently online players to no longer be able to find matches (until they restart the game). Those players would all think they are waiting for matches, but actually they weren’t. They would then wrongly believe no one else was even online. This belief would cause them to give up, which then ACTUALLY caused fewer people to play online. It seems that this didn’t happen all the time (hence it being so hard for us to pin down), but enough that it really tanked our online population.

This issue is NOW FIXED.

Separate from the matchmaking situation, the underlying netcode for online play is extremely good in Fantasy Strike, and has been for a long time. So it’s extra heart-breaking that this matchmaking issue may have prevented some people from even realizing that. Please invite your friends back to the game and try some casual or ranked matches this week, in honor of us now having fixed this matchmaking bug.

Facial Reactions

Last patch, we said that we added facial reactions to the game, meaning when a character is hit by something such as Grave’s super or Jaina’s yomi counter, etc, that the victim’s face is actually animated. There was a problem with this tech and we quickly disabled it via a hotfix immediately following last month’s patch. This time, the facial reactions really are in the game.

CHARACTERS

VALERIE

--Valerie’s yellow attack (both neutral and forward versions) have 1f faster startup. This is the attack you get by pressing either B or forward+B after you do the B,B (cyan -> magenta) sequence.

--Valerie’s neutral yellow attack is -6 on block instead of -12; the forward version is -13 instead of -12.

--Valerie C’s first hit now hits 5 frames later than before, though the 2nd and 3rd hit and total move duration are unchanged.

Developer’s note: the purpose of the above changes is give more of a reason to do the neutral (non-crossup) yellow attack after doing the B,B (cyan, magenta) sequence. After doing B, B, you can end with either a C or a third B, but the C choice was very fast and only -1 on block, which is pretty good. The C is still -1 and still good, but doing it now gives the opponent more time to attack before the C reaches them. Meanwhile, doing the B (yellow) ender is still fast, and actually 1 frame faster than before. That is just barely fast enough to beat throws now during its startup, like the C already does anyway (the C beats throws because it’s off the ground).

If the opponent blocks the neutral yellow C mentioned above, you’ll be at -6, which is better than the -12 you used to be. You’re probably safe because of the pushback. There’s a tradeoff now in that the rainbow ender ends at -1 on block (good), but its slower startup means more things can possibly beat it. The neutral yellow ender is fast enough to beat all normal attacks and normal throws when done after B,B, but it’s -6 on block. That’s worse than -1 on block, but better than before this patch when it used to be -12.

This leaves the crossup yellow ender. It’s 1f faster so that it’s startup matches the non-crossup version, and it has 1f more recovery so that it can be hit back a bit more easily when blocked correctly (for example, Lum’s forward+A punch can now hit it back after he blocks, but barely couldn’t before).

SETSUKI

--Fixed a bug that could cause the kick ender in Setsuki’s B attack to “auto-correct” when it shouldn’t (turn around suddenly to face an opponent who got on the other side of it). This same fix might also make her hold-B throw face the direction it should in rare cases where it might have thrown the wrong way.

--Setsuki's B teleport kick no longer completes the dash part for no reason while time is stopped from Geiger’s Time Stop.

GEIGER

--Slightly improved the shading on his face, and changed his overall skin tone to not be so shiny, which used to result in his hands looking too plasticy.

DEGREY

--Fixed graphical issues when DeGrey appears in menus where his clothes intersected his body at the waist and shoulders.

--Fixed DeGrey's ghost suddenly popping to a different position on the final frame of his winpose.

MIDORI

--Removed a stray 1f of invulnerability when Midori reverts to humanform on the ground, at the very start of the vulnerable recovery.

LUM

--Fixed a graphical tech issue that made his eyeballs sunken too far into his head.

MISC

--Performance improvement. Depending on the speed of your computer, you might have experienced intermittent framerate spikes. For example, even if you can maintain 60fps, every so often it might drop to 40fps or something for a fraction of a second, then back to 60. We’ve greatly reduced this issue, such that these framerate spikes are less frequent and less severe if they do occur.

--Fixed a crash that could happen in survival mode if you beat an opponent really fast after they enter the playfield.

--Slightly improved the load time of the score screen at the end of survival mode (it’s fast anyway).

--Fixed Survival Results screen to be a blue background instead of accidentally being white.

--Updates for text in the in-game move list:

DeGrey's f+A "Overhead kick" -> "Elbow lunge"

Grave's air B "Hurricane" -> "Whirlwind"

--The voice over in survival for the announcer saying “Metal Boss” and “Shadow Boss” is now the same voice actor as the rest of the game. Also, a more dramatic take of him saying "sudden death round" is in. (Sudden death round happens in ranked and team battle when both players need one more round to win and they then have a draw round.)

--Adjusted the sound mix. Story voice over is louder now (was getting lost against the music before), the versus screen fanfare music is a littler quieter so it matches the rest of the game, and the announcer’s various lines also better match the loudness of the rest of the sounds.

--The CPU opponents now have a better idea what their own thrown ranges are and will not attempt to whiff normal throws outside of that range. It was especially egregious for Argagarg, Rook, Midori, and Dragon who often whiffed their throws over and over from far away for no reason. Also, the CPU will no longer try to throw airborne opponents or mash the throw button while airborne.

--Fixed an issue where pressing accept to start watching a character spotlight video had a short window of time where pressing accept again would put you in a buggy state.

--Deleted the tiny squirrels from Midori's stage because it gives +2fps on Dojo (the worst fps stage) on both medium and high graphics on computers roughly the strength of a PS4.

--During the tutorial, you can no longer enter frame step mode.

--When exactly two controllers are plugged in, the help text throughout the game no longer constantly reverts to keyboard mode for no reason.

--Fixed a bug where victory poses (such as Jaina’s, Grave’s, Rook’s) could sometimes show their secondary objects (sword, bow, birds) moving around in the wrong place, disconnected from the character.

--The profile screen was wrongly showing NUMBER of Daily Challenges attempted, but now correctly shows the best result you’ve achieved this season.

--On the move list, fixed the position of the word "Super" when the resolution is different than 1920x1080. The lower the resolution, the lower this word would accidentally appear on the screen.

--When selecting "Online" in Main Menu while trying to connect to server, if the connection fails, a pop-up now appears (instead of nothing).