Posted 31 May 2013 - 11:06 AM

Ask the Devs #39

UI 2.0



`Mech's and Mechbay

Weapons & Loadouts

Maps/Environment:

Gameplay/Game modes/Meta

Cockpit, HUD & Customizations

Miscenalleous

Forum/Website/Sales, Events and Tournaments:

Some players have asked - ‘’why wasn’t my question answered?’’ We receive an average of 200 questions for each ATD! We do our best to select a range of questions that will result in the the most informative ATD.A: Eventually we would love this to happen. There’s a lot of architecture work, engineering, and web development to make this a go. I don’t expect this to be done in 2013, as we have other aspects of the game to finish first.A: There are always limits. We won’t know the final limits for a little while yet. It’s a balance between reasonable space and aesthetics.A: Yes, we plan to address the HUD after launch, adding some new features, and allowing custom colors.A: With UI 2.0 yes.A: Yes! And yes! We’re going to be showing of the new group/pre-launch (lobby) screens very soon.A: A limitation of our current architecture prevents us from selling bundled goods. The new store will replace the weekend sales we currently run with daily, weekly, and other event sales. Players will be able to see when and how long an item will be on sale for. The new system will allow us to put items on sale for smaller time frames, down to the minute if we want. The best part – no more sales downtime! Yay!A: A mech yes!A: Each mech is designed to be have strengths and weaknesses. This can take the form of lager hit boxes or geometry, along with harpoints and quirks.A: There is no official timeline. The art team squeezes them in when they have extra time.A: They all get quirks, we’re slowly going back in time adding them to each mech.A: Not so far.A: We’re going to be tuning each chassis in the future to address some of the less useful variants.A: Eventually we plan to increase the speed cap, until then the ranges are going to stay the same. There is still quite a variance of 2x from light to assault.A: No plans.A: Yes we track usage.A: Yes we have, but have elected to balance them differently. Currently the splash damage on all missiles is set to 5cm (effectively removing it) and will investigate if it should change any further in either direction.A: Vectored jumpjets have been discussed.A: At this time, no. But we have discussed an equipment hardpoint.A: Armor values are based off the TT values.We do not plan to convert modules or consumables to equipment, as they are designed to be layered and balanced on top of the standard BattleTech rules founds in MechLab. We’re looking at separating modules and consumables, giving both their own separate space rules. And yes we are adding more modules and consumables as time goes on. It is also our intention to make players make a conscious decision as to which modules/consumables to bring to the battlefield, and not necessarily bring everything but the kitchen sink.A: We made arm lock default because most new players have an easier time learning how to pilot their mech. With UI 2.0 and Training Grounds, players will undergo a tutorial which teaches them how to toggle this on and off.A: No further news on this thought process. If we reject it, I’ll let you know.A: Eventually, as the timeline allows for it.A: No plans to do so at this time.A: We’ll be reviewing this with the HUD rework after launch.A: Yes. We’re tuning right now, expect tweaks mid-June to bring it in line a bit. More details forthcoming.A: While nothing specific is coming at the moment, we’re going to be coming full circle on weapons soon, where beams will be looked at and tweaked if necessary.A: We have an Island Urban map in production right now. Due out late summer/early fall.A: This feature is being worked on and will debut very soon (June/July).A: We removed it for performance reasons. Our engineering team is looking at it, fixing some bugs and performance related issues. Once fixed, expect to see it come back provided it does not impact performance on min-spec machines.A: We’re adding some new movement code that will make mechs behave more realistically when traversing rolling terrain. Once in, we can examine adding water friction if we feel it will add a benefit to gameplay.A: It’s on our list of to do maps!For now we are following the timeline closely. We may loosen that restriction if necessary, but I don’t see that happening in the short term.A: It’s doable, however it would significantly up the number of calculations needed to be done per frame on the server, thereby reducing server performance and increasing network traffic.A: The average amount of FF damage done per player per match is less than 5 dmg. The amount of damage being done is far less than even we thought, which is encouraging. I like the FF indicator, we can look at putting up an X or something indicating do not fire along with an audio queue when dmg is done.A: No plans to rush this, we have lots of other features queued up first. Once launch is out of that way, we can reintroduce collisions to the test servers and balance them before going live.A: The latter is being worked on. Also, the new lance interfaces currently on live servers, allow the Company Commander to quickly reorder players in to different lances.A: It’s something we can look at after launch.A: We’re looking at different ways to improve balance. Nothing specific to talk about just yet.A: We’re looking at making this an easy in-game toggle in addition to the current toggle via config menu.A: You are reward for collecting resources, not capturing resource points. We are discussing internally whether we should add a cap reward.A: Lobbies will show up after UI 2.0 is out in the wild.A: Yes.A: We are working on refactoring in game rewards to be more granular and role/group/faction based.A: Achievements will most likely start at 0.A: With Community Warfare yes.A: We’re discussing moving these lights to the HUD.A: Yes.A: It’s on our list of graphical additions.A: After launch we plan to refactor parts of the HUD. This is on a list of improvements along with color options etc.A: We show everyone’s Dead/Alive/Disconnected status in the player list. Can you expand on that thought?A: It’s getting adjusted to be similar. It’s Paul’s favorite mech, so I made sure everyone could kill him more easily.A: I’ll ask the team what they think.A: The tools team is working on another feature right now, however this IS on the short list.A: Yes. The engineering team is working on this now. Similar to the HUD bug, this is an issue deep within CryEngine.A: Yes, eventually we will have an API for players to get access to stat information.A: Eventually.A: We’re doing an analysis now.A: I’m going to delay answering this until we get closer to launch. We plan to use the test servers to help determine what this ultimate looks like. Stay tuned.A: We actually tune the game with each patch. We do not foresee patching any more than 2x per month at this time.A: Probably not. The client/server nature of our game requires some pretty secure handshaking when dealing buying/selling/equipping BattleMechs. I will ask though.A: Yes, sometime in 2014.A: I would expect something cool for launch.A: All of the above can happen and has. We have an extremely aggressive release schedule, one that sees a feature completed no more than 4 weeks ahead of going live. We’ve been working towards increasing this gap to allow for better testing and soak time. A new set of test servers will come online in the next 4 weeks. These will allow us to test major features and minor tuning adjustments at scale. Scale meaning player loads similar to our production servers. Between IGP and PGI we have finite resources and hardware. It’s almost impossible for us to replicate live conditions at scale. A lot of issues only rear their heads when we have 1,000s or 10,000s of players playing. With each month that goes by, we are able to improve our processes, and testing to improve quality and delivery of contentA: I would expect an MC sale around the same time as last year, all things being equal.A: It’s a great idea and one that’s been tossed around internally. Once we get to launch and beyond, we’ll have more time on our hands to run bigger community events. Right now the team is charging hard towards getting the last major game features in.A: We’re moving them to a new home on the website. They should make a return in the near future.A: As you can imagine we get lots of feedback, some more qualified than others. We weigh community feedback carefully against our design goals, long term plans, and telemetry. Often what is perceived to be an issue, say Win by Capture in Assault, is not actually as big of an issue. When design goals, planning, feedback, and telemetry align to say something needs adjusting, we jump on that quickly.