In this article, we’re going through VERY concrete features and priorities. Let’s not take much time for explanations and just allow these changes to speak for themselves.

Most of them are already in the works and should arrive in the first half of the year.

Combat UI

In 2017 we introduced new combat UI which was meant to be a foundation for the further cool additions. And for 2018 we’re committed to building more and more on this foundation.

That includes many small yet impactful things:

Reload button — so your Punishers and Tempests are ready to fight when you are

Enemy power indication. If enemy’s robot is significantly stronger than yours, you’ll have a chance to pull back before engaging — or pile up with your teammates to tear him apart

Ally HP bars — to let you know if your teammates can keep fighting with you

HP bars for physical shields. You always know how much of your energy shield is left, but for physical shields, there’s no durability indication — shouldn’t be the case anymore

Targeting zoom to aid shooting from afar

Custom UI scaling — to make buttons bigger or smaller, depending on your liking

Clarity improvements like better hit markers

...and so on!

A quick mock-up of what ally HP bars should look like.

Matchmaking and fair play

We keep monitoring matchmaking quality really closely. Nearest improvements include changes affecting it both directly and indirectly:

Scaling rewards and more attention towards clans should motivate stronger players to climb up on the ladder and compete among peers, and tanking won’t be a viable option

To further demotivate dishonourable play we will add visual representation of low priority queue and keep tweaking the low priority queue itself

Ability to rejoin the battle after disconnecting should reduce the number of uneven matches

Report system should allow you... well, to report people not playing fairly

We have planned plenty of changes related to Low Priority Queue — starting with proper in-client indication

Hangar UI

Two particular things worth mentioning right now:

New weapon/robot description format. It will help you to make more informed decisions about acquiring new equipment pieces for your collection

Improved inventory sorting

Performance and stability

Doubling down on tracking crashes on specific devices in specific cases

Refactoring the backend of Hangar giving it more flexibility and stability

Manual quality options allowing you to choose between looks and performance

Sound

We’re moving War Robots to a new audio engine in Q1 2018. This should improve the sound quality greatly while ALSO lowering the load on your devices

***

That’s not it of course. We outlined the general direction of changes we plan for the first half of the year.

In the last article of the series, we’ll talk about clans.

Other articles in the series