Anyone have the upcoming buildnotes?

[Vash]

When I logged in earlier in the evening I noticed the News window had a blurb about Thursday's buildnotes being available later on (the 15th).

It's now 5am CST and they havent updated the little update window, so I was wondering if they posted them on the beta site? If they have, would someone mind posting the list here? I still cant access the stupid beta pages :P~


Thanks in advance!

[Sarah Jinstar]

Not yet Vash, the're still not there as far as I can see. If I happen to come across them I'll post em for ya tho! ;)

[Vash]

Ah thanks Sarah, I appreciate it :)

In the mean time, I'm going to (try to) get some sleep. :zzz:
(have I mentioned that I love these smilies? hehe)

[Sarah Jinstar]

Anytime Vash not a problem. Sleep well! Hopefully get my discs today so I can join all you exclusive guys in there!

[Vash]

A little afternoon bumpage, just incase :)

[Sarah Jinstar]

Partial list for ya Vash taken from Dave's producer update. I'll post the full list when its available but I figured this would tide you over.
Recently fixed (tomorrow's patch):

a) Heavy armor (tanks and such) are pretty much immune to small-arms fire now. That makes them much more fearsome on the battlefield. Their weapons and turret speeds were also improved somewhat to make them a bit more intimidating.

b) We did major map revisions based on the gameflow that we'd seen in the last couple of weeks. More chokepoints were added so that more battles should occur away from the facilities. We'll be watching that avidly.

c) VS weapons got a lot of attention. There were some bugs that were gimping a couple things, and some improvements were made in other areas. The VS are close to balanced now, but we still have a few things to tweak.

d) We improved player statistics so that you can more accurately see how many types of armor you've killed, how many vehicles, how many bases you've capped (or assisted capping), etc.

e) We've improved vehicle collision logic so that light vehicles take damage when ramming things, but heavy vehicles can pretty much just plow through things.

f) Fixed a bunch of compatibility issues with GeForce, ATI, and Matrox cards. (Matrox Parhelia actually runs pretty dang fast now.)

g) Fixed the grief system to allow accidental griefers (folks who only grief occasionally) a lot more leeway. Also, the system is set up to dissipate grief faster and to cap the amount of grief that can be done through a single accident.

h) Huge front-end screen improvements. All the beginning screens got a major facelift.

i) VoiceIP was added to the game via TeamSound. It's built-in now, so as long as you have a functional microphone, you should be able to communicate with any of your squadmates.

j) Battle plans are added for Command Rank 3. With this ability, you can actually draw lines and add text to your overhead map, real-time, and your squadmates will see that information as you lay it down. This adds a great deal that you can do as a Commander and makes commands very visual.

Stuff still to come in the next week or two:

1) The phantom hacker fix (finally!)

2) Implant improvements

3) Facility link ability improvements.

4) Medic improvements.

5) Continued weapon balancing.

6) Sharing xp for squads across a continent

7) VR Training improvements

8) Off-line training modules

9) Weather improvements

10) More...but the changes get too detailed and minor for a list like this to cover. ;)

So...lots here (as of tomorrow) and more to come. And release is a mere month away. Can't wait.

[Vash]

Yeah I just saw that :) Sounds pretty good hehe

Thanks Sarah!

[Sarah Jinstar]

You're very welcome, certainly sounds like a huge list of great features, including built in voice, and a tossed bone to those looking to be commanders.

Heres to hoping the mailman likes me tomorrow as after reading this I'm just all the more excited to get in there. Lots of good stuff! :love:

[Rogue]

:drools: I can hardly wait

[JonnyK]

what's phantom hacking? are they not going to let infiltrator suits hack or what does that mean

[Tieom]

Phantom hacking = one infiltrator going around a continent hacking all the empty bases with no battles and getting mad XP.
It's pretty stupid, and apparently a big thorn in the Dev's side(s).

[JonnyK]

so what can they do about it? make it so you don't get ex. till the thing actaully turns your way? or do they even get points right away from hacking?

[Deadlock]

theyll send a mild electrical shock thru ur keyboard every time u try to do it

[Mephistroth]

psh phantom hacking, thats pretty cheesy. But thats going to be a hard problem to fix.

[Matuse]

No it wouldn't. Just put in a never-misses AI turret (with darklight) in front of the console. Make it immune to knives, pistols, and grenades...very easy to kill with any other weapon.

Hacker must bring help to kill turret. No more solo hacking. Problem solved.

[Sarah Jinstar]

Thats a really good suggestion Matuse. Also its not something that would be hard to impliment at all.

[Incompetent]

Here (http://users2.ev1.net/~jasonsharp/index.html) is a link to what i think could be a very good way to fix the situation with stealth hackers. It was originally posted by a guy named zoolooman on the beta boards (he made the site so non-beta people can look at it, i think) and I think it could really improve the game. I also like the idea to make AMSes and towers require NTUs, hopefully going through them fairly fast.

[Ludio]

So phantom hacking is just when the defenders are too lazy to get to undefended bases? Why do you need to fix that? As for the turret idea it wouldn't work, they could just go in without infiltrator suits.

[Warborn]

So phantom hacking is just when the defenders are too lazy to get to undefended bases? Why do you need to fix that?

It needs to be fixed because it's absolutely no fun to have to chase around a hacker, going from base to base resecuring facilities without doing any fighting. Games are suppose to be fun, y'know? Not tedious and time consuming, as fighting a phantom hacker is.

[Prefect]

I think a good solution against phantom hacking would be to require someone to stay inside the SOI until the hack is finished.

[LesserShade]

Exactly warborn. I am all for defending bases in the heat of battle, but nobody is going to sit at a base idle for hours just to defend it against the possibility of a CC hack from one hacker.

I think what the devs are trying to fix here is not an infiltrators ability to walk into a base and hack the CC, but an infiltrators ability to run to a dead part of the continent, hack a base CC and move to another base immediately. Phantom hacking is having your base hacked, showing up, and there is nobody defending the hack because the guy that just hacked it is already hacking another base somewhere. If they fix it so that a hacker has to sit in an SOI during a hack, that would just stop one hacker from hacking half a continent in 15 minutes and it would also allow defenders to track him down. Hopefully this will put a damper on the solo hacking, but not nerf an infiltrators ability to hack bases with a group.

[Talyen]

the build notes are up, its just they are 12,000+ chars long, and it wont let me post that many ^_^

Good stuff, though. Anyone know when they plan to apply the patch today?

[Matuse]

As for the turret idea it wouldn't work, they could just go in without infiltrator suits.

In which case they couldn't be invisible, and stand a MUCH higher chance of being dead by opposing faction players, and/or automated turrets.