Dev Blog: V36 and Season 1
Hey everyone,
We've been heads down for the last few weeks and we're really excited to finally show you what's coming. V36 lands on Monday 9 November. It's the start of Season 1, it brings a new Elo system we've built with the OFstats team, and honestly it's the biggest update we've done since launching on Steam.
Here's what's in it.
A new Elo system for FFA
We've been working with the team behind OFstats to bring a proper FFA rating system into the game. From V36, every public FFA game you play counts towards your rating. There's no separate queue to sit in, you just play.
Season 1
V36 is also the start of Season 1. Your previous games still count, so nobody's starting from zero. Running it in seasons gives us a lot more control over the ladder, and it means we can keep the Top 100 clean by filtering out banned accounts.
How your rating works
Your rating goes up or down depending on whether you won and how likely that was. Beat a tough lobby and you'll gain more. Lose a game you were expected to win and it'll cost you more.
Losing doesn't always mean dropping, though. How many structures you captured (and how much gold you made) still counts, so a really strong game can soften a loss or even turn it into a gain. That matters most while you're new.
You'll also see a ± next to your rating. That's how confident the system is. Play regularly and it shrinks, take a break and it grows. Older games slowly count for less, so your rating reflects how you're playing now, not six months ago.
Everyone starts at 1,500. For reference, around 2,310 gives you roughly a 50% chance of winning a typical 40-player lobby.
Tiers
Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master, and Grandmaster at 2,500+. Every tier below Grandmaster has three divisions.
Which games count
Public FFA games with at least 10 human players and one human winner. If you just want a chilled game that won't touch your rating, put _0_ at the start of your name.
Goodbye to Ranked FFA
Elo FFA replaces the Ranked FFA queue, which we're retiring. It didn't work the way we wanted it to, but a big thank you to everyone who played it and told us what they thought. A lot of that feedback went straight into what you're getting in V36.
Anti-cheat
There's been a huge amount of anti-cheat work going on behind the scenes. We can't say much about it without helping the people we're trying to catch, but the number of accounts we're flagging and banning has more than doubled, and it's still going up.
O-FAC, our anti-cheat system, will keep getting better with every update. Keeping the game fair is something we'll never stop working on.
One small thing you'll notice: if a player you reported gets banned, you'll now get a message thanking you. Please keep the reports coming, they really do help.
Friends
You can now send and accept friend requests, which makes it a lot easier to find the people you play with and get into games together.
Replays
The new replay viewer is now the default, and you can pick any moment in a replay and carry on playing from there. Perfect for that one fight you're still annoyed about.
Save and share singleplayer games
You can save a singleplayer game at any point and come back to it later. You can also send it to a friend with a link or code and they can load it straight in.
A new map picker
There's a new Earth tab where you can browse every map on a globe. Each map card now shows its size, how many nations it has, how much of it is land, the recommended player count, and the community member who made it.
Lobby presets
If you host custom games, you can now save your lobby settings and reuse them in one click. We've also added a win threshold setting.
Mobile
- New quick-build and tap-to-preview controls
- A slimmer unit bar so you can see more of the map
Quality of life
- Keybinds to send troops and gold to whoever's under your cursor
- Hold a key to place a new building instead of upgrading one nearby
- The nuke range circle now warns you before you fire: yellow if it'll break an alliance, flashing red if it'll mark you as a traitor
- Share buttons in the top bar and on the end-of-game screen
- An option to hide all cosmetics
- Clan tags show as team names on the team leaderboard
- A bigger spawn glow so it's easier to spot your teammates
- Better rail previews
- The game timer stays in the corner during Overtime and the Doomsday Clock
- Two new music tracks
- New Dutch province flags
Smarter nations
Nations now save up for hydrogen bombs and stop overreacting to a single warship.
Performance and fixes
- Much better performance when there are lots of nukes, SAMs and units on screen
- Fixes for desyncs and disconnects on laggy connections
- Keybinds now display properly on AZERTY and other regional keyboards
- Spectators no longer count towards lobby player numbers
- Plus loads of smaller fixes
What's next
V36 is the first step towards our Christmas update, and there's a lot more coming before the end of the year. We'll be talking about it on our update stream tomorrow (Friday 6 November) at 4pm UK, so come and say hi.
Thanks for playing, and see you on the battlefield!
Lewis and the OpenFront Team