Dearly beloved Crusaders,
We are gathered here as our integration effort of the massive Unreal Engine 4.11, it's the birth pains of that with all our middleware (Scaleform, Wwise etc.) and newer gameplay systems which have been in mid-development for a long time has brought us to this week. Dearly beloved was also just something I wanted to say.
Note, this patch has recieved more updates and is still on the UAT server
The good news is you can try it out on our UAT (Founders) server, which in my campaign for making everything sound far more terrifying is now called the the WART server. We need more war.
This means the new current goal for deployment of this patch is tomorrow Thursday the 12th and here is a refresher and changes to this patch WARPATCH.
- Headliner: Unreal Engine 4.11 with its FPS optimization focus on WAR
- Supporting actor: Our own optimizations on WAR
- Introducing: Balancing rules for matchmaking (min and max players per map, max gap between teams)
- Newcomer: PvP Map: Back to Maggon
- Also starring: Match flow: Predeployment setup phase and spawning vehicles directly from battle map (no marathons)
- And Chat: interaction through keyboard only (like Battlefield, meant to fix a few bugs + UE improvement) and global cover and vaulting improvements
- A currently unknown amount of extras, such as 100s of bugfixes, improvements, class and weapon balancing as well as a few surprises that might make it in and here of are the following. Expect a metric fragton of patch notes post-deployment
Some highlights
- You can now choose Skirmish (40 players or less) or Grand (60 players or less) battles from the World Map.
- Skirmish battles are set to 5v5 minimum. Grand Battles are set to 20v20 minimum. If this is a problem, we can change it at any time without a patch.
- Max imbalance for a match will be 3 instead 5.
- The loadout screen has been revamped for layout and usability.
- Squad Leaders now have an additional effect on them to highlight their position to squad members.
- War Parties (and their UI) should generally work a lot smoother now.
- There is now a Setup Phase, a timed period at the beginning of a battle before everyone spawns. During this time you can choose your deploy point, chat and set up your squad.
- There is now a Rewards screen at the end of the match to show you your XP and token gain.
- On spawning, players should be more spread out and it should be much harder to exploit spawn positions.
- There are more noticeable differences between Tier 2 (swords) and Tier 3 (axes & mauls) melee weapons.
- The Power Axe has a new look – note that you will be able to earn the “double-headed” look in-game later.
- Stagger times have been reduced in general and stunlocking should be rarer.
- Muting a player through chat command (/mute Playername and /unmute Player name)
- MOAR WOAR
That's it for now. Jump on WART and see the progress. As I always say, we chase fun, not dates and missing a patch date doesn't mean 60 people sit around waiting while one guy fixes a bug for a week. We keep on the WARHAMMER and a delay often means the next patch is shorter out - and some things might be added to the upcoming patch.
Your eternal beloved,
Nathan, Nathan, Nathan and the other Nathan who's usually silent
Senior Producer
Warhammer 40,000 - Eternal Crusade
(in case you didn't know what Warhammer game this was about)