Scroll down for a full list of changes since this post
Hey guys, we just want to give you all an update on the most recent patch. 3.0 required a lot of code to be rewritten and we have essentially back tracked on our progress bug wise. After a year in early access you'd expect us to be near complete by now, but this is not the case. To see why visit the news post below. For a TL;DR: We were not happy with the direction we were headed design wise and decided to overhaul some fundamentals of the game, ignoring any existing bugs because we saw no sense in patching things that would be changed.
If you missed it, here is why we did 3.0
http://steamcommunity.com/games/Blackwake/announcements/detail/1591325606922639270
This genre is still young and unprecedented, with little reference to go off of we were not surprised when halfway through Early Access we would completely change course. By that time we had seen enough public play to know where we wanted to go.
One could argue we were putting content before bugs, which is half true. We were in a constant tug of war with retaining players long enough to have incentive to fix bugs. According to negative reviews from 2.0 and previous, players stopped playing due to lack of content, not because of a buggy experience. Because of this we shifted our focus onto content and only prioritized gamebreaking bugs that could be recreated almost all of the time. We would much prefer a content rich game that has some bugs to fix than a polished game that doesn't hold you.
Before going live 3.0 was tested as extensively as it could have been for those who volunteered to join the testing branch. As far as bugs go we have many on our list and are working as quickly as we can. We have been asked by server owners to actually slow the rate of our patches because it's causing them to restart too often.
It is worthing noting that many bugs can be fixed by simply reconnecting. In some cases a single error during connect will botch the state of the game and cause a multitude of seemingly random bugs.
Obvious signs that this has happened are invisible ships, being unable to jump, or seeing players on deck with the swimming animation. We are working to at least warn a user that this error has occurred while we investigate more into the issue. It doesn't appear to be consistent at all (making it difficult for us to get logs of what really went wrong).
As for the design and forts, this is being tweaked constantly. We also have analytics in place. A lot of things are currently happening that aren't exactly bugs, but oversights in design that we would never have known until the patch was public. As expected we are now patching reactively to these "tactics".
Please keep in mind 3.0 has only been out for 5 days and there are only two of us (minus any outsourcing to speed things up). Only one being a programmer. We're knocking bugs out as quickly as we can and we definitely won't stop until things are cleared up.
Overall the amount of positive feedback we've gotten has been overwhelming. We're much happier to see the game head in this direction even if it means going through a rough patch from such a large overhaul. Bugs have never been more crucial to us than they are now.
Dakota & Tyler
Side note
There seems to be a misunderstanding about our plans to leave early access being mistaken for planning to stop updating the game, this is not true. Also this initial bare bones 3.0 patch is not all of 3.0, we just released it in its rawest form to make bug fixing easier. Other features are done and not turned on yet. (See our 3.0 preview post in news history)
Changes since this post:
- Attempted to fix various bugs linked with connection issues
- Can no longer pass captain to yourself to reset mutiny votes
- Fixed issue where staying on deck while a ship sank would make you/other players invisible
- Fixed issue where joining late would not spawn existing ships for the faction with a fort under attack
- Fixed issue where long respawn times from fort battles would carry over after returning to ships
- Attempted fix on issue causing some rounds to start under attack and unable to construct ships
- Fixed issue where admins in spectate mode would trigger forts to be under attack or flags to capture and make building ships not possible
- Fixed issue where dead players would keep a fort in attack mode
- Fixed error in ship sinking that would cause desyncs if you joined during the process
- Made changes to help alleviate clicking the spawn button too quickly spawning you in the ocean if you just connected
- Attempted fix on issue that may have been causing some grapples to result in thousands of tickets and supplies being given to the victor
- Mutiny votes should no longer carry over between rounds
- Gate health regeneration has been buffed significantly to require most of the faction to break the gate and assault so there are less small skirmishes on the fort
- Because of the above flag capture speed has been tripled
- Fall damage has been made a little more forgiving on forts while still not allowing defenders to survive the fall from a wall and flank
- 5 players are now required to make your fort go into attack mode so single players hiding won't stop your ability to construct ships
- Adjustments made to ship labels in the Q menu to prevent issue where they sometimes wouldn't show
- Attempted fix on issue that may have been causing the respawn timer to count and never spawn you
- You should now be able to carry supply crates through water
- Tip boxes have been blocked if weapon select menu is up
- Cannons should no longer reset their turn angle just before firing if you leave them too soon after igniting
- Server owners can now see who manually restarted the server
- Server owners can now see the version mismatch that caused a restart
- (Already in place but not officially documented) a patch was released after hotfix C to make gates 2x slower at regenerating. We have a new system for gates on the way.
- Made adjustments to some previous connection changes that ended up causing some players to not be able to join a crew or spawn after fix C
- Gate system has been overhauled. You will now escort an explosive payload from the dock to the gate to destroy it. The explosives can only be stalled by 3+ defenders. This will of course be balanced as analytics and feedback come in. Once stable, a hotfix will come to scale this based on population.
- Defenders should now respawn in the fort faster if the gate has not been breached so the option to defend the fort isn't delayed by a long respawn timer
- Should no longer be able to damage parts of ships below water
- NOTE!! Fixed an issue where all over aimed shots would hit no matter what, making ranging very easy. This has been fixed and aiming is now back to normal, NOT nerfed. It may be more difficult if you were not around just before 3.0
- Players on the lower deck of the galleon should no longer become invisible
- Tweaked the Q menu further to work on disappearing labels
- Tooltip adjusted on bomb payload to display more often
- "Target below surface" check has been removed, may or may not be re introduced. We decided we want to balance ships first
- Attempted to fix an interesting error brought to our attention where if you used non ASCII characters in your name your name would default to "x", making any player with the same situation not able to connect and be stuck at "connecting". We don't know how our font will treat these characters, but we have removed the ASCII check
- 2 ships near the fort will now put it in attack mode to stop ship construction until the area is cleared
- Attempted and tested another fix on grapples shot moments before a ship sinking would result in a massive amount of tickets and supplies