Hello and welcome to the Forty-Fourth Field Report!
It has been a very long time since we have released a new field report - the last one having been released at the anniversary of the battle of Antietam back in 2019. It detailed the progress we were making with the artillery branch at the time which was a major game addition. Today’s field report showcases several key systems and features as well as the biggest team composition shake-up we’ve had in years so let us get started!
New Inter-Skirmish Area Flow
Since the initial introduction of three skirmish areas in 2016, to now featuring more than thirty, the player's experience cycling from the completed round to the next round of play has largely remained the same. Throughout the years we have noticed just how often players take screenshots of the end-of-round victory/casualty screen so it has been obvious to us for a long time that this part of the game/result of the game is of key importance to many.
Knowing this, we set out to revamp the entire flow of what is presented to the players when a skirmish area ends and how they are moved on to the next area to fight at. We will detail the exact steps that a player is taken through in chronological order below:
Overhauled Victory Screens
Once a skirmish round ends all of the players are greeted with a new victory screen showing the two winning infantry regiments proudly standing at a key point of the just finished area while the familiar victory jingle is played.
Battle Reports
When the new victory screen has finished all players will be shown the new “Battle Report” screen. This is a quick 30 second replay of the match that has just ended, shown on the overview paper map. It features a number of exciting features such as being able to show the locations of formations, skirmish formations, casualties, officer casualties, dropped flags, cannons and artillery shell impacts. It also shows each player his own position and places where he became a casualty during the round.
All of it is an accurate representation of the round that was just finished (but greatly sped-up).
Players will be able to see how clusters of skirmishers band together to form formations or how a formation is pushing the flank of the enemy and how they respond and position their own formation to halt the advancing enemy and lots of other exciting tactical choices and outcomes!
We can’t wait to see what you all think of the battle report feature and how you use it once it is released (might be a good post-event tactical debriefing tool for our company players for instance!).
A Sense of Geographical & Historical Direction
While the battle report is showing the timelapse of the round just finished, players will notice a familiar voice that is subtitled below the battle report screen and titled as “Historical Events” playing. The narrator (voiced by Campfire Games Historical Advisor George Crecy) will present the historical outcome of the just finished skirmish area while the battle report screen is playing (he will be easily mutable if you’d rather wish to discuss the specifics of the battle report timelapse with your mates instead).
Once the battle report timelapse and historical outcome of the area is finished, players will be taken on a quick flight to the next skirmish area in line to be played while the historical narrator introduces the new area and its relation to the old one from a historical standpoint.
We have seen that a fair few, often newer, players do not realize that they are in fact playing on smaller key sections of either Antietam, South Mountain or Harpers Ferry, likely primarily due to our pop-up text based screens at the start of each skirmish area not being very readable (being shown after the players have deployed, resulting in most players just wanting to get moving or get organized and less so reading a pop-up screen). We believe the in-game overhead flight to the next skirmish area in line to be played is going to help players view our battlefields in more of their entirety than ever before.
Once the flight has settled on the new skirmish area and the historical introduction of it has finished the players will be shown the faction selection screen as the new round begins...
A Work-In-Progress Demonstration
Enough talk about it though. Here is a WIP demonstration of the above 3 new additions to the inter-skirmish area flow of the game. Being a work in progress, please remember that everything is subject to major or minor change.
The inter-skirmish area flow updates are scheduled to be released in the next alpha update. We hope you will all enjoy them when they are released.
Demotion System: Moderating Non-Admined Servers
One of the main goals for War of Rights has always been to bring as much teamplay and organization often only found within passworded servers into the public servers of the game by designing game mechanics to nurture such general player behavior.
This continues to be a major goal of ours and so we take troll reports by our community seriously. One of the major things left for us to squash is providing players on servers with no present admins an option to take matters into their own hands in some fashion in order to limit trollability while the admins are offline (and when they are online as well for that matter). This is where the new demotion system comes into play.
This is a preview of a system that is going to enter production soon and so please keep in mind that things are subject to change between now and its release. That being said, we thought it a good idea to give you a heads up as to the direction we are headed and get your early feedback of it prior to testing it:
Demotion System Preview
We have seen several community members suggesting a vote ban system to be implemented as that is what is usually used in other games but such a feature, we think, would be hugely problematic in WoR due to the limited amount of information we’re passing on to the individual players compared to most other games (no way of checking any kinds of stats to fact check an initiated vote claiming some random guy is a massive teamkiller for instance).
Instead of a vote ban system we have come up with a downvote-based demotion system:
Downvoting
Every player on a server can downvote any other player on their team using the tab screen. Here, they will find a down arrow icon next to all of their teammates.
Upon pressing the down arrow icon next to a player name it will be highlighted to indicate that they have downvoted the individual. A 1 will appear above the down arrow icon to indicate that the player has 1 downvote (if the player already has a number of downvotes his total tally will be increased by 1 upon clicking on the down arrow icon).
A red background will appear behind any player name on the tab screen that has downvoted you. This is to ensure that people are not trying to exploit the system by, say, switching teams in order to try to demote a competent officer of the enemy team without said officer having a clue as to who is downvoting him. It also ensures that I, as a downvoted player, have as much information at hand as the person downvoting me. This is only fair and while it may cause conflict it will also help solve it (both parties know they have downvoted each other and so both parties know to avoid each other in-game).
Demotion Triggered
A downvote towards you only counts for as long as the player who downvoted you is on the server (it doesn’t matter which team he is on for his vote to count). He can leave the server and the downvote will be removed but once he rejoins the server it will be in effect again. Eventually we hope to have persistence between servers (at least official ones) so that this is not only tied to a single server, but either persistent to all official WoR servers or all WoR servers, period.
Once you reach a set percentage of downvotes of the entire server population (it could be 15% server population resulting in a full 150 player populated server requiring 22,5 downvotes towards you) you will be demoted.
Your name on the tab view will get an added “demoted” type icon next to it and the total downvotes you have. This icon will also be shown under your in-game nametag (next to the speaker icon).
A demotion message will be shown to you at the center of your screen. It will inform you that you have been demoted and of the restrictions that apply to being demoted.
It will then run a hidden timer of about 10 seconds before slaying you.
A demotion ends when (on a 150 player populated server) you have less than 22,5 (15% total server population) downvotes against you (this can happen either when the players having downvoted you have left the server, or retracted their downvotes or simply due to the server becoming more populated and so because of the percentage rule it will require more downvotes for you to reach the 15% threshold).
Demotion Restrictions
Upon being slain moments after the demotion has been triggered, you will be greeted by the infantry regimental/class selection screen.
When demoted, you can only ever pick the Infantry Private class to spawn as. All other classes: NCO’s, Officers, Flag Bearers & all of the artillery branch classes will not be selectable.
After having spawned in as an Infantry Private you will notice a red “Demoted” next to your class name “Private - Demoted” in the lower right corner when you press T to bring up the tactical overview.
You cannot pick up dropped flags as a demoted player. Upon trying to pick up a flag you will be shown a user interface message in the center of the screen stating that you can’t do so as a demoted player.
The infraction decay timer (for team damage inflicted by you) is greatly increased from the normal non-demoted rate for demoted players, resulting in much less teamkill trolling being possible for you compared to non-demoted players.
Server Wide Mute Sub-system
Once the above demotion system is integrated we will be able to use some of the downvoting features to expand our VoIP & text chat muting system (pressing the little speaker icon next to players on the tab view) to trigger a server wide (both VoIP & text chat) mute to any player that has been muted by more than 15% of the server population (the exact same mechanic as the downvote demotion system).
Upon reaching this, the server wide muted player will be shown an on-screen message informing him that he has been muted server wide in both VoIP & text chat and a muted icon will be shown under his nametag in-game (the VoIP speaker icon with a red cross over it), letting everyone know why the player they try to communicate with is unable to answer them.
The normal speaker icon next to his name on the tab view will also be changed to one that stands out to indicate that the player in question has been muted server wide.
Sub-System: Minor Demotion
The goal of this additional minor demotion system is to give smaller, often isolated, units on non-admined servers a way to sort their own, often very local, issues out amongst themselves instead of having to use the main (major demotion) system and convince 15% of the server population to vote to demote whatever player they may be having issues with.
For example: If a particular artillery battery is facing a pestering troll that keeps turning the cannons the wrong way/blocking the crew from pushing the wheels in the direction they desire, etc. Using the minor demotion system all that is required for the troll in question to be demoted is more than half of the members of his unit to have downvoted him. If this is done the minor demotion is triggered even though the downvote of the 15% of the total server population is not reached.
A minor demotion comes with the exact same restrictions as a major demotion but it only lasts for 30 minutes (the major demotion lasting until there are no longer more than 15% of a server population that has voted to demote you). Once the 30 minutes of the minor demotion are up the system will check if there are still more than 50% of his unit that has voted to demote him. If so, it will be activated for another 30 minutes, etc, etc.
Sub-System: Simple in-game downvoting/muting player menu
An easy to use in-game popup menu when looking at a specific other player and pressing a key to bring it up to quickly downvote/mute them without having to find them on the tab screen to greatly help players be able to vote/mute when the new systems are implemented.
The demotion system is expected to be implemented and released shortly after the introduction of the inter-skirmish area flow updates to the game.
A Community United
It has come to our attention that a much liked community member and long time WoR player as well as crowdfunding backer has recently passed away at a much too young an age. It has been incredibly moving to the dev team to see how the community has banded together to support the people most affected by this tragic loss as well as having shared memories that have been had with the departed.
This is not the first War of Rights community member we have lost nor will it sadly be the last. Because of this we feel obliged to let you all know how we have decided to conduct ourselves as a company when such tragedies occur so as to avoid misunderstandings as to our intentions:
We have decided not to mention any lost community members by name nor create in-game memorials for them out of respect for the loved ones left behind. We do not wish to possibly be seen as riding a goodwill PR wave in order to maximize profits, or by pulling at the heartstrings of our players by exclusively honoring some of the most well known lost members within the community. We do not wish to make the distinction between who is worthy of remembrance via an official announcement and/or memorial piece added in-game by us and who isn’t. To us, every single lost community member is worth honoring and remembering.
We hope our, now very, official stance regarding the matter is, if not satisfactory to the community members currently in grief, then hopefully understandable in the long run.
We would like to send our condolences to every community member who has lost a friend or acquaintance within our community.
Goodbyes & New Faces
Lastly, we would like to say our goodbyes to two, now former, team members at Campfire Games:
Philipp, a key part of our programming team who has decided to leave us to join Crytek in order to continue working on improving CRYENGINE directly. We are very sorry to see him go as he has been an integral part of the technical development of the game for many years and we wish him the best over at Crytek.
Hinkel, a part-time community manager that has been with us since the very early days when the project was little more than a vision. Hinkel is leaving the team due to creative differences. We wish him the best for the future and would like to thank him for the many hours he has poured into the project, mostly unpaid, during the years he has been with us.
To end on a high-note instead of a gloomy farewell we are very happy to welcome Aleksi from Finland to the team as a new full time programmer at Campfire Games!
While he has only been part of CG for a few weeks, Aleksi has already achieved some excellent results which we’re excited to release in the next game update, particularly in relation to increases in client & server CPU performance (up to 30% CPU performance improvements (depending on your setup) compared to the live build with more optimizations on their way!). He has also greatly sped up the overhaul of the transport system (the system which artillery and cavalry is built upon) so expect to see some of those improvements soon as well.
That’s about it for this field report. We look forward to reading your feedback!