5.06: Sacred Steed, Pegasus, FairPlay 2.0

25 Apr 2020Developer post

Source: Steam Community (opens in a new tab)

Sign-up for the Steeni Cup is open! 150€ Prize pool and mystery cards for all participants. Individual sign-up only. See the tournament thread for details.

The Legion In-House League (LIHL) is also underway. See the LIHL Hub for recordings of casted matches, and stay tuned for an announcement about the upcoming playoffs.

New Units: Divine Tier 3

Sacred Steed
- Cost: 80 gold
- Health: 750 (Arcane)
- Damage: 34 (Magic)
- Attack speed: 0.87
- Range: Melee

Mana Blessing
Restore the mana of nearby allies. Each point of mana restores 0.5 mana, up to a maximum of 1.5 per target. Extra mana will always attempt to bounce to another ally. If there are no nearby allies in need of mana, instead boosts its own attack speed by 20% for 5 seconds.

Affects all mana-using units except Angler, Bounty Hunter, Kingpin, Infiltrator, Orchid, Sacred Steed, or Pegasus.

Pegasus
- Upgrade Cost: 190 gold
- Health: 2470 (Arcane)
- Damage: 112 (Magic)
- Attack speed: 0.87
- Range: Melee

Mana Miracle
Restore the mana of nearby allies. Each point of mana restores 1.5 mana, up to a maximum of 4.5 per target. Extra mana will always attempt to bounce to another ally. If there are no nearby allies in need of mana, instead boosts its own attack speed by 20% for 5 seconds.

Affects all mana-using units except Angler, Bounty Hunter, Kingpin, Infiltrator, Orchid, Sacred Steed, or Pegasus.

New Major Feature: FairPlay 2.0

We've rebuilt FairPlay from the ground up and significantly improved it. As with any new feature, there may be bugs or unoptimized components. Please let us know immediately if you encounter any issues, especially if you're unfairly banned.

Use in-game reporting when you believe a player's actions deserve banning or chat banning. In-game reports are more effective than forum reports and work immediately, rather than requiring review from a moderator.

FairPlay 2.0 Improvements:

Now scalable in anticipation of a larger player base
Now considers long-term behavior, instead of primarily looking at recent games
Less likely to unfairly punish a player who experienced a bug or had internet troubles but otherwise consistently stays in games
Much more likely to punish players who previously abused the system by consistently but moderately leaving games (rage quitting, disconnecting, afking, dodging)
All players are now evaluated based on their propensity to (1) intentionally lose games, (2) leave games, and (3) create a toxic environment
All players now have a Behavior Score. A high score will increase your essence gain, which can be used when the shop is released. A low score will decrease it.
Improved Reporting
Reporting is now smarter and better taken into account
Reports now diminish in weight for players that report recklessly
Cheating reports are now monitored more carefully
You can now report someone for an Offensive Name in-game.
Improved automated detection for intentional losers
Improved AFK detection
Improved warnings
Warnings are now given out more frequently to help players improve their behavior before being banned
Now shows a FairPlay client notification any time you receive an [!] at the end of the game

Fixes and Improvements

Matchmaking
- Improved ranked matchmaking quality and speed for players <1100 rating
- Matchmaking now speeds up less during off-hours, which means slightly higher quality matches on average for all players. Depending on the results, we may be able to increase match quality further in a future patch.
- Fixed a rare case where the matchmaker would treat you as a 1200-rated player, regardless of your actual rating. This was occasionally causing very high-rated players to match with low-rated players.
- Smarter team shuffling for Classic Queue, which will help better balance the teams, especially for low-rated classic players and new players

Performance
- Improved overall graphics performance (disabled anisotropic textures & lowered shadow cascades, which should hopefully not be noticeable. Also lowered some shadow distances.)
- Improved some performance in games with many units (fixed dynamic playback speed during night time & lowered soft unit caps a bit)
- Improved graphics performance (character no longer receive shadows or use light probes)
- Improved performance of Tab Scoreboard, especially when mousing over unit icons

Stability
- Potentially fixed some crash bugs related to Vertical Sync (disabled it in graphics settings for all quality settings)
- Enforced some limits in custom games to prevent server-wide lag
-- Starting gold cap: 1000 per player
-- Starting mythium cap: 1000 per player
-- Maximum mythium: ~3000 per player (your workers stop harvesting mythium if you have over 3000)
-- Hidden supply cap: (800 / number of players) per player. For example, a 4-player custom game will allow 200 supply per player. Most units use 1 supply, summoners use 2 or 3, and workers use none.

These limits only affect custom games, not ranked or classic. We love creativity and having fun in custom games, but we have to be respectful of overloading the servers.

Visual Improvements
- Fighters are longer transparent during the night. This should allow you to see your fighters better
- Improved outline scaling when zoomed out (and hides outline entirely when zoomed far out)
- Fixed a bug where sometimes life bar positions would be offset for some units under lag conditions
- Fixed a bug where outlines weren't rescaled for secondary meshes
- Improved Fog of War graphics for Low and Medium settings, at the cost of some performance
- Made Leviathan's Aerial Command a bit smaller
- New graphics for Butcher's Leech and Head Chef's Cannibalism
- Fixed Head Chef idle animation (it would accidentally get smaller)
- Fixed Harbinger idle animation (it would accidentally get bigger)
- Fixed a rare bug where you would have an invisible builder unit in your lane

Play vs. AI
- Hard difficulty bots now start with regular (250) gold but have +65 income. This makes them consistently harder, rather than dependent on opening with a lucky tier 6 fighter

Bots
- Fixed a bug where takeover bots for disconnected players in Classic Queue wouldn't build properly if you hadn't selected a legion/builder yet
- Fixed a bug in 3v3 and 4v3 custom games where bots sometimes wouldn't send mercenaries when they should have
- Fixed a case where bots would upgrade regen with an uninjured king, when they should have upgraded spell or attack
- Fixed a bug where bots wouldn't send on Wave 21

Profile
- Fixed a bug where your latest game didn't show up in your profile
- "Loading [X]'s profile" screen should more consistently show up now
- Profiles load slightly faster

Spectator Mode (admin-only)
- Fixed a bug where Change View couldn't be clicked on the right side of the button
- Pings from players no longer play sounds
- Now shows King Upgrades as soon as they happen
- Fixed a bug where Camera Bookmarks didn't work. As a result, the following now pan the camera to the player's lane:
-- Clicking a player's name next to his power score
-- Clicking a player's towers on the tab scoreboard
-- Pressing F1 - F8 jumps between lanes
-- If on 2v2 map, F5 and F6 will jump between Kings.

Post-Game Stats
- MVP Score: Improved formula to better-reward players who cause the enemy team to leak and penalize players who send recklessly
- Builds tab: Net Worth is now updated at the end of the wave (as well as at the end of the game), to be consistent with the Graphs tab
- Added graphs for Player Mythium Sent and Player Mythium Received

New Player Experience
- Now shows a "Congratulations" popup after you beat the first two tutorials with recommendations to play the rest of the tutorials & join Discord
- Play vs. AI (Medium) now unlocks at level 3
- Play vs. AI (Hard) now unlocks at level 4

Quality of Life
- Lioness: Now grows in size for each stack of Entourage
- Alpha Male: Now decreases in size for each stack of Dominion
- “Spell damage” is now referred to as “ability damage”
- Added a red text that shows up if you don't meet the conditions to dual build (requires both players to choose Mastermind, Chaos, or Hybrid and both players to build in the middle)
- Mousing over a unit on the scoreboard now shows buff stacks and buff borders (green = positive, red = negative)
- Now shows a notification when you delete messages from the inbox

Localization
- Fixed message about picking Mastermind/Hybrid/Chaos
- Updated translations and pushed new units to the google docs

If you notice an incorrect or missing translation, please visit LegionTD2.com/translate, and it will be fixed or added next patch

Minor Fixes
- Fixed a bug where white text would briefly flash after you pressed the ready button
- Temporarily disabled Friends List > Invite to Game features since they were causing in-game bugs
- GameID now shows the correct one when viewing a game in Match History

Game Balance

This will be a nerf-heavy patch to compensate for power creep (the tendency for everything to get buffed over time)

4v4

Hybrid Builder

- Starting income: 3 -> 0

Chaos Builder

- Starting income: 3 -> 5

We considered other buffs but decided against them for now, in favor of extra baseline power to make Chaos viable

Equalizer mechanic
- Reduced overall
- Now gives slightly less bonus gold to the player in 4th and slightly more to the players in 2nd and 3rd
- Smarter formula for determining inequity, which makes it much less likely for the 4th place player to leapfrog the 3rd

King

Base stats

- Health increased by 14% in 1v1 games
- Health reduced by 4.7% in 4v4 games
- Health increased by 7% only on wave 6

Upgrade Attack

- Damage increase: 9% -> 8.5%

Upgrade Spell

- Damage and effect increase: 8% -> 8.5%

Legion Spells

Magician

- Mana regeneration and mana gain: 27% -> 25%

Fighters

Dark Mage

- Mind Warp: Autocast logic: Fixed a bug and made it smarter about not casting on low hp units

Violet

- Lightning Strike: Damage: 120 + 0.6% max health -> 120 + 0.3% max health

Despite previous nerfs, Windhawk remains one of the most consistently strong rolls in the game, rocking a 52% win rate and 80% pick rate.

APS

- Health: 1150 -> 1080
- DPS with self buff: 50.9 -> 47.8
-- Damage: 50 -> 38
-- Attack speed: 1.02 -> 1.26

MPS

- Health: 2700 -> 2550
- DPS with self buff: 127 -> 119
-- Damage: 112 -> 90
-- Attack speed: 1.07 -> 1.33

Butcher

- Health: 1320 -> 1250

Head Chef

- Health: 3100 -> 3050
- Damage: 101 -> 110
- Maximum mana: 30 -> 16 (mana cost of Skull Stew is still 15)

Lost Chieftain

- Gaia Shield reworked

Old:
- Casts at the start of battle, then every 14 seconds
- Target unit maintains current % health
- Target health increase: 700
- Target prioritization: Uses a highly complex formula to attempt to make an intelligent selection

New:
- Casts once at the start of the battle
- Target unit always gains the full amount of health (only affects and buffs the synergy with Wileshroom/Canopie and any future units that start with <100% life)
- Target health increase: 1100
- Simple, consistent target prioritization:

Target the most vertically forward unit within range
If there is a tie between two or more units, pick the one that is most centered
If there is still a tie between two units, pick the one on the left

The old formula caused frustration. Sometimes it would buff a bad target, and sometimes it would buff a good target but players perceived it to be a bad choice. The new formula makes things much easier to understand and gives players more control over which unit Gaia Shield buffs. In the future, if we have time for implementation and UI support, it would be interesting to give players the choice of which unit they want to buff.

Nightmare

- Health: 1100 -> 1080
- Attack speed: 1.9 -> 1.85

Hydra

- Ancient Power: Damage and damage reduction per wave: 0.8% -> 0.75%

Despite the niche usage, we just can’t ignore how high Eggsack’s win rate is (55%)

Mercenaries

We developed a new internal metric called the Mercenary Power Index. Based on that, in addition to feedback, we’re making some adjustments to a number of mercenaries.