8.04: Damage Tracker & 4v4 Skill-based Matchmaking

18 Oct 2021Developer post

Source: Steam Community (opens in a new tab)

Patch 8.04 is expected to release on Wednesday, October 20.

Pollywog Cup

Sign up as a team here by October 21 at 8pm CEST (11am PDT) and join the tournament Discord. This is an open tournament. Anyone can sign up.

Schedule: October 22-24 from 8-10pm CEST (11am-1pm PDT). Be there 15 minutes early!
Prize: $300 USD to the winning team
Format: Bo3 single elimination, Bo5 for finals. Maximum 64 teams.
Rules: Mastermind 2v2

The Pollywog Cup is organized by an external organizer known as CFA.

Roadmap & Idea Board

Check out what we're working on and submit ideas for things to add to the game: legiontd2.com/roadmap

Damage Tracker

Now it’s easier to see which fighters are your main carries. Click the icon to switch the chart from "Damage" to "Damage Taken" and see which tanks are doing their job.

Mouseover a fighter’s name to hover the fighter unit. Click the fighter’s name to select the fighter itself. The bar will be green if the unit is alive, and gray if the unit is dead.

4v4 Skill-based Matchmaking

Previously, Classic 4v4 queue would form a match as soon as 8 players were ready. Now it will try to match you with players closer to your skill level, using your hidden 4v4 rating.

Due to the more casual environment and the importance of fast queues, 4v4 matchmaking is very "loose," meaning you'll match with a variety of skill levels. Keep in mind that the team auto-balancer will always shuffle teams to be as fair as possible.

We'll be monitoring queue times and matchmaking fairness in 4v4 carefully and tuning things as needed.

Restart Campaign Button

In the Campaign only, you can now quickly restart a match via the ESC menu. Note that the restart button is only available for the first 20 minutes of the match right now, due to some technical limitations.

If you're past 20 minutes and want to restart, use Surrender. It's faster than Quitting and also awards essence and XP.

Improvements & Fixes

Major Improvements
- Added a button to start a Classic 4v4 match if you have 8 players in your custom game room. If you're in a squad of 5-8 players, it's highly recommended to play Classic instead of custom games because it auto-balances teams, has card drops enabled, and gives bonus essence.

- Pinging units now shows additional information

Major Fixes
- Matchmaking: Fixed occasional cases of long queue times when there shouldn’t have been, especially for lower rated players
- Gameplay: Fixed some very rare cases where a unit would start at max mana, when it shouldn’t have
- HUD: Wave Info and Attack Effectiveness windows now save their positions between sessions
- Tab Scoreboard: Fixed a bug where enemy units weren’t hoverable after they died
- Client: Fixed some cases where the game would freeze when trying to quit
- Reconnecting: Fixed a bug where you couldn’t send Giant Snails after reconnecting
- Interface: Fixed HUD layouts not saving between sessions
- Translation fixes and improvements. If you'd like to contribute to translations, please visit legiontd2.com/translate. Any changes you make will automatically show up next patch. Thank you for your help!

Matchmaking
- Duo Penalty: Improved to be more fair. Slightly higher penalty in low Elo and moderately lower penalty in high Elo for skill gaps
- Loading Screen: While duoing in ranked, now displays your party rating badge instead of your individual rating (to help players better understand duo party rating)
- Loading Screen: Unranked players now display their actual rating badge to players outside their party (to show a more accurate rating)

Minor Improvements
- Bots: Now smarter about generally avoiding ranged mercenaries on ranged waves
- HUD: Unit range circles are now shown during the battle phase. Range circles are a little less bright around the edges.
- HUD: When autosend (“AUTO”) is off, it now shows an empty checkbox to make it more clear that it is off
- HUD: Attack & Defense Types table now shows relative percents like +20% instead of absolute percents like 120%
- HUD: Fighter tooltips now show percent bonus damage/reduction: https://i.imgur.com/WF4cGTD.png
- HUD: Wave tooltip now shows attack range for ranged waves
- HUD: Pinging a player's power score now shows their leak ratio
- HUD: Pinging a king now shows its king upgrades
- Graphics: Enemy lane indicator VFX improvements
- Graphics: Upgrade Available white circle is now a bit more visible
- Graphics: Newly Deployed blue glow is now a bit more visible
- Menu: Prevented selecting Mastermind Variants or Lock-In Fighter too quickly (to reduce the chance of misclicks)
- Options > Interface: Health Bar size now goes up to a max of 300 (from 200)
- Options > Video: Cursor confined mode now has the “Default” option, which will be the default for new players moving forward. When “Default” is selected, the cursor will be confined for full-screen, but free for borderless/windowed.
- Debug: Added -stacks X command for setting hydra stacks

Minor Fixes
- In-Game News: Fixed a bug where in-game news sometimes didn’t show, especially for short events
- Graphics: Fixed some cases where a unit would appear to continue running across the screen, when it was actually standing still and attacking
- Audio: Fixed Mute Insufficient Resource Sounds option not working with king upgrades
- Audio: Fixed Judgment missing sound effect
- Battle Text: Various fixes & improvements
- Codex: Added -save/-load commands which were previously missing
- Graphics: Fixed a bug where trees sometimes weren't rendered for players on non-Very Low graphics

New Player Experience
- Game Coach: Now warns you about training workers during Wave 15 battle (since you can get 2x workers starting on Wave 16): https://i.imgur.com/sG62Z01.png
- Game Coach: Now reminds you to hit “1” and “3” keys to pan to your lane/enemy lane
- Game Coach: No longer reminds you to hit Tab + Space
- New Player Experience: Fixed a bug where ties/match canceled counted towards your games played, which affected your initial rating boost

Stability
- Fixed a few more cases where a player would get stuck on Connecting to Login for a minute or two, instead of connecting quickly
- Fixed some rare cases where a player would receive the “Loading account information” popup during a loading screen of a game

Game Balance

Legion Spells

Creditor

- Gain 50% of your spare gold (up to 170 spare gold each wave) >> Gain 40% of your spare gold (no cap)

Making Creditor more fun and less confusing.

Villain

- Damage amplification: 30% (15% for ranged) >> 28% (14% for ranged)

Fighters

Bone Warrior

- Health: 110 >> 100

Oathbreaker

- Health 1100 >> 1080

Pack Rat

- Health: 600 >> 620
- Damage: 58 >> 59

Buzz / Consort

- Attack speed 1.03 >> 1.01

False Maiden

- Damage: 25 >> 26

Hell Raiser

- Damage: 50 >> 51

Kingpin

- Damage: 192 >> 195

Reverting the last nerf to Kingpin. Despite being perceived by some as strong, Angler/Bounty Hunter/Kingpin are underperforming.

Zeus

- Attack speed: 2.44 >> 2.35

Gargoyle

- Attack speed: 0.93 >> 0.91

Sacred Steed

- Health: 760 >> 740

Pegasus

- Health: 2580 >> 2510

Violet

- Health: 2300 >> 2340

Mudman

- Health: 1680 >> 1660
- Attack speed: 0.77 >> 0.75

Golem

- Attack speed: 0.77 >> 0.75

Butcher

- Health: 1350 >> 1330
- Attack speed: 1.01 >> 1

Head Chef

- Health: 3730 >> 3670
- Attack speed: 1.01 >> 1

APS / MPS

- Attack speed: 1.45 >> 1.41

Nightmare

- Health: 1060 >> 1100

Priestess of the Abyss / Azeria

- Attack speed: 0.96 >> 0.97

Infiltrator

- Health: 720 >> 730
- Attack speed: 1.03 >> 1.04

Orchid

- Health: 2520 >> 2530
- Damage: 133 >> 134

King Claw / Ocean Templar

- Delicacy removed (now only Grarl can be sold for 90%)

We're removing some versatility from these units to nerf Grarl (without directly nerfing Grarl further) and to encourage players to commit to keeping King Claw and Ocean Templar once they are built.