Greetings, Pilots!
Welcome to the first BIG patch of the New Year! Update 1.4.X+ introduces MAJOR gameplay changes and serves as the foundation for building a more stable, efficient, and consistent ARMAJET experience for our users. While we're proud that Update 1.3.X introduced incredible Pilot customization, big (relative to what you know as 'current') Progression system updates, and a first-look at the First Time User Tutorial... it had also introduced bugs and stability issue side-effects that were very much unwanted. Before we continue...
To our community: As a side note, we weren't proud of the many issues that plagued 1.3.X and it was an even harder choice to delay a more stable patch. Most of you are familiar with our VERY fast release cadence of 'every 2 weeks' or so... but 1.3.X was a not-so-gentle reminder that quality of life for ours users must remain the most important goal. Nonetheless, our incredible community of Pilots continued to fly fearlessly into our skies! For this we have no other words but 'THANK YOU' for the amazing patience and understanding as we create the game you've always been looking for. We've been humbled by your support and positivity, especially as we see more and more of you everyday!
Update 1.4 Official Release Notes
Please read these thoroughly, including the KNOWN-ISSUES (there are just a few that we'll be hotfixing ASAP).
OVERALL CROSS-PLATFORM GAMEPLAY CHANGES
- More responsive shooting and hit registration
- Eliminated the "Valor Sniping" exploit when joining an active lobby—upon joining a match in progress, a 60s 'JOIN' countdown begins!
- All players are now able to shoot-through friendlies for maximum damage and reduced fear of self-inflicted grenade deaths (beware... it is STILL a generally BAD idea to clump together!)
- Infamous 'dumb' AI/Bots have been revisited with an IQ boost (more improvements to come)
- Enjoy quicker TDM matches with 3:00 minute maximum time limits and 30 maximum kill limit!
- Audio 'Health' filter has now been applied to warn you of certain death; scaling as a player takes damage (blunt realism with bigger damage!)
- Auto-aim 'snap' on mobile is improved with better tracking on mobile-devices; accuracy lessens with player movement (not a substitute for actually aiming properly!)
- Mouse cursor is now confined to the specific gameplay screen.
Super Bit Machine: We hate killing ourselves with our own frag grenades just as much you do! Consequently we've also heard your general feedback revolving around "Why would I want to aim for my friend intentionally in any firefight?" and we agree that 'shooting through' can makes sense...so we're giving it a go! This gameplay design overhaul also led to quicker matches in general so maximum time limits and kill caps were lowered to also supplement and reflect quicker matchmaking with more human lobbies. As an added realism feature, an audio-cue for 'how dead' you are has also been added--this scales in damage... try taking a rocket to the face just once!
FIXES & IMPROVEMENTS FOR OVERALL STABILITY
- Hotfix: Immersion Mode:ON/OFF in either state no longer interrupts end of round or causes 'Scoreboard Stuck' issue!
- Hotfix: Improved loadout updating between matches in custom games
- Hotfix: Gold now visually updates when users complete Challenges in Player Profile
- Hotfix: Fixed the infamous 'Stuck Secondary' bug in Public and Custom games
- Dark maps, missing pilots, missing weapons, and other missing asset issues fixed with streamlined asset downloading – including more prompts for data usage and stability during the loading processes.
- Fixed multiple visual glitches related to menus, improving scene transitions, text fields, loading icons, clans and overall UI elements affected.
- New and improved menu background for performance and consistency across Home, Bounty Open, New Weapon and Armory screens!
- Stability: Fixed multiple memory leaks in menus which also fixed multiple crashing issues on lower-end devices.
- Various back-end bug fixes and server improvements
- Tutorial: First time user experience given a "crash-cleansing" with removal of multiple non-responsive and halting issues, including device sleep and external notification breakers.
- Updated HR Pilot poses and removed Ana Pilot "T-posing" bugs.
- Matchmaker improved to reduce wait times and improved lobby merging for more human matches!
- Split-screening has been disabled for all mobile devices (formerly resulted in shifting UI elements; resulting in non-responsive app states).
- Netcode: 100% Hit-registration is now confirmed by the servers and relayed back to client upon successful hit with the damage number indicator (when in doubt, always trust the numerical damage).
- Netcode: Servers have been beefed up for load balancing; continually being tuned for smoother connections and matchmaking per region.
- Spectator Mode: Audio adjusted per map for spatial audio when spectating with scaling zoom levels.
Super Bit Machine: Echoing our introduction, we've owed better STABILITY to our players for nearly 1.5 months. Please enjoy a more consistent and stable Armajet experience as we continue to stack more features into the game. There's a reason we're taking a huge stance on stability this update, especially as new maps, game modes and PARTY SYSTEM are on the way!
UPDATE 1.4 CURRENT KNOWN ISSUES
- Completing a challenge doesn't result in a VISUAL gold reward (we promise you get your hard-earned gold, it just doesn't update live yet...) STATUS: FIXED
- iPhone 6s PLUS devices may experience end-of-round crashes (we went ahead and ordered multiple phones to get to the bottom of this ASAP) STATUS: OPEN
- [Android] Armajet does not default to Full Screen on a few Samsung devices. STATUS: ACTIVELY FIXING
- [PC] Loadouts may not reflect weapon equip changes made in-between rounds. STATUS: FIXED
- [Tutorial] Parts of the tutorial map will turn pink if the user puts the app to sleep or 'backgrounds' the app while tutorial enemies are on screen (an edge case, but still). STATUS: OPEN
- [AI] Bots in general still need a bit more Skynet lovin' (but they're better currently) STATUS: OPEN
WHAT'S IN THE FUTURE
- Earn the January Top 40 Seasonal Badge—remember to land within Top 100 for Paragon Rewards!
- Maps, Game Modes, Update in-game HUD, Squads, and even more Pilot Skins coming up (to say the least!)
- MOBILE CONTROLLER SUPPORT
- gear.armajet.com -- get your own personalized Armajet gear now!
- Join our discord community for even more info, official dev stream times, and upcoming features!
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Enjoy Update 1.4 and PLEASE DO let us know what you think! If you missed out on the last Dev Stream where we talk about Update 1.4, catch it here. You're going to love what we'll be building on top of this patch!
See you in the skies, Pilots!