Build 63

[tim]

Hi everyone, welcome to build 63! Here are the changes for this build:

* Added a new tank, the Kraken
* Reworked the old Augments Menu to disallow purchasing of augments with VP.
* Removed VP indicator from HUD
* Made convoy routes spawn convoys less often, but made them more common.
* Buffed Trailblazer gun
* Display Convoy Routes on the map
* Added an item reward and shoutout for discovering Convoy Routes and Towns

This week, we have another new tank, the Kraken. This tank specializes in killing smallish vehicles. Please let us know if you think it's too strong or too weak.

Based on your feedback, we've redone the Trailblazer gun to hopefully be more effective. Give it a try again and let us know.

As Convoy routes were spawning Convoys too often, we've increased the delay between spawns, but we have made more of them appear on the map in order to compensate. Because of this change, we've also had to declare victory on the current map, so this build will start a fresh map. This gives you a chance to try one of the other new features, item rewards for discovering convoy routes and towns. These are given to the first person to discover a route or town, and are pretty nice, so we hope they incentivize players to search these things out. Convoy routes also are displayed on the client now as red lines, to help you plan your clearing activities and see where a convoy will go.

Finally, this week we have removed the ability to purchase augments with Victory Points. Because of this, there is no longer any need to display your victory points on your screen, so the HUD has been updated accordingly. The new menu that replaces the augment menu is likely to be expanded to display more in-game tank stats later on.

Please report any bugs in this thread. Thanks again for your time testing the game.

Rob & Tim
Jetbolt Games

[quicklite]

Items for scouting? I love it! Gives people a reason to scout, which is great because scouting is a seriously fun meta-game. Though if we're doing this, you should get items for every 200-300k gridshards you spend on a certain town, or maybe even a certain region, excluding cleared ones IMO. That would give some reason to hoarding gs until the revamp.

Nothing to say about the kraken, aside from it anyone actually has a lvl19 unlock at this point I'll be seriously impressed

Trail gun buff should be neat, as with visible routes.

[Ood]

Request:
Make teleport only available if a path is cleared to the target.

No more cherry picking deltas.
No more scout jumping.
More incentive to clear.

[Deleted]

Scouting rewards instigate solo rogue activity, because they are too high. They also leads to drama (GTFO, I am exploring there).

[Ood]

The new drill is bad.

By switching what spawns minions you've removed the unique aspect of the structure, and made it just like everything else... sit on it. Also, the spawn switch renders the shell virtually non-lethal after the main structure has been killed, whereas before it was still a danger because of the large numbers of minions.

Additionally, making the walls 360degree capable nullifies the effectiveness of fury-like tanks (fury, mustang, wolverine, mustang).

Finally, why's it so ugly?

[tarbomb]

The kraken is an interesting tank. It's a lousy solo tank for clearing, but in a team, it has its uses, and since convoys are apparently vehicles, it's terrific against them. Sound familiar? Yep, kraken fulfills the same roles as the cutlass. It's a terrific convoy hunter (a bit more team-oriented, though, due to the heal and the lack of cloak) that's mediocre at everything else. I love it, but I'm not sure whether or not convoy hunting was its intended purpose. Unfortunately, killing vehicles is of little use elsewhere (a team large enough to find a dedicated vehicle killer useful would also steamroll vehicles in seconds), so if this facet of its functionality is removed it would probably be a rather poor tank.

The removal of VP is nice in that it generates more of an incentive to clear for the low-level augs that would have been purchased with VP in the past. Gridshards and building seem kind of pointless now, though (especially since facilities aren't really that useful, and are time-consuming to construct), so I hope the town system is reworked soon.

The new indicators for convoy routes seem to encourage clearing them. That's a good thing for convoys, but regions seem to have largely been forgotten; there's no incentive to clear an entire square region (which is a rather boring task, too) instead of clearing routes for convoys other than the zeta, which since last build has gotten the shorter end of the stick on the risk/reward curve compared to convoying. Personally, I'd prefer to see the region-clear zeta activation mechanic be replaced with another spawn mechanism altogether (perhaps dumping gridshards into an activator socket and then destroying self-regenerating walls as suggested in an earlier post), but if regions are supposed to be relevant, clearing them needs to be incentivized more.

And finally, on scouting: the new rewards are great. Perhaps too great. Getting constant level 12s just for finding towns and routes is a certainly enjoyable, but when you consider that over a hundred towns can be found in a game, scouting is shaping to be an even more profitable activity than convoying, and by far better than clearing. Perhaps the reward should be made proportional to the distance to the closest point on the frontier boundary, so scouting could gain a more interesting risk/reward curve.

[Kelsoo]

The only thing I can take from this is scouting should be more co-op, as stated, it will lead to a whole bunch of people getting pissed off and now makes soloing a viable option by just finding towns.

Don't lower the reward, but find a way to make it more co-op friendly.

[fsm]

Tar from what I hear youve been obscenely lucky with what youve gotten from scouting. So I dont think your sample is representative. Also I think you like Kraken because your the only one with one


The problem with the scouting reward is exactly what Zub said. The GTFO im scouting here can and will occur and cause the type of drama I think you dont want in the game.

I think clearing needs more incentive too. If I clear a large quantity of Alpha/Beta processors or Bore Augers or really any non-Nova tank/GCT/Delta/Drill Im not getting any loot that I will be able to use. Thats not a good thing for your veteran players.

I agree with Ood in that the new drills kind of suck. They are ugly and a tedious to do.

[Kelsoo]

Aug 14, 2013 19:17:46 GMT -5 fsm said:

I think clearing needs more incentive too. If I clear a large quantity of Alpha/Beta processors or Bore Augers or really any non-Nova tank/GCT/Delta/Drill Im not getting any loot that I will be able to use. Thats not a good thing for your veteran players.

I agree with Ood in that the new drills kind of suck. They are ugly and a tedious to do.

I hope drills were not messed up to badly, and you right but it's not even people that are veterans, clearing gets so boring at one point I was just holding down W like I was waiting for a very, very, slow progress bar to fill up.

Clearing needs incentive major time and more dynamic enemies instead of waiting and *hoping* your on at the right time for a Zeta. It seems there are some plans in the works, but nothing for making clearing to fun.

Edit: I think one of my biggest problems with clearing is that there is almost never a time, never, where you are close to death. It's far to easy and takes way to long with far to little of a reward.

[K]

I think that death should remove all prisms, completely.
Would discourage suicides of non-pulched players.

Edited.

[Guest]

Everything about the new drills is wrong. And I don't mean the "change is bad" kind of wrong, just... not right. Ood sums it up quite nicely.

(By the way, if the idea is to have the shape of the fortress(including redoubts) match the icon on the map, there's nothing wrong with pentagons as icons. I think this was mentioned for bore augers a while ago too.)

[Guest]

Aug 14, 2013 20:21:47 GMT -5 K said:

I think that death should remove all prisms, completely.
Definitely adds to the feeling of perma-death. Also would discourage suicides of non-pulched players.

That's would be a nice idea, except this "feeling of perma-death" is not a good thing.

[Kelsoo]

The death penalty should be high but not perma-death, that is not what Grid12 is about.

[[too lazy to log in]]

I agree that at some point the VP should have been removed, but I feel it happened all too abruptly. (I still had a lot of it to spend, sigh.)

Why?

Because clearing has no direct incentive now. I mean, look at the three main aspects of the game:

- Convoy hunting: you kill it, you get fat loot, or even if it's not that fat, it's still steady and can contain coins (temporarily).

- Exploring: You get fat loot. Level 10 - 12 is considered "fat", since the average CONVOY LOOT is only lvl 7 - 9. This will of course lead to jealusy and I was seriously surprised at the trashtalk this caused in game yesterday already. ("Damn you I was one tile away and you got the explore...", even if the other one was much, MUCH richer than me so why would he care?). I suggest to reduce the exploration rewards to level 6 - 9, to fit "common high tier" loot (ie convoys, deltas, etc.)

- Clearing: With the VP gone, there is no direct reward for clearing. I mean, what does clearing can offer?
a) it is no longer a victory condition
b) loot obtained from clearing is generally crap. Deltas and worthwhile things get cherry-picked fast.
c) building system is still bad, and given that there are strong "cleaner" tanks now, buildings are kind of useless. And building stuff is not giving a direct or personal benefit
d) clearing a lane for convoys only has the benefit of being able to kill it faster, if you are lucky and are online. In other words: lanes to kill convoys only benefit those who are always online for the ride, and that is even an indirect benefit. To put it in other way: Why the hell should I bother clearing a lane, if I can log in only for one hour a day? I will probably fight 2 or 3 convoys, while the next 10-20 on the same lane would be missed? Will anyone be ever thankful to me for their riches? I surely won't get a discount of the items they have obtained thanks to my lane...
e) same goes for zetas. Aside from that clearing a sector is much more tedious, fighting a zeta is now a lot more painful than before, and the rewards are not that great, given that you lose everything in 2 deaths, which will be a likely event. And you have to be online at the right time. Why should I bother to clear 80% of a sector, if the rest will be surely done when I'm asleep?

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I don't like the new drill. Guess I'm just too used to the old pentagonal form. I agree that the new shape looks more square-like (fitting it to bee a large square building), but fighting it is... worse. I mean, you punch a small hole on the side and kill it. Of course this worked with the old shape too, but somehow now it seems to be easier.

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I haven't played trailblazer since it got a gun, but I assume it works well. By the time I get to play it, exploration reward will be likely nerfed (it should be!), so guess I'm skipping on that.

[hypevosa]

No one is clearing anything, no one is connecting towns anymore, etc. The game is now discordant and broken thanks to throwing the rewards all to exploration. Please, give people a reason to clear regions again, and to connect towns, etc.