New Feature: Offline Support/Local Play Offline play will allow you to play Deformers with your internet completely disconnected (as long as you have the game installed and the ReFormed Patch already, of course). When playing offline, PS4 players will no longer need a PS Plus subscription and can now invite their splitscreen friends as guests, and XB1 players will no longer need an Xbox Live Gold membership.
When offline, the top "Play" button will be greyed out and the "Local Play" option will be available (in addition to the Workshop, Tutorials, and Options). In Local Play, you have access to the three Game Modes, nine Arenas, and target practice Dummies. To use Local Play with splitscreen, make sure to activate splitscreen from the Main Menu and then press the Local Play button.
If you've never connected to the internet while playing Deformers, you'll have access to a preset collection of Forms and customization options in the Workshop. If you have booted up Deformers while connected to the internet, it will mimic what you've unlocked in the Workshop already.
Please note that Progression and Prestige are both online-only systems to prevent offline exploitation; as such, playing in Local Play or while offline means you will not earn experience, Prestige, Silver, or Strands.
New Feature: Cross-Network Play In this update, cross-network play is supported between Steam and PS4 users and Steam and XB1 users. Please note that at this time, PS4 and XB1 users are not able to matchmake with one another.
When you matchmake with players that don't share your platform, you'll be able to see a small designation on their nametag in the lobby, on their in-game tag, and on the scoreboard. Due to certain platform restrictions, cross-network players are unable to communicate with one another using VOIP, but can use the Quick Chat tool to get across brief, simple messages.
Cross-network play is automatically enabled for all players, but can be disabled through the in-game options under the "gameplay" category.
New Feature: Tutorials We added multiple new in-game tutorials, which can be accessed from the "Training" button on the main menu:
Navigation
Master the basic mechanics of movement, jumping, and aiming.
Combat
Hone your skills by learning about ramming, charging your ram, shooting, blocking, grabbing, throwing and charging your throws, and escaping from grabs.
Powers
Practice with each of the Powers so you can familiarize yourself with their unique abilities.
Classes
Learn the strengths and differences for each Class to find the one that best suits your playstyle.
Each Tutorial can also be played when offline. If you're in a party or in splitscreen, the Tutorial button will be disabled.
General Updates
General
Major performance updates that are too numerous and technical to list.
Many, many network/service backend improvements, including:
Matchmaking requests will no longer enforce a "ping restriction" in order to actually start matchmaking, which means that if you were receiving an error message when pressing "Play", that may no longer occur.
Added Credits to the Options menu.
Created our first baby AI system, which is currently in use in our new in-game tutorials. So cute!
Added a bad word filter for usernames. Keep it clean, folks!
Disasters
Disasters have been temporarily disabled as we explore ways to refine the gameplay experience. They will return!
UI Updates
General
The main menu news feed is now more beautiful than ever.
Post-round screentime has been reduced which you get into the next game even faster!
Kill notifications have been beefed up, which makes destroying your enemies that much more satisfying.
Changed "Add Login" to "Add Splitscreen" for better clarity on what that button actually does.
New Feature: "Perfect" Action Alerts
“Perfect” action pop-ups notify you when you’ve hit the sweet spot of a Ram, Block, or Throw (“Perfect” actions do more damage, knock enemy Forms further, and stun enemies for a longer duration).
New Feature: Health Bars
Team and opponent health bars make it easier to know if you should assist your buddy or fire off one more shot to finish a weakened enemy.
New Feature: Hit Confirmation
A visual indicator has been added to the crosshair that provides feedback when your target has been dealt damage.
New Feature: Struggle Notification
If an enemy grabs you, it will now show an on-screen notification on how to break out of their grasp by struggling.
Bug Fixes
General
When kicking a party member, they will actually be forced to leave the party.
Some players would get hung up at the Form chooser screen, which would require a hard reset of the application or console. Fixed that.
Fixed localization errors and missing text. Es muy bueno.
Fixed a bug that caused a development console window to appear when reaching a certain Prestige rank.
Fixed a post match issue that caused some Forms to warp.
Fixed a crash that could occur when quitting the game before reaching the Press Start screen.
Reworked lobby flow to reduce the potential for crashes/hangs that were frequently seen on PS4. It's a lot smoother now, too!
Removed jitters when entering the Form chooser screen.
Fixed flickering of UI between rounds.
Fixed an issue where the same arena would sometimes be picked twice in a row rather than randomly.
Announcing the "Deformers: ReFormed" Game Update
Hi everyone,
On April 21st, we took a big step as a studio and launched Deformers, our first multi-platform multiplayer game. It all started as a passion project for Ready At Dawn, a chance for us to go back to our independent roots. What was at first a couple of developers experimenting with our tech has now turned into a passionate team of 20. Since the early days of making this game, we’ve strived to keep a small team mentality that has remained to this day.
We’ve had our fair share of growing pains through development and launch. The team has continued to work tirelessly around the clock and, as you have seen, we’ve already deployed multiple smaller updates to address the challenges we encountered. With your help and the guidance you’ve provided, we were able to stabilize our matchmaking and database services. We’re aware that some players are still experiencing challenges with connectivity. Matchmaking queue times have been impacted as a result, and remedying this has been our focus and number one priority.
With many of the launch challenges and growing pains behind us, I am excited to let you all know that we will be releasing our first major update to Deformers, “Deformers: ReFormed”, on June 8th at 10:00AM PT — our chance to do right by you. Beyond a number of optimizations and bug fixes that will address many of the outstanding concerns you’ve raised, this update will also bring some major and exciting additional features to the game:
Offline Play – You will be able to enjoy a truly offline couch co-op experience with up to 3 of your friends.
Cross-Network Play – To bring the community closer together, players on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One will have the option to matchmake against Steam players and vice-versa.
Tutorials – We’ll be rolling out new, in-game tutorials to help players get up-to-speed on the basics and core mechanics of Deformers, as well as learn about Powers and Classes. You’ll have a chance to perfect your skills before entering the combat arena. We plan on implementing more advanced tutorials in the future, which will reveal the deeper strategies behind Deformers’ game mechanics.
But this update would not be complete without a big thank you to everyone who has played, helped us improve the game experience, and followed our journey since the beginning. So we wanted to announce a few initiatives for both existing and new players:
In-Game Currency – Firstly, in appreciation of our current players for the support you have given us, we’ll be adding 30,000 Silver to every player account that was created prior to the time of this posting (June 6th at 9:00AM PT); Silver can be used to unlock Styles, Tags, Taunts, and Emotes in the Workshop.
Free Weekend – Secondly, we will start a Free Weekend event on all platforms that will go live June 8th at 10:00AM PT on Steam, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Stay tuned for further details we’ll be posting here in the next few hours.
Free Weekend 50% Off Promotion – And lastly, starting during the Free Weekend period and lasting until June 11th, Deformers will be on sale for 50% off on Steam. Additionally, Deformers will be on sale for 50% off on every platform from June 9th-15th through the online GameStop store and at retail locations.
This is only the start. We have more updates, features, and surprises coming your way in the coming weeks and months.
So on behalf of the entire Deformers team, as well as everyone at Ready At Dawn, thank you all again for your feedback, support, and encouragement. We’re excited for the opportunity to learn and grow with you. See you in the arena!
The Deformers Official Discord Server is live, and you can use this link to join and meet other Deformers players: https://discord.gg/TBcqbrP
Once you're in, please make sure to read over the #rules then you can jump into the #set-your-role channel to tell our handy Discord bot, Tweedledee, which platform and region role to give you.
What is Discord?
Discord is a communication program that supports both text chat and voice chat channels (and it's adding more features every day), and is a great tool that we can use to further facilitate player-to-player matchmaking. It also has a "server members" list that shows players who are online/away/offline, and if the member has it enabled, it'll show you what game they're playing.
How Do I Join?
If you have the Discord stand-alone client (which I recommend), you'll want to click the "( + )" at the bottom of your server panel, select "Join" then paste in that invite URL up top. Otherwise, simply clicking on the invite link above will open up a browser window where you'll be prompted to join/log in and will immediately add you to the server.
Hope to see you there! ːsteamhappyː
Letter to the Community from the Deformers Dev Team: Thank You!
Hi everyone,
We wanted to pause for a moment in between all the design discussions and bug-fixing since launch to say a heartfelt Thank You.
We’ve been reading every word, both the praise and feedback, watching livestreams, and anonymously playing in game lobbies to get your honest take on Deformers and we are very grateful for the thoughts and ideas that you’ve provided. Every bit is helping to forge the path ahead with the launch of our first live product, and we’ve been very humbled by your support.
To everyone who has played Deformers, mentioned it on social media, commented on our YouTube videos, discussed it on your podcasts, or covered it in your reviews, we truly appreciate the time you have taken to join in this journey with us.
Know that we are hard at work on addressing many adjustments to the game experience on a regular basis, including a server-side update to resolve the connectivity challenges some players have reported. We are also extending the time to claim the Founders Pack Forms.
Thank you again; we’ll be sharing more about the updates – and a few other surprises – very soon!
We're currently investigating an issue when attempting to join a match or create a custom lobby. The error received may appear as "Could not find or create a lobby" or as "Cannot connect to Deformers service".
Thanks for the reports everyone, and apologies for the troubles!
2:00AM PDT - Update
Just wanted to pop in and let everyone know that we're continuing to dig into this; we've made some minor backend adjustments that we hope will help here and there, however we're still investigating the root cause of these service errors.
We can confirm that this does occur across all platforms, however, so it's not restricted to a particular one. It's also possible that this service error can manifets in different ways, such as disconnecting you from a lobby or displaying "Cannot connect to Deformers service". The issue seems to occur in waves, so if you find that you're able to get into multiple matches successfully, please keep an eye on this thread for the official thumbs up on when we resolve this issue.
Thanks to everyone again for hanging in there with us as we work as quickly as we can to get you back into Deformers; we really appreciate your patience!
4:45AM PDT - Update (Sorry, posting a bit late)
A little earlier we rolled out a few more updates; one was to resolve a certain type of service crash and the other was to make it less common that when a service failed, players would be kicked out of their game (this doesn't guarantee it'll never happen, but hopefully it's less common now). We also put in some changes in hopes to get better data back from errors and crashes to help us narrow down the source of issues that could lead to some of these bigger service interruptions.
We're still expecting some ups and downs right now across all regions, but will keep working on getting those services back up as soon as we're able and keep you updated along the way.
6:50AM PDT - Monitoring Status
At this point we aren't seeing any more frequent errors show up in the logs, though we're continuing to monitor it. If you're still getting any of the "Cannot connect/lost connection to Deformers Service" or "Cannot create/find a lobby" errors when selecting a game mode, please post in this thread so we can keep this information from players across all platforms in one place.
If you post, make sure to include the following information:
Error message
Region you play from
Platform you play on
Game mode you selected
Whether you were partied or not
Thanks again for your patience, everyone!
1:20PM PDT - Brief Outage for All Players (Resolved)
While we snuck out to grab lunch it looks like the services threw a tantrum. We knew the cause and were able to quickly resolve this issue and are now back to work on the remaining "Could not find or create a lobby" issues that some players are still experiencing.
Looks like this particular outage may also have impacted our login service as well, which we've addressed and are monitoring for further incidents (you may have been stuck at the "logging in" screen, for example). If you're still encountering this, please let us know in the comments.
6:45PM PDT - Service Cycling to Gather Info
We're beginning to intentionally cycle our services, which means we force a mock outage and let the automated system bring the services back up to gather intel on what processes may be the root cause of these errors players have been experiencing. As the services come back online (it takes about 10 minutes), you'll be able to play in between cycles until we initiate the next one.
We're currently targeting to cycle the services every 30-60 minutes, and will be putting info up on the in-game news feed to help bring awareness to this. As the services are rebuilding, players should be able to jump in game and play Deformers until the next cycle begins.
Thanks everyone for all the reports you've sent in and patience you've had; we're hoping that the information we can gather with this process can help us pinpoint the source of the errors you've experienced so we can resolve them.
12:55PM PDT - Rebooting All Services
We're currently rebooting all services to address another matchmaker outage. Should be on the way back up, but you may need to restart your clients before attempting to matchmake again. Thanks for your patience!
5:10PM PDT - Restarting Matchmaking Service
The matchmaking service was giving indicators of an impending outage; we've started the reset process which may result in a disconnection from game with an error message. Please give it about 15 minutes to fully reset, then re-attempt to matchmake at that time. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Edit: We're actually just going to retire our old matchmakers as they were becoming problematic. Working on getting up new shiny ones with some additional updates that we hope will help! :)
5:35PM PDT - Matchmaking services are back online
Please jump in and let us know if you still encounter any "cannot find or create a lobby" errors. Thanks again for your patience!
Edit: Looks like the updated matchmakers are having a service interruption; investigating it now for emergency maintenance.
8:50PM PDT - Service Alert Status: RESOLVED
Hi everyone! We've made some additional adjustments to our services and it's looking like PC players are no longer receiving the "Could not find or create a lobby" errors that were frequent over the past couple of days.
If you're still running into this error, please let us know so we can gather more info and go through some troubleshooting steps!
Resetting Deformers Matchmaking Service (Please Retry in 5 Minutes)
We're resetting our matchmaking service which can result in disconnecting from a game or receiving an error when attempting to create or join a lobby.
It usually only takes a few minutes to come back up, so please try again in about five minutes (or check back here for when we've given the all-clear).
Thanks and apologies for the inconvenience!
[RESOLVED] Service Alert: Unable to Enter Deathmatch Game
We are currently investigating an issue when joining Deathmatch lobbies where players will not be able to fully ready up, and therefore the game never starts. In the meantime, please select either "Team Deathmatch", "Form Ball" or either of these two modes in a Custom game as they don't appear to be affected by this same issue.
Thanks for your patience as we get this resolved!
8:55PM PDT - Service Alert Status: RESOLVED
This issue also appears to resolved now that we've made updates to our services for greater stability. Thank you for your patience!
Deformers is Rolling in April 21, 2017!
Deformers Launch Date
We’re very excited to announce that Deformers is launching April 21, 2017 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One! The servers will be officially online at midnight EST on April 21st (9:00pm PDT, April 20th).
Founders Pack Forms
Today, we are also sharing the full set of Founders Pack Forms!
The design of the Founders Pack Forms were a collaborative effort between Ready At Dawn developers and the winners from recent community tournaments, such as the FORMulation Showdown and the GameStop Manager’s Expo.
The Founders Pack Forms are:
Armando
Finius
Hampton
Stax
The Founders Pack is granted for free to all players who log in to Deformers during the first week of launch, and also to those who have preordered Deformers online via GameStop, Steam, through the PlayStation Store, on the Xbox Marketplace, or through participating GameStop retail stores.
