Changelog, Hotfix, Wednesday September 23rd (19.1876)
Hotfix - 19.1876
New!
New Daily Objectives: Win vs X faction 5 times. Rewards: 500 coins. Win 5 games over-all was removed as an objective.
Empire Crest Cardback is now available.
We will be doing limited edition Oktoberfest cardbacks - released this week and for the next few! If you want to collect them all, you'll have to buy 'em while they're available!
PvP Bots now give ladder points for victory. This means that you get .5% of your own rating if you play against a bot, and if you lose, you lose .25% of your rating. Battles against PvP bots will not be able to be resumed from the menu anymore, as a reflection of this change.
Fixes
Corrected many engine problems, including but not limited to: Kamikaze Lantern blowing up and damaging non-adjacent units (or not damaging anyone at all), Shelter disappearing when command cards are played on nearby allies or enemies (but not the Sheltered unit), and Shield not disappearing when receiving damage. There are other fixes as well - this was a very large change that corrected a number of problems.
Matches will now be cancelled if both players do not load the game correctly - so that people who disconnect on load phase will no longer receive losses. These matches will not affect the statistics of either player involved.
The store should no longer say it's "500" for purchasing all cardbacks by default, even if the price is higher.
Corrected a problem with tooltips from the main screen displaying in other parts of the UI (including the profile and collection screen).
Fixed a conflict with challenges and deck building/saving confirmation. The game now auto-declines challenges while you are in the deck building screen.
PvP bots now count toward PvP-related objectives.
Heavy Recon Panhard now has free move but no diagonal move, as intended.
Recon Jeep damage boosting ability now works even when attack is reduced to 0 or less.
Bombardiers no longer ignore Shelter.
Sleep of the Dead changed so that it only gives you Awoken Ambush cards if the targeted unit actually dies (so targeting Sheltered units with it will no longer work).
Balance Changes
Alliance Grenadiers Cost reduced to 4 from 5.
This card was just a little too expensive for what it offered.
Alliance Panhard Marksman Range increased to 2 from 1. Now does not retaliate.
Even with Annihilator, 1 range along with only 1 HP made it too vulnerable most of the time. Now it can really apply some board control and force the enemy to respond.
Alliance Jagdtiger Move cost reduced to 1 from 2 (is no longer Slow).
Given the specialized anti-mechanical nature of the unit, being Slow made it expensive to manoeuvre into useful positions.
Alliance Volksgrenadiers Lost advance deploy, move cost reduced to 1 from 2 (is not longer slow).
Being Slow didn’t fit well with their initiative and made them expensive to move for an early unit.
Alliance Rearmament Cost reduced to 3 from 5.
Considering that it doesn’t let you draw another card after use, this was too expensive.
Alliance Railway Gun Cost reduced to 7 from 8.
Compared to other Alliance Command cards like the Grand Slam and Tall Boy, this was a little overpriced.
Alliance Gebirgsjager Flak 38 Cost reduced to 5 from 8. Stats reduced to 2/2 from 3/3. Now attacks forward instead of diagonally.
Without Advance Deploy or bonus move abilities it was fairly mediocre for an 8 cost unit. With the price and stat reduction, along with forward attack, it should now be a useful option for mid-game.
Neutral Urgent Despatch Courier Now destroyed and returned to your hand when you attack or use the Ability.
Previously this card could place too many Shields to easily handle, and it devalued other Shield cards (Alliance was especially affected by this). The new change means it is still a powerful card (effectively being a slightly slower, but reusable Smokescreen) but not so devastating if you can’t immediately destroy it with a Command Card.
Empire Fear Barrage Cost increased to 7 from 6. Changed so that you draw one card for every enemy Organic hit.
This was changed to work as it was originally intended, which makes the card rather more powerful in the right situation.
Full Disintegrate
Neutral Urgent Despatch Courier
Alliance Volksgrenadiers
Alliance Panhard Marksman
Alliance Gebirgsjager Flak 38
Empire Fear Barrage
Newsflash: Improvements on Freezing
Hey everyone! So, as some of you might have heard in the chat, the team found one of the bugs we believe is responsible for the freeze and lag errors that people have been getting. The game was doing database backups and saving enormous amounts of data from every turn played by every player in the game. When we totaled it out it was something to the tune of 7.1GB and it was doing this four times a day.
That data was being saved, backed up, and the server was compressing it all at the same time. Every time! With that kind of process going on it’s no wonder there were some freezes and some lag. The good news is that we found it and we’ve fixed it. It’s already been folded into the live version and you should be able to see those effects at work!
Today is the last day that the Alliance Crest cardback, in the store on the third tab, is available. Each of these limited edition cards will be available for a week and then gone. Poof! Like magic. A new one will be taking its place. Which? Empire! Look for that tomorrow if you’re an Empire fan! I know I will be.
Also, tomorrow we’re hoping to update the game with some of the other fixes that we’ve been working on. Some balance changes have gone into it along with fixes to kamikaze, some tweaks to shelter, and a few other things.
That’s all I have for you at the moment! See you on the battlefield!
Spotlight Preview: Arena Mode (Part II)
Today for our Spotlight Preview of Arena mode, we have a special treat. Today you get to see how the deck building (drafting) for Arena works, and not just in the form of screenshots – no, today we’re going to show you the real deal, in the form of a video provided by our own Onyxandria!
Check out the video below and if you like it, make sure to share it with your friends. Arena’s actual release date should be announced sometime next week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOS_eO595Cw
This video is on our test server. Some of the cards might have different stats to reflect future balance changes (spoiler alert!) For those who would rather their content previews in the form of screenshots, check ‘em out below!
You can stay in the loop with all of our news by following us on Twitter @MOWFaceOff and on Facebook right here. Sometimes we hold regular promotions on social media, too – so the real question is, if you’re not already following us, what gives?
And the winners are!
The cardback design contest ended on the 10th at 6pm EST (GMT -5) and as we promised the winners will be announced today. There were good ideas, exciting to read most of them, but unfortunately only three winners could be selected. Thank you to everyone that participated. We hope you had as much fun thinking these up as we did reading them. For the contest results!
In THIRD PLACE and recipient of 500 gems is Offroadxpipe
In SECOND PLACE and recipient of 1000 gems is Lazymornings
Lastly, in FIRST PLACE and recipient of 1500 gems is Astartes
The actual cardbacks may not be exactly as entries described, but the design should be broadly the same when/if any are implemented into the game.
Congratulations to all of our winners, and thank you to everyone for participating. Your gems have already been distributed. This is the second of our contests and we plan to host more in the future. We hope that everyone will be looking forward to it and keeping an eye on the news for the next one. As always, see you on the battlefield!
Behind the Scenes: Meet Mark
Hey everyone! As we’ve done a couple of times now this is the fourth installment of our Meet the Dev series. Today we’re interviewing Mark. He’s our Technical Director and general boss-man for March of War: Face Off. He’s an active member of the community and chat, usually lurking, and a lot of you have seen him popping in and out of the chat.
On a side note the Cardback Contest has closed. We’ve had some really great entries and they’ve been compiled. We’re going through them to find the winners – who will be announced Monday. Keep your fingers crossed through the weekend and look forward to that announcement. Without further ado, Mark~
You’ve been called a veteran employee of the company. How many years have you worked on March of War and March of War: Face Off? How would you sum up the experience?
I’ve worked for Isotx since the Modtoaster/CrosuS days so roughly 8 years. It’s been quite the experience watching our products evolve and improve.
What was your first project with ISOTX, anyhow?
Helping to recover a critical server that had been deleted by mistake by a vendor. That server was the entire company at that time.
When you signed on to help out with Face Off what would you say your primary goal for the game was? Has it changed as the game has progressed?
Well I’m the Technical Director for all Isotx products. My goal for Face Off was to bring to Face Off what we learned from developing March Of War in order to make Face Off the best possible product.
What’s the combination to your gun safe? Kidding! Would you call yourself a gun collector or just an enthusiast? Can you confirm the rumors as to whether or not the government of the Independent People’s Republic of Cheese Sandwiches has given you a license to kill?
I do have a modest collection of firearms. I like to go shooting (paper targets) whenever I can. As for my being an assassin, I could tell you but then I would have to kill you.
Which up-and-coming faction, of those yet unreleased, are you looking forward to? Are there any spoilers / peeks and previews / or just personal thoughts that you’d like to share?
The remaining 3 factions all have a lot of interesting possibilities for units. I think with each new faction we develop we learn from the previous ones, so some exciting things are in store for our players.
On the subject of factions, a lot of players have expressed the belief that the dev team extremely favors the Alliance. Onyxandria (speaking in the third person) has become solely Empire supportive. State your allegiance and what it is about that faction now, also in the future, that you’ll be supporting and looking forward to.
Well I’m currently playing Empire as well having switched from Republic. But I have good cards in all three factions and I enjoy playing them all. I’m planning on playing the remaining 3 factions as well. As for the dev team being biased we are not. What we want is a nice balance between the factions but one that leaves multiple game play options for each faction. It is true however that we developed the Alliance faction first so all the devs started out playing Alliance and Alliance was the mother (or father) of all other factions.
If the dev team were plotting something for your birthday (of course that’s not happening I have no idea what you’re talking about) what flavor of cupcake, cake, tart, pie, or dipping fountain would you be most hopeful to have on the scene?
Chocolate, death by chocolate.
Arena mode has been talked about on and off the scene for a while now like a carrot for the players to look forward to. Could you give us a little preview of how you see arena being set up and played from the player’s perspective? Nothing concrete, of course, but put some leafy green topper on that carrot!
Well Arena is the ultimate test of skill in Face Off. You get a level playing field with everyone else in the Arena your skills at deck building and your tactics playing those decks are all that matters. It’s the great equalizer. Got what it takes? Prove it.
No player in Arena has any advantage over the other player its just skill.
Arena specifically generates random cards from your faction and neutral, a selection of 3, and you pick one - you do this until you fill a deck of 30 cards up. You have to pick one per choice of 3.
Then you are matched to an opponent and you get prizes based on your win ratio, the better you do the better the prize
Some players prefer PVE over PVP. Is there a serious dedication to improving the PVE experience going on behind the scenes? What would you say the biggest current project for improving PVE is?
There is a very serious effort underway to improve PVE. Just check the recent changelogs. When we initially designed Face Off we viewed the PVE as simply a practice mode for PVP. We had low expectations for the AI being any good. However we did decide to use an interesting new technology called MCTS (Monte Carlo Tree Search). This technology has been used to help computers master the game of Go. Go is a very difficult game to teach a computer to play well. The AI in Face Off has a lot of potential and we intend to exploit that. Our AI dev is back from his long summer vacation and is hard at work each and every day making the AI beter. Look out!
You knew it was coming. Our readers/players are very interested in hearing your point of view on the Florida license plate story. How did you come to own that car and did you notice, before the interview, that the plates were a little on the risqué side or did they catch you unawares and surprise you? Do you still own the car? Inquiring minds want to know.
Well this is just an incredible story. It starts with a computer in Florida owned by the State Of Florida deciding that the license plate A55 RGY would be a perfectly good non-offensive license plate. So let it be written so let it be done. And that is how I came to own this license plate http://www.snopes.com/photos/risque/license.asp on my leased car.
So one of the programmers who worked for me at that time thought it was a funny plate and he decided to take a picture of it and he uploaded it to a small website he had. And then someone saw it and uploaded it to another web site and so on. Well the story ends with my being in that car with my wife and a stranger chasing after my car on foot banging on her window saying “you’re the one I saw that license plate in a Playboy Magazine article”. Oh and did I mention that was right after all these strange people started calling me telling me about how I was winning the license plate of the year award etc.
My wife who is a wonderful person had about enough at that point. She politely told the programmer who took the original photo that we were going on vacation and when we came back the license plate had better be gone. So the programmer took the plate to the Department Of Motor Vehicles and “exchanged” it. I do regret to this day that we did not keep the plate at least as wall decoration.
When I first saw the plate I was like “if you want to mess something up get a computer to do it” so yeah I knew it was an “interesting” plate. But I had no idea that one photo could lead to all that. Keep in mind this was when the Internet was a lot smaller than it is today.
He had some fun things to say and I’m glad he had a chance to tell us the license plate story. We’re working hard on Arena and trying to get it out to you guys. Hope you’re all as excited for it to arrive as I am. As always, see you on the battlefield!
Changelog, Hotfix, September 10th (18.1582)
Build #: 18.1582
New
Added "Grandmaster" crown to the chat. You can now see players who are in the Grandmaster league for this specific season in the chat; the tag will go away next season. This is our vanity reward for reaching GM. Dev tag was altered slightly to match this.
Corrected many AI problems including the AI not using flare launchers correctly, killing its own units, not taking advantage of advance deployment and misusing targeting.
Deck builder now asks for confirmation when changes have been made and you try to leave the deck builder without saving.
New characters will now get 250 tickets to start with. Users who were registered in the last week will also be given the 250 tickets. The goal here is to close the gap some between new and old players, so we're giving new players a little more to work with in order to catch up more easily.
A limited edition Alliance Crest cardback is available in the store. It costs 1000 gems, and will only be available for a week. If you want it, better get it soon! The other four faction ones and the Steam launch one will also only be available for just over a week more!
Changes
Added more logging code to track down some of the friends list bugs that people experience.
Losses in PvP are now less damaging in ladder points.
PvP Bots will now take into account deck rating instead of just player overall rating; this means that the bots will use decks that match your rating, instead of random test decks people haven't played with much, etc. This should make PvP bots a little more challenging.
Balance Changes
Alliance Motorcycle Partisans Move cost reduced to 0 from 1 (gained Fast).
Alliance Heavy Recon Panhard Move cost reduced to 0 from 1 (gained Fast).
These early Alliance harassment units were buffed to make a delaying strategy more viable.
Alliance Afrika Korps Engineer Health increased to 3 from 2.
Considering his ability costs 1HP to use, he was too weak to be useful.
Alliance Panzergrenadiers Attack reduced to 1 from 2.
They were being undervalued, especially to comparable units from other factions. This change means they are still tough mid-range infantry with range and a useful Assault ability, but they aren’t quite as deadly to short range enemy units, who will now have more opportunity to close with the Panzergrenadiers.
Republic Forward Air Controller Health increased to 3 from 2.
Neutral Shocktrooper Cost reduced to 5 from 6.
Just too expensive for his stats and ability.
Neutral 155mm Howitzer Health increased to 3 from 2.
Neutral Rocket Truck Health increased to 3 from 2.
For their 10MP cost, these units were too weak.
New Units
Alliance Weapons Drop (Bronze) Cost 5, gives +1 Attack to all allies in Row.
Alliance Defense in Depth (Silver) Cost 5, gives Shield to all allies in Row.
Republic Air Raid (Bronze) Cost 7, deals 2 damage to enemy CC.
Republic Devil Dogs (Silver) Cost 5, Organic. 3 Health, 2 Attack, Range 1 Forward+Vertical. Move 1, cost 2 (Slow).
On Move: Gain +1 Attack for one turn, gain +1 Health.
Empire Type 4 'Hunter' (Bronze) Cost 6, Mechanical. 3 Health, 1 Attack, Range 2 Forward. Move 1, cost 1. Can move diagonally.
Anti-Mechanical (+2)
Empire Tank Traps (Silver) Cost 3, target enemy Mechanical is Disabled. Draw a card.
Neutral Rough Terrain (Silver) Cost 6, all Mechanicals in play take 1 damage. Draw a card.
Neutral Regroup (Common) Cost 2, target ally gains +1 HP and moves back one tile. Draw a card.
Neutral Defectors (Bronze) Cost 8, target ally gains +2 HP. First two enemies in Row suffer 1 Damage.
Neutral Danger Close Artillery (Bronze) Cost 7, target an ally. All other units in a 3x3 area around them take 2 damage.
Full Disintegrate
Alliance Panzergrenadiers
Spotlight Preview: Arena Mode
We’ve been talking about it a lot: the fabled Arena Mode. It’s a new game mode that should shake up the meta of Face Off a lot. Some people have been asking us some very hard questions, and in true Face Off dev fashion, we’re going to try and answer with honesty and clarity. Here’s some of the frequent ones!
What sort of prizes will Arena have?
This isn’t set in stone yet (sorry) but we’re looking at: Coins, Packs, Tickets, Limited Gold Cards, and maybe even Gems. Packs, Tickets and Coins are a given. The other two are still being discussed.
Will Arena be Gems-only?
Nope! One of the main ideas behind Arena was to give people something else to spend their coins on if they feel so inclined. So there will definitely be coin entry. Gems will also be able to be used for the entry fee if you’d rather spend money on that.
Will Arena affect the ladder in any way?
Arena has no bearing on your ladder position or points. Additionally, playing in the ladder while in the middle of an Arena run will not end your Arena run. You can’t be in queue for both at the same time, though.
Wait! But does that mean I might not be matched for Arena? How will this affect the PvP queue?
Truth be told: We’re concerned about this. With our small playerbase, it’s true that your Arena run might take a long time to complete because of a limited number of players in the queue – and it might reduce players in the queue as well. We’re trying to work out a solution. Many people have suggested making PvP bots count for points. We’re sincerely considering it, but nothing is set in stone here yet. We are working on addressing the problem, though.
Enough about that. How does Arena work?
That’s a discussion for another news post, but here’s a teaser image of Arena while in testing~
Many AI fixes (especially with how it handles 0MP units)
Added loading screen messages to show the reason for 94% hangs (IE, if you load and the opponent does not, it will say "Loaded. Waiting for opponent.")
Added shiny/rarity to the unit on hover in battle (so now you see when the opponent has played a gold card that it is, in fact, a gold card).
The background animation will now stop playing while you're in challenge mode.
Empire card packs will now have a description.
You should no longer lose points upon being promoted a ladder tier.
The score required to reach Grandmaster is now shown.
Player Rating is now shown in the ladder screen.
Match History now shows rating delta.
Players who have recently been matched together will no longer be (so you won't be matched to your last 2 opponents anymore).
Added more code to track PvP hangs to try and get to the bottom of why some of them are hanging. It would be immensely helpful to us if, when you experience these, both you and your opponent report it as a bug. A lot of the problems we're running into, we get one report and not both. We need both to try and track down what's going wrong more easily (so that we can compare what happened on one player's end versus their opponent's). Any assistance you can grant us would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance.
Fixes
Fixed turn damage modifiers not being removed properly.
Corrected a problem where double clicking 'save' in the Deck Editor caused duplicate decks to be created.
Bren Gunners can move again.
Actually reduced the cost of Assault Grenadiers to 4 from 5.
Adjusted card text on Fear Barrage to match the current functionality (you get one card if you hit at least one Organic, not one card per Organic.
Changed the name of the Republic USMC ‘Zippo’ to Republic USMC ‘Sparky’, to prevent confusion between it and the regular Sherman ‘Zippo’.
Various text changes and improvements (thanks to Talrea for pointing out many of these!).
Balance Changes
Alliance Rest and Refit Changed to: Target ally is Disabled, suffers -1 Attack and is forced back one tile, draw two cards.
Gives Alliance an option for drawing more cards, but at the temporary cost of unit effectiveness in the field.
Republic Medevac Cost reduced to 0 from 2. You now draw a card after use.
It was rare that you would have an Organic unit with such a good assault ability that it was worth paying resources and using a card to take them off the field for replacement (or extracting heavily damaged units). Now it only uses a slot in your deck.
Full Disintegrate
Alliance Rest & Refit
Changelog, Hotfix, Wednesday September 2nd (16.1386)
Hotfix - no new build
Like the update two days ago, this was a "server side" change. So that means you don't need to update, the build number remains the same.
Ladder Changes
The Grandmaster ladder is now open at any point in the season. You no longer have to wait until a week after the season starts!
In addition to having to have a Glicko-2 rating of at least 2100, to be considered a Grandmaster, you will also need to have a Ladder score of 500 or above. If either your rating drops under the threshold, or your score does, you will be demoted to Diamond.
That's it for now! Happy playing!
Changelog, Hotfix, Monday August 31st (16.1386)
Hotfix - no new build
This particular hotfix was a "server side" fix. That means that you don't need to update; you just need to reload your client. The build # is the same.
Ladder Changes
Shows rating alongside points, entries are sorted by points within a league, but rating determines tiers/promotions/demotions.
Points start at 0 when a new season starts, like now, but the working of ratings themselves has not changed.
The points change at the end of a battle:
If the stronger player wins, the points gained and lost are equal to 1% of the lower rated player's rating.
If the weaker player wins, the points gained and lost are equal to 1% of the higher rated player's rating.
In case of a draw, the points gained and lost are equal to 0.5% of the higher rated player's rating. The lower rated player gains points, the higher rated player loses them.
Example 1: Player A rated 1000 loses against player B rated 1700. Player A loses 10 points, player B gains 10.
Example 2: Player A rated 1000 wins against player B rated 1700. Player A gains 17 points, player B loses 17.
Example 3: Player A rated 1000 draws against player B rated 1700. Player A gains 9 points (17 / 2 = 8.5, rounded to 9). Player B loses 9 points.
AI Changes
The AI now gets the "+1 MP" card when you play against it and it is the second player.
On Hard difficulty, the AI will now always go first. (This includes battles against PvP bots.)
This will be effective as of the now and will affect the new season, starting at 00:00 UTC on September 1st.
League Placement Rewards This month, we're giving tickets equal to 50% of your total score to every player in the game for prizes. However, this will be the last time that you get tickets. Next month, we'll be giving new rewards, which will be primarily vanity related. We will detail these out in a future news post, so keep an eye on the announcements!
