As we mentioned yesterday, the Skulls of Arkhona campaign has now begun! You have until July 30th to fight with your faction of choice. There's 30,000 faction RTC available if you play 40 matches and all factions win!
The Skull for the Skull Throne event hosted by Game's Workshop is well-underway and until Monday, July 24th @ 1pm EST you can score big savings on Eternal Crusade:
In addition to these discounts, ALL players who log in over the weekend (until Monday, July 24th at 1pm EST) will get 4 FREE skull cosmetics! Chest pieces for CSM/SM/Orks, and a helmet for Eldar. These items will never be available again, so fire up the game and get them now!
See you on the battlefield!
Katie
Skulls for the Skull Throne! Free Skull cosmetics and new patch!
Skulls of Arkhone in-game campaign starts tomorrow Friday 21st.
You will also receive one cosmetic item for each faction when you log in over Skulls for the Skull throne weekend, three chests and Eldar get a helmet. It's pretty skully and unique for this weekend. They won't be available again.
Patch Notes
Patch 1.4.25, deployed Thursday, July 20th, addresses matchmaking, performance, optimizations, bugfixes, balancing changes to loyalty point costs and melee, cosmetics, map changes.
General
• Reduced maximum range for weapons to match character relevancy distance.
• Apothecaries now have access to MKIII and MKIV backpack appearance items.
• Fortress Agnathio has a new side entrance on defender's right/attacker's left of the fortress.
• The end of the "secret" pipe on Agnathio is no longer out of bounds, so it is possible to shoot into the new side entrance.
• Maggon Station has had many of the "far" spawn points moved closer to the B and C capture points. Defenders should find themselves spawning 150 meters away instead of 200+ meters now.
• Settings screen overhaul to allow for further advanced options and settings to be added.
Balancing Updates
• Loadout point costs for many weapons have been reduced. Every "Mastercrafted" weapon was reduced at least by a little.
• Defensive Bash of the combat knife, ceremonial knife, spiked knuckle, 'urty syringe, and Narthecium now result in short stagger instead of long stagger.
• Many trinkets have been changed to be percentage-based modifications.
• Black Bolt Defense: Added an extra tank and two extra transports to the attackers. These are available on the right side spawner (when facing towards the fortress).
Bug Fixes
• Fixed a bug where the announcer sometimes voiced messages from the wrong faction. He should no longer be affected by the warp.
• Olipsis Refinery: Increased height of vehicle blockers to prevent Eldar vehicles from entering capture point B.
• Fortress Ronan: Repositioned vehicle spawning icons on the 2D map to be closer to their respective vehicle spawner.
• Fortress Ronan: Fixed gap in ruin that characters can get stuck in.
• Medusa Relay: Added blocking volume adjacent to fuel tanks in capture point C to prevent characters from being trapped behind them.
• Fixed a bug where the Warlock plays the pistol grip animation when using Destructor, Embolden, Enhance, and Force psychic powers.
• Silva Shoota (available via Steam DLC) now uses the correct "Big Shoota" barrel mods.
Matchmaker update!
We've got the data we needed, and we've reverted the map sizes to normal. The matchmaking changes will remain.
As it seems there was confusion about player changes on the maps.
The reason we changed map size is the matchmaker works with the number of players, and the buckets (servers) it puts players into. So we were trying different sized buckets than we had before, nothing else.
We will use this week to analyze matchmaker changes with normal map sizes.
Thank you all for helping out!
-------------------------
Previous News from Friday:
This weekend we will be testing our matchmaking system, as well as match sizes on LIVE. Examples of changes are smaller match sizes so that we spin up more servers for fewer people and Matchmaking settings are more strict on when to start up a match, as well as minimum players.
This will affect queue times, for better, or for worse. Hence us testing, but this is important data and for the greater good.
Nathan
Patch 1.4.5 Deployed June 21 - Happy Summer Slaughtering!
Hey Crusaders!
Today is officially the first day of Summer and a perfect day to deploy our next patch.
The major update in 1.4.5 is the implementation of Easy Anti-Cheat which we discussed in detail during last week's Twitch show.
Here are the patch highlights:
General
• Increased damage assist and debuff assist timers to be even with the armour regeneration timer
• Added Master Crafted and alternate look Storm Shields to Space Marine reward boxes.
• Removed collision from faction banners in maps.
Balance Updates
Flickering Flame:
• Increased damage from 10 to 30.
• Increased penetration rating from 10 to 100.
• Increased ablaze ailment from 6 to 10.
• Removed damage falloff.
• Decreased RPM from 333 to 300.
• Reduced max range from 400 metres to 50 metres.
• Increased mana cost of flickering flame from 4 to 10.
• Reduced LP cost of Burny Syringe from 200 to 50.
• Renewer (Eldar healing spell) now heals more and gives an XP assist bonus
• Apothecary and Painboy "healing grenades" now give proper assist XP
• Possessed hero now has grenades and a health pack
• Skarboy Kommando gives a melee bonus to squad members when acting as squad leader
Bug Fixes
• Fixed Invisible vehicle collision present next to the titan and rhino wrecks next to the destroyed gate on Black Bolt.
• Visage of Murder chaos helmet didn't have glowing eyes and the icon was incorrect.
• Zedek: Fixed a barricade near capture point C that could not be vaulted over.
• Pegasus: Added blocker volume around canisters near point A to prevent characters from getting between them and the wall.
• Pegasus: Improved the invisible collision under capture point C to facilitate vehicle movement.
• Pegasus: Fixed character collision with stairs in point B.
• Medusa: Fixed character collision with stairs in point C.
• Fixed the MKIII mask for Iron Warriors
• Allow Relic helmet on all Chaos
• Fixed an invisible collision on Blackbolt
• Fixed a floating vehicle blocker on Blackbolt
• Fixed some holes in the back of Fortress Ronan that let Swooping Hawks fall through the floor
• Power Klaw strong attack now launches vehicles as far as Power Fists.
• Tooltips for ranged weapons that can be reloaded now show ammunition in the same way as the in-game HUD, where the sum of the first and second values are equal to the total capacity.
• Fixed incorrect RPM in the tooltip of Hunter's Mark.
• Fixed incorrect RPM in the tooltip of Avenger's Duty.
• Fixed missing fire mode icon in the HUD when using Hunter's Mark.
• Re-enabled the gem glow on veteran Banshees with Ebon Witch shrine.
• Agnathio: Fixed a out of bounds issue outside capture point B.
• Torias: Improved vehicle blocking collision near capture point C.
• Olipsis: Improved out of bounds volume at the entrance.
• Scope toggle will no longer revert after death.
As always if you need any game/account support, please contact Customer Support.
Happy Slaughtering!
Katie Fleming
Community Manager
New Player Top 10 list started - Official Forums
We've now started our third round of the Players Top 10 list, which is a prioritized list of what you think is most important, then second most, and so on, for us to address.
We, of course, have internal priorities but these player lists are very important for us in our prioritization which we review constantly based on the state of the game at any time.
Other feedback channels we use to determine our actions:
Internally:
- Game server data
- Player behavioral data
- Game statistics and analysis
And more informally, unofficial community channels where we lurk:
- Twitch, we watch different people play our game
- EC Reddit, cause we're on Reddit anyways ourselves
- EC Discord, just because
Feel free to jump in. Just read the rules of the respective channels and the people that manage them.
And if you're considering buying Imperium Edition now on 50% discount, which essentially is $100 worth of stuff for $25 (Regional pricing varies) but are wondering if there is a bigger discount coming in Imperium on some sale or other, don't worry. Imperium, when on discount at all, is 50%.
Twitch Friday 14:00 EST! We found the warp in our new offices, and our next patch.
It's good to be back from the dead and in the warp again. Some nasty plagues are going around, and I was out for a week. Then again, I never really could resist quality Nurgle time.
This Friday we resume our Twitch in our 30-minute format, then afterward, DJ Penguin will be playing and doing the giveaways.
The team will be playing on their developer accounts, so if you want that Dev Steam achievement, it might be a good time to be playing.
On the schedule, we have a couple of interesting things to share. Sadly, nothing visual like UI as the systems are still in server-side development, like personal goals and "lag," the common word for everything that's affecting gameplay.
Twitch schedule is as follows.
Production Update
• State of the Crusade, how is the game doing, lots of numbers on all sorts of things, like balancing and player activity.
• Anti-Cheat, we’ll be talking in detail about our client side solution we’ve implemented. This is what I meant about no fancy viewable things. You're not supposed to see or notice it.
• What’s in the upcoming patch, which is focused on Anti-Cheat but has extra juicy stuff we can mention, like balancing. You won't see it on the Twitch, but you will feel it in the patch.
Yes, of course, our favorite faction is always X, and we always nerf Y. Interestingly, that's a surefire way for a game to die. Favor one faction, you end up with players in only one faction.
• Dude, where’s my campaign? We’ll talk about the upcoming series of campaigns briefly. They are for all factions at the same time, tied together, and we will give further details in the following twitch on how it moves the story forward.
And if you're wondering, of course, Eldar will get their massive campaign, when their unique assets are done.
Giveaways
• DJ Penguin’s stream hosted and, the team will be playing on our Dev accounts, some in DJ Penguins war party so you can all get that Dev kills achievement!
I'll also be there in the chat and maybe field a question or 47.
And the big question, when is the patch coming?
It doesn't have a set date, but as soon as the Anti-Cheat is fully implemented and tested, the patch goes out with whatever is ready at that time.
I have my hopes up for next week, but this patch doesn't go out till Anti-cheat is ready.
Many of you will have a wonderful moment seeing all those Steam game bans suddenly appear on people that have been abusing cheats so far and think we haven't been monitoring them. Yes, I'm evil like that. This you already knew.
With fresh greetings from the warp,
The Eternal Crusaders
Why are we crazy and giving 5K or 10K RTC? Trading cards? News!
Note: Today's patch were minor fixes, housekeeping, and enabling the Damned Legionnaire, the Space Marine hero. Highlights at the bottom.
Yes, we've always been crazy, or at the very least, mildly insane. It comes with the territory. This isn't one of those moments.
We do frequent changes to our packages, pricing, and setup with the Steam store team, as our business model simply doesn't fit very well. Steam has been great and helped us out with a lot of special requests and unorthodox setups, and part of the effort of cleaning up the old and making things future proof.
Some packs have had the same 20K RTC "DLC"
That is not good, as if you say, bought Squadron, then went for Imperium as well - since Imperium is a $50 packages containing $100 of RTC and items - then you might not have gotten the RTC in your second Imperium purchase.
This is about to be fixed. Don't worry. If you contacted support before and got your RTC, we're sorry for this, and if you end up with more RTC, it's all yours. We're nice like that.
Part of that transition, as well as separating Squadron and Imperium from the basic RTC Credit pack that have a built-in discount, we're increasing the amount of RTC coming with Squadron and Imperium to enhance its value. It will now be 25K RTC in both.
So if you ever bought one of those two, you are now getting 5K, or 10K RTC if bought both when you log in.
I guess we are accidentally nice again. Sorry, it won't happen again.
For those of you that bought the game recently, you may have noticed a lack of Trading cards and such. That is also because of our complicated setup, as our full version of the game configuration is a DLC on top of the Limited free version.
Steam fixed this yesterday, so now all our DLCs that are above $9 will drop cards again.
News on move, Eldar, and degradation of performance
In other news, we just moved to a new office last weekend and are now getting up to speed. So we're preparing some small deployments, such as the Legionnaire (flaming guy) and further fixes and improvements.
We've also noticed a slow degradation of service, which we are investigating. If you have experienced a massive change - as in massive, please submit a bug report to us, describing:
WHEN it started degrading.
WHERE you are in the world with your SteamID
WHAT degraded (Ping up 100ms? Rubber banding? Special map?Framerate)
And last, but certainly not least. Eldar campaign is in preparation. It is weeks out as we do changes to the setup of the campaigns, and we are waiting for all the unique rewards for it that are delayed. I'd rather wait than half-ass it.
The changes specifically are to provide small goals for the other factions, while the big campaign is still Eldar and as glorious as the others.
This will help to provide a bit more targets on all sides, as you can play the Eldar campaign, and jump back to your other factions for a little something-something.
The campaigns will work better, and the matchmaker won't break, as to be quite honest, the faction focused offering, and in-game campaign coordinated efforts were simply too successful for us.
We wanted people to try the other factions, and with all the doubts that nobody would ever play faction X and everyone plays faction Y, we were pleasantly surprised to see our system bombed disproving that theory.
That's all, for now, crusaders, in our efforts to be eternally yours, we try to improve and be better people. Sometimes. Not really, we're all evil. Stop it, Nathan. No. Yes, It's Friday. OK.
Nathan Richardssons
Senior Producers
Patch notes:
- New Space Marine Hero available for purchase
- Shield weapon mods are now functional
- Fix overheating weapons not properly setting the cooling state on the server
- Various Store thumbnails fixed and some icons
- Various material fixes for appearance customization
- Blackbolt: Some blockers fixed
- Ronan: Some holes patched
- New Ablaze rounds in progression tree
- Fixed Synapse Cut Achievement not unlocking with some personal hand weapons
- Fixed Eldar evade, lengthened the timing window for evading animations so the cancel doesn't occur if there's a queued attack
- Increased XP cap for Complex and Horde PvE modes!
Patch 1.3.53 - Deployed May 10th, and they shall feel no pain
This patch addresses the deamons, traitors and xenos as the Emperor's finest retaliate, matchmaking, performance, optimizations, bugfixes, balancing changes, cosmetics, and of course - The Space Marines waging a campaign (starting May 12th).
This is the third of our campaign of faction campaigns, where we are encouraging people to try out other factions. They continue to work amazingly well, with the other factions basically breaking our systems.
While most people have already tried the Space Marines, we shall see if they can rally together and show superior teamwork.
Everyone, including us, thought Space Marines would always dominate in numbers, but these faction campaigns have shown us that this was very wrong. Now we will improve our campaign system, incentives, and approach to these events.
As part of these campaigns, we have launched the Skarboy Kommando, Possessed Marine and coming up next, the Damned Legionnaire himself, with flames to rival even the hottest Tinder date.
These are the highlights of the patch on top of all the "under the hood" stuff.
General
• Players now able to redeploy when in a vehicle (to prevent edge cases of being stuck in a vehicle)
• Tweaked the lighting and post process volume of Maggon Station and Refinery Olipsis. Let us know if you think screenshots look better on those maps now.
• Fortress Ronan now has a new "secret" parking spot for vehicles inside the wall on Attacker's right.
• The aquilla and laurel on the Aquila Blessed Legs now turns gold when wearing Relic Armor
• The Possessed Marines benefits from the melee fixes listed below.
Balance Updates
• Travel distance for a melee weapon's forehand and backhand attacks are now far more consistent.
• Travel distance of fast and strong attacks performed by melee weapons within the same category (swords, axes/clubs, fists/klaws, etc) no longer vary wildly.
• Strong and fast melee attacks performed by melee weapons within the same category (swords, axes/clubs, fists/klaws, etc) no longer link to the next queued attack with wildly varying timings.
• Base Warp Charge Regen for Warlocks, Aspiring Sorcerers, and their Veteran equivalents increased from 7 per second to 10 per second.
• Warp Charge Regen Delay for Warlocks, Aspiring Sorcerers and their Veteran equivalents reduced from 2 seconds to 1 seconds.
• Duration of the getting up animation for Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines and Eldar has been reduced from 3.67 seconds to 3.0 seconds to be in line with Orks.
• Removed damage falloff from Lash of Slaanesh.
• Increased range of Lash of Slaanesh from 15 metres to 25 metres.
• Removed one Tank and one Transport from the vehicle spawners on Fortress maps. This means attackers can have a total of 4 transports, 2 tanks and 2 ordnance vehicles up at a time. Cooldown timers have not been touched.
Bug Fixes
• Updated the description of the Skarboy Kommando (and other upcoming heroes) to show that they are Elites and have non-editable loadouts.
• Fixed a bug where the Sicky Slugga fire mode displayed in the HUD as single fire instead of automatic fire.
• Added a vehicle blocking collision volume to Zedek to prevent Eldar vehicles from climbing cliffs between capture points A and B.
• Added a vehicle blocking collision volume to Fortress Harkus to prevent Eldar vehicles from climbing the pipes near the north side of the wall.
• Fixed a bug where some vehicle blocking collision volumes in Zedek that were also blocking characters.
• Removed a railing on the second floor of Zedek capture point A that was bisected by some boxes.
• Fixed a piece of debris that was floating by the secret side entrance that passes under the exterior walls of Fortress Agnathio.
• The new reward shoulder wasn't playing nice with Daemon Forged Armour.
• Fix for death screen sometimes appearing multiple times
• Fix for Night Lord effect appearing on Possessed
• Improvement to Vehicle physics (grenade thrown at vehicle shouldn’t make them go through floor or fly into the air)
• Fix for Warlock and Sorcerer having a need ammo icon on top of them
• Fix for VFX still appearing on stealth characters
• Fix for sticky grenades not falling off when flying upward
• Fix stealth transparency pop when looking through a scope
• Improvement for hovering vehicle movement
• Added big Hero images in the store
• Fixed issue where the Possessed’s left hand appeared to be holding a weapon.
• Fixed exploit where players could speed up the revive process by attempting to pick up a user as he is getting up from a healing grenade.
• Weaponry on vehicles will no longer appear below the vehicle for the first few moments after being spawned.
• The tyranid dummies are no longer floating off the ground.
Blood for Chaos Campaign
Hey Crusaders!
We've just launched our second faction campaign, this time focusing on the Chaos Space Marines!
Hop into game > World Map to check its progression until Sunday, May 7th. After the campaign has ended, re-visit the World Map to claim your reward!
To read up on the latest patch head over here: http://steamcommunity.com/games/375230/announcements/detail/1282807465631251853
Katie
Patch 1.3.44 deployed April 27th - Abaddon is not pleased
This patch addresses Abaddon's mood, matchmaking, performance, optimizations, bugfixes, balancing changes, cosmetics, and of course - The Chaos Space Marines waging a campaign (starting April 28).
This is the second of our campaign of faction campaigns, where we are encouraging people to try out other factions. It worked amazingly and there was a 5-fold increase in Ork players and matches.
As part of these campaigns, we are launching the Skarboy Kommando, an Ork hero.
Now let's see what happens when Chaos comes for your blood and souls - the gods are hungry.
These are the highlights of the patch on top of all the "under the hood" stuff.
General
• The new World Map visual update is in, paving the way for new functionality.
• There are reports of Skarboy Kommando on the battlefield but we’ve been searching and haven’t been able to locate him. (Premium version)
• A new advancement, Sneaking Skillz for Slugga Nobz allowing them to not find themselves anymore. (Free version)
• Three new Khornate helmets are in the rogue trader store for you fashion conscious followers of the dark gods.
• Chaos has a new campaign starting with a sweet looking reward. It’s a shoulder pad with a chaos star on a pile of skulls.
• The Shuriken Catapult 3.4x zoom scope is now available via supply drop.
Balance Updates
• Adjusted the damage falloff of the Kannon Deffgun shell fire mode such that direct or near-direct hits are required to do maximum damage.
• Removed the suppression effect from the Ace Dakka.
• The Chaos Space Marine anti-personnel default loadout now comes pre-equipped with the Frag Bundle. This item has also been added to the Chaos Space Marine starting inventory and can be equipped by Traitor and Traitor Assault classes.
Bug Fixes
• Fixed a bug where Dakka Deffguns and Plasma Deffguns could not queue fast attacks.
• Fixed a bug where Deffgun fast and strong melee attack VFXs were not played in the correct direction.
• Fixed a bug where Slugga Boyz could not equip ammo consumables.
• Fixed a bug where all Eldar vehicles would incorrectly use forward maximum speed to limit lateral movement speed. It now has less lateral ability and Eldar vehicles will have further changes, making act more like hover vehicles and less like omnipotent Death Race participants.
• Removed a floating pillar in Medusa.
• Assigned heroes to players who already bought them on Website.
• Moved "Purchase Extra Slot" button top right and adjusted naming.
• Fixed a bug where the blood decals from Tyranids remained visible indefinitely, causing performance issues when many of them were stacked.
• Fixed bug where both of the Mark III Armours were clipping when the user has power armour equipped.
• Added a Ork Cloaking Device called Sneaking Skillz for veteran Slugga boys in advancements (Slugga Nobz).
• Fixed bug where the Skarboy Kommando and Striking Scorpion's grenades appear cloaked on other clients.
• Fixed bug where firing at a Ground Assault who had their shield raised would result in damage being taken.
• Fix a bug where double clicking on a zone in the world map would result in the zoom being interrupted.
Here are the previous patch notes from the April 12 patch.
http://steamcommunity.com/games/375230/announcements/detail/236844763024207019
Hope you enjoy the upcoming carnage.
