Update 8 [5/18/11]

It's an issue with the current version of Unreal3 and it's fog volume implementation we're using. Once we switch over to the latest version it is fixed.

I'm on the fence with the Juice/OT thing.

Seriously, it might just wake some people the hell up and having them aggressively push instead of staying in their little safe corners of the base and try to kill anyone wandering into it.

But yet and still, the majority of people playing now are asshats. They will probably turtle harder and hope someone will go off and shoot the other team's mb once so they can win the game.

I think it's a good idea that would be better with like-minded audience. We shall see.

Allow me to rephrase:


Dear Uber,

I have been an avid fan of Monday Night Combat (MNC), playing since the Beta release, and sinking approximately 400 hours in to the game. Those were, without a doubt, the best 400 hours I have ever spent on a game. In that time, I have played through every iteration of the game, and not once have I had any major complaints or concerns, however, I am unable to understand the reasoning behind the recent changes, some of which seem to contradict Uber's previous statements.
Could you please enlighten me by divulging the thought process behind the recent changes (specifically Overtime and Juice changes), so that it may put to rest the concerns I have about the direction in which MNC is headed.
I eagerly await your response.

Yours sincerely,
Myst


PS: I still believe the game to be far superior to any current competitors, however these changes have somewhat reduced my interest and enthusiasm in playing.

I'm on the fence about the OT issue but everything else seems to be pretty good. I don't think it will encourage turtling anymore than it did before. Now if your ball gets down you can't use OT as a crutch. Against good players the ball typically stays down anyways seeing as its much harder to get your ball back up then it is for the enemy to get it down.

I really like the idea of OT starting within a 25% margin between your teams ball and the enemy's ball but we'll see how this plays out. And to those flipping out, you have absolutely no idea how this will affect the game no matter how many hours you currently have. I am just glad Uber finally did something drastic with the game's mechanics, its not like they refuse to revert patches if we don't like it, after a couple months of complaining i'm sure they'll change it. :roll:

After a couple hours of play I'm really liking the changes. One juice won't cripple the strongest of defenses anymore, but it is still enough to break a stalemate.

As for OT, I like this condition. It would be nice if server admins has the choice between no-OT, OT only if a tie and always OT.

thank you for the reply and i hope the change to the latest version is soon

as the OT change, i have found that a people sit back in their base just as much of the couple of games i have played today, was pretty disappointing, also that 3 people on my team thought that a juiced gunner couldn't take down a 3.3 rockit turret that was being healed by 1 support

Perhaps a compromise for the over-time change is to keep the new mechanic only when there is a decent gap between the Money Ball healths.

Apparently people are turtling more now (havent played; going by reports) because they can calculate that they have won by just tapping the ball.

Instead, to avoid over-time, there should be a larger gap between the balls.
In this way, players cant be sure they have won just because their ball has more health.
They have to continue attacking at least until their ball is ~130% the health of the enemy ball (for example).


We want to create a mentality where players say, Well, we are winning, but it might not be enough to avoid over-time yet. We need to keep attacking and get a larger gain.
(This is why I dont suggest the cut-off limit be 200%; it is too easy to gauge that your ball has double the health of the enemy ball and decide to quit attacking. 210% or something tricky to gauge visually is more appropriate.)


In this way, there is a system to avoid over-time in annoying cases, and also a certain amount of encouragement to keep attacking rather than turtling.


L. Spiro

from the few games i played it seems like a full on turtle fest now and with the juice changes it is very hard to break through the defences

im glad that star ratings are now hidden hopefully people will not care about them as much any more

i like the countdown timer although with the changes to overtime it seems a little redundant

i can see juice being used almost solely as an anti personnel boost now as it is suicide so try and take down even 1 lvl2 rockit turret if there is an enemy player near by and the way people seem to be turtling now its very rare for it to be clear

imho this update seems to have severely nerfed attacking players and been a big buff for the turtles

Two things tended to pop up on our "dislike" radar from the fans and the community, these were Overtime and Juice. This patch was built to address these things.
After taking a long, hard look at the game, I believe the reasons people don't like these two mechanics was that they are the ones that most promote non-team play. Overtime because a single player could hang out and win the game solo. And Juice because people who could play well enough, stay alive and juice chain could carry the game themselves.

So, we decided to go and do something a bit major. The Overtime change is meant to make the game focus more on teams defending and working together. This was the result we saw in our internal play tests. It mainly shifts the importance of keeping your Moneyball shields up, thus knowing where the enemy bots are and how good your defenses are. The Juice change was meant to make it so players could rally around a juice player and use them as the tip of the spear in cracking a base, not have them do it solo. This too was confirmed with our internal play tests.

The level 2 turrets at the start were put in place to slow down the initial rush. We internally tried level 3 turrets but that made it a bit too hard.

Like all major updates to our game, and any game, chances are you'll have to take a look at your strategies and tactics and consider changing them to meet the new demands the game places on you.

As always, we will keep a watchful eye over everything and adjust as necessary. I think we've proven we're open to updating the game as often as we want.

And yes, Laser Blazer turrets are still weaker than Rock-Its but they no longer give free juice and are still quite a bit cheaper.

And pay no attention to that turret debilitator thing. Nothing to see here.

Read my post here please:
http://www.uberent.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=10193
Before you say that I did not give alternative strategies a chance, the fact is I actually typed out a long post about players whining about the new patch, and suggested that they consider new combinations of Endorsements to get around any difficulties they encountered.

I suggested a Rate-of-Fire + Clip set for people wanting to target turrets.

I was going to say not to bash the new gameplay until they tried these new strategies.
And then I erased it thinking no one would listen to someone who had not played the new patch.


So I finally got home and played it. My review is above.

Trust me when I say I had a completely open mind about this.

I was trying to play and then post a positive result.
I thought I had one after my first few games.
I was wrong.


It seems the problem is that you in your office have a much higher amount of coordination between teammates.
You guys can coordinate attacks on turrets that we cannot.
Even if microphones are off, you can just shout across the room.

I have no doubts that your in-house gameplay results were spectacular.
But your in-house team is representing one of the most optimal gameplay scenarios imaginable.
Random people online either miss text chat or dont see it at all thanks to the anti-aliasing bug.
Even if they see it, it is not a guarantee they even understand or care.

Newbies dont know as much as your team.
Some people (and it seems to be a large amount) cant see team chat at all, and some people just dont notice it.


I wanted to give a compliment. I was going to say, Thanks to the buff on turrets, my local Support was much more willing to heal me up to the enemy base.
But that turned out to be just one guy who has played for a long time.


Read my review for the full story.
I am certain you are doing your best, but keep in mind that your in-house team is full of people who know the game mechanics.
They are all playing how you want people to play, but beginners (which represent the future of the game) will not play how you want them to play.

As I said in my post, I never posted a word of support for the juice system simply because it was already so correct I never imagined you would change it.

That means: Dont listen to every whine you hear. Whiners are louder than anyone else, but it doesnt mean they are right.


L. Spiro

what else came up on the radar? lack of maps and no mod tools?

i think you have done a great job with this game but lets face it, it is dead, completely dead. Community made maps and mods are always the best, and always make games last way longer than they normally would.

So will you please get some mod tools out and not waste time on pointless stuff like chickey gear

thanks

@ Ekanaut. My comments or the context they are in shouldn't be stopping you from communicating with the rest of the forums. If there is a problem with me and my posts, deal with me not post 'smart *** comments' about my 'smart *** comments'. Don't stoop to my level. Don't be a ****. Represent uber properly.

@ Scathis. Thank you.

:lol: :ugeek:

For future reference: Scathis is the MNC balance god so if there is anything you dislike about the balance blame him.
:twisted:

"turret debilitator?"

First off, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to directly address our concerns.

This is the part that interests me most. Is there a way that you and the other designers can specter regular pub matches or high level games? Some of the things that were addressed in this update does not scream of me of poor design, but rather a poor fanbase.

Many of my many gripes in this forum wasn't that "Gee, the set up is unfair and how could I win under these conditions". It was more of "Gee, I'm always on the team with idiots who don't get the purpose of the game". Every now and again, yes, I was able to sneak in and just barely get a win for my team because they were busy turtling, the other team was busy assaulting, and I could sneak in with some quick damage.

These changes will not bring about better game play as it was fine as it was. The better gameplay must come from the team, as this is a team game. To Buff what doesn't need to be buffed will, sadly, create a reliance on these things for the bad players. I suspect more turtling to actually GET overtime now and then a rush for juice on all sides.

Hopefully I'm wrong. But other than the forum members here, I have little faith in the community that games this great game.

Yep I giggled too, were both 12 years old.

I used to work in a French game company in Thailand.
The CEO told me that he did not like the Thai way because Thai programmers/artists/whatever were too submissive.
Instead of voicing their opinions, they would just say, Okay, and do whatever the boss said.

I joked to him, That is why I always try to give you ****, to make up for them not giving you any.
He laughed.

I think it was a way to respond to all of the player input, but without considering that:
#1: Players who whine are the only players that are heard and
#2: Player whines are sometimes contradictive of each other. People whined about over-time and juice, but you cant mess with both of them. If you mess with one of them you should solve the problems of both parties.

Change the rules of over-time? Fine.
Change the rules of juice? Fine.
Change both? No, not fine. They cancel each other other. One or the other, not both.


L. Spiro

If you want to change juice take the heal away that you get when activating it. This has been a complaint for so long and it's the reason why juice is considered OP. Juice was pretty fine otherwise.

If you want changes that don't upset as many people ask the community for their opinion. There is nothing speaking against this.

I love you Scathis, thank you.

Still don't agree with the changes (in my experience, snipers are the biggest complaint about the game, and I know many people who refuse to play on a server simply due to the presence of a good sniper), but respect the decision/post & I love you


I may or may not be very drunk at the time of posting, I'm sorry

While reading these patch notes I am seriously like WTF. I cant make a judgment call yet because I play on 360 and Im not saying theres nothing good here at all, but I lurk in the forums pretty heavily and all I see in the patch notes are player suggestions and that concerns me a great deal. Sure listen to your players, but theyre not game designers. Hey if everyone keeps crying so hard about snipers like they did about juice maybe they'll listen to their playerbase and take them out of the game altogether. I wouldnt be surprised if the next set of patch notes have Sniper removed from the PC version of the game and juice gone entirely.

On paper these changes look like you are redesigning the entire game. That's not a good sign IMO considering we're 9 months out from release of the original product. Furthermore, it looks like you're headed towards a game I don't even want to play anymore and this is possibly my favorite game of all time in the last 10 years. As developers you're obviously free to tweak your product how you want and I am sure there are players that enjoy these changes. Personally, I was always of the mentality that if you didn't enjoy a game due to its mechanics you should go find one you do enjoy rather than bitching until they make the game into what you want. Thanks to all the whiners that couldn't handle the game and have now potentially ruined it for me.

Apparently Uber caves to pressure when people tell them how to design their game, but not to the pressure of people that have been left updateless for almost 6 months.

This is the first set of patch notes I saw as a 360 player that I didn't want.

Edit: Sorry if I come off like an ***, but I am heated. I keep coming to this site daily in the hopes of an Xbox update and see what's going on with the PC version only to be met with daily disappointment. Maybe it's time to just give up on MNC for now and pull my whole team over to Brink.

i liked the new changes at the beginnign, but then when i tried to clutch the game for my team, i found that juice was not sufficient due to the immense turtling of one support on the enemy team. he had a shaveice and two hacked rockit turrets, which meant that i suicided after just one turret that i smoke bommed and juiced on T.T