Patch Notes - R53 Discussion (Live 5/14)

IceIX

Reposted from Announcements for discussion.

Most of the work on this patch focused on internal SDK and tool updates that need to be done for the client. So tons of work, just not much that is directly usable by any given Field Agent. As always, some features may be added or changed before this goes Live.

Alliances

- Fixed pending Agents being able to view Alliance chat before they are accepted into an Alliance

UI

- Fixed a display issue where Agents would not see the second reward received if a Season reward and an individual Versus reward were earned at the same time. - Changed the Events tab to Versus. All Versus Tournaments will appear in this tab. - Added a notification icon whenever a new unplayed event appears in either the Story or Versus tabs.

Gameplay

- Agents are now able to instantly level a character up to their current level max with a single burst of Iso-8. If an Agent does not have enough Iso-8, the game will offer an Iso-8 pack that is applicable to the cost required. This offer will top out with the Agent's Iso-8 plus a Mother Lode Iso-8 pack.

Nemek

IceIX wrote:

Agents are now able to instantly level a character up to their current level max with a single burst of Iso-8.

Hopefully just in time for that X-Force buff...!

Unknown

if you dont have enough Iso, will the game use all the iso you have and level the character as much as you could?

Unknown

I'm hoping that has a confirm button or something, because otherwise someone's going to accidentally spend all their ISO on Bagman at some point.

Unknown

Pjoe0211 wrote:

if you dont have enough Iso, will the game use all the iso you have and level the character as much as you could?

Read the full description. If you don't have enough, it asks if you want to buy the remaining ISO using the standard prices from the shop.

Unknown

grimeon wrote:

Pjoe0211 wrote:

if you dont have enough Iso, will the game use all the iso you have and level the character as much as you could?

Read the full description. If you don't have enough, it asks if you want to buy the remaining ISO using the standard prices from the shop.

I read that, i was wondering if thats your only option if you enter that scenario, or if you may also just dump all your iso into one guy as much as you can, hence the question

Unknown

You know I think it would be kind of cool to have set jumps in levels. For example have a button to level up 1,5, or 10 levels at a time. It could then pop up a box saying "This will cost XXX amount of iso, are you sure you want to do this?"

Unknown

Pjoe0211 wrote:

grimeon wrote:

Pjoe0211 wrote:

if you dont have enough Iso, will the game use all the iso you have and level the character as much as you could?

Read the full description. If you don't have enough, it asks if you want to buy the remaining ISO using the standard prices from the shop.

I read that, i was wondering if thats your only option if you enter that scenario, or if you may also just dump all your iso into one guy as much as you can, hence the question

Yes - this. I have never had enough ISO to jump a character to thier complete max level, but I would like to at least jump the 10 levels or so I have saved up (for example). It sounds like from the patch notes its all or nothing, but I think we are wondering is why not allow it to go to the max you have in ISO?

Unknown

I think the whole point of this is to encourage people to whale and to make it easier for the whales. "See, you can just spend $300 and max out this character."

IceIX

Definitely good suggestions there that we'll take on board.

From a completely player point of view, it's an interesting little extra piece of data that I can see on every character so I know how much Iso I have left to invest in them. Even if I'm not going to invest into an Iso purchase for leveling in a fell swoop, it's kind of cool to know that it'll be 22,035 Iso-8 to take my Daken from level 50 to level 69.

TheVulture

IceIX wrote:

Definitely good suggestions there that we'll take on board.

From a completely player point of view, it's an interesting little extra piece of data that I can see on every character so I know how much Iso I have left to invest in them. Even if I'm not going to invest into an Iso purchase for leveling in a fell swoop, it's kind of cool to know that it'll be 22,035 Iso-8 to take my Daken from level 50 to level 69.

I'd certainly appreciate that, as at the moment I nerdishly work it out with a player-made calculator and keep totals in a spreadsheet!

mjh

I really hope the chat gets fixed sooner than later. What's wrong with it, you ask?

- more often than not my messages don't go through, they just disappear (yes, I closed the app and opened again, nothing)
- the chat UI is just horrible, you can tell not a single designer was involved
- **** font is that?
- the notification system for chat is terrible. An exclamation to alarm me about my messages? When I go into it, how can I tell what messages are new from which ones i've read? Again, would be solved with some design
- if I want to edit my message, I have to tap around my sentence until it finally gets the right position. iOS comes with a damn precision select tool (the magnifying glass on tap-and-hold), c'mon devs
- if my message is long, instead of making the input box taller, it just hides the beginning of the message, wow

overall the alliance chat messaging experience is one of the worst i've ever encountered

take notes from any project management tool for teams in the work place and implement those, for example:
Invision
Basecamp
Google Hangouts

Lastly, how come I can only send gifts to my alliance members who also happen to be Facebook friends? Am I supposed to add random strangers to my Facebook just for MPQ?

Unknown

Can people apply to full alliances? I guess not.

Unknown

HawkeyeSucks wrote:

Lastly, how come I can only send gifts to my alliance members who also happen to be Facebook friends? Am I supposed to add random strangers to my Facebook just for MPQ?

You must be new to this online gaming stuffs
That's exactly what they want. As does about any other f2p game does.

But on a more serious note the I'm pretty sure that the chat was more of a hey this would be kinda cool idea someone did in their spare time rather then a fully fleshed out project and got tacked onto the alliances as a freebie gift.

Unknown

Please consider disclosing changes to event mechanics like MMR, scaling and brackets in the patch notes and generally being more transparent about them. Every time something slightly changes the community needs to bang their heads against the wall to figure out if something changed or if it's just bad luck.

Rules that keep being changed and goal posts that keep moving without the player knowing are not a good way to keep the community content with the directions the game takes.

Unknown

sms4002 wrote:

You know I think it would be kind of cool to have set jumps in levels. For example have a button to level up 1,5, or 10 levels at a time. It could then pop up a box saying "This will cost XXX amount of iso, are you sure you want to do this?"

The set jumps sound like a better idea than a "max out" button. I usually spread my ISO up over the top 2-3 characters that I am trying to level up.

I think the set jumps should be smaller tho. 1-5. I would much rather hit 5 two or three times then having to hold the button for 20 minutes to level up 15 levels because each level is 1000+ ISO.

Unknown

I'm unclear on what exactly is being changed with the Events -> Versus tab change. Does that mean pve "story" events are going to be moved to story? If this is the case I believe that change will be unnecessary and will probably cause confusion. I for one enjoy being able to overlook every timed event going on in one tab.

I'm probably the only person who has an opinion on this change too...

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Alliances

- Fixed pending Agents being able to view Alliance chat before they are accepted into an Alliance

That's a relief. I spent ten minutes chatting with a nice, enthusiastic dude this morning before someone else looked at his roster and decided not to accept him.

It was awkward.

Unknown

HawkeyeSucks wrote:

I really hope the chat gets fixed sooner than later. What's wrong with it, you ask?

- more often than not my messages don't go through, they just disappear (yes, I closed the app and opened again, nothing)
- the chat UI is just horrible, you can tell not a single designer was involved
- **** font is that?
- the notification system for chat is terrible. An exclamation to alarm me about my messages? When I go into it, how can I tell what messages are new from which ones i've read? Again, would be solved with some design
- if I want to edit my message, I have to tap around my sentence until it finally gets the right position. iOS comes with a damn precision select tool (the magnifying glass on tap-and-hold), c'mon devs
- if my message is long, instead of making the input box taller, it just hides the beginning of the message, wow

overall the alliance chat messaging experience is one of the worst i've ever encountered

take notes from any project management tool for teams in the work place and implement those, for example:
Invision
Basecamp
Google Hangouts

Lastly, how come I can only send gifts to my alliance members who also happen to be Facebook friends? Am I supposed to add random strangers to my Facebook just for MPQ?

there are some limitations that prevent you from using the ios edit field. The game is probably made with an opengl based engine and all the text, edit fields, etc are done with this engine. For them to use all the same bells and whistles that are in the standard ios edit field, they would have to redo the entire screen using iOS cocoa controls. It's doable but it would have a different feel than the rest of the game and not be portable to the steam version (so it will be more work to build and support).

That said, I do run into issues with chat still, like the most recent message not displaying and it still auto scrolls... sometimes. sometimes it only autoscrolls by one line, sometimes it does scroll like it's intended to, and sometimes it scrolls back to the top.

_RiO_

davecazz wrote:

there are some limitations that prevent you from using the ios edit field. The game is probably made with an opengl based engine and all the text, edit fields, etc are done with this engine. For them to use all the same bells and whistles that are in the standard ios edit field, they would have to redo the entire screen using iOS cocoa controls. It's doable but it would have a different feel than the rest of the game and not be portable to the steam version (so it will be more work to build and support).

Well, the single-line chat message input box is pretty much a complete PoS on the Steam/Windows version as well, so there's a bit of opportunity here to fix both.
If both will require different fixes to integrate with their respective OS platforms correctly, then so be it. That's something the devs should really have gotten right on day one of this feature.

Unknown

_RiO_ wrote:

davecazz wrote:

there are some limitations that prevent you from using the ios edit field. The game is probably made with an opengl based engine and all the text, edit fields, etc are done with this engine. For them to use all the same bells and whistles that are in the standard ios edit field, they would have to redo the entire screen using iOS cocoa controls. It's doable but it would have a different feel than the rest of the game and not be portable to the steam version (so it will be more work to build and support).

Well, the single-line chat message input box is pretty much a complete PoS on the Steam/Windows version as well, so there's a bit of opportunity here to fix both.
If both will require different fixes to integrate with their respective OS platforms correctly, then so be it. That's something the devs should really have gotten right on day one of this feature.

any development project has limited resources and I'm sure they have a huge list of features they want to build. I don't think anyone would want Demiurge to drop everything and put their best guys on chat at the expense of everything else.

for the amount of updates they crank out they are doing an awesome job. bugs are to be expected, we just need to keep raising awareness until they are fixed.