Friday with Means - August 19th, 2011 - Progress

[Gunfytr]

First page

edit: DOH!! So close, yet so far.

[Colawrenn]

First.

[Malosar]

Sounds like a major milestone on the engine progress! Glad to hear such a big aspect has been resolved, thank you Parsed for your awesome work.

[SoapTarder]

new icons look super seksy. glad to hear about bs changes. the ones you listed are ones everyone was griping about, and I think everyone can agree needed fixing. the biggest fix that is still needed, is the crappy handling of bugged bs rounds. I think most can agree, that the round should not start until enough people click "yes". if after 1 minute there are not enough, just send everyone that clicked yes a box that says "there were not enough combatants, invite will be sent again when enough combatants are signed up" or something logical like that. thats the biggest gripe people have with bs atm, it needs fixing at some point.

[snakeeyes]

I really like the new nano icons, we will surely get used to them pretty fast and some of them describes the nano very well.

It's interesting to read the updates being done to the engine, nice to see more and more things falling into place.
As said earlier I'm really looking forward to both new engine and rebalance, but until then I enjoy the game and work on my chars.

As for the changes to battlestation means said: "hope this is a step in the right direction".
He didn't say "these are the only changes we'll ever make to battlestation ever"

This was a useful and nice FwM, quit your whining allready.

[haavarst]

Really nice looking icons

[haxi]

Standout icons:

http://i.imgur.com/qBV4N.jpg

[Kotts]

So.... how come the yalms, and mantas got nano icons? I thought they were equipped and not cast.

Liked the fwm

[JungleGeorgeRK2]

My issue with battlestation is the sometimes very long waits and when finally started only one side shows up. Maybe this is more of a problem with level 100 or less matches.

Maybe adding schedule where I can signup for schedule match would help.

Other than gaining a level from the daily mission, promote the other rewards for participating. I know paid accounts earn points for getting armor. What other benefits,titles,...?

Maybe a chance to win something that gets mailed to you? Most competions give an award/prize.

[Raggy]

Looking good!

One gripe though:

2. Repeated trips to the Decontamination room (repeated death inside 90 seconds) will result in a longer "respawn time" of about 36 seconds (about 16 seconds longer than normal.)

What if you get mega unlucky and each time you step out of Decon you get instagibbed by a full end-game char with Mongo Rage? 20s sometimes seems long enough, adding an extra 16 on because you got unlucky doesn't seem too nice. I know it's a sort of failsafe to people suicide running for points, but still.

Also the new icons look fantastic, great job guys.

[Tazalanche]

It is nice to see a FwM with this kind of information. Hopefully this information can reduce the QQ in this thread so that it will remain open for the entire week.

I guess I'll express an unpopular opinion.. but it is my opinion anyway.

I'm tired of the icon changes. Some of them, when they were a replacement of an overly used icond, were great. But the more recent changes seem like changes just for the sake of changing.

I personally don't have an issue with the existing nano icons. Maybe they aren't perfect but they've been this way for many years and I know what I'm looking at without even thinking at this point. I'm all for useful change but who exactly is this helping right now? Its not like there's some huge influx of new players to impress so why not leave things as they are and roll out ALL of the icon changes at once (in sync with the new engine) instead of constant shock/change on icons every 2-3 months.

Maybe its my old age but these minor icon changes are annoying.. especially after waiting so long for changes to take place that actually do matter.

You're not the only one that wishes they would have done it in one big nuke, versus a year's worth of DoTs.

I feel that some of the items icons that were previously changed do not look as much like the actual item as the original icon. That being said, I like the appearance of the majority of these new nano icons. There are a few that might represent their name on Earth, but absolutely do not represent the theme of the game. The eagles & the body parts (muscle men, lips, arms, etc.) are the first ones that I noticed felt out of place. Either do silhouettes of body parts or detailed body parts. Having them mixed doesn't look right for some reason... maybe it is because of how thick the outlines are on the detailed one? I dunno. They just seem "off".

[Myreyliib]

Height Map/ Ground Shape:
This was incredibly important as the visual and physical aspects of the ground, while close, were not perfect. This would result in floating buildings, fences, and where the ground did not match previously generated collision floating players. There are some locations where you can see this in current AO where the collision of the mesh does not match the visual representations of it. Without this great work by Parsed this week this would have been a very significant.

Will this also alleviate some of the issues with corpses spawning under ground, you sometimes get in the current engine?

Also that last sentence could probably do with an extra word or so. I bet Parsed didn't work late, just so you could cut corners (or words).

[Gridpain]

nice changes !

Specially BS changes so mostly needed !

First page

lol missed

[Johnnykay]

I hope the nano for the Icon located 3rd column, 9 rows from the top is called "Jungle Love"

[Means]

Will this also alleviate some of the issues with corpses spawning under ground, you sometimes get in the current engine?

Also that last sentence could probably do with an extra word or so. I bet Parsed didn't work late, just so you could cut corners (or words).

Haha. Bad proofreading fail. Thanks for pointing that out.

This will not help with corpses falling underground. This is caused by the bodies of monsters "landing" at a distance away from the point they are considered to be "touching the ground". If there is geometry (like a hill) at the location they land...but not where they are thought to be standing the animation will place the corpse below ground. Nothing that can be done about that short of remaking the animations.

[Xirayne]

Really good news! Thanks! I actually danced around when I read this! <3

[Macrosun]

tl;dr

[Pomidor]

Nice that updates are in progress.

What striked me most are new ICONS. Docaholic has made a lot of great work for playerbase, but, man, those ICONS looks like cartonish old SEGA game, just with upgraded PCX. Really, really bad idea to change them that way.

[If6was9]

The 4 things that were changed about Battlestation have never been an issue to me. The six guys who must have complained loudly to get those changes are just six guys.

The majority of people who play this game and consider BS either an occasionally necessary evil or an occasionally fun side trip are much more interested in increasing the frequency of battles than whether or not someone can cap while in a state of spawn grace.

The numbers required to spawn a BS remain the same - which is high given the present population.

Some BS's are still locked in Bug mode (31-60, Rimor, was bugged the last two times I checked, on different months).

The BS maps are designed for high level, run and gun proffs: title 7 soldiers, fixers, pistol advs ... and not much else.

While I love the OFAB loot I still have no idea why we'd be rewarded for fighting meaningless battles in a battlestation. There's no credible story buy-in for BS as a whole.

Those last are things that I think need work about BS, not respawn times and grace periods... that just sounds like some weeny spawn killer wants to get back to racking up his numbers.

I agree with Traderii that icon changes should probably await the big overhaul. They DO look great but we're getting little things shifting under our feet all the time and it is distracting.

[wyldebeast]

Are we getting break dance expertise? (4th row from the bottom, icons 3 to 5)