Build 1.6.21

[John]

Build 1.6.21 Release Notes

New Features

• Promotion: Rank 2 and 3 now available. Each rank gives an additional point for allocation in stats, and an upgrade to the active ability:
  
  • Warmaster: Sundering Impact with more Sundering!
  • Raidmaster: Stonewall with more resilience!
  • Bowmaster: Bird of Prey with more range!
  • Shieldmaster: Bring the Pain returns more pain!

Changes

• Proving Grounds: Promotion cost to Rank 1 reduce to 40 renown
• Mead House: Experienced unit cost reduced to 30 renown
• Battle: Elo is only exchanged between parties of power 6 or above
• Battle: Elo difference is used as a hard window for matchmaking. The window starts at 4 and expands by 2 per second
• Battle: Tournament battles affect both your tournament rankings and your global rankings
• Friend: Friend mode re-enabled!
• Marketplace: Now waits until renown and/or units have arrived before closing 'Delivering' dialog
• Marketplace: New Sales!
• Login Streak bonus alert stops showing for the day when you have consumed all of your bonus
• 720p now supported as a fullscreen resolution

Known Issues:

• Elo Achievements don't show up until the battle _after_ you trigger them.
• Friends show as offline when they should be online
  
  • Restarting TBS:F client sometimes fixes the issue
• Client Version Too Old
  
  • Restart Steam to fix the issue

General Notes:

• The game always writes log files into $HOME/tbs_logs/. You can access this or email it to us for bug reporting

KNOWN WINDOWS ISSUES

• Crash on startup
  
  • Reinstall the game through Steam
  • Reinstall the game to a different folder if the above does not work
• Steam Overlay unavailable
• Terrible performance in fullscreen
  
  • These are both fixed with the following steps:
    
    1. Right-click the following
    2. Choose "Settings..."
    3. Ensure that "Enable hardware acceleration" is clicked
       NOTE: This does not work with the Chrome browser
    
    

KNOWN MAC OS X ISSUES

• The Steam Overlay functions intermittently on Mac OS X
  
  • If you load the game without the Overlay, simply restart the game and it usually appears
• Crash on startup on Mac OS X
  
  • Remove the folder "/Library/Frameworks/Adobe AIR.framework". If you need to reinstall Adobe AIR, visit this link: https://get.adobe.com/air/

For previous updates, see the Patches & Updates section.

[hovercraft]

Wow, thanks. I found the game couple of days ago, and I'am thoroughly impressed with what you achieved. I didn't have that much fun with this kind of a game since, well, I think "celtic legends", do you know this game?
Another question - I didn't catch your kickstarter, frankly I was somehow not convinced by art style (was I wrong) but if I would like to get on now, is there a way?

[mariusmora]

Really cool and needed update! I like the new elo tweakings!

[piotras]

edit: nevermind!

[Gygu]

It seems that there is a problem with the friend mode - I cannot challenge a friend even though he is playing Saga - I cannot see him in friends list and neither he sees me.

[eAZy]

It seems that there is a problem with the friend mode - I cannot challenge a friend even though he is playing Saga - I cannot see him in friends list and neither he sees me.

You must both have your steam profiles set to public.

[Gygu]

Thanks for help, worked like a charm.

[Yellow]

NICEEEEEE!!! friend match back on + Rank 2 and 3 now avanible!!! + all the extra stuff, very nice indeed. Great jobb guys!

[Yojimbo]

I've probably missed something obvious, but is there any way of distinguishing the rank of an enemy unit?
Without knowing it could be easy to make tactical mistakes based on rank one assumptions.

[netnazgul]

Don't know whether it's a bug, but sometimes matchmaker gives me opponents for a couple of seconds and then drops them leaving me seeking a new enemy.

[Butters]

Build 1.6.21 Release Notes

Changes

• Battle: Elo is only exchanged between parties of power 6 or above
• Battle: Elo difference is used as a hard window for matchmaking. The window starts at 4 and expands by 2 per second

Apart from the issue cited in rzeznicc's thread (high elo player not getting any matches), there's something very wrong here.
I understand the intent, but it seems to me there's been an overlook that's kind of screwing everyone over right now.

So the intent is, until you get to a full team, you stay at elo 1000 and the hard window for matchmaking doesnt affect you, so you get paired with other beginners, right ?
But the problem is, at the time of update, many people were in the process of getting to their full teams, and already gained elo. They now are at maybe say 1100+ elo and 3-4 rank 1 units. Problem is, especially at a low player number times of the day like now, they'll get paired almost systematically with higher rank teams, which of course leads to a lot of frustration. The terrible thing is, they can't just start and forfeit a bunch of matches to lower their elo on purpose, because they don't have a full team so their rating cannot be modified...
I think this issues needs to be addressed ASAP. At the moment the ingame chat is full with disgruntled new(ish) players, and I can certainly understand where they are coming from.

[Tirean]

Apart from the issue cited in rzeznicc's thread (high elo player not getting any matches), there's something very wrong here.
I understand the intent, but it seems to me there's been an overlook that's kind of screwing everyone over right now.

So the intent is, until you get to a full team, you stay at elo 1000 and the hard window for matchmaking doesnt affect you, so you get paired with other beginners, right ?
But the problem is, at the time of update, many people were in the process of getting to their full teams, and already gained elo. They now are at maybe say 1100+ elo and 3-4 rank 1 units. Problem is, especially at a low player number times of the day like now, they'll get paired almost systematically with higher rank teams, which of course leads to a lot of frustration. The terrible thing is, they can't just start and forfeit a bunch of matches to lower their elo on purpose, because they don't have a full team so their rating cannot be modified...
I think this issues needs to be addressed ASAP. At the moment the ingame chat is full with disgruntled new(ish) players, and I can certainly understand where they are coming from.

Match making still takes power of your team first, then it searches for the closest ELO match for that.

[Butters]

Match making still takes power of your team first, then it searches for the closest ELO match for that.

Does it really ? All I hear from the in-game chat points in a different direction.
It might just be that the servers are empty atm...

[Tirean]

Does it really ? All I hear from the in-game chat points in a different direction.
It might just be that the servers are empty atm...

Could also be something went wrong with the coding when they changed it if that is happening consistently.

[Yellow]

One thing that i would like to see, maybe not right now, but in a near future(specially when something on this regard is implemented, is all leaderboards to be reseted(exept the tournament ones and maybe "most games played?")...

Why? u might ask.. well, with all the changes to how matchmaking works, to the ELO system, the new rank units, and hopefully the new unit Caps that should/will be implemented, it would really make more sence if everything gets down to 0 again, so that everybody has a real chance now to make it to the top, not just as it has been until now, with 80% if not 90% of the top 20 on Most of the leaderboards specially "Win Streaks" been people:

- Using All Melle Builds.
- Exploiting new players at power 1 teams.
- Having a hugge advantage becouse of previosly playing the beta when the game came out on steam, so having it super easy vs players who had just joined.....

the combination of those 3 is how 90% of those with 50-100 win streak made it there.

DISCLAIMER:
Am not jelaus of any of them, i am myself ranked 50(+/-) on "Over all Ranking", and ranked 10(+/-) on both "Most Wins" and "Most Games Played". Sure it will be a bitt of a pity to loose what i have archived until now, but well, thats a sacrifise i am willing to take in order to have a real leaderboard based on real skills and not just on exploits of the system...

[Jorgensager]

One thing that i would like to see is all leaderboards to be reset

This is pointless since you gain ranks by gaining ELO, and you gain ELO by beating other players. If you are among the 20 best players, it really doesn't matter if others have a headstart of 200 ELO. All you need to do is to play well consistently, and you could get up there quickly. The top ranks gain less ELO per win by the very nature of the ELO system, and beating one of them will give you a big boost, so just keep going if you want to make it into the top 20.

As the majority of players get better, stats like win/loss ratio will normalise over time.

[Yellow]

This is pointless since you gain ranks by gaining ELO, and you gain ELO by beating other players. If you are among the 20 best players, it really doesn't matter if others have a headstart of 200 ELO. All you need to do is to play well consistently, and you could get up there quickly. The top ranks gain less ELO per win by the very nature of the ELO system, and beating one of them will give you a big boost, so just keep going if you want to make it into the top 20.

As the majority of players get better, stats like win/loss ratio will normalise over time.

U dont get to top 20 on "Wining Streak" by gaining ELO, u do it by following the 3 paths i posted, and while "Over All Ranking" and "Win/Loss Ratio" will as u said, normalise over time, "Wining Streaks" most likely won't....

And is not by any chance a question of me wanting to get to top 20, am pretty sure i can manage to do so withown the need of the leaderboard reset, as a matter of fact i am already top 10 on 2 leaderboards and top 50 on overall, its about giving everybody a chance to get there by fair play and real skills, not by exploiting game mechanics upon game release...

[Jorgensager]

U dont get to top 20 on "Wining Streak" by gaining ELO, u do it by following the 3 paths i posted, and while "Over All Ranking" and "Win/Loss Ratio" will as u said, normalise over time, "Wining Streaks" most likely won't....

They are almost entirely dependent on the most OP strategy in the current build. I can pretty much guarantee we will see some similarly OP strategies in the future before proper balance is implemented (assuming that is possible)... How many times do you want them to reset the longest win streak boards? There's no point in having a Hall of Fame which is reset on every update.

[Yellow]

They are almost entirely dependent on the most OP strategy in the current build. I can pretty much guarantee we will see some similarly OP strategies in the future before proper balance is implemented (assuming that is possible)... How many times do you want them to reset the longest win streak boards? There's no point in having a Hall of Fame which is reset on every update.

As i said, if u actually had read my first post u would have noticed... the resent should be a 1 time thing, and should not be implemented right now, but once "unit Caps" be added(or any alternatives to the 4x issue being OP)

Sure with the addition of new units in the future some other balance issues might arrise, but at least by that time, the chances of exploits and 100 win streaks would not be as plausible as they are now. Not to mention taht the biggest part of the community would already have a decent amount of skills and knoloadge of in-game mechanics + If units caps are indeed implemented there should not be any future issue with 4x of the same.. as such thing would not be possible in the first place.

[Arnie]

Apart from the issue cited in rzeznicc's thread (high elo player not getting any matches), there's something very wrong here.
I understand the intent, but it seems to me there's been an overlook that's kind of screwing everyone over right now.

So the intent is, until you get to a full team, you stay at elo 1000 and the hard window for matchmaking doesnt affect you, so you get paired with other beginners, right ?
But the problem is, at the time of update, many people were in the process of getting to their full teams, and already gained elo. They now are at maybe say 1100+ elo and 3-4 rank 1 units. Problem is, especially at a low player number times of the day like now, they'll get paired almost systematically with higher rank teams, which of course leads to a lot of frustration. The terrible thing is, they can't just start and forfeit a bunch of matches to lower their elo on purpose, because they don't have a full team so their rating cannot be modified...
I think this issues needs to be addressed ASAP. At the moment the ingame chat is full with disgruntled new(ish) players, and I can certainly understand where they are coming from.

Players are still matched the same way as always:
1) Power
2) Elo
John just opened up the Elo Matching part of it to be a little longer if we cannot find you an exact match. This has had the side effect of adding an average of 7 more seconds onto finding you a match, but it should also find you better matches. So an average of 7 seconds early on could save you 15 minutes of a poor match. The "Hard Window" John refers to is for everyone. If you have a 1000 Elo Ranking then we look for someone within 4 Elo of you and then expand both higher and lower by 2 Elo per second until a match is found. We do this same calculation regardless of your Elo, newb or vet.

If you get matched with a >6 Power team but you are <6 Power then no one gets Elo. This entire design is to block people from farming new players.

*None of this has any effect on Renown gain.

*We do plan on giving bonus renown at higher power play and are now working on the exact system.

Right now, since we just added rank 2 and 3 units the air is a little thin for the high power teams (12+) because there aren't enough players yet at those ranks. But we expect there will be very soon and that situation will level out.

On closing, I feel perhaps we did not message this build correctly and players have the wrong impression of what we're doing 'under the hood' with MM. Everything we've done should HELP to find you a better match, not the reverse.