RHINO_Mk_II

Yeah, that might do it, assuming the slow on hit isn't egregious like 50% or something.

Edit: Holy shit that max damage range though....

It's 30%, and lasts for 2 seconds.

Patch notes with pretty pictures here: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?threads/test-server-update-april-8-2020.254026/

Outfit War PTS Schedule

We'll be running a compressed Outfit War schedule over the weekend to give players , where players some opportunities to practice and play before our first Outfit Wars event this Saturday on Live servers.

Outfits are required to enlist and qualify during these compressed timetables per usual. Cycles begin on the following days, and all times listed below are in PT:

Wednesday, Apr. 8

• 4am
• 10pm

Thursday, Apr. 9

• 4am
• 10am
• 4pm
• 10pm

Friday, Apr. 10

• 4am
• 10am
• 4pm
• 10pm

Test Schedule phases are as follows:

• Enlistment phase: 30 mins
• Qualify phase: 30 mins
• Preparation phase: 30 mins
• Combat phase: 2 hrs

Tactical Slot and Merit Assets

We have added a new loadout slot to all players. This slot now houses Merit Reward deployables, and in the future may house other limited, tactical equipment.

Tactical Slot deployables will n...

Definitely some similarities in the overall sentiment, but it's worth remembering the actual state of things back then.

What we've implemented with Outfit Wars is actually creating fights, massive, sprawling, multiple-base hotspots around the map, with far less lattice stagnation than we've seen in the past few years. That's something to be proud of, and the game as a whole has become more alive as a result. Compare that to WDS pre-season 2, where there were practically no fights at all because everyone was running circles around the map with literally no resistance, not super healthy.

The reason this has some positive repercussions for the game is because we did take player psychology into consideration. It's pretty clear we've answered the "why we fight" question for competitive players with Outfit Wars; the bad thing is that the way it's being done is toxic Outfit to Outfit. We'll certainly make changes in the future, and we've got some solid ideas on how to remedy this while sti...

BinaryNS

Thanks to the RPG team for addressing my findings so quickly. I look forward to having a fairer outfit wars qualifier after the patch.

I really struggled to find a good way to contact the team confidentially that would guarantee a quick response for a bug with time-sensitive, large effects like this. Please let me know if there's any way (feel free to DM) if there's a better way to approach this situation any differently next time.

You did a great job. We do frequent this subreddit, so posting your findings here is very helpful to us.

hdt80

What's the reasoning behind no revives? I strongly disagree with that decision. Revives are necessary to take a base and are a huge source of income for medics. With these changes really only players that get kills will be useful, and no supports.

I was on the fence about this one, too. When it comes down to it though, players won't suddenly stop giving you revives because it's not counting toward base capture score. There are a lot of other incentives like experience gain, directive progression, getting allies back so they can fight, etc.

However, what players will do if the behavior is incentivized, is sit in a choke point on top of the biggest pile of bodies you can find, constantly reviving players over and over again as they're mowed down the moment they stand up, despite the futility of their position, with no one pushing to make plays that actually take bases.

It's because of how easily revives can be farmed that we decided to put this one on the list for the time being. Doesn't mean it needs to be there forever though, if that behavior were suddenly to change.

Original article is here: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?threads/outfit-wars-alpha-1-scoring-fixes-and-fairness.253943/

We'll be bringing the PC servers offline at 6am PT, April 1st to bring in the changes detailed in the article below. The downtime is expected to last up to 2 hours.

Hey there, folks. We're on the cusp of completing the Outfit Wars Alpha 1 cycle now, with loads of Outfits per server currently participating in the Qualifiers.

With this being somewhat of a landmark for Outfit Wars, the question of fairness of scoring has come into question as we lead up to this big moment.

We set Alpha 1 up with the expectation that we'd be able to see what kind of meta developed, and use it for a baseline moving forward. And thanks to the enthusiasm around the feature, we were quickly able to come up with a list of potential changes for our next round of testing.

However, there were a couple exploits that surfaced that ended up devaluing the hard work that many Out...

"Bastion" permissions are coming in the April update.

RunningOnCaffeine

Out of curiosity, why not push this ASAP? It's pretty rough explaining to new people that the reason they're dying in the spawn is people abusing bugs.

Getting this fix to Live sooner isn't out of the question. We first need to make sure we 1. Have a window that works with what we're doing internally and between departments, and 2. That the fix doesn't break other things at the same time. Number 1 is the main gate at the moment, but that can change at any time.

We've finally got this fixed internally, and it'll make it out in the April update.

Sad_forlife

I have video footage of the bug where shield in front of vehicle spawn pads being misaligned is an actual gameplay problem, where is the best place to report it? I don’t expect it to be fixed since it has been in the game since DX11, and I am 100% sure you devs and 90% of people that play this game know about it. But still.

We're aware of this one, and it's on our list of things to fix. Like you said, it was brought on with the DX11 update. The reason the gates are offset is an issue with bad code that we want to be able to address correctly.

We could definitely go to every base in the game and bandaid their current positions by shifting the NPCs down, but they're in their correct positions in all of our tools, which means we'd have to unbandaid everything again later. Given the relatively low impact on gameplay, it's a better time investment for us to wait on code resources to free up and take a look.

AgentRedFoxs

They should keep it so it does damage. A player base can be taken out in a matter of seconds with the bastion. The Glaive only has a 1000m range and cant fire in no deploy.

To be clear, we are keeping it so it does damage. Bastions themselves should never be taking damage directly, and should only be taking damage when hardpoints are destroyed. Those are the bugs we're cleaning up in this update, both with the Glaive IPC dealing damage directly, and the physics collisions dealing damage (in some cases insta-gibbing the Bastion.)

Jarazz

ghost-shell reloads

The ones that happen if you restock ammo at that moment?

That's the one.

This one is pretty high up on our list, alongside ghost-shell reloads and the survivalist rocklet rifle exploit. We're still primarily dealing with the issues that shook out of Escalation (outfit war assets, voice comms,) but we should be circling around to some of these long-standing bugs in the not-too-distant future.

lol, we'll get that resolved. Definitely a bug.

HAXTIME

This is interesting.

However, if only the top X players (score-wise) were accounted for in a battle, when deciding who gets the ownership, wouldn't that be an even better approach? (per side)

That way, if your single-squad outfit does an exceptionally good performance, it doesn't matter if a random zergfit has 2000 people sitting on the point padding ammo, because most (if not all) of them won't matter.

Although I guess it ends up being pretty much the same thing in the end, I just had this thought for a few days now. It would pretty much put an end to this behavior.

if only the top X players (score-wise) were accounted for in a battle, when deciding who gets the ownership, wouldn't that be an even better approach?

That's how this will work.

EDIT: It occurs to me that you may have meant a single player from a participating outfit is all you'd score. How we'd like scoring to work is that we take x of the highest scoring players within an outfit, and their combined score is what's used to determine who takes the base. We want outfit-based goals to require multiple outfit members, but not so many that only excessively large outfits are the ones reaping all the benefits.

if a random zergfit has 2000 people sitting on the point padding ammo, because most (if not all) of them won't matter.

We're looking to address this as well by rewarding specific actions, instead of all methods of raw experience gain as it does currently. We'll release more details when it's time.

ErnestCarvingway

Ever had your fun ruined by a stray outfit?

Not with this update! No 12 man outfit who actually took the time to learn the game and enjoy being good at it will ruin the day for cat herders ever again. Thank you wrel and welcome everyone to the popdump championships of 2020!

Like I said about 14 minutes ago, changes are coming in the next update, and it's important that we're able to gather data now so that we aren't kneejerking that leaves us reeling for multiple month periods trying to line it all up. This has been the case in the past, and with the increased team resources, getting it done right is way more important than getting it done fast.

An example of what will be coming in the next update are limitations on how many outfit members can contribute to scoring on a base capture. So your "actually took the time to learn the game" outfit coordination will pay off more easily.

This has been addressed a few times over (and please give these links a look,) but this initial release is intended to give us a baseline for how we want to tune this in a future update (which at this point is looking like an April release post-Outfit Wars Alpha 1.)

All of the concerns are valid, they've all been accounted for and discussed well before this update was released, and we already have a list of changes we're looking to introduce.

I understand we're all a bit impatient here because we're excited to see the system improve (or are disappointed that your "competitive outfit" isn't going to be able to compete this go around,) but I'd like you all to continue to trust the process.

Whiteagle808

In line with the changes to Desolation, construction costs have been rebalanced, and apply to both Desolation terminals and Construction terminals.
MBT: NA to 500

Liberator: NA to 500

Galaxy: NA to 750

Wait, does this mean we get to spawn Heavy Vehicles at Construction Terminals now?!

Right now this is only for Desolation's command center terminals, but Construction can probably get the same treatment in the future.

Pithekos

team is prepping an update for next week that has several Outfit Wars-specific changes that need to go live before the first season

Does that mean we can count on some rebalancing of the qualification system before the start of the season?

PS. Take care and stay safe :)

This Alpha season is going to be used as a baseline for adjustments to come the following cycle, so no changes are planned before then. It's important we don't make kneejerk changes before we have proper data across all the areas we're observing. Players need time not only to figure out the rhythm, behavioral changes need time to settle (honeymoon phases always have skewed data,) and probably most importantly, we need to know how players end up breaking the system, so that we know all the areas we need to hit when we do make changes for the next round.

WorstDariusEUW

I tested it 10 minutes ago and it's not bugged for me

For the majority of instances, the bug is fixed. You can still recreate the bug in at least two different ways though, according to reports and internal testing. That's just the way it be sometimes.