Update 9.5
Your Feedback Has Been Received!
Halo 5 is on the horizon, along with the usual slew of releases that we're all hyped up for. MCC is working more than it used to, but when XBL itself starts failing barely an hour before Battles we can kind of be screwed. There are a handful of problems still in MCC as well which continue to cause issues, potentially the biggest thing being the lack of dedicated servers and the resultant connection issues that plague the battle nights.
Those are problems outside of our control, for the most part. However, there are also a few issues that we can actually address. We've been receiving feedback after each battle night and have four War Council meetings to try discussing these things and figuring out how best to approach things. We've also had several polls to get a gauge on how the community feels about the topics, and have weighed the feedback carefully. This update is meant to show that your feedback is becoming actual change.
Cortana, Windows 10, and You!
PSA Intermission before getting to the changes:
Three days ago, Windows 10 launched, and it was kind of huge. 75+ million devices have already upgraded to Windows 10 and that number is continuing to increase rapidly. Reviews for the OS are almost completely positive, aside from concerns about privacy settings (settings which you can disable with a few mouse clicks, btw, so not that big of a deal).
Oh, it's also free to upgrade from Windows 7/8/8.1. Yay!
I just want to take a few minutes to give you guys some good resources to help figuring out and optimizing your Windows 10 experience:
- Tips and Tricks from /r/Windows10
- Things to Remove/Disable from /r/PCMasterRace
- A Few More Tweaks from /u/tumas04
For those on the fence about upgrading, I do think Windows 10 is a huge improvement over Windows 8/8.1. It's not as huge of a difference when compared to Windows 7 and is quite similar, but it does come with some nice new features that can come in quite handy.
- Cortana, a neat feature that allows for voice searches and can help you find anything you're looking for, as well as some neat Halo-related nods. Integrates with both searching online and through your computer, even allowing you to easily open programs with a few words instead of using the shortcut.
- Edge browser, the replacement for Internet Explorer. IE sucks, and Microsoft finally realized it needs to die. Edge is very similar to Chrome, actually, and runs quite well. At the moment it's missing some features like extensions and a few things like that, but the fact that you no longer need to worry about IE whatsoever is a vast improvement alone.
- Xbox app, makes it much easier to keep up with everything Xbox. Checking achievements, messaging people, and even inviting others into your games are now much easier. No more worries if the MCC in-game roster decides not to work, or your Friends List is loading slowly, now you can just invite them with a click from your computer! Also, you can stream games from your Xbox to your PC if you want.
- Virtual Desktops, if you know what this means then they're awesome. If you don't, you probably wouldn't use them anyways so I won't explain that much. Neat built-in feature.
- Bunch of smaller things.
I'm done selling you something which is free to upgrade to, so Moving on...
Score Limits to Alleviate Imbalance
We made a poll asking about a potential change to our gametypes. Should we keep them at 15 minutes or shorten it a bit? Or, should we add a score limit to the games? We received a good amount of feedback from people, and are implementing a few minor changes. Let me explain what we want to achieve with this:
- It's unfortunate that many of our games aren't between teams of equal skill, and if that's the situation we want to help alleviate that.
- In landslide-type games, the winning team will hit the score limit before 15 minutes have passed and the game will end early, acting as a mercy rule.
- Some games are extremely close and come down to the wire, were every second matters. We want to maintain this so that you guys can still make those epic comebacks and insane finishes.
- The score limits will be high enough so that close games will rarely, if ever, reach them, thereby maintaining the 15 minute length.
I went through and analyzed all games that have been played on MCC so far, ones from last war and this current war. In total, I used data from 250 games to figure out how best to set the score limits. (due to Ricochet not being used last war, I took 12 Ricochet games played during the Rec4 war and used that data) Here is a full breakdown of it all:
These score limits are going to be tested this Sunday (tomorrow) to see how they work out. The BN Feedback afterward will be used to hear how you guys liked the added score limits, and whether you think any of them should be refined or adjusted.
You can find all of the updated gametypes on my fileshare right now. They are labeled with FC:L2 v2, such as FC:L2 H4 Conflict v2.
So How About That Secondary Weapon?
There was another poll about the secondary weapon used in H2A. The poll was pretty conclusive that most people want to keep the Suppressed SMG, so that's going to remain in there for everyone to use. However, we are going to be modifying the gametypes a little bit.
We're going to be giving you guys a choice of what secondary to use. You can choose from Suppressed SMG, SMG, and the Magnum, for whichever one you want to use.
If you want a magnum, have at it. If you want to keep the current Suppressed SMG, you have that as well. If you want to use a regular SMG also (it's actually better for duel-wielding) you can also do that.
These new options are included in all of the FC:L2 H2A v2 gametypes on my fileshare right now. As with the score limits, the BN Feedback after the battles will be used to get additional feedback, so let us know how you guys like these options for secondary weapons!
And what about adding more gametypes?
The third poll was about asking members what possible gametypes we could try implementing into things. The WC had a meeting yesterday and discussed the topic for a bit, but wasn't able to come to a decision. We will be having another meeting next week to make a final decision about it and will be adding stuff to the 8/9/15 battle night.
If you have further feedback or suggestions you want to make about this, go here and reply to the thread. The poll itself is closed (it was just a yes/no thing anyway) but we will definitely still be reading all of the replies posted in that thread.
Feel free to include stuff about this in the BN Feedback as well, as that will be another place we look to when we're discussing it.
That's all fine and dandy, but lag and skill imbalance are still issues!
Very true, and these things were discussed in the meeting yesterday as well. Similarly to adding new gametypes, there wasn't a clear enough concensus to implement anything right now.
However, we decided on a deadline to form a decision by the end of the 8/9/15 battle night. Currently, here are a few preliminary details and possibilities:
- When dealing with lag and connection issues, the main topic on the table is Houdini's proposal for Certified Connection Hosts.
- It's obvious that certain people have a better connection then others, and are better able to host the matches. This would form a list of those able to host a lobby without issue and would have those people host games whenever possible.
- In terms of matchup balance, we've been talking about several possibilities. Here's a very brief summary to keep you guys up to date:
- Our current system has you change opponents after each and every game, round-robin style. You may have one good, close game, and then the next game is a landslide victory or loss, where it was apparent that skill was mismatched heavily. It's a tough issue to deal with and any solution is give-and-take.
- One possibility is that if you've had a close, neck-and-neck game and both teams approve, you could simply face each other again immediately. It reduces the variety of opponents you may face, but makes the games more likely to be close, intense, and fun.
- Potential restrictions could be a forced change of gametype (helps with variety), and a restriction on how many games you can play against that same opposing team.
- In cases where you would end up facing the same opponent due to rotation instead of the above, we could alter the rotation so that repeat matchups favor squads of closer skill. This could increase wait times in lobbies, however, which is itself an issue that's still being addressed.
- The most heavy-handed approach would be an army draft, which has been proposed many times but never truly implemented. This comes with the biggest drawback, though, of preventing people from playing with their friends and instead having them play with whoever would best balance their skill levels. This is not something we would implement mid-war, but has been brought up as Halo 5 gets closer.
The main thing to take from this is that we actively looking into ways to help improve things. If you think you may have a good suggestion or topic you want us to discuss in WC, let us know. Message your FM or High Command members and they can bring it up during a War Council meeting. Alternatively, post about it in our Suggestions forum.
Quick Update on the Website
No huge changes to the website recently, but there were some minor changes made and of course we have some bigger plans for Halo 5. :)
First, some of you may have noticed that the Splash/Welcome page is no longer a thing. If you go to www.fcwars.net you'll simply get redirected to our Home page. We figured it was an unnecessary extra click that was needed to get to the website, so we killed it.
Also, titled spoilers, such as the one I used earlier to show the breakdown for the score limits, now have a border on the left side to separate it from the normal flow of text. This way you can easily see exactly how much the spoiler shows and can see where it ends.
Between now and H5, we are going to be doing a lot of behind-the-scenes type things and eventually some major modifications you'll notice. Can't spoil anything yet, of course. Parts of it are as you would expect, but other parts are totally new and should be pretty significant changes.
If anyone has specific requests for things they'd like to see changed/adjusted/added to the website, we're always open to suggestions, so don't hold back even if it's just raw criticism.
EDIT: In the next post below this, Metkil takes a minute to post about some work he's done behind the scenes to help fix some bugs and other issues, so scroll down a little and check that out as well.
One last thing
With the introduction of score limits, there's also now a way of abusing them. They exist as a mercy rule, but for objective games the other team could simply stop going for the objective and instead just slay the other team for the remaining 5 minutes.
This is effectively abuse of the mercy rule mechanic and is not something we want to see happen. WC is currently holding an official vote to determine whether we should punish those who abuse the mercy rule, and if so how severe the punishments should be. The vote is still ongoing right now, but we'll edit something in here once it's finalized.
If you are winning the game by a large margin, work to hit the score limit. Ignoring the objectives to pad your K/D is not what FC's battle nights are about. However, we understand that not everyone plays the objective, some people focus on slaying while their team does the objectives. This is fine, as long as your team continues doing so. If it seems that you are intentionally prolonging the game, then it would be considered abuse of the mercy rule.
Burden of proof for this would be on the people claiming the enemies were abusing the rule. Both H2A and H4 have in-game theater modes that let you fly around and get different angles or follow specific players. Combine this with the X1's Game DVR and you can record 5+ minutes so that we can see the details.
Once again, the exact rule for this is still being voted on and discussed in the War Council, but we'll edit something in here once that's decided on, which should be before battles.
EDIT: Violations will be considered under rule I:3.3. First offenders will be warned, and subsequent violations will result in infractions and/or battle night suspensions. If you feel your opponents abused the mercy rule, inform someone in your High Command after the game and use the in-game theater to record a 5-minute clip that we can view as evidence.
Just a quick reminder that battles are tomorrow, Sunday, at 6:00 PM EST. We are playing on H4 Landfall and H2A Lockout. You can find the updated map variants on my fileshare, as well as all of the new v2 gametypes which feature the score limits and H2A weapon sets.
See you guys at battles!
~Mythonian :cyborg:
