Which leads nicely in Rad's post...
A) if you have questions, ask.. Someone wanted to know about HLTV in 3.1 on the NS forums (http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=92378) and while I can't say for 100% certain, it's clear we are aware of the issues and are deciding where along the fix time-line they fit.
B) Often features/balance tweaks look completely different when they are designed vs. when they are released (cloaking went through at least 10 permutations), and we've made the decision not to get people's hopes up only to have them dashed (you all saw what happened when we were unable to keep the fixed Hitboxes in, mass confusion where people didn't understand/wouldn't understand). So it's a decision we've made to not release the details of what's being included until things are more finalized..
Zunni, to A), I see plenty of other people ask. I read the responses, but we really need a better way, a news post, something than having to troll the forums day in and day out. To B ), I completely understand that
exact changelogs are not possible. But how hard is it to place a news item on NS.com stating "We understand that Sensory Chambers need a boost and are currently working on a solution". That IS better than nothing. I was partially privied to the hitbox bugs as a consti. I admired what was done, but I also saw how they needed to be fixed. And I understand the public changelog with hitbox change already in it, then having ot remove the feature caused some confusion. But if you're working on the hitbox bug, how hard is it to say "We are currently on track for 3.1. Some changes include possible marine upgrade cost reductions, lifeform costs, and continued work on hitboxes. We may not be able to roll out all these features in the next patch, but progress is being made in each area. Our goal is to help correct the game imbalance aliens have over marines at second hive."
I made the changes up, but the point is you made two very big points. One, the dev team agrees alien early-mid game is too powerful (if that's the case), and two you see a sneak peek of what is being
tested (not
implemented) to help. I also know too much info on the PT process and you run into too many rampant speculations, but TBH, official silence gets annoying.
But I'm certainly not opposed to saying this release (3.1) will have some new movement techniques, some fixes to long time pains, some usability fixes and some other things as well. But also understand we are in the middle of writing this code, so what is on our scope list may change based on time/issues that appear etc..
See, this is exactly something I'd love to hear. I'm glad you are willing to come to the LM community to make this post, and especially talk to my specific points, but why isn't this in a place where everyone can have the benefit? Get what I'm saying? A monthly/weekly/biweekly update on 3.1 would be great. I said somehting about a Developer's Journal on NS, not because I want to know the inner workings of how Tanke chased down a minor bug for three days, but just what area of NS was being developed, or what balance changes were being made (not specifics, but somehting like "we're working on giving early game marine teams the ability to respond to alien upgrades faster". It's not much, and shouldn't take but a few minutes a week to summarize the development status. IT could even be "We knocked out 3 bugs this week from our list, and the PT's are steadily bringing us info on what needs to be tweaked. All in all progress is good" or "We ran into a nasty problem this week with one of our builds. PT's are trying to pin it down, but this bug has delayed our progress a little. We hope to have things ironed out for our next PT build"...
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