MMC v0.7.x State of the Onion [3/9/2022]

[Mini Militia Classic Alpha Force]

v0.7.x Release Addendum Notes [3/9/2022]

Health update: Everyone is back on their feet again and healthy as can be hoped for (it was a bad head cold and was not COVID! Sleep was the cure but a week of productivity and momentum was still lost). Thank you all for your well wishes. We slid the schedule a week to the right, but we're gonna keep working till it's done!

Please send people who are upset about META changes to these notes. Illness kept the notes from going out earlier. Unavoidable, so be kind to our volunteer support staff, they are doing what they can. Raging on them does not motivate us to change anything. We note a few folks are upset and move on. Please remember this as we transition from alpha to beta and even MORE tuning happens that tour feedback is invaluable, but your angry sputtering words, not nearly as much. When you calm down we want to know why you think a change is "trash." Bugs happen, these latest changes did not go off as planned. So let's continue to work on using our constructive words. For those that have given us detailed explanations and are patiently waiting for us to figure this out, THANK YOU! We are so lucky to have your support. You will help us make a better game in the end when we launch.

-Hunter

v0.7.x Release Addendum Notes: Recent changes, Current situation, and the META impacts [3/8/2022]
META = Most Effective Tactics Available. META refers to game play approaches and mechanics that are known to be winning strategies, especially topical when we add new ways to affect the game mechanics be it by choice or glitch. v.0.7.x made major changes that altered the entire play style. Not all META changes will be bad and many will be tiny adjustments. Some will be unintentional as much of v0.7.x changes were...

Damage Attenuation = Attenuation is the mathematical weakening of a gun's damage over distance. Most shooters out there use this mechanic to create the most effective range to engage. (side note It's been in 11 year old+ v1 DA2 MM code (but non-functional for reasons that a bug fix removed and allowed it to run, albeit incorrectly, on v0.7.3; more details below.)

DAMAGE ATTENUATION CHANGED

What happened to weapon damage?

The overall damage attenuation did not deploy as intended. There are several reasons for this happening. NOTE: Damage is not going to stay like v0.7.3 forever. This is NOTa sniper/shotgun focused nerf either. We're NOT trying to balance any single weapon. ALL weapons, except for PHASR (which is immune to attenuation by design form the outset), were affected by this change. The battle report data suggests the lethality of weapons has not changed, just the amount of damage delivered over distance. If you notice it only on sniper and shotgun, you might not be as varied in your approach to playing this game as you may think. Currently your sniper shots will NOT 'one shot' headshot kill at over 1/3 range. It should have been ~2/3 as per the v0.7.2 design notes, this did not 'math out' right. In the old game that was normally off screen, but now the view META is altered too (i.e., you can see more.) 

Why didn't internal testing catch it?
Play testing doesn't usually catch issues like this when a near-release change happens. Our testing rarely includes multiple range value testing. Range testing is done at the extremes so this is a flaw in our test case coverage and will need to be updated to reflect attenuation testing from now on. We will try to be better at this, but mistakes are going to slip through. 

Why not change it back?

We are still debating this internally and need a solution that can be agreed upon and tested. The situation is complicated by several factors and are making interpreting player feedback difficult:

1) The damage attenuation formula (that has been in the original DA2MM game code since v1) was never allowed to run correctly as per the v1.0 DA2MM design and since a lot of shooters use it to manage engagement and game balance its should be no surprise it was part of our design as well.

2) There are three DIFFERENT places damage was being calculated and all calculations were DIFFERENT. 

3) We also discovered damage was being calculated slightly differently on Quick Play, Custom/CTF, and Local/Wifi... ALL DIFFERENT. 

Which is the right calculation to use? 

So no, we are not going back to that split system that was wrong to begin with. This was a 10+ year old time bomb that just went off on us with very undesired results. But, that's ALPHA baby! Flip this burnt coin over and look at the bright side with us: We're in a good place to fix this old institutional design flaw and settle it once and for all. We think we can even emulate the flaw in Cv4 for that retro MM feel. :)

Will you fix it? 

The damage attenuation issue does not have a complete solution yet. For now, we have one unified damage formula for all game modes and connections. We do want to make weapons slightly more lethal at longer ranges now that we have more field of view options. We are debating extending the full damage out further (like it was intended in v0.7.2). Cv4 as a game mode is not yet going to see the damage adjusted back to the pre v0.2.1 (pre-server managed, pre-bug fixed) version for quite a while. When we do make CV4 like v4, it will not simulate the misses and damage bugs in that old code. Sorry, you will have to play without those bugs and you will not have weird misses like in v4. Part of this rewrite in alpha is to fix these broken systems, not change the game where we can help it.

Hang in there. Damage attenuation will be altered, for the better or worse, and we want to know what you think when that happens.

COVER (DUCK) MECHANICS CHANGED

What changed?

We fixed the elusive 'neck shot miss' bug. That ended up removing the crouch-head shield exploit and has made crouching WAY less effective. It was pointed out to us after the fact that an exploit existed that blocked ALL shots downward through the head into the body. So effectively a crouched player's head became a shield. This greatly affected the cover mechanism's effectiveness. Sniper kills went up dramatically after this change. Even after attenuation alteration, they remain top reasons for death. Now that the head shield doesn't work and because you are a 25% taller target, areas you could fully hide in now are not as protected anymore. Again this is another blow to the META around the use of the cover mechanism and even against decade old map positioning strategies.

Will you fix it?

We recognize that this needs to be balanced at some point, but it's not the highest priority as the damage attenuation issue. We don't yet have a solution and there is a lot of discussion about how to adjust the damage reduction of the cover mechanism (crouching.)

FINAL SUMMARY
We don't like the amount of change that occurred in v0.7.x releases. We favor making smaller changes over time. We really do not want to be tuning right now for any game mode, but we may try to make alterations in the right direction. Again, this has YET to be decided and is under much internal debate of what should be done about these changes that affected the METAs so deeply. So many mysteries have been discovered with this change. Now we need time to work towards the solutions that match up with our plans.

ROADMAP UPDATE
Find the latest roadmap attached and here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KBRgRIe8z0duhetJY1RHmqu-XL1_HLrX?usp=sharing

We've added another task that is required work now (replace our ad network) and we're almost completed with the token monetization tasks, leaving the in app purchases and bug fixes to be addressed. We're getting closer to beta! But we're not there yet.

v0.7.3 Release Notes [2/26/2022]

The "shield fix and scope view change animation speed setting" release (still alpha! but closer to beta than last release...) 
- Fixed the shield so we can shoot through it again (that's not how shields are supposed to work... whoops)
- Fixed a crash at startup showing up in crash reporting with v0.7.2
- Added ability to change the scope animation transition speed that was 'fixed' made less jerky in last release (Comet asked very nicely for us to change it back, and we said "NO" , but instead we added five options from 'no animation' (jerky fast, but without an FPS dropping glitch!) and four more settings ranging all the way down to 'slow as a pat of butter sliding down a warm knife'. They just have to deal and embrace the future, because we are cold and heartless like that. )