v0.6.3 the "Quick Play battle coin kerfuffle" release [1/7/2022]

[Mini Militia Classic Alpha Force]

Finally its fully available...

We submitted this one on the 7th... and here we are on the 9th... So after 40 hours of waiting, Google has approved this release (new longest review time record that still got approval btw; I truly thought they were gonna reject it and was preparing my soul for even more work to fix something.) Apple's approval came through yesterday after about ~18 hours... Last release was out in 4~6 hours for both... We're just need to build in padding and manually control the larger releases from now on. Baking in a 12-48 hours window of padding and waiting to release it post approval until we are standing by to support it, etc. I am reminded as a ship gets bigger, it gets harder to quickly turn. ;P

Broken RPG Reload & Ammo

While we have been sitting by waiting to see this go out for around 40 hours for the bulk of the testers we did some server updates... and it looks like we have a logic/config problem and broke RPG ammo counts and reload somehow, so we'll need to fix that sooner than later too. I don't think your account will get banned... I hope not. But without further ado here is the run down of changes and release notes:

Major Change of note:

This is the life of game testing while under development... one day you are collecting battle coins and the next day you are not. After reviewing server data about how battle coins are being used, we realized that the coins aren't working as we thought they would. Most of the players have very few coins and then there are a few players that have lots. Most (75%) people play in custom where the coins don't matter. Looking at the mechanics of the battle coins, there really isn't a need to collect them so we have changed that part of the game.

This is what you will see in Quick Play:

- Quick Play would still have loadouts and have a set spend limit (currently it is set to 5k) but the coins will now function like Custom. Everyone gets 5000 coins to spend how they want each game.
- At the end of the game, instead of earning battle coins, players earn the sponsor tokens that will allow them to buy away ads and purchase access to other features (in the future). Players still gain XP in ranked games.
- XP will still increase the player's rank and give them battle coin discounts for the cost of their loadouts. Play for a long time --> your rank goes up --> you pay less for your favorite loadouts.

Attached are screenshots that show the rank discount on loadout costs and the total number of coins each player has to work with (current QP spend limit is 5000 and remains unchanged.)

There are also a number of bug fixes in this release. Please review the notes below and give us feedback if you are still seeing any of these issues. Some issues are difficult to test in the development environment so while we hope to have the fix, we may have missed something.

v0.6.3 RELEASE NOTES

QuickPlay Changes:
- Replaced battle coin earn with token earn (the earn rate is NOT final and we will adjust the rate, but you should get at least one token per game... as long as you have a positive score...)
- Every player gets comped battle coins and does need coins on your profile to use them (name of coins in this context may change to loadout points in future)
- Spending Limit is still set to 5k, but does not get recorded as coins spent and deducted from a player's profile

Bug Fixes and Adjustments:
- Fixed several client crashes (thank you for crashing and restarting your app after crashes so we get them!)
- Attempted** fix for player spawn crash
- Attempted** fix for message box crash
- Fixed several server crashes, replaced quick play servers (sent the old ones to the glue factory)
- Changed pause button near health meter to be a cog wheel icon (i.e., settings) that opens the chat/quit prompt
- Adjusted the weapon fade out to allow pickup in the first few seconds of fade, but not the last second...
- Changed player health to display when they throw a grenade, melee, and when damaged (previously it was only shown when shooting)
- Improved multi-touch responsiveness (allegedly)
- Tweaked double loadout issue (this is still causing problems so although you *might* be able to achieve a double loadout, if you start doing no damage... you will likely know why...)
- Added better server logging of anomalies (we are watching you... better)
- Removed Dual Drop velocity (not thrown)
- Fixed early flag despawn in CTF (partially... let us know if its better/worse)
- Attempted** Fix to remove drawing an extra gun on avatar in some weapon pickup/loadout scenarios
- Fix bugs in and around spectate mode (we did NOT add any newly requested features for spectate, those will come later.)

**(We can't repro this in dev so we're guessing so let us know if happens to you again)