Monday Night Combat Updates

Update 5 3/10/11

Summary
This update focuses on the new player experience. With the influx of players coming from PAX East we wanted to make sure that the new Monday Night Combat fans get to play with other new fans without getting rolled over by veterans. With the new All-Star Rating system players will be able to get an idea of their skill level vs the others on their server. The balance adjustments to armor endorsements and the default class changes were aimed at continuing this goal by making the newer players live longer but the veteran players, who are usually armed with custom classes, be more in balance when they use these endorsements.

New Features
• All-Star Rating System - The All Star system is a system to rate players so that they have more visibility into the overall skill level on each server. The All Star Rating is a continuously adjusting five star rating. Play well, it’ll go up. Play poorly and it’ll go down. We will improve the system in future updates as we get feedback and data.
• New Outlander Gear!
• New Penny Arcade’s Cardboard Tube Samurai Uniform for Assassin!
• New Taunts while wearing Outlander Gear!
• : New votekick functionality. A player initiates a vote by typing in the console. PLAYER can be the player's name or their player number from the . Once a vote is in progress, other players type or in the console. If ⅔ of players vote to kick, the player will be removed and not allowed to return for some period of time. The exclusion period increases greatly with each subsequent votekick.


Fixes
• Fixed issue with grapples after getting knocked into the air
• Fixed rare case of Assassin getting a back grapple when she is actually in front of her target.
• Fixed Ping display in scoreboard
• Dedicated blitz servers immediately end rounds and return to lobby when all players have left the game.


Balance
• Reduced the benefits of armor endorsements for Assault, Support, Sniper and Assassin.


Adjustments
• New Game Summary display before the end game scoreboard
• Altered the default Assassin and Sniper builds to include armor endorsements
• Increased the chance of JuiceBot spawning during a game in honor of PAX East


Dedicated Server
• Dedicated Servers can set the Max Star Rating for the server by adding ?MaxStarRating=[0-4] to the commandline options. This is a zero based index so the actual value is +1 the entry (ie 0 = 1 star)
• Updated commandline and UI support, updated batch files to support AllStar Rating

Updates to Magicka have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Fixed issues/bugs

• Spell mines now play the detonation and deployment sounds correctly.
  
• Life based spell mines no longer knockbacks.
  
• Fixed a crash when changing language in certain situations.
  
• Volume levels are now set correctly on startup.
  
• Changing language now updates all message boxes.
  
• Fixed arcane/life barriers death explosion damage.
  
• Scene changes should be more stable for users who experience audiomanager crashes.
  
• Nullify will now remove vortices correctly.
  
• Fixed crash in Chapter 6 bossfight.
  
• Improved lightning effects in Chapter 9 (This should also improve performance and avoid crashes in the last scenes).
  
• Fixed vortex crash whenever npcs with ranged abilities were spawned (ie Chapter 10).
  

New features/balancing

• Added CTD magick to campaign.
  

Known issues

• Some players are unable to start the game at all. This is due to a TypeInitializationException and is currently being worked on.
  
• Network uplink bandwidth, while improved, can be demanding.
  
• Steam attempts to install XNA framework every time game is launched or rare occasion.
  
• Characters can in rare cases fall through the level collision mesh, this is due to lag or poor framerate. Many general network improvements and general optimization will reduce this risk.
  
• The game may appear to be stuttering even though framerate is good.
  

Updates to Trine have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Trine

• Adds support for iZ3D
  
• Adds European Portuguese language (text-only)
  
• Adds Romanian language (text-only)