Welcome to the twenty-first issue of the Developer Digest series. Here you can find out more about game development straight from the developers and producers of Armored Warfare!
Would it be possible to remove the ATGM to gun switch delay in cases where the missile was not fired yet?
It’s something we’ll consider for Balance 2.0, in which we are planning to rebalance both autocannons and ATGMs. We’ll revisit the switch issue once we have some testing results to analyze.
Please introduce a feature where sending a message to a player, muted by administration, shows a warning that the player cannot reply to your message.
Yes, we’d like to add that feature in the future.
Do you have any plans to introduce more vehicles, based on jeeps and trucks?
Yes, for example the Kornet-D ATGM Tank Destroyer, based on the GAZ Tigr platform. Another matter, however, are vehicles based on civilian chassis, the so-called “technicals” – those we want to avoid.
Will the game be optimized to work with Vulkan API?
Not anytime soon.
Will there be more vehicles with upgradeable turrets in the future?
Yes, upgradeable turrets for some vehicles are planned.
When will the “Insane” difficulty for PvE be available?
Balance 2.0 will introduce a number of additional AI features and settings that will allow us to tweak the PvE difficulty. Examples include the customizable ability of AI vehicles to target weakspots or the ability to fire guided missiles (in first iteration these will not change their direction). AI will also do the following in Balance 2.0:
- Change between ATGM and autocannon depending on what enemy its facing (MBT versus lightly armored)
- Change ammo type depending on who its facing (AP or HE)
In general, we just want to give the AI more tools to use depending on the situation, this isn't necessarily intended to directly make the mode harder, but it will at least help balance out the challenge between light armored vehicles and MBTs in PvE.
With that being said, we are still consider what to do with the Insane mode – whether to introduce it as yet another difficulty level, or – for example – as a separate PvE survival mode where players fight never-ending waves of AI opponents.
Will there be any national crew voiceovers?
We are currently looking into allowing the players to modify their own crew sounds (limited use of mods).
Will you introduce the Sprut-SD Light Tank in the future?
Yes.
I think that the problem with Matchmaker in Armored Warfare is that it waits and tries to get as many people into a game as possible instead of getting people into a game as fast as possible.
That's not exactly true. Matchmaker will not continue to increase its search if one new person joins at a higher tier. It's only looking to reach a minimum player number on both sides with equal tiers. If it hasn't reached that within a set time limit, it looks to expand its search to other tiers. It currently refuses to put an imbalanced number of higher tiered vehicles on one team which, when coupled with low population, can result in Matchmaker waiting longer to find others who can help it reach its target match pop numbers. Throw in platoons and vehicle types coupled with a lower population and you can see where Matchmaker would struggle to create a fair game without sacrificing wait time.
We are making some changes for Balance 2.0 which we believe will help speed up Matchmaker's ability to make fair matches in a shorter amount of time provided enough people are in queue.
The vehicles, announced as being “in development” lately all seem to be versions of existing vehicles. Is this trend going to continue?
What is being announced for Balance 2.0 are vehicles which better represent the tiering structure we want. There are tons of new, unique vehicles coming down the pipeline after Balance 2.0. Everything announced recently though is just part of rebalancing current trees.
Will you include more Cold War vehicles?
You are going to see Centurions and other vehicles from around that era.
Will Armored Warfare have crew models like in the other tank game?
Adding crew models and animations is actually incredibly time consuming an expensive since they are unique animations for most vehicles. This may be something we tackle in the future once we have more vehicles in the game, but our main focus right now is just to add more vehicles.
Will you introduce better rewards for capturing an Objective in Global Operations in the future?
Capturing will be getting a boost in the future. We are planning to balance out methods of gaining credits more after the release of Balance 2.0.
That's it for today. See you in the next issue!
