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Server Upgrade today

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Wednesday, September 23, 2009

We've got a fairly major patch coming later today, and the servers will be down for up to 6 hours starting at 2:00 Pacific Time while we apply the new build. The major changes will be:

Removing many items from the BetaTIX store. Over the past weeks you've helped us tremendously with our testing of the MetaTIX store, but now we're done with that phase of testing so we're shutting it down for the next phase. We're going to leave some of the items, like Health Capsules and Life Boost for your convenience - if you've still got a few BetaTIX you can spend them on those items, but all other BetaTIX items have been removed. That includes the Treasure Chests. The next time you'll see them in the game will be after commercial launch.

Selectively modifying your inventory. Some of the high level items will be pulled from the game, the consignment store, and your inventory. This is designed to create a good starting balance in the game. These include the following items:

 

Guns	Eggs	Armor	Items
Plasma Rifle	Healer	Trailblazer	Armor Recharge
Laser Rifle	Rhino Beetle	Fearless	Concussion Grenade
Assault Shotgun	Acid Beetle	Alloy	Antidote
Gauss Gun	Scorpion	Destruction	Transport Device
Sabot Machine Gun	Viper Beetle	Fiend	Rapid Breeding
Sabot Rifle	Psi Beetle	Tyrant	Mayhem
Laser Rifle	Portal	Overlord	Magic Charge
			Rage
			Immune System
			Consuming Power
			Electrical Storm
			Rally

Resetting the bugs. As we've all recognized over the last few weeks, the bugs are currently ruling the roost to some extent. I think that the changes we've outlined above will be harder on the humans than on the bugs, so we're going to bring the breeding rate of the bugs back down to normal on all except the fodder bugs. We're also bringing the rest of their stats back to normal. If we swing back too far, we'll adjust again, but right now I think what we really need to do is work on helping new bugs, and not the experienced bugs players.

Change Notes. Here is the list of other change notes for this build:

1. Increase the game rewards for players when somebody on their team drops before the end of the match.
2. Modified the game reward in PVE games.
3. Improved the bug AI, made their route slightly more variable. We'll likely have to turn this up.
4. Add the function to monitor players internet speed. Players with abnormal speed will be forced to leave the server.
5. Add bug leader resurrection into bug new players tutorial.
6. Add an alert message in the human tutorial to prompt the player to open maps and search for a target.
7. Modified the in-game message pop-up location to keep it out of your face during play.
8. Modified the Assault Shotgun performance from 3 rounds to 5 rounds per shot. Also decreased the power of each single round.
9. Modified the chatting system in the game with higher volume and better communication quality
10. Modified character size of alert messages to separate chatting and attacking. Much clearer view for players
11. Add the ability to delete weapon, equipment and bug eggs
12. Modified the texture and consequence when bullet hit the floor, water or other material
13. Tons of English updates. There are more to update, please send them to us when you see them.
14. Use percentages to indicate the damage levels for weapons such as Toxin Launcher.
15. Increase the server's ability to verify clients network info. Screen and filter all the information from the clients.