Get ready for an improved arena experience and some sweet bundle packages to keep you at the top of your game!
The time has come again for improvements, balances, and other general awesomeness to come to the arena! This patch is already live, and you can find all the details about it below!
Drop Pods v2
Drop Pods are better than ever now, with added options for Captains that will help add up to a smoother experience for Pilots.
Captains may now “redeploy” one or all Drop Pods using the previous build in the Drop Pod. For owners of multiple Drop Pods and those that work with long-term Pilots, we hope this is a welcome quality of life addition!
Captains will also now notice an “Unpack” or “Unpack All” option available to them. From now on, when a Pilot is done with your Tank it will now stay in the Drop Pod until unpacked after it is returned to you. This will allow Captains a chance to view their Pilot’s progress from the previous day if they want before collecting their Tank parts.
Deployed Drop Pods now have an “Unlock” option, which will instantly return the contained Tank to you from the Pilot it has been sent to. This option will carry an Arachnium cost, but will be free for the first 10 minutes of deployment, just in case you make a mistake.
The cost to unlock a Drop Pod after the 10 minute grace period will be .5 Arachnium per 12 hours that remain on deployment.
Drop Pods may also be deployed for a variety of time periods now, depending on the rarity of your Drop Pod.
P&E View v2
The Play and Earn menu now shows far more statistics about your activity than it previously did.
This page will display the current market price of SILK, as well as the most recent VP/SILK ratio. You’ll also be able to track lifetime stats now for your account on this dashboard.
This feature is under maintenance at the moment, and has been pulled out of the build until it can work as intended. Hopefully there will be a solution shortly.
It’s not just this main dashboard though! Each Weapon, Body, Map, Node or Drop Pod now shows more statistics about the rewards you’ve accumulated.
Report v2
The mute button on the in-game scoreboard is now a “mute and report” button. Muting a player will stop you from receiving communications from them, and will also report them for in-game communication abuse.
Any reports for communications abuse will now no longer be punished with game bans, but instead with a global mute.
Every player now has a maximum of three reports to spend daily. It’s important to note that the above “mute and report” action will never count as one of these three reports.
If you report a player and that player is found guilty of abuse and is punished, you will receive an in-game notification and receive an extra report that you can use whenever you need it.
Killfeed v2
Get ready to get vicious out there Pilots!
The in-game killfeed UI has been overhauled, and tons of new ways to stand out from the crowd in battle have been added.
- Domination: Destroying the same player two times in a match before they destroy you sends a notification that you are dominating them! This gives extra points at the end of the match.
- Revenge: Destroy a player Dominating you to get a Revenge notification and your own extra points.
- First Blood: A shoutout and extra points granted to the first player to destroy another.
- Multikills: You’ll now see info about multikills broadcast to the entire match!
Introducing: Freecam
You’ve all been waiting for it… and the time is now!
Spectators in Exhibition matches will now be able to freely move their camera about the arena, rather than having to follow the point of view of one specific player.
Use this power wisely Pilots. Explore the arenas, get into the action, record epic battles!
Hidden Ranks
The overall goal of Spider Tanks as a gaming experience is to create a competitive and rewarding experience, but also for players to just have some good old fashioned fun.
Testing has shown that ranks being visible before a match has a negative effect on players’ enjoyment of the game and perception of matchmaking, while offering no meaningful strategic benefit. It arguably could also detract from the time that they devote to thinking about team composition and strategy in the limited window before Ability selection.
We want players to enjoy the game as much as possible, so now players will no longer see the rank of other players before a match.
Players will, however, still be able to see ranking info after a match. This change will not affect matchmaking, but only change what is displayed and when.
Improvements
- A player that manually leaves a match will now be counted as abandoning. Players who manually leave a match can no longer re-join this match.
This should make sure players won’t be able to quit and rejoin on purpose to prevent death, while still keeping the possibility to rejoin for players whose game has crashed or got disconnected.
- The Select Region popup is now much more descriptive about which region will be chosen for “Use Best Region”.
- [BOT] Players on your team will no longer callously ignore the flag! Rejoice!
- Weapon and Body properties in the Garage now show a lot more information about each.
This feature is under maintenance at the moment, and has been pulled out of the build until it can work as intended. Hopefully there will be a solution shortly. - The match placement UI is more clear overall.
- Players affected by the “Jammed” status effect (applied when being hit by the Stun Grenade, Grapple or when using the Shield Drone) can now no longer Deliver Chickens in Chicken Chaser, Contest or push the Payload in Poultry Pusher, Capture or contest hills in KotH, or carry the Chicken in CtF.
Survey Says…
The results of the community survey on everyone’s favorite game modes are in, and the distribution of modes randomly chosen in matchmaking has been adjusted accordingly.
While the results of this survey were certainly tilted towards certain game modes, it’s also obvious that the community is somewhat divided in the games they enjoy most. Everyone enjoys the arena how they enjoy it, and that is perfectly fine!
To help accommodate all Pilots, no matter how they enjoy playing, game modes have been weighted at the following levels for every match:
Team Deathmatch:
16.66% ⭆ 24% chance
King of the Hill:
16.66% ⭆ 22% chance
Kill Confirmed:
16.66% ⭆ 18% chance
Hold the Flag:
16.66% ⭆ 17% chance
Poultry Pusher:
16.66% ⭆ 11% chance
Chicken Chaser:
16.66% ⭆ 8% chance
Balance Adjustments
-The Good News!-
All Bodies
Changed Speed/Armor distribution to generally give lighter bodies a little more health.
Sniper Rifle
Damage at max range: 4000 ⭆ 4400
Reload Time: 2.1 ⭆ 1.8
Fire Artillery
Explosion Damage: 1320 ⭆1450
Rocket Artillery
Explosion Damage: 630 ⭆ 666
Laser Blaster
Projectile speed: 17 ⭆ 18
Base projectile damage: 500 ⭆ 550
Brambler
Explosion Damage: 1200 ⭆ 1300
Bladespinner
Projectile damage: 2000 ⭆ 2150
Crossbow
Self slow while charging: 25% ⭆ 15%
Flamethrower
Self slow on use: 40% ⭆ 30%
Eggxecutioner
Projectile speed: 17.2 ⭆ 18.5
Explosion damage: 1250 ⭆ 1350
Grapnel Launcher
Self slow: 50% ⭆ 45%
Pull force: 0.75 ⭆ 0.8
Stun Grenade
Explosion Radius: 4 ⭆ 5
-The Less Good News!-
(Just a few though)
Triple Threat
Projectile Damage: 550 ⭆ 525
Reactive Plating
Self slow: ⊘ ⭆ 15%
Energy cost: 6 ⭆ 7
Repair Zone
Repair amount per tick: 500 ⭆ 450
Pest Control
As usual, the bug assassins have been working behind the scenes to root out problems.
Fixed:
- Ripper range not properly being increased when upgrading the weapon.
- Bouncer Gun bounced projectiles going through walls and barriers.
- Shield Projector being able to push players out of bounds.
- Poultry Pusher chicken sometimes being the wrong teamcolor.
- Upgrade UI elements sometimes being in the wrong positions.
- [BOT] players with healing weapons to sometimes try and heal full-health players.
- Shield Drone flying too far for its user sometimes.
- Artillery Turrets shooting past targets when having a weapon equipped with upgraded projectile speed.
- Several localization fixes.
- Various small fixes.
Arena Bundles of Joy
Do you think that’s all!? Of course not, Pilots!
We’re introducing a series of new products in the Spider Tanks Store designed to give people a one-stop shop for improving their Tanks… as well as giving those that may be grabbing their first Tank an easy way to get started!
Component Bundles have now been introduced to the store. These bundles come in a variety for each rarity, and have been priced at an introductory discount of 50% off the overall cost of all Components contained within!
Purchase Component Bundles with $GALA or ETH and receive an additional 5% off!
Have you been Piloting other people’s Tanks and are ready to strike out on your own? Have some friends that want to get into the arena and don’t know where to start? Well then, get excited about our new Starter Bundles!
Starter Bundles come in four varieties currently. Each contains a Common Body, Common Weapon, 15 Arachnium and 1500 Bolts!
Note that these bundles cannot be bought in bulk and the store will only allow one per transaction.
Any of these new bundles give you tons of extra components compared to buying a la carte from the store. Now is a great time to trick out your ride!
Experience the New and Improved Arena!
Wow, that was a mouthful!
Oh, are you still here? That means all the other Pilots probably have a destructive head start on you. You better hurry over to the Spider Tanks Store and load up on these discounted components so you can get to the arena!
We hope you really love this new build… but for chicken’s sake — Get out there and blow some stuff up already!
