The update fell victim to Microsoft's certification backlog, in case you were wondering.
Uber Entertainment's ridiculously huge (and first) title update for Monday Night Combat has finally gone live. The update, which was announced and finished weeks ago, fell victim to an ongoing certification backlog at Microsoft. If it makes you feel better, though, the forthcoming DLC will now be coming "sooner than later," as the publisher has pledged to not let this kind of delay happen again. Nice guys, those Microsoft guys.
Our general philosophy on Monday Night Combat is that it is a service based model of game. For a multiplayer game like ours to be successful, we need to adjust balance, fix exploits, and add new content based on feedback from our community and do it quickly. Unfortunately for the our first title update, which was handed off to Microsoft for certification over a month ago, got caught up in a perfect storm of software changes and tons of new games coming out. This caused our title update to get backlogged along with other digital titles.
We carried all the details of this title update when we first received word of it in late August. Those details are available just below, but a new change that you might want to know about was announced in the aforementioned message board post. The trial time for playing the demo over Xbox Live has been bumped from 30 minutes to 60 minutes, meaning you now get twice as long to decide how awesome MNC is and practice up before the game's first bit of (free) DLC hits.
== TEASER ==Trial Game
Extended trial time to 60 minutes from 30.
Connectivity and Multiplayer
Reworked the way we handle parties in the pregame lobby to avoid splitting them up.
Fixed several issues where host migration would fail immediately.
Decreased wait time after a successful host migration.
Lobbies will now host migrate and not kick you back to the main menu.
If the host leaves during the end of match sequence, the host will migrate and players will return back to the lobby and not the main menu.
Optimized the time it takes to migrate hosts, shortening the time to migrate.
Improved weapon hit detection in high lag situations.
Fixed endorsements being incorrect after a host migration.
Fixed getting into private matches without an invite.
General Gameplay
Fixed players being able to damage the Moneyball’s shields.
Fixed visual effects staying on the player after the effect has worn off.
Reduced the amount of increased damage the Moneyball takes in Overtime, thus reducing the effectiveness of “Juice rushing”.
Fixed Ringouts, Headshots and Grapple Kills not giving the proper amount of money. Balanced Ringout money to reflect the change. Message now displays correct total amount of money earned.
New “You Win!”/”You Lose!” UI for the end of a match.
Fixed juice benefits ending early if the player grapples during juice.
Fixed juice bar getting stuck full.
Fixed deploying on or near active jump pads.
Fixed controller sensitivity of 10 not saving.
Fixed messaging for kill streaks. Ultra and Uber streaks will now be named properly when popping up above your cursor.
Fixed an instance of the player’s skill pick UI going away unexpectedly.
Fixed an issue with bots walking by enemy turrets and bots without engaging them.
Fixed upgrading a turret that has been hacked to the opposing team.
Fixed turret collision not going away after being destroyed.
Normalized time between a grapple miss and the ability to grapple again for all grapples. The biggest change is the Assassin not having as big of a penalty for a missed grapple.
Fixed the “Team Leader” and “Team Player” highlights from being reversed.
Fixed players being able to mute themselves.
Fixed idle kicking when standing still but still looking around and/or shooting.
Fixed players who cheat and hack their profiles from being able to apply multiple gold endorsements.
Optimized main menu ticker for players with large friends lists.
Fixed HUD showing Moneyball shields as up during over time even though they are down.
Reduced announcer talking for kill streaks to help reduce the repetition of announcements.
Various performance optimizations.
Support
Reworked Support’s bot aura so that it doesn’t make the Jackbot appear overhealed.
Fixed Support’s Firebase skill from recharging while the Support is dead but the Firebase skill exists.
Fixed being able to use the Heal/Hurt gun while taunting.
Fixed some instances of the Support’s Firebase not appearing when thrown.
Fixed Heal/Hurt gun not being affected by rate of fire endorsements and reduced it’s overall healing/hurting ability to compensate for the change.
Fixed Supports being able to use their Hack skill through walls.
Fixed Supports being able to throw their Firebases through the wall.
Fixed Air Strikes sometimes damaging enemies under cover.
Supports can now only Hack enemy turrets at Hack level 3.
Increased the time to Hack enemy turrets.
Decreased duration of Hack on a turret for levels 1 and 2.
Assassin
Fixed Assassins from being able to get permanent sprint and super speed.
Fixed Assassins getting a double smoke bomb allowing them to jump higher than intended.
Fixed Assassins being able to cloak during a grapple.
Fixed Assassins from being able to use her smoke bomb during a lunge.
Retuned damage done by dagger after a lunge.
Tank
Tank’s Jet Gun alternate fire damage is now reduced depending on the percentage of ammo left in the clip. Increased the full clip damage to compensate.
Assault
Fixed an exploit involving the Assault’s Fly.
Fixed Assault’s bomb audio lingering after bomb is gone.
Monday Night Combat Live Update System
Pre-game Lobby is now 45 seconds.
Min Number of Players to start Crossfire is now 6.
Increased player bot spawing from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.
Beautifully said. That game is full of garbage right now. I have to agree mostly on the juice part though. Juice is extremely easy to get since you can either buy it, use to juice dispenser or just killing bots (Killing bots can get you a fair amount of juice very quickly without the juice endorsement) and enemies. I can't tell you how many times I would build multiple turrets only to have them demolished by a juiced assassin. The patch really did not help anything at all. Sure, now i can see who won the game at the end, but what else did they fix? In my opinion it is still very much the same buggy game except for a few tweaks.
Fixed Assassins being able to cloak during a grapple.
What? :( "
Yeah I saw that too! That sucks. :( But I'm excited about this update, as I'll actually play the game again now. It amazes me that there were THIS MANY bugs in a launched console game. I miss they days when console games were 99% bug-free, and stupid patches for PC gamers. :/ "
Console games were never bug-free. "
Name me any major console game from NES through Gamecube that had show-stopping bugs... as in, making the game almost unplayable due to glitches. And besides, I didn't say they were all 100% bug free. I said 99%. I don't see how any one could argue that old console games were far more reliable than the new ones. Sure, the new games have a lot more to handle, but that should me there is more time added to the QA process. "
Final Fantasy VI (nee Final Fantasy III) on the SNES has several bugs. One I encountered on my very first playthrough of the game. I left Narshe, got into a random encounter, summoned Ragnarok, and had my screen explode into hex code and junk. Was able to save it, reset, and discovered I had 255 of every item in the game in my inventory. I wasn't following a guide to glitch the game, this happened purely by chance, on my first playthrough of that game. Oh, check this out - http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VI/Bugs_and_Glitches Games are infinitely more complicated than they used to be, comparing them to games of old would make as much sense as comparing their graphics or sound. "
I'll quote myself: "Sure, the new games have a lot more to handle, but that should mean there is more time added to the QA process." Again, I'm not arguing that "old games don't have glitches, so new games shouldn't have glitches". My point is that newer games are rushed to market because of the ability to patch the game after release, the same way the majority of PC games were handled since there have been PC games. However, MOST console games that existed before updates were available contained minimal bugs, because the developers knew there wouldn't be a way to release first and fix later. Am I the only one that has seen this trend? I understand how game development works. I've written game reviews for TouchGen.com, and had disussions with hundreds of game developers (independent and mainstream) over the past few years regarding polishing their games. The fact is this: the development studios that spend more time on testing and QA for their game release games with less bugs than those who pump them out to try to make a buck earlier than they need to. This is especially seen in the App Store, where clunky mobile games get drowned out because they weren't properly tested, and are rated low due to bugs.
And just so someone doesn't try to make this point, I know that there are deadlines and pressures from publishers... that's one of the main issues with the current process!
Monday Night Combat is garbage (excluding blitz). Call of Duty rejects have putrified MNC, that and the game is just bad. The Orange Box's own Team Fortress 2 on the 360 is more balanced than MNC, and it has no major updates! 2007>2010 Oh and what's the point in investing HUNDREDS of dollars into a turret only to be destroyed easily by a juiced player? Juice is such a crutch. I just love trying to take care of a camping sniper only for him to juice and use that SMG or trying to take care of ANY camping player only for them to juice. Amazing for blitz, horrifyingly bad for Crossfire. Also, being matched into the same game an average of 6-7 times, sure is great. I don't remember ever having this problem before the "patch". I played a good four hours of Crossfire and it set my feelings in stone. The first week was fantastic. Everyone was learning at the same time, and there were no glitchy players or laggy players either!
This patch has done nothing. Maybe by the time Black Ops releases, all of the laggy players will flock over to there (yeah, I wish. I said the same thing when Reach dropped). Being shot through a wall by any class is horrible which was so apparent yesterday, and putting so much money into your base's defense only to be wiped out by a juiced player is absolutely stupid. How about I get a return for those hundreds of dollars I put into my defense instead of my own special abilities? I'm the defense guy, the turret guy. Nearly 3,000 laser turrets built/upgraded! I know laser turrets are weak, but I don't only build those so don't suggest I'm building the wrong turrets as I was just making an example.
One last thing: I have one friend that plays this game. Now, when I go in to play Crossfire, there is almost always a 3 to 6 person party that I have to go against with randoms being matched onto my side with no microphones. Being rolled over or just being spawn camped (that's Call of Duty mentality for you) is expected. How about we borrow an idea from good ol' COD and implement a so-called "mercenary" Crossfire. Everyone is jumbled and put on whatever side, no parties allowed. THAT, THAT right there would make this game PLAYABLE to me.
Don't get me wrong, though. I didn't buy this game being a hater or anything. I bought it first day, and I was in love. I had been following it since January of this year. The personality in the characters and the gameplay and turret management amazed me. In a way, I still love MNC. It's just the people, I guess. When everything works out fine in a game and I'm both earning kills and earning deaths, it's fun and there's no room for unfairness. But coming out of the spawn only to be backstabbed or taking a headshot (the hitboxes are so off, especially for sniping), it's disheartening. I don't know. A LOT of bullshit took place yesterday when I booted up MNC, excitement taking over me. Then the same shit that I hated the game for happened, even with so called "fixes". How about fix the EASE of getting juice, especially for Assassin. Like someone told me yesterday, I guess I just "don't build turrets, then". Yep. *sigh*
Now, please don't go insulting me or just taking one part of my post and skewing what I had to say.
There is a happy ending to this story: I went ahead and just put in The Orange Box, hosted a 16 man 2fort (which did fill up within 2-3 minutes!) with two of my friends, and had a blast.
Fixed Assassins being able to cloak during a grapple.
What? :( "
Yeah I saw that too! That sucks. :( But I'm excited about this update, as I'll actually play the game again now. It amazes me that there were THIS MANY bugs in a launched console game. I miss they days when console games were 99% bug-free, and stupid patches for PC gamers. :/ "
Console games were never bug-free. "
Name me any major console game from NES through Gamecube that had show-stopping bugs... as in, making the game almost unplayable due to glitches. And besides, I didn't say they were all 100% bug free. I said 99%. I don't see how any one could argue that old console games were far more reliable than the new ones. Sure, the new games have a lot more to handle, but that should me there is more time added to the QA process. "
Final Fantasy VI (nee Final Fantasy III) on the SNES has several bugs. One I encountered on my very first playthrough of the game. I left Narshe, got into a random encounter, summoned Ragnarok, and had my screen explode into hex code and junk. Was able to save it, reset, and discovered I had 255 of every item in the game in my inventory. I wasn't following a guide to glitch the game, this happened purely by chance, on my first playthrough of that game.
Oh, check this out - http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VI/Bugs_and_Glitches
Games are infinitely more complicated than they used to be, comparing them to games of old would make as much sense as comparing their graphics or sound.
Patch is live and so is MNC on my Xbox! It feels good getting back to the game when it wasn't overrun with glitchers and exploiting. Assault feels a little weak now by comparison but you can finally kill a damned support without four players assisting!
Fixed Assassins being able to cloak during a grapple.
What? :( "
Yeah I saw that too! That sucks. :( But I'm excited about this update, as I'll actually play the game again now. It amazes me that there were THIS MANY bugs in a launched console game. I miss they days when console games were 99% bug-free, and stupid patches for PC gamers. :/ "
Dude what. Are you serious? Wow.... You know that just about every console game will update all over the place right? They STILL update AC1 from time to time. Just because you don't see the glitches doesn't mean that when you have to update or play off line, they aren't fixing bugs. "
What? I don't really know what you're getting at. I was talking about the fact the older console games weren't launched with tons of bugs like modern games are. That was always a PC thing. Before games could be patched, developers spent a lot more time ironing out issues BEFORE release.
Fixed Assassins being able to cloak during a grapple.
What? :( "
Yeah I saw that too! That sucks. :( But I'm excited about this update, as I'll actually play the game again now. It amazes me that there were THIS MANY bugs in a launched console game. I miss they days when console games were 99% bug-free, and stupid patches for PC gamers. :/ "
Console games were never bug-free. "
Name me any major console game from NES through Gamecube that had show-stopping bugs... as in, making the game almost unplayable due to glitches. And besides, I didn't say they were all 100% bug free. I said 99%. I don't see how any one could argue that old console games were far more reliable than the new ones. Sure, the new games have a lot more to handle, but that should me there is more time added to the QA process.
Fixed Assassins being able to cloak during a grapple.
What? :( "
Yeah I saw that too! That sucks. :( But I'm excited about this update, as I'll actually play the game again now. It amazes me that there were THIS MANY bugs in a launched console game. I miss they days when console games were 99% bug-free, and stupid patches for PC gamers. :/ "
Dude what. Are you serious? Wow.... You know that just about every console game will update all over the place right? They STILL update AC1 from time to time. Just because you don't see the glitches doesn't mean that when you have to update or play off line, they aren't fixing bugs.
Fixed Assassins being able to cloak during a grapple.
What? :( "
Yeah I saw that too! That sucks. :( But I'm excited about this update, as I'll actually play the game again now. It amazes me that there were THIS MANY bugs in a launched console game. I miss they days when console games were 99% bug-free, and stupid patches for PC gamers. :/ "
Fixed Assassins being able to cloak during a grapple.
What? :( "
Yeah I saw that too! That sucks. :(
But I'm excited about this update, as I'll actually play the game again now. It amazes me that there were THIS MANY bugs in a launched console game. I miss they days when console games were 99% bug-free, and stupid patches for PC gamers. :/
" I really want to play this game again but now that reach and all the other fall releases are dropping, I don't think I will be able to get my friends on MNC. "
Yeah, I was really enjoying MNC but decided to take a break until they released a good fix-up patch, but now I don't know when I'll get around to going back.
Reach is really, really fun and New Vegas is coming out soon, those two games alone are probably gonna hold my attention for a good while.
(Plus I have suspicions that my wife is going to be stealing my XBox when Kinect and Dance Central come out)
I really want to play this game again but now that reach and all the other fall releases are dropping, I don't think I will be able to get my friends on MNC.
This is a really good game. Will probably play it now that I've played Reach enough. Just got the last achievement in Reach yesterday, so this is a good timing.
" I thought this game was able to be updated without having to go through those processes? Or am i thinking of a different game? "
You are right. There was an article about that that supposedly they could just punch numbers in the background to balance out the game. So I don't what happen to that. "
There's a .txt or something similar that they can edit to change certain values in the game, but I'm sure it's severely limited. It looks like Brad just copied the original list, because this:
Monday Night Combat Live Update System
Pre-game Lobby is now 45 seconds. Min Number of Players to start Crossfire is now 6. Increased player bot spawing from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.
Is what went live a month ago when they edited that file.
@MormonWarrior said:
" Anybody else think the mascot girls in Monday Night Combats are way hot? Wait...is that videophilia or something? "
I hope you mean Pit Girl and not the Mascot. Yes, she is hot. "Come on Gunner, get mean now!"
@Jayzz: no you are right- but I think that those are balance tweaks for OP/UP classes to adjust damage values. This looks like a fix for how things operate, more like a true patch than just minor tweaks.
" I thought this game was able to be updated without having to go through those processes? Or am i thinking of a different game? "
You are right. There was an article about that that supposedly they could just punch numbers in the background to balance out the game. So I don't what happen to that.
This doesn't fix all the issues I have with the game, but it's a mighty fine start. Next would be not having the assault be the main target for assassinations.
I've never had much of a problem with Microsoft's practices but it seems like they should be hire some more people. With the addition of Windows Phone 7 (damn you Verizon i want it) its just going to get worse.
Uber Entertainment's ridiculously huge (and first) title update for Monday Night Combat has finally gone live. The update, which was announced and finished weeks ago, fell victim to an ongoing certification backlog at Microsoft. If it makes you feel better, though, the forthcoming DLC will now be coming "sooner than later," as the publisher has pledged to not let this kind of delay happen again. Nice guys, those Microsoft guys.
Our general philosophy on Monday Night Combat is that it is a service based model of game. For a multiplayer game like ours to be successful, we need to adjust balance, fix exploits, and add new content based on feedback from our community and do it quickly. Unfortunately for the our first title update, which was handed off to Microsoft for certification over a month ago, got caught up in a perfect storm of software changes and tons of new games coming out. This caused our title update to get backlogged along with other digital titles.
We carried all the details of this title update when we first received word of it in late August. Those details are available just below, but a new change that you might want to know about was announced in the aforementioned message board post. The trial time for playing the demo over Xbox Live has been bumped from 30 minutes to 60 minutes, meaning you now get twice as long to decide how awesome MNC is and practice up before the game's first bit of (free) DLC hits.
== TEASER ==Trial Game
Extended trial time to 60 minutes from 30.
Connectivity and Multiplayer
Reworked the way we handle parties in the pregame lobby to avoid splitting them up.
Fixed several issues where host migration would fail immediately.
Decreased wait time after a successful host migration.
Lobbies will now host migrate and not kick you back to the main menu.
If the host leaves during the end of match sequence, the host will migrate and players will return back to the lobby and not the main menu.
Optimized the time it takes to migrate hosts, shortening the time to migrate.
Improved weapon hit detection in high lag situations.
Fixed endorsements being incorrect after a host migration.
Fixed getting into private matches without an invite.
General Gameplay
Fixed players being able to damage the Moneyball’s shields.
Fixed visual effects staying on the player after the effect has worn off.
Reduced the amount of increased damage the Moneyball takes in Overtime, thus reducing the effectiveness of “Juice rushing”.
Fixed Ringouts, Headshots and Grapple Kills not giving the proper amount of money. Balanced Ringout money to reflect the change. Message now displays correct total amount of money earned.
New “You Win!”/”You Lose!” UI for the end of a match.
Fixed juice benefits ending early if the player grapples during juice.
Fixed juice bar getting stuck full.
Fixed deploying on or near active jump pads.
Fixed controller sensitivity of 10 not saving.
Fixed messaging for kill streaks. Ultra and Uber streaks will now be named properly when popping up above your cursor.
Fixed an instance of the player’s skill pick UI going away unexpectedly.
Fixed an issue with bots walking by enemy turrets and bots without engaging them.
Fixed upgrading a turret that has been hacked to the opposing team.
Fixed turret collision not going away after being destroyed.
Normalized time between a grapple miss and the ability to grapple again for all grapples. The biggest change is the Assassin not having as big of a penalty for a missed grapple.
Fixed the “Team Leader” and “Team Player” highlights from being reversed.
Fixed players being able to mute themselves.
Fixed idle kicking when standing still but still looking around and/or shooting.
Fixed players who cheat and hack their profiles from being able to apply multiple gold endorsements.
Optimized main menu ticker for players with large friends lists.
Fixed HUD showing Moneyball shields as up during over time even though they are down.
Reduced announcer talking for kill streaks to help reduce the repetition of announcements.
Various performance optimizations.
Support
Reworked Support’s bot aura so that it doesn’t make the Jackbot appear overhealed.
Fixed Support’s Firebase skill from recharging while the Support is dead but the Firebase skill exists.
Fixed being able to use the Heal/Hurt gun while taunting.
Fixed some instances of the Support’s Firebase not appearing when thrown.
Fixed Heal/Hurt gun not being affected by rate of fire endorsements and reduced it’s overall healing/hurting ability to compensate for the change.
Fixed Supports being able to use their Hack skill through walls.
Fixed Supports being able to throw their Firebases through the wall.
Fixed Air Strikes sometimes damaging enemies under cover.
Supports can now only Hack enemy turrets at Hack level 3.
Increased the time to Hack enemy turrets.
Decreased duration of Hack on a turret for levels 1 and 2.
Assassin
Fixed Assassins from being able to get permanent sprint and super speed.
Fixed Assassins getting a double smoke bomb allowing them to jump higher than intended.
Fixed Assassins being able to cloak during a grapple.
Fixed Assassins from being able to use her smoke bomb during a lunge.
Retuned damage done by dagger after a lunge.
Tank
Tank’s Jet Gun alternate fire damage is now reduced depending on the percentage of ammo left in the clip. Increased the full clip damage to compensate.
Assault
Fixed an exploit involving the Assault’s Fly.
Fixed Assault’s bomb audio lingering after bomb is gone.
Monday Night Combat Live Update System
Pre-game Lobby is now 45 seconds.
Min Number of Players to start Crossfire is now 6.
Increased player bot spawing from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.
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