Community Transmission - Squad System Update & Release Notes

[DYSPROssium]

Incoming Transmission

It’s time for another Community Transmission and we’re here to talk about the Squad Update. It releases tomorrow (September 25th), so on with the details.

Squad System
The new Squad System will allow you to re-join your friends, allies, and the action much quicker than before. If you’re already playing with a group of friends, you will be placed together into a squad. If you join a game on your own, you will be placed into a random squad.

When you are defeated, you will have the ability to toggle through a spectator camera. This camera will be focused on one of your squad members and you’ll then have the ability to spawn directly onto them. Want to spawn on a different squad member? Simply toggle through the spectator camera until you find the squad member of your choosing.

The new squad system also grants you the ability to play 2v2 Private Matches of Hero Showdown.

We went more in-depth on the Squad System in its own dedicated Community Transmission, you can find that here.

91st Mobile Reconnaissance Corps
The 91st Recon Cops were a regiment of the Republic during the Clone Wars. Lead by commander CC-8826, or Neyo, the 91st were involved in many battles across the Clone Wars.

104th “Wolf Pack” Battalion
The Wolfpack was a battalion that active throughout the Clone Wars and known for numerous military operations. On one such encounter, they engaged on a night assault on one of the last remaining outposts of General Grievous.
The 104th Battalion can be identified by the iconic Wolf logo that identifies the squad, and the dark blue markings upon their armour.

You can read more about some changes we’re making to the Clone Trooper Appearances by click here.

Ping Site Changes
We have added a new default setting to the ping site option. When you have this selected, the game will attempt to match you to any of the ping sites that you have the best ping to. In the real world, this means that if you are located in Europe and have a good ping to both Frankfurt [FRA] and Dublin [DUB], you could be matched to either one, meaning you should find games a lot quicker.

These changes will start to arrive alongside the September update and further updates will be made in the months after, as we continue to tweak and improve the matchmaking system.

Matchmaking
End of Round (EOR) matchmaking is a feature you will have noticed before. It’s something that has been turned on and tested at intermittent periods over the last few months.

The two key benefits to the end of round matchmaking will be:

• Mixing players up more often. As a result of this it’s less likely that you will find yourself stuck in a poorly balanced game for more than a few rounds.
• We’re changing the matchmaking behaviour so it favours filling up existing servers, as opposed to starting new ones. This means that you should join servers that are trending towards being full, as opposed to joining an empty one.

We go into more detail on the Matchmaking within its own Community Transmission, which you can find here.

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Release Notes

NEW CONTENT
FEATURES

• Added ability to get into squads and spawn on squad members on Galactic Assault and Strike
• Improved screen flow for quicker spawning in all modes where Squad Spawn is not present

QUALITY OF LIFE

• More dynamic change of characters shown on the Home and Career screens, due to implementation of backend ability to change those in a live environment
• Implemented various stability fixes for the End of Round (EOR) Matchmaking
• Improved the way the game client looks for an online game, by adding an automated Default option for the best Ping site, as well as simplifying the choice of sites in the menu.

HERO CHANGES

LEIA ORGANA

• Fixed an issue where Leia's Alternate Fire ability could damage a player piloting the AT-ST

VEHICLE CHANGES

U-WING

• Fixed an issue where the "Repair" ability would not properly activate

LANDO’S MILLENNIUM FALCON

• Fixed an issue where the Tactical Jammer ability would have no effect on Lando's Millennium Falcon

CLASSES & SPECIAL UNITS CHANGES

OFFICER

• Fixed an issue that would prevent the Disruption ability to trigger in sync with the animation

HEAVY

• Removed the ability of Ion Turrets to lock and fire on troopers, as requested by the community
• Reduced the damage done by the Ion Torpedo for better balancing

GENERAL IMPROVEMENTS
Fixed an issue where the Resourceful Star Card wouldn't correctly lower the ability cooldown when used.

GAME MODE CHANGES

GALACTIC ASSAULT

• Implemented backend timers that allow tweaking of the objective duration on Galactic Assault in a live environment

HERO STARFIGHTERS

• Added animations to further enhance the look and feel of the game mode's widget

STRIKE

• Fixed a spelling issue in one of the objective texts

MAP CHANGES

JAKKU

• Fixed an issue where heroes could hide or get stuck behind metal barriers on Jakku

ENDOR

• Fixed an issue that would leave players stuck between tree and mountain assets

TAKODANA

• Fixed an issue where the chicken near the East Turbolaser would not be fleeing from the player

GENERAL CHANGES

• Added Ewok Hunt and Extraction-based challenges to the list of Daily Challenges
• Removed Hero Showdown-based challenges "Perfect Together" and "Vader and Kylo", based on player feedback that they are too hard to achieve in an online environment
• Fixed an issue where Iden's character and description text would be missing from the Campaign's spawn and customization screen
• Fixed an issue where players would not be able to change their Clone Trooper appearances during the pre-round screens on games taking place on Kashyyyk and Kamino
• Added additional UI effects when unlocking an Emote, Victory Pose or Appearance from the menu
• Increased the maximum numbers of players in a group to 20, and the maximum number of players who can play together to 8
• Fixed an issue where the button to get more Crystals would not show up in the Emotes and Victory Poses screens
• Adjusted the "Saviour Kill" stat, so that it tracks relevant kills from the whole team and not just the squad members
• This update will automatically disable CrossFire functionality for players with AMD Graphics Cards running on Windows 8 / 8.1, due to lack of support for multi-GPU with the specified operating system and GPU vendor.

KNOWN ISSUES

• Squad members that are inside certain land vehicles (Armor, Artillery, Speeder, Tauntaun, Mountable Turrets) are not correctly shown as being inside vehicles on the Squad Spawn screen. The fix has been identified and will be implemented in the next update.
• Selecting to spawn on squad members who are inside land vehicles will temporarily disable access to the “Choose Character” screen. The issue gets resolved once players choose to spawn in the Default location. The fix has been identified and will be implemented in the next update.
• The spawn screen UI will, in rare cases, remain on during gameplay on Strike, or Galactic Assault. The issue gets resolved once players choose to respawn. The fix has been identified and will be implemented in the next update.
• The cooldown timer of the Shock Grenade ability would not be affected by the Resourceful Star Card. The fix has been identified and will be implemented in the next update.

Punch It, BB-8

[Tinogiggedy]

As of this update a fresh problem or something not mentioned in the update. Playing GA on tattoine and what do I see but 3 lightside heroes in stage two. I didn't see anything saying that these changes were being implemented so I'm left to assume that some clever cheating pr*cks have already figured out how to exploit a bug in the new system. Yay and that was the very first game I played, I'm sure this will get better.

Also now seen this on Kasshyyyk GA again defending lightside 3 heroes in phase 2. Can someone at EA please confirm if this a bug or intentional. 

[Sati_Sati]

@DYSPROssium

Thank you! May the force be with you! :eahigh_file:

HEAVY

• Reduced the damage done by the Ion Torpedo for better balancing

"Oh, 2nd nerf for the ION torpedo?" -> I checked the stats. -> Nothing has changed.

Hmm, I missed something perhaps. 

[Tinogiggedy]

Definitely a spawn glitch of some sort, same person that had a 3rd villian on tattoine also spawned a 3rd AT-ST. 👏 Well done EA, fancy fixing this quickly? 

[Sati_Sati]

Yeah, I just saw the screenshot that 5 AT-STs are in the map. Yes, 5 AT-STs!!!

Something went wrong. I have a bad feeling about this. 

[Tinogiggedy]

Here's another fresh bug. When assault troopers have vanguard active and are running you can't hit them with a saber it's like your swinging at air even when your on top of them. It's happened to me at least 4 times today. EA what are you doing!!!! GA practically the only playable game mode is becoming ridiculous now. More people are figuring out the spawn bug and spawning additional sh*t. More buggyness than ever before ffs. 

[-DW-GarthRevan]

Thanks so much for the squad system. This is a huge improvement and I appreciate that you are willing to make such changes.

Ideas too improve the experience even further:
- a default spawning option: So that you spawn in at the first available slot after X seconds or at default or so on. I feel like picking now a little disrupts my gameflow.
- a display in the hud showing which of your squad members are alive. Possibly just some small dots next to the ticket counter on top. So you could stand still enabling your squad to spawn to you.

- a small symbol/timer showing if you can be spawned on right now.
- however i feel the display is also a little cluttered already. I would be happy if you would something about the objective marker like adding an optional transparency or making it smaller or move it on top on some maps. The objective often is by design the hot spot of the game, yet the objective marker very often obstructs the view if you don't aim down sight, which often is a bad idea for other reasons. So an optional transparency in the options menu would allow more experienced players to advance and newer player still to learn and so freeing up the display a little bit.

Technical Issues
- when I have a group sometimes I player with strangers instead of my group as it should be. I had a group of 3 yet one member but I wasn't in the squad. Group prioritization seems not to work instantly or sometimes.
- yesterday I was in a group of 4 (including me) yet couldn't spawn to anyone. The spawn options other than default were just blank (see attachment). There were  20 players on both sides. So not an odd number.
- I was kicked out of the game when I was number 1 in GA. Heard of a friend he had the same issue. I never had that before. Is that part of the balancing ? Though as I was 1 just one time unfortunately I don't know how often this happens or if this was just one occurrence. Never had this before though.

Other Feedback
- Jump Trooper / Rocket Droids I really like the ability to move now. I would love to have the rocket a larger impact radius or a little shorter cool down time
- Thank you so much for the ion turret change.
- Also one interesting thing is that one guy I had under suspicion of cheating (but not enough to accuse/ report him, he just got many kills very very fast) suddenly disappeared. With the new system such people will be reported soon and that is a good thing / side effect. 

However like said... thank you for the continuous improvements and the communication.

[ggibb65]

@Sati_Sati - the ion torpedo has definitely been nerfed. 3 won't take down an AT_ST unless it is already damaged. On Hoth 2/3 torpedoes used to take down most starfighters. Now 2 will only take down an Airspeeder, 3 will take down Starfighters if you can get a quick enough lock or they have some damage. On Tatooine, undamaged Speeders now take 2 where before 1 was enough.

[Sati_Sati]

@ggibb65 Hello there!:eahigh_file:

Thank you for the information. My friend told me that too. So it seems that EA people nerfed the ION torpedo again.

(Though the damage itself was not changed in my file, it is 100(Base Damage) + 120(Blast Damage).

 Probably the damage coefficient was changed... oops, I cannot see that.)

I thought after the August patch, 1st-nerfed version of the ION torpedo was well balanced. But they didn't. Very interesting.

[ggibb65]

@Sati_Sati- I agree, The first nerf was definitely enough. Now they have gone away from the original intent when they gave 3 torpedos as a defence from the aerial attacks. Maybe there was more complaints from Starfighter/AT_ST players than us poor troopers.