Men of War II (BW) News

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Hi, friends.

Thanks for the words of support and feedback on the latest video. Thanks for the constructive (and any other) criticism too. As always, we have read everything and in today's diary we will give feedback on your feedback. Also you’ll read some about the results of the last months, settings, and bugs that were in the video, but already fixed and other.

How naive we were, deciding that the Early Beta footage inscription would save us from kicks into the fps dropdowns, jabs into the work-in-progress interface, and van-dame-like split kicks straight into the T-34-85 dancing on the trench. Okay. Thanks to that we have stuff to discuss today and can show with examples: wherever we can, we keep our promises. We promised that in Soldiers: Arena it will be possible to play on an average PC and even recorded the video on this kind of PC. Promised to show real gameplay without editing, and showed without editing how really slowly Pastorazzi plays with howitzers. We promised to quickly fix bugs and hear your wishes - so we fix and we hear.

Animation bugs. A known problem but we just did not have time to fix it before shooting the video. Notice how smoothly and gently the T-34-85 now rides over the trenches.



Sound. We have already become used to the sounds in the game and, apparently, did not pay attention to how the sounds of small arms brought pain to the ears. German submachine guns and machine guns sounded louder than similar weapons of other nations. Corrected. We customized the models of sound spreading. The main focus is now on big explosions and big guns. Added the whistling of mortar mines and the sound of the semi-automatic AT-rifle EW.141. In general, it has become much more pleasant, but the work must go on.

Interface. Still in work and in some places it will change beyond recognition, Including the icons that we added to the game a couple of days before shooting the video. But you wished to customize the display of interface elements: And we have this already. If information about units and the battlefield is less important to you than realism and cinematic images - you can always turn off almost everything. By the way, opponents of health bars can’t hate us anymore. Cause, technically, these are the health rhombuses, so ... checkmate!

The size of the map seemed too small some of you, guys. The attentive reader knows that the size of the map adjusts to the number of players. This is one of the ways to achieve the perfect balance of epic and realism to deliver maximum impact and read what is happening in the session. Soldiers: Arena is a strategy game about a full-scale ground encounter and fierce battles along the entire front line, and a hidden enemy quest. The width of the optimal map for a 5 vs 5 fight looks like this.



In addition to the usual work on the balance of battalions, fixing bugs, creating new models and special effects, we also did these:

• Realistic projectile flight paths. When changing the type of shell, the gun changes the angle so that the armor-piercing flew along a flat trajectory, and the HE shells flew along the plunging one. HE were less likely to fly past the target and better get into the trenches and buildings, and AP shells from, for example the ML-20, will not be casting steel hail and throwing your tank into rock bottom.
  
• Fine tuning of shells and caliber dependencies. For example, the larger the HE caliber, the greater the effective range of the fragments and the damage they inflict on the vehicles. The seismic effect was increased for large calibers also, so that 155 mm now obliterates a trench with a single hit. And 100+ mm shells now break vehicles modules from one damaging hit.
  
• “Arty preparation” mode has been added. This is a variant of firing a position, but without an aiming buff after each shot and accelerated by 33% reload. Good for playing with an artillery battery, when accuracy is less important than an overwhelming and demoralizing effect. Perfect for clearing the territory before allied infantry advance and stopping the offense. It works only for units intended for this. Scare infantry with armor-piercing volleys from ZIS-2 battery isn’t a great idea anyway.
  
• We test mechanics related to experience, unlocking new units and balance of the techtrees. We corrected the distortions and adjusted the cost in order to have a more or less working model of the development of the player and the technology tree by the start of the EA. Most of us have already managed to form our favorite decks, and those who want to continue to use them have to farm like an ordinary player. Strange feeling.
  
• Usability and general understanding. We’re changing interfaces, icons, tips, hotbars, etc., to simultaneously give the player full information about what is happening on the battlefield and not clutter building up on the screen. This task is not an easy one, given the Arena's hardcore nature and the huge volume of what is happening on the screen, but we have good progress made already.
  

Fought with bugs. In addition to the units dancing in cyclical animations, there were other fun things. For example, the modified shell trajectories did their deal in providing us with comedy. Armor-piercing shells fired from howitzers continued to apply gravity rules for HE, so they very quickly got tired of fighting the weary air of the ‘International-Standard-Arena’ and fell half-way to the target. Some units after the concussion refused to follow orders and dig up the trenches, believing that they had suffered enough and were too old for this sh... shovel work. But the most tragicomic was not even a bug, but a flaw in the rules, was when the cannon remained attached to the carrier after the death of the driver. When someone tries to steal your carrier - it is even strange ... why did someone need it? But when someone is hijacking your carrier with a cannon attached to it and a full artillery crew - this is the officially recorded peak of shame for the player in Soldiers: Arena. And, fortunately, you won't be able to endure it.

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As you can see, the game is constantly changing; and videos, gifs or screenshots show exactly the current state, and not the final one. Therefore, do not despair if something does not please you and keep calm. Wish you all the best.

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Hi, friends.

Today we’ll talk ... a little. And, perhaps, discuss in the comments ... a lot. The concept of approximate numbers, the melting point and preview gameplay video of Soldiers: Arena.

Here and after all quotes from “Fahrenheit 451”

As Ray Bradbury reasonably remarked, it was very hot in the discussions and comments under the previous diary. This is partly our guilt, because of the delay ... and yet here comes another one. But you made it worth your while too, right? You’ve decided not to balance evil with good this time. Okay, let's count the draw and move on. In this diary we explained in detail the reasons for all the delays and hoped that now we would be on the same wavelength as the community. Obviously, we still understand the phrase “approximate dates” in different ways. And it’s a time to do something about this.



When the moles of “Releasedates?!” reaches a critical mass, it is difficult to restrain and not to announce the approximate one. And we did not restrain. When we knew that we couldn’t keep up with the schedule, we changed the date. You were burning out from delays, and we were equally burnt out of comments and hurries. Now the temperature has risen to supercritical values ​​and it needs to be brought down. Therefore, today we will provide the hot tea and a gameplay video, and in return it would be jolly handy if you were to provide a dose of kindness, how about that?

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The release is still scheduled for the near future, but in order to reduce the amount of sadness from the postponements, let's set it “To be announced” for now. We don’t really want (again) to walk down the Internet under constant “Shame!” screams through the path of atonement, simply because we are making the game better. Next time, we shall change the date to a specific one. The same applies to the price. At least two weeks before the release, they will be listed on the store page.



Despite the fact that the new icons just appeared in the game last week, we, as promised, we shall publish the first gameplay video of Soldiers: Arena now in January. It comes without edits, exclusively showing the rough, angry and loud howitzer battalion gameplay. So we’ll add another “Check!” on the board of fulfilled promises and will continue to work on the full version of the video. We remind you that the pace and style of gameplay differs greatly for different battalions, and animation bugs and old models are still present. More will be to come. You can watch the video now. By the way, do tell in the comments if you were eager enough to watch the video before reading the text :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mp2srn9B-pw&feature=youtu.be

Thanks again to everyone who believed in us all this time and continues to support us so far. You are the best. Soon!

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Hi, friends.

In today's diary we will talk about two new multiplayer maps: the Kursk fields and Bazerville. Here you can read about the features of each of them, the importance of gameplay diversity, the differences of maps in Soldiers: Arena and in other RTS games, and add to your collection a new render with Yemelya (ML-20) on it. Unlike its fairy-tale namesake, the Soviet howitzer doesn’t ride on a Russian stove, but still manages to create some magic in the game even without the help of a magical pike, but with the help of its own 152-mm shells.



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We won't repeat ourselves and speak again about the main principles of creating maps for Soldiers: Arena. If you need to refresh your memory, here are the links to the diaries about Polesie and Village. In today’s issue you can find the distinctive features of the maps in relation to each other and to other strategic games. Let's start from the end:

• Interactivity of environment. We always wanted the world to be as lively as possible and give the player a lot of opportunities to interact with it. In most strategic games, you can at best use the terrain as a platform to gather resources or shelter from the fire. In the games of the series it was always different, and in Soldiers: Arena the number of such interaction mechanics became even bigger than in any other GEM-game. You can dig up the whole map with trenches, barricade buildings, hide your artillery behind a camouflage net and hide infantry in already growing bushes, use hills and cavities to your advantage, use burnt wrecks of enemy tanks to hide your own tanks, demine minefield and have fun in general.
  
• Front line. To win, it is not necessary to destroy all enemy bases or units, and the struggle for territory is not limited to points of interest. Although the priorities or places of increased interest remain, in each session you can see some non-standard solutions. Someone manages to dig in the middle of the field and hold a position throughout the battle, and someone loses well-fortified buildings, discouraged by armored cars rush or artillery advance. The non-standard approach in Soldiers: Arena work well and you don’t need to repeat the same actions each game. Build the fort — capture the mine — build the barracks — upgrade the fort…. Naaaah.
  
• Role component is reflected not only in the selection and use of units, but also in map design. Each kind of troops has a landscape more comfy to play on. Depending on which map you are playing on and which units, the priority points of attack or defense can and will differ greatly.
  
• New experience on each map. The above mechanics make it possible to significantly change the gameplay, top units and battalions, even with a simple rearrangement of buildings. But we are not limited to this, and we want each multiplayer map to have its own individual gameplay features. Maps that differ only in weather conditions, a season of the year, or a visual style of buildings, is not our option.
  

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Let us turn to the differences of maps in relation to each other. The village, as the very first map created specifically for Soldiers: Arena, is one of the most balanced, and provides opportunities for the implementation of any specialty. There will always be a spot to hide howitzers, buildings for capturing by infantry, narrow streets for tank maneuvering, etc. At the same time, this is the map with a lot of dense buildings locations in it, and, for example, it is the most convenient for the Infantry Assault Battalion.

Polesie has a swamp in which it is impossible to dig trenches, and only certain islands of solid soil can be strengthened. Two hills with easily overlapped passages that will protect units from direct fire. And there is a mill on the hill, which gives a good overview, which is especially difficult to attack and convenient to defend.

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Last week we added a Bazerville map modified to version 3.0. It will be familiar and unrecognizable at the same time for most of the MoW fans. We had to seriously change the location of the buildings, make the ravines a little less deep, remove some buildings and add others so that the position of the sides in relation to the front line became balanced. Bazerville is most similar to the Village map, but is an even smoother version in terms of landscape and location of buildings. So you mustn’t adapt to the landscape most of the time. Lonely buildings are scattered along the entire front line, as are small open and well-sweep spaces. It can be said that Bazerville is the most measured and homogeneous of maps at the moment.

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One of the features of the Kursk fields is a large amount of open space, which makes the station and a small group of buildings to the right even more interesting to hold. The rest of the map may seem like a dead zone for infantry. Large open spaces without elevation changes enable machine guns, tanks and cannons to shoot through half of the map without changing positions. The first tests on this one were really unusual. The infantry seemed too weak. Tankmen were afraid to go forward towards the fortified positions of AT-artillery. Mortars and howitzers died as soon as they become visible, and their main advantage in indirect shooting from behind cover was not evident.

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Some time passed and a new meta was formed. And then we finally convinced that the Arena formula works. Battalions, who initially seemed less interesting, opened from a new side. The speed advantage of the Motorized Rifle Battalion in relation to other infantry seemed previously insufficient or even insignificant. Due to the large number of buildings and uneven terrain on other maps, armored vehicles did not always excel. In open spaces, their advantage makes the difference, while the Assault Battalion, deprived of the opportunity to move by dashes from building to building, loses its light flare of imbalanceness. A full-length infantry attack often leads to losing, and a cautious game with snipers or strengthening positions leads to victory. Therefore, the Sapper battalion with its additional AT-hedgehogs, barricades and quick digging of trenches becomes more attractive. At the same time, the bias in the direction of howitzers decreased and AT-artillery became stronger due to the possibility of firing at half of the map, taking the place in the center. No buildings and trees cover the view anymore. You just put the battery and wait for the victim.

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Nonlinear balance, to which we so sought, is working, and at different levels. And this is a great reason for joy and a little pride. Each map differs not only visually, but also in the gameplay sense, and these differences are more obvious and deeper than in other parts of the series. Also we have a bit more maps before the Early Access than we initially planned. So, where we don’t meet deadlines, we catch up with content, you know. Friends, write in the comments what maps you would like to see in the Arena and which mechanics of interaction with the outside world you lack. Wish you all the best!

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Hi, friends.

As promised in the last diary, we’ll speak today about battalions and how to manage them. We shall reveal some of the secrets, which have been guarded so far. We’ll talk as precisely as possible about what echelons and battle ranks are, and how many troops can be taken into battle. Also, using the example of two tasks and their solutions, we will explain why Soldiers: Arena will be comfortable for players with different microcontrol skills and expectations from the gameplay.



First, we select a battalion from the list of available ones. There could be an illustration with an almost ready-to-use interface and a draft description under the art, but someone scrawled a cheat code for endless gold on it, so ... Try as hard as you can to imagine the most beautiful interface and then just pick a battalion there. Next, the army constructor window will pop up.

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And here we are forced to take a big pause before continue managing the battalion, and explain what the echelons are, and again plunge into some history. The Arena-game began with three major innovations: a dynamic front line, a system of specialties (battalions) and the concept of echelons. We can say that this is the foundation that keeps all the other features on it. We told about the dynamic front line almost on the onset, a bit later we also revealed the concept of battalions, and echelons were saved for last. In fairness, it’s worth noting that we still left some clues, but we hid them behind words such as “early stages”, “middle of the session” or endgame.

Echelons divide the game session into three stages, which subsequently evolve for both teams simultaneously. With each subsequent echelon, the level of available units, the number of command point (CP) and the intensity of the battle grow. In combination with other solutions, echelons help to solve several problems at once, which we attempted to tackle in Soldiers: Arena from the very beginning:

• Units should not depreciate. If you love the BT-7 for its speed and cheapness, it makes no sense to give it up. The first echelon will be present in each session and in each session, the BT-7 will be useful.
  
• The need to minimize excess waiting and moments of inactivity. First echelon units are available immediately and you do not need to save CPs for them, just to choose the order of spawn (more on this in one of the following diaries). In most cases, by the time the first echelon units are finished, the second one is ready. Thus, a player with phantom threads of nerves and low resistance to defeats will not be able to lose all his favorite units at once, lose the game and lose himself on a downwards spiral of existential apathy. Well, ok, he can always lose himself, but we have diminished the reasons for this.
  
• Make the pace of the game smooth and constantly growing. The first echelon makes it possible to study the enemy’s battalions relatively calmly, test its defenses, strengthen your own and warm up. The second is for the full-scale battles along the entire front line and the culmination of the game, which often makes it clear how it will end. The third echelon is a battle of top units and a fight to the last.
  
• Emphasize the features of the battalions. For example, a battalion of medium tanks is especially good at the first and second echelons, and by the third, when top heavy tanks and cannons arrived, it slows down a little. It is necessary to be cautious and go to a fight if only having a numerical advantage.
  
• Create a lot of interesting game situations and non-linear balance. Some will say that when on the first echelon, only the howitzer commander has the leFH 18 and this is NOT interesting situation at all, and the T-35 of the heavy tanks commander is something too nonlinear. But such is life - there is never equal conditions in it. In addition, such mastodons are very expensive. For example, leFH 18 at the first echelon is available only in one copy and occupies slightly more than half of the available CPs. But losing such a unit, it makes the situation very uninteresting for you, and nonlinearity may also enter a downhill experience.
  
• Add realism! There is nothing realistic in the fact that only Tigers and Katyusha participated in the battle. We want to show the alignment of forces on the battlefield and the interaction of army types as plausible as possible.
  

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Echelons are divided into slots (4-5 usually). In the battalion constructor window, you will see that only certain types of units with a unit level limit are suitable for each slot. For example, in the second slot, you can put only support infantry and firing points of 5-th level maximum. In addition, each slot has its own “capacity”. So to put there ten medics or three Pak-38 - is a strategic question.



When selecting the slot, at the bottom of the “Recruits” panel you will see all the units from among those already open that are suitable. As you can see, playing for a certain kind of troops, you are not limited to this particular kind.



The battle rank (BR) is the cost of the unit and at the same time the indicator of the capacity of the echelon. On the unit card, the BR is displayed in the lower right corner. A unit's BR may differ depending on the chosen battalion since the units native to the specialty of the battalion receive a discount of about 20-30 percent.

Each echelon has its maximum BR value: 12, 17, 22, respectively. The first digit to the right of the echelon name shows the used BR, the second shows the maximum one. The smaller the difference between these values, the better you prepared for combat.



We are committed to ensuring that in Soldiers: Arena the fate is not decided only on the clicking speed of the players. Those who do not do well with microcontrol will not feel useless. Specialization battalions and the correct managing of them make it possible to emphasize your style and your abilities. Consider the example of two tasks, how much the gameplay may differ, the density of presence on the map and the requirements for micro, depending on your build.



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Now this battalion (accessible only to the USSR) is assembled so that it can be played as safely as possible and only a few units at a time. KV-2 are expensive, clumsy and not very accurate, but they can keep the enemy in suspense well while being out of reach. Well, relatively so ... howitzers, airborne, top AT-guns are still dangerous, but you usually have time to react and fallback. Yes, and keeping track of two units is not so difficult. About the cons: very bad control of the map, shooting from the respawn area is as accurate as predictions of entering the Early Access, and the reconnaissance and support of the infantry constantly has to be requested to the allies. With such an assembly, the loss of each KV-2 is unbearable pain, and the support of allies leveling your weaknesses is a necessity. But if you soberly assess your strength on microcontrol, like to break the plans of enemy artillery and shoot monstrous projectiles through half of the map - this choice is for you.



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If in childhood your parents forcibly sent you “to learn piano” and now you think that someone should answer for this - take it without thinking. The battalion is assembled so as to have the maximum amount of infantry to control the map, reconnaissance, actions behind the front line and dirty sabotage. You’ll have many units, but sensitive ones. And the better your micro skill, the stronger this battalion. If you just frame the units and send them to rush ... well, then this battalion will seem useless to you. But if you know how to pave the way through the enemy's defense line with the auto attack turned off, constantly using DC for throwing grenades, invoking artillery strikes and firing, while not forgetting the other units scattered throughout the map - this will be pain and dirt, dirt and pain, and I don’t know ... pain in the dirt.

Each battalion has similar peculiarities and can be managed in completely different ways. For example, the first one can play through spamming BT-7As and infantry support, while the second one through sniper superiority and sitting in the bushes. Style, pace, requirements for micro and situational overpowerness of units is determined only by your preferences. Speaking of preferences. Write in the comments which battalions with unusual specialization and combinations of units you would like to see in the game. It is possible that Santa Claus will hear you out.

Friends, before saying goodbye, the Best Way team wants to wish you all the best for the coming year. A year that will be interesting and significant for all of us. Be kind, cheerful and exercise much! It is soon now.

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Hi, friends.

The time has come for the next Feedback diary. The one who reads could know some about settings, balance, AI, interfaces and matchmaking. There will be a regular rubric about funny bugs too. And we'll show the technology tree of the USSR, because you asked, and we don’t mind.

In the previous diary we already wrote that now there is the possibility of reconnection to the session, but this is only one of the obvious advantages of the infrastructure changes that Soldiers: Arena has undergone in the past six months. The opportunity to enter the game as a spectator, player rating, matchmaking and optimization are also included. These are those works for which we had to delay the Early Access release. Obviously, nowadays, no one will be surprised by matchmaking systems or reconnect to the games, but in order to implement them on GEM2, we had to work hard. And the time for the execution of these works was very difficult to calculate. Therefore, we had to keep this information secret and hide it behind the words “optimization” and “network code”, although we incredibly wanted to share it.

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Such large-scale changes always bring new bugs and a lot of work on reconfiguring the game, but it was definitely worth it. Time is relative, and the fact that you had to wait for Early access a little longer paid off when creating the session. In 2019 it would be strange if one couldn’t plunge himself into battle with the infrastructure not working. Soldiers: Arena should be not just a good game, but also the most responsive and convenient game on the GEM and some of these changes are ready. Now we are already using the matchmaker, but the number of players in the test is not enough for it to work at full strength, so it will definitely be refined after the release. At least now we can answer your questions about how the commanders will be balanced and the opponents can be chosen. Three basic parameters are taken into account:

• The maximum level of units in player’s army. It is bad to play with 53-K against Tigers!
  
• Battalion specialization. It is bad to play with other four tankmen against five infantrymen! By the way, it is hard to say bad for who.
  
• Personal player ratings. It is bad to play bad! The magic of numbers and raw statistics. The better you play, the stronger the opponents.
  

Need to talk more about the ratings. Everything is quite logical about it. Player keeps climbing progressively until a certain point, and the higher he rises along the food chain, the stronger the opposition and the more he loses for poor performance in a game. But it will be possible to rise in the rating even when losing the game. You know, no balancer will save you from playing with people who do not care what happens in this very game and there are situations when it is almost impossible to win. And those who contribute the most should be rewarded. Since the battles in Soldiers: Arena are not just down to the destruction of enemy units, the statistics will take into account other useful actions: hijacking enemy vehicles, fights for the territory, building capturing, and so on. Obviously, it is easier for some units to destroy the enemy ones, but this does not mean that their contribution to the victory is proportionally the greatest.

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Work in other areas also did not halt in these months.

• Interface. Did you notice the new icons and the technology tree? Also we added a second row of hotbar for those who need more than one.
  
• Responsiveness of the game. Added in-game hints not only on the gameplay, but also on the interface elements. Making the rules of the game more understandable. Now, if, for example, you shoot with 88-mm at a light tank engine, it will be broken in 100% cases. Breaking the gun barrel is no longer a random event upon hit. You shoot into the barrel - you break the barrel.
  
• AI. Units become smarter and annoying moments appears less often. For example, before there were unpleasant interruptions, when units began to run into each other because of the intersection of paths, even when they were far away from each other. Now the traffic rules have been mastered. At your requests (numerous, it is worth saying) tankmen stopped taking their place on the machine gun even before the previous gunner let out his last breath. Now they wait a few seconds, before leaning out of the hatch. This is in addition to being able to order them not to lean out at all.
  
• Rules of the game. Significantly accelerated the set of points in the case of capture of 75% of the map. Now, if you have been forced to stay near the respawn, you will not endure shame for too long. The coefficients of the influence of players on the size of the map were changed so that the battle would become a bit more spacious. We configured the storming of buildings. Skill and weapons of a fighter have even more weight. One stormtrooper, for example, may win in a confrontation against an entire detachment of riflemen recruits.
  
• Playtests. We tested the game at low levels, since it is from them that new players will start, and it is their balance that must now be given special attention During the last few months the most powerful tanks were Pz.Kpfw.III and T-28. We are glad that at low levels the game does not lose intensity and does not seem boring, but on the contrary has its own charm. Cheaper units make it possible to think less about saving and play more carelessly. On the screenshots of the USSR technology tree, all units of levels 1-3 are open, so that you can understand what we are talking about.
  

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As always, we fought against bugs. More changes - more bugs, you know. There were damn a lot of changes in the last six months, which meant there were quite a lot of bugs ... At first, it was easier to say what works, than what does not work. Now the situation has stabilized, but memories of ringing silence, which fell on select players during the games causing utterly terrible experiences, are still alive in the memory of many. Or for example the smoke screens, because of which the game began to eat twice the resources as usual. Or how about the barrels of guns which broke down even with the slightest contact with the allied vehicles, which gave you the feeling that you were watching a professional football match. And certainly one can never forget if they were unfortunate enough to see at least once how fighters shot in the direction opposite to which they were staring at ... and turned their weapons accordingly. Creepy stuff to see and it feels good knowing that you will never see it.

In the next diary we will write in detail about the process of recruiting an army and forming your battalion. We will try to remove all the misunderstandings and clear our understatements so that we have to explain less when showing the gameplay video. We really don’t want to do it with an unfinished interface, but it may be necessary. Not to show the gameplay before the start of sales is not an option. In the meantime, wish you all the best, guys!