Balance Update and Quickmatch Ladder / Community Content

Fellow Command & Conquer fans,

Thank you for all your feedback over the past week regarding the top balance issues we’ve been discussing.  In this post, I’m going to break down our evaluation of the feedback, and outline other exciting changes coming to the next patch.  Let’s get started.

First, our teams have been reading all the comments on the balance thread from last Friday, and based on those perspectives we’ve made some adjustments to the game.  And to provide the community an early preview of these changes, we actually just updated the Beta Patch version on Steam with a first pass at those balance changes.  Below are the key changes you’ll see in the new version:

• The Nod Cargo Plane delivery time has been normalized
  • There was overwhelming support for this change in the thread.  The time has been normalized to 4 seconds on Normal speed in this version, but we are likely going to increase this to 5 or 6 seconds based on our own playtesting.  Please try this out in Skirmish or LAN and let us know how it feels.  (Note, the plane will now sometimes spawn in the middle of the map to accommodate this behavior.  We initially had it with the Cargo Plane speed increased, and just looked kinda ridiculous…)

• The Weapons Factory health has been increased
  • There was also strong support for this change, with the suggested health numbers ranging quite broadly.  We decided to start with a 30% health increase, and are looking for feedback if this feels meaningful enough to make the desired impact.

• The Naval structures have been removed from the victory condition
  • There was unanimous support for this change, and this has now been implemented.  The game should end if a player only has Naval structures remaining (Or only an MCV in a Transport).

• To address the TD Engineer / APC issue, the APC now has the Repair Facility as a pre-requisite to build
  • This was the topic that garnered the most activity, and it was a healthy discussion in the thread.  Based on our observations, over 50% of the community who commented voted in the direction of changing the APC to be attached to the Repair Facility.  So we decided to go with that approach, and would be eager to hear how this changes the Engineer / APC rush dynamic.  Obviously it won’t be as easy to judge this until it’s available in formal Quickmatch, but any early reactions to build order, etc. would be helpful.

• Harvester improvements
  • In the June patch we made some changes to the Harvester logic, which caused some unintended ripple effects.  We’ve aimed to address a few key items in this patch:
    • The docking priority should now be properly overridden with a docking command
    • The Harvester should no longer freeze for several seconds in this docking procedure
    • In Red Alert, the Harvester should better prioritize Gems if they’re in the an adjacent cell
  • Please try these new behaviors in Skirmish and let us know if the Harvester is getting closer to your expectations

• AI in LAN Mode
  • Over the past week we’ve made improvements on getting AI to be compatible with LAN mode.  If you’re able to try LAN with other players, please add some AI and let us know how it’s performing for you.

Of note, the first four bullets can be enabled / disabled via a new “Modern Balance” checkbox in the Rules section of Skirmish and Multiplayer game lobbies.  This option will be set to ON for Quickmatch.  And in case you missed my note on accessing the Beta Patch version of the game, please refer to my previous post here.

The next topic to discuss is our Quickmatch map pool.  We understand this has been a more challenging part of the legacy content, and the legacy maps have not provided the best foundation for competitive play.  But we have some positive news to share on this front.  Over the past month we’ve been able to collaborate with the community and our legal teams, and have worked out a process for incorporating community-created content into the official game.  This means the selected content will become part of the official install / update for the game, and allow the content to be used with the servers for our online / Quickmatch systems.  Each piece of content is being approved by the creator(s) themselves for this purpose, in order to ensure the creators are supportive of this use and receive credit for their contribution.

With that in mind, our first attempt of this initiative is aimed at updating the Quickmatch map pool with some of the more balanced community maps.  The changes below are not guaranteed, but is our first proposal for the next round of map adjustments:

Tiberian Dawn:

• Remove "Eye of the Storm" from QM pool
• Remove "Nowhere to Hide" from QM pool
• Remove "Tiberium Garden" from QM pool
• Remove "Four Corners" from QM pool
• Remove "Red Sands" from QM pool
• Remove "Monkey in the Middle" from QM pool
• Adjust "One Pass Fits All" (Make top left vs bottom left, and top right vs bottom right only viable QM spawn options)
• Keep "Green Acres" as is

• Add "Elevation" community map by AchromicWhite & Lovehandles
• Add “Quarry” community map by AchromicWhite & Lovehandles
• Add "Heavy Metal" community map by FeRReT666 & Lovehandles
• Add "Electric Avenue" community map by FeRReT666 & Lovehandles
• Add "Canyon Pursuit" community map by AchromicWhite

Red Alert:

• Remove "Things to Come" from QM pool
• Remove "Shallow Grave" from QM pool
• Remove "Arena Valley Extreme" from QM pool
• Remove "Bullseye" from QM pool

• Add "Path Beyond" back to QM pool (But only top left spawn vs bottom right spawn)
• Add "Tournament Arena" community map by [UF] freezy
• Add “Tournament Ore Rift” community map by [UF] ^^ZxGanon^^
• Add "(WHT) Canyon" community map by AchromicWhite & FeRReT666

As always, we are eager to hear feedback on these proposed map changes.  However, if you have any feedback, especially on the community maps, I strongly request you keep the feedback healthy and professional.  There will be zero tolerance for any of the content creators being treated disrespectfully, and doing so would make community initiatives like this less likely in the future.  I want to thank the content creators for contributing their work and helping to make the Remastered Collection a better experience for all players.

And finally, with these upcoming balance and map pool changes, we wanted to give everyone a heads up that we’re preparing to reset the Quickmatch ladder.  This will likely happen in early August, and is hopefully enough time for people to make a final push during this season.

Please let us know if you have any feedback on the items above, in case we can make any final adjustments before the patch gets finalized.  Thanks for all your ongoing support.

Cheers,

Jim

Jimtern