MattScott

Yes. I was only indicating "golds" and "bronzes" as a way to describe their skill. The plan is to try and remove the information used by dethreaters to game the system. We have another idea in progress to indicate ELO. The whole point of Phasing is to avoid any loading. There may be a transition screen while server-side objects are resynced, but there is no loading of assets on the client, since those are already in memory. Our matchmaking logic chooses a server that is more appropriate for your skill level, and then from there, you shouldn't need to phase at all.

Hi all, I just posted a minor update. We took a break from the new engine for the last 2 months to troubleshoot FE's existing servers to get the game running better. We just put a big fix up today (crosses fingers). Hopefully that will stabilize things so we can get back to the fun stuff. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, We just made another change this morning. I wont go into the technical details, but it appears that when moving servers, one of the core libraries was left linking to the OS version. There was a slight difference in OS compared to where the servers were hosted. After fixing this issue, we did notice another significant improvement in performance. My hope is this will help clear up the Character Select / lag issues. Let us know. Thanks, Matt

I have commented multiple times on this, and the SPCT have also revealed that general loading times in the Engine Upgrade are already drastically faster (even without Phasing). The Phasing implementation will spin up new server instances for each type of district when we need them. However, these wont be unique, empty districts just for 1 mission like what you see on WoW. That is only necessary for PvE situations. We are also looking at changes to how threat (or matchmaking calculations) are done to help prevent dethreating. For obvious reasons I am not ready to comment on this yet, but we will be scrubbing all visible indicators of threat from the game, so players wont have as much information to abuse.

Hi all, Phasing is simply our term for seamlessly moving a player between two instances of the same type of district. It allows us to matchmake across instances and then aggregate each side together. In rare cases we may need to spin up a new instance which may be empty for a time till we add more players, but for the most part players will be moved to instances where other missions are taking place. Phasing can sometimes be confused with Instancing, where players are moved to a unique unpopulated area to play just for their quest/mission/etc. We are NOT implementing Instancing. Thanks, Matt

Okay. Back to the drawing board.

Hi everyone, There are now 581 total tickets (unsolved). And there are 386 tickets that have not been touched (untouched). We have been getting quite a few older players needing help to get back into the game, which is why our untouched ticket count went a little higher. Today we are answering tickets from July 5th, which means we are now at a 2 week response time. If your ticket is older than July 5th, and we have not reached out, then I recommend updating your ticket and asking for status. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, We have been troubleshooting several solutions for the ongoing Character Select / Lag issue that happens regularly. Several changes were made last night, and the logs have cleared up, so we could use some community feedback to see if this has fixed the issues. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, We are working with select players to collect logs and diagnose the issue. Many players reported this issue initially after the 4th of July. As of last night's patch, some of the same players reported a slight improvement where the issue would either die down or only showed up when many characters were on the screen. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, I was asked specifically to weigh in on this poll. First, I am very much aware of the overwhelming negative opinion of RIOT on the forums. However, I also feel like those players that gave specific feedback on changes would complain if we dropped the mode and did nothing. So there is a bit of a catch 22 for us. Second, we have completely changed our strategy with respect to this game mode. We may still continue making small tweaks, but there are no ongoing plans to do any significant amount of development on RIOT itself until we get better feedback from the console launch. Instead we are incorporating some of the underlying systems into future plans that will go towards improving the main game. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, We have been actively working on this. Unfortunately the bug only appears in end user builds - not development versions. That means we have been unable to reproduce the problem in a way that gives us enough information on fixing it. However, it is one of our high priority issues to fix, and we will continue to hunt for the problem. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, This thread has gone long enough without a response from LO, so here is where I stand on this. 1) We are working on getting more GMs in-game to help But this is not an effective solution. Just like drivers who slow down when a cop is around, they always speed back up as soon as he's gone. 2) LO is not ignoring this issue Every solution we have discussed or seen discussed on the forums takes development resources and will compete directly with releasing the Engine Upgrade. I'm not opposed to spending dev time to fix dethreating. But from what I can see, all the ideas thrown around would take a couple weeks of dev time and players would find new work arounds in a couple days, which doesn't seem like time well spent. 3) Dethreating is an issue but its the symptom of larger problems IMO, we need real change in the architecture of how players are matched. The only lasting solution that I can see is to launch 3.5, merge all the worlds, and finish implementing cross-district phasing, so that we can match players across all districts / regions. This will move all 8 players to the "best" district based on best ping and best tick time. In this scenario players will simply choose the district type based on where their friends are, so they can mess around till a match starts. No spamming a district with 79 players to get the last spot. No visible threat segmentation. Once a match is ready, they all get moved. That way we can have golds fighting golds alongside bronze fighting bronze in the same district. The new phasing also allows us to spin up more servers dynamically, so we can add more Waterfront or Financial servers based on demand. From there we can work on ways to improve the algorithm and incentive all players to reach Gold rather than dethreat to Bronze. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, I want to make sure my comment isn't taken out of context. During a chat I was having on unofficial Discord channel with the players, the subject was brought up "Why don't you just kill RIOT?" (I'm paraphrasing) I gave the stats and analysis that we found as a response. For clarity, the actual stat I gave was based on analyzing the same period of time and matches played across Fight Club and RIOT. During that period, for every 100 unique accounts that played a match in FC, 150 unique accounts played a match in RIOT. There was no comparison on matches per account or total matches across each mode because the length of matches varies a lot. I tend to agree with Tigrix that none of these modes are in competition with each other. Players all have their own preference. I felt our research was worth mentioning, because the forums can be an echo chamber for a relatively small percentage of the community. If RIOT wasn't getting any traction, then Little Orbit would simply remove it. Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, Things continue moving the right direction. There are 613 total tickets (unsolved) which is our lowest amount to date. And there are 345 total tickets that have not been touched (contacted). Today we are answering tickets from June 24th, which means we are now at an 18 day response time. I went back three months to look at our average response time then vs. now. 90 days ago our average response time to new tickets was 19.3 days. Right now our average response time is actually 13.5 days with the *longest* wait time being 18 days. Lastly, if your ticket is older than June 24th, and we have not reached out, then I recommend updating your ticket and asking for status. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, All Firecracker titles on our list went out today. If you haven’t received it, go ahead and open a ticket with Support. We will start sending all the ARG Tier 2 individual codes tomorrow. Each code unlocks one Redhill weapon skin and the Conspiracy symbol set. These need to be hand delivered. We appreciate your patience. Thanks, Matt

This is something we are looking at, but it requires Phasing in the Engine Upgrade. On a side note we did discover a fairly big bug that only occurs in low pop situations in RIOT that basically abandons players who are waiting for a match. The team is working on a fix now.

Hi all, The Firecracker rewards from the 4th were awarded today. Thanks, Matt

Here is an update on this week's patch which includes some RIOT changes based on community feedback.

Yes. You'll be able to buy account bound versions. Understood. The current rewards are just for players that want them for free.

Hi everyone, Jericho Outage Just a quick note to let you know that we are currently experienced a network outage with our provider that is affecting Jericho. It is not a DDoS, and we are still investigating with them. New RIOT Changes We aren't putting a lot of focus on RIOT, but we did solicit feedback from the community, and I wanted to follow through on that with a significant number of changes to the mode based on that feedback. To be clear, if RIOT isn't your thing, I totally understand. New RIOT Weapon Skin Reward As part of the patch, we added more tiers and new skin. I recognize this isn't super compelling. I do feel like the Joker Ticket rewards are fairly valuable given the growing selection of permanent weapons in the Joker Store. Just to be upfront, there are going to be three Japanese skins in total for RIOT. Yakuza. Dragon. Koi. They were all finished some time ago, and we decided to save them so we could give RIOT players something while we finished off the Engine Upgrade. These are just meant to be fun rewards for those players that want them. You don't need to chase them if you don't want to. All three skins will be going onto ARMAS in a pack or possibly the Joker Store at a later date. Bad Math on tiers 6-10 of RIOT Here is a quick note from LORider, one of our designers on a mistake with the new Tiers. "Some of you have mentioned in great detail the issues regarding RIOT’s progression. Admittedly I did not take into account the time requirement for queues when finalizing the progression for the new tiers and as such the requirement to progress requires more time then intended. We are working on some back end changes that will more closely simulate a single queue system which will reduce the time required but until then I want to course correct on the pain of the wait times. In the next patch I will be lowering the contact threshold for levels 6-10 from a requirement of +17500 contact experience to +12500 contact experience instead. Any experience gained will be kept and reflected properly when we make this change. I am happy to receive feedback and hope to respond swiftly when able." And some higher resolution art elements created by the artist responsible for the these three skins. Thanks, Matt EDITED: I can't spell Koi. And added elements of the skins.

Hi there, Back in January 2018, G1 did a massive password reset across all players. Unfortunately this required many players to go through Support to get access again. Once we took over, my brand new Support team was flooded with these requests and our response times became very long. However, the team has been working hard and we have brought down our initial response time significantly. We are currently at 3 weeks right now, but I expect that to continue dropping. Thanks, Matt

It was a completely different company’s game.

Hi all, Just a quick note to say thank you to everyone who sent me latencyreports over the holiday. We are using that data to do more tuning on the solution. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, Jericho has not been as stable as I had hoped over the holiday. A couple large scale DDoS attacks did get through but we will be tuning systems to prevent future attacks. Beyond that one of the games adjacent to us at our provider got hit hard, and it took us down several times. We’ll continue to work on it. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, For anyone that is experiencing lag, please run /latencyreport in-game and then send the log to me over Private Message. I can confirm that the DDoS protection has been working since it was installed. It sounds like these issues may be legitimate server issues. I am hopeful that we can start back up working on server stability / speed, now that we can eliminate DDoS as a source of slowness. Thanks, Matt