SEPTEMBER DEV DIARY: CM Chris

Sep.25.2018 BY KIXEYE_Chris

Hello, Commanders, CM Chris here with another monthly installment of the CM Diary to catch everyone up on what’s been happening in September and what’s coming down the pike for next month. Let’s dive in!

OPTIMIZING ACTIVITIES

Recently we introduced a brand new activity called Smash & Grab. In part this was introduced by player request – but it’s also something that ties into our ongoing initiative of optimizing the various activities that we run throughout the week.

Strike Battles on Wednesdays were great when they were first introduced, but over time we began offering Strikes as part of nearly every other Rewards Store, so the Strike activity lost its unique purpose in our calendar. With its replacement, we now have a mid-tier activity for recently featured unit blueprints in Hijack, as well as a mid-tier activity for recently featured equipment blueprints in Smash & Grab. Next we’ll be setting our sights on Rise of La Muerte for refreshing its store contents, then eventually replacing it with something brand new!

ALL NEW NEWSFEED & LIVE CALENDAR

As part of our 2.37 release, a brand new look for the Newsfeed is arriving. This Newsfeed contains featured stories, categories, and an all new live calendar. This should allow us to increase the amount of updates, educational content, and social community updates we’re able to do without burying important pieces of information like Update Notes.

Here’s what the Front Page looks like:

As you can see, there are three categories (Updates, Strategy, and War Zones). The front page displays the top story for each section. Navigating to any of these tabs will show you only that category’s articles. Updates are for items such as Patch Notes, event briefings, gameplay changes, etc; Strategy is for tutorial articles, unit recon reports, and general education; War Zones is for anything that doesn’t fit the normal mould such as community celebrations, social media presence, etc.

The other big addition is our live calendar, which you can access by scrolling below the front page of the newsfeed:

Activities that run in the game display here as cards, with their rundates, live status, title, and brief info on what they are. Clicking on a card will navigate you to a blog post that provides a description of the activity and how it works.

Note that you cannot navigate to this calendar if you are in one of the Updates, Strategy, or War Zones tabs, it can only be seen below the front page of the Newsfeed.

We hope you enjoy this much-improved communication tool!

LIGHT VEHICLE SEASON

Following our transitional feature event, plus the upcoming Last Stand early access activity, we find ourselves fast-approaching the Light Vehicle season in October.

The Light Vehicle shared equipment migration begins to roll out as part of our 2.37 update, which happens Tuesday, October 2nd. A full briefing will release on this migration later this week, but I’ll take this opportunity to remind everyone that Light Vehicles will see some significant changes to their unit class and functionality, as the purpose of each unit becomes more directed and its power becomes more baked into its Equipment.

Additionally, bear in mind that whatever is lost as part of the migration is gained back elsewhere. Players always end up in an equal or better position than they were originally, if not in equipment you immediately have then in how far the equipment you currently have will take you. The best part about the shared equipment migrations is that equipment items take you farther into new units than the old equipment system allowed.

Following the migration, we’ll be coming up on our first event of the Light Vehicle season on October 11th. We’re meeting a brand new faction (The Vajra) in a brand new JUNGLE biome, never before seen in Rogue Assault. We’re extremely excited to bring this new look of Rogue Assault targets to you.

Missions 1 through 9 will feature the base layout that you are all familiar with in this La Muerte season, but Mission 10 will feature the first new target layout for The Vajra season, and will give you a chance to take the Grizzly IFV top prize for a spin once you have it claimed.

Our map and art designers have been emphasizing the paths in these newest maps because of how important movement is in the Light Vehicle season. There is definitely a recommended path for moving through the map at pace, so pay attention to those tracks you see in the dirt!

That wraps us up for now. I hope you’re all having a blast out there and – as always – want to extend our thanks for being with us here in Rogue Assault. See you out there in the battlefield, Commanders.