Greetings Commanders,

As we continue developing your game and moving towards Open BETA we want to provide you, our loyal players, with regular updates on what we’re working on within the game. We’re also keen to enlist your support and feedback; it is your play testing and feedback during our BETA phase that has helped improve this game, we thank you and we want more of it!

As you would expect, we have a long-term vision for Transformers Universe and we’re continually developing towards that, but we’re also paying close attention to what you guys have been saying on the forums, in our BETA surveys and also looking at what you’re actually doing in-game. One of the things we want to do is make sure you guys are aware of what we’re working on, and how we’re looking to address the feedback that you’ve been providing.

Downloadable Client – We’re soon going to be launching a downloadable client for Transformers Universe. This means that if you dont have a currently supported browser or have not installed the Unity plugin you will be able to download our game client and get speedy access into the game. An additional benefit of the client version is a significant increase in the frame rate across many machine specs –  soÂwe’re confident this will give you an improved play experience. In addition, the next web build also improves performance for a wide range of machine configurations, and will give players with lower spec machines a significantly smoother experience.

We’ve also been looking hard at the way people are playing the game, specifically the issues some people are seeing with “spawn camping”, game balancing and cases of “rage quitting”. Some of these issues are improved significantly just by having more players.  That said, these are all issues we take very seriously and have a huge impact on your play experience, so the team here is working on various ways to ensure you always have the most balanced and fair experience possible. The next game build will see theÂintroduction of one-wayshootable collision around the spawn points. This will allow newly spawned players to shoot out, but the opposition won’t be able to shoot in. Players will still be pushed out of the spawn points after a certain amount of time, so they can’t hide forever butÂthis will allow players to drive back the opposition before they respawn into game and also increase the risk an attacking team incurs if pushing up on the enemy spawn.

We’re also going to be adding in a new feature; the ‘Parity Buff’ to provide a boost if you’ve ended up in a match where you are outnumbered and are losing – no buff for those good enough to hold their own against numerically superior opposition I’m afraid! The buff kicks in the second a match is unbalanced, whether that be 3 v 4, 1 v 2 or in a worst case scenario 1 v 4 – and this applies to all members of the team. The buff gives all affected players additional health and shield to allow them to better weather the combined firepower of the enemy and scales – based on the number of opposition you have to face. Players with the buff get a buff icon above the shield and spark bar and can hold ‘C’ to see its effects. The enemy will see the same buff icon next to players who have it when they target them. All the time the buff is applied the game is actively looking for players to backfill in and correct the imbalance, and the buff will be reduced or removed when new players spawn in – it is also removed if the affected team draws level or starts beating the enemy. This buff gives disadvantaged players the ability to stay in the match and keep fighting fairly whilst they wait for re-enforcements.

We appreciate it’s no fun to not be able to play because you’ve run out of bots, so to reduce friction for new players we have reduced the amount of time it takes bots to repair up to level 5. This is now 90 seconds, down from 5 minutes. The Energon cost to repair has scaled accordingly, so repairing a bot in this level range is now less than 50 Energon. This should eliminate situations where lower level players can run out of bots and not be able to re-deploy. In addition to this change, we have also slightly reduced the Energon repair cost for bots of all levels and made players drop Energon when killed in PvP. This will help everyone stay topped up with Energon whilst playing PvP – but remember it is always going to be more efficient to craft or buy Repair Paks than just using raw Energon to repair.

Teamwork is the cornerstone of a successful battle in TU, so to make sure everyone always knows what’s happening to their team we have added a panel on the left of the HUD which shows the current state of each team member at all times in PvP. This includes spark and shield values, any buffs or debuffs active on them and whether or not they are repairing in the Hangar. Keep an eye on this panel as it will help you know when to push your advantage or pull back and re-group. Groups still use this same space with group members being shown in blue rather than green on the panel.

The design team are currently finalizing a series of different‘disincentives’ for playersto quit out of a match before the game has finished. There’s a range of options and severity of punishments we’re looking at, and as we begin to finalize these we’ll provide a follow-up post – but keep an eye out for these as we hope to start rolling them out in to game as soon as possible.

We’ve heard your desire to know more about the game’s systems so we’ve added a new feature; the Knowledge Base. The Knowledge Base is accessible in the Hangar by clicking the ‘i’ button and contains several videos on how to get the most out of combat and the various features of the Hangar. Check it out to make sure your skills are up to scratch and maybe learn something you didn’t know. The Knowledge Base is also a great place to direct new players if they are asking questions and you want to help.

Having a great match with players who you’ve enjoyed battling with is always a good experience – and one that we are keen to make last as long as we can. To that end we are working on allowing players to vote to stay with the same players at the end of a match and just continue on to a new PvP battle without having to go back to the Inner Base and re-queue. This feature is currently in development so look out for it in the patch notes of coming releases!

Finally, and on the same topic, matchmaking is something that we’re continuing to refine and improve. At its heart, Transformers Universe is a PvP game and we know that not being able to get good matches can ruin a play session. So from our next build we’re rolling out a series of improvements to the way that we match you into games, without getting into the nuts and bolts of it we’ve increased the criteria used to match players, and have also adjusted the way in which we expand our searches to get you games. You should see this through improved, more explicit messaging when waiting in a queue, and we’ve greatly reduced the chances of entering a game with players more than 10 levels above you. This should now only happen when low numbers of players are online.  We’ve also greatly improved the current ‘waiting for Commanders’ screen to give you information on who is already in-game, what bot they are playing and allow you to chat to your team mates to discuss strategy before you start the match.Â

So those are just some of the fixes and improvements you can expect to see in the coming weeks. We will post full patch notes with each build so be sure to check those out to be in the loop on exactly what’s gone into game with each new patch.

Most importantly though, we want your feedback! Jump on to this thread in the beta forums and tell us what you think, what you’re enjoying about the game, what you’d like to see improved and anything else that’s on your mind. The community and development team actively monitor all your posts, and this feedback really does help.

We look forward to seeing you in battle, and we’ll be back with more updates soon!

TU Development Team!Â