link Hi, friends. In the last few months, we have been mainly working on the optimization, interface and responsiveness of Soldiers: Arena. Of course, new models are being created in parallel, maps are being finalized, units are being set up, commanders built, and balance is being corrected, but the priority now is to make the game stable and understandable. Work on the new mechanics is much more interesting than fighting for every +2 fps, intuitive interfacing and no bugs. And, most likely, it would be more interesting for you to read, but hey ... is it not this the essence of feedback, to show things as-is? Now our endeavors involve a complex, damn time-consuming, and rather boring stage, of which without it’s successful completion, you will be much harder to love Soldiers: Arena. Good performance of the game is the norm and hardly anyone decides to say thank you for it. But when the game constantly hangs or is full of bugs... Beware, , developer, cause you can’t escape the wrath of the masses, and even your dearest folks will not hesitate to stone you. The word 'optimization' weakly reflects more than 9000 problems that need to be solved so that everything works, but also does it constantly, without crashes, bugs and accompanying pain.
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A few words about balance.

So we have a similar situation with the balance. We continue to set up commanders to make them unlike each other and emphasize the features of their gameplay. Add and take whole groups of units, change mechanics, test, change again and test again. One of the main tasks of Soldiers: Arena is to show the real interaction of combat units. But this does not mean that you can just write the data into a spreadsheet and everything will fall into place. It's not just the distances, the thickness of armor and the speed of movement. After all, there is no balance in life. And the conflict parties did not start the fight under the same conditions. The vehicles of one side could surpass the enemy in all respects. Soldiers could be tired after a long march and hungry because of potential problems with the delivery of provisions. In addition, the enemy would refuse to fight fairly and unleash all sorts of hell on earth at you. Many of these conditions can not be considered in the game, without turning it into a simulator. Therefore, the balance must be sought and sometimes created where it was not in real life. But we believe that the result is worth it.
link Still from patch to patch, something new appears to give a dose of overpoweredness and suffering. For example, for a long time the explosive action of artillery shells on the armor was insufficient because the tanks sometimes did not notice the direct hit of a 150 mm projectile. It was not realistic, so we changed them and everything would be fine .... but in the same patch came a change in the noise mechanic. So you overdid the settings somewhere, something broke, some already got fixed and yet a new bug reappeared - and we now get permanently invisible howitzers, which present themselves unopposed to proceed to beat the devil out of life and flatten everything on the map. At the same time, the infantry suffered more than others because of low survivability and an abundance of shells in the air. We had to experiment with the health values of the infantry, cannon reloading speeds, power of fragmentation action of shells, protection in fortifications and trenches to find the best ratio. Now howitzers inflict enough damage, but do not go over the top, and infantry manages to breathe for a little longer inside fortifications and do not die from a passing projectile.
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Settings.

Among other things, we set up the rules for capturing the Front Line. Now it is more profitable to break into the enemy territory than to win a narrow strip along the entire front line. So we wanted to encourage risk and make tactics of sabotage and breakthroughs more profitable. Continued work on fine-tuning every gun. From the length of the barrel depends the effectiveness of the gun at long distances, its accuracy and speed of aiming. For example, StuG III Ausf. B, due to the short barrel and low speed of the projectile, has a significantly lower efficiency at long distances than the StuH 42. The plans include the precise adjustment of tank and anti-tank long guns, semi-automatic rifles, bolt action rifles, etc. We were also repairing armor bugs to avoid those uncomfortable moments when the tank can be killed with machine-gun fire by shooting it into the hatch. Despite the fact that even the Death Star had its own Achilles’ hatch, tanks in the game aren’t supposed to have one.We went on adding and customizing new models, both units and entourage assets. In addition to almost three hundred combat units, there are still a lot of buildings, stones, tractors, and other things to be done.
link If you have been waiting for a long time for some particular feature and have not seen it in our diaries, do not rush to call your homies from the block and come forth to our home addresses. The list of the mechanics we planned is impressive, and you offered many interesting things, but they all can wait a little. Still, it's better to have a working and stable game and adding new features with subsequent patches than to have a lot of features and add with patches the mere ability to play. Optimization and elimination of bugs - this is what many developers are burning on, thinking that the game is ready and you can quickly break into the release, reap the glory and money. This is not our option and we better apologize for the next change of the date than a thousand times for selling a game that can not be played. Wish you all the best.
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