Update 1.03.001 is now LIVE!

The 1.03.001 Update for Starhawk was deployed during server maintenance today, August 10 at 2pm Central time and included the following changes:

• Two new maps on the planet Cypress.
• Prestige Levels.
• New space station homeworld "Waypoint".
• Team balance fixes.
• Updated voice chat system.
• PTT (push-to-talk) option.
• Vulture Jet-Pack eject.
• Rift Barrels on Mini-Map.
• Misc. Bug Fixes.
• Ranked Option.
• Skills shortcut on respawn screen.
• Display of Build & Battle icons while respawning.
• Display nearby Build & Battle structures.
• Cooldowns for Host kick-player and team-switch.
• Interactive music update.
• Capture the Flag scoring change.
• Top-Sorted customization unlocks.

Two New Cypress Maps:
The biggest addtions in this update are the two new awesome maps on the swamp world of Cypress. For more details on the FREE Cypress Map pack that is included in the Starhawk 1.03 Update, CLICK HERE to read a PlayStation blog post written by LightBox Interactive's President, Dylan Jobe. 

Prestige Levels:
In the initial version of Starhawk, we supported levels 1-50. To be quite honest, we thought that would have the player community covered for quite some time. However, we had underestimated the rate at which people were going to get through the levels so we had to accelerate the release of our prestige levels for those players who are above 50. The Prestige levels in Starhawk are not numbers; they’re a Greek symbol ranking of ALPHA through OMEGA. The Greek symbol will be displayed by your name in-game. These are very hard ranks to achieve and the jump from level 50 to ALPHA is steep because these are really intended for the hard-core community.

New Space Homeworld “Waypoint”:
In Starhawk, Homeworld’s are like lobbies. They are 3D levels where you and your friends can go to party-up, talk tactics and then pick a game to join. This new Homeworld is a cool space station. We added this because we really wanted players to enter a deep-space “lobby” to mess around in.

Team-Balance Fixes:
There were some bugs in the party/clan cohesion system where servers would keep parties and clans together in *ALL* cases and this resulted in some brutally mis-matched games. This has been fixed! There were some other issues that resulted in messed-up team balance and we have resolved those as well. Should be a ton better!

Revamped Voice Chat System:
During the initial launch of Starhawk we received reports from the player community about voice-chat dropping after a few games or in some cases, the voice-chat would simply not work. As you can imagine in a deep, team-based game like Starhawk, voice-chat is critical. So we did a ton of digging to find-out what the issue was and it ended up requiring a change to our Client/Server voice system. This change makes the VOIP far more stable and resolves the voice connection issues that some players had been experiencing in the past.

Push-to-Talk Option:
This was requested by so many players, and in concert with the revamped Voice Chat System, the PTT option really is a great addition. Now players have the option to have their microphone turn on when they press L3 rather than automatically when they talk. I guess, too many players were being yelled at by their Moms, had crying babies in the background, or hell, maybe both! You can find the PTT option in the Audio Settings menu in the Uplink.

Vulture Jet-Pack Eject:
Players are now allowed to dismount while flying around in a Starhawk if they have a handy dandy Vulture Jet-Pack equipped.

Rift Barrels on Mini-Map:
To help aid players and their use of the Build & Battle system, we decided to add small icons on the mini-map where we’ve placed the Rift Energy Caches — those are the barrels that you shoot that burst open with Rift Energy that you can spend to build your arsenal of destruction. The blips on the map are displayed when the barrels are active and are *NOT* displayed when the barrels are waiting to respawn.

Bug Fixes:
These are not as super-sexy as free maps, but the fact that they are fixed will really help the community. We also addressed some host migration issues, a number of crashes and network instability issues, and even the laggy pick-up bug was fixed as well.

Ranked Option:
Another feature that was requested by players was really two requests related to how games post stats. The first point brought up by players was regarding stat-padding going on in password protected games, and since those games were password protected, they should not count as real ranked games. Now, you can still have a very private game with a password but your stats will not post. Also, if you are having a Clan vs. Clan game you have the option to turn stats on or off — because it might be a practice or scrimmage. Furthermore, if you are doing a Clan Scrimmage (your clan in both Rifter & Outcast slots) the stats will *NOT* post to the server. This is to keep clans from stat-padding in locked-out games.

Skills Shortcut at the Respawn Screen:
Players really wanted a quick way to change skills without having to leave the respawn screen. So…we added a little tab in the upper right corner of the respawn screen that allows you to press TRIANGLE and jump right to the skills menu! Oh, and we also now allow you to change your skill at other places in the Uplink instead of only in-game.

Build & Battle Icons While Respawning:
Another thing we did to help players when using the Build & Battle system was to display a simple graphic icon of each of the structures on the battlefield as the player is drop-poding into combat. This simple change really helps players know what structures are already built and helps them make better use of the stuff their team has built. Not to mention it helps let you know immediately where you should run when you crack-open your drop-pod!

Display Nearby Build & Battle Structures:
There are now some new visuals to help players recognize Build & Battle structures that are built nearby. For starters, any time you place a structure; Starhawk very clearly displays how many are nearby. It also now highlights those nearby structures on your map *AND* displays some markers on the edge of the screen to help inform you that not only is there a structure nearby, but which direction it is.

Cooldowns for Host Kick and Team Switch:
There were a number of exploits that could occur in the original version of Starhawk where players would change teams rapidly or a host would quickly kick a ton of players. That can no longer occur because we track when you perform one of these actions and block you from doing it again for a set amount of time — and we can tune the time if we need to.

Interactive Music Update:
After playing Starhawk for so many hours, we really felt that the music was not kicking-in as frequently as we wanted it to. There were many times when you’d be in the heat of combat and there’d be no music at all. We felt this hurt the pacing and in fact some players in our community noticed the same thing. So the 1.03 Update includes some new tweaks to the interactive music system and the more frequent music makes a big difference.

Capture the Flag Scoring Change:
We’ve been playing CTF in Starhawk a ton here in the studio and we’ve always felt that there were too many games ending in draws or times when the match would get into awkward stalemates. So with the 1.03 Update, we have changed one of the key rules for CTF and one of the key contributors to the stalemates. Now, to score a point in CTF, you need to take the enemy flag back to your base — period. Your team’s flag does *NOT* need to be there for you to score. Now certainly, your team still needs to play defense because you don’t want the enemy team taking your flag and scoring, but this change makes the pacing so much better. Much faster and far fewer draws and stalemates.

Sorting Unlocked Customization:
Now this is more of a simple convenience thing but we changed the way the various characters and vehicle customization options are presented so that the unlocked ones are always displayed at the top of the list. Not a super-big change at all but I thought I’d include it here.

Drop-Pod Upgrade:
One of the things that we were experimenting with during our Starhawk playtests to help combat “base-ravaging” was to make the Drop-Pod more deadly. Our whole design goal with the drop-pod system was to make the act of respawning in your home base an incredibly powerful weapon. This was to help combat against “base-ravaging”. After a lot of review, and play testing and tweaking, we decided to upgrade the drop-pods to be more maneuverable *AND* have an increased impact radius. This along with some changes we made to the respawn timer really makes a huge positive impact on the reduction of “base-ravaging”.

Custom Music via XMB:
In Warhawk we added support for your own music and we’re doing the same in Starhawk. The 1.03 Update now allows you to play your own music through the XMB. So if you want to experience Starhawk’s unique Build & Battle gameplay while blaring Pat Benatar you totally can!

We hope you all enjoy the update and let us know what you think!

Game Balance Update 1.02.003 now LIVE!

A new Starhawk Update was deployed today during global server maintenance at 11am Central Time. This update was primarily focused on fixing a new bug related to missile scrubbing. In addition to fixing the bug, we have also included the following game balance updates: 

• M.A.W Rocket Launcher for Troops now more difficult to scrub/dodge
• Swarm Lasers are now more difficult to dodge than in the retail release

Scrubbing Bug:
When we released the 1.02.002 game balance update, we introduced a bug that was only seen on the public Starhawk environment. The result of this bug caused all weapons that are "scrub-able" to be *INCREDIBLY* difficult to scrub. While we did very much want the Homing Missile to be more difficult to scrub, this bug caused all scrub-able weapons to be very, *VERY* difficult to scrub.

The release of this 1.02.003 Update fixes that bug but still keeps the Homing Missile more challenging to scrub/dodge. 

Swarm Laser:
This update increases the difficulty of scrubbing a Swarm Laser volley. This does *NOT* mean that it is more difficult than how they were in the 1.02.002 update -- that was a bug! However, Swarm Lasers were a bit too easy to scrub prior to the bug and players in our community agreed. So this update makes scrubbing/dodging Swarm Lasers a bit more challenging than they were in the retail release of Starhawk

Troop Rocket Launcher:
As part of our on-going efforts to reduce "base-ravaging" we have increased the difficulty of scrubbing rockets fired from the troop's M.A.W Rocket Launcher.  Many of our fans in the Starhawk community have raised the issue that the Rocket Launcher is not as effective against Hawks as it should be and we completely agree.

Thank you for your patience while we fixed the scrubbing bug!

 

Game Balance Update 1.02.002 now LIVE!

We performed server maintenance at 12pm Central Time today to deploy another great balance update for our Starhawk fans around the world! Today's release of the 1.02.002 Update includes the following changes: 

• Hawk Homing Missile now harder to dodge
• LR3 Sniper Rifle no-longer damages the OX Tank
• Bruiser Skill damage to buildings reduced 
• Home-Base spawn regions have been increase on ALL maps 
• Re-Enabled kick player feature for game hosts
• Reduced Flak Cannon rate of fire
• Significantly Reduced Flak Cannon damage vs Hawks
• Increased Flak Cannon pick-up respawn delay
• Increased Grenade pick-up respawn delay
• Reduced Grenade pick-up ammo from 3 grenades to 1 grenade
• FIXED team roster imbalance for Rifter team in ZONES
• Rift Barrels now only respawn once per round in Co-Op

Hawk Homing Missile:
In the last game balance update we made a significant improvement to the combat effectiveness of the homing missile which was something that our player community was really wanting -- but we feel we didn't go far enough! So this update makes the Homing Missile approximately 50% harder to dodge.

What this really means to our hard-core Hawk pilots is that you're now filling up your evasion bar at a slower rate when you're dodging. You still need a full evasion bar to dodge a Homing Missile but it will be harder to achieve a full evasion bar. This also resulted in us scaling the evasion required for the Swarm Laser accordingly so that it still requires the same amount of evasion "effort" to dodge as it did prior to this update.

Home-Base Spawn Region:
We have been aggressively tracking "base-ravaging" as an issue that we'll always continue to try and reduce. To help achieve this goal, we have increased the amount of "spawn-able" area for your home-base in both Capture the Flag and Team Deathmatch.

Here's an example of the region increase for the Orbital Map. Although please remember that we have increased the home regions on *ALL* Capture the Flag and Team Deathmatch maps.

The reason for doing this is to help provide players that are respawning into their home base with more options and distance between any attacking enemy players. This now makes it more difficult for an attacking force to keep a team pinned in their home-base due to the increased surface area the attackers need to cover to induce"base-ravaging". 

Bruiser Skill:
When players had the Bruiser Skill activated, they were simply tearing down the structures way too quickly. To help fix this we have reduced the amount of damage the melee attack does versus structures when the Bruiser Skill is equipped. For example, previous it required only 3 strikes to destroy a structure and now it requires 5. Please note that the small auto-turrets still only take a single strike to destroy. A further adjustment was made so that with Large Turrets (Beam & Flak) now require 3 strikes when the Bruiser Skill is equipped.

Hawk Flak Cannon:
This weapon was very over-powered and our fans agreed. This update includes a significant set of changes to the weapon's attributes. It rate-of-fire was reduced by 250ms and the damage it deals against Hawks has been cut more than in half. The respawn delay for the Flak Cannon pick-up was also increased from 30 seconds to 60 seconds.

These are some pretty massive changes but based on player feedback, our own internal review and play-testing *AND* our combat analytics, a massive change was warranted.

Troop Grenade:
There were some really degenerate situations occurring where players could essentially be come "grenade-turret" by staying in a bunker and continually throwing grenades -- never running out of them because the pick-up respawned so quickly. This drove us to change the number of grenades you get per ammo pick-up from 3 down to 1 as well as increase the respawn delay of the pick-up from 1 second to 5 seconds.

We're looking forward to hearing your feedback! 

Starhawk Update 1.01.001

It's about damn time!!! -- We're finishing up the last bit of testing and "packaging" so we can deploy the Starhawk 1.01.001 Update world-wide early next week!

Please know that this is just the first of many updates that we're going to be doing to tune Starhawk's gameplay. We know this update alone does not "fix" all issues and achieve perfect game-balance, but it should address a number of key issues.

Our plan to reduce "base-ravaging" is a multi-stage process and this is just the first step towards that goal. We have also included a few other changes including a much "snappier" Homing Missile!

• B&B OutPost cost reduced from 8 to 4 Rift
• Field Mechanic Skill now auto-repairs Hawks far more slowly
• OX Tank HE Shell direct-hit damage reduced by 33%
• OX Tank HE Shell blast damage reduced by 33%
• OX Tank HE Shell now has slower rate of fire
• OX Tank HE Shell accuracy has been reduced a small amount
• OX Tank vehicle construction cost increased from 2 to 4 Rift
• Hawk Cluster Bomb blast damage reduced 40% per bomb
• Hawk Cluster Bomb blast damage area reduced from 30' to 20' 
• Hawk Cluster Bomb blast damage fall-off increased
• Hawk Shield damage absorption-capacity has been reduced by 50%
• Hawk Cloak time has been reduced by 33%
• Hawk Homing missile Max speed has been increased by 25%
• Hawk Homing Missile target acquisition speed has been increased by 70%
• Hawk Homing Missile thrust-delay reduced by 50%
• Player Complaint System is enabled
• SkillScore now factored-in for Matchmaking
• Updated "Player-Danger" icons & logic for server-list
• Auto-Turret dismantle now twice as fast

Build & Battle Outposts:
In the release version of Starhawk, the Outposts cost 8 Rift and we've reduced that to 4. This significant reduction will greatly help teams increase their team's controlled regions on the map and even this one change should reduce base-ravaging by providing teams with more options for spawning locations.

Field Mechanic Skill:
There were some very savvy pilots who were using Cloak, Shield and the Field Mechanic Skill in such a way as to be almost unstoppable on the battlefield. While we applaud that kind of tactical use, it nevertheless resulted in very lop-sided engagements and we had to take action. Now, if you equip the Field Mechanic Skill, your Hawk will not auto-repair as quickly which results, in concert with the Shield adjustments, in a significant reduction in "invincible" pilots.

OX Tank & High-Energy Shell:
The OX Tank was very powerful, and rightly so... its a TANK! That said, it was a bit too powerful. Even our Tank-Divas here in the studio agreed. To help get the OX in better balance with the Starhawk's overall combat economy, we are making a number of changes. Firstly, it now costs more to build the vehicle at the Depot. The Depot itself still costs the same. But now the OX costs 4 Rift when you build it from the control panel.

We have also made a number of changes to the High-Energy Shell. This is the fast, almost rail-gun like shell the OX can fire. We've reduced the damage of a direct-hit as well as the area of effect damage. Previously it not only had super-high direct impact damage, but it's AoE was potent enough to make it simply brutal against troops -- when the real role of the OX needs to be more about anti-vehicle and anti-structure. We also slightly reduced the accuracy and increased the time between the first and second shot so that it couldn't be used as such an effective long-range-anti-troop-rail-gun.

We have not included any changes to the OX Tank's Artillery shell at this time.

Hawk Cluster Bomb:
The Cluster Bomb was OP. There is no doubt about that. Sure it feels fun to rain death on group of enemies... but let's be honest, we all felt a bit dirty doing it! We have decided to reduce the damage per-bomb *AND* shrink the area of effect of each bomb by 40% and 33% respectively. We have also added softer damage attenuation to the Cluster Bomb's AoE to help make them still effective against Vehicles and Structures and not so focused on troop ravaging.

Hawk Cloak & Shield:
These two weapons really spice up the Hawk's use on the battlefield but as we noted with the changes to the Field Mechanic Skill, there were also some changes that needed to be made to bring these weapons -- and the Hawk in general -- into better balance.

The amount of time a pilot can stay cloaked now has been reduced by 33%. This is still enough time for it to be used to get out of a sticky situation, but not too long such that a nefarious Hawk pilot can engage in perpetual *AND* invisible base-ravaging.

The Shield also got nerf'd and no longer can absorb as much damage before breaking. The reduction was pretty significant here and now the Shield only absorbs 50% of what it could previously. Again, much like in the Cloak situation, it's enough damage absorption to give you a "out" if you're in trouble but not long enough for it to yield degenerate bombing runs or dogfights when used in combination with some skills or other tactics.

Hawk Homing Missile:
This game balance update includes some dramatic changes to the Hawk's Homing Missile and these changes were focused on one key goal -- get the Homing Missile tracking its target faster and get it to impact its target faster. Now of course we need to make sure it's balanced so we're obviously not making the Homing Missile an instantaneous 1-shot kill!

So we've increased the thrust on the missile so that it has a higher top-end speed and the target has less time to scrub the missile. This thrust increase also includes a faster thrust activation time so when you do deploy a Homing Missile, the thruster kicks in far quicker and this gives it a "snappier" feel in combat. Lastly, we greatly reduced the amount of time the Homing Missile takes to maneuver towards it's locked target. This isn't the amount of time it takes to get a lock, but rather, the amount of time it takes the Homing Missile to steer and acquire its target while in-flight. 

Player Complaint System:
We've also enabled a system that allows players to anonymously flag other players for moderator review. Our Moderator Team has a special Starhawk system that displays a list of all players around the globe, how many complaints have been filed for each player and what kind of complaint.

This allows players to help "police" the games and get our Moderators into their games to render judgements more quickly. Moderators can watch individual players and can join games even when the game is technically "full" or password protected.

To file a Player Complaint, simply select a player's name from the Scoreboard and you will see a new "Player Complaint" item in the pop-up menu. Select it and you will be presented with a few options for the kind of complaint you want to file: Cheating, Harassment, Vulgarity and Bad Builder.

QuickMatch, Server-List & SkillScore:
When we launched Starhawk, we intentionally had SkillScore matching disabled for QuickMatch. This update re-enables this feature. If you select to join a game through Quick Match, the server will do its best to put you into a game that more closely matches your SkillScore -- or more accurately a +/- range around your SkillScore.

We have also changed the way "Player-Danger" icons are displayed in the Server-List. Preivously, you would see servers in the list have 1 of 3 icons displayed next to the connection strength of the server: Pink Cake, Yellow Fist or Red Skull. These indicated the average SkillScore of the server. So you knew a server with a Red Skull was dangerous to you. However due to another issue, high-SkillScore players were still allowed to join "Cake" games. This resulted in lots of newbie players getting worked-over by the best of the best. Until this issue is resolved, we have disabled both Cake and Fist icons.

So now, you will only see Red Skulls in the Server-List to warn you that game is filled with players that are "better" than you. Although you should note that playing in a Red Skull server can yeild faster SkillScore growth due to you battling with players that have higher SkillScores -- so the choice is yours!

Faster Auto-Turret Dismantle:
The auto-turret animation we shipped with was too long and resulted in players just getting ravaged by other turrets or players. The new dismantle animations is *WAY* faster and feels a lot better in the heat of combat.

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What're We Working on Next for You Guys?
Well of course we are finishing the testing of our 1.01.001 Update but we are also finishing a "stability" patch that includes many fixes for lots of annoying locks that we have seen in our global crash report. This patch should make a *HUGE* difference for Starhawk stability and includes a completely new system for network error reporting that automatically logs any player's network error with our game analytics database. This way we can correlate disconnects by region, by player and if needed, by discreet activity in the game.

The network team here at LightBox Interactive is also working very closely with the SONY Network team to isolate the issues that some players are reporting about our voice chat. After a few games the voice relay system is breaking-down and that's resulting in players being "dropped" from voice communication.

Beyond that on the horizon, we have more updates for game balance, protections against "base-ravaging" and the team is continuing to make great progress on the FREE Cypress Map Pack and we're really looking forward to sharing more info on it in the coming weeks!

The Design Team here at LightBox Interactive also had a playtest this week of a new prototype gameplay mode called "Flight-CTF" although to be honest... it had more in common with Quidditch!

Team-based air-combat, 1 "ball" in the middle of the sky and 2 goals one at either end of the map. You score points by getting the "ball" and flying through the goal. The prototype was early and rough but it was hellua-fun and we'll keep you posted on how it develops, and when it looks like we'll release it for all of you guys to get your hands on!

Play-testing Some "Base-Ravaging" Fixes

It feels really good to be back in the mode of pushing game-balance update to our Starhawk players world-wide! And since our release on May 8th, we've been watching the comments about base-ravaging. We agree with those comments -- base-ravaging always sucks -- and we're seeing it when we play online as well. We're also seeing it in the game analytics.

So we just finished up an internal playtest using the initial set of changes we're planning to roll out next week. These are largely weapon damage, AoE and Build & Battle Rift cost changes but they made a really positive difference! The Design Team is discussing the results of the session right now and may have some other things they want to tune for next-week's balance update.

We're also going to start something new that we *DIDN'T* do during the BETA. We're going to be telling you guys about all of the changes we are going to make ahead of time before we deploy the update. This will help fuel discussion and debate in the community and really provide you guys with just a general "heads-up" to the changes.

Also, now that Starhawk is released globally, we need to make sure that individual players and their clans are aware of what's going to change *AND* when! This is especially true since many of our players are now involved in Starhawk tournaments.

Oh yeah, and one more thing. I threw in a few pics of the team working on some of the models and textures for the lush new world of Cypress. It's a really exciting and challenging environment for the team to be crafting, and the vegetation and organics are a really great addition to the collection of worlds in Starhawk.

So stay tuned to our Dev-BLOG here for the latest details!