Starhawk 1.04.003 Update Today!

Today during a global server maintenance window at 3pm Central time, we deployed a small 1.04.003 Update to Starhawk which was almost entirely inspired by your feedback and we really hope you enjoy the update!

As some of you may know, in mid-October, we parted ways with Sony Computer Entertainment and it's Santa Monica Studio. Nevertheless, we have maintained a great relationship and we've worked together to release a small update for our Starhawk community. The release of this 1.04.003 update was something that everyone here at LightBox Interactive felt was the right thing to do for you, our fans. Our former colleagues at Santa Monica Studio agreed completely and graciously offered to have their QA team provide all the testing support needed for the 1.04.003 update even though it really wasn't an "on-the-books" project for them.

Now of course we were limited in what we could develop for this small update since it is not a full patch with a funded development cycle. However, we were still able to make a few really positive changes:

• Added new Arena load-out for small maps.
• Reduced Grinder damage in singleplayer.
• Added Grizzly to Lone Wolf [Blitz] load-out.
• Replaced Cloak & Shield in Gatekeeper game mode.
• Removed Outposts from small maps.
• Cluster Bomb weapon balance.
• Fixed spawn-in bug for Assault game mode.
• Changed Skill Score Leaderboard.

New Arena Load-Out:
There had been a request by the fans for awhile now for a simple non-vehicle load-out that could be used in our small maps and for modes other than DeathMatch. To help give players this option, we have added an Arena Load-Out to the small maps Junction, Relay and Glade, and it includes the Shield Generator, Pod Cannon, Supply Bunker, Watchtower, Auto-Turret, and Wall. This new load-out is available for CTF, TDM, Zones, DM and Assault.

Reduce Grinder Damage in Singleplayer:
Sure, most of our updates have to do with Multiplayer but we never lose sight of the solo experience! And for that reason, we felt we needed to make a change to the Grinder only in the campaign. For those of you who played the SP campaign in Starhawk, you may have noticed that when you got the Grinder, it was CRAZY easy to cut through enemy units under a stream of molten sparks. In fact, it was too easy. To help balance this weapon and maintain the right level of difficulty for the later missions in the campaign, we have reduced the Grinder damage by 33%.

Added Grizzly to LoneWolf [Blitz] Load-Out:
This change is very straight-forward and is simply a bug fix so LoneWolf and LoneWolf [Blitz] load-outs use the same Build & Battle units.

Replaced Cloak & Shield in GateKeeper Game Mode:
GateKeeper mode is very fun however some players had found that when using the Cloak and Shield in this flight-focused mode, a player could essentially be unstoppable. And the fans were right it was exploit-tastic. We looked at a variety of solutions and the one we settled on for the 1.04.003 Update was to replace the Cloak and Shield pick-ups with the Homing Missile and Flak Cannon pick-ups respectively. This change is isolated to just this gameplay mode and makes a huge improvement to the balance of GateKeeper!

Removed Outposts from Small Maps:
The small maps we added in the 1.04 Update were a great addition to the over-all set of maps in Starhawk! However, the fact that you could use Outpost Build & Battle structures in these intentionally very small maps was really not yielding the proper game experience. To resolve this, now Outposts are removed from the load-out if you choose one of the small maps like Glade, Junction or Relay. This change helps make these maps feel much better and the removal of the Outposts really helps drive more tactical gameplay rather than just the Outpost spam we were seeing.

A point of clarification: You can still choose the Trooper load-out on a small map like Glade, for example. It will show you that the Outpost is contained in that load-out however when you get into the game, the Outpost will be selectively pruned from the Build & Battle wheel. And again, this change is only for the small maps.

Cluster Bomb Weapon Balance:
Due to the way the Cluster Bomb was being used there were a couple of changes that we felt needed to be made. We still want to preserve the weapon's power on the battlefield but the sheer volume of Cluster Bomb kills relative to the other weapons needed to be adjusted. To resolve this we have made the pick-up take a bit longer to respawn. It was previously 60 seconds and now it is 75 seconds. While this may seem like a subtle change, 15 seconds does make a difference!

The second change we did to the Cluster Bomb was to combat the degenerate behavior of using the weapon at nearly point-blank range. In this situation, a player flying a Hawk could just jam a Cluster Bomb down the throat of a player or more often a group of players at such a close range that there was no real counter defense. To help resolve this, we have fixed the Cluster Bomb so that its explosive area of effect can damage the player who launched the Cluster Bomb. This means that a player STILL can do a point-blank Cluster Bomb attack however there is now some significant risk to do so.

Fixed Spawn-in Bug for Assault Game Mode:
When we released the new gameplay mode Assault in the Starhawk 1.04 Update, players were able to find a bug that allowed a player to spawn into the enemy team's base during certain rounds. This, as you can imagine, resulted in an erosion of the gameplay experience were were looking for! The 1.04.003 Update simply fixes the bug so you can no longer spawn into the enemy base.

Changed Skill Score Leaderboard:
We had received many comments about our Skill Score and Skill Score Leaderboard. Some players were seeing odd behavior like their Skill Score going down after a game they just won or other such seemingly odd changes. This definitely needed to get fixed. So we spent some time investigating and found that while the underlying math for the Skill Score is actually working quite well, the issue seemed to arise from server delays when a player's Skill Score was updated. This would result in you never really seeing the proper Skill Score when you looked at the Leaderboard.

We really wanted the Skill Score Leaderboard to be a very real-time leaderboard with high-frequency updates but the practical fact is that it never worked exactly the way players expected because it simply WASN'T as real-time as we needed. So, to improve this, we have made a change to how Skill Scores are processed.

Now in the 1.04.003 Update, all Skill Scores are collected for 24 hours and then processed all at the same time (at 4am Central time) in a much more complete and global fashion. This results in a Skill Score that reflects your overall game performance for the past 24 hours and greatly reduces the odd behavior of Skill Score changes that just didn't make any sense.

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We're incredibly fortunate to have such a passionate fanbase and we are truly thankful for all of your ongoing involvement in the Starhawk online community!

Hope you enjoy the update & have a very
Happy Holidays!

Stay tuned for an update on our new mobile game! 
 

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!

Update 1.02.004 now LIVE!

Yesterday we saw several reports from our player community that while playing Starhawk they *DIDN'T* see the changes we made -- the game balance either felt old or simply incorrect.

Some players were seeing the proper balance and some were not.

We have identified the issued and it was caused by some players not having their Starhawk client automatically restarted after an update had been downloaded, installed and processed. This resulted in some players having incorrect game balance or in some cases a mix of old new or incorrect settings.

This 1.02.004 Update includes a fix to ensure that all Starhawk clients properly restart *AND* process new game balance settings after an updated is applied. No other changes have been made.

We never like having to do 3 updates in 3 days but we wanted to make sure that everything was operating properly in-time for weekend play!

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! 

Stability Patch 1.02 is now LIVE!

Very, *VERY* early this morning at 4am Central time we performed world-wide server maintenance and deployed a new patch for Starhawk. The patch is focused on resolving the most common crashes as well as providing a new automatic system of recording any network errors that players encounter. There were however a few other things that were included in the patch so here's the full list: 

• Fixed for the prominent Crashes & Locks
• Added automated network disconnect error-reporting
• Fixed missing sound FX for when missiles are dodged
• Fixed XP display for players already at the first-tier level cap of 50
• Fixed Server-List so it can scroll properly and display the full-set of global games
• Fixed texture paging bug that sometimes caused a blank Uplink
• Fixed the Sweet-Tooth's awesome butcher's blade accessory
• Fixed the bug causing only 4 players to be allowed into your Homeworld
• Fixed bug that caused the Clan Leader board to scroll incorrectly
• Fixed Server-List filter on full games to work properly 

As we've mentioned before, the team here at LightBox Interactive is working on another game balance update and we'll be providing you the list of all of the changes next week! We're also hearing our community "Loud & Clear" on our voice issues. The team at LightBox Interactive has spent many days debugging what the issue is and we've relayed that information to our Network team at SONY. They are currently investigating a fix and we'll be sure to keep you all posted!

We are very thankful of our community's patience and we are fully committed to making sure the Starhawk experience continues to improve with Updates and Patches as well as grow with FREE downloadable maps!

Game Balance Update 1.01.001 now LIVE!

Our global maintenance is now completed and the game balance update 1.01.001 is now LIVE and ready for players around the globe to download and play!

Again we want to remind everyone that this update is just he first of many we have planned to really "dial" the gameplay in Starhawk. So please keep your feedback coming -- we do read Tweets, Facebook posts and forum posts!

There are a few other things we wanted to point out now that the 1.01.001 Update is LIVE.

You all will now notice that the server-list has a new icon displayed. This icon shows which region on the planet the server host is located. We felt this information was needed in addition to the connection strength icons so that players had more information to make up their minds on which game to join:

NA Flag is displayed for any player hosting in an SCEA Region
EU Flag is displayed for any player hosting in an SCEE Region
JP Flag is displayed for any player hosting in an SCEJ Region

You'll also will notice that the Cake, Fist and Skull icons are being displayed in the server-list even-though we previously posted that we were going to disable the Cake and Fist icons. This is due to us having to temporarily remove that change at that last minute. We'll keep you posted on when we roll that change back out to you guys!

Schedule for Game Balance Update & Patch Release!

We have finished tested both our first game balance update *AND* the stability patch! We're planning to have server maintenance at the following times and the down-time should be less than an hour.

Balance Update -- Thursday May 31st at 9:00 am Central Time.

Stability Patch -- Friday June 1st at 4am Central Time.

The details of all the items included in the game balance update were listed in our last blog-post. All of those items passed our QA process except for the new (and faster) animation for turret dismantle. There were some issues that it caused and we had to pull it form the update. Don't worry though -- we *WILL* be deploying the faster dismantle animation once the kinks get worked out!

As we've also noted in the past, the stability patch is largely focused on 2 key items for us. Firstly it adds a great new set of automatic network error reporting so we can isolate any connection issues that players are experiencing. And secondly, it adds a number of crash/freeze/lock updates that greatly improve the stability of gameplay even in large 32-player games.

We've also been working on the next game balance hot-fix and we'll be posting details on what's included in that one very soon. And yes, Bruiser Skill and Flak Cannon *ARE* on the list of updates!

The team is also been doing a lot of investigation into some reports of voice-chat cutting our for players and we're working on a new patch that, among many things, includes some voice updates that should greatly improve the connection stability of Starhawk's voice-chat.

Play Starhawk this weekend and let us know what you think of the latest balance update!