2 of 3 month of the patch period time have passed, and due to inactivity of a big part of the balanceteam members, we are quite behind with the patch. Pip and me did a lot work with the theory base behind the patch, and while it is not beeing as finished as i'd have liked by this time, we aren't too much behind there. There is a big lack of test games however, not only because of me and the other balancetest members got busy in RL and couldn't play much, but also because there are not many balancetest games from the community.
To make sure the patch will have the best quality possible and will have the theory behind that it needs, but also be polished and tested sufficently, some things need to change:
First, we'll add 2 new members to the team, RA_Nombringer and LaPPen, to replace the inactive members Brainfart and Galacticfear. I'm hoping to play more myself aswell. But even if the team had 100 members, the amount of testgames will never be enough (little example: League of Legends tested a patch with some 10.000 people for a few month, and they still had to do hotfixes and many changes to it afterwards), and a larger pool of data helps a lot. Everyone can help to make sure this game gets the patch it deserves by just playing games with the balancetest gamemode, independent from player skill as long as the game is balanced skillwise.
Additionally, the deadline for the patch has been removed. Every change will get the time that we think it needs to make sure it will be polished. But as some of the smaller changes won't need as much time as the bigger ones (i.e. t3 air), we decided to split the patch and release it in parts. This way you can already play with our smaller fixes that are finished, while we get enough time to work on the bigger ones.
We aim to release the part of the patch with the smaller changes on the original planed date by end of january. We will focus on this changes now to finish this part as soon as possible.
After that, we will continue to work on the bigger changes as long as needed. As Roadmap i'll aim to have the t2/t3 land finished after 1 additional month, as the theory base for that is already quite good already and it just needs to be tested. t3 air will take longer, there is still a lot theory work to be done before we can even start to polish it. But it might take more or less time as needed.
As usual, feedback is appreciated, especially of people who played with balance testing
This thread can be also used for general discussion about the patch/balanceteam, not related to single changes.
Lessons may cost a portoin of your soul.... (Noms are included but not guaranteed)