Hello everyone,
We received a lot of strong feedback from the community regarding the level system after we rolled out Update 188. Most of the negative feedback we received was about the lack of a reward for hours previously played. While we thought that starting all players on a level playing field with a grace period would be more enjoyable, we now understand that this is not how the community feels, and we hear you. As a result we have decided to issue a loyalty bonus for our veterans.
Loyalty Bonus
To ensure that the loyalty bonus for veteran players is distributed fairly, we have calculated the average in-game playtime against hours played. As a result, we will issue approximately 1600 XP for every hour played. The loyalty bonus will be available to anyone who has purchased and played the game before the release of Update 188. However, players with private Steam profiles will need to temporarily make their profiles public to retrieve their rewards. This is due to technical limitations imposed on us by Steam, and unfortunately, there is no way around this. It is the best compromise we could achieve.
We expect the loyalty bonus to go live within the next week or two.
The above is a breakdown of the unlocks as well as the experience required to level up one time within each level bracket (symbolized by its own unique wreath).
Balance Tweaks & Fixes
We have also released a potential fix for the issue with experience not saving correctly. However, we are still in the process of migrating our back-end away from Steam for a more secure and reliable system.
Finally, we have already implemented several balancing changes to the experience earned in a match:
- Increase the base rate of experience gain by 90%.
- Reduce the formation bonus from 50% to 25% to make it more consistent with skirmishing and reduce the impact on artillery players.
- Lift the staging zone restriction on XP gain for artillerists.
- Add the option for server owners to disable progression restrictions for passworded events, but at the cost of disabling experience payouts.
- Tweaks to Hookers Push, Piper Farm & Pry Ford staging zones in order to better facilitate the new xp system.
Going forward, we will continue to make adjustments to ensure the experience system is fair and just for both veteran and new players alike.