Hi! If you're interested in checking out our experimental new co-op battles you can find them live on the test server right now. Notes on co-op: For now, teams are managed via the team console command. Invite someone to your team like so: team invite Sir Knight Accept an invitation and join a player's team like so: team join Farbs Check whose team you are in, who else is there, and who is invited, via: team info team help will list some other helpful team management commands. I'm sure you'll figure it out. There's no way to list which teams you are invited to at present. Whenever the owner of a team enters a casual or custom battle, everyone else in that team is dragged along for the ride. Remember to leave a team before you commit to a non-team battle! Battles are largely self-explanatory. When you pass however, you actually pass to your next team-mate. It's only when your entire team has passed that your opponents get a turn. Communication is very important, so I suggest using a voip system (Skype or similar) to talk with your team. I'm interested to hear how it plays with text though. Both the tech and the design are very young, so there are undoubtedly some rough edges. We'd love to hear feedback on both, whether you encounter bugs or just have thoughts to share on how it plays and what we could do with it. Thanks, and have fun!
Played some of this with Farbs and Jon, it's suuuuuuper cool and I'm super excited! I want to do lots of tests with people
a) Apparently, an invite can be made from anywhere. phaselock (ff) invited lockphase (ie) who was on the landing page/sp. Should teams be valid only if all members are in mp/dedicated lobby ? And leaving said lobby warrants an automatic kick ? b) phaselock teamed with lockphase and invited lockphase to a celestial dojo... Clicking accept gives 'That battle is no longer accepting new players.' Duh... I guess team members shouldn't be allowed to invite single player battles among team players. c) team members that are no longer online/dc still retain team membership. I think that some indicator of the disconnect timer can show on team info ? Something like > team info CHEAT: Team owner: phaselock Member #1: phaselock Member #2: lockphase (status: offline, 23 secs to kick) erm, currently IE users can use F2 and then F1 to close console. But every F1 use throws the IE help window, at least that's how it is for me. Would it be difficult to make the F2 toggle console instead ? At least for the current co-op testing cycle.
Ultimately we want coop to work in the campaign, so in theory it's fine for teams to stay intact when a player goes to sp.
Thanks Phaselock! The current party management systems and tools are just a bootstrap so we can test the battles. I wouldn't worry too much about them for the time being.
Just played a game with jade303 on a custom map from my peasant tournament. Was against Gary using Mom's figures, we were using MP team in the scenario settings. Two figures spawned, not 3. We each had 1. For each of us it was our first character in the keep. Snoozi never showed up when we idled for 3 min testing Snoozi. No other especially buggy functionality showed up. Then I accidentally went into a ranked game vs Gary. It dragged in jade303, and my 'player name' was jade303 instead of Flaxative (even though team name was Flaxative because I created the team). All 3 of my guys spawned, and none of jade's did. Then I resigned the battle and Card Hunter hung — it's still spinning as I type this.
Maybe a bug (trying to reproduce, hard to tell but seems consistent): Inviting a player to a (casual) game, if that player is a member of a team but not the owner of the team, sends the invite normally, but when that player accepts the invite their client hangs. Details • CT5 is team leader. jade303 is on team CT5. • Flaxative isn't on a team. • Flaxative invites CT5 to casual match. This works. CT5 controls 2 guys, jade303 controls 1 guy, Flaxative has 3 on opposite side. • Flaxative resigns, we all return to lobby just fine. • Flaxative invites jade303 to casual match. • jade303 accepts, his client hangs. CT5 and Flaxative remain in the lobby. This is where it gets super weird: • jade303 reloads and logs in and goes to lobby. • jade303 sees a game going on and clicks on it. • Flax and jade303 are now in a battle together. We each have our own full MP parties. • CT5 gets dragged in as a spectator and can't see or use cards. (then, normal • Flaxative loses to inactivity while typing this report. Worth noting, when jade303 logged back in, he was no longer on CT5's team, but CT5's team still had a jade303 on it.
If a player logs out right now, that player remains on any teams it was on for people still on those teams, but not as far as they're concerned. So, jade303 logs out. CT5 still has "jade303" on his team. jade303 logs in. jade303 uses "team info" and sees his own 1-person team. CT5 invites jade303, jade303 joins, new team is CT5, jade303, jade303. If they enter a battle, the battle has 3 players on that team: CT5 (who can play), jade303 (a phantom jade303 who isn't controlled by anyone), and jade303 (the real jade303, who can never play because the phantom jade303 can't play or pass).
I should note, every game of co-op i've played has been fun, even without VoIP, though the experience is a lot better with it. Being able to ping squares or cards is a definite must, I'd say.
I think it will be necessary to have team chat (a command for the chat window where it will only be visible to allies) such as [t] play that card or [Go to this square]. Also, as Flax has said, you should be able to have a Team Ping which will highlight squares (and cards?) for your ally to see - but not your opponent!.
Pinging will definitely be useful. We expect to have an extra chat tab for communicating with your team too.
Well, I'd reckon spectators need a different set of color indicators as well, like color based mouse-over outlines for team. Which should technically go with the ping colors. Damn, I keep envisioning the Dota exclamation mark ping format.
Not really feedback on the systems, but... Not all custom scenarios give each player on the team equal amounts of fun @Finial @Stexe
Main problem with the Co-op method: There is no way to toggle it off (that I know of). I'm stuck with one of my characters on maps where I want to test builds.
Loli's bug and the issue with team leaders playing ranked matches instead of the correct player have both been fixed, should be in the next test build. Thanks again for the reports! Now, can we arrange a 3v3 match some time? I don't think we need to test it, I just want to play one.
