CM Covert Disclosures No.4: Information

Reflecting on the Firebirds Major Update

The major update was large in terms of graphical changes and the introduction of ray tracing. These types of additions take a lot of development time and did bring issues at first for some players which were unintentional. The dev and QA team worked hard on rectifying these issues as soon as they could, we appreciate your patience with this and reports on these issues. The entire team is grateful for your help and sorry for any disruption to your game time.

Coming on to major feedback that was collected by the team. Many thanks to everyone who left feedback, especially constructive criticism. Here’s some replies from the devs that I’ve picked out from our doc. Other technical information on vehicles or their ordnance will be spread around by other CM’s on the forums. If you’d like to see if we have some responses to particular feedback, then feel free to ask and we’ll try to provide you with answers if we have some.

“Missile Evaded” message: We analyzed player feedback and decided to improve this feature. In some modes it will be completely hidden (SB), and in the rest (AB, RB) it will be possible to hide it or leave it at the player’s discretion. Evasion statistics in the debriefing menu will remain for all modes. We’re working on the ability to hide or enable the message at the moment, if everything goes fine this option will be available soon.

Asking for Soviet top tier jet improvements: Currently regarding statistics US aircraft are in the lead with Soviet aircraft slightly behind, though not significantly enough to where they require better weaponry. From looking at the preliminary data, the addition of advanced weaponry as suggested by players would tip the scales drastically in the other direction, here we’re talking about the RVV-MD close-range missile. Also brought up were R-77-1 medium-range missiles, though regarding energy these don’t differ much from the R-77 already in the game.

Newly added helicopters lacking the new heli damage model: The devs are working on this, updated heli DM will be coming in the future for the helis released in the Firebirds major update.

Reflecting on the New Player Card

Our goal

When the devs first started working on the new player profile, the goal in mind was to make it more simplistic and without information overload, which is why the player card only has one showcase and information is spread out rather than it all being in one place. The devs also wanted player cards to be unique and special to each player, with the ability to showcase cool achievements that they’ve earned, or show off a rare vehicle that they’re proud of, for example.

Reflection

When the major update released, one of the main talking points was the new player card and we relayed this information to the dev team. In hindsight, the team realises that releasing the player card with missing information beforehand was not very effective. Our aim was to release new player card “showcases” gradually rather than all at once as many of them take a while to program and implement into the game as there is a lot of old and intricate data to handle. After design, implementing such a card takes a considerable amount of time with the GUI designers, and handling a huge amount of historic data is a careful process. We’re going to learn from this.

We had a lengthy discussion with the devs about its design based on feedback. We considered that it could be rolled back to the old one in the meantime while more features were added, however this was not plausible due to technical reasons and the fact that we’d have to maintain the new and old version, causing further delays.

We understand the feedback about its design and display of information, but as of now the devs will be keeping it in terms of layout. Having said this, we’ll be adding the missing information gradually (more on that below), but the current layout and display of information on the Player Card will remain how it is.

In total, the devs have more than a dozen different showcases planned which will be added over time. If developed in time for the December major update, the following five showcases are planned to be added. However just a warning that there is a chance they might not make in December, which means they’ll come sometime in early 2025 instead.

We also have some more showcases planned, they will likely be added in the spring:

• Achievement Hunter.
• Squadron Warrior.
• Medalist.
• Title Collector.
• Decal Collector.
• Decorator Collector.
• Ace of Spades.

Profile Background & Avatar Frames Customization

Additionally, if all goes to plan, in the December major update, the devs plan to add profile background customization. There will be 7 free profile backgrounds that the player can choose from and ways to get other ones through events and for Golden Eagles. As mentioned above, no promises if this will come in the December major, they may be pushed back to early 2025, but they’re in the works!

Avatar frames will also be added as well, perhaps in the December major as well. When they’re first added, they’ll also be free with some paid ones (ranging from 500 to 1,000 GE, prices might change) much like how profile icons work. And as mentioned already, we can’t say for sure whether they’ll be ready for the December update and may be pushed back as well, but they’re being worked on!

KV-7 vs KV-7 Event Reflections

The dev team and CM team collaborated on this event to create it together, we experimented with a new type of event whereby there was the same type of vehicle vs itself. We wanted to do something fun and unique for the game’s 12th anniversary here, which was the main reason there was only 12 IS-7s given away.

We’ve collected feedback on this event and will look to improve similar ones in the future. They may or may not return in some aspect, perhaps as a fun little weekend addition or even not at all, no promises from us on this. We’re still analysing and thinking of ways to improve them and make them as fun as possible without the feeling of a “marathon”. Thanks to everyone who participated in this event and left feedback on it and congrats to the 12 IS-7 winners!

Be sure to activate the code NOSEKRITPLS on the your profile page to receive this cool decal designed by the CM team!