TotalWar Arena: Update 2.3 Arrived!

Update 2.3 arrived today and it brings new features, improvements and a lot of bug fixes. All the information is available here, in the official patch notes.

TotalWar Arena Update 2.3 Offical Patch Notes

Improved Scoreboard

Developer note: the current iteration of the scoreboard should be considered WIP. We really would like your unbiased feedback about how you, as a player, feel the scoreboard reflects your in-game activity. From that we will look to refine and retune the scoring system for the future releases. 

We have re-introduced points as the driving factor with four distinct categories on the scoreboard. The driving force behind this change is that the kills/deaths system led to assumptions about how we reward players, and many of those assumptions were incorrect. We have also observed that some players were changing their behaviour based on those incorrect assumptions. To rectify this, we have re-implemented a points system on the scoreboard as they more accurately portray how all play-styles are rewarded, not just players who get lots of kills. We’ve always rewarded players who work together, but we are now making sure that the scoreboard recognises that and reflects it effectively.

The categories are broken down into:

• Aggression – Points granted for aggressive actions you take against the enemy team.
• Defense – Points granted based on your defensive play.
• Support – Points granted for supporting and aiding your allies.
• Capture – Points granted for actions around capturing the enemy base and defending your team’s base.
• All the above are totalled up, and players are ordered from top to bottom on the scoreboard by their cumulative totals.

Commander Power Limitation

• We tested internally what effect highly upgraded talents have on gameplay balance at Tier I. We found that while the abilities are stronger, their fully upgraded versions generally give only a slight advantage that is not balance-breaking. We also don’t want to discourage upgrading and want to make sure that those who choose to stay at a certain tier still have ways to progress their commander.
• We don’t want to go too far in one update. In general, we plan to introduce features step by step: Like with the scoreboard, we want to present you with an initial version, gather your feedback, and then iterate on the feature based on your feedback and our metrics data.

Improved End Screen

Based on community feedback, we’ve added some information to the death screen. The initial purpose of the death screen was to educate players on how they were defeated, but we found that players really liked the idea and wanted a deeper implementation. To build on what we had before, we now include more statistics, such as damage dealt, so that the page is now representative of your overall performance, rather than only your death statistics. The purpose of the page is now twofold: To show you which unit types were the most effective against you, but also a showcase of your achievements in the battle.

New additions include:

• Show the decorations earned by a player in battle, including the total amount.
• Show how much damage the player has done to enemies (separated by unit type).
• UI rework to beautify the screen.

Improved Consumables Panel

The previous consumables panel was unnecessarily large and it took too many clicks to add consumables to all your units or to get an overview of which unit has which consumable. We listened to your feedback and simplified the panel: You can now open it with one click, and you don’t need to close it to view another units.

Balancing & Content Changes

• The Greek shock cavalry was too weak when charging.
  • Charge damage for Greek Cavalry has been increased.
• Milites and Hastati were not performing well offensively.
  • Slightly increased the normal damage of Milites.
  • Slightly increased the normal damage of Hastati.
• All the Roman Javelin units that used to have the Strain ability, now have received a new ability called Hurl.
  • Hurl is an improved version of Strain for the Roman Javelin units.

User Interface Changes

Player Guide Addition

Matchmaking tips:

After pressing the matchmaking button, you will now be presented with tips that are specific to the unit types you have decided to bring into battle. These customised hints are designed to help new players understand more of the game mechanics of Arena and cover a wide variety of topics. This is only the initial surge of these hints and we’re looking for more mechanics and tips to add to the rotation.

Examples include:

• Unit-specific tips – how to use and how not to use a specific unit type.
• Team cohesion tips – how to work properly with the team to achieve victory.
• Commander specific tips – how best to use your commander with the units you have.
• General gameplay tips – how to excel at the game and have fun.

Pre-game Chat Lobby improvements

Based on player feedback we have implemented the following changes to the pre-game lobby chat. Please note: these changes do not affect in-game chat. We will be addressing in-game chat improvements in future updates.

• Players will now be grouped by both region and language in pre-game lobby chat. Regions are:
  • North America
  • EU
  • CIS (RU)
  • Asia (multiple languages)
• Languages are grouped as follows:
  • English, Polish, German, French, Czech, Spanish
  • Russian
  • Traditional Chinese (Cantonese)
  • Korean
  • Japanese

These changes are the first round of chat improvements. We will continue to improve your in-game chat experience with further updates.

General UI Changes

• UI Improvements. Includes:
  • Display unearned achievements – You can now select a drop-down in your profile to see which achievements are available but that you have not earned yet. We found that many players were asking for this.
  • Improved placement markers for artillery and dogs.
  • Disconnected icon no longer displays for enemies.
  • Renamed disconnected players.
  • Added new tooltips to parts of the Battle UI.
• Tutorial bug fixing and improvements.
• Updated naming conventions for statistics names.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a multitude of high count crashes observed since the last update.
• Fixed a crash that might have occurred when an artillery unit’s commander dies.
• Further improvements for crashes related to 32-bit machines.
• Game no longer desyncs when using the “Ambush Flurry” ability.
• No longer possible to move and shoot with Light Artillery while they are deployed.
• Can no longer bypass the cooldown of abilities by right-clicking on a possible docking zone.
• Charging through friendly units will no longer cancel that allied player’s movement order.
• Stationary sub-squads will no longer charge when the main body of the squad charges.
• Units will no longer stand-up for a brief second after knockback.
• Toggling abilities to off no longer causes units to lose their orders.
• Buff & Debuff abilities now stay active for the full duration if reapplied to a unit.
• “Presence” ability cooldown no longer resets when ability duration is complete.
• “Repair” ability can now be used on partially damaged artillery.
• Can no longer activate consumable ammunition when disassembling artillery.
• Can no longer manual aim when disassembling and repairing artillery.
• Barbarian Cavalry can now throw Scorched Earth behind them.
• Units in “Formed Combat” will now attack and do damage to routing units.
• Improved “Formed Combat” behaviour when units in Pike Phalanx move backwards.
• “Scorched Earth” should no longer throw javelins.
• “Flaming Throw” should now throw flaming projectiles.
• Phalanx/Spear Wall now has collision with destructible objects.
• “Focus Fire” should no longer orientate the units towards a non-ordered orientation after use.
• After a unit uses “Throw Pila” they will no longer reform a few steps backwards.
• If “Fear” is attempted on an enemy far away while on a cliff edge, the entire unit will no longer constantly shuffle on the cliff edge.
• Fixed an issue where it was possible for artillery to not turn.
• Artillery projectiles should no longer vanish in mid-air after use.
• Men entities will no longer “glide” when moving a heavy artillery unit after assembling.
• Additional pathfinding bug fixes.
• Giving a unit a movement order while walking around a corner will now keep them in formation.
• If all players on the winning team quit the battle they will no longer get a victory.
• Heavy Infantry Charge is now available again in the basic training tutorial.
• FPS will no longer drop to radical levels when using x2 and x5 fast forward speeds in replays.
• Replays will start with the player’s view as opposed to a random player’s view.
• Live replays no longer appear for games older than 14 minutes.
• Fixed duplicate position markers appearing on the minimap after a unit has been spotted.
• Tooltips will now display correct text when hovering over all unit icons on the scoreboard.
• Extra abilities that units shouldn’t have, no longer display on the World Info Panel.
• Unit cards are now correctly coloured when viewed on the World Info Panel.
• Unit health will not automatically display as 0% after taking damage if using the % setting for the unit health display.
• Fixed an issue where names could get mismatched on the deployment screen.
• Players who disconnect after selecting a slot on the deployment screen will now free up their selected slot for someone else to pick.
• Entity markers will no longer briefly flash when fading out after selecting a different unit.
• Agema Cavalry can no longer be unlocked without purchasing prerequisite items.
• Can now unlock the “Imperator” & “Ad Victoriam” achievements.
• Sulla is now counted towards the Ad Victoriam achievement.
• Salernum map fires now have audio.
• Cleaned up “Defiance” * & “Fury” tooltip – should now say it delays death, rather than delay damage.
• Cleaned up “Format Combat” tooltip – should no longer mention that it does damage on knockback.
• Cleaned up multiple abilities that were using incorrect information in the “Target” field of the tooltip.
• Cleaned up some grammatical errors with certain unit descriptions.
• References to increases or decreases of time on the commander ability tree are now worded so they’re inline with the rest of the frontend.
• Greek Archers should now have bow icons that accurately reflect the weapon equipped.
• Player usernames no longer cut-off the screen on the minimum resolution (1280×768).
• The tooltip for adding a consumable no longer overlays the consumable description.
• “Failed to Authenticate” message has been reworded to be more clear.
• [LOC – All Non-English] – “YOU” sub-section of Parties & Friends no longer has a missing string.
• [LOC – Japanese] – Fixed text misalignment on the squad panel for the daily victory and diversity bonus text.

About Author

Harkonnen

Tank Nut and Gamer Wannabe! Huge fan of tanks and World War II history. Playing video games since I was six years old, from Streets of Rage on my Sega Mega Drive to World of Tanks, I’ve never stopped since and will always love games.

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