Matched Play Beta 4 - Update 342 Released

Changelog

Tweaks / Improvements

• Added a Top Bar UI toggle to the advanced options menu.

• The Observatory’s scanned Status Effect icon will always show for Aliens within range, regardless of HUD detail settings. (Similar to the Parasite status effect icon for Marines.)

• Re-added the Railgun Exo’s target outline HUD effect on all Aliens and resolved the performance issues when looking at something far beyond the effect’s maximum range. (Thanks Axtel!)

• Three additional status effect icons added: Nerve Gas, Spores and Armor Healing.

• All status effects are now clearly marked as buffs/debuffs.

Matched Play Changes

• New Friends Group feature where you can invite up to 2 other friends before joining a public lobby, to end up on the same team! There is a maximum of two friend groups per public lobby, and one group per Team.

• New Private Lobby feature where only those whom you invite can play in your match! Note that Matched Play rewards are disabled for this mode.

• Penalties are temporarily removed until they can be administered in a more fair and accurate way in a future update.

• You should now be able to reconnect to an in-progress match after crashing, unless steam has gone offline or the lobby no longer exists.

• New and improved shuffle algorithm which ensures Friends Groups will stay together and evenly balance teams around them.

• Lobbies now robustly handle users leaving and joining after the lobby has reached 12/12 players. Lobbies will correctly roll-back the lobby state as long as the lobby has not reached the Planning Phase.

Matched Play Fixes

• Fixed known cases where player names and avatars would not show up in the Planning Phase screen. All players on the same team should now be visible to team-members after a short delay.

• Fixed known cases where a lobby would fail to spin up a server due to lobby authentication issues.

• Fixed known cases of users being assigned to Team 0 and thus kicked from the match.

• Fixed the lobby status UI (waiting for commanders) not updating properly in some scenarios.

• Fixed some instances where a client could get into a desynchronized state with the lobby UI.

• Fixed users who volunteered to command not being able to see their voted maps during the map voting stage.

• Fixed users not being able to see the Map Vote button after a lobby was rolled back to Waiting for Players.

• Fixed the volunteer to command button showing up after a map vote.

• Fixed a case where Waiting For Commanders timer could get stuck at 0 without progressing the lobby.

• Fixed an issue where players who left during the Map Vote stage would still appear to be in the lobby if the Map Vote screen was open when they left.

• Fixed several issues with player names and avatars being in an incorrect state in the Lobby screen after multiple players left/joined.

• Fixed ability to join a match that just completed using steam friends.

• Fixed ability to join a lobby that had progressed to or beyond the Planning Phase (the user would be kicked from the server when they joined).

• Fixed inconsistent behaviors with in game lobby invites and steam friends invites.

• Fixed numerous script errors and other scenarios that would break a lobby.

• Fixed multiple issues where clicking