Hello Ashes fans!
**2.75 Update**
I've been very active with play testing on the upcoming 2.75 update and it's gone through a few iterations. Thanks to all the community members who have been testing it with me and offering me great feedback, Chronopolize in particular. Most of our updates don't have the opportunity for this much play testing, so I'm really excited about these changes and how the community will receive them. There's some other cool things happening in 2.75 that I haven't yet mentioned in the March Dev Journal.
**New Retributor Audio**
The lacklustre Retributor weapon sound effect always irked me, and like the Air Marauder, it's finally been replaced! Here's a comparison to show you the before and after:
**Leaderboard Reset**
Our season 2 ladder has been in place for some time, so with the launch of the 2.75 update we'll be resetting the leaderboards for season 3. Congrats on Amelie who is currently at the top of the ladder, but there's time to dethrone him yet!
**New Automatch Map Pool**
Alongside 2.75 and the season 3 ladder reset, we are updating the map pool for automatch. I've converted some of our best team games maps to be better suited for one versus one play. We're removing most of the tiny and small maps and replacing them with larger ones. The game has evolved a lot over the past year, and now with Juggernauts, the late game is a lot more fun! Below is the list of new automatch map pool:
• Seginus
• Mirach 2p
• Merga 2p
• Europa
• Gamma Draconis 2p
• Ross 128 2p
• Atwater
• Italia
• Espana
• Ulrich
Economy Changes
2.75 will contain a vast number of balance changes, but one of the underlying changes is to the economy. a common criticism that Ashes had received is it doesn't allow for enough defensive play styles given the important of map control. Map control should and will always be important, but we are reducing some of its severity in the form of Turinium Generator bonus income reduction and making lowering some of the passive gain from resource Deposits.
- Turinium Generator bonus resource income decreased from 10% to 5%
- Resource Deposit gain reduced from 0.5 to 0.25
- Resource Extractor gain increased from 1.5 to 1.75
**Competitive Review**
Recently a great video by Enlightning Gaming was posted that reviews Ashes as a competitive game. I really recommend you subscribe to his channel as he does some great content, he had a rather interesting video about Chess.com as an esport. (And StarCraft 2, but we all know that.) Ashes was never intended to be a competitive RTS along the likes of StarCraft, but we made sure there was the features in place to allow for it to develop if there was the community will.
So that's it for April.
Cheers,
Callum
