Star Wars: Squadrons is leveling the flying field, as it were, with a new update that addresses lobbies and matchmaking with changes to match forfeiting in its spaceflight battles. Update 2.0 brings plenty of other bug fixes and AI tweaks, including one for swatting pesky pilots taking down big Capital Ships in a sneaky fashion.
In their update 2.0 notes, Motive Studios explain some of the changes to how forfeiting or sticking out matches will now affect your rewards.
“Players that defeat opponents through natural play or forfeit will now gain full skill points and progression rewards. Players that lose naturally after a teammate abandons or lose by forfeit will still gain full progression rewards but take only half the skill point losses. Meanwhile, players that abandon will be appropriately punished: abandoning the game after deployment always results in a loss and leaver penalties have been significantly increased.”
As for the why of it, “the new forfeit system puts control back into the players’ hands and allows players to decide which matches are worth fighting until the end and which are worth forfeiting,” says senior systems designer Dan Kim. “We felt that the previous system was often difficult for players to understand and unduly punished well-behaved players after an abandonment occurred, with some players reporting that they felt robbed of wins, locked into pointless matches, or unrewarded for time already spent when leaving ‘safe to leave’ games.”
There are quite a few other fixes and changes in the full notes, though one does jump out. They’ve changed up the AI behavior for Capital Ships in Fleet Battles to discourage “mosquitoing” which is apparently the tactic of dealing damage to the larger ships while flying beneath them. Capital Ship turrets now deal greater damage to players who are close to them and moving slowly. “This will reward the playstyle of players who are flying like proper mavericks,” Motive say. “To those who aren’t, you’re much more likely to be blasted into oblivion now.” I dunno, that may not be maverick behavior, but it sure sounds like a good guerilla spacewar tactic.
If you hadn’t heard, Squadrons has recently added Baby Yoda to your ship dash. Baby Yoda everywhere.
