Hi-Rez Studio's Global
Agenda did a lot of things right at launch, but they have come to
realize that there were also a lot of things missing. No time has been
wasted in getting a massive overhaul setup for the 1 month anniversary
for the game, which deployed March 2nd. Perhaps the one thing you can
derive from all of these notes and changes is that this developer
listens. This is becoming a rarer trait in the gaming developer world
as some of the finest and most creative minds are being cramped and
having features cut by publishers (I'm looking at you, Supreme
Commander 2, for removing all semblance of the old Total Annihilation
economy!) So let's get down to business--what will affect you from this
list? 


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src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/80948">


Now you can find your favorite strike team members easier than ever!



- Added a Friends List Feature 

  Oh, thank God. With a simple /friend command, you can now
pull up a menu that enables you to keep track of all those goofballs
you run into inside and outside of the game that you don't mind seeing
again. Of course, functionality doesn't end there; you can set notes,
send messages, and even invite players to your team from this menu.
Setting notes enables you to finally keep track of who has a leveled
and geared alternate class, rather than having to beg in alliance for
one more medic to defend your territory. 

 

- Separate PvP Queues 

 
The major benefit of
this is that you never have to queue for that mission type you hate;
you can do what you want to do in the PvP queue now. Unfortunately,
there were separate PvP queues in beta and the end result was lots of
queues rarely, if ever, going into a match. We'll see how it plays out
now that the game is live. 

 

- Option to Balance your PvE
Team 

 
It's happened to us
all--we queue for PvE, and get thrown into a team that is 3 Recons and
a Robotics. 2 Assaults and 2 Recons. 4 Medics. Ridiculous teams will
happen and your only choice is to run with it or decline and go back to
the queue. Since optimal teams fare much better in Maximum Security
than sub-optimal, this option will make doing those much easier. It
basically guarantees 1 of each class will be assigned to your team, but
your search time will likely rise greatly as a result. Make sure you
don't alt-tab and miss your team finally coming together. 

 

- Major Crafting
Overhauls 

 
A whole lot went on
in what has been considered one of the worst crafting systems of the
millennium. First and foremost, one of the main ingredients, Plates,
now drop twice as often. One of the major exploits to farm them quickly
was to set up a turret farm around an alarm's spawn areas and
constantly spawn Alarm Responder bots for fast loot. This has been
fixed; they no longer drop anything. Now everything will drop more
often, and more legitimately than a 4 Robotics team exploiting an
infinite spawn. 

 

  All blueprints have been renamed so that they are actually
associated with what they do. No longer do you have to search through
500 Alpha Analysers to find the one that increases AOE damage for your
Assault. A lot of new recipes have been added that do not provide
random benefits; they now provide a guaranteed type of proc such as
Ranged Protection when crafted. Specialization of your gear will be
much easier to craft and fund as a result. 

 

- Conquest Changes 

 
Good news if you
live in Europe or the Oceanic Regions--Hi-Rez has added two new zones
that are more in line with your prime time, Anvil and Tradewind.
You can also view a real-time
combat log of who is attacking who in a Conquest Zone. This way you can
see how territory is actually changing hands, and who is active at the
moment.  

Some overhauls to AvA
equipment have also been put in, namely the fact
that an attack is now
all-in. A loss equals a destroyed dropship. However, in the evet that
you pick up your equipment, you no longer have a chance to randomly
lose it as a result of losing and being looted. This was an
undocumented ... “feature” that lost our alliance a
lot of Vandals recently. Deployables for AvA have been nerfed and now
deploy at a reasonable rate rather than near instantly. This will help
to put an end to those annoying missile turrets, and their placement
areas have been nerfed as well with improved collision size. 

 

  Perhaps the most important part of this patch is Conquest
Map Rotation. If you play at the same time every night you probably
defend the same territory every night. And you used to have to play the
same map every time, over, and over, and over again. No more! Unless
the hex contains a key facility, there are now multiple maps that will
rotate through. 

 

Of course, there have been more general improvements to graphics and
sound quality and effects as well as bug fixes all over the place. One
of the major notes is that there are no real balance changes with this
patch. The two conclusions you can come to from this announcement are
that the developers are happy with the state of the game at the moment,
or that they don't have enough data and feedback to make the changes
just yet.  

It's
nice to see that no massive bugs exist with the skills right out of the
launch though. (Anyone remember the Seal of the Crusader bug that
basically handed Paladins 40% faster attack speed and attack power with
no penalty in World of Warcraft?) When a small developer can release a
game bug-free and give the community what they ask for in short order
like this first patch, it's proof that this game will continue to
prosper for some time. If you'd like to see the full patch notes,
they're available href="http://forum.globalagendagame.com/gablog/index.php/2010/02/23/global-agenda-version-11-released-to-public-test-server-slated-for-live-release-early-next-week/"
target="_blank">here!
 See you in Dome City! 


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Global Agenda Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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