There are two things that have occured since Paragon went into Open Beta. The first is that the number of the sheer number of players leaving matches or simply going AFK has increased enormously (certainly for me). The second is that match lengths are ridiculous. A match I played earlier in the week lasted almost two hours (I had to go and lay on the bed afterwards). In the latest address to the community, Steve Superville attempts to round-up the issues


Hey Paragon Community,

Paragon is now in Open Beta, meaning anybody can play the game for free and give us feedback. We fully intend to continue the path of making big, sweeping changes toward achieving our goal of the most competitive MOBA in the world. We eagerly seek player feedback in any form that we can find it, be it on theOfficial ForumsRedditTwitterFacebookYouTube, surveys we send out, etc. If you are new to the community, we encourage you to provide candid and constructive feedback, be it positive or critical, experiential or analytical.  We appreciate it all and it helps us march forward to making the game better with each build.

If you are new to Paragon, the community has been working hard to create content that helps you learn different aspects of the game such as laning, jungling, and guides for every hero and role. There are vast amounts of content and highlight plays to inspire, educate, and entertain. Here is a short list of some content we have spotted:

Here is the list of topics at the forefront of our thoughts:

Balance
Heroes are in a much tighter win-rate spread than last month (between 45% and 55% across all Heroes). This is the healthiest spot we’ve been in yet, and while we will try not to upset it drastically, we will continue introducing new Heroes #EveryThreeWeeks (with Narbash having joined the roster this week) and updating our gameplay systems. Additionally, each play style has at least two Heroes that players are finding viable, as represented by a healthy pick-rate spread across our Heroes. The adjustments to Ranger health and offensive card stat values have created a healthier environment for each class to find its pocket of strength. There are more changes planned, and it’s nice to start from a firmer foundation going into September.

Bad Actors
We continue aggressive actions against “Bad Actors” who leave games or AFK, increasing the ban penalties applied to serial offenders, and improving the experience for dedicated players. 

Additionally, we added a mature chat filter. This feature can be turned off, but why? It replaces unsavory words with hearts - we think players deserve all the love!

One of the recent community concerns is “false positive” bans on our cheat detection. There have been some posts (fairly) asking if we have an issue with the system and asking how the system works so the poster and community can “trust that we are detecting cheaters properly.” Our stance is that an explanation of how cheats are detected would do nothing more than arm the cheaters with information to try to find away around being detected. As of August 16, we have banned a total of 305 players for cheating, which is a miniscule fraction of a fraction of the players who have joined us in June, July and August. We are *very* concerned with the integrity of our system and diligently review code and logs from the banned accounts. If we ever find an error, we will own it, apologize, and unban the affected accounts.

Match Length
Match length continues to be a concern and we are aggressively exploring options to bring them back into line. Average match times aren’t too far from where we were (41-minute median up from 37), but there has been an increase in the higher percentiles, with some matches reaching extremes of 1.5 hours plus. This is not an acceptable length.

We have historically reacted by making huge changes, which have had undesired impact on the core gameplay even as they successfully reduced game times. Instead of doing that we will be introducing smaller changes each week and observing their impact on game times. This should help us avoid some of the pain our players felt from previous sledgehammer approaches. Rest assured, match length has our attention, and we are on the case.

Other Work in Progress
We are also working on a host of other features, as mentioned in previous blogs, including Card Crafting, cosmetic Banners, game remake rules, improved onboarding, and more. As we get closer to releasing those features, expect to see dedicated blogs providing more details!

Thank you for joining us for the start of Open Beta!

See you on the battlefield,

Steve Superville
Creative Director / Paragon Team
Epic Games

Epic Games/Twitter: @EpicGames
Paragon/Twitter: @Paragon
Superville/Twitter: @SteveSuperville


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

Last Updated: Aug 26, 2016

About The Author

Lewis is a long standing journalist, who freelances to a variety of outlets.

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