Banned from ESO? Here’s what you should do…
I have been reading the AgeComm forums and have had some emails from the community site and this blog with regards to possible “unjust” banning from the ESO service. Whilst I understand people feel strongly that they are innocent my understanding is that the tools used to collect data about ESO accounts are the same tools used by Ensemble since ESO’s introduction. With a 4 year record the ESO system is probably robust and correct in its reporting. However, if you have been banned and want to appeal heres some top tips…
- Ask yourself “why have I been banned”? Before asking Robot try asking yourself this question – have you noticed any unusual activity have you given out any login details? If you havnt cheated it doesnt mean someone else hasnt compromised your account and cheated under your ESO ID.
- Next stop- check your emails. You should receive an email from Age3support advising you that you have been banned, the reason why and the type of ban (temporary, permanent). Study the email carefully and make sure that you didnt do what the stats reported. Remember, Robot only ban on cumulative reports of cheating. You must understand that the results are probably correct and that there is a good possibility your account may have been compromised.
- Email back. Be sure to include your name, email, CD key and PID key (found in the “About” screen in game). Robot will investigate your query and will get back to you with more details. Remember to be polite and write in plain English.. I would advise against txt tlk. Robot should be able to clear up any reason why you have been banned and if there has been a mistake, will get you back online.
- Still un-happy? – Post in the forums. The Age Community is a great place to ask for help and members may be able to help find you the root cause of the ban. Never under estimate the community.
- Last resort.. If you feel you have been treated unfairly you can raise a formal complaint with Robot at the studios main contact email address (see thier website).
I hope these tips help people understand how they can go about getting information about why they may have been banned. As a reminder.. make sure that you dont:
- Cheat on the ESO service using any hack tools or modified game files
- Dont give out ANY of your account details.
Feel free to get in contact with me at dean@remember-ensemblestudios.com if you are still flummoxed on what to do. Or you can find me and lots more helpful community members at www.agecommunity.com. For those that have spoken or wish to get in contact with me remember that I am not an employee of Robot Entertainment and cannot speak on their behalf. This blog is run by an individual and any advice on this site or through my email is personal advice completely un-affiliated with Robot.
Not forgetting the Halo Wars readers..
As a side note, for Halo Wars readers.. DLC 2 is coming soon! Aloysius has teased it may be sooner than you think!
Final Title Update 3 patch notes available for Halo Wars
Well here they are folks! Pretty much very similar to the proposed patch notes posted earlier.. some highlights are:
- Team killing will no longer give points (hooray!)
- Self Destructing buildings will give opponents points (similar to Age of Empires)
- Warthog build time increased
And here’s the rest:
Balance Changes:
– UNSC Warthogs Gauss cannon damage against tanks and other heavily armored vehicles reduced by 25%
-UNSC Warthogs build time increased by 3 seconds to 25 seconds
– Anders research time bonus decreased to 25% from 50%. Her Research cost bonus remains unchanged at 50%
-Covenant and UNSC turrets have 5% increased health and 5% increased damage
-UNSC Elephants have a 20% more health
-Grenade damage type now has 25% additonal damage against Warthogs and other medium armor ground vehicles.
-Recycle basic cost return fixed to be 50% for constructed buildings.
– Locked down bases when unlocked will now release units inside very quickly, which means that when under attack a player can now build a fighting force while locked down and then release them much more quickly than before
– UNSC Leader powers disabled at the start of Reinforcement Matches
-Players no longer receive points for team killing.
-Self Destructing/Recycling buildings now gives points to opponents
Bug Fixes:
-Players should now find it much easier to play System Link games
-Fixed Covenant Shield Generator Exploit
-Invisible Units should now have invisible health bars
-Players will no longer be able to scout opposing bases by using the area-select tool
Discussion is rampant on the HaloWars.com forums!
Joe Gillum talks Halo Wars single player campaign design
Another developers blog post on community website HaloWars.com. This time Joe Gillum gives us an insight on what its like being a campaign designer on an Ensemble game. The Ensemble guys spent alot of time reading books, player Halo games and talking to Bungie to get ideas about level design. The art below demonstrates this nicely:
![Hole3[2]](http://remember-ensemblestudios.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Hole32.jpg "Hole3[2]")
Here’s an extract from the blog and a link to the full article – an excellent read!
The first thing we do when we start a new campaign is to do some research. Instead of hitting the history books like in our Age of Empires games, we grabbed anything we could from Halo and absorbed it. We read books, played through the games, and talked with Bungie to make sense of any questions that arose. I personally spent a few days doing nothing but playing the Halo campaigns in the office to refresh my memory and get some inspiration. This helped more than I even hoped… people would stop by my office to watch me play and learned some things they may have forgotten about the games – or to yell at me to turn it down!
Bungie CEO: “Ensemble didn’t build a game with a community that carried it”
Some interesting remarks from Harold Ryan the CEO of Bungie who in an interview with Brier Dudley at the Seattle times said:
Q: It’s interesting how you’re mentioning Bungie like that. Are you now trying to raise the profile of the studio? Is this a step toward additional games beyond Halo and saying hey, we’re not just ‘Halo, we’re Bungie’?
A: Yeah, definitely. When you go back to the divestiture from Microsoft, that was when we started paying more attention to the Bungie brand. It means something – there’s now an existing game, Halo Wars, that wasn’t built by Bungie. There’s a big difference in the success – in sales, in the review numbers of the title. The Ensemble guys (who made Halo Wars) are great guys, they did a great job with what they did, but I don’t think they made a Bungie game. They didn’t build a game with a community that carried it.
It seems somewhat a harsh comment seeing as the Halo Wars community website has been online long before the titles launch and was lead by a fantastic community team at Ensemble Studios. One might like to point out that the community was damaged due to the Microsoft decision to close the studio. Obviously, any community will suffer when a company is closed. Today the community is lead by a sole community manager, Duncan “Aloysius” Stanley and Robot Entertainment has recently held a developers play night with the fans and a feedback thread asking for fan feedback on Title Update 3 fixes.
Seattle Times article:
Updated: Age Community and Halo Wars community sites are offline
No need to panic! Well.. unless you expected to play Age of Empires or engage in community discussion on AgeComm or Halo Wars.com that is. Yes indeed this is the news that something has brought the community sites offline. Never fear though Robot is on the case!
Stand by for updates.
Update 1: HaloWars.com is back online! AgeComm, ESO still down.
Update 2: Community manager confirms problems which should be resolved very soon:
Aloysius:We are having some issues with the website, and hope to have them resolved very soon.
Update 3: And we’re back! Happy gaming / talking!
Official Robot Entertainment blogs go live!
The Robots at the spacepod like office in Plano have launched their official company blogs with Dave Pottinger and David Kubalak. Dave Pottinger shares with us his dream of having the Robot Entertainment logo in Lego form much like the Google logo shown below:
![00-Google2[2]](http://remember-ensemblestudios.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/00-Google22.jpg "00-Google2[2]")
It is infact a deadly serious project and Mr Pottinger has been spending his free time experimenting with Lego base boards to get them a suitable size for the Lego Robot logo – here he is, in action!
One might wonder if Mr Pottinger spent too much of his childhood playing with Lego! It does seem like a fun project though and if Google can do it why not Robot? You can stand by for updates on this by following this website or by subscribing to the Robot Blog RSS feed.
In other non Lego news..
David Kubalak lifts the curtain on the faces behind Robot’s art team:
![Art-Team-final[1]](http://remember-ensemblestudios.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Art-Team-final1.jpg "Art-Team-final[1]")
Please note: The above picture may not accurately represent entire appearance!
You can click the image to enlarge and from left to right you will find:
Bryan Hehmann – Environment Artist, Nathan Stefan – Concept Artist, Gene Kohler (bottom) – Character Artist, Dion Hopkins – Visual Effects Artist, David Kubalak- Art Director, Charles Tinney (bottom) – Animator, Rob Walden – Hard Surface Modeler, Juan Martinez Technical Artist and Animator, Brad Crow (bottom) – Art Director, Paul Slusser – Environment Artist, Duane Santos – Hard Surface Modeler, Won Choi (bottom) – Concept Artist, Chris Moffitt – Character Artist, and Bart Tiongson – Concept Artist.
All of those people are Ex-Ensemblites! Its interesting to read about the individual roles each artists has. David Kubalak is the Art Director and has his own blog where you can find some of his artwork at: http://www.davidkubalak.blogspot.com/
Clearer Robot Art picture discovered!
You may remember a previous post where I mentioned Age Community were studying Robot Entertainment pictures closely for any hints on a new Age of Empires game. David Kubalak’s blog contains an image extract from a news article which shows a picture of Gene Kohler working on some textures. Check out the image below and be sure to enlarge!
Discussion on this can be found on the Age Community forums.
Further reading..
I encourage all fans to check out the Robot website to read the full blog posts from the two Robot Daves! Looking forward to seeing more posts from them soon!
Lets see how this Lego logo develops!!
Tim “Timotron” Deen reveals (nearly) final patch list for Halo Wars
Tim Deen has updated his feedback thread on HaloWars.com with the soon to be final patch notes. The title update is now in its final changes of testing and unless there are any sudden imbalances to be found you can take the notes below as pretty much being the final patch notes. Discussion on these should be directed to this thread where Robot will be looking over for feedback. The patch notes follows:
*** Note: Updated with final patch notes for the balance changes that I am sending in for final function/ bug testing ***
Balance changes::
1. Gauss warthog gauss cannon damage bonus against units with heavy armor (Scorpions, Wraiths, Scarabs, Locusts) reduced so that tanks will stay as a viable option to counter warthogs.
Final:: Gauss damage with a 0.6 modifier (down from 0.8), which is a 50.0% damage boost instead of a 100% damage boost against tanks over earlier warthogs.
2. Warthog build time slightly increased to restrict how fast players can mass and replace warthogs during the game.
Final:: Warthogs will take 3 additional seconds to the build (25 seconds).
3. Anders bonus to tech build rate reduced to further balance the leader.
Final:: Anders research bonus changed to be 75% of the base time to research techs instead of the previous 50%. (the cost reduction remains at 50%)
4. Base turrets attack and health boosted slightly to increase turret viability in early and late game.
Final:: We finalized on a 5% boost to base turret health and damage after extensive testing we feel that a small buff was warranted but that overall the turrets can function just fine in the early game but the player has to choose to use them and sacrifice some supplies.
5. Elephant health increased to improve survivability and viability as a unit.
Final:: Elephants gain a 20% boost to health, which when combined with the infantry grenade buff works out rather well.
6. Grenade/ Plasma grenade / RPG damage against medium armor (warthogs, ghosts, choppers, wolverines and cobras) increased to both better balance marines/ grunts against warthogs and to improve marines overall against players who try to turtle with wolverines and cobras.
Final:: Grenades gains 25% additonal damage against medium armor ground vehicles.
7. Recycle basic cost return fixed to be 50% for constructed buildings. (While a technically a bug, this directly impacts many slightly exploitive strategies)
*** Other items we have investigated internally ***
8. Investigated changes to the Arbiter rage power for heal and strength, but with internal data and looking closely at what we had time to do for the upcoming title update, we have decided the data did not warrent a change to the Arbiter at this time.
9. Investigated mainline infantry base damage against air but looking at the numbers and the data from games played, we feel that the infantry are within bounds for their role at this time.
10. Investigating reports of shield generator exploit that causes shields covenant base shields to re-raise during combat, we have a repro (thanks to those that sent in the repro steps) and we are looking at a fix now to hopefully include in the title update.
11. As I have noted before the reinforcement exploit with cutter MAC blast is fixed in this title update.
*** One additonal change which impacts balance ***
12. *new* Locked down bases when unlocked will now release units inside very quickly, which means that when under attack a player can now build a fighting force while locked down and then release them all at once instead of having them destroyed peacemeal. Fighting off a rush or hiding what you a building against scouts is now a viable choice for both the UNSC and the Covenant.
note: there are other bug fixes in the title update as well but those will be covered when we wrap up the title update and write the final patch notes.
Halo Wars artists blog – how to make Halo look like Halo… without Bungie!
Paul Slusser talks today about how the artists at Ensemble tackled the prospect of creating art for an existing IP. The blog notes that it was not a simple copy and paste from Bungies art files and that Ensemble had to put alot of work in from scratch designing art models for units and buildings. A good read, you can find an extract and link to the blog below:
First thing we always do is start gathering as much reference material as we can find; downloading screenshots from the internet, getting marketing material from Microsoft, and the most obvious one, asking Bungie for all their art files. That last one seems like a no brainer right? After all we are both part of Microsoft and they own everything, right? Nope. As it turns out it’s really hard to get in contact with someone at another studio to provide assistance, when that company was behind schedule on their latest installment of Halo AND we had no idea about the negotiations they were having with Microsoft about becoming an independent studio again. It didn’t take long to realize that our concept department would be on their own in figuring out this art style.
The UNSC and Forerunner had to maintain the same geometry angles throughout their structures and vehicles while the Covenant had to maintain the same curvy organic look in theirs. The UNSC vehicles and Spartan armor all had a similar green metallic look that we tried to emulate with our materials. Using a similar Army green with a broad, gold, specular highlight worked really well for our camera distance and sun angle.
Continuing with the Halo Wars map blogs – “Docks” is added today
Today’s map blog update with the developers is the 2v2 map “Docks”. This time skirmish map designer Justin Rouse and Community Manager Duncan “Aloysius” Stanley take us through thier tips and experiences. The excerpt and link to the blog can be found below:
Because of the choke point and decent travel time from one side to the other early in the game, it’s pretty safe too boom up. This is why I really like using Cutter and elephant/marine rushing on this map. If I can setup my Elephant near the enemy bases and get it pumping I can slow down their boom sometimes, even keeping them off the open base location near their start area while my partner boom/techs freely.
Docks 2v2 (HaloWars.com)
Anthony Long – Composes excellent Halo Wars five long years music video
Anthony Long, a fan of the Halo Wars Soundtrack originally composed by Stephen Rippy has uploaded a YouTube video of his own version of the Spirit of Fire music piece. I think you will agree that this is an excellent version and I am sure Stephen Rippy would be proud of a fans hard work on this. You can see the video below and a link to the original YouTube page. You can also find a direct download of the MP3. I encourage you to leave comments on the YouTube webpage and rate the video if you like it.
“That’s a really cool interpretation of “Spirit of Fire” – I like it quite a bit and am really pleased that the theme meant enough to inspire some creativity.” – Stephen Rippy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S8sos-DjjA
MP3 Download:
