Halo Wars title update 4 announced. Meanwhile, Halo Wars wins best strategy game at IGN
Today is a great day for Halo Wars fans kicking off with Robot’s announcement that the fourth title update for Halo Wars will be going live tomorrow on the 18th December. This patch implements many of the proposed fixes as discussed before, these being:
Balance:
Grunts now do more damage to air units
The Scarab now has 25% more health and does 25% more damage
Gremlins now requires 2 reactors to be built
The Arbiter now takes 25% more damage while raging
Hunters now focus their Assault Beam much faster
Brute Chopper is more effective vs. airBug Fixes:
The Cryo/Reactor Glitch has been fixed
The Multiplayer Lobby should now work better for people with misaligned controllers
Y-Abilities should no longer have their cooldowns reset erroneously
Profiles that had problems accruing points in Multiplayer should now be able to gain points properly
Meanwhile over at IGN Halo Wars was awarded the “Best Strategy” game of 2009 on the Xbox 360 platform saying that:
“PC diehards may cry foul at the idea of a real-time strategy game on a console. Halo Wars is enough to silence them. It strips away some of the depth and excessive management required out of a PC game and boils the formula down to quick strategy and exciting confrontations”
Harter Ryan, Executive Producer on Halo Wars at Ensemble Studios who now works at Robot Entertainment had this to say on the official Halo Wars community website:
“We’re proud of Halo Wars and its reception by both the Halo and Xbox 360 communities. Winning IGN’s Strategy Game of the Year is a great honor and is a fine reflection of all the effort that went into creating the game at Ensemble Studios and Microsoft Game Studios.”
Indeed! Congratulations all Ensemblites!
New Halo Wars rank numbers revealed!
Robot Entertainment Community Manager, Duncan Stanley has quickly updated the Halo Wars community with the proposed ranking changes for Halo Wars. Previously the ranking system stood as follows:
| Rank | Score Needed | New Points |
| Recruit | Play 1 Game | Play 1 Game |
| Lieutenant | 25,000 | 15,000 |
| Captain | 60,000 | 30,000 |
| Major | 140,000 | 60,000 |
| Commander | 310,000 | 120,000 |
| Colonel | 700,000 | 240,000 |
| Brigadier | 1,500,000 | 480,000 |
| General | 2,400,000 | 960,000 |
The idea behind this change is to help make the General achievement easier to attain whilst still being relatively difficult. Rest assured, in order to achieve this top achievement players will still need to play alot of Halo Wars. Feedback about this proposed change can be made in the official Halo Wars community forum. – head over there and check out the discussion!
Robot to reduce the number of points to reach General rank in Halo Wars
Robot Entertainment Community Manager Duncan “Aloysius” Stanley has confirmed that Robot intends to reduce the number of points to reach the General rank in Halo Wars. The number of points to reach the rank currently stands at 2,400,000 exp. The number of points has been criticised by some players as taking an unreasonable amount of play time to achieve. In wake of the recent launch of Halo Waypoint on Xbox Live which tracks players achievements across all 360 Halo games (Halo3, Wars and ODST) this should make the top achievement more balanced with other games achievements. Currently the scoring system stands as follows:
| Rank | Score Needed |
| Recruit | Play 1 Game |
| Lieutenant | 25,000 |
| Captain | 60,000 |
| Major | 140,000 |
| Commander | 310,000 |
| Colonel | 700,000 |
| Brigadier | 1,500,000 |
| General | 2,400,000 |
Stand by for announcements for an adjusted scoring / ranking system!
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!
Age 3 Patches have been released!
Quick heads up to Age of Empires players who have been awaiting the latest round of patches this time from Robot Entertainment, the patch is now available for auto download and manual download on the AgeCommunity website. Information can be found below:
Patch Notes:
Age of Empires III: 1.13
Age of Empires III: The War Chiefs 1.05
Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties 1.02
Download:
Click here and choose your game from the list
Age is not forgotten! – New patches for Age of Empires 3
Robot Entertainment has today demonstrated its continued support for the Age of Empires 3 series by releasing a new patch for all three Age 3 games and expansions. I have included a link to the patch notes. The patch should be auto downloaded by your Age client in the next few days. One of the most important things is that the almost rampant double decking glitch has now been fixed – Age players can now rejoice!
Feel free to discuss more in the community forum.
And heres the links to the patch notes:
http://agecommunity.com/downloads/patch_-_1_13.rtf
http://agecommunity.com/downloads/xpatch_-_1_05.rtf
http://agecommunity.com/downloads/ypatch_-_1_02.rtf
Over and out!
Robot listens to fans with Halo Wars patch
A Halo Wars update is coming over Xbox Live courtesy of Robot Entertainment. A recent update on the Halo Wars website confirms that the first balance patch is on the way. Keeping with Ensemble style the patch is based around feedback from fans. Whilst there has been no Ask Sandy for this game, Ex Ensemble Studios members from both Robot and Bonfire have been active on the Halo Wars message board collecting feedback and helping members.
Just to point out though, this patch is NOT DLC
That’s right. You wont find any maps of new gameplay in the update it is just a balance patch for now. You can read the full statement from Robot’s Community Manager “Aloysius” below:
“We’re going to be releasing some information on the upcoming Halo Wars Title Update, or patch, here on HaloWars.com over the next few weeks. This Title Update fixes some matchmaking bugs, balances a few things inside and outside of gameplay, and adds a small feature that fans have been asking for. The Patch was developed around fan feedback, so hopefully players will be happy.
The first piece of news is that the Prophet of Regret’s speed on land has been reduced to match the other leaders. This helps balance the Prophet Rush that was stymieing a lot of players. The second piece of news is that the Flaming Warthog and the Honor Guard Wraith will now be available in Multiplayer battles against other players.
We’ll give you guys more bits of the update here on HaloWars.com so keep checking back. “
