Aug 22.2017 — Change Log

PATCH NOTES

Echo Arena Patch Highlights

NEW FEATURE: PARTIES

Parties, How Do They Work?
We’re very excited to deploy our first implementation of parties! Here’s a full rundown of how to start or join your first party:

Party Prep
Before you start your party, you’ll first need to make sure that you have the players you’d like to invite added to your Oculus friends list. As a heads up, if you’re just now adding them it may take up to half an hour for the Oculus friends system to refresh and show them on the Echo Arena Arm Computer.

Additionally, you’ll want to update your Oculus settings to make sure your Activity isn’t set to “Only Me”, as this may prevent you from showing up on the friends list for invites. You can do this by going into your Oculus settings, selecting “Privacy”, choosing “Privacy Settings” then clicking on the “Change” button next to “Activity” and adjusting your settings to “Friends” or “Anyone” (whichever you’re more comfortable with). If you don’t see your friends on your invite list, you can let them know they may need to update their settings as well

Since you may be adding lots of new players, you might also use this opportunity to change your “Real Name” and “Friend List” settings.

Party Chat
To communicate with your Echo Arena party, you can use the built-in Oculus party voice chat or, if you prefer, a 3rd party tool such as Discord (there’s a community Discord with voice chat rooms available), Ventrilo, or TeamSpeak.

To start an Oculus party voice chat (which supports a maximum of three players), use the Oculus Home button and navigate to your friends list. Click on your friends you’re in an Echo Arena party with then select “Start a party”. To learn more about Oculus parties and rooms, check out this Oculus blog post.

Party Invites
Once you and your friends are ready, enter the Echo Arena lobby and open up your Arm Computer (for those new to the AC, it’s located on your left wrist and you can open it by using your index finger on the slider). The third tab on the bottom is your Oculus friends tab — click on that to see a list of your Oculus friends that you can invite (use your index finger again to scroll the list up and down). To invite them, click on the orange icon to the right of their name, then confirm the invitation by clicking on checkmark icon.

Once your friends have accepted their party invites, they’ll appear in the second tab (your party tab) and you are now considered the “Party Leader”. The Party Leader is the only player who can invite additional players to the party and start matchmaking.

Up to six players can be in a party, however if you have more than three players in a party you will not be able to matchmake (we needed to allow up to six players in anticipation of private matches, which are coming soon).

Party Play
Once the party’s ready to matchmake and there are three or less party members, the Party Leader can select “Find Match” to begin matchmaking.

If you’d like to invite a friend into an in-progress match and there is an empty space on your team, you can do so through the Arm Computer (if you’re the Party Leader or aren’t in a party yet).

Party Bugs
Our goal was to get parties into your hands as soon as we could, and as such there are some bugs to be aware of when using this new feature — please check the “Known Issues” section below for the ones we’re currently tracking.

We’ll be updating quickly to resolve these bugs (especially the critical ones that aren’t due to backend limitations); if you encounter any additional bugs that aren’t listed, please let us know in the support channels on the community Discord.

NEW FEATURE: TIEBREAKER

Tiebreakers will now occur if a match ends and both teams’ scores are the same. Each tiebreaker round will be 2 minutes long; if no team scores during the round, all players will be reset to the starting area and a new tiebreaker round will begin. This will repeat until a team scores. During a tiebreaker round, the team that scores a goal first will be declared the winner of the match.

UPDATE: POST-GOAL PUNCHING FUNCTIONALITY REMOVED

Baby, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me no more.
To prevent Bad Manners during the post-goal downtime, we’ve disabled the ability to stun others during this time period. We recommend healthy alternatives like dancing, air guitar solos, and commending others on their plays (allies and opponents alike)!

Bug Fixes

1. Launch tunnels should no longer be closed for players late-joining a match.
2. Fixed a crash that could occur when players muted themselves.
3. Holding a prop while joining a match should no longer result in an application hang.
4. Fixed a bug that caused the stun SFX/VFX to not activate for the player who got stunned.
5. Activating the launcher after a goal will no longer let players deploy the launcher early in the next round.
6. The rotation speed limit can no longer be overwritten in the JSON file; it is limited by the in-game setting.
7. Players should no longer boot to the single player main menu when launching the Echo Arena app.

Known Issues

Critical

• Players using the Windows 7 operating system are reporting a high frequency of connection errors such as “Cannot Connect to Server” at the main menu, or getting a blackscreen when connecting to a match and getting dropped back to the main menu. Players who have updated to Windows 10 report that these issues have almost entirely subsided.
• If a player rejects a party invitation, they will be unable to receive and/or accept a party invitation by the same Party Leader. To resolve this, the Party Leader will need to reboot their game client.
• If any party members leave a party, the Party Leader will need to reboot the game client before they can join the same party again. This is the result of a limitation due to the backend system to prevent party invite spamming and not a bug, but we wanted to add it here to provide more clarity on why this happens.
• Party invites will appear to come from “Lobby Member” in place of where the Party Leader’s username should appear. If you’re planning to invite someone to a party, make sure to let them know using one of the options mentioned in the “Party Chat” section above.

Parties

• The Arm Computer does not update when the Party Leader begins matchmaking; Party Leaders, make sure to check the “Party Chat” section above for some ways to communicate with your party.
• There is currently not an indicator on the matchmaking podium to indicate why the “Find Match” option is locked when the party has four or more members. As a reminder, the current maximum party size allowed in matchmaking is three.
• The Oculus friends list in the Arm Computer does not consistently display all friends. This may be related to the privacy settings we mentioned in “Party Prep”.
• If a player who was kicked from a party sends a party invite to the previous Party Leader and they accept it, the name of the previous Party Leader will appear blank on the new Party Leader’s party tab in the Arm Computer. It’s best to reboot the game client before sending a party invite (or reinviting) a player you were previously in a party with.
• Party member names appear blank in the Arm Computer’s party tab if the party member joins while it’s open. Close and reopen the Arm Computer to resolve this issue.
• The Party Leader does not receive any visual or audio notifications when players join or leave the party. Check the party tab in the Arm Computer to see who has joined or left, and check the “Party Chat” section above for some cross-lobby communication options available to keep in touch with your party.
• The Party Leader icon doesn’t update when a new Party Leader is promoted.
• The party invite message does not clear from the Arm Computer when a player accepts the invite using the Oculus UI.
• Party icons on the Lobby list do not update when changes occur to party status.
• There is no notification when a party invite is rejected.

General

• If you’re receiving a “Service Unavailable” error when attempting to play Echo Arena, please try uninstalling the Echo Arena Open Beta if it’s still in your Oculus Library, as this seems to be the source of the issue.

Compatibility & Performance

• AVG has been the source of multiple crashes due to it blocking parts of Echo Arena. If you find that you’re crashing on startup, when pressing “Play/Start Game”, or seeing a black starfield when attempting to play, please check AVG to see if it’s been blocking “threats” related to Echo Arena.
• McAfee is blocking the Echo Arena executable file which can result in errors or crashes when attempting to run the game. You can add EchoArena.exe as an excluded file from realtime scanning in McAfee LiveSafe by right-clicking on the McAfee Icon in the system tray > Change Settings > Real-time Scanning > Excluded Files > Add File > Browse to EchoArena.exe and add to Excluded Files.