Haswell

Explanation by SS:

Soooo, we had a little fun with a "minor secret" that SS first hinted on Official. This is related to the story update posted yesterday, it turns out there's a hidden message within the story that is only revealed by viewing the page source. https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/storyline-campaign-story-update Folks on the ArmoredLabs Community Discord started analysing the the story inside out for any further clues, the majority of us gravitated on "instance node" and "instance 572". @Azdule first made the connection between nodes and shortened links used on the AW site. In the context of this clue, "node 572" leads to this particular page: https://aw.my.games/us/node/572 https://aw.my.games/en/about/game-features/how-we-balance-vehicles This is where we hit a wall, there were no obvious clues to lead to another step. After around 12 hours of fruitless searching I fired up a web crawler to scour through the entire AW site for a hail mary shot, while others explored other possibilities such as capitalized letters, the significance of "572", and the location of Thorpe's HQ. This process took another 7 hours, but here's the result: The results of the crawl can be found here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/70jqy7ftlfar14r/crawl.csv/file Out of sheer dumb luck, we found the end of the secret, as well as more tidbits about the game. https://aw.my.games/en/minor-secret-uncovered https://aw.my.games/en/vickers-skin-concept However, we are still dumbfound on how we were supposed to get from the first clue - the hidden message - to the end of the secret. We are still trying to work this out, but I'm posting how we got to the end here for the record. If anybody have any more ideas, please help! I feel dirty for skipping all the way to the end without knowing how we were supposed to get there.

Incoming 50 shades of Perihelion Grey https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/storyline-campaign-story-update

In other news, we will also be hosting the speedrun marathon this weekend for Weekend Warrior, for everybody to get their 50 games and completing the mission. I'd be damned if we have to lose manpower or vehicles this early in the campaign. Also, this idiot right here. Don't be like this idiot. DON'T FUCKING DO THE PVP MISSION.

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/storyline-campaign-episode-1-prizes

Teaser for the Black Mamba skin. Why does it have to be black and not hot pink...

Definitely feels that way, considering how the power difference between tier 6 and 7 got so blurred together they might as well all be at the same tier. Having higher alpha at tier 6 than tier 7 is definitely working as intended, right? Or nearly 8k DPM?

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/development-vanguard-raid

More gems from the shitshow: What's the point of a ready rack when the intra is just as long as the single shot reload? Chieftian 900 pike nose is now flat. Completely flat. VT4, 96B, 99A and 99A2 are now DPM gods at their tiers. M51 Isherman is the undisputed god in the tier 1-3 bracket, while also having higher DPM than most tier 10s. Expeditionary Tank unmanned turret now takes full damage. BVP manned turret now takes reduced, unmanned turret damage.

Found the actual quote:

SS also hinted that this raid will be different from the previous ones. New mechanics perhaps? Grindfest going from bad to worse?

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/storyline-campaign-update-october-11

"Tier 1 vehicle armor reaching 1 meter thick is intended" - balance designer I don't want to hear ANYBODY arguing for historical accuracy or realism ever again, enjoy your Sherman with 1 meter thick armor.

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/maintenance-october-11

The cooldowns for smoke generators and smoke grenades at lower tiers never got improved to 0.33 standard, they still use the same 0.32 reload times.

The time frame for Reinforcements got extended, as promised. https://aw.my.games/en/mission-reinforcements Also, if you haven't gotten your 50 games in this weekend for War Games, don't fret! You will have another chance next weekend to continue your progress, ArmoredLabs will continue hosting the speedrun marathons to get as many players completing the mission as possible!

Just some examples of how fast we are speedrunning through AN, the average time of my platoon was 21-23 minutes per full run (4 chapters). We have basically zero coordination and just kept moving forward at all times, there is no complex strategy involved in this. Replays for one of the runs if anybody are interested in watching our playthrough: https://www.mediafire.com/file/8izcur3pav9unwe/speeeeed.7z/file This is actually fun to try and optimize our speedrun routes, avoiding obstacles and terrain that would slow us down and ignoring enemies. Will definitely continue this weekend, come join us!

An update on the SLEP mission:

I'm doing a thing for this, come join!

Just going to update the participant list one more time, as per the article. https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/storyline-campaign-new-missions-available There are 707 players on the list. The campaign rules state that at least 45% participation rate is required for a solid victory on missions, this means at least 319 players (318.15, rounded up) must complete the missions for them to succeed. Again, 319 players must complete the missions.

Need to emphasis this point: DO NOT FUCKING DO BETRAYAL. The reason for this is that if the mission succeeds OR fails in any way, we will have effectively attacked the US Army as described in the story. This means any further legitimate opportunities with them will be effectively lost, and we may have to directly fight them in a much more difficult (and grindy) mission later on. If the mission gains 15-35% participation, we will LOSE the most played vehicle and suffer manpower losses. As long as the participation remains under 15%, it will count as not attempted and we will "win" this mission. The only winning move is to not play. Don't. Fucking. Do it.

When things get stealth changed and not necessarily for the better, yes. Have a 9.8k dpm 99A2.

Centralized thread to contain all the rage and despair, after seeing the quality results of the October 7 update. Notes for reference: Note: there have been more changes to higher tier vehicles as well, they weren't documented in the patch notes. Feedback on such changes should be noted here as well for completeness.

https://aw.my.games/en/news/general/maintenance-october-7 Low tier hell hole is about to get worse.

Just a party to welcome you two!