THE POSTMORTEM
Well, it certainly has been a strange few days. The game we’re all here to play was not-so-secretly replaced with a turret-suicide mini-game, thanks to an unintended use of Stormguard Banner. It has pained us to hear from players suffering through this in public queue — and has been even harder to watch streams where players just trying to play Vainglory were invaded by trolls using the affectionately named #poopstrat.
We will do everything we can to prevent a broken item from slipping through again, but sometimes the infinite creativity of the player base will uncover … stuff. We did the only thing we knew how, which was to work all through the night to get a fix out as soon as possible — and do it in a way that wouldn’t require an update submission that could take weeks for approval.
It has only been a few days since this exploit emerged, but it feels like years … and if you’re wondering “What took so long?” there are quite a few reasons:
First, we tried to see if there was a way to change Stormguard Banner without eliminating its turret effectiveness. This is because its appropriate use by a Roamer makes that player feel more useful and also helps games move along at a reasonable pace. But every variation we tried ended in the same sad-panda place: dead turrets everywhere.- After resolving the Stormguard Banner issues, it was important to make sure there weren’t other similar tactics that could result in the same destructive behavior. So we tested hundreds of variations on the #poopstrat theme, ultimately resulting in additional turret changes.
- Next, the team, lead by CaptainNeato, had to find ways to implement desired changes without touching the client code (since we didn’t want to wait potentially weeks for app submission approval). Some elegant solutions proved completely impossible, sometimes for seemingly innocuous reasons such as “the turret health bar is the wrong type” for that kind of change. You should have seen the look on Neato’s face when he realized his first turret-change choice was a non-starter because it required three digits of client-side code, which wasn’t possible with a purely server-side hotfix. This also means that our solutions today may not be our solutions in Update 1.9 because CaptainNeato will have free rein to do what he wants.
- And finally, the QA team headed by BlasterMaster had to run a furious-yet-meticulous fire drill to test all the changes being merged onto live to ensure that by fixing Stormguard Banner and turrets we didn’t introduce new psychoses. This included a monitoring period of radio silence that was more prudent than “Super Evil.”
We know you’ve been on a roller-coaster the past few days. Please know we’ve been in the front car taking those ups and downs with you, and getting just as nauseous with just as much adrenaline and vertigo. But now we believe we’ve stopped the ride, and we can all file off and go about our games. Thanks to all those taking the spontaneous #WarhornPledge or shouting #ILOVEVG. It means a lot, and we’ll try to do better. —PlayoffBeard
LIVE CHANGES
STORMGUARD BANNER
“Let’s go actually play the real Vainglory now.”
- Stormguard Banner no longer affects turrets.
ALL TURRETS
“Back the #$% up.”
-
Turrets now gain bonuses when there are no enemy minions in turret vision range.
-
Turret slice damage (percent-health damage) increased from 4.5% to 7.5%.
-
Turret damage amplification increased from 28% to 45% per successive hit.
-
Turret armor and shield increased by 300-520 based on the in-game timer.
It’s with great pleasure and relief that I can now say “go play!” See you out there.
