The following post is from Producer Jason Hughes:

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Hello Everyone!

It's been a little while since we've chatted but hopefully everyone is doing really, really well. We've see a lot happen with HAWKEN over the past few weeks and there is a lot to talk about. We also want to welcome all of those new to the game; I've seen a great mix of new and familiar faces in matches lately! HAWKEN is now in front of a much larger audience and we're quite happy with the boost in population as I'm sure you veteran players are as well.

We'll start back with more regular Development Update postings now that some of the extra work needed to get HAWKEN up and running on Steam is complete. I know there is a lot everyone would like to hear about, so we will break things up into smaller bites for now. At this moment, I'm opening my draft of this post while on the couch with the windows open, television on. It's a nice sunny and warm Sunday afternoon here in California. I'm drinking some warm coffee with just a tad of whipped cream on the top because...Sundays.

G2 MECH RELEASE

We released something new with the G2 Assault mech in a recent update and we admit there was some confusion about the intention behind it. We plan on making additional UI adjustments to provide more clarity to potential buyers, as this seemed to be the main reason for the confusion.

The G2 series of mechs is a way to expand upon mechs already existing in some fun and unique ways. They aren't necessarily intended to be competitively focused mechs and they have the potential to be more of a fun novelty for players. Contrary to some beliefs we do not have multiple mechs that we're just sitting on waiting to release. We do have a nice selection of mech models already created but it still takes time to design, engineer, animate, test and polish everything associated with a release. The G2s are a way to help fill in the voids between bigger releases since even now we are a few months away from the next major mech release.

So why not just add G2 options onto the existing mechs? Unfortunately that would contribute to balancing and technical nightmares. It makes much more sense to have them as additional options for players and add some incentives to spend time leveling up a mech already owned. We do indeed plan to continue with the G2 mech line although we don't have details available for the next one yet.

VOIP STATUS

We are very much aware of the issues plaguing VOIP at the moment and it's unfortunate we aren't able to have something working 100% for our players. It only works some of the time and we are working to address that. Voice communication is deeply integrated into our platform SDK and as there is no quick and easy fix. We are exploring solutions which include potentially ripping out what we have and replacing it with something else but that's not ideal. We have a finite amount of resources and although it's a very high priority issue for us, sometimes there is work for the platform team that takes a higher priority over VOIP fixing. Again, it's important to us and we will continue to keep you up to date on details as they develop.

TEAM BALANCING

We are actively looking into some improvements to team balancing. I don't have details to share just yet because our course of action hasn't been finalized but we wanted to let you know we aren't satisfied with how it's currently functioning. We want to roll out some adjustments sooner rather than later and we'll let you know when we have specifics for you.

DEVELOPMENT STREAMING ON TWITCH

We started something new on Friday which we will have as a weekly event in moving forward. We'll be playing the game with the public, answering questions, giving good stuff away and streaming it all over Twitch. If you missed last Friday we're sorry to hear but be sure to catch us for the show this upcoming Friday! It was fun, the response was quite positive and we want to spend even more time with the great HAWKEN community. Join us and maybe we can get to a few of your questions.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

We assembled a bit of a strike team last week to assist with the higher ticket counts and we apologize for any delay you may have had in a response. I assure you our team is working 7 days a week at all hours of the day and yet still couldn't help as fast as we'd like to. Taking care of customers is absolutely important to us so we had team members like Deuy, ZamboniChaos and Vanashinkaku all chipping in to help last week. What we ask of players is to please reserve the support ticket systems for problems you're experiencing with the game. It is not a system for providing game feedback or for reporting multiple times on one particular issue you may be having. It doesn't get us to a resolution faster and the more we can reduce tickets that don't need immediate attention the better service we can provide.

WHAT'S NEXT

Since appearing on Steam and taking more direct control of patching and deployment, we've provided minor updates (and hotfixes) at a much higher rate than ever before and hopefully that's proven to be good for the game. We're remaining agile and and can complete the process quickly and efficiently. Also, we know the patch size is not ideal for players but unfortunately it's how UE3 functions by default. Sometimes the smallest change can result in an entire package needing to being replaced. We will work on improving this system but you may not see the benefit of it immediately.

Outside of the minor patches, we've been working on our next update which is targeting a release this month. The deadline for content and feature lock was 10 a.m. Monday morning and we'll be spending a couple of weeks stabilizing and bug fixing. This update has a focus on some smaller improvements, bug fixes and adding some cockpit options that weren't there previously. Some new features include offering reticle choices and HUD coloring. We'll also be offering some cockpit decorations which are pretty cool to be honest and we'll share some more details shortly! Patch notes are still being drafted and won't be posted for at least another week as we continue to make fixes.

What's next after what's next? I'll work with ZamboniChaos on some ways that we can share some of what's on the horizon. We want to be able to provide some visibility on what we're working on yet still be able to account for shifts in priorities and emergent work. The last couple of months were not small and required a significant investment in effort by all team members in preparation for this past week. It doesn't always result in bullet point features to get excited about but it does impact your gameplay experience in a positive way.

WRAPPING UP

Thanks for taking the time to read this development update! If you didn't have your particular topic of interest addressed, we'll try to get to it in the next posting. The community support of the game means the world to everyone in the company and we will continue to work every single day making HAWKEN as fun as we can. Thanks everyone, we'll chat again soon and I need a bit more whipped cream for my coffee.

-[HWK]HUGHES

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