Version 2.2.1 is live. There are no new features in this one, and that is deliberate. After the tutorial rework in 2.2.0 we went back over the tour properly, and this release is what came out of it: a set of fixes to the parts of training that were quietly failing, plus a single balance change to the very first mission.
This is a patch, so it forces nothing. Your current build keeps working. The web version updates itself, and a fresh Android build is on the download page for anyone who wants it.
What was going wrong with training
The tour points at a control and asks you to use it. That works right up until you are not standing where the step thinks you are, and then it fell apart in a way that was hard to spot from the outside: it would carry on repeating an instruction for a screen you had already left, with nothing highlighted and no route back.
We audited all 18 steps against five different places a player can actually be standing, took the three defects that were reported to us, and then played the whole tour end to end on a fresh account. That turned up six more instances of the same underlying fault.
The fixes
- A step that loses you now tells you how to get back, rather than repeating on-screen instructions for a screen you are not on. This was the widest fault of the lot: four separate steps went on talking about your profile after you had closed it
- The NEXT button on the explanation panels stays on screen. On a phone browser it could sit below the fold, which meant that on some phones you simply could not reach it
- Returning to unfinished training is cleaner. You get the "Training in progress" prompt and nothing else, with the guidance appearing after you press CARRY ON. CARRY ON also leaves you where you are standing instead of moving you somewhere
- The last step of the tour can no longer strand you away from the boss screen
- The buy-your-first-weapon step keeps its guidance inside the buy sheet, instead of losing it behind the sheet
- Four steps that pointed into a hidden sub-tab now show you the sub-tab first, so you are not hunting for something that is not on screen
- The first-mission step asks for one mission and then greys out RE-DEPLOY, telling you to close the popup and carry on, rather than leaving you sitting there running it again
- Also fixed: a step that could be completed from the wrong tab entirely, a stray highlight on the Home tab during a step that never mentions it, and the instruction card covering the top bar at the exact moment the instruction was "tap your Cash in the top bar"
One balance change, and why
"Report for Duty" is the guaranteed-success mission every new commander starts on. It now pays 3 XP and about $900 at one star, down from 8 XP and $1,200.
That is a nerf, so here is the reasoning. It costs 1 Energy and it cannot fail. "Run the Live-Fire Range", the mission directly after it, costs the same 1 Energy and can fail. Report for Duty was paying more than it. A guaranteed win should not out-pay a mission you can lose, so it now sits one notch below: a guaranteed 3, or a risky 4.
The other half of it is that Report for Duty used to carry the tutorial. It does not any more, and the boosted reward that existed to push a new account through it stopped being paid for when the tour was reworked.
What has not changed: it is still a guaranteed 100% success, and it still retires at Level 15. No other mission moved at all, and nothing you have already earned is touched.
Get the update
Because this is a patch rather than a forced update, nothing stops working if you sit this one out. The browser version updates itself the next time you open it.
If something in the tour still does not behave, tell us. The fixes above exist because people reported them. Feedback goes in the discussions channel on Discord.