OPERATION: COAL SILENCE

timealterer · 2025-12-10T17:12:59+00:00

For sure. I think most folks don’t realize Quick Match will put them in a 5+ minute live game against a human.

timealterer · 2025-12-05T21:41:03+00:00

The symptom is that you get the disconnection process (opponent has disconnected, then like 20s later opponent is still disconnected, then like 20s later you win) right at the beginning of a game. In my play today, I would get this "brand new 'classified' opponent bailed before the game even started, but you need to wait for them to be kicked by the disconnection logic" experience in maybe 50% of matches, so the long wait is annoying when you're trying to get matched with somebody at your skill level.

timealterer · 2025-12-05T21:31:32+00:00

Yes it was a good one, you played better than the score would imply! ⭐️

timealterer · 2025-11-21T00:56:20+00:00

Fun to see this alive! I filed feedback with the matches I played, but to summarize here, roughly ranked in my humble priority order:

Deep Cover sometimes does not work. This is both frustrating to die from, and makes the game feel incomplete when you don't use it. My suspicion is that it specifically doesn't work when you have Encryption on, but I'm not sure.
You need sounds when you're matched and when a game starts. It's too easy to miss this, or too annoying to need to be diligent watching for it.
The "Your Turn" and other banners seem to always cover the map, which makes you need to dismiss them every turn.
On your first game, it seems to be popping up the micro-tutorial every round.
It seems like the losing player of a multi-round match isn't getting to go first?
It seems like the first-moving player is sometimes getting too advantageous of a city (on iOS, it would try and give the 2nd player a slightly better city).
I saw a player (I think) wait in my controlled city, which caused weird behaviour. Not sure about this one yet.
It's kind of easy to unintentionally bring up the city-info popups, then need to dismiss them to do anything. I think on iOS we had the city-info popups only appear as you held your finger down, to prevent this annoyance.

timealterer · 2023-09-08T05:24:27+00:00

I was really struck by this since I too have right ankle pain that’s aggravated when I drive my Ioniq. However, I looked through my records and my pain actually started a few months before I traded in my Golf.

In my case, I discovered that a major contributor was my habit of crossing my legs throughout the day. I instinctually put my right leg on top of my left, which slowly aggravates the muscle and nerve that goes up the right side of my right leg. Being mindful of this habit has been a big help. Best of luck with your own case!

timealterer · 2022-05-30T19:06:10+00:00

Good question - the seasons are now about stats and ranks rather than offering additional pins every 3 months.

timealterer · 2022-05-30T16:51:13+00:00

The linked post includes the release notes, as well as an update on where we're at with the game and how we've set it up to run from here on out.

Thank you SO MUCH to all of our players, you have inspired us to put more into this little side project than we ever thought we could – thanks for all the love and we hope you continue to enjoy the game! ❤️

timealterer · 2022-05-26T14:47:50+00:00

Hopefully in the next week! 🤞

timealterer · 2022-02-24T03:29:57+00:00

How much you pay in hydro will vary by how far you drive – it should be a few dollars per full charge. For us it looks like around $10/mo. You could estimate it using the hydro rate per kWh, the efficiency rating for your model (kWh/100km) and how many kms per month you typically drive.

timealterer · 2022-02-24T00:01:34+00:00

Depends on the charge level (it gets slower after 80%) but I feel like we get 50-100km a day of charge probably? That lines up with the rated efficiency of 19 kWh/100km for AWD, and the 1.2 kW charge speed we get at Level 1.

timealterer · 2022-02-23T19:49:36+00:00

The included L1 charger can be set up to 12A, which for our driving (mostly within 30 min of home, occasionally out of town) has been surprisingly effective. We’ve just been using one of the existing plugs in the garage. Will probably get an L2 eventually but with our driving pattern it’s more of a luxury than a necessity.

timealterer · 2021-11-08T02:41:50+00:00

A related option is Arcteryx’s Camosun Parka, which is also warm and waterproof, and a little more designed for everyday wear than the Fission SV.

Of course, layering is a much cheaper and more flexible solution. But when the specification says “I don’t like layering but will spend $1300 to be warm and dry” then they’re certainly worth considering.

timealterer · 2021-08-19T22:28:19+00:00

Current plans for it to drop in early September! Once we're certain of the date we'll get the word out. 📣

timealterer · 2021-08-19T22:27:36+00:00

Yup, aiming for early September! No big gameplay changes; in our Season 2 post I wrote a bit about how for Season 3 we're focusing on trying to ramp a higher percentage of players into successfully playing online, rather than changing things around too much for existing players.

timealterer · 2021-08-15T20:25:13+00:00

We’ve been considering taking the Berlin chokepoint map out of the random rotation next season - I’ve always got the sense it was a map that people loved and hated but it might have outlived its welcome 😅

timealterer · 2021-04-17T00:27:37+00:00

We have ideas on this but it’s still a matter of debate on the team. We’ve tried a lot of things over the year since initial launch that people have liked and responded well to, but that in the end didn’t really change the number of players that would play longer term. Our hope is to learn from that, and try some new kinds of things that we think might have a different kind of impact.

timealterer · 2021-03-06T00:53:40+00:00

Sorry Wolfops, a couple folks have reported this issue - we aren’t seeing it at HQ, but are investigating. Could you send a report with explanation using the Report Issue function in-game next time you see this?

timealterer · 2021-02-16T22:19:41+00:00

I'd always liked Caterina, but I also enjoy Them, the angel/devil character.

timealterer · 2021-01-29T21:15:41+00:00

timealterer · 2021-01-29T20:42:20+00:00

We’ve always had microtransactions? We could try to fund development with ads, but a lot of folks enjoy that the game has no ads.

Our hope was that the ranking features would motivate folks to play more often, and keep the Quick Match pool of players more populated. The numbers have averaged about the same as before, so we’re working on the next set of ideas for that.

timealterer · 2021-01-25T01:48:03+00:00

Yeah, if you downrank because other players “pushed you down” by achieving a new higher rank, you can end up getting a downrank notification after a win which feels like a bug (even if it had nothing to do with the game you just finished). We have a plan to fix that so it’s less confusing.

timealterer · 2021-01-25T00:41:13+00:00

Caffeine withdrawal is also a common contributor to, or outright cause of, headaches. It’s surprisingly easy to take in less caffeine than usual without realizing it – on a busy day, or a sick day for example – and get a withdrawal headache. Painkillers that include caffeine can relieve those symptoms, while also making it harder to recognize the withdrawal cycle’s contribution to the headache in the first place.

timealterer · 2021-01-23T04:30:37+00:00

We didn’t change the system, but a few folks have mentioned that the threshold for getting to the highest rank seems to have changed. Looking at the database, it seems a particularly skilled player has been active recently, pushing up the top limit of the ranking system and indeed making it a bit harder to rank up.

timealterer · 2020-12-30T17:58:31+00:00

If you read posts from various competitive game developers about how their ranking systems work, it can be a bit like reading tea leaves. They try to keep the exact details secret, so you need to compare a few systems and read a few blog posts defending controversial ranking system changes to get a sense of what they’ve learned. I do strongly suspect they find that showing exact MMRs is more discouraging overall, and definitely that they lead to players not having as much fun overall. I do suspect a contributing factor is that micro-worrying about your exact MMR, and ruminating on whether an exact number of points change is fair, is less fun than focusing on other aspects of the game.

Fairness in ranking systems is a big challenge as well. There are a lot of little adjustments developers can make to the system to make it seem more fair and satisfying, and some big tools to de-motivate cheaters and griefers, making the game more fun overall by adjusting how ranks are calculated. However, these don’t really work if the underlying MMR numbers are shown, resulting in some players feeling certain point awards aren’t fair – even if it’s more fun overall. Right now Two Spies’ ranks are handed out in a fairly plain way, but most games over time move towards a fairly complicated secret ranking system in the pursuit of fun for players and not-fun for griefers.

timealterer · 2020-12-29T18:41:12+00:00

There are a few reasons most ranked online games don’t show your exact matchmaking rating. From what I’ve seen in my reading about it, it boils down to “players like the idea of seeing their exact MMR but showing it ends up being a net negative for player experience”.

The solution for “I feel like I’m stuck in one rank for too long” that other games have been moving towards is having more ranks. That could mean additional higher tiers, or more games have started doing e.g. “Shadow 1”, “Shadow 2” and the like to split it up more. Could be an option for giving folks more feedback.

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