August 17, 2023
Thank you all who attended the Q&A session this Monday. Below is a summary of the transcript. We want to give a big thank you for those who participated in the session. As a disclaimer, these are subject to change based on your feedback! We want to collaborate with you to create the best possible product. We have plans to get this in your hands within the next couple of weeks. We will test things and work with the community on making sure we can create a better experience over time.
We'll have more of these snapshots of development as we progress. As a community member, these are great moments to share your thoughts with the design team & allow us to integrate feedback. We plan on showing off some of the changes before the big patch.
Q: When is this planning to go live?
A: We are planning to push this update live within the next two weeks.
Q: Will there be a wipe for this update?
A: Since we’re reworking masteries and gear, there is a high chance that we’ll need to wipe unless we can find a way to transfer information easily. We’ll update based on what we discover. If we do, we will compensate players based on some level of progress they’ve made during this season. If we need to do that, we'll carry over all of the things that you’ve basically earned, and then we will give everybody the same pass for a new season. So if this season turns out to be shorter, whoever got the season pass will just get the same exact thing again for the new season, so there won't be any loss to anybody.
Q: What are your plans for improving the map environments and variety?
A: Right now we have three map sets with a variety of different rooms. There's another map set that's going to be coming hopefully within the next 30 days that will look different. Given the new structure the maps will have different shapes and different locations for the hotspots, we’re also working on other environments that will make things look visually different.
Q: Will there be melee weapon wraps?
A: Yes.
Q: Will there be boss fights or raid mechanics for the end of some games?
A: We plan to add more bots to the game. You'll see some again in the next 30 days or so. We are planning to create rooms that will give you more difficult enemies to fight for better loot. Bosses we’ve talked about but may be something we look at in the longer term.
Q: Will you change the refresh time in the shop to something shorter than 24hrs?
A:. Yeah, we'll probably create something to lower the shop refresh time.
Q: Will players be getting a larger stash since they have to carry armor now?
A: We’ll look into it but things should stay mostly the same. We’ll adjust as we go. Players do need to get more stash space earlier on so we plan on adjusting how quickly players get stash tabs and safe slots.
Q: Will the game be released on console?
A: Yes. We are working towards a console version and it’s planned to release before the end of the year.
Q: Will there be a trade system?
A: Trade systems have different pros and cons associated with them, so we are looking at what is the best way to implement one. We're trying to create some kind of trade system, although we want to make sure that it doesn't become something for players to come in and make real money transactions out of it. So there's some things we can do that are less problematic. One of the things we'll evaluate is having an auction house for crafting materials. That's the kind of thing that's hard for people to necessarily use real money for selling, but it still lets players trade a variety of things.
Q: Will the high security rooms always be in the middle of the room?
A: The high security rooms are not always in the middle of the map. As I showed you in the first map, they were located towards the right side. They will be at different places on different maps that have different structures. There is a random element as to where you spawn as well and how far away you'll be from those high security areas. Then there's a whole strategy that you have to think about. If you're there first and you have to fight the really difficult bots, is that what you want to do?
Or do you want to let other players fight the bots? We also have a function right now that we'll be testing, which is when you call in the more difficult bots. It alerts other players to you.
Once we test it, we'll see if people like that or not. That's something that could be in as well. This way people are notified when the high level loot is coming in and if they want to fight over it.
Q: When will the level 50+ map be released?
A: Due to the size of the player base now, it's really problematic to put it out, because you just won't be able to get matches. So, I think our intention is to just put this out as fast as we can.
We'll either give you this update very soon (two weeks) or we'll turn on level 50 to let people play the next security level.
Q: Will classes have more specific abilities they can use/unlock?
A: Yeah, to start off with, we've just given players a couple of abilities, but we'll most likely have a limited number of classes with more selections. Both on perks and abilities that you can use within a class. So, there'll be a set of classes, and then hopefully, you'll get to do some customizations that cater more to your playstyle.
Q: Will the game be cross platform once it comes out on console?
A: The game will be cross platform but it's going to match players based on input type. So, controller players play with other controller players, keyboard players play with other keyboard players.
Q: Do you plan on making any changes to the armor system?
A: We're looking to implement a slightly more radical system with the armor like some of the other games have, and we'll just decide if that it's enjoyable or not. One is movement speed versus the level of armor that you have, so armor that can take on more damage versus moving slower versus being lighter. We'll see how that basically plays out.
Q: Do you plan on updating the contract/mission system?
A: We plan on putting a much more comprehensive mission system in. Players will have a variety of objectives to do within the match itself. So you may not care about going out and raiding the highest level of loot. You might just look for the medical room and have a mission to basically interact with an NPC there to revive him and have him escape, or find a particular key card, things of that nature. We’re probably still like a month away before that's in.
Q: Will you create an open, on planet map?
A: Right now we do not have an open world map, but we will have maps with more open spaces in them.
Q: Are you adding controller support?
A: Controller support is actually being worked on right now. The first pass, which is controller support for the PC, should be out over the next 30 or so days. But that won’t be full controller support for every single thing. You can more so expect that with the console release.
Q: How do you plan on letting lower level players play with their higher level friends?
A: In theory, this should not be too much of an issue within this new format because it just depends on what players want to go after.
So if they're just going for low level loot or if they're going for the medium areas or if they're going for the high areas, they have the chance to succeed. But one of the things that you'll see in this is a much higher TTK. It's going to be much tighter than it was before. So now it's not a matter of somebody being able to kill you twice as fast with twice the health, that whole thing will be more condensed to a degree. So you should be able to have more fair fights, even though there will be differences, obviously both on the type of perks that we get and some of the damage, but it should be more balanced.
Q: Will the engineering perk still work the same?
A: Yes. Engineering is still similar to the way that it works now. You'll just have to find a piece of, let's say, armor or weapon or perk or something that gives you the ability to open the engineering chest.
Q: Will you add more safe containers?
A: We’ll look into as we develop but now inventory will stay mostly the same. We will allow for safe containers to be unlocked earlier for players that did not purchase the Founders Pack.
Q: Do you plan on adding more weapons?
Q: As far as weapons go, we intend to add a bunch more unique weapons. Since we have the mythic weapons. Those will be introduced either more frequently or have more variations of weapons available more frequently in the game. Same with armor. We're looking to create a lot more variation.
Q: Will you ever add four person squads?
A: We'll have to test that. Right now three player squads let people also come in with two. Once you get to four, it becomes a much more of a problem. So I'm not sure what we will do with that, but that's not in the short term for changes.
Q: Will you add private lobbies?
A: We do want to add private lobbies at some point but I'm guessing that's still a couple months away at this point.
Q: How will the progression change?
A: We'll also probably change around some of the XP progression to be more mission based. Under that scenario you're more working towards leveling specific things, and you can decide what to level based on what's important to you.
Q: Will you add more recoil to guns and raise the skill ceiling a bit?
A: There probably will be more recoil added to the game because we’ll add more things that you can find to reduce the recoil. However, that will be very dependent on the gun itself, so ideally we add more weapons that have some other benefits but have higher recoil. Then you can lower it with different types of enhancements.
Q: Are there plans to add an end of match screen?
A: We plan to add a lot more information that tells you exactly what happened. That's coming, it's just waiting on things just like anybody else.
Q: Will you add a kill cam?
A: We're not sure about if that's giving too much information right now because if you're in a party and you get a kill cam, you get to see the enemy's information a little too readily, so that may not happen.
Q: Will you add a feature that allows players to sell straight from the backpack and stash?
A: Yes.
Q: Will you add perks or ways to increase movement speed in the game?
A: That will probably go with the armor that we're evaluating right now. So, people can decide if they want to be heavier and slower or faster and more nimble.
Q: Will players be able to ping areas on the larger map?
A: You should be able to ping on the big map now. Tell your friends where you want to go or what you want to do. There's a set of information on there that's going to be available to everyone.
Q: How will crafting change with these armor mastery changes?
A: Crafting is not going to be significantly different, although we're looking at a couple of options. The main form of crafting is still going to be the same. As an example, if you want to create a certain type of armor or you want to create a specific type of weapon, you'll just craft those, and it will have the rolls that are associated with it. Hopefully we can also add additions to the crafting area that you can upgrade to give you different types of benefits. So we'd rather move a lot more of the progression to the vendors, your hideout area, and other areas like that, which will allow you to consistently bring better gear into raids versus just making everybody kind of go slowly through a loot grind.
It's just that, instead of mastery rolling, 2 engineering, 1 recon, for example, it's just going to roll for higher thresholds of masteries, like engineering 4, for example which means that you can open up special crates. That's the type of roll that you're going to get.
Q: Will players be able to upgrade armor to get the mastery they want?
A: We will also look at some modifications and evaluate it to see if we want to do things like here's a way to upgrade a piece of armor in terms of a rarity of something along those lines.
Q: Are you planning on localizing the game?
A: Different languages support is being planned and we're actually all working towards that right now. The plan is to have it translated to several languages over the next couple of months.
Q: Will you add different graphics options to the game?
A: We might add some additional graphic options, but they are very limited since we're using the latest with Unreal 5. There are currently some limitations of what you can and can't do with it. We are going to be moving to a newer version, 5.2, and that will probably give us some more options, but that's still a month or so away before we can do that.
Q: Will I be able to see player loadouts or abilities/details while playing against others?
A: Yeah, that's something that we can look at. We’re also adding match details to show how many people and how many kills you got and who killed. That would be at the end of the match screen, which we are planning to put in.
Q: Will there be new bots added?
A: Yes. Hopefully those will be in within a month at the most. I know there’s this crazy spider humanoid bot that’s going to be coming in. We're also going to put more interesting movement capabilities on the bots. For those of you that remember the switchblade and the way it behaved originally versus the changes that we made to it, where it can leap now and go after you, a lot more bots are going to get those types of treatment. So we do want to make the bots more interesting and more deadly whenever we can.
Q: How will players know if somebody is stronger or weaker in a raid from a visual standpoint?
A: We've actually had a few debates on that. I think what we're going to do is see how it feels under the new system and whether people think we still need to do something. So just armor level is not necessarily as meaningful because you have a whole bunch of different pieces of armor on you with different rarities. But we might be able to say, for example, if a primary piece is chest and you see hitmarkers of some color, we might be able to do some things along those lines.
Q: Do you plan on adding clans/guilds to the game?
A: We definitely want to add clans or guilds in the future but that's not in the short term at this point.
Q: Will you be adjusting the time it takes to use health/shield packs?
A: The healing time is still based just purely on the amount of health that you have. So, for example, in the testing that we're doing internally, you start with 100 health. It started at 150, and the healing packs healed 50% of your health over the same amount of time as it did before.
Q: Will the prices for crafting be adjusted?
A: I think for crafting materials, we're also planning to lower the costs. Our goal is for it to be much easier to craft things.
Q: How common will it be to find armor as loot during a match?
A: For people that have concerns with the armor drops, you won't have to worry about the masteries as much. You'll be able to find that type of loot more readily so it won't feel abrasive. It'll be a lot more like weapons now where people can get weapons easily and it's just a matter of did you find the exact thing that you want?
Q: What measures have you taken against cheaters, aimbotters, and hackers?
A: We obviously ban them as we see them. We've actually been banning a good amount of them and the automated machine learning system has been doing a really good job in removing most of the really nasty ones. We ask that you report these players through the game and Discord. We've started hardware banning people as well. So if we see any kind of repeated offenders, or even if they're not repeat, but blatantly obvious hacking, then we just give them a hardware ban at that particular point.
Q: Will there be squad only voice chat?
A: We definitely plan to have it.
Q: Will you add more ammo space?
A: We feel we gave plenty of ammo space, but obviously we’ll need to look at that under the new armor system, but you should have enough.
Q: Will there be a visual difference between armor rarity in-match?
A: There is currently not a visual difference between armor levels, because we still have the visuals associated with the skins. We have talked about several alternative paths if we want to show it, for example, either using color or some other visual elements to indicate armor rarity. So, we'll see after we start playing and getting the community feedback how we can best address that.
Q: Will you add more servers?
A: As far as servers, like North America West, & more EU servers. The hope is with the new system that lets you consolidate all the queues together, we are able to put more servers out that are more localized because the current system just requires to have so many queues that the user base gets separated a lot.
So without having all those queues available, we're able to provide more servers with better ping to local areas.
Q: Will there be an option to increase the size of my inventory?
A: That's actually something that we are looking at. We may experiment with something that only has a few slots versus more slots. That way people can also experiment with that. Especially if we tie it to movement speed like a lot of the other games do, so you can decide to be a loot goblin with a lot of things that are heavy and each thing that you carry will slow you down. Or you can go with light and just look for the few rare things that you want.
Q: Can we put these changes to a community vote?
A: Putting things to a vote is very difficult until players actually test it. So what we'll do is we'll put the changes in and then we'll ask for feedback. So, what we'll do after we make changes is two things. One, we'll just look at the data and see what that says. Secondly, we'll ask the player base how they feel about it and what seems to work and what doesn't work with it. That's how we typically make changes. Unfortunately, however people theorize things, it's often different than how it feels to play it.
Q: Will there be an opportunity for a more difficult/hardcore mode with friendly fire in the future?
A: It's possible, but we don't have quite the user base for it now. It may be one of those specialty missions that have a variety of different ways to play, that will get kind of introduced and revolve around, and we could definitely have much harder game modes for people to play.
Q: How will escape pods work?
A: The new escape pods that we're testing out actually just let you activate it. And then everybody in your team can actually go through that same escape pod. So it opens up, let's say, for 15 seconds and then closes back again, but it doesn't disappear. So it's more of an escape station that people can go through over and over again on the map versus being a one time use.
Q: Are we going to be able to bring more than six shields and healing packs with the raid with us?
A: That might just end up being dependent on the armor or perks. For instance you may find armor that allows you to bring in more healing and shields into a raid where you can bring more healing and more shields, but they might be slower to heal or another aspect to it.
Q: Will you consider adding loose loot to the map?
A: We’ll look into considering loose loot but at the moment we plan on having less crates with more loot in crates making the looting experience feel less repetitive and more rewarding. At the moment it's more of a UI/UX concern.
Q: Can you separate armor and mastery, allowing mastery to be something you can level instead and have armor and more unique status?
A: Our mastery system and our perk system are kind of interchangeable to some degree. So what will most likely happen is that some of the masteries that you currently see are gonna be rolls on various pieces of armor and weapons. Some of the perks that you see will be expanded. So classes can have more definition on the way that they want to be played. Some things will be through the leveling system. So, the different perks are going to get distributed into a few different spots that people will be able to configure to their preference.
Q: How customizable do you plan on making specific classes?
A: In any particular class we may have either additional perks or skill tree or something along those lines to let you select. Right now, there’s a limited number of perks that you can have on a given class, but if you can imagine having 20 different perks for a class and 4 different abilities whatever it may be, then you'll be able to create a lot more of a diverse build with that.
Q: Will you now allow weapons and armor to be placed in the safe container?
A: Yes, we'll re-evaluate all the inventory as it may be necessary, but probably not in the short term.
Q: Will you be able to place markers on the map?
A: Yes.
Q: Will you add a way to replay the tutorial?
A: Yes.
Q: Will you add a firing range or an area to test weapons?
A: We do plan to add this in.
Q: Will there be insurance to purchase on weapons, armor, or items?
A: We’re not looking into insurance right now because again, we're trying to get the gear in and out relatively fast.
Q: Are there any plans to add attachments for guns?
A: That's something that we actually will look at. They're similar to the type of rolls that we do on the guns now. So I don't know if we'll have that or not, but if we do add that, it won't be in the short term.
Q: Do you plan on allowing for more cosmetic customizability?
A: Cosmetic individual pieces like different legs is not something we plan to do. The whole point right now with cosmetics is to try to get some cool rolls that are unique to you and that nobody else will have exactly since they’re procedurally generated.
Q: Can you elaborate on the weapons and what they’ll drop when they break?
A: So when something breaks, it will just look at the recipe it takes to make it and at the minimum, will give you something out of that recipe. So how much you get is something that we’re still looking at but it may be that we just make it so you get the highest level piece out of the recipe or something along those lines. Our ultimate goal is that the player should still get something decent out of it.
Q: Are you going to add an armor repair system?
A: We don't want to do armor repair at this point. We want to make it simpler. You lose it on death and it can sometimes break into components you can use to craft a new armor piece.
Q: What happens when I die and I'm revived. Is my gear broken?
A: So if you have a piece of armor and die, it has a chance to break. Then it will be broken and you'll just have the crafting materials there instead. Yes, it's gonna be a little bit more punishing to die. But at the same time, we're also gonna give you more opportunities to get loot. So those things should kind of weigh against each other.
Q: Since the Armor mastery is the main form of progression, what's the progression system that's going to replace it?
A: So, the armor mastery system is a loop based progression system to a certain degree, because you can start getting armor relatively fast. But what we want to do with progression, is going to be a lot more around the classes and the type of ways that you can essentially outfit different classes to enable progression in all areas of the game and different playstyles.
Q: Will there be anything new from the vendors? More missions?
A: Yes, we want to attach a variety of different progression systems to different parts of the game & expand it across many different avenues instead of just the armor, weapons, crafting, and consumables. Maybe there's a progression feature that lets you upgrade the armor to a higher rarity. Maybe there's an element of a vendor that allows you to upgrade a particular part of just the armor and different things like that.
Q: What happens when a player wipes the high security, rare loot area of the lobby in the first five minutes because he can sprint there? He doesn't care about exiting with loot because his stash is so full. So instead he circles the map for PVP because there's no point in progress.
A: No matter what they loot, they still have to escape. Exits are now not always in the center, they're on many different points within the map. Sure, they could just go loot it but they still have to find the access terminal to tell them what their exit is. So there's a variety of things they must do and people can kill you along the way to your exit.
This project was completed with assistance from the Georgia Film Office, a division of the Georgia Department of Economic Development.
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