Greetings, Chosen!
We’ve been hard at work in the Lair, working on all facets of the game experience (both the back and front ends). Thank you for the continued feedback and support on the Discord and beyond. You all have been a great encouragement to our work! We hope you enjoy the added features in 0.5—for me, personally, the scoring system has been a really rad addition. All you support players out there can now fully commit to the role and get rewarded for doing so!
Let us know your thoughts on the changes and how we can continue to improve things. We’ll see you in Discord and in game!
– cloaken
SOCIAL
DROP IN
If a match is currently too lopsided (Kills/Deaths) in favor of your friend’s team, you will drop in as an opponent instead of an ally.
Note: that this is a temporary solution to some of the complexities we’re experiencing with the DIDO system. In a future update, we’ll let you choose ahead of time which side you want to drop in on and let you know if that particular team is full. For now, if you don’t want to play against your friend, it would be best to drop out and try another match.
FRIEND COLORS
You can now see friends in the game via slight color variances on the minimap, their health bar, and on the score table.
FRIENDS LIST
The friends list has received a UI refresh. You can now always see the number of your friends currently online as a green bubble on the SOCIAL button.
SHOP
The shop gets a new UI coat of paint! Check the “Special Deals” section for surprise from us and check out daily deals!
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BUGS / CLEANUP
- Fixed an issue where Primal Fire wasn’t doing the correct amount of damage to primals.
MAPS & MODES
- Azure Plateau has received a beautiful sunset-styled art pass. May you enjoy the fullness of “golden hour” on the Mistral Islands!
- We have added 3 new small maps, one for each game mode:
- Core Rush – Enclave
- CTF – Traveler
- Flag Hunter – Overgrowth
- Multi-kill window increased to 6 seconds (from 5 seconds).
- Note: This coincides with a change that prevents spawn camping from contributing to multi-kill bonuses, described below. In other words, we believe multi-kill rewards will be more skillful and rarer to achieve overall, despite the increased duration of this window.
- Outposts can no longer be captured if their defender is still alive and nearby.
- Capture the Flag: Matches that end in a tie now show a “Tie Game!” announcement for both teams, rather than “Defeat”.
SCORE REWARDS
A new system has been implemented that tracks player contribution in many areas of the match including game mode objectives, neutral creature takedowns, outpost captures, kills, and assists.
Your score during a match influences the XP you earn when you exit the match. This relationship is not 1:1—scoring has dampening functions that heavily lift XP at low values (newer players) and severely limits XP at high values (high scores from very veteran players). In other words, a higher score is always better, but don’t sweat it if you’re still learning the ropes.
Also, be aware that each mode and map can have different experience tuning, so modes that typically have fewer opportunities for score, or are more “feast or famine” in their opportunities, should still provide appropriate experience for the time you’re spending in them.
This will all be tuned over upcoming releases to make sure it’s creating a good experience for everyone. Out of the gates, we already expect this will be a major improvement for anyone focused on objective play such as capturing or reclaiming flags in Capture the Flags.
Though this is not a comprehensive list of all score sources, here are some things to be aware of:
- The scoreboard now automatically sorts by score, rather than kills.
- The scoreboard has been updated and now has the following columns:
- Score
- Kills
- Assists
- Current Killstreak
- Killstreaks (kills during a single life) and multi-kills (pentakills, decakills, etc) each reward points—and players are also rewarded a large chunk of points for taking down a player holding the Divine Blessing (multi-kill) buff.
- Outposts and core captures reward points in a 15 meter range (much larger than the capture zone itself).
- In Capture the Flag, a successful flag capture grants a very large reward to the carrier. Additionally, flagbearer kills and reclaims both (smaller, but still meaningful) rewards.
- In Hold the Flags, players carrying flags will earn points every few seconds. Additionally, players within 15 meters of other players holding flags, or of allied flags on the ground, will also gain points. (None of these persistent bonuses stack together, or increase based on the number of flags held).
SPAWN PROTECTION
- Killing players within 10 seconds of them spawning grants zero score, does not contribute to kill streak rewards, and does not benefit any leaderboard stats.
- Note: This lasts 4.5 seconds longer than spawn invulnerability.
- The invulnerability and movement speed upon respawning lasts 0.5 seconds longer.
HUMAN GEAR
- All assault rifles have had minor adjustments made to shot speed and auto-aim effectiveness.
- Players will now re-spawn after death with a modest amount of heavy ammo.
PRIMARY WEAPONS
HEAVY WEAPONS
We are interested in stretching the current perceptions around heavy weapons. Up until now heavy weapons have traditionally been low ammo count, high damage varieties. We think there’s some space to allow heavy weapons to also represent amped up versions of primary weapons. With this in mind, heavy weapons in this category will exhibit the following attributes:
- Slightly stronger than primary weapons.
- Have a much larger ammo clip than traditional heavy weapons.
- Gain significantly more ammo from pickups.
These weapons are for players who want to explore playstyles that take advantage of the strengths of two different weapon archetypes, without necessarily requiring the low ammo/heavy damage variety of “heavy” weapon.
ABILITIES
TRINKETS
TRAITS
PRIMALS
ALL PRIMALS
We’re aiming to create more incentives to fight primal forms as previously there was no real reason to take one on if they were nearing the end of their duration. Now, all damage done to a Primal will cut down their remaining duration.
- Primal forms no longer have a fixed duration, instead they will constantly lose a percentage of health (increasing over time) based on their base duration until they transform back to human form.
TRAITS
GENERAL
PICKUPS
- Primal pickups charge granted reduced from 5% to 3.5%.
- Large primal pickups dropped by Wildslingers and Defenders value increased from 6x to 10x (30% to 35%).
That’s it for 0.5!
Make sure to head over to the official Discord and let us know what you think. Every day we’re pushing hard to get the game in a state where we can share it out to larger and larger audiences. Thanks for being a part of this journey with us! We’re excited to be making a game that we’re proud of and that we hope you’ll deeply enjoy.
Never settle for the lesser evil.