Aug 11, 2016

Just Survive - Greg

Servers will be coming down at 9:45PM PT for approximately 4 hours on Thursday 8/11. This publish requires a player and world wipe due to bug fixes regarding base tampers and durability.

New Features

A set of unique zombies have been seen roaming the area. These zombies hold the secrets to a new set of exotic and powerful weapons.

Players who succumb to the harsh realities of H1Z1 will now come back as one of the horde. These zombies will appear wearing the same gear they had when they died.

Quality of Life Changes

Respawn selection has had some improvements added

You will no longer be able to respawn within an area around where you died.

This area is a 9 grid diameter around your corpse

You cannot respawn within that grid for 5 minutes

If you die close to the grid any overlapping grid will inherit the lockout time form your previous death

Text chat is now enabled. Press enter to open chat bar

Made the following changes to the limited base building rules

Bases can now be built in the Villas

Campfires can now be placed anywhere

Flares can now be placed anywhere

Added limited base building to the Krakow server

Performance Enhancements

Improved server performance to reduce lag on high-pop and zombie intensive servers

More parallelization of core game and graphics systems for better performance on multi-core cpus

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue the prevented Zombies from damaging vehicles

Fixed an issue which allowed tampers to be stacked

Fixed an issue that allowed players to prevent the loss of durability on certain tools

Players now start with a basic compass instead of an improvised one

Combat Feedback

Reticle now indicates that firing is disabled and character will enter a passive stance.

Thrown weapons now display a tracer, only visible to the person throwing them, making their path of flight more apparent.

Vehicles

Vehicles handling has been improved

Vehicles are less susceptible to flipping

Vehicles have been modified to have varied characteristics:

The police car is the fastest.

The off roader has the best handling.

The pickup truck is the toughest.

Passengers in the rear of the pickup truck can stand up to shoot forward and crouch to take cover and shoot behind.

Flipped vehicles have more realistic friction, won’t be drivable using turbo

The following vehicle sounds have been improved:

Engine and turbo

Tire squeal when turning on pavement

Braking sounds.

Vehicles also now have horns [Default: J].

We’ve made some physics tweaks that should have vehicles exploding unexpectedly far less and doing the correct amount of damage when they do explode.

Jul 13, 2016

Producer's Letter For July 13th

Just Survive - Greg

Hey everyone!

It’s been a while since I posted one of these. Although I do apologize for the extended dry period, I do want to clarify my update cadence going forward. As you noticed last update, our current build was on the Test Server for a good amount of time. This supports our general philosophy that publishes remain on test until they reach a quality level we are comfortable with. I know some of you are thinking, “Yea, there were still bugs in that publish”. Fact is, H1Z1 has been receiving a lot of changes under the hood and we just adopted some of the combat improvements from KOTK which we feel are relevant to JS. This includes many bug fixes and performance adjustments. As much as we would love to avoid a single issue, as soon as we publish an update to the masses, issues tend to show themselves more rapidly. We are happy that we could turn a lot of these around quickly and we want to thank all of you who helped us out by reporting issues.

Moving forward, you can expect an official updated from me AFTER we do a live publish. This way, you get the new stuff and you see what’s coming next. Pretty straightforward!

So, what’s happen in development?
As usual, no guarantees for release date of the following topics. They’ll go live when they’re ready and they will hit the Test Server first!

Weapon enhancement recipes
You’ll now be able to kill rare zombies to find prototype weapon parts. You’ll combine these prototype parts with normal weapons to discover a recipe. The newly crafted weapon will have special abilities and stats. They will also have finite lifetime and cannot be repaired. So, save these for a “Special” occasion.

Upon death
You player will now rise as a zombie. So you or your friends will have to….um….kill you again to get your stuff back. Should be fun!

Boss zombie experimentation
I don’t want to spill the beans too much on this one. As we continue growing Just Survive, we’re always looking for ways to introduce new play loops into the game. Having boss encounters plays well with many of the things we want to do going forward. So, don’t be surprised if you run across a more vicious situation sometime soon. And you thought bears were scary! Hah!

Survival Score Servers:
We’re putting together another server ruleset. This one is designed around the notion of “How well did I survive?”

It’s going to work something like this:

A few designated servers will be on an auto wipe system. Every XX weeks (1, 2 or 3 possibly) the world will end. The server will wipe itself and give a final score to each player. This score is accumulated and displayed in the UI as you are playing. You’ll get points for things like zombie kills, recipe discovery... Etc. Think of it as a more advanced version of the death screen when it presents your end stats. Past scores will be available for some undetermined length of time also.

We are still designing and working out the kinks with this one and you can expect to play it on the Test Server first to provide your own feedback.
Expect to hear more about this in the future.

Limited Base Building
Couple fixes:
The Villas are being opened for base building
Campfires, torches and flares are no longer restricted from the rule
Sorry Krakow players….we missed you in the rule update. You are getting the rule also.

Exploiters
We are fully aware of the current exploits going on. We do not speak publically regarding steps being taken when dealing with this sort of thing. But I will say, if you are caught exploiting, you will be banned. Please pass it along

Loot
For a long time now, loot has been in a state which wasn’t on par with a survival experience. We’ve read all your posts; we’ve gone invisible and observed many players. We’ve checked high, low and medium pop servers. We spoke to many players live in chat.

I’m sorry if we’ve given you the easy life in the past but times need to change a bit. In a nutshell, the current loot drop rates are intended. Building a base was never intended to be a simple task btw…

That’s all I have for now.
Peace out and see you all in game!

@ShockDev

Jul 7, 2016

Combat Update Details

Just Survive - DBG_RadarX

All servers will be unavailable beginning at 1:00 AM PT (8 AM GMT) for maintenance to introduce a game update. Downtime is anticipated to be less than 4 hours.

Note from the Team:

Combat Update Notes:

For those that don’t know me, my name is bronstahd (Garrett Fern), and I’m a combat and gameplay designer working on H1Z1: King of the Kill. Tomorrow we are releasing an update we’ve internally termed “the combat update” which is the result of a focused push toward improving combat and related gameplay systems. I wanted to spend some time talking about several of these changes in greater detail to give some insight into what’s changed and why we’re excited about this update’s release.

Shotgun

We’ve continued working to improve the consistency of the shotgun. Our goal is that the shotgun should be a powerful, up close threat. This update further tightens the shotgun’s spread of fire, making it more powerful up close. In addition, the shotgun’s damage will fall off over distance, so it isn’t too powerful at range. The feedback we’ve seen has been positive so far, so we’re really looking forward to seeing these changes on the live servers.

Cone of Fire

Recently, we added Cone of Fire adjustments based on your character's movement state. We did this because, put simply, guns were performing far too accurately when running and jumping. Philosophically, our belief has always been that aiming down sight should be the most accurate method of aiming; this change made sure that's the case.

However, it was also possible to aim down sight while jumping, which also allowed for tremendous accuracy in a way that didn't make sense. This update addresses that issue by preventing ADS while jumping or falling. This has also allowed us to ease up on some previous combat restrictions around movement and it will now be possible to shoot and ADS directly from sprint. You'll no longer have to wait for your character to slow down and suffer a delay when trying to shoot.

General Weapon Polish

This update also contains a lot of general weapon polish. In no particular order, here's what you should expect to see:

• Historically, melee weapons have been underwhelming and of little use. As a first step toward addressing this, we've increased melee weapon damage across the board. This won't entirely fix melee weapons, but it should be a noticeable improvement:

Fists: 4.5 damage -> 9 damage
Combat Knife: 10 damage -> 21 damage
Machete: 12 damage -> 25 damage
Wood Axe: 16.5 damage -> 34 damage

• Since our last change to the AK-47 we've been listening to the community and the feedback has been pretty clear: it's not powerful enough when compared to the AR15.

We've been internally testing a faster fire rate for the AK-47 which we'll be rolling out with this update. Here's what you should expect to see:

The AK-47 should be faster than AR15 in full auto fire, but more difficult to control.
The AK-47 should be closer in speed to the AR15 when tapping.
Specifically, the delay between shots has been reduced from 160 ms -> 145 ms.

We think this change will create nice some trade-offs between the weapons and make the AK-47 a compelling choice once again.

Increased the damage of the R380 from 15 -> 17 to reduce the number of shots required to kill with it by one.
Decreased the damage of the M9 from 19 -> 18 to allow time to apply healing after taking five shots. Previously it wasn't possible to apply any type of healing before bleeding to death.
We've made some adjustments to the M47 Gas Grenade that should make them far more viable as a thrown weapon option:
- Damage increased from 1/tick-> 3/tick.
- Duration reduced from 60 seconds -> 20 seconds.

Depending on the weapon, it used to take anywhere between 0.5 seconds to 1 second to change from one weapon to another. This time has been reduced to 0.15 seconds for all weapons.
Weapon slots will always be assigned the same number, regardless of whether or not there are weapons in other slots.

Damage Log

We believe that when a player dies it should be very clear to them what killed them. That’s not always the case currently. As a first step towards remedying this, we’ve added a damage log to the death screen that will display how much damage the attack that killed you did and whether or not it was a headshot. Moving forward, the plan is to re-work the death screen so we can display even more information about cause of death.

Body Armor

We've also made some changes to the way Armor works that should improve the reliability of body armor:

The entire body (chest, arms, and legs) is protected by Body Armor.
Helmets still protect the head.

Hit Reactions

Hit reaction animations would cause the other character's head moved, often preventing a quick follow-up shot from registering as a headshot when it should. Other characters will no longer flinch out of the way when shot.

Camera & Reticle Improvements

We've made a couple of improvements to the reticle.
We’ve added a new element to the reticle that increases in size to display Cone of Fire information based on player movement.
Improved color saturation and added clearer outline which should make seeing the reticle, even small reticles, much easier.
In most cases, projectiles now originate from the camera rather than the weapon model. This change significantly reduces projectile collisions with medium-height cover like fences, rocks, cars, and similar objects and also improves projectile performance when fighting uphill or against players on top of buildings.

In some cases, it was possible for one player to have clear line of sight on another player, due to the camera being offset above their head, while actually being obscured from the other player’s view. We felt this would be unfair, and in these cases (generally, when your character is very close to medium-height cover) projectiles will still originate from the weapon model. We’ve added feedback to the reticle to make it clear when this is happening.

General Gameplay

Respawn:

Select a respawn region upon death: Now upon death, you'll be presented with a spawn selection interface. From this interface you'll choose a grid square to respawn within. Your actual location will be random within chosen grid.

Vehicle Anti-Hoarding measures:

In an effort to combat vehicle hoarding and to give more players an opportunity to obtain a vehicle we’ve made the following changes. The changes are intended to make vehicles a little more transitional so that you can find one, use it up, and then more easily find another one.

Vehicles now decay their condition slowly over time. They will fully decay in a little over two days.
Wrenches spawn in the world but are much rarer. They will always spawn with full durability.
Wrenches will lose 100 durability per swing on a vehicle. Wrenches have 2500, so when repairing a vehicle they can only hit 25 times. Each hit will repair 2% of the vehicle’s maximum condition.
Wrenches can no longer be crafted.
25% more vehicles concurrently spawn in the world.
Vehicles now spawn procedurally in random locations around major points of interest.

That’s our first pass at the solution. We will now observe and make adjustments as necessary.

Nomad server: This is a new ruleset in which you cannot build bases in the world. We will be standing up two US worlds and two EU worlds initially.

Bullet conversion is being removed from the game

The in-game map now shows your current world position. If you're in a group, you'll also see indicators for each group member

Limited base building ruleset is now be instituted across all worlds

Zombies are now be more abundant. We fixed a lot of issues with the zombie/wildlife spawning system which was degrading the experience over time.

Characters are now equipped with a skinning knife. This knife is necessary to harvest wildlife and zombies. You can now target the dead NPC and press “E” to harvest. This replaces the old method of attacking a dead corpse with a hunting knife.

Interaction Responsiveness

We’ve long had problems with delays in picking up items. It isn’t really a combat related thing, but it was a big enough deal that we wanted to pursue a fix for this update. The time it takes to pick up items, open doors, and perform other interactions has been greatly improved and is now nearly instantaneous.

Additional Patch Notes:

Items should be more consistently highlighted during looting
Removed dynamic weapon slot numbers from the UI
Fixed a bug where hit-markers would occasionally get stuck on
Fixed a bug where players could not melee others on ATVs
Fixed a bug where explosions could damage players through structures
Fixed a bug where the Molotov’s fire effect would sometimes be invisible
Corrected Molotov behavior so that they damage vehicles but do not cause them to burn
Fixed an issue where players would render incorrectly if they exit a vehicle at certain distances
Fixed a bug where thrown grenades could go through players
Fixed a bug where equipping a weapon while inventory is full could cause the player to lose the weapon
Fixed an exploit where swapping backpacks a specific way could create infinite bag space
Fixed a bug where the UI would make it appear that multiple hits were registering at once
Fixed a bug where character would appear to be falling when strafing against concrete barriers
Fixed a bug where the reloading the AK-47 while firing could prevent the reload animation from playing

Jun 7, 2016

H1Z1: King of the Kill's new Ignition mode is Battle Royale for impatient people

Just Survive

I haven't played H1Z1 in a while: I initially spent some time in survival mode, both alone and with "friends", and took a few stabs at winning its Battle Royale mode (note: I lost). Since then, Daybreak has split the game into two separate Early Access titles: Just Survive, and King of the Kill. With the introduction of a new Battle Royale mode called Ignition, it seemed as good a time as any to jump in to the King of the Hill side of the game.

What I found is that Ignition is Battle Royale for people who are incredibly impatient to kill and die. Rather than BR's slowly paced hunt for gear, the long runs through the wilderness, the careful searching of buildings, and the tense build up to the final few confrontations, Ignition is in a big hurry to get players heavily armed and careening toward each other at top speed.

A match begins with players being lowered from individual helicopters wait, no. A match begins with players trying to entertain themselves in the multiplayer lobby before the match begins.

I, too, entertained myself. I ran around punching other players. I went prone and tried to roll across the entire map. I used the various emotes. I fought a crowd to see who had the right to sit on the lobby's only toilet. I added my boots to the pile of boots that appears in every lobby for some reason.

I also traded in some of my boring pants to try to win a new pair of pants with H1Z1's loot gambling thingie. Let's see how I did!

Oooh. Brown pants. I won brown pants. Of all the colors, brown is the brownest. All the other players are going to be brown with envy when they see my new brown pants.

Finally, the match began properly. As I was saying, players are lowered to the ground from helicopters, and begin the match already sitting on gassed-up ATVs. Then everyone speeds off to get equipped. Every player has invisible explosives attached to them, and has only a few minutes to reach a safe zone before they detonate. Safe zones are visible on the map, and you can spot them when you get close as a chopper hovers above them casting down magical green beams of safety-light. Any player not in a safe zone when the timer expires blows up. Surviving players must then race to the next safe zones before the next timer expires. As the match progresses, there are fewer zones and less time to reach them.

The driving physics are about how I remember.

My first round didn't go so well. I was lowered to the ground and sped off toward a brown clump of buildings I'd spotted from the air. It registered that player death notifications were appearing almost immediately. And not the usual kinds of early BR deaths: by axes and fists and maybe a pistol. Players were being killed moments into the match by shotguns and assault rifles.

This is because Ignition is swarming with guns. In fact, upon spotting another player about twenty seconds into the match, I ran up to punch him to death only to discover he was already packing.

I'm not sure how he managed to shoot me dead without ever raising his pistol, but the point is there's no real scavenging for gear in Ignition. Pick a building and you'll almost certainly find it stuffed with weapons, ammo, armor, and of course other players looking for the same.

My next match didn't go much better. While speeding down a road again, mere seconds into the match I was first injured by one player with a shotgun and then another wielding an AR-15. Discovering I couldn't bandage myself while driving, I had to pull over to stop my bleeding before my health ran to zero. Just as I did, more bullets arrived to finish the job.

Eventually, I started surviving a bit longer, mostly by avoiding the bigger settlement areas and aiming for more distant, lone buildings. There's a strong impetus to loot the first place you see, but there's plenty of time on the clock before the first detonation, so it doesn't hurt to loot in less crowded areas and let the first gaggle of players kill one another. I got myself armed, took a few other players out, and eventually made it to a safe zone.

Crouching in some bushes and watching through a scope, I saw other players arriving in the zone and begin culling each other. I also got an idea of just how many players die when the timer expires and their explosives detonate. You can see the notifications spamming below.

And it was like that in every match I played. If you can make it to one of the first safe zones, you've got a decent shot at being one of the final survivors because a good handful of players will wind up getting blown to bits due to poor clock management or not knowing the map very well.

I later became one of them because don't know the map very well. This was the second instance of safe zone spawns, and I picked the one the map showed as being on an island. Unfortunately, the map didn't show that most of the island consisted of sheer cliffs, so I wound up just driving around it looking for a way up. I didn't make it, but I still placed 9th.

My strategy from then on was avoid players whenever possible, get to the first safe zone in one piece, hide if I hadn't picked up weapons or shoot players as they arrived if I had. It typically worked OK, except just about everyone is better at shooting than I am, and one time my rifle wouldn't fire despite being loaded.

I never won, though I did place 9th a second time. The third safe zone was located on top of a mountain, and since I'd once again forgotten the details of the map I couldn't find the road up, so I attempted to just drive up the sheer side of it. It was a slow and agonizing trip, but I did manage to get my ATV into the safety circle. Though I immediately slid right out again.

A few more adjustments and I was back in the circle and no longer slipping down the side of the mountain, but here's a funny thing: when you spend long minutes sliding around on a sheer cliff on a noisy ATV, other people tend to see you from miles away. Just as I'd safely parked, another player shot me in the back. I hope, at least, he enjoyed the show.

Ignition mode is clearly an attempt to goose up Battle Royale into quicker rounds with more action and fewer lulls, and I think it works. Like the rest of H1Z1, it's sort of sloppy but a lot of fun, and nothing to take too seriously. I think Ignition's shorter, gun-happy, action-heavy matches might do well for Twitch viewers who don't want to spend quite so much time watching players slowly run around scavenging in Battle Royale, and it's a good option for players who enjoy BR but want to get right to the carnage.