Apr 18, 2019

Developers Respond to Community Feedback (Part 1)

Survarium - joewillburn

Hello everyone,

It's been a while since we had some in-depth communication between our development team and the players. Over the last 2 months (or so) we have been passing on player suggestions and feedback and working closely to get the team to respond. It took a while as a lot of translation was required and many times we had to double check a lot of the text. So, with that being said, we'd like to present you with part 1 of the the Q&A. We hope you enjoy it!

1. The players want more transparency when they’re killed. The killcam doesn’t show how much ammo the enemy had in the magazine, the type of ammo the enemy was using, nor the consumables he had equipped (grenades, mines, medkits and so on). This was once a feature a couple of years ago but it was removed with the implementation of the new UI. What’s more, one of the patch notes of like Update 0.43 do say this being implemented again, but it didn’t really.

Killcam, Advanced weapons and gear viewer is a good idea, but for me that would be of less priority than other more important features – clan wars, socialization features (player’s profile), etc.

2. I browse through the SHOP and select different filters on the left of the screen (equipment tier, faction). Then I switch for example to my INVENTORY just to check some stuff. When I switch back to SHOP, the state of the filters on the left is reset and I have to browse and search again for the piece of equipment I was looking at before. I think the state of the filters in SHOP should be remembered until you restart Survarium. Just like in INVENTORY, where it works fine (although Inventory doesn't let you filter by tiers).

The Filter reset in Shop was purposely designed to have no confusion for the player about which filters he had activated. Once you switch from the shop, filters reset and you'll need to apply them again. They are not numerous anyway.

3. A "To Workshop" option when purchasing weapons would be useful. You would be able to inspect what modules can it have and how does it look like with that Premium camo or decal, before buying it.

‘To Shooting Range’ and ‘To Workshop’ buttons are useful, I would implement those without the need to right-click – we need to get rid of too many context menus.

4. It would be interesting to be able to try a weapon for a couple of days, or a "weapon of the day" mode where you could use it to eliminate a certain amount of enemies, giving you access to its premium version temporarily and encouraging the players to buy and test that weapon. Maybe by the end of the week, they could win a lesser premium piece (gloves, boots, helmet) for a premium set, but always fulfilling the weekly mission of a faction and thus, generating expectation for the users who are keeping tabs on which will be the weapon of that week. These are ideas that would be interesting to see.

‘Allow trying the weapon for a short period of time’ is a good idea, like it.

5. Vote-kick option. Many many FPS games have this. It’s a very useful feature if implemented correctly (majority of votes needed to confirm) and would help in the cases where a guy decides to ruin your team’s match on purpose by going 5-30 and dragging the team to a loss (crucial in TDM/Slaughter matches, where he would save the team by just trying not to die that much), stays AFK with the “autorespawn” option turned on and/or is generally a pain in the neck. It's better for one guy to suffer alone than to make the entire team do it.

Vote-kick option – I like that one too.

6. The in-game SHOP tab shows all the weapons available for Silver and Gold, but there’s no list for the so-called “Ultra-rare” ones that can be won in Treasure Hunt. This is just one more reason to call the game Pay-to-Win, as a new player doesn’t exactly know that “free” versions of the Gold weapons exist that are just as good. This is once again a feature that the game did have in the past, but was removed when the new UI style got implemented.

The list of Ultra-rare weapons which can be unlocked only in TH sounds good, but could raise questions about ‘why it’s in the shop’?

7. The players would like to know the number of actual players online at a particular moment, or how many matches are being played in their selected server or mode. The “PLAY” button menu does show players in Queue, but it doesn’t seem to work correctly (because people complain about not finding a match on that server with everything selected and 30+ players in the queue displayed for a given server). Again, this was a feature that used to be there but was removed when the lobby UI got updated to the new style.

We'll see if there are any bugs with the display of players online and if there’s something to be improved.

8. If we want to use the same gun on two different profiles, but with different modules equipped on the gun on each profile, we're not able to, we're forced to buy the weapon twice (although we don't need to unlock its slots again, so that's good). For example, a [1st] sneaky-peaky profile with a silencer and a x2 scope on an SVD and a [2nd] profile with muzzle flash hider and x4 scope for the same SVD...

By design you need to have two pieces of the same gun to be able to use different modules on those simultaneously. It’s also logical, isn’t it?

9. Display the flag capture radius on the mini-map. The overlay would indicate the limits you need to stand within to capture the flag. This is good for trying to find enemy players, as you'd know exactly where to search. Some games that have this introduced are Counter-Strike and the Battlefield series.

The flag capture radius display sounds like a good idea, worth trying.

10. Getting +5 points for disabling C-4, Mines, Traps, Clay-mores, Traps, Ammo boxes and sensors would be a nice thing. It would be useful for the inactivity penalty too. And a nice thing for those who invested points into the Technical skill-tree to see such things. And, to be honest, disabling an enemy mine is worth 5 points, just like a kill-assist.

Giving points for disabling mines, traps and so on sounds reasonable, well noted.

11. Let us choose the ammo type used on each gun when already in the match too, at the ammo stash we have in the base (only there).

It seems more reasonable to be able to change player profiles.

12. Bot AI. People wouldn’t mind playing against them all the time if they were better. They’re easy to kill but most of the time if feels like they’re cheating against you: instant head-shots after turning 180 degrees in 0,5s… killing through walls or through bushes… not being able to pick up batteries… not dying to anomalies… not able to respond to radio commands like “I need help!” to assist the players…

Bot AI is a well-known problem, however we are still short of hands to improve their behavior. First thing I would do is to make it impossible for them to see through the grass and reduce their reaction.

And even with the single match-making tier there still seem to be many cases of 2v2 + bots matches at late night or on empty servers.

That’s the problem of player population on server, we need to improve that of course. So we are basically talking about finding the right balance between waiting for too long in MM or playing with bots. What would be the greater evil?

13. Add more radio command options. “Affirmative”, “Negative” (for when someone asks for help), “Sorry” (for a team-kill, for friendly damage, for destroying friendly devices), “Area clear”, “Artifact Found” (for Search & Destroy mode when defending), “Attack point A”, “Attack point B” (for Search & Destroy mode when attacking), “Thanks” (for covering, for healing, for ammo, for helping), “Hold this position”.

Advanced quick commands settings would be desirable. You could be able to change those depending on the play mode. However we already have the voice chat in there, making the issue less of a critical one, but for the players with chat bans it would be good.

14. 2nd and 3rd equipment profiles cost is not an issue for veteran players who have millions of Silver just gathering dust… but we constantly see new players complaining about their price. Maybe their price should be lowered a bit, or 2nd profile given for free once you reach level 10 (or 20, or 30), and the 3rd profile cost could remain the same as it is now.

Profiles given for reaching a level could be a good idea (you can either buy or level up).

15. Players have asked for an option to be able to scrap unneeded modules into Spare parts. They have also asked to consider adding the possibility to exchange the 40M+ Silver that some have into Spare parts. 0.58 Update introduced the possibility to buy AKMSU many times with Silver and use its modules to upgrade ours and we thank you for that, but more needs to be done, because this was a fan-service for veterans, not for everyone.

As for the modules – we have ideas how to design it the way the player could receive the module that he wants.

16. In any match, the best player will be the one who scores the most points in his team. It doesn't matter if his k/d isn't high. Such players devote themselves to the team and do as much as possible to lead them to victory. The problem in Season Leagues is that these players sometimes won't even reach top 100 due to the fact that they lose matches. They often have more points than any players of the winning team, and yet they don't get rewarded for their efforts. So they just stop playing League at all because it's not fair.

Leagues require reviewing. Maybe once Clan Wars are introduced we’ll have to switch them off completely. I don’t think it’s a good idea to give progress to the top player of the losing team in leagues. At least this is not what we are used to seeing in other competitive games like Dota, CS:GO etc. If you lose, then you lose, it’s a team-based game after all. Perhaps something worth considering is punishing him with less of a fine, but nothing more than that.

17. Search and Destroy. A very promising mode that would be the best in the game if it wasn’t for its issues. Defenders do not see the artifact on the mini-map if they find it (at least make it so we can spot the artifact manually like we can spot batteries), a lot of players are AFK at the start (so the first round begins too fast) or throughout the match, too many explosives can be placed at the same time by the same player (imagine 5 defenders placing explosives everywhere), team-kill should be limited to something like 150 damage per match max instead of 3 team-kills (in many cases one player just goes nuts at the start of the round and kills 3 teammates for no reason).

Search and Destroy mode is not ideal, we’ll keep improving it. As for AFK, we have improved the AFK system for this mode.

18. Next match. People have showed interest in being able to vote to play the next match against the same enemy team, for faster matchmaking, with a voting option at the end of the match to decide this. If the majority votes to play another match with the same teams, it should load the next mode/map.

Maybe not a bad idea. Worth trying.

19. “Looking for a group” system for PVE. This is basically because people use lobby chat to look for a group and then have to ask what level they are, what’s their tier, if they completed PvE in the past, what difficulty they want to play and so on. This would also remove some language barriers, because not everyone speaks English and, in fact, Russians have their own chat so they don't see these kinds of requests in the chat.

That’s exactly how we designed it to be. If you want you can play solo, there’s no prohibition to that whatsoever.

20. The same “looking for a group” feature would also be nice for PvP squads, because if the ELO difference is too big, then the players can get matched to opponents outside of their skill range without knowing it.

PvP squads are MMed based on maximum ELO, if there are players with bad ELO in the squad – they do bad for themselves. Perhaps it’s worth adding a notification that the MM is done by the player with highest ELO.

21. The very first matches for newbies and under level 10 players, there’s an issue with them. New players seem to have a hard time finding their first match so, after 5-10 minutes of waiting, they just uninstall the game and leave a negative review on Steam saying “the game’s dead”. This is probably because there’s a system in place (or there used to be) that match-makes new players only against other players that are under level 10 until they reach level 10. An option to choose to play with everyone should be available.

New players get MMed pretty fast now. So I cannot agree to the statement. Nevertheless, we’ll continue finding ways to improve the experience and perhaps try some other approaches.

22. Mini-map improvements. The mini-map is not capable of displaying height (which could be made possible if it was adaptive and would mask other floors with ///). Some maps (Vector, School, Radar, Fort, Cologne) have lots of structures or buildings with more than one floor and it's hard to locate the enemy even if they're displayed on the mini-map. Also, in modes where it’s important to see where the artifact or the battery is, it’s time lost trying to figure out if it’s at the same level as you are.

Renewing the mini-map with somehow displaying the heights, building floors and so on is worth trying