Aug 3, 2018

Armored Warfare - Silentstalker

Dear friends,

This October we are celebrating our three-year anniversary. These years have been extremely productive for us and we have managed to implement a lot of our planned features, but the best part is yet to come.

We have cultivated a spirit of teamwork and have thus built a tight-knit community around Armored Warfare, who have always helped us evolve and stay on the right course. We are attentive and perceptive to our players, and we are willing to try out their ideas, regardless of the cost. We take pride in our commitment to the game and the community.

Armored Warfare is a brand open to bold decisions and exploring new frontiers. Using the PC version as a solid base, we have since had a PS4 launch. As a matter of fact, this was an essential experience for both us, as the developers, and My.com as the publisher.

As of this day, the Xbox version is now also available for pre-order, to be fully released on the 2nd August. This won't be the final stage of Armored Warfare’s expansion to consoles, the journey is just beginning.

This year we've also launched our Season-based Special Operations. These are full scale special PvE missions aimed to provide an authentic tanking experience. The battle locations change every Season, taking our players to: Jamaica, Panama, Georgia – and this is just the beginning. Future seasons will introduce campaigns in places such as the Middle East and the Arctic. In the future, you’ll even get to fight in Moscow!

Armored vehicles are at the very core of our game. One of our nearest future updates will feature an entirely new branch of Israeli tanks and we're already working on introducing some Scandinavian vehicles. Acting upon the feedback of our community, we're also experimenting with artillery. Not to mention that, based on your feedback, new special events will be introduced as well this autumn and they will be directly accessible in the game.

This news we have shared with you today is only a small part of the greater plan and experience we have in store for our Armored Warfare commanders. We have a clear picture of what we will be developing for the game throughout the coming year. We are eager to involve the community in early testing, receive feedback on player experience to further improve the game. For example, right now amongst the developers, there's this truly astonishing idea of developing a player-determined storyline, which will empower our community to decide how the story pans out on the larger scale, ultimately affecting the outcome of the game.

We'd like to offer a massive “thank you" to all of you, for these three tough yet mind-blowingly amazing years of support. It is thanks to you that Armored Warfare will continue to keep on growing. As for us, these three years are but a beginning of a wonderful journey we hope to share with you.

Stay tuned!

Armored Warfare Team

Aug 1, 2018

Improving Player Experience: Mode Availability Changes

Armored Warfare - Silentstalker

Commanders!

Today, we’d like to inform you about the changes we are making to the availability of the modes that are currently available in Armored Warfare in order to improve the overall game experience and make the game more accessible and user-friendly to new players and veterans alike.

First, there’s the Player versus Environment mode. Update 0.25 brought a change where the three basic difficulty levels (Standard, Challenging and Hardcore) became only available at certain Tiers. We are generally quite happy with the change as it brought the desired results, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement. We will introduce the following tweaks to the system:

Standard difficulty will be available from Tier 1 to Tier 5
Challenging difficulty will be available from Tier 3 to Tier 8
Hardcore difficulty will be available from Tier 6 to Tier 10

Another matter is, however, the Special Operations mode. This mode is considerably more challenging than standard PvE and, based on both your feedback and the statistics we’ve gathered, we decided to restrict it to Tiers 6 to 10:

Standard difficulty will be available from Tier 6 to Tier 8
Hardcore difficulty will be available from Tier 9 to Tier 10

The reason for this change is the fact that the increased challenge made the mode a very difficult entry into the PvE mode, driving less experienced players away with its difficulty. The mode was conceived as an end-game PvE mode after all, making it unsuitable and frustrating for lower Tiers.

Secondly, there are the Player versus Player modes.

We are generally happy with the standard PvP mode being available and slowly rising in popularity. It will remain available from Tier 2 to Tier 10 as, based on our user experience research, it doesn’t make a good entry point into the game as a whole – new players tend to enjoy their first battle more in the relaxed Standard PvE mode.

The Global Operations mode is another matter entirely. According to your feedback, the mode turned out to be quite unpopular on lower Tiers. It was, after all, designed as an advanced Player versus Player experience for larger maps and the low Tier smaller maps have turned out to be an unpopular and unsuccessful solution. As a result, we are restricting Global Operations to Tiers 8 to 10 where their large maps, Wildcards and dynamic objectives can really shine. Additionally, this change will cause an improvement to the mode’s queue times as its spread will be narrower.

We hope that you will enjoy these changes and will see you on the battlefield!

Aug 1, 2018

Branch of the Month – Gun Tank Destroyers

Armored Warfare - Silentstalker

Commanders!

This month in our Branch of the Month series is dedicated to the wheeled gun-armed Tank Destroyers, available in Sophie Wölfli’s vehicle pool.

The history of the real life Tank Destroyer vehicles is quite complex and it would probably take a whole book to describe it – in fact, many books do just that. The intricacies and various details of the tank destroyer doctrine would cover many page – we’ll have to do with a shorter summary.

The Tank Destroyers (albeit many were not called as such) are vehicles specifically designed to kill enemy tanks on a budget. Whether designed from scratch or converted from another existing vehicle, their battlefield role remained the same for a long time – to engage the enemy at long distances (ideally so long that the enemy cannot retaliate) and to retreat (or advance) afterwards to repeat the process.

The Tank Destroyer class saw its golden days during the Second World War, where various dedicated or improvised vehicles were devised to fight the seemingly unbeatable hordes of German Panzers (and – vice versa – the unstoppable Red Army tide in the second half of the war). Americans in particular created a whole military branch and doctrine dedicated to this goal, while possibly the most effective German vehicle of the war, the StuG III, was in fact a self-propelled gun as well as a capable tank killer in some of its iterations.

Many of these wartime vehicles used existing chassis (for example the Panzer II or the Panzer 38 (t) for the German Marder series, the Panzer III chassis for the StuG III series or the T-34 chassis for the Soviet SU-85 and the SU-100) fitted with a more powerful gun than such a vehicle would normally be able to carry – there was a price though: the gun was almost always fixed and could only aim forward in a certain limited angle (called gun traverse angle). Such a vehicle would then wait hidden in ambush to surprise the enemy, fire and then bail out because its thin armor could not sufficiently protect it.

There were exceptions to this of course. The American Tank Destroyers such as the M36 were turreted and, to a degree, behaved like actual tanks. They were often faster but less protected with the top of the turret open. The extreme case of this would be the M18 Hellcat, one of the fastest tracked vehicles of the Second World War. Its extreme speed did it, however, little good as it was often slowed down by the terrain or the other vehicles it was bound to escort.

The Germans, on the other hand, built several superheavy Tank Destroyers such as the Elefent and the dreaded Jagdtiger. These were heavily armored but slow and ponderous monsters, whose reputation in combat was vastly overblown by both propaganda and soldier stories of fighting them (and defeating them, of course – some written “partisan” accounts contain more Elefants destroyed than were actually built in total). These vehicles were also extremely expensive and relatively fragile. While their guns were deadly, the limited experience of their crews and logistics issues made them simply not worth it (this sub-class disappeared with the end of the war). On the other hand, the Soviet SU-152 and ISU-152 series were quite successful thanks to their ability to act as artillery and remained in service in such role for a very long time (some of them were for example still used by the Iraqi during the Gulf War).

After the war, the Tank Destroyer class was rapidly replaced by a universal combat vehicle – the Main Battle Tank. Few post-war gun Tank Destroyer designs achieved any significance – the best-known example would be the German Kanonenjagdpanzer, designed to utilize the obsolete 90mm guns the Germans were left with after the older Patton models were pushed out of service. Since then, most of such vehicle proposals (for example to build such a vehicle on Leopard 1 chassis or even a Leopard 2-based one) remained in experimental stage and the Taifun II prototype was, more or less, the last hurrah of this class.

On the Russian side, perhaps the most powerful such vehicle and one of the last ones of its kind was the SU-152 Taran prototype of 1965.

The need to kill enemy tanks effectively did not, however, disappear.

In the 1960s, the classic gun-armed Tank Destroyers started disappearing as a class, but many designs vied to take their place. These can be split into three categories:

ATGM-based tank killers
Fire Support Vehicles
Improvised or Homegrown Tank Destroyers

The first category includes special vehicles armed mostly with anti-tank guided missiles, sometimes with additional machineguns. It often overlaps with Armored Fighting Vehicles that usually use the same chassis. Typical examples would include the German Raketenjagdpanzer, the British FV438 Swingfire or the Russian Kornet missile launcher on Tigr-M chassis. The massive downside of these vehicles is that while they are often excellent at killing enemy tanks, they are useless for everything else as knocking down a wall with an expensive guided missile is a massive waste. As such, their role on the battlefield is limited.

The second category includes vehicles such as the M1128 Stryker that are capable of killing enemy tanks (especially older ones) with their MBT-class guns, but are primarily intended to provide fire support to friendly infantry and lighter-armed vehicles. These are very universal but generally poorly armored and cannot go toe to toe with enemy MBTs. Russian vehicles such as the Sprut-SD also fall into this category with the Zhalo-S being an exception – unlike others, it was actually designed as a Tank Destroyer, but its gun proved to be too weak to serve as such and the project was shelved.

The third category includes various vehicles developed in countries that either cannot afford to buy a fleet of modern Main Battle Tanks or are under some sort of embargo. This category is fairly rare and almost never exported – these vehicles are built not out of desire, but out of necessity and are quickly replaced whenever the opportunity arises. Examples could include the Chinese Tank Destroyers from the 1980s or earlier and various Cuban or North Korean contraptions of limited combat value.

It’s worth noting that even the abovementioned “modern” Tank Destroyers are almost never called so and the category name is thus slowly passing into obscurity. During the recent years, we are, however, seeing a rise of a hybrid class of vehicles, capable of both supporting infantry and killing tanks. These are the Russian BMPT-series and although the Russians were definitely not the only ones attempting to develop such a vehicle, the Terminators, as they are called, are by far the best known.

From August 1 to August 31, 2018, the following vehicles will be available for lower price than usual:

Dragoon 300 Tier 3 TD – The Dragoon is one of those unremarkable vehicles that pass through the history of armored warfare almost unnoticed. A solid four-wheeled design, it was produced for nearly three decades in several variants and is an ideal introduction to the four-wheeled Tank Destroyer gameplay in Armored Warfare. You can read more about it in our dedicated article.

Discount: 35%

LAV-300 Tier 4 TD – Another often unnoticed design is the LAV-300. Around two hundred were built between 1982 and 1994 and were exported in small batches of various configurations to a number of countries. While it was a solid fire support vehicle, it never attracted much attention and it was removed from all offers in 2002, almost a decade after the last vehicle rolled off the New Orleans assembly line. You can read more about it in our dedicated article.

Discount: 35%

ERC-90 F4 Sagaie Tier 5 TD – The Sagaie was a French fire support vehicle from the 1970s, developed originally as a private venture by Panhard. The French quickly found it suitable for the use of their expeditionary forces as it was light and easily air-transportable. Ultimately, around four hundred of them were built and used in several French peacekeeping missions. You can read more about it in our dedicated article.

Discount: 35%

LAV-600 Tier 6 TD – The LAV-600 is a modernized version of the LAV-300. Cadillac Gage Textron tried to monetize the relative success of the LAV-300 by renaming it in the mid-1980s and by offering it as the next generation of affordable fire support. The plan didn’t go too well and by the time the project was cancelled in 2000, only thirty or so vehicles were built. You can read more about it in our dedicated article.

Discount: 35%

Centauro 105 Tier 7 TD – Back in the 1980s, the Italian military looked for a well-armed platform that would carry the same type of armament as the Leopard 1 MBT while offering better strategic mobility. The result was the B1 Centauro, one of the best wheeled fire support vehicles in the world. Of the four hundred made, many were also exported to Jordan and Spain, making it one of the most successful modern Italian vehicles of modern history. You can read more about it in our dedicated article.

Discount: 25%

M1128 Stryker Tier 8 TD – The iconic Stryker is one of the most recognizable U.S. Army vehicles and is absolutely, positively a better fire support platform than the M113 Gavin. Adopted in 2003, it has since proven its reliability and ruggedness many times over.

Discount: 25%

Centauro 120 Tier 9 TD – This is an upgraded version of the Tier 7 Centauro with a new HITFACT turret carrying a 120mm smoothbore cannon. It is an interim vehicle aimed at export. Only a few were built and sold to Oman with the Italian military itself preferring to wait for the next-generation Centauro II. You can read more about it in our dedicated article.

Discount: 20%

B1 Draco Tier 9 TD – The Draco is a Tier 9 alternative to the Centauro 120. Instead of a massive gun, it’s armed with smaller rapid-fire 76mm cannon that provides it with excellent damage per minute and penetration characteristics. It trades high single shot damage for the ability to fire twelve smaller shells in rapid succession. You can read more about it in our dedicated article.

Discount: 20%

Generally speaking, where the missile tank destroyers are stationary snipers, the wheeled tank destroyers are mobile snipers. They are all fast (although not as much as the AFVs or the LTs) and maneuverable, allowing them to drive from cover to cover, shell the enemy at long distances thanks to their exceptional stationary firepower and then disappear again. If you like this mobile sniper gamestyle, this class is for you, but beware: their stealth and accuracy are balanced by their fragility that becomes more accentuated on higher Tiers, making this sub-class suitable for advanced players. They are also not very accurate when moving and cannot act like Light Tanks. Attempting to do so would lead to your quick demise.

As was stated above, with several exceptions, the role of these vehicles on the battlefield is long-range sniping. The static accuracy of the class is unparalleled, but it suffers when the vehicle is moving and the Tank Destroyer vehicles cannot be used effectively for firing on the move – at least not as well as other classes.

The key is to stay hidden behind some cover, ideally a bush or two, that increase your camouflage factor. Some of the lightest vehicles can stay hidden effectively even after firing their gun or a missile, others have to immediately retreat or seek different cover (especially on higher Tiers where more advanced anti-stealth such as thermal optics are available).

Waiting along the expected routes of enemy approach is a good idea and all maps contain a number of spots that allow just that. In ideal case, a skilled Tank Destroyer player not only locates a suitable position for sniping, but also plans his escape route and the way to the next firing position or two. Like the Armored Fighting Vehicles, the Tank Destroyers require knowledge of each map for high-quality gameplay as a Tank Destroyer driver who does not remember where suitable spots are can find himself with few options left. Of all the classes in Armored Warfare, the Tank Destroyers require perhaps the most patience and planning.

We’ll see you on the battlefield!

Jul 31, 2018

Vehicles in Focus: B1 Draco

Armored Warfare - Silentstalker

Commanders!

The Tier 9 B1 Draco, built on a chassis of a B1 Centauro and one of the most unique Tank Destroyers in the game.

It is an anti-aircraft vehicle armed with a 76mm L/62 rapid fire cannon installed in a new, enlarged DRACO turret that can be mounted on various platforms including tracked vehicles, fixed installations or – in this case – wheeled chassis such as the B1. The turret is unmanned and remotely controlled.

The vehicle appeared for the first time in 2010 and was offered for export as a potent anti-aircraft as general fire support and even artillery and mortar shell interception solution but the attempts to sell this type of vehicle type have not yet met with success.

More often than not the OTO Melara 76mm L/62 gun can also be found on various ships (usually frigates, corvettes and missile boats) with multiple countries (including India, Israel and Taiwan) using this Italian weapon system.

The fully stabilized 76mm gun is automatically loaded by a drum-type automatic loading mechanism with 12 rounds that can itself be quickly reloaded by 12 shell drums stored in the back of the vehicle. The loading mechanism is capable of 80-100 rounds per minute bursts. The gun is guided by an advanced radar and gunnery system, capable of precise aiming even at very long distances and of controlling the 76mm DART guided ammunition radio-controlled ammunition, which can adjust its trajectory in order to maximize accuracy. The gun can elevate to +75 degrees and depress to -10 degrees.

The vehicle weighs around 30 tons and is powered by a 520hp Iveco MTCA diesel, allowing it to go as fast as 100 km/h. It’s also rather large – in order to keep it acceptably light, the protection levels are generally quite low – it can only withstand 7.62mm bullets (STANAG 4569 Level 2). On the other hand, given its nature and the maximum range of its gun (20km or so), the Draco should not find itself in front-line combat anyway.

In Armored Warfare, the B1 Draco is a Tier 9 Tank Destroyer. What makes it special is the fact that where other high-Tier Tank Destroyers rely on powerful guns or guided missiles that deliver a lot of damage followed by a longer reload time, the Draco goes the opposite way. Its 76mm gun has a relatively low damage per shot value but it can fire 12 shots in rapid succession, followed by a rather fast magazine reload.

This trait makes the vehicle an excellent PvE support TD thanks to its high damage per minute value, but it also makes it quite vulnerable in PvP – unlike the vehicles that rely on single shot damage, it has to stay stationary for a prolonged period of time to fully use its damage dealing potential. It is therefore extremely important to fire at long distances so that you can utilize your solid camouflage factor and fire your entire magazine without getting spotted. In order to increase its survivability, the Draco also has a Scudo hard-kill APS and a more powerful engine than it has in real life.

In PvP, it is best used as a second line vehicle, staying hidden until the battlefield clears out a bit and moving to flank the remaining opponents. It shines on large battlefields but is unsuitable for small maps and urban areas.

We’ll see you on the battlefield!

Jul 30, 2018

Developer Q&A - Session 20

Armored Warfare - Silentstalker

Commanders!

Welcome to the newest Q&A Session where developers are answering questions posed by players.

In some Special Operations, there are objects that one needs to destroy, such as bunkers or helicopters. The damage dealt to these objects is vital to the team but is not rewarded as “damage dealt” with Credits and such after the battle is over. Is this a bug?

It is true that the Team Results window does not display this kind of damage. Completing such objectives in the game is useful when it comes to teamplay (for example, shooting down the helicopters in the third Black Sea Incursion mission) but it is not appropriately rewarded. We are not happy with this situation and are working on remedying it. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the system, we won’t be able to fix this in the upcoming update.

There are currently vehicles in the game that are unusable in Special Operations, such as Wiesel 1 or Kornet-EM. They have too little ammo for the task and some contract missions even forbid the use of ammo-replenishing PvE consumables. Additionally, I feel that their damage is reduced in PvE. Is this intended?

Their damage is not reduced in PvE. As for the amount of ammunition carried, it’s smaller than on other vehicles to maintain at least some basic semblance of realism – it would be strange if such a tiny vehicle carried more ammunition than a full-sized tank. Another aspect to consider is balance – these vehicles are very successful in PvP thanks to the combination of stealth and powerful ATGMs. To offset these characteristics, players must make sure that every hit counts since their ammo is limited. We are currently looking into adding some repair and rearm areas – we’ll be looking at player feedback and if it turns out that this issue still exists even after the recent difficulty adjustments, we will add them, like we did on the fourth map of the Caribbean Crisis.

How does the Special Operations matchmaker work? For example, four Tier 10 AFVs or LTs can’t really complete the third Black Sea Incursion mission – can you prevent the matchmaker from assembling teams that have zero chance of victory?

The Special Operations matchmaker works the same way as the PvE one. Generally speaking, it’s not supposed to assemble teams without a single well-armored vehicle. In some cases, the matchmaker does, however, exactly that – it’s a known issue that we haven’t been able to root out completely. We are currently working on fixing it.

Why is the Caucasus Loot Crate given out for contract missions and not for, you know, the actual Caucasus-themed Black Sea Incursion Special Operation?

Special Operations have their own rewards that we consider sufficient.

Will you change the system of PvE rewards for battle performance?

Perhaps in the future. The team is currently occupied with other things.

Will you do something about the AI opponents in PvE destroying our vehicle modules too often?

We agree that it’s an issue, especially when it comes to internal turret modules. We will be addressing this issue in Update 0.26, where we:

Reduce the damage caused by AI opponents to your modules
Add an ability to the Field Maintenance PvE consumable to also repair your modules

Additionally, we will be making the APS systems more effective. Together, these changes should help PvE players a lot.

Are you planning to increase the amount of Credits and Experience income from PvE? It feels that you can make much more of both in the Global Operations mode.

Global Operation battles do bring you more income per battle, but they also usually last longer. Statistically, you can complete two to three PvE missions per one Global Operations battle. With this in mind, the PvE rewards are fair.

What’s up with the AC-130 wildcard that can take out half of my team in one run? I thought this was a tank game.

We know about the issue. It is tied to wildcard scaling with tiers that is not working correctly. Unfortunately, there is no fast solution – it will take a bit of time to fix.

In some Global Operations battles, when the result ends up being 50:50, the team with more objectives captured wins. Don’t you want to disable respawning during such occurrences so that the stronger team can win?

No. The team that has more captured objectives IS stronger.

In Global Operations, what often happens is that a whole bunch of T-15s, Kornets and Sphinxes ambushes an MBT from cover. The MBT can fire once, but that doesn’t do much – after that, there’s nothing it can do against a flood of ATGMs. What are you planning to do to help players in such situations?

In Update 0.26, we are planning to give all modern MBTs effective means to defend themselves in such situations in the form of the already mentioned APS overhaul. When used correctly, the active protection systems will allow the MBTs to survive such situations. And another thing – the newly introduced Israeli branch will feature armor that will be very effective against ATGMs and will be able to “out-shoot” ATGM spammers thanks to its commonly present Ready Rack mechanism. As a result, the impact of the abovementioned situations should be greatly reduced.

Can you do something about tree opacity? When passing a forested area, it’s difficult to navigate due to the map foliage and firing over the trees is difficult too when you don’t see your target.

Aim at the silhouette. Alright – seriously speaking, it’s something we might look into in the future.

Will you improve the visual effects of water waves and the way the water in the game behaves when a vehicle enters it

Yes, we are planning an improvement of a wide variety of special effects.

Why not return the number of players to the queue interface? The current waiting time system shows inaccurate times anyway.

Displaying the number of players in the queue window led to a number of cases where players “gamed” the system so that it would give them a matchmaking advantage (for example, by ensuring they were on top of the team). The old system had other issues as well – it was incomprehensible for new players (or, more specifically, it made it harder for new players to draw waiting time conclusions from the numbers provided) and it didn’t really work for platoons at all. The new system actually works with a larger number of conditions and is more accurate and easier to comprehend. That doesn’t mean it’s always absolutely accurate and we are working on improving it even further.

Are you planning to allow players to choose between the new UI and the old Obsidian UI?

No. Otherwise, we’d have to support all new mechanics in two different systems.

Are you planning to allow transferring the accumulated Experience of Premium vehicles directly to other, progression vehicles?

No.

Have you thought about adding a post-battle chat to the game? One or two minutes, you know, to talk about what happened in that game.

We currently have no such plans for random battles as such chat would quickly become very toxic. We are, however, working on providing players with more communication options (platoon voice chat, General Chat in the HQ, Battalion Chat in the HQ that is coming soon).

There are a large number of potential Tier 8-10 prototypes waiting to be added to the game. How do you choose what to put in a progression branch and what to make a premium vehicle?

Generally speaking, for the Premium status, we choose those vehicles that had no versions of follow-ups (dead end offshoots for vehicle development) or those vehicles that foreshadow the upcoming progression branches such as the Merkava Mk.2D. Progression branches are generally assembled from vehicles of the same class and nationality (Israeli MBTs, French MBTs etc.), although some branches are based on a “topic” rather than nationality – for example the “light anti-tank vehicles” of Oscar Faraday.

Are you planning to introduce more retrofits?

Not for now. However, when it comes to customization, there will be a number of interesting options for the special Battalion contract vehicles.

Can you add a retrofit that would increase the amount of ammunition carried?

That would be a very situational retrofit, usable only for specific vehicles, in specific modes and on specific maps. Constantly installing it and removing it depending on what mode you want to play would be quite awkward. It could potentially also be quite balance-breaking. However, we are considering an ammo refill consumable.

Can you add a notification of teammate help requests to the minimap?

Not in Update 0.26, but we do hope to add it this year.

Can you make a feature where, after any battle, we’d see an image of a vehicle with all hits that penetrated or didn’t penetrate indicated on it so that we can sit down and analyze the outcome in order to help us play better?

As the first step, we already improved (and continue to improve) the impact decals on your vehicle. They now differ based on what kind of shell hit you. Based on their appearance, you can check the way your vehicle looks at the end of the battle and draw your own conclusion. In the future, we will add the possibility for you to view your vehicle at the end of any match without having to resort to replays.

Why can’t you reload your smoke launchers quicker and why don’t the repair points fix them?

Smoke launchers in real life take longer to reload than they do in the game, but the real answer is – balance. For the same reason, repair points aren’t generally meant to return your tank to mint condition, especially when it comes to defensive measures. That is why your ammunition is replenished in full but only a portion of health is returned. We are, however, looking into allowing the repair points to also replenish your smoke grenades.

Are you planning to give amphibious vehicles more abilities than just the bonus to drowning time?

Not at the moment. For the future, we are, however, considering adding fully developed amphibious vehicles with the ability to swim.

Can you make the PvP contracts go away? I play only PvE.

We will review the contract missions in general, including adding a solution for those players who prefer to play only one mode. However, we do consider the system where playing all modes yields the best rewards the right way to go.

Some contracts are made in such a way that they support anti-team gameplay (kill stealing etc.) – are you going to do something about it?

Yes. We are planning to review these contracts in order to make them promote team play better.

Remember the Base mechanism? We miss a “strategic” element like that. Will you return it?

Yeah, we miss it too. The old Base was removed for an overhaul as it didn’t quite do what it was supposed to, but we haven’t forgotten it. After we finish with the main Battalion activities we have planned for the upcoming updates, we plan to return the overhauled Base in the form of a Battalion Base with its own resources, crafting and asset deployment on the world map.

That’s it for today! We’ll see you on the battlefield!