Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #114!

This week we're pleased to be sharing with you our updated Early Access Roadmap for 2021!

We'll also be sharing with you the key parts of Update 9 today! On top of that we're letting you know how you can test out these new additions and changes ahead of Update 9's launch to give us your thoughts and feedback before they go live.

We'd seen from various parts of the community that you'd like to get more involved in changes to the game ahead of their implementation and we're looking forward to further embracing that mantra with you.

Now I'm going to pass the Dev Brief over to Lead Developer Max to show you what's next for Hell Let Loose -



Hi everyone,

We are excited to share the first roadmap update of 2021! This will show what’s coming up in Update 9 and what is still to come this year and beyond. We also want to give you more info about some of the changes well in advance of Update 9 itself, in order to keep new and veteran players better informed and to provoke conversation before we open testing up in the PTE.


Hell Let Loose PTE Application

Within the next few weeks we will begin testing U9. This is to make sure we have stable servers and clients before the update gets pushed live. We will have a focus on specific things we want the community to test and give feedback on, and will let you know what these are closer to the test date. We are happy to tell you it will now have a separate Steam application dedicated to testing.

While this was a large amount of work to set up for previous playtests, it had always been our desire to provide you with a separate app for quick access. We were able to take the time shortly after the launch of U8 to establish this new system.





Update 09: Q1 2021

• Melee
  
• Server Admin Camera
  
• Implement correct weapon zeroing for all firearms
  
• Beginning the armor system rework
  
• Community Voice Overs
  
• Steam Achievements
  
• Barbed Wire functionality
  
• Added and refined localization
  
• MG34
  
• Additional loadouts
  
• Continued Bug & Crash fixes
  
• Warmup Staging Period for Warfare Mode
  
• XP level increase
  
• Sound Improvements across the board (BAR to footsteps to death)
  
• UI Changes
  
• Max level Increase
  
• Improve optimisation
  
• Grass and Foliage spawning improvements
  
• Utah Beach Offensive mode for both German and US forces
  
• Weapon visual quality overhaul
  
• Improved Damage Occlusion System

And many more changes!

Medium Term Still To Come:

• Continued improvements to armor systems
  
• Campaign Mode
  
• SMDM Overhaul
  
• Russian Forces
  
• Russian Weapons
  
• Russian Vehicles
  
• Flamethrowers
  
• Kursk
  
• Unannounced Eastern Front Map currently in development
  
• 2 Unannounced Western Front Maps currently in development
  
• Continued in-game FX overhaul
  
• Continued in-game SFX overhaul
  
• Continued implementation and expansion of RCON features

Beyond this Roadmap

We want to assure you that there’s tons to come beyond this roadmap, we simply can’t fit it all on here and feel it’s more important to communicate short and medium term goals on this image.



One of our toughest challenges has been how we tackle the armor bugs and inconsistencies, and get it to a place where it is fun, satisfying and consistent.

Update 9 contains many changes to armor. Some large ones are:

• Increased the MG belt size to 200.
  
• Fixed zeroing on the MGs resulting in far less drop off.
  
• Reworked several associated sounds.
  
• Created new FX to better designate non-penetrating hits.
  
• Reworked HE shell damage tracing to make them ignore smaller occluding collision (ie. a fence won’t protect you from the damage). Includes all radial damage on explosions.
  
• Buffed HE shell damage radius on all vehicles.
  
• Began reworking smart materials and geometry on all vehicles and vehicle viewports to increase visual fidelity and lower vram requirements.
  
• Altered Fuel costs
  
• Hitbox adjustments
  
• Collision adjustments
  
• Penetration values & angles
  
• Armour values
  
• Tank handling and stability

We will continue work on the many different aspects of the armor system in response to community feedback, taking into consideration but not limited to the following:

• Main gun alignment
  
• Coaxial gun alignment
  
• Vehicle PhysX
  
• Handheld AT Damage
  
• AT Gun Damage and distribution
  
• Mine Damage
  
• Tank Speed
  
• 
  
• Turret speed
  
• Switching seat speed
  
• Expansion and balancing of vehicle rosters
  
• Reconsideration of vehicle componentry
  
• Repairing
  
• Rearming
  
• Tank commander loadouts
  
• Crewman loadouts
  
• Introduction of new vehicles
  
• Ongoing hitbox adjustments
  
• Ongoing collision adjustments
  
• Ongoing penetration values & angles
  
• Ongoing maintenance and balancing of armor values

We want to acknowledge that the current tank play can be very frustrating, and we are 100% dedicated to improving the overall armour and vehicle experience based on the community's feedback. This will not come all at once, as it requires rigorous testing and significant development time, but we want to reaffirm this is a top priority. The reason we’re unable to achieve this in a single update is due to the intense complexity behind the scenes as to how the vehicle physics model works. Often, adjusting one aspect of the vehicles will cause unintended other issues.

For example, while we can easily alter some aspects of penetration or armour values, we feel that there are endemic issues in the way the physics model works that will require a bigger relook.

We still have a lot to do, and are far from happy with it’s current implementation. We will be continuing to make significant changes, and will be asking the community for feedback when we have more focused PTEs post Update 9.

We are aware of some current optic and gun offsets that can arise during gameplay. We understand why this is happening and are currently troubleshooting the best approach, however this is likely a significant rework and will require a lot of development and QA time.

There are some immediate collision and hitbox issues that we will be looking to resolve for U9, but will require additional work to make this more consistent and intentional. We will do our best to eliminate as many armour bugs we can for U9, and we appreciate the patience as we work to fix this for the community, especially for those who main tanks.


.INI File & AA Settings

We have made the decision to lock the .ini file to avoid exploits and game-breaking alterations. As we’ve had to lock this, we’ve collated a huge number of community-specific AA settings and have included these as an AA setting (this can be accessed in the Options menu under “Community”).


VIVOX / VOIP

We have seen some significant improvements to the in-game voip since last week due to changes made by Vivox. We are going to continue to troubleshoot with them and we will continually provide updates as we work to resolve these issues.

We have also included in U9 the ability to re-connect to the VIVOX server via the game options menu, this may resolve your VOIP bug, depending on the issue you are experiencing.


Grass & Foliage

We’ve rewritten the way we spawn grass so it is now near-instant. This will provide a significant upgrade to the cover and concealment within the game - especially near spawns. We have also worked through all maps to make sure that grass and bushes are not affected by setting scaling. This means that low foliage quality settings will no longer remove concealing bushes.


Loadouts

We are looking at ways to balance loadouts as we look to introduce the Russian forces and therefore more weapons into the game. The current loadouts are by no means final and will be something that will be constantly tweaked for gameplay and balance throughout ongoing development.

Also we will be introducing some new loadouts specifically to those roles that lack a second loadout.

• Commander
  
• Machine Gunner
  
• Sniper
  
• Tank Commander

Warfare Forward Garrison Meta

The Warfare Garrison meta has been updated and the rules around their placement have been adjusted to encourage offset placement, but to discourage ninja-garrison spawn bombing.

• Garrisons can now be placed in the first row/column of the red zone.
  
• Garrisons placed in the red zone cost 100 supplies.
  
• Garrisons placed in the red zone are disabled if enemies are within 100m of them. This is to encourage conservative placement.

NOTE: We will be testing this during the PTE and specifically observing the placement and effectiveness of these in opening up a more circular frontline.


Achievements

As mentioned when we released achievements, we want to reiterate that many will not be available to unlock until we make client and server side changes in Update 9.


UI Changes

We’ve reworked the deployment screen format and main menu to better include explanatory descriptions and format the text better to multiple resolution scales. This also includes adding an available spawn point list in the deployment menu.


Weapon Zeroing

We’ve fixed the zeroing across all firearms. Effectively, this means your sights are adjusted to compensate for bullet drop, meaning you’ll need to aim a smaller amount above your target's head to correct for bullet drop.


Max Level Increase

We have increased the max level from 200 to 500. For those who are already at level 200 you can expect to see your level jump to your new level, based on your existing experience points


A Note on Dev Briefs

We’ve noticed that the content of dev briefings tends to be angled towards one of two parts of the community: one side is keen to hear about future content or to look behind-the-scenes at the development process, while the other is interested in granular updates on specific technical issues.

While in the past we’ve tried to balance the briefings between addressing hot button issues and future content or things we’re working on, we’re now going to do our best to include running status updates on hot button issues - even if we’ve addressed them in previous dev briefings. We will include these at the end of the dev briefing to try to keep you as up to date as possible.



That wraps up this week's Developer Briefing!

We're really excited to be sharing more on the future of Hell Let Loose with you, we'll be delving more into Update 9 and its contents over the coming Dev Briefs too so watch this space!

As always we love to hear what you think, so feel free to share your thoughts on the Roadmap, Update 9 and PTE changes in the comment section.

If you're yet to join us in battle Hell Let Loose is currently 25% off until Feb 15th
https://store.steampowered.com/app/686810/Hell_Let_Loose/


Have a great weekend everyone!

We'll see you on the frontline.

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #113!

This week we're hosting another Community Q&A where we'll be answering some of the hottest questions that you've sent in to us!

On that front you sent us over 1,500 questions in a week! This totally blew away our expectations so thank you. The team went through them all and picked 25 that we think you'll appreciate having the answers too!

Before we dive into that though, Black Matter Community Manager Spono has the latest update on the VoIP situation:


Hi everyone,

I Just wanted to give you an update with the current in-game VOIP situation and thank you all for being so patient as we work to fix this. VIVOX have been working hard and have made several configuration changes to resolve the loss of comms some of you are experiencing.

VIVOX will be continuing to make a few tweaks over the next 24-48 hours as we lead into the weekend, but are already noticing an improvement and are seeing no mass drop events since these changes were made.

VIVOX have multiple people monitoring this and will continue to do so throughout the weekend. It would be great to let us know if in the weekend you are still experiencing loss of VOIP, or if your VOIP experience is now better.

I want to personally thank the entire community for your patience as we have worked tirelessly with Vivox to resolve this as quickly as possible. Apologies for the time this has taken, we remain cautiously optimistic but hopefully we are now on the road to recovery. We will endeavor to update you on this after the weekend, once we have heard back from our friends at VIVOX.

Thanks again
Spono




Will Hell Let Loose be supported after you leave Early Access?

Yes. Leaving Early Access simply represents a consistent level of quality and optimisation across the game that we’d be happy to call a starting place for all the work to come. It is not a sign that we’ve “finished the game” and are going to move on. Once we leave Early Access, the team is poised to expand and continue as we always have - with the same or slightly larger flow of work as we’ve always had (too fast and it becomes hard to quality control and too slow and the game will feel stagnant!). We have to implement campaign mode, more forces, expand the ones we have, expand weapon and equipment offerings, add new mechanics (flamethrowers and mortars to name a few), add completely new map types, refine the metagame, continue to balance, support the competitive side, continue to optimise, add more vehicles and much more. Many of the most popular games on Steam are titles that have been out for more than five years!


What do you think about adding more complexity/variety to the AT weapons in the game, i.e. magnetic mines/charges, single-use rockets, AT grenades, etc.

This is ultimately where we want to go with the anti-tank capability. We feel it’ll be much more interesting to have a varied series of mechanics that can be used to take down different vehicles than just firing a ton of rockets at them. Ultimately the armour array is still quite undercooked. The current “medium” tanks in the roster will be replaced by the most populous mediums of the day (namely the Pz 4 for the Germans, the T34 for the Russians and the stock M4A3 Sherman for the US). As a result we’ll be rebalancing the AT role to encourage different styles of play.


Are defined "Front lines" the desire of the design team or are you looking at adjusting the linear nature of sectors within maps and garrison placement? - Whilst the changes in U7 (?) were to address "ninja garrisons" with fixed lines I now see garrisons and outposts seemingly dropped in near identical locations every time.

Unfortunately the sector system (the hard squares) was a legacy implementation that has been hard to move away from, as it governs so much of the metagame. Ultimately, the key design goal is to create an organic frontline (that ideally can wrap around into the first active red row) without reintroducing the spawn bombing of the ninja garrison mechanics (where players drop the attack Garrison within the enemy SP and spawn the entire team there).


Can we expect more loadouts for the Spotters (please add satchel charges for them) and Snipers (G43 with a scope and bolt action rifles without optics)?

Yes - there’s really no limit to the loadouts we’re keen to create and implement. They’re hugely flexible for us to alter, balance and expand and it’s the key way we’re able to introduce new gadgets. Expect everything you’ve suggested and much, much more as more forces enter the game.


Do you have any ideas about new abilities for commanders? Like air strike with Stuka or rocket strafing run with P47?

Definitely. The Commander array was designed to allow us to continually expand their abilities - something that’s very easy for us to do. Expect to see Stukas, rocket strafes, nebelwerfers and more. We’ll be balancing adding these to each force in future updates.


Would it be possible to implement a way to increase/decrease command channel versus squad channel voice volumes? Also a way to equalize voices? People who increase their in game mic volume end up sounding "boomy" whereas others are almost impossible to hear.

This is something we’re discussing with Vivox at the moment, as we’re limited on the outputs. We’d love to be able to treat each channel with a different SFX filter to better distinguish them, as well as allow you individual volume control. Often the question comes up as to why use Vivox at all, given the relative issues or inflexibility. The key answer here is that other titles force the game server to carry all voice traffic. Vivox takes all our voice traffic off our game server - allowing for a much higher tickrate (networking accuracy) in game - even with 100 players all in one small area.


Are more options planned for placed weapons like the current Pak-40. I was imagining one of those 20mm flak guns or an HE mortar. Side note- you guys are awesome, absolutely amazing dev team, seriously ya'll rock.

Thanks so much for the support! Our plan is to introduce a flak position as a deployable that can be upgraded to various levels, with different functions. We’re also looking at allowing you to upgrade the AT guns similarly. We’re also going to be introducing mortars and deployables too (and most likely HMGs). There’s still a lot more to come!


UE5 may be in your hands early this year. (remember the amazing demo) So what do you think UE5 can bring to the game? Destruction maybe? More dust? ect. Keep up the good work, and be proud of what you are doing. cheers Jimmi.

UE5 is still quite a Pandora’s Box of potential complexity and features, but one we’re really excited to open up. We’re going to seek to move to it depending on the benefits in order to future-proof the title. If that lets us achieve greater performance, atmospherics or even destruction then you can bet we’ll be very keen to explore if these can be brought into HLL.


Will we also see incendiary grenades and/or molotov cocktails?

Yes! We’re actually very excited to properly add fire to the game. It will most likely be later this year, but we want to bring incendiaries in with infantry and vehicle mounted flamethrowers. Molotovs, incendiary grenades - even incendiary rounds are on the table.


It seems that developing a historically accurate flamethrower would be extremely difficult to implement. How is the team doing with this upcoming weapon, is there anything we should know, what steps have you taken to ensure its accuracy, and when do you foresee it coming to fruition? Thanks!

Funnily enough a lot of the flamethrower code already exists in the game - we just need to generate some of the FX and the work around setting up the weapon from an animation perspective. We’re going for a fuel/gel mix model - allowing you to consistently throw straight lines of fire over 20-30m (we’ll be testing the ranges). The idea is that it’ll be a way of clearing buildings at range with a high risk and reward factor. Exposing yourself to concentrate the flame, but highly effective at clearing tight spaces.


Are there any plans to add more vehicles, things like Tank Destroyers, Armoured Cars etc?

Yes, these are all planned and much more!


Will there be further tweaks to the gore system, eg. bullet dmg and stuff like bloodpools forming under dead bodies?

Yes, this is something we want to continue to refine and polish. It’s still using a lot of visually imperfect elements that we want to tighten up and make much better looking.


With the inclusion of the eastern front and what I'm assuming, more subclasses. Will you try to balance the amount of classes to each faction? IE will Germany have 2 machine gunner classes while Russia and America only have 1?

Due to the way our backend works, we’re keen to keep the number of roles in the game at 14, as expanding this will cause huge continuously multiplying complexity. As a result of this, we really see the loadouts available to each role as a way of expanding functionality across a team, and weighting it in a particular way.


Are you guys looking into adding maybe a 1 to 2 minute preparation phase before a match starts? To give people a little time to plan the attack, and to figure out what roles are needed in a squad.

This will be arriving in Update 9!


Back during the backing process of HLL, adding in the Pacific was a potential goal that wasn't met. With the success of the game so far, do you think the Pacific may be added into the game sometime in the future? Thanks for everything, and keep up the great work!

Let’s just say, if things continue as they are then we’d definitely be looking at introducing it.


How do you figure out how to balance between realism and more "game-y" elements of gameplay?

It’s always a very tough balance. It usually requires us boiling down the expectation of a feature or weapon and then considering how that could be best represented on the battlefield in a way that compliments or modifies other existing mechanics. A good example is the artillery. We felt it was important to capture the total power and devastation of it on the battlefield, and to do so we needed to introduce some limiting principles - namely, the need for teamwork in both placing marks, working with a loader and minimal game-feedback that you’re being successful. We’ll always begin with what the absolute most realistic implementation would look like and then work it back to suit the gameplay. Fundamentally it has to feel fun and to perform as close to expectations as possible - paired with an appropriate learning curve and devastating side-effects. If artillery was incredibly easy to fire then we’d have to lower it’s lethality - causing grenade-style explosions. If we make it too powerful, then we’d need to complicate it to the point where it was very inaccessible to use - lowering it’s presence on the battlefield. That is always the balance we consider - “who will want to use this?”


Are there any particular development processes you use as a small development team to release such a high fidelity game? It amazes me that such a small team can produce such a high fidelity game, arguably better than what many AAA studios have released over the last few years and as a games developer myself I like to know how the small studios get ahead.

Really appreciate the kind words - they’re a huge encouragement to the team. Realistically, I think finding the right like-minded team-members has played a huge part.


What feature are you most excited about from the future roadmap?

I think Campaign mode will tie each battle together in a really meaningful way that will give greater context and reward to the efforts of each player on the battlefield. I’m also very excited about the Eastern Front and the sheer breadth of the combat that will start to roll through the game. That you could be leading a tank column across Normandy in one battle to be hacking someone to death with a shovel in the living room of a tiny Russian Izba in the next, to dropping artillery on a rocky desert outcrop in the next battle.


Do you collect stats of every player's efficiency such as kills/times killed throughout his 'career'? Would be interesting to have a look at that not just for one round but in total (all plays) to review personal progress. Thanks

We do collect stats, and we’re going to build out a stat page in a future update. We’re keen for players to be able to see where they’re improving or efficient, and we also feel that the data will help us make better informed decisions around balance and gameplay.


What is the plan for a campaign and what is it's status?

We’re designing Campaign mode to become the default system of map rotation from server to server. Within it, we’ll pit Allies against Axis across a world map, allowing you to experience the full scale of conflict as you press for global victory. Essentially, a campaign will begin on a server and the first 5 minutes will be a both teams observing a world map of different territories. We’re thinking through the exact mechanics at the moment, but want to introduce an element of risk and reward to decision-making in this screen. Will you choose to open your campaign by attacking in the “Beaches” territory (choosing between Utah or Omaha), or will you decide to begin in the far east as the Russian forces? We need the design to be flexible enough to allow us to continually add maps, as well as introduce variety and different stakes to each battle. We want resources to be fixed, so that failing to maintain a good balance in one battle will affect the next one. In addition, the choice you make over whether you choose to attack on Offensive mode, defend on Offensive mode or fight a Warfare battle will similarly change the reward for victory or defeat. We have a huge number of variables that we’re excited to introduce - we’re currently just working over the design to make sure that it’s both compelling, competitive and balanced. It also needs to be able to house all current and future content. In any case, it will be a very, very large update post-launch as it’ll be a very significant addition to the game.


During early access it's hard to decide if you want to implement new features to bring new players, or fix bugs to keep existing players interested. How do you plan on balancing those two objectives?

It’s definitely always a difficult balance. New exciting content brings in new players and allows us to keep the lights on at the studio, but at the same time we always need to make sure we’re dealing with the bugs and less fun aspects of the game that are causing issues for the community. We’re reaching a point now though where there aren’t many surprises within the course of development. We’re finalising some aspects of optimisation and technical processes that will make development much smoother when it comes to fixing bugs and performance. Eventually we hope that we’ll reach a point where all the fundamentals work seamlessly and we can spend time widening the game.


Update 8 has been great! Especially the updates to the support and engineers. What unit type do you think needs more love the most next and what additional infantry loadouts & customizations do you have planned for the future?

Really glad you’re enjoying the additions! Ultimately we’ll be rotating through the most under-cooked loadouts to add more and more to them before circling back to the start. Initially we were so busy with overhauling key parts of the game that many of the loadouts became just different mixes of existing guns. We’re going to be increasingly moving away from introducing loadouts with existing elements, and use them how they were designed - as a way of introducing entirely new functionality (be it weapons or gadgets or equipment).


Do you ever expect the game to have tanking only maps? Would be kind of cool!

We’re keen to keep the ruleset for HLL as fixed as possible, with the main variable being the maps and forces present. That said, we know that some maps are better for infantry and some are better for vehicles. While we’d never limit the players or force playstyles in a certain direction, we’re going to be introducing some famous tank battles. It’ll become obvious once you’re in the battle why armor played such an important role in open, rolling terrain!


Night combat, do you have any plan to do any current maps but with night variants? If so, would flare guns also be looked at both as illumination and anti tank/infantry variants?

Yes, we’ll be bringing in a night mode in the future. We feel it’ll need flare guns to brighten up longer ranges and give unique purpose to the night environment. We don’t want to introduce a night time mode that just encourages players to increase their gamma!


Are there any plans to introduce rifle grenades? (spigot-type grenade launcher / Schiessbecher) + thank you for your work so far! :)

Yes, we’re very keen to introduce this to the game in a future update!



Dedicated melee weapons are on the way! We'll be sharing how they work and more in an upcoming Developer Briefing.


They say keep your friends close and your enemies closer...


That wraps up this week's Dev Brief!

We hope you enjoyed our latest Community Q&A session, let us know what your favourite questions and answers were in the comments as we'd love to hear what you think!

Have a great weekend everyone.

We'll see you on the frontline.

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #112!

This week we're doing our weekly post slightly earlier than usual to coincide with this morning's hotfix.

So, get ready for patch notes, an update on the current VoIP situation, a development state of play from Max and the opportunity to submit your hot topics for our upcoming community Q&A.

Oh and there's a little uniform reveal for our next faction...



We’ve released a small hotfix to address some servers not being shown in the browser. As this was a low risk fix we are able to do this by itself and you should see more servers to choose from now in the browser!

VIVOX/VOIP

We’ve been in constant communication with our friends at Vivox and are working hard with them to establish the cause of the VOIP loss in game. While several issues have now been addressed in the back-end (specific server VOIP dropouts), we feel we are getting close to a fix for the disconnect/reconnect issue.



With the first roadmap of 2021 just around the corner we wanted to again give you a chance to ask that one burning question you may have. Although we won’t be able to answer them all, we will do our best to consolidate them and give you as detailed of an answer as possible at this current point of development.

Please fill out [url=https://forms.gle/kaJz7iVCph4fhUbE8
]this form[/url] for your one burning question!

We look forward to going through your questions and sharing our answers with you soon.



A Message From Max

Hi everyone,

As always, the team is working across a huge amount of quality of life fixes, bug fixes, crash fixes, optimisation, new content and planning into the future.

We thought we’d take some time to quickly address the hot topics currently in the community and let you know where we're at with them:

Tank MG Hit Registration

Currently the tank is using a cheap version of hitreg that initially was designed and suited to the pre-ballistics form of the MG (linetrace). It was designed to be as cheap as humanly possible, due to the then incredibly high volume of fire that tanks could put out.

The basic thought was that continuous saturation of fire was a quick way to degrade the tickrate of a server incredibly quickly - causing lagging, rubber banding etc. After adding the ballistics model to the tank MGs, we thought in testing that the old hit reg would continue to function as well as it always had. However, we've seen since the update that there are some very strange things occurring when different angles are reached from both the player capsule (the networked position of the player on the server) and the way the hit prediction works for the MG rounds fired from the tank.

We've tested several fixes for this and each one has introduced other weird effects, so the outcome we're going to push for is implementing the infantry hit reg solution (from the handheld firearms) onto the tank MGs. While this is certainly do-able, the time it takes to do this will mean a significant rework and re-test of all vehicle mounted MGs in the game. It's on our list for the next update, but isn't something we've been able to hotfix.

HE Shells

While we limited the total insta-gib range of the HE shell, we've noticed that there are several issues occurring where players are landing shells very close to the enemy (ie within the killzone) and they're walking away unscathed.

We've investigated ways to fix this, and have reworked a huge amount of the way we trace damage from an explosive source. In testing, we've seen that landing shells can sometimes have damage occluded from the blast by tiny portions of the landscape geometry and other small props. The damage then reflected outwards and wouldn't hit the area of the player that would trigger the damage. While we've made tons of changes and custom fixes to most explosives to negate this (satchels, grenades, arty), there are still complexities to add and refine - especially on our heavy weapons projectile weapon type.

As a result, we've re-written the way in which we trace damage for the heavy weapons, both making some aspects of it more expensive on the netcode, but we've also made efficiencies in other places too. As a result, there should be no more accurate shots failing to kill your target. Obviously though, this is something we'll continue to monitor after we roll this change out in U9.

Grass Issues

Since this was spoken about recently, we’ve optimised much of the engine code that handles this and are seeing significant improvements across the board. The engine now longer force-unloads the grass, and instead keeps it culled when the player dies which then allows us to bring it back in on spawn very quickly. We’re very excited to roll this out in Update 9.

Armor Issues

There are tons of these and each dependent on the vehicle, the player and the expectation of what should happen. We've got lots of detailed feedback across this from clans and the community more broadly, and we've broken each issue down into a bug to be worked through (and many already are). There are some easy ones to fix, and then there are some tough ones to fix. Physics are always exceedingly painful - especially when using them in a way that needs to be incredibly lightweight.

The main thing here is that we're working on aspects such as: manoeuvrability, hit boxes, damage effects, shell non-pen effects, weird hitbox issues causing single shot kills, bouncing/floaty physics, offset reticles etc. The list is really long and often the moment you tweak any aspect of the physics, lots of strange things happen. In any case, we're working through the feedback as efficiently as possible to get as many meaningful changes in for U9. We should also note that we’re still building out the base armor roster for the game - including bringing in the more unsung heroes like the Pz4 and Stug, alongside the stock Sherman variants.

Metagame

We’re currently looking across all feedback and have been thinking deeply about how we will adjust the metagame in order to better enable off-set attacks on Strong Points, without returning to the previous ninja Garrison metagame.

Optimisation

This is ongoing over the course of development as we work through a ton of issues and overhaul the fundamentals. Now that many of those overhauls are complete, we've been able to make some big leaps forward, with more to come. The weapon overhaul and grass changes have increased performance, as well as other optimisations.

Tutorial and Tips

These are key for us, but they've also been on the back burner while we work out what the actual meta and functionality of the base game is before we start creating tips (that would soon become outdated the moment we changed something). The need for this and good localisation is ever more apparent, and something that we're prioritising more and more.

Localisation

With the growth of several new communities, we’re introducing improved localisation for all languages (with updates to the now long out-of-date text currently in the game) and adding certain languages. This will include iterative updates to the in game Field Manual.


Thank you all for your continued support, feedback and patience. It really goes a long way! Now, we'd like to give you a first official look at a uniform from the Eastern Front...





1. SH-40 (Steel helmet-40)
2. Summer field uniform 1940-1943
3. Tarpaulin boots
4. Universal ammo pouch
5. Mosin rifle ammo pouch
6. MPL-50 (small infantry spade-50)
7. Сable pouch
8. Small sapper ax
9. Sapper tool bag
10. Sidor (Duffel bag) with satchel charge.






That wraps up this week's Dev Brief!

We hope you like what you've read and seen today! The team are looking forward to going through your questions for our Community Q&A and we're keen to give you some answers, so if you've got something you'd like to ask us make sure to get it submitted!

Have a great weekend everyone.

See you on the frontline.

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #111!

This week we're previewing the MG34 and explaining how it'll fit into the German Machine Gunner's roster!

The team also have an update on where we're at in regards to tackling the current VOIP issues in-game.

Oh and before we get stuck in, you'll also notice that the map we're showing you the MG34 on isn't from the Western Front...



The MG34 will be coming to Hell Let Loose in Update 9 for the German Machine Gunner role.



A key aspect when introducing new weapons to Hell Let Loose is considering the difference this weapon will make to the battlefield, and how it will be meaningfully different to whatever is currently available. This is often based on the historical usage of the weapon, technical difficulty in achieving a significant difference (i.e. if the functionality is not something that exists elsewhere in the game and must be custom built) and then lots of testing and feedback with the community.

The issue with having a very low time-to-kill within a game like Hell Let Loose is that bullet damage values more or less stay consistent from weapon to weapon - with the largest factors being reticle shape, recoil strength, recoil pattern, ammo counts and loadout availability.



As a result of this, we’ve designed the MG34 to possess its real life rate of fire (while fast, noticeably slower than the MG42), and also a slightly lower recoil value - enabling greater precision and control. In addition to this, it has a smaller belt size, but a number of belts that matches the ammunition count on the MG42.

While the MG42 is used for pouring huge amounts of lead down range into an enormous “beating zone” (which is what ultimately made it such a unique and fierce weapon) with a large belt size, the MG34 is for more considered and focused fire at the sacrifice of overwhelming fire.



When looking at the spectrum of weapons available to the German forces during WW2, the MG34 was the backbone of the army for the entire duration of the war before being challenged by the MG42 in the later years. As such, we feel that it is appropriate to replace the MG42 with the MG34 as the Standard Issue loadout for the German Machine Gunner role. Fear not though, as the MG42 will be available as the first unlock for the role at level 3.

We also want to note that while we won’t ship the MG34 with a select fire mode, we’ve revisited select fire mode functionality and will be looking at introducing it in the future for all weapons with the setting available.

We’re excited to show off the distinct characteristics of the weapon’s fire sound and functionality below in one of our coming Eastern Front maps! Please be aware that both the texture quality of the MG34, the casing fx, as well as the map are still work in progress with more to be done!





We want to quickly follow up with the VOIP issues some are still experiencing in game. We are in conversations with our VOIP provider Vivox to resolve this issue as soon as possible. Several fixes have already been made but we want to make sure any final aspects are resolved.

If you do experience VOIP loss, please let us know in the #voip_troubleshooting channel in our official Discord. Some players are managing to reconnect to VOIP by disconnecting and reconnecting their mic/headset. Let us know if this works for you.

Once again, thank you all for your patience and support whilst we investigate this frustrating issue.



That wraps up this week's Dev Brief!

We've got lots more to share in the coming weeks, including an updated Roadmap and a community video Q&A so watch this space!

Have a great weekend everyone.

We'll see you on the frontline.

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #110!

This week we're showing you the reworked Barbed Wire deployable that'll be coming to Hell Let Loose as part of Update 9!

We're also taking a moment to address the current VOIP issues we're seeing players experiencing, as well as officially confirming a new weapon coming to the game, so stick around until the end!



For Update 9, alongside working through many other incomplete aspects of the game, we’ve managed to swing back and figure out a cost effective way to give barbed wire the desired effect we’ve all been waiting for.

Hell Let Loose’s damage system is designed to be relatively simple when it comes to addressing wounds. This is to not only reflect the relatively simplistic triage process during the war (with some forces not even having morphine widely available), but also to create a strong series of actions in order to bring someone back to fighting capacity.

As a result, we feel that the key with barbed wire is that it should cause noise rather than damage (and we all know how horrible the sounds of being trapped in barbed wire are) and completely slow you down for as long as you’re stuck to it. In addition, while some barbed wire can be navigated through, we obviously felt it was important that player-deployed barbed wire completely blocked you.

We’re therefore replaced the old, tiny barbed wire in the Engineer loadout with large - tall arrays that are far more effective at blocking locations and causing bottlenecks.


Please note: This is early footage and is subject to change.

Barbed wire can be blown up with Satchel Charges and well placed artillery. We’ll be testing this functionality in order to make sure it strikes a right balance of being a considerable obstacle without being too strong and impossible to deal with.

In the future we’ll be looking at letting heavy vehicles potentially crush barbed wire in order to clear it.



We’re aware that significant voip issues have been experienced for far too long. We’ve been doing a vast amount of digging and profiling, and (with help from the community and our QA team) have identified the issue.

The team are now working with the provider to rectify the issue as soon as possible. We will keep you updated via Discord and other channels as we work on this.

Sorry for any frustration caused by this, we really appreciate both your patience and reports whilst we get this fixed.



We saw many correct guesses in last week's tease, so today we're confirming that Update 9 will include a new weapon for German Machine Gunners, the MG34!



We'll be delving more into the MG34 and its role within the game in a future Dev Brief, so watch this space MG mains.

That wraps up this week's Dev Brief! Let us know what you think of the changes coming to Barbed Wire, we look forward to hearing your thoughts on it!

Have a great weekend everyone!

See you on the frontline.

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #109 and the first briefing of 2021!

To get the ball rolling we're starting small and focused this week as we look to revealing and diving into the larger parts of Update 9 in the briefs to come.

But having said that, this week's brief will be pleasing on the eye and your weapon firing satisfaction so without further waiting I'll pass you over to Max!

Happy New Year everyone!



Hi everyone,

It’s our first week back into the studio and as a result of us getting busy again we’ve got a relatively low-key dev briefing for you this week before we can start to dive into the larger aspects of Update 9 and beyond.


A key visual element of first person shooters are the weapons, hands and arms that take up large portions of screen real-estate the entire time you play the game. While we managed to overhaul our hands and sleeves in Update 7, we didn’t manage to tackle a visual upgrade of our weapons - arguably the most significant objects in the game and certainly objects that deserve to be the best quality we can make them.



For Update 9, the art team has been keen to audit these areas and have rebuilt an entirely new procedural texture system in line with AAA workflows. Previously, older texturing workflows relied on several unique textures for each model in the game. You would have three textures that would make up the Kar 98k, and as a result of texture budgets, you’d need to either handle these in an extremely clever way, or simply downgrade the resolution of them in order to make them cost effective - resulting in a total loss of detail.

New Modelled Barrel


In the last three years, with the advent of much more widely used photoreal lighting and material creation processes, the philosophy behind texturing has changed significantly. Instead of creating three separate unique textures for each of the 40+ weapons and pieces of equipment in Hell Let Loose (roughly 120 different textures), the use of “smart materials” means that we are now able to create a “metal material”, “wood material” and “bakelite material” using three textures in each. We then take each weapon or piece of equipment in Hell Let Loose and set up one single very low res texture that acts as a mask. It basically let’s us tell the barrel of a gun to use the metal material, while the stock is told to use the wood material and so on.

The result of this is incredible. Instead of using 120 different textures, we’re able to look at guns like the Thompson, BAR, Garand, K98k and so on and simply use the same three wood textures and the same three metal textures - each contained within a custom material that lets us change the way these behave per gun. The first weapon to benefit from the early version of this system (that we’ve now taken much further) was the MP40.

So what does this mean? Ultimately, it offers a really significant optimisation for GPU and texture memory that will be best felt on low end machines, while also enabling us to maintain incredibly high quality detail very close to the camera. In essence, through some clever overhaul, we’re able to optimise and drastically improve the visual quality of every weapon in the game. In addition, it also means we’re able to create weapons far faster - as once the model is made and the single mask texture has been created, we can procedurally texture in minutes.

Kar98K Scoped - Current Version


Kar98K Scoped - New Version


This technology is also important because we’ll be implementing this into the way we work on other things in the game - like vehicles, props and other objects. The end result should fundamentally be a significant improvement to frames and visual quality. In addition, this system also gives us the ability to dynamically texture the weapon - adding fingerprints, blood flecks and eventually mud, snow and raindrops.

Luger - Current Version


Luger - New Version


As a side note, we’re also fixing any incorrect text on weapons while cleaning up each model. A small example is that the M1919 is now a far better looking gun with proper modelled holes on the barrel.



We’re also excited to announce that we’ve fixed the often talked about issue of the weapon zeroing that was introduced with the ballistics systems. Each weapon is now zeroed correctly and far better models the real life trajectory. For laymen, the outcome of this is that it no longer feels like the bullet is “falling out of the barrel” - instead travelling straighter for far longer. While this has applied to all weapons, it is especially satisfying on the lower caliber weapons and vehicle mounted coaxial and hull machineguns.

In addition, we discovered a nasty bug with regard to the tank mounted machine guns that cause the bullets to occasionally not register with infantry at certain angles. We’re currently looking at fixes for this.



That wraps up Max's post on the upcoming weapon visual upgrades and weapon zeroing fixes!

What we shared today is just the tip of the iceberg for Update 9 and we look forward to sharing lots more with you as we move through early 2021.

Now before we sign off for the weekend, can anyone figure out what upcoming weapon this belongs to?



We'll see you on the frontline!

Hey everyone,

We hope you've all had a good week so far!

We just wanted to quickly update you that you’ll start to see aspects of the upcoming Steam achievements rolling through in different ways (some being listed on Steam but obscured). We’ve plugged them in as just a very minor aspect of the next update.

We appreciate that for many players achievements are not their desired priority, and we want to assure you that not only was this a very minor piece of work, it was a value-add to our work on adding additional telemetry to the game that will help us get a much greater sense of role usage, map popularity, average game length and weapon usage.

Just to let you know - In addition to this, we’re also investigating an increase in Vivox VOIP connection issues. We really appreciate your patience and reports on this while we investigate these problems as a matter of priority.

We'll be back again tomorrow for our weekly Dev Brief!

See you on the frontline.

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #108!

To see out 2020, Max has put together an end of year review as we look at some of the biggest content drops that Hell Let Loose received over the last twelve months, as well turning our gaze to 2021...

Over to you, Max!



Hi everyone,

2020 has been an enormous and historic year - with the loss of loved ones, jobs and even just the normal rhythms of life. Amidst that, we’ve been very fortunate to be able to continue work on Hell Let Loose, and have been thankful for the support we’ve seen for the game from the existing community and new players.

Because of this, we’ve been able to expand the team and increase production on all fronts. As a result, 2021 will be a huge year for Hell Let Loose. We’ll be seeking to leave Early Access, introduce a whole new front and the Soviet forces - an entirely new army. On top of that we’ll be continuing to polish, optimise and expand the existing game.

2020 was a very challenging year for us as a dev team. It marked significant milestones in our overhauling of previous systems and has set us up well for the future - with hastily formulated solutions (line trace ballistics, the way we handle mapping, our entire animation system etc.) finally given new life with our desired solutions.

In a quick look back, here are some of the major pieces of content or overhauls added to the game:

Update 5 in February saw the introduction of Purple Heart Lane, the US heavy tank variants and the overhauled non-verbal communication system.

Update 6 in late April introduced Hill 400, as well as our ballistics overhaul, the addition of the Scout cars, the Recon Plane Commander ability among many others.

Update 7 in mid July introduced the total FPP and TPP animation overhaul, the total firearms sound effects overhaul, Carentan and the Foy overhaul among many other changes.

Finally, Update 8 was introduced in early December and saw the introduction of transport and supply trucks, satchel charges, hammers, blowtorches, the Grease Gun, the overhaul of Hurtgen Forest, the overhaul of the supply and fortification systems, the introduction of a hit box system and the total overhaul of all explosion and heavy weapon sound effects and visual effects.

Because of the support and interest of the community, we’re in the fortunate position of being able to confidently plan many more years of content to come. In what is now an established tradition, we’ll continue to share what we’re working on with you in the weekly dev briefings.

Finally, thank you for your patience in the journey of our development. While we always strive to fix, polish, optimise and expand the game in the right order and as fast as possible, we know that we often make mistakes or introduce issues - or may have prioritised something high on the list only to discover a more pressing issue emerges. While it’s happened before, we know it’ll happen again and we thank you for your patience in allowing us the time to work to fix these issues. Our commitment is to work as quickly and efficiently as possible to address all community feedback, as well as continue to expand different aspects of the game.

While we’ve often said the Hell Let Loose journey has just begun, it’s appropriate to now say that 2021 will be the end of the beginning. We’re very excited for the year ahead and are looking forward to working with you to continue to refine the game. With the Western and Eastern fronts coming into play, we still have huge development milestones to tackle - melee combat, Campaign mode and flamethrowers to name only a few. We have many more different maps to create - each with entirely new gameplay challenges. We have new vehicles, new weapons, improvements to the meta, new effects, new sound effects, new cosmetic options, new Commander abilities and more.

We hope you have a wonderful new year and look forward to seeing you on the frontline in 2021!

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #107!

This week we're talking about the meta! Specifically what we feel is working, what we think isn't and what we're doing to change it.

We were originally planning to talk about this over the last few weeks, but due to Update 8 and Patch shenanigans we had to push this topic back slightly... But now the time has come!

Project Lead Max has put together the team's thoughts on what we're seeing and what we've learned from all of your feedback on how the meta plays and feels at the moment.

Now, lets get stuck in shall we!



Hi everyone,

Now that the dust has settled on both Update 8 and Patch 14, we thought we’d take the chance to address several large metagame issues that we’ll be looking to solve in the near future. In order to best address them, we’re keen to not only discuss them here, but use this dev brief as a jumping off point for wider community discussion.


Initial Issue

Previously, defensive players would often be incredibly overwhelmed and hamstrung by attacking players who would sneak into the strongpoint (or just behind it) and drop down a Garrison (referred to as a “ninja garrison”). This would then negate all measures the defenders had in place, by enabling the attacking team to dump their entire force onto the point extremely quickly.

The key issues here were that this completely dissolved the “frontline” aspect of the game and enabled near instantaneous leverage of entire teams into action behind or on top of the enemy line. In effect - 1 (and at most - 2) players could leverage the entire attacking team into a single location, with the defending team unable to parry this attack by virtue of it being so easy to initiate.

In order to preserve the sense of a front line, and better telegraph the loss of ground and enemy thrusts, the ability to place Garrisons in “red zones” was removed. This was largely to see if teams could successfully leverage an assault with 3-4 Officers using OPs in the red zone instead of the single Garrison.

Positive Result

The positive result has been in far more stable front line combat. The movement back and forth of teams directly correlates to their positioning, and attacks can be telegraphed and thwarted by defenders.

Negative Result

The downside has been the often-stagnation of teams into pure attack or defense - largely due to the asymmetry of leveraging assaults. Instead of being able to move 4-5 Officers into an attacking position using a Garrison, multiple individual Officers must now attack together in order to present a significant enough front to successfully push a defended strong point.

For example, in the following image we can see more than 6 individual Officers have manoeuvred to the same location in order to place down OPs. While this is encouraging to see, the inability to quickly deploy attacking Officers (and therefore OPs and units) into flanking or attacking positions (that have won ground against the defenders).





Ultimately, we do not want to return to the days of ninja garrisons that enabled one or two players to leverage the entire attacking team into the point in the blink of an eye. At the same time, we want to enable attacking teams to be able to properly establish an assault with a Garrison from an offset or close location in territory that has already been cleared and won by them (instead of only ever being able to move individual OPs forward).

The intended design for Garrisons is such that a team can place one in order to support an attack or defence - but that they are not the key instrument in the attack. We have designed the shorter spawn times on the OPs, as well as the less restrictive placement rules to facilitate OPs as a way of moving your individual unit forward from the Garrison up to the point (or, sustaining your unit on a defensive point while the Garrison is designed to sustain the individual units from a lower risk position).

With this in mind, the best outcome we feel would be to enable the placement of a Garrison in the first row of red zone (critically - not deep behind enemy lines) in order to enable a forward assault starting point, but ideally not within 250m of the strongpoint itself (therefore preserving the ability for the defenders to engage in meaningful combat without immediately being overrun).

How to achieve this:

We feel that there are several options here, each with different levels of work attached.

• Change the rules to exclude enemy garrisons from 250m of the defenders strong point. We feel that this would solve the issues experienced by defenders, but also enable attackers to open up flanking fronts to assault the strongpoint (critically, enabling a spawn location for Officers to begin their assaults using OPs). While this idea would most likely solve the issues, we feel that stopping players from building near the very place they want to attack will feel unintuitive and too gamey.
  
  
• Alter the fragility of Garrisons in red zones. This could be done by making them inactive with a larger enemy radius (ie. if an enemy is within 100m of the Garrison, it becomes locked), able to be destroyed by large proximity (ie. removed if an enemy is within 100m) etc. This would encourage players to place attacking Garrisons in safer locations that promoted more telegraphed attacks.
  
  
• Enable players to build Garrisons in adjacent sectors in the row, but not in the active sector (similar to Offensive mode). The key issue we see here is that central sectors will always struggle more as they will need to fight a two front war - although this is something that will always be present within the game to a degree.

Airhead

Typically with Hell Let Loose, we like to try and make sure most game problems are solvable by the Commander, the Infantry or the Armor. This issue when it comes to the Commander leans heavily on the use of the Airhead.

In playing consistently with this feature, we feel it’s wise to greatly increase the time the Airhead is active from one minute to five. Design around the airhead is to create a fragile but potent spawn location that can be used by attackers to begin an assault from within the redzone. While this is working - the short duration it’s active means that the opportunity is often missed. To counter this, we will be extending the duration, while also messaging to the team that an Airhead is active.

Halftracks

We’re yet to add halftracks, but our design for them positions them very much as a mobile garrison that is able to be used within the red zone. While “one man with a box” is extremely difficult to counter by defenders, we feel that a large and fragile vehicle represents an acceptable visual and sound signature to enable Garrison functionality within the defenders territory.

Our feeling here is that the halftrack - used cautiously - could work as either a fallback spawn point for defenders, a wide flank launch point for attackers - or a creeping garrison pushing directly towards the strongpoint.


We want to preserve the frontline push and pull of the teams, but better enable attackers to “solidify” their gains into enemy territory by being able to place a Garrison, instead of being arbitrarily locked to sector edge garrisons.



Issue:

Something that can be seen both in the competitive scene as well as the public scene is that the nature of scoring wins and losses in Warfare mode promotes stagnant “hold the middle” gameplay. Teams will often push to the center, take the neutral sector and then hold the point for the duration of the game. This leads to boring gameplay - including forced total time limit game - and overly simplistic victory conditions.

Proposed Fix:

Instead of awarding victory based on whoever has the most territory at the end of the game, we will change the sector reward value to represent a score. Capturing the third sector will still award victory, but the scoring will be cumulative instead of fixed.

• For capturing the middle territory, your team will be rewarded with 1 point.
  
• For capturing the first enemy row, your team will be rewarded with 2 points.
  
• For capturing the second enemy row, your team will be rewarded with 3 points and Victory.
  
• For retaking your own previously captured rows, you will only be rewarded with 1 point for each row retaken.

For example:

• Team 1 takes the neutral territory and is rewarded with 1 point.
  
• Team 2 attacks and takes the neutral territory off them. Both teams are 1-1.
  
• Team 2 attacks and takes the first row of Team 1. Team 2 is rewarded 2 points and now has a total of 3 points. 3-1
  
• Team 1 attacks and retakes their first row. 3-2
  
• Team 1 attacks and takes the center row. 3-3
  
• Team 1 attacks and takes the first row of Team 2. 3-5
  
• Team 1 attacks and takes the second row of Team 2, winning the game: 3-8.

Public Games:

In this way, we feel that public games will become far more dynamic, and that aggressive teams will be rewarded for successfully pushing forward. In order to encourage this, we may look at rewarding greater total victory experience to teams that capture row 3, as opposed to trigger a score victory.

Competitive Games:

In terms of the competitive scene, we feel that this is a great way of scoring games across a season - encouraging each team to try to win the highest number of points within a game to enable them to compete on a broader scale.

Instead of a binary “win/loss”, this would represent a much deeper idea of how the game progressed, as well as create greater competition as each team is trying to earn as many potential points as possible to keep them in best standing for a season.

Eg.

• Team 1 wins 9-4 in game 1 against Team 2.
  
• Team 3 wins 5-3 in game 2 against Team 4.

The result would be:

• Team 1
  
• Team 3
  
• Team 2
  
• Team 4

As opposed to the current system in which Team 1 and Team 3 are considered equal - despite Team 1 playing a better game.



Our ongoing commitment to you - our community - is to attempt to find the best solutions for each issue that arises over the course of development - from TTK issues to fences to armour hitboxes to metagame. While we often don’t get things right the first time, we are committed to continuing to find the best possible fixes and solutions that capture the spirit of the game, while also dealing with endemic issues.

Next week the team will continue talking through through the meta issues, as we’re aware that there are quite a few. Increasingly in development we’ll start to use dev briefings as a platform by which we can share our thinking about key issues. Obviously, we’re also aware that with a community this size - answers are very rarely monolithically correct, and that many people may love an idea or feature, while others may despise it. As developers, this is a very difficult line to tread, but we’re keen to keep as much transparency as possible during our update cycles.

In any case, we’re very excited to work with you to improve Hell Let Loose as much as we can. We’re already hard at work on continued polish, optimisation, future content and solutions to the issues discussed above. We’re particularly excited to follow the conversations around this dev brief and will be keen to see the conversation evolve.

We'll see you on the frontline!

Hey everyone,

Before we delve into the patch notes we just want to say thank you to everyone for your support and feedback following Update 8's arrival!

Today's patch is a possible thanks to the community's feedback, patience and comments both here on Steam as well as our other social hubs.

If there's something you've fed back that hasn't been addressed or mentioned today, fear not - just because it isn't in here doesn't mean it isn't on our radar.

Now, let's get stuck in shall we:

• Bypass server queue not allowed - bug fixed where it was causing mass disconnects on map change.
  
• Vote kick threshold raised - will require a much higher % of the team for a vote to succeed. This is one of the most painful features we’ve ever worked on in HLL. Too low and people continually troll by kicking people - too high and it’s useless. Ultimately we’re looking at the ability for server owners to enable/disable vote kick and also player reporting and admin logging for U9.
  
• Vivox/Voip issues, we are watching this closely and have made one or two bug fixes.
  
• Fix for super grainy/sharp broken AA. While these changes benefitted TAA, they multiplied the effect on other forms of AA. We will be hand implementing these settings to TAA for Update 9.
  
• Fix fallen burned tree collisions on Hurtgen forest so players can step over them.
  
• Make all wire fences ignore collision from bullets, tank shells and heavy weapons.
  
• Changes across the BAR, Thompson, MP40, K98k, Garand, G43, M3 Grease Gun weapons to reduce damage drop off at range, as players landing difficult, accurate shots were punished for their efforts.
• We also increased the shots to kill on extremities for some of these weapons, while returning the STG and BAR to their OHK status. The result is that all of these weapons now play closer to their U7 variants, while still punishing shots that hit the lower legs and feet.
  
• Fixed: The SFX for exiting ocean water can be heard within 500m.
  
• Slightly lowered semi-automatic recoil. It now sits just above half way between the original and the new. We played with this every day since the Update and found that the new recoil was slightly too strong.
  
• Applied bullet penetration to many irritating materials that we’d missed (wire fences, small wooden posts).
  
• Fixes for collision occurring on things it shouldn’t (grass on the top of embankments, some reeds, some other foliage, window and door openings on some buildings).
  
• Fixed a few dozen map bugs reported by QA and the Community.
  
• Partial fix for grass loading slowly. Much more should now have loaded when you spawn, but there’s still more work we can do here.
  
• Removed medals from the player nameplate HUD icons, as their scaling often totally broke the visual and was more distracting than useful. We’ll look at implementing this after we revise the idea. The medals are still present in the scoreboard and Barracks.
  
• Various server crash fixes, and improvements made to address reports of ‘rubber-banding’.
  
• Fixed Sapper being available before level 3 for the US Engineer.

That wraps up today's patch notes!

As always we'll be watching for and collating your feedback on these changes and fixes as we continue to craft Hell Let Loose throughout Early Access.

If you haven't already downloaded the free 'Winter Warfare Helmet Pack' you can do so for a limited time below:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1205050/Hell_Let_Loose__Winter_Warfare_Helmet_Pack/

We'll see you on the frontline!