Happy Friday, Survivors!

The cat is finally out of the bag: We’re collaborating with Makeship to release a Generation Zero themed plushie for a limited time. I’ve seen this requested many times over the years and before I worked at Avalanche, I myself might have snuck in some requests for a little Machine friend to have at home.
After months of careful planning and multiple design iterations, here’s what the Tick Plushie will look like:



Isn’t it absolutely adorable? Here’s how this campaign is going to work:
Between December 1st and 24th, 2023, you’ll be able to order your very own plush from the Makeship website. They cost $29,99 each. If more than 200 are ordered during that period, they will be produced and shipped early next year. This means that Makeship will produce as many as you order, meaning there are no stock limits!
Seeing the initial response after we announced the plushie on social media and discord, I am confident that we’ll be able to reach the goal and get these little fellas shipped out to you all (and me, of course).
I’d like to note at this point that this is purely a marketing campaign, meaning no development time that would have otherwise gone towards bug fixes has been spent on it. The only one that has gotten distracted by obsessing over a piece of felt the size of an american football is your Community Manager, and you don’t want me doing any coding on the game anyway.




I want to talk about the skill revamp, which we added to the 2023 Roadmap. Unfortunately, there have been some more adjustments and this feature has been suspended for the time being. The reason for this is that we noticed that there are other systems we have to work on or get a grasp of before we can get started on reworking skills. We currently don’t have a timeline for when the feature will be released, but know that we’re still planning on doing it. The way skills work hasn’t kept up very well with the updates we’ve put out thus far and we’re aware of that. We appreciate your continuous feedback around the things we can improve!

Let’s quickly go over some reminders of announcements you might have missed (No biggie, our Discord Server is always there to help out with missing information).
First off, the next update is underway and we’ll start teasing what’s in it very soon. Notable bug fixes include the inventory “last item” bug and the “tap to refuel” bug. We’ve also addressed a number of crash issues, especially related to vehicles, with more fixes to come in future updates!

The GZ DareDrop campaign is still active for content creators to do fun challenges and earn rewards. Sign up and get your loot now!

Lastly, the Steam Autumn Sale is still underway. You have until November 28th to secure some of the best deals on the GZ base game and its DLCs to date:

• Both story DLCs as well as US and Soviet Weapons are 65% off.
  
• Motorbikes are 37% off
  
• Even Companion Accessories are reduced by 20%
  
• At 80% off, now’s the perfect time to get your friends into the game at the price of, like, a bagel. One of those fancy ones with more toppings than you can fit in your mouth at the same time.

Good times! Here's a link for you to click on if you wanna check it out right away: Away we go!

As always, thanks for reading this edition of the Resistance Report and I’ll talk to you in two weeks. Today’s Swiss German word is “Chuchichästli”, or kitchen cupboard. The Germans never tire of asking us to say this and they find it hilarious.

Bye for now,
Carni
Community Manager

Happy Friday, Survivors!

I’m sorry for missing the last Resistance Report, things were getting hectic preparing for the Guerrilla Research Update (and some other things you’ll find out about soon, wink) and I didn’t end up having time to write it. But fret not, the planned biweekly cadence for these letters remains unchanged!

First off, let’s have a look back at the update. It introduced Weapon Augmenting, which is one of the best features added to GZ since release, in my humble opinion. For those of you who are out of the loop: Weapon Augmenting has you complete gameplay challenges in order to unlock Augmentation Designs which you can apply to your 2-5C weapons to make them stronger and more fun to play with. My personal favorite is Trick Shot Master, which has you taking out Machines while in the air (AKA either jumping or falling off somewhere). It can then be applied to a shotgun or melee weapon and increases both damage and accuracy significantly - but only while you’re in mid air. This design has me bunnyhopping around the battlefield like a madman and probably adds some extra mental confusion to my attacks. No notes.

From what we’ve seen across our social media channels, you seem to love augmenting your weapons as much as I do and I’m so happy about that. There seems to be some confusion about them, though, so let me shed some light: the weapon parts you need for augmentation can be gained by recycling weapons at the recycling station. The higher the quality of your weapon, the more weapon parts you receive. I’d also like to reiterate that experimental weapons can not be augmented. We decided this because we don’t know the effect that combining two augmentation powers with the existing perks of an experimental might have. If the current iteration of this feature behaves as expected, we might consider extending the functionality to 6C weapons, but currently it’s not on our roadmap.

The update also added three new Procedural Missions, the first of which is already active now. It’s called “Resistance Radio Maintenance” and has you keeping up important Resistance infrastructure. If you haven’t played it yet, fire up your game and give it a go!
We made these new Procedural Missions with two goals in mind: to make them longer and more rewarding. They should take you 10-15 minutes to complete and award you with more goodies at the end. Please let us know if the rewards feel adequate to you and if there’s anything we can improve about these missions!

Of course, when you release a lot of new content for a piece of software that has existed for 5 years, there is always a chance of something breaking in the process. In this case, we’ve heard lots of reports of the inventory not working properly. Between elements that stick to your cursor and previously looted items displaying over others, it has been a bit of a headache to you. We hear this and a fix is already underway. Unfortunately, a hotfix is not feasible because we have a major update in the works that will be released soon and shifting those timelines would do more damage in the long run. That being said, the fix will be in this next update, so you won’t have to wait too long!

Speaking of bug fixes: while we improved tabbed out performance on PC, we’re quite aware that there are still performance and crash related issues around. The next few releases will have a lot of focus on making the game run smoother and with increased stability. It’s not only important to us that we release quality, enjoyable new features, but also that you get to play and enjoy them in the way we intended. We wish we could just fix “the crash issue”, but the reality is that there are a thousand different reasons for a game to forcibly close and we’re doing our best to keep them at a minimum, but some bigger issues still slip through the net sometimes. We hope that these upcoming updates will improve your ability to play for as long as you want, alone or with friends. We love seeing you enjoy Generation Zero and sharing your love for the game!

For the content creators among you, we have something special lined up. DareDrop is a platform where developers can post gameplay challenges in their game and creators can complete those challenges and earn some sweet rewards for them and their communities in the process. We think this is an amazing opportunity for us to show off what a great and nuanced experience GZ can be. Of course it’s also the perfect time for you to record or stream a game you love and earn some cool stuff! Dares include easter egg hunts, speedruns , and complex kill conditions, so there’s something for everyone.
The campaign starts in four days, on the 14th of November, and lasts until December 12th.
You can check out the campaign and get started here:
https://daredrop.com/e/generation-zero

Thank you for reading this Resistance Report and I hope you’ll return for the next one!
In the meantime, please join our Discord Server for the best direct communication with me and some of the other Devs and let us know what you think about the Guerrilla Research Update (Please don’t ping us, though, we get startled easily).

Uf wiederluege,
Carni
Community Manager
(PS; That was Swiss German for “See you”, and yes, that’s a staple for these letters now)

Greetings, Survivors!
It’s November and we’re excited to talk about the Guerrilla Research Update, releasing tomorrow at 10am CET. As you might have seen on our Social Media channels, it contains Weapon Augmenting, new free cosmetics, a new cosmetic DLC, and some much needed fixes. Let’s get right into it!

We love to give you more ways to customize and adapt the way you play Generation Zero. Weapon Augmenting is a big step in that direction: it offers new challenges, reinforces and empowers your individual playstyle and diversifies the existing range of weapons more than ever before! Not to mention giving those of you who have been hoarding their resources something to spend them on.

Weapon Augmenting consists of two parts: Research and Crafting.
The Research is done in the new tab of the same name. It has you complete different gameplay challenges in order to unlock Augmentation Designs.


Each Design has 3 tiers (Bronze, Silver, and Gold) which become stronger as they progress, but of course the challenges required to unlock them also become harder to complete.



These Designs can then be applied to a weapon of 2-5 crowns rarity.

The application of these Designs happens at the Consumable Crafting Station, which is now split up into a Consumables part and an Augmenting part. This is how it works:
First, you select a weapon you would like to augment.
Then, you select the Design you want to apply. The application costs an increasing amount of resources based on the quality of the Augmentation Design.


Note that overriding or removing an Augmentation does not refund any of the crafting materials used to apply it. However, upgrading to a higher tier of the same Design will subtract the cost of the previously equipped tier.

There are Primary and Support Augmentation Designs. 2 and 3 crown weapons can have a Primary Design applied to them, whereas 4 and 5 crown weapons can have one Primary and one Support Design.
We decided not to allow Experimental weapons to be augmented as they’re already quite strong and the interaction between an Experimental weapon’s innate effect and augments might lead to a lot of unexpected scenarios. It could still be something we want to consider in the future, but for now this feature will stay exclusive to the regular weapons.

After we released the first three Procedural Missions, we heard a lot of feedback about them from you. Mainly there are two things you thought could be improved: the length of the missions and the rewards.
For this iteration, we’ve added three new quests for you to complete on a weekly basis. They should now take you around 10 minutes to complete and we’ve tweaked the rewards you get from them to be more satisfying.

Resistance Dead Drop
Find a cache of resources stashed by the Resistance and figure out a way inside.

Resistance Radio Maintenance
Perform repairs and maintenance on parts of the Resistance’s radio infrastructure.

High Value Target
Take out a high value Machine that’s roaming around a radio transponder.

We will continue to monitor your feedback around Procedural Missions and keep finding ways to make them more engaging, fun and challenging. Please let us know what you think about these new ones, especially compared to the previous three! We highly appreciate your input.



This cosmetic DLC was made to let you and your Companion mimic the menacing look of the enemy. The apocalypse is here, and this DLC offers a makeover to make you and Survivor’s best friend look the part with a wide range of weapon and companion cosmetics.


Machine-themed weapon skins: Made to stand out, these fresh appearances are based on the different Machine classes: FNIX, Prototype and Apocalypse (left to right).
What’s amazing about the FNIX and Apocalypse variant of these is that they’re emissive, meaning certain parts of them will glow in the dark! Here’s how that looks:



Companion Swag
On top of this, we’re happy to include a skin (which also glows!), Light Kit and Voice Box to make your Companion sound like they’re one of FNIX’ finest!
Get ready for a lean, green killing machine with the Apocalypse cosmetics for your steel buddy - they won’t know what hit’em.

Listen to a preview of the Apocalypse Voice Pack

Vocoder Voice Pack
Lastly, this pack includes another Voice Box for the Companion - the Vocoder kit. Think “space robots from your favorite 80’s scifi show”, that’s what it sounds like. Funky!
Listen to a preview

Get the pack here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2591100/Generation_Zero___Advanced_Intelligence_Cosmetics_Pack/

For those of you who are still unsure about the cosmetics pack, no worries! We got you covered. With the Guerrilla Research Update, all of you will be able to loot 6 new weapon skins and one new Companion Voice Box!







The Resistance has found a way to express themselves and the chaos that they’re going through in these beautiful weapon looks. These skins will be added to the loot pool of the new Procedural missions, which you can expect to appear starting with the update.

Companion Voice Box: 56k
Inspired by 80s telecommunication sounds, this Voice Box is perfect for those missing the time when your mother had to hang up the phone if you wanted to download something from the internet. It will also be available from all suitable loot sources after the update.
Listen to a preview

Last but not least, the ability to mute the Companion has been added in the form of the “Disconnected Voice Box”. Simply choose the option in your Companion customization menu and your trusty friend will be a silent protector from now on.

As always, we have a slew of bug fixes and improvements that are also included in the update! Namely, we’ve made some performance enhancements and the game should now be running smoother. In future patches, we’re going to emphasize performance even more, so expect more of these changes coming soon.
The Kotenok finally displays the correct stats between the 4C and 5C variants. Machines have been made easier to loot and several quests have been updated to prevent mission blockers.
PC versions have received a significant change in performance when tabbed out of the game and multiple missing textures, terrain holes and missing collisions have been fixed.

We hope you enjoy this update as much as we did developing and testing it!

The Generation Zero Dev Team

Weapons

• [Community Reported] Fixed a display bug that showed the 4C Kotenok having better stats than the 5C one

Companion

• Fixed capitalization in the Companion Crafting Station
  
• [Community Reported] Fixed a crash when using Spotter Module in multiplayer

Machines

• [Community reported] Fixed the Firebird's loot interaction box. No more ring-around-the-rosie!

Missions

• Fixed an issue where Barcodes wouldn’t count towards the Bunker progress in “The Home Team”
  
• Fixed certain circumstances preventing the player from talking to Pontus during “The Home Team”
  
• Fixed the barn door already being unlocked at mission start in "Emergency Supplies"
  
• Fixed the Firebird intro mission not starting properly when picking up the tracking device
  
• Fixed an issue where enemies wouldn't spawn during "Road to Salthamn"

Equipment and Weapons

• Removed ragdoll physics from the Remote-Controlled Tick after detonation
  
• Prevented RC Tick from taking damage from landmines

Performance

• Fixed a bug that caused unnaturally high CPU and GPU usage when tabbing out of the game on PC
  
• Fixed several crashes happening during combat
  
• Fixed a crash on startup on Steam

Sound

• Fixed a bug where certain sounds would be stuck in a loop after finishing a Base Assault

UI

• Fixed enemy outlines persisting when switching from the binoculars to a weapon scope
  
• Removed undiscovered Warboard POIs from radar. No spoilers!

World

• Fixed collision on cargo crates in warehouses
  
• Re-added engines to multiple cars on Himfjäll island
  
• Fixed multiple floating and misaligned props
  
• Fixed several terrain tears and holes

Machines

• Some armor plates on the Tank’s legs are invulnerable

Missions

• Progress Lost on Mission "The Home Team" for client completing the mission in Multiplayer

UI

• Multiplayer Matchmaking - Player fails to join the correct session as per the preferred multiplayer matchmaking settings
  
• Safehouses might get lost when logging in. This is most commonly encountered on PlayStation.

Performance

• Riding a motorcycle can crash the game, this is more prevalent on last gen consoles

Happy Friday, Survivors!

This is the second of our new series of community update newsletters that are now officially named Resistance Report! Trademark pending.
They’re intended to provide you with some information about what we’re working on and how we’re progressing. If you missed the first one, you can check it out here. I’m Carni, Community Manager for GZ and I’ll be taking you through some points today!
Let’s get into it, shall we?

The Halloween Event is back!
Between October 21st and November 5th, you’ll once again be able to earn four spooky clothing sets to scare your friends with.
They drop from all Machines you exorcise (except for the Seeker, poor fella doesn’t get any swag to carry) and will of course be unlocked permanently once you get them.
This is the perfect opportunity for our new players to get their fashion game up to par!
As for our Veterans: We hear that you’d like new clothing sets to obtain and are working on some new apparel items for you to earn in 2024. Until then, feel free to complete your Halloween style collections.
I look forward to seeing your boo-tiful outfits all over our social media and will show the best ones to the Dev Team to admire!

Everything is on track for it so far. We don’t have a date for it yet, but development is going well and soon, I’ll be able to tell you more about what’s in it.
In the meantime, let me give you some advice I’ve given to the people who join my weekly live streams (subtle plug, I know):
Those weapons you don’t need? I’d keep them in my storage box for now, if I were you. They might come in handy later.

Speaking of storage boxes: we’re aware of the fact that many players have run out of storage space again and are asking for the ability to upgrade their plundra further. We want to enable you to do this, but it requires more research into balancing and performance. We appreciate your patience!

Thanks for reading this first official Resistance Report!
As always, if there is anything you’d like me to discuss or mention in future reports, please let me know.

Cheers,
Carni

Greetings, Survivors!

This Dev Letter is going to be something slightly different from what you’re used to.
We’re trying out a new format of Dev Letters where we update you on what’s been happening in the GZ Community and, if we can, give you some insight on what we’ve been working on.
We hope you enjoy this new form of communication! Let us know what you’d like to see in these letters and we’ll do our best to include some of your suggestions in future iterations.

We are currently working hard on getting the next major update ready. Our community Beta Testers have already played the first version of it and given us tons of valuable feedback on how to make it even better – feedback we’re now implementing and testing further. Shout out to the 60 or so members who volunteer to help us test new builds to help us improve them before we release them into the wild!

We can’t commit to a release date for this new update yet, but we are approaching it carefully and making sure everything goes as planned.
Keep an eye on our social media channels in the upcoming weeks as we’ll be posting some teasers for what’s in this update!

Are you or someone you know a member of PS Plus? You might be entitled to a free copy of Generation Zero to download and keep forever!

Over 1 million new fighters have joined the Resistance against the machines since this activation with Sony was started, which we are immensely proud of and grateful for.
But the machines are relentless in their goal to defeat the humans of Östertörn, so we’ll take all the manpower we can get! If you know someone who has eyed the game before, but hasn’t checked in on it in a while, this is the perfect moment to have them give GZ a go.

Remember, you’re stronger in numbers! Outlast the Machine Threat - together.

We want to reassure you that we’re closely monitoring our channels (social media comments, Discord chats, forum threads and the support site) for your bug reports.

We’ve especially noticed players having problems with getting disconnected from multiplayer lobbies, crashing, or discrepancies in what the host sees versus what their co-op partners see.
We’re already identified some of these issues and are working on fixing them. You’ll see a small amount of performance and crash fixes in the next update with much more to come in future releases.

Here are some of the issues we’re especially aware of:

• Certain GPUs on PC get maxed out while the player is tabbed out of the game
  
• XBOX performance can get worse while riding a motorbike, which sometimes even leads to crashes
  
• PS5 is currently locked at 30FPS. 60FPS glory for all!

The Generation Zero Discord server recently passed 15k members (and is now already over 20k!), so we’ve kicked off a contest that has been going on for almost two weeks.
The three best GZ related Haikus will receive keys for the GZ base game or any DLC, so if you know how to count syllables and have 5 minutes to spare, hop over there and participate for a chance to finally get your mitts on that weapon DLC you’ve been eyeing!
The contest will end on October 2nd, 2023.

Click here to join the Discord server! simply complete the onboarding survey and go to the #announcements channel to read everything about how the contest works.


Thank you for taking a break from combatting the machine overlords to read this letter.
We look forward to talking more about what’s ahead with you in the next one!
By the way, the Dev Letter about the process of making a road map is still under construction - just like the subject it talks about, it turned out to be longer and more complex than initially assumed, so we want to make sure to get every detail right. You can expect it in the coming weeks!

Until then, cheers!
The Generation Zero Dev Team

Greetings Survivors!

We have a crucial update about upcoming price changes for Generation Zero in specific regions. Starting September 25th at 10 AM CET / 4 AM EST, the base game and DLCs will increase in price across the following currencies:

• Brazilian Real (BRL)
  
• Indonesian Rupiah (IDR)
  
• Thai Baht (THB)
  
• Vietnamese Dong (VND)
  
• Turkish Lira (TRY)
  
• Ukrainian Hryvnia (UAH)
  
• Norwegian Krone (NOK)
  
• Indian Rupee (INR)
  
• Chilean Peso (CLP)
  
• Colombian Peso (COP)
  
• South African Rand (ZAR)
  
• Argentine Peso (ARS)
  
• Kazakhstani Tenge (KZT)
  
• Uruguayan Peso (UYU)

This change will vary from region to region to align with current global currency trends and ensure pricing is sustainable and fair for all our players.

We know this is a lot to take in at once and understand this isn’t ideal for players in the affected regions, which is why you will still be able to take advantage of the current pricing until Monday, September 25th at 10 AM CET / 4 AM EST.

Thank you for your ongoing support! If you have any questions about this change, please ask away and we’ll respond as soon as we can and to the best of our knowledge.

Greetings, Survivors!

The September Update is here, bringing you a substantial amount of bug fixes.
If you’ve seen our Road Map, you know that we have some amazing content lined up for the rest of this year, which is why we’re reserving this release for bug fixes to make sure we’re ready for what’s to come.

While we’re hard at work preparing upcoming content, we didn’t want to wait with these fixes, especially since a lot of them were issues you reported to us after the Companion update and we wanted to let you play with the Companion to its full capacity before we add more content on top of it!

It’s not just one of the most anticipated and requested features from the Community, but also one of those we’ve been most looking forward to releasing, so we’re making sure to do it justice.
We hope you enjoy these bug fixes and look forward to the next update as much as we do!

Until then, remember the rules of survival: Destroy, dismantle, and rebuild!
The Generation Zero Dev Team

Companion

• Fixed an issue where the Companion item could be dropped by pressing R
  
• Fixed an issue with Companion targeting, where rocket launcher projectiles would continue to target a destroyed enemy, instead of retargeting a new one
  
• Fixed an issue where the Companion would react to flares and fireworks by attacking them instead of attacking an enemy
  
• Fixed an issue where 'Repair Companion' button failed to grey out after using the Repair Kit in the Companion Workbench
  
• Fixed an issue where a client’s Companion might end up invisible to the host
  
• Fixed an issue where Companion could remain stuck in the Pet the Dog emote animation, if players interrupted it with any other emote
  
• Fixed an issue where the Companion could go out of bounds or clip through geometry when performing the Pet the Dog emote
  
• Fixed an issue where performing the Pet the Dog emote could catapult players into the air or cause them to fall through geometry
  
• Fixed an issue where item quality was not shown for items in the Companion inventory
  
• Fixed an issue where the Companion could be picked up while performing emotes
  
• Fixed an issue with missing sound effects in the Companion Workbench
  
• Fixed an issue with the Companion Spotting Module, where it kept calling out the same enemy over and over
  
• Fixed an issue in multiplayer games, where there was no VFX shown for other players getting healed by a Companion with the Medic Module equipped

Mission

• [Community reported] Fixed an issue where the Building Blocks mission might not be able to complete due to a missing FNIX base

Equipment and Weapons

• [Community reported] Fixed an issue where players were unable to attach Vision Modules to scope on the RLG-7
  
• Fixed an issue where players could use the Sensory Jammer despite being detected by Scouts
  
• Fixed an issue where Explosive Arrows did no damage on FNIX Outpost Generators

Gameplay

• Fixed an issue where players might join a multiplayer game with a difficulty setting other than the preferred

UI

• Fixed an issue where Completion and Station might overlap on the map screen
  
• Fixed an issue where icons could be erroneously displayed on Warboard maps
  
• Fixed an issue where opening Inventory while interacting with a Station or Storage Container might cause UI overlaps
  
• Fixed an issue where UI prompts did not update if player rebound keys while in control of an RC Tick

Map

• Fixed a large amount of terrain holes and floating props

Machines

• Some armor plates on the Tank’s legs are invulnerable
  
• Some Machines that are visible for one party member are invisible for others in the same lobby
  
• Dead machines sometimes still produce idle sounds

Gameplay

• Assignment "Destroy 5 Runners with a hunting rifle" does not track correctly

UI

• Multiplayer Matchmaking - Player fails to join the correct session as per the preferred multiplayer matchmaking settings
  
• Safehouses might get lost when logging in. This is most commonly encountered on PlayStation.

Performance

• (PC) Tabbing out may result in unusually high GPU usage

Attention, Survivors!

Another small Hotfix has just gone out.
It addresses a crash occurring when looting at the same time as the Companion.
Please keep reporting any crashes you're having via the proper channels so that we can address them properly.

The best way to report bugs and crashes is on our forums!

Thank you and Happy Looting!

[HOTFIX]

Thank you for your patience and feedback regarding game crashes when joining multiplayer sessions. We have now released a hotfix that resolves this issue for Steam users.

We are also working on a fix to address less frequent issues that have been reported by players since the update, and will let you know more soon.

Your feedback was incredibly useful in helping us nail down these bugs, so thank you again. Please continue providing your feedback in the Steam Discussions or by {LINK REMOVED}visiting our forums (the best place to report bugs).

Dear Community,

Here it finally is! Everything we'll be working on during the second half of 2023.
Thank you for your patience as we were working out the details!
There will be a Dev Letter about how Roadmaps are made, the hurdles, and why it takes so long to come up with one.
We hope you'll enjoy these features just as much as we do!

Cheers!
The Generation Zero Dev Team