• New Ability
  • Soul Gust
    • “Send out a charging blast of magical energy that passes through walls and forces enemies back”
      • The Mage is getting a new ability to replace her Ice Block ability
      • Soul Gust will damage enemies and apply a significant knockback
      • This ability can even travel through walls, rocks, trees, and bone! This is our first ability that won’t be stopped by pesky walls
    • Talent: Soul Gust will now apply a 3.5 second reveal on the hit enemy
• Bass Drop Bundle
  • A new bundle is available in the Shop containing 5 cosmetic items
    • Technomancer Mage
    • Beat Boks Chicken
    • Neon Booster Mount
    • Bass Drop Skydive
    • Boosted Spray
• Communication Wheel
  • Pressing the VGS button will now allow you to select more ways to communicate with friends and enemies while fighting your way to a Crown Royale
  • The three options are Chatter, Emote, and Tactical wheels respectively
    • Chatter - Filled with exclamations and general non-essential communication. Examples: Awesome!, Curses!, and Woohoo!
    • Emote - Filled with your selected Emotes and Sprays as well as the ability to Joke and Taunt
      • In the Armory you will be able to equip 3 Emotes and 3 Sprays to use while in a match
    • Tactical - Filled with more objective-centered commands. Examples: Ready to Forge!, Under Fire!, and Fog is Coming!
  • By default the C, V, and B Keys are bound to the new Communication Wheels
  • Gamepad players will be able to open the Emote Communication Wheel by pressing Left on the D-Pad, and make a selection by using the right thumb stick
  • Please note: All keybinds will be reset to default when this update goes live
• Ping System
  • Added the ability to ping a point of interest, displaying a UI indicator to the player and their team for a short duration (10s)
    • By default, this is bound to middle mouse button for PC players
    • Gamepad players will access the ping system through the new Communication Wheel

 

• Weapons
  • Stone Staff
    • Time between shots has been increased slightly
    • Base damage has been increased slightly
    • Accuracy has been slightly reduced
  • Longbow
    • Increased gravity drop off when bow is fully drawn
• Environment
  • Jade Gardens Environmental Updates
    • Reduced some of the elevation in Jade Gardens to allow multiple paths to move around the point of interest
    • Added more objects and terrain to add more coverability in the region
    • Fixed the slope of several inclines to allow players to traverse up hills

 

• The HUD now displays when a player enters a new region
• A number of improvements have been made to hit registration on all platforms
• Added the ability for players to scroll through Armory items using the mouse wheel
• Improved Blink responsiveness and accuracy even further
• Spectation
  • Fixed issue where Runes weren't being shown properly when spectating
  • Players can now chat while spectating
  • Keybinds will now be hidden while spectating
  • Damage numbers will now consistently show up while spectating
  • Minimap will now update properly while spectating

 

• Fixed several audio mix issues
• Fixed an area in Jade Gardens where players could get stuck
• Fixed an issue where Legendary Ice Block would heal more than intended
• Fixed an issue where the Loot Goblin wouldn’t drop loot when killed
• Fixed an issue where several ceilings in Gun Town had improper collision
• Fixed an issue where the button to open the map on console wouldn’t toggle the map when pressed again
• Fixed an issue where characters would occasionally T-pose when picking up a new weapon
• Fixed an issue where crouching while vaulting through windows could put your character collision into a bad state
• Addressed some issues with being able to see shadows through walls
  • Additional fixes will arrive with update 20

Hey everyone, my name is Michael Tsarouhas, I am the lead game designer on Insurgency: Sandstorm. In today’s post we want to talk a little about our upcoming new official cooperative mode Hardcore Checkpoint. We’ll go over our motivation behind creating the mode, the pillars that govern its design, and how we turned traditional Sandstorm gameplay on its head and created something that plays unlike any of our other game modes. We’d also like to take this opportunity to say that you can check out all the content coming in our next update including Hardcore Checkpoint in our Community Testing Environment May 20th. Just go to your Steam Library and look for “Insurgency: Sandstorm Community Test Environment,” which you should own as long as you own Insurgency: Sandstorm.

The idea for Hardcore Checkpoint actually came from our community rather than any sort of flash of inspiration we had ourselves. Just a couple months following Sandstorm’s release in December, we saw that a lot of players were already modding co-op on community servers. They increased enemy counts, turned up the AI difficulty, and made other tweaks. While these modifications might sound simple, they went a long way in making things way more intense. YouTubers like Karmakut, OperatorDrewski, Bluedrake42, and others took this to another level, turning off the HUD and playing with as few as just two players. The result was more a much more difficult, tense, and tactical play that you can’t always get from normal Checkpoint mode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr9E1Bi3PrI

These community servers and videos demonstrated to our team that there was a clear interest in gameplay geared toward our hardcore audience. People who aren’t afraid of a challenge and getting struck down by our AI. One of the unique things about Insurgency’s design is that it sits in the middle between the fast paced military FPS games like Call of Duty or Battlefield and the slow paced ones like Arma, Squad, or Escape from Tarkov. Because of this, when it comes to designing new game modes that actually change gameplay fundamentals, we can lean one way or the other. In February we released Team Deathmatch, an FPS classic obviously geared towards players who prefer fast-paced arcade-oriented gameplay. But now, with Hardcore Checkpoint, we’re leaning in the other direction.



Hardcore Checkpoint is founded on the ideas of scarcity and adaptation. Until now, all our game modes have been fairly consistent in terms of equipment. When you die, you respawn with all your gear as if nothing happened. In Hardcore Checkpoint however, this isn’t the case. If you die in this mode, when you respawn you’ll come back with only an unupgraded Mosin rifle, a Makarov pistol, and a smoke grenade. You can get your Class Loadout back by resupplying at a Supply Crate as you normally would, but there are only three crates in the map, and you can only resupply once at each crate. You get one crate at the beginning to start you out with your goodies, one that spawns at a random objective, and one at the very end for the final counter-attack. That’s it. This means players need to be much more careful, and when they die and respawn, they need to manage their ammo and make do with what they find. They can gather weapons and ammo off the ground or search for randomly spawning Ammo Boxes which will give a few magazines for the weapons they’re carrying.

New enemy AI behaviors have been added. Bots in Hardcore Checkpoint are fewer, but they are more trained, sneaky, tactical, and human. They’ll fire more accurately, wait to ambush you, use better weapons and weapon upgrades, hunch down in cover when suppressed, and retreat and regroup when overrun. Also, they dress cooler.



Movement speeds have been significantly reduced. Sprinting across a road without cover to flank an enemy is going to take longer, and isn’t always the smartest decision. Normal standing movement is now more of a tactical glide. When we first started playtesting, this felt pretty weird. We felt like slugs and we felt restricted in our abilities. But as we played, we realized this was exactly what we needed to feel, and was important to what the mode is trying to accomplish. The slower speed makes players even more vulnerable than they are in normal play, and thus raises the tension. It gives off some strong Rogue Spear or old school Ghost Recon vibes where every movement and action feels much more deliberate, and there are more opportunities for what game designer Brian Upton calls “anticipatory play”. In Hardcore Checkpoint, you’re not a rocksteady gunman or unstoppable competitive sprinter; you’re a soft squishy human trying to keep your gun up and on target as you pitter patter forward and hope a suicide bomber isn’t waiting around the corner. Running around everywhere will carry a much greater risk of getting shot, on top of the already great risk of losing that sexy Mk 17 Mod 0 with suppressor, optic, laser sight, and extended magazines for a dumpy old bolt-action rifle from WWII.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCCmJcieaog
(Video example movement comparison between Normal and Hardcore Checkpoint, using a loadout with 73% total weight)

Each of the eight classes is limited to just one player per class. Official matches are still set at eight players, however we found that player counts of six or even lower were also a lot of fun and congruent with the slower pace. With one player to a class, everyone has a specific role to fill and must take advantage of their unique capabilities to help the team. The Gunner and Marksman both need to be in position and set up in those windows as soon as a counter-attack starts. The Demolitions needs to be diligently putting grenade launcher rounds and other explosives into any dangerous looking rooms or buildings. The Observer needs to be with the Commander at all times in case fire support is needed, since there is never another Observer to fall back on. Friendly teammate indicators are hidden at a distance, so target identification and communication are paramount.



Hardcore Checkpoint is a brutal mode. There will be sudden death, there will be friendly fire, there will be stupid Observers, and there will be a time when you get very angry at us for not making the Mosin cycle its bolt faster. But when a team does their jobs right, communicates effectively, keeps the tempo slow, and gets into their groove, Hardcore Checkpoint is fun as hell. It’s been exciting for us to experiment with the traditional Checkpoint co-op that we and our community know so well and to create a totally new experience out of it. It stands as an example of how we (and modders) can take the Insurgency: Sandstorm platform and push the design in totally different directions. We look forward to having you all play it, and please let us know what you think in the comments, on the forums, social media, Reddit, etc. Hardcore Checkpoint will be coming out in our next update, and is playable as both Security and Insurgents on all our maps including our upcoming new map Outskirts. Remember you can also check out Hardcore Checkpoint and all the other content coming in the next update in our Community Testing Environment starting next week. Go to your Steam Library and look for “Insurgency: Sandstorm Community Test Environment,” which you should own as long as you own Insurgency: Sandstorm. We hope you enjoyed this community update. Be sure to stay tuned for more.

Hello, commanders! Take part in The Legendary Tournament in honor of the Early Access Release of Deuterium Wars. Fight valiantly at Arena from now till June 2 and earn as many points as possible. All active participants will receive a guaranteed reward, and the best of the best will receive valuable prizes from Razer!



Preserving the common design features of the Razer Ornata Chroma line, she also gained her own style, so that it will become not only a tool for games and work, but also a real decoration of any table. The keyboard uses a hybrid key mechanism that combines mechanical membrane switches. On the one hand, this allows you to get a high accuracy of key response and preserve comfort and silence. Razer Ornata Chroma has a stand under the brush, which increases comfort during long gaming sessions, as well as work.

This gaming mouse is designed specifically to satisfy the most demanding gamers. It combines cutting-edge technology, together with incredible ergonomics and greater reliability.

Selection of the most successful cyber sportsmen. The headband and ear cushions are made of pleasant and high-quality materials, which allows them to stay in them for a long time. The microphone which is built in the left bowl of earphones, allows to give the order in time or to report the location of the opponent.



This powerful cluster grenade launcher is capable of putting an entire enemy detachment in one gulp. The main thing is not to shoot yourself "under your feet."

There is no better way to light in Deuterium Wars than with a flamethrower.

The queue of this experimental weapon can disable the enemy's hovercraft system.

The most valuable resource of Altanara, for which you can buy yourself something especially valuable.

Still a good amount of deuterium, with which you will be happy to see in the market.

Absolutely all tournament participants will receive credits, experience and valuable game items for each stage of the tournament.

1. Duration: till 21:59 CET on June 2, 2019.
   
2. By participating in the "Legendary Tournament" in the game Deuterium Wars, you agree to its rules.
   
3. The tournament takes place as an in-game competitive event in the game Deuterium Wars.
   
4. To take part in the tournament you need to download and install the game for free:
   https://store.steampowered.com/app/455300/Deuterium_Wars/
   
5. Prizes in the Tournament are determined by points accrued under the terms of the competition.
   
6. Persons who have reached 1, 2 and 3 position in the rating will be given a special in-game subject "Cup".
   
7. Cup winners must contact the tournament organizer within 30 calendar days of the publication of tournament results in the official communities of the Deuterium Wars game through the official Discord server or write to v.makovetskyi@disquire.com.
   
8. Delivery of prizes to the winners at the expense of the organizer.
   
9. The winners of the “Legendary Tournament” cannot receive the cash equivalent of prizes.
   
10. Participants undertake to play fair. The use of third-party software to get the gaming advantage is strictly prohibited.
    
11. The winner has the right to refuse his prize.
    
12. The winner cannot replace his prize with another one from the list of prizes.
    
13. Players must behave with dignity and not have conflicts with other players.
    
14. In case of violation of these rules, the participant may be fined a certain amount of tournament points or completely disqualified.
    
15. Employees of the organizing company and their closest relatives can take part in the tournament, but cannot win prizes. In this case, their result will not be counted.
    
16. The tournament may be suspended or canceled in the event of force majeure.
    
17. During the tournament, game servers may be temporarily unavailable due to planned or unscheduled tech maintenance. All players will be promptly notified about them in the official communities of the game in social networks.
    
18. Disputes, if necessary, will be considered by the representative of the organizer within three days from the moment of their occurrence, guided by these rules and common sense.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/455300/Deuterium_Wars/

Hey StoneTiders!

🤔 What do you think needs the most improvement in StoneTide right now?

Let us know by commenting!

Ben

The release of Vambrace: Cold Soul is very close - can you feel the ice cold atmosphere of the forbidden city? There is less than two weeks to go till the release on 28th May! Do you want to get even more stuff on the world of Vambrace: Cold Soul with the games release? Than give your wish for Evelia and unlock free goodies, that will be included in the game here on Steam!

How to participate? Just click on the Wishlist-Widget at the bottom of this update or on the product page, share the news and tell your friends! We keep you posted on the current number of wishlist entries.



https://store.steampowered.com/app/904380

Hi ! Another smaller update this time ! Since some things still needed a little bit of tweaking before next updates. While not being content-full it provides few things that should make gameplay more enjoyable.

• Added camera sensitivity slider in options menu
  
• Fixed bug where some items were marked as equipped when in fact they weren't
  
• Brake system is now reworked, definitely way better control over braking action on controller and wheel
  
• For now, since there is no manual gearbox, reverse will activate moment after full vehicle stop. In the future manual gearbox is planned.
  
• Suspension now have another level of simulation, Panhard rod, links, and leaf springs now affect whole suspension geometry !

I hope you like the changes. Take care !

Dear Anglers, today we would like to share some news from the developer camp with you again.

Cozy fishing next to each other is great, but sometimes you might want to prove your skills! Special fishing tournaments with unique prizes will help you achieve your goals.



Suggestions and wishes of our players are not ignored but implemented wherever the opportunity arises. A new indicator has been introduced to improve the clarity of the backpack. This indicator shows which equipment and what quantities you already own, when you are browsing the shop menu.