Nov 10, 2023

Generation Zero® - SR_Carni

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)

Nov 10, 2023

Our Plans For Robocraft 2 Based On Feedback

Robocraft 2 - Freejam_ChrisC

Hello Robocrafters!

We have spent a few days going through all of the feedback on Steam and within our Discord to begin preparing an action plan! Very soon we’ll be assigning development tasks to our team to address many of the feedback points that players have raised. This is not going to happen overnight and some of these will take quite a long time to implement, so please be patient whilst we work on this feedback. If you want to be kept up to date with the very latest news, please join our Discord.

Here are the main areas that we will be focusing on:

“No Party System”

This is a feature that we are actively working on and whilst we don’t have a date set for it, we assure you we want to release it as soon as it is ready. Here is a work-in-progress look at the party system within the main menu

“Not enough content”

We’re working hard on this with Hoverblades launching first, Tank Tracks well on their way, and new maps and game modes in production. We will be doing some planning in the studio to determine if we can increase the speed of production of these elements including looking at new weapons, and biomes (like Ice, and Earth planets).

We’re also working on Modular tank tracks and you’ll be able to create your own designs. We can’t wait to share more of this but for now, check out this tease we shared last week:

The Tech Ladder

We’ll be looking at reworking the Tech Ladder in its current form to make this more of a Tech Tree where you unlock functional parts and weapons for your Robocraft with branches so you can choose which parts to unlock sooner or later. We will also make this a Main Menu feature so it feels more like a key progression element of the game. We’ll also look at ways to ensure players get the build tools and do not need to unlock them on the Tech Ladder whilst ensuring that users get the info they need to be able to use them effectively.

Client performance (FPS)

We’ll put some programmers on optimisation of the client right away. This is an ongoing thing but we hope to get some improvements to you on this quickly. Robocraft 2 is particularly CPU intensive so we’ll be focusing on that area initially.

Combat slow \ Weapons underwhelming

Our main focus here initially will be on making changes to make the weapons feel more consistent, more satisfying to use, to provide better feedback for the damage you’re dealing. We will be discussing the specifics of how we’re going to do this with the community on our Discord server in the coming days.

On-foot pilot Gameplay

Issues with the On-foot pilots focused mainly on the underutilization of this new mechanic within the gameplay and the difficulty of killing pilots outside of their Robocraft.

We have some plans and designs which still need development which should help both controlling and killing pilots feel more fair, as well as take full advantage of what we think could be an exciting element to the gameplay of RC2.

Reassemble Mechanic

The ability to reassemble mid-combat has been controversial since we introduced it, especially in its current form. We absolutely recognise that it can feel both unfair and frustrating to players for their wins to go unrewarded because an enemy can suddenly rebuild their robocraft and there are a number of solutions we have planned for this.

Our aim is to keep the fundamental reassembly mechanic, but change how, when and why you can use it, alongside planned changes to on-foot pilots.

Ping/ Input lag

We’re going to look at ways we can improve latency and ensure players get better pings on average. We also want to look at ways to give players more control over which servers they play on and more visibility into which servers they are joining.

Physics lag and imprecision on weapons

Since we support rotating platforms and self-built weapon turrets we use physics to simulate the joints of the weapons. The physics simulation of the joints can produce some perceived ‘lag’ as the joints realistically try to accelerate and decelerate to get your gun pointing where you are aiming as well as the joints reacting to bumps in the terrain and recoil forces of the weapons. We think all of these things can contribute to a feeling of laggy aiming. Our aim is to do a bit of a deep dive into these systems to see if we can improve their responsiveness to aiming whilst retaining some of these realistic simulation elements.

Sound effects

Some players had feedback on the overall audio quality of the game, with a few specific places to focus on. We’re going to do a pass over the game's audio design, mixing some elements differently and completely reworking others.

Announcer's voice

The announcer has been pretty hit or miss within the Discord community but we can see quite a few players were not happy with this and would prefer something different. We plan to try some alternative options which we will run by the community on Discord to find something that works.

Lack of team comms (Text Chat, Voice Chat, Pings & Minimap)

We are fully aware that these are quite highly requested features and are planning to include them in the future. We will raise the priority since quite a few reviews mentioned these.

Building too complex

Whilst we have had quite a large number of players enjoy the building system, it is evident that we have seen players mention that this features a steep learning curve. There are two elements to improving the experience; polishing some of the existing UX and UI, as well as showing more information within Build Mode to help builders understand the underlying systems and how to build effective Robocraft.

Weapon CPU

We are considering the option to have only one pool of CPU, similar to RC1, but will need to figure out if we can do this while keeping the benefits of design and balance the current system offers the game.

Undo

It’s coming! I assure you! We already have block placing and deleting working with undo, as well as precon placing and deleting. We are working on wire placing and deleting at the moment. Then we’ll do material and colour painting as well as robocraft shifting.

Logic and Wiring

We’ve been wanting to redesign the Logic and wiring UX for quite some time. We understand many of the criticisms of the current system and have some plans that will allow us to improve the player experience. We also have plans for improving the UX for editing Tweakable Stats on parts.

More Graphic options

This is now also higher on our list as it was also mentioned in a few reviews and on Discord.

Stay up to date with the development

We urge anyone who wants to stay in touch with us and wants to see how we communicate with players on a daily basis to join us on the Discord. Several members of the team regularly engage in discussion and share thoughts! It’s also a great place to pick up on some extra building tips too!

JOIN THE DISCORD

A lot of these changes and improvements will take a while before they are released to you in an update. But we will make sure that we share some further plans and ideas very soon! Thank you

The Freejam Team

Nov 10, 2023

Power spikes create key milestones juust before round showdowns (with good farm)

Skillshot City - bencelot

This patch tweaks the cash and XP rates to make farming more meaningful, and adds key milestones to aim for just before the rounds 1, 2 and 3 showdowns.

Firstly, we all earn a lot more cash and XP. Tier 2 and tier 3 weapons are also $5000 cheaper, so we'll all be more powerful by the final showdown.

Also, skills now level up at fixed, predictable levels. We get new skills at levels 1/2/5/8/11/14. If you farm well, you can reach level 5 just before the round 1 showdown. This is important because level 5 now always gives you a LEGENDARY boosted skill, which starts at level 4 and can reach a super OP level 7. Levels 8, 11 and 14 will give everyone EPIC or RARE skills, which also give bonus points and provide key milestones right before the round 2 and 3 showdowns.

Enjoy!
bencelot

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[SKILL DRAFT CHANGES]

- We now always see brand new skills at levels 1 and 2. Then 3 and 4 upgrade them. Then we get boosted skills on level 5/8/11/14/17.

- Normal skills can now go up to level 4 instead of level 3.

- Boosted skills now come in 3 rarites: Rare, Epic and Legendary.

- Legendary skills always appear at level 5. They start at level 4 and go up to level 7.

- Epic skills can appear at levels 8, 11, 14 and 17. They start at level 3 and go up to level 6.

- Rare skills also appear at levels 8, 11, 14 and 17. They start at level 2 and go up to level 5.

[ECONOMY CHANGES]

- Getting 5 streak points now gives you a flat +500xp, instead of a free level up.

- The Kill Reward now gains xp and cash 33% faster.

- Supply Drops give an extra +100xp, +$1000 and +3% weapon damage.

- Cops give 11/12/13/14/15xp based on your wanted level instead of a flat 10.

- Tier2 weapons cost $5000 instead of $10,000 (but are still only available on round 2)

- Superweapons cost $15k instead of $25k ($10k instead of $15k to upgrade from your tier 2 gun)

[GAMEPLAY CHANGES]

- Cops have 50 instead of 40hp health and do 100% instead of 80% damage.

- 3 supply drops instead of 1 spawn at the start of a BR match

- Supply drops gain armor for each player nearby, shown by an expanding health bar.

- Civilians now eject from cars faster, immediately as soon as it starts flaming

- Shotguns now deal more damage but have worse range and spread

[GENERAL CHANGES]

- Updated the default control scheme a bit (for new players). Interacting with HUD is now CTRL, placing chems is now C, slashing knife is now middle mouse

- All players, now including F2P people, will show off their account level when they win a round

- Your Streak point progress is shown below your health bar.

[SKILL BUFFS]

-Radiate cooldown is now 18/17/16/15/14/13/12 instead of fixed at 16s. It does +5 impact damage per level and the radius is 10% larger

-Beefcake doesn't increase your hitbox size as much (lvl 7 is +20% instead of +40%)

-Falling Inferno now additionally increases your molotov duration by 1 to 7s

-Critical Rage chance now ranges from 140 to 380% instead of 133 to 333%

-Illicit Income values are halved, but it now increases your XP earned as well

-Shrapnel chance of free nade now ranges from 50% to 350% instead of 40% to 280%

-Armed Robbery chance of big XP ranges from 25 to 175% instead of 20 to 140%

-Medical supplies healing ranges from 10 to 40 instead of 5 to 35 per loot

-Hypnotic Army range increased by 5m, and cooldown is now 10 instead of 12s. Max vendors is now 0/0/1/2/3/4/5

-Invisibility duration buffed by 5s per level

-Blade Fury slashing damage is now 100 instead of 60 hp/s

-The bonus damage duration after spike trap is 4 instead of 3s

-Flying Dagger range and speed increased by 10m for all levels

-Backtrack duration increased by 1s for all levels

-Rambulance damage also increases car mass for collision purposes

[SKILL NERFS]

-Flaming Bullets duration now ranges from 0.5 to 1.1 instead of 0.3 to 1.5s

-Regeneration healing ranges from 2 to 14hp/s instead of 2.5 to 17.5 hp.s

-Executioner damage ranges from 8% to 56% instead of 10% to 70%

-Self Repair takes 2.5 instead of 2.0s to heal you

-Stimpacks healing ranges from 3 to 21 instead of 4 to 28 hp per shift

-Toxic Blood duration now ranges from 3 to 9s instead of 2 to 14s

-Arcane power bullet damage ranges from 7 to 49 instead of 8 to 56hp

-Clip Magnet seek speed is now 20 instead of 30 degrees per second

-Assassinate bonus damage ranges from +3 to +15% instead of +3 to +21%

[BUG FIXES]

- Fixed a bug where clip size upgrades weren't showing properly in the HUD.

- Fixed Always on Top challenge not working

- Fixed a bug that caused cops to stand on top of cars

- Fixed a bug where the critical rage sound effect wasn't applied to shotguns