Hello Survivors!
Today's update has spent a lot of time on test iterating and taking feedback from the entire Just Survive community. Let’s talk about what led us here and what the future holds for Just Survive.
The Past
For those that don't know me from our Community Discord or my frequent posts on our Reddit Community, I'm Michael Clark, aka DGC_Michael, Producer for Just Survive.
For over a year now, my team and I have been making revolutionary changes to Just Survive, to make the game and the survival genre appeal to a broader audience. While that new creative vision called "Badwater Canyon" was in the early stages with one part of our team, my primary job became improving Just Survive with a small side team. The direction and development of each Just Survive update from December 2016 through April 2017 was part of this core effort from our side team. During this time we were thrilled to see the growth for Just Survive, hitting some of our largest concurrent player numbers in the history of the game.
During April, our small team was fully integrated into Badwater Canyon development. On August 15th, 2017, Badwater Canyon launched and brought a ton of new features and gameplay to Just Survive, with plans for many more to come in the future. While some of our fans were pleased with the radical changes we made to the game with Badwater Canyon, it did not bring in as many new players as we had hoped.
The Present
As we've previously mentioned here, in September 2017 we moved forward with a second shift in focus, with the entire team adjusting towards the more familiar and successful version for which our initial small side team had been responsible for. The first part of this effort went live late in November 2017, bringing back free placement of player bases and the full Z1 map.
Today's update is the second half of that effort, and includes numerous changes to core gameplay, including combat, construction, and raiding overhauls, all of which were developed with significant player involvement. You can read the full patch notes here.
The team will continue to develop new features and rework existing ones with this new core to the game, alongside all of our players, examining feedback along the way. The overarching philosophy behind each future update is to respect the core gameplay and honor the gameplay concepts while augmenting, rather than replacing, that core experience with new features and content.
The Future
One of the first new features we're looking to add to Just Survive is a permanent, account-based progression system. Server wipes are vital to the changing development process, and as we work to formalize server wipes into a proper seasons system, we want to ensure that players have achievement tracking and account-based progression so that they maintain permanent gains across each wipe.
We're also looking to expand upon the Quest and Event content in the game to provide deeper gameplay and greater rewards to enrich both the survival and PVP aspects of the game.
In addition to new features such as these, we're also re-examining existing systems like our loot and crafting economy, with the aim of streamlining and clarifying the purpose of the items available. Every item should always have a purpose, even if that purpose is to be utilized in crafting. Now that we've streamlined the tier system and added an upgrade system to our weapons, we're also ready to start looking at modifying weapon balance and ensuring that every weapon has a purpose and feels right.
Closing Thoughts
If you've been playing Just Survive consistently throughout Badwater Canyon, we thank you for all of the continued feedback and engagement. If you are reading this and haven’t played in a while, we encourage you to log back in. For all those playing this new update, you'll get a Hideout Crate after 30 minutes of play and an Avalanche Crate after your first four hours playing this update.
Thank you, Survivors.
