Hey everyone!
With the class update we wanted to bring back switchable abilities, but first and foremost add quality and polish to the classes and do some needed changes and reworks based on your feedback.
Keep in mind that the classes are not and not supposed to be perfect and final, the bulk work is done but there will be further refinements over time based on your feedback. Overall the classes are much more engaging, refined and have more identity and replay value. For the future we have Rogue, Assassin and Engineer also in the works but with 12 classes you'll have a lot to play right now.
U5 Key Features:
- Overhaul of 12 classes, tons of huge changes! - New Switchable ability slots - New Eliminator class - New Heavy Gunner - New Rocketeer - New Sniper - Many level & graphical improvements - New Stat upgrades - New Items & Weapons - Item & Attachment improvements - Improved loot progression (Part 1) - Huge under-the-hood & UniversEdit improvements - Tons of fixes and improved audio - Many other improvements
Known issues:
- Sometimes kill and hit audio goes missing
- (!) Avoid reloading or switching weapons at level changes/teleporter
- Sometimes icons display wrong
- Looking into fixes ASAP
NEW Class - Eliminator
The Eliminator is a new bounty hunting class with dual wielded handguns and powerful gadgets.
He does not want to get caught and can circles his victims with his distracting infiltration ability, while going for weakpoint kills to get credits rewards.
His switchable abilities offer powerful gadgets, like the dangerous room clearing eliminator drone, or the distractor laser cluster drones. He can also place a seth-up laser sentry turret in classic professional hitman fashion. He is not easy to play but offers some nice rewards.
NEW Class - Sniper
The Sniper is finally back! With his target-laser and focus on weakpoint hits, he is not to be toyed with. He now deals area damage on headshots and has quite some new gadgets to try.
His LS-30 is a powerful starter weapon and looks equally bad-ass. He also has different mobility choices. More tweaks to sniper will arrive based on community feedback!
NEW Class - Heavy Gunner
The Heavy gunner is back with a force!
Dishing out heavy sustained firepower and starting with a cylindrical magazine LMG,
the Heavy gunner is a force to be reckoned with!
The new Heavy gunner mostly follows the classic S1 Heavy Gunner. Simple but highly effective and with more madness than ever.
NEW Class - Rocketeer
The Rocketeer has been completely remade and essentially returns the key S1 Demolisher elements but adds some new twists. With Seismic Resonator you can re-trigger previous explosions for powerful combos (even enemy ones!). Rocket boost and resonator allows catapulting out of danger and burning noses of near enemies.
The Rocketeer has heavy AOE damage potential but is not as durable as other Grenadier classes. Imagine a trick-jumping sniper with explosive launchers. More tuning is to come.
HUGE TOTAL CLASS OVERHAUL!
- Essentially everything is new!
- All classes got a ton of improvements and changes
- Varied new starter weapons have been added
- Just log in and check out everything with fresh eyes!
- You can skip the wall of text and just check it all out ingame.
Total Rework - Riotguard
Riotguard got reworked and is now a aggressive shield bashing melee brawler, while the Judge has the more S1 / previous style shield dash and bulwark. The Riotshield can now be toggled on and off, he no longer has energy shields. With low cooldown close range attacks and stagger combos. Riotguard feels like a brawling game character almost and is much more fun now. Try it out!
Some more Riotguard changes are to be expected, especially the Perks will see work and maybe some more tweaks to the shield mechanic, but this is already a huge upgrade.
Improved - Guard Judge
Guard Judge has been improved in all areas. His Heavy Shield Dash with Bulwark up is very powerful, and he can also now handcuff people by dashing into them without the shield. His Bulwark got reworked into Stabilized Bulwark, enabling a sort of "Pistolero Mode" where you have virtually no recoil for 3 seconds and can open a fight with well placed accurate shots. He also got greatly improved visual effects making it much more fun to play.
Some more things are planned for Judge for the future, adding a "Performance Review" feature, where police duties are reviewed, and you are up-ranked if you fulfill the acceptable ratio of causalities, property damage and accuracy. A New Judge revolver is also in the works.
Improved - Disruptor
Disruptor recieved quite some improvements. He now has a stunning lightning punch which can be triggered in melee range. His mobility is now a protective shield, which aids allies and constructs. He can also punch his shock trophy for a powerful combo.The energy shields got removed to favor a more high stakes playstyle. He really excels in playing with cover and taking aggressively pot shots melee range with his punch attacks all around sight blockers and cover, but never wants to be caught open field.
With the lightning cluster, masterkey and the Cryo turret he has quite flexible specialization abiliites- Disruptor has a quite unique playstyle which might be more for acquired tastes but definitely brings something special to the table, like some sort of melee engineer. More work on his perks and tweaks onto the shield ability are planned.
Improved - Grenadier
Assault Grenadier got removed and his features got merged into the base Grenadier.
Grenadier's kit worked well and mostly saw polish and new perks, improved vfx and more
Grenadier got improved VFX and new perks and should see a noticeable improvement.
Some more work on Grenadier perks is planned as well!
Reworked - Chrono Trooper
Chrono Trooper recieved quite some big changes and has much more depth now. Varied timing based benefits make him all about split second decisions and execution. He now also starts with a capable fusion SMG. Chrono charge has varied interactions and his new temporal ammo perk gives him the boost to distinguish his role as a weapon based soldier / smg ambusher type.
The new "slow motion" ability also further gives him some unique time based power.
Some more tweaks about the details of his combos and perks in general are expected.
Reworked - Chrono Striker
Chrono Striker got many improvements and now builds around telefragging, chaining abilities for powerful combos and in general has become some sort of mobility-based 'mage' class.
He now owns the freshly upgraded shield dome and has some nice other abilities.
Striker's hard reset bonus is on the watchlist for future changes.
Improved - Chrono Breacher
Chrono breacher has seen varied upgrades, mostly varied S1 elements were brought back, but some new twists were added as well. You can now do stagger combos with blink, go with a stimulant or explosive build with the focus perks. Many polishing tweaks have been done. Blink now also grants a powerful "priority take-down" bonus if you teleport into multiple targets and more. Overall we are quite happy with the class, maybe some sounds could be further improved.
Reworked - Anti-Material Recon
The Anti-Material recon got some bigger changes. He now has a distinct "take cover" ability, giving him durability and staying power to out-damage the opposition. He now plays a bit like "the manly sniper" who uses powerful ambushes at the start and then overwhelms with raw firepower while caring less about pinpoint precision.
He got 2 alternative core abilities, a HEAT and a HVAP piercing shot, and has some new gadgets as well to play with. A new focus was also put on piercing enemies, this is now rewarded with stacking benefits.
Removed - Psy Recon
The Psy recon felt too different and it's execution was not great. There are some good elements we want to bring back, such as the psy field, or the shot, but overall we think his kit should rather be in the future assassin or be items. It is still possible to get the Psy recon back, it is just not enabled in the menu by default. Feel free to upgrade and make a mod out of it or just use it for yourself!
How to get it back:
- Open universEdit, (Create a depot if needed)
- Go to PlayerClassSpecialization on the left
- Copy the Psy Recon
- Give your new copy a new name (Add a 'New' Localization on top)
- Click "Specialization of the Following Class" > Search
- Search the Recon, and confirm
- Save the class
- It now will be back in the menus
Don't forget to fill in the class survey posted on discord and steam forums!
New Switchable ability slots
- Each class now has 3-4 switchable specialization abilties!
- The new Specialization abilities can be unlocked with data, each costing 100 data.
- Fixed Data not being gained from certain bosses
- Data gain has been increased overall (probably 2-3x)
At the start we went for a more S1-style approach where abilities were more shared, but testers wanted more unique choices, so now the classes have nearly all unique switchable abilities per class. For these abilities we also explored varied new concepts and tried making things "out of the box" such as the placeable warning poles, booster pads, bring back remote triggerable C4, killer drones, radio jammer gadgets and more. Some of these definitely will see more polish but overall these are very varied and some of our best content yet.
New Class Level Perks
- All classes now have new perks which can be unlocked by leveling
- The unlocks are at level 3, 7 and 15
- These contain varied new perks
- Most perks have been expanded on!
New Starter Weapons:
Red Buzzards [Eliminator]
M1911 Helium [Sniper / AM Recon]
HS-50 (Updated) [AM-Recon]
LS-30 Nightowl [Sniper]
LG-3 [Heavy Gunner]
Squad-6 Compact [Chrono Trooper]
New Findable Weapons:
GM-6 Lynx
Discus Launcher of the High Order
Also updated sprites for: Tokko Fusion, Akita Fusion, Varied ammo types
Varied weapons have had rarity adjustments so more variation is at the start of the game
Improved Loot Progression / Mid game progression (Part 1)
Now after the classes are much more engaging, we no longer have to compensate by adding a bunch of random upgrades in the early game where they do not belong. We also noticed that the mid-game progression is lacking. We initially made the mistake of putting too much focus on special shops (Gambler etc), while these should only be a rare bonus thing. The reason this was done was because items are not as good as they can be and that deceived into adding more other things to compensate, which was clearly a fallacy.
The plan now after U5 is first to polish up the items to be the sandbox that is at the essence of the game progression and improve the upgrade systems, while taking away focus from special shops.
Another thing that stood out was that you plateau'd extremely quickly and then after the first boss you were already fully geared and the game became bland and repetitive. This was one thing that we also really hated in S1. Below is a very simplified visual representation, and some details:
Raritiy drops:
- You were getting too many legendaries and epics right at the start, this destroyed the progression
- You now get more blue rarity (common / uncommon) at the start of the game
- Added an additional rarity scaling, this essentially works like luck and increases rarity of loot
- This will result in you finding more epics and legendaries after the first boss but less before
- Varied weapon rarities have been adjusted
Chests:
- Chests were too many and confusing. There were 6 metal chests for weapons.
- Removed Intermediate metal police and metal military item & weapon chests
- Chests now: Wood > Metal > Legendary Metal Police / Legendary Metal Military
- It is now easier to distinguish the different chests and their expected contains
- The Medical chest is now more rare but fully heals
Shops:
- Mid-Map Shops (Gambler, Medical etc) now start spawning after the first Boss
- We think the class starting kits easily hold their own and we don't need these extras to fill in
- End-Map Shops (Pandoras, Compositor) now start spawning in the third map (Before the boss)
- Ability Upgrade shops now are multi use (But there will be a overhaul upcoming)
TLDR:
Overall these changes are making the early game less overloaded and rarities less random.
You get a more logical loot and power progression throughout the maps.
The game "opens up" after the first boss, where more things come into play, compared to "Im done"
More work on making items and mid-game progression better is coming in thenext update.
We are looking for your feedback here, but the next update will make this all more complete.
Stat Upgrades:
- Stat upgrades are back!
- They give some simple but effective body upgrade perks, found in chests
Kernels:
- Kernels now offer a choice of 2
- Tooltips have been updated and Icons improved a little but still should get new icons
Upgrade Kits:
- Weapon upgrade kits now drop less often but give more
- Generally if you find a upgrade kit, you can upgrade your weapon now
- Overall you get a little more
- You now also see the amount you have in the weapon menu
- A buff notifier was added to remind about upgrading
Other:
- Varied enemies have been fixed or tweaked
- Dogs have a more forgiving attack and slow down after hitting once
- Fixed varied enemy stun issues
Environments:
- Visuals in varied areas have been improved
- Added varied graphical improvements (Check out the Dev Blog )
-- Bent Normal Occlusion
-- New Ambient Occlusion Decals
-- New Shadow Planes
-- New Decal shaders
-- New Water shader
-- New Micro Shadows
New Map for Missile Silo (First area)
New Map for Training / Police Academy (First area)
Some juicy environment work upcoming for the next update!
Items:
Priority for the very near future will be to improve items and add item synergies
Items are the core of the Synthetik progression but right now our older items are way below our current skill level and possibility space. We tried to compensate the feeling of "something is missing" with shops and whatnot but in reality it was just item quality that was lacking.
With this update, a few items have been upgraded but overall this is planned for U6.
- Varied (mostly Police) items have new synergy effects
- Added new visual effects for throwing things or punches
- Removed varied boring items to be remade as perks or other
(Combat Methadone, Executioners Badge, Hit List (now Sniper feature), Shield Combobulator)
- Field Rations (not Power rations) and Stun mines moved to rare Lost & Found loot table
New Item: Destructor Grid
Deploys a powerful laser grid below your feet, damaging enemies over time
New Item: Weapon Jammer
Jams weapons of enemies in close range and deals slight damage over time
New Item: Unstable Current
Zaps a near enemy with unstable lightning
New Item: Thunderstorm Relay
Unleashes a storm of shock lightning all around you
Scaling:
- Abilities / Items (Actions) can now inherit power
- This means a buff your item spawns will have the same power as the item
- Spawned units now also have scaling on their ability power based on the spawner ability
Varied:
- Unending Fixes
- Varied technical improvements
- Reduced game size by around 30%
- Reduced Loading times at certain points significantly
- Check out the previous dev blog for more details!
Audio:
- Fixed some big issues with Audio falloff and other things
- Overall there is a huge improvement around non-weapon sounds
- Known issue: Sometimes some sounds, mostly pickups, don't play
Tons of improvements have happened to our unique UniversEdit Framework
Compared to the Early access start or even the start of this year, the workflows, power, speed has probably improved by 500%.
We now actually have achieved that you can edit and create content while in the game / Tutorial level. This is not yet available to modders but we have achieved real runtime creation of game content! We can create a new ability while playing, and spawn it in, do a change, and respawn it.
This is something extremely rare and a great boost to productivity. More work will and should be done to improve workflows and reduce the amount of friction but this is a big change for us.
New Debug Menu [F3]
- Don't forget to enable it in your settings first! This works in the Tutorial map.
- We added a new Debug menu. This was done as the previous used an suboptimal third party UI
- We can now far more easily extend the menu
- This also uses a new Hotkey feature where you can bind any button to a hotkey
- There are still some issues to sort out, especially with the search but overall it works
Highly recommended hotkeys to set for yourself:
- Credits
- Grant Ammo
- Toggle Action Debug (New Feature!)
- Spawn Dummy or Enforcer or something
- Remove actions on player
New Action Debugger
- We implemented a new action debugger UI
- Enable with the F3 button (General > Action > ToggleActionDebugUI) and hover over an action
- This shows in realtime how the action paths are executed!
- If the condition is true, it shows green, if not, it stays gray
- We even added a fading animation so you will notice things executing just 1 frame
- This makes understanding complex actions way way easier and you can now see where it's stuck!
New Warnings
- Some new warnings have been added in the action list
- This is warning with varied things, such as "forgot to enable stacks" or "path is still passive"
- We are working on adding more warnings and a popup on action saving
New Scaling / Inheritance
- Spawn action now can inherit its power %, meaning it gets the same power as the spawner action
- Spawn entity now allows adding actions to the spawned entity
- This is widely useful for many things, such as using an existing unit and giving it something
- (Balldefender + Suicide, or Despawn itself after 10s action etc)
- This also means you don't need to create a new entity or entity class to just give it an extra action
- This action also will gain the power scaling inheritance same as spawn action
- This means things like shield dome can now scale which they couldn't before
Deal Damage Improvements
- Cleaned up and hidden un-relevant things to make it easier to use
- Fixed some default values
- Added tooltips for all damage stats
- Added % current health based damage
- Added % max health based damage
- These are very useful to make things scale a little but don't overdo it
- Now works with backstabs
Shoot ammo Improvements
- Now shoots straight if no target is found
- Now takes pellet-count from the ammo into account (shotgun ammo etc)
- Varied fixes, more fixes to come
Here are quite some powerful new goodies you (and we) can use:
New Conditions
- Damaged by this action
- Killed by this action
- Get hit by action
- Get hit by weapon
- Hit by other weapon
- On weakpoint kill
- On explosion spawned
- On Entity spawned by owner
New Stats
- Stat: Weapon damage multiplier
- Stat: Damage taken multiplier
- Stat: Body Recoil
New Results / Effects
- Change Team (Mind control)
- Set Entity Invisible to Enemies
- Spawn Visual Attachment Weapon (Laser)
- Spawn Visual Attachment Entity
New Targets
- Target last entity spawned by action
- Target last entity spawned by owner
- Target all entities spawned by owner
- Target last explosion position
Other:
- You can now use color palettes on classes
ATTENTION MODDERS!:
- Your custom classes still work but you need to reassign the abilities to the new switchable slot list.
- This takes 2 minutes but otherwise they won't show in the menu properly, but are still playable.
- Right now the extra ability is not visible but works, this will be fixed
- For the future class upgrades, make sure to set your focus perks as focus perk category!
General Known issues::
- Sometimes kill and hit audio goes missing
- (!) Avoid reloading or switching weapons at level changes/teleporter
- Sometimes icons display wrong
- Looking into fixes ASAP
Thats it!
There were some things surely forgotten, it will be added in the next fix update patchnotes.
Roadmap & Dev Blog:
By the way - don't forget about our very informative Dev Blog from a couple days ago!
It has a roadmap, Multiplayer info and more!
We hope you enjoy!
- Team FFG