Hello again Marauders!
We found that first P.T.E incredibly useful and are extremely happy as a development team with the results. We see a bright future as we continue to do more PTEs in the future. We really appreciate everyone trying out GUILDS P.T.E 1.0 as it exposed important issues that needed fixing. We have spent this last week refining the upcoming update, addressing the reported issues and adding some quality of life.
We think it's important to run a second public test (for a few days depending on it's success) to see how these recent changes have worked, check the remaining bugs and confirm any stability fixes. You will probably still encounter bugs and have suggestions, which you can let us know about in our Official Discord, under the pte-guilds channels.
If you wish to join in make sure to right click on "Marauders" in your steam library and pick the P.T.E in the "betas" tab that will begin downloading this version. (anyone is eligible).
There’s a lot to cover so let's get into the patch notes of GUILDS P.T.E. 2.0 (Changes since P.T.E. 1.0) :
XP Revisited
Issues became clear during that first Public Test Environment that the XP requirements per level were definitely not as intended and were in fact “broken”. This resulted in very small differences between the early levels and flatter amounts later on, when they were supposed to be exponential.
This has now been addressed. However, to prevent it feeling like we have just increased the amount of XP needed we wanted to make sure the player has several methods to gain XP to compensate. For example: You can now gain XP from completing trades (with certain ones having high XP amounts). Done a huge rebalancing for certain NPC kills (Like the Warden giving over 1000 XP) and larger gains from completing missions in the Zero to Hero campaign.
We hope this results in a more consistent experience with opportunities for exciting revelations!
(Please note; we will be revising faction XP requirements in the near future so it has the same potential)
A.I. Adjustments
NPCs have been a topic of discussion since the very beginning! We wanted to implement some changes that prevented them from being so aggressive and highly sensitive (sight and sound) which would allow them to have a wider range of behavior. This may result in them seeming “unaware” but it allows for them to patrol, camp and even loot! Rather than them constantly charging targets, this will still happen but at least not all instances. Internally this has led to interesting new playstyles like sneaking up behind them and even following NPCs to nearby loot stashes. We will continue to monitor the situation as we know they can just seem clueless at times but we are excited for what this change brings!
Return of Region Select
We re-enabled the ability to choose your region for Standard and Raider mode and increased the efficiency of our backend. With the increase in speed in Europe we decided to merge EU East & EU West into one region EU Central (You should get the same if not better ping). We also added a new region selection for the Guild Hideout. Allowing you to pick which region you want to launch the guild hideout in, letting you to choose a region that give the best ping for the guild members that are going to be playing.
NEW
Options menu has a Social tab where you can set preferences for the social stuff e.g. Allow Friend Requests, Chat Settings etc
ART
New icons for certain magazines and weapon stock items, brighter icons were rebalanced, certain icons are less noisy and are no longer too sharp
BALANCING
- XP amount per level is the correct exponential value, we have rebalanced elements across the board, there are now much greater rewards for killing bosses/special NPCs. player xp rewards for zero to hero missions is also a lot greater. we have also introduced player xp rewards from trades and added new trades that give extremely large xp rewards for the later levels (between 1000 and 3000 xp in some cases)
- Guild beret now only scraps junk. guild helmet only provides metal scrap or junk
- NPCs (especially ones equipped with a pistol) shout less when in combat (they still will shout if they see a target before they engage)
- Bleeding has been reduced from 3 damage tick per tick down to 2 damage per tick for all SMGs and pistols also the chance of a bleed has been reduced from 20% to 10%. rifles are still 3 damage per tick however their chance of bleed is down to 5%. dart weapons remain the higher value of 3 damage per tick and around a 30% chance. shotguns remain a 10% chance of bleed with a 3 damage per tick.
- M16 miner NPC now has a SVT40 rifle
- Stamina recharge is now at its fastest when not holding a weapon (similar to previous recharge rates when holding a weapon), knives and grenades are 5% slower, pistols are 10%, shotguns are 15% and rifles are 20%.
- Players now start with mat49s instead of mp40s
- Players start with hunting knives that give a higher chance of junk to help with the first zero to hero mission
- Players start with brodie helmets instead of civilian helmets
AI
- NPCs are now better at prioritizing targets that are closer(if they move or make noise)
- NPCs now have shorter vision, a realistic sight cone (around 90 degrees forward) and less powerful hearing so they can patrol, loot and hide until they have a closer/definitive target (more natural)
- Player's footsteps have been rebalanced for NPCs so you can "sneak up" on them/get closer if you are stalking them or sneak away without alerting them
- When shots land near NPCs they will look around and have better vision to find targets
- Pistol NPCs no longer headshot targets by accident when aiming for their shoulder and the target is in ADS (head is covering the intended shoulder target)
- NPCs now spend around 30 seconds looking for a lost target (down from around 90 seconds)
UI
- Changed “Play” (login) and “Exit” buttons back round to what they were like in live
- Region selection is now enabled in the main menu for Normal and Raider mode
- Region selection is now available in the guild menu so you can pick where you want to launch your guild hideout
- Tweaked the look of the is ready button when a crewmember to make it more obvious
- When switching pages on guild search, now auto scrolls back up to the top of the list
- As Raider mode doesn’t have missions or guild badges in it, we removed those elements from the end screen on completing a Raider mode match
- New social tab in options menn, ontaining settings relating to chat: e.g being searched for etc
- In the Guild Edit menu no longer need to press the confim buttons for changing “Is Public” and “Invite Type”, also tried to make it more clear that you do need to press the Apply button for changing guild patches and tag
- Updated the look of Ship Storage UI in-raid inventory (Had older UI look so unified it with current look)
- Misc tweaks across the UI
SOUND
- Added hover over sounds to the buttons in the left bar (friends, chat etc)
- New radar ping sound effect when the ship HUD UI changes for when able to breach or interact with salvage
- Fixed bugs relating to inventory items getting wiped
- Fix for a timed out matchmaking state causing problems where the start / cancel match buttons would part cancel out and not work anymore
- Fixed a bug where Guild / Freebooter wouldn’t be detected correctly if your guild was set to not public (This would have caused you to not get guild points when you left a match with other guilds patches)
- An issue with XP balancing has been addressed so it’s now the intended exponential value
- Fixed a bug where a “Message” button would show up on yourself in the guild members and it would cause you to crash if you used it
- Fixed stamina recharge being slower when not holding a weapon
- Fixed a bug where you could get into a guild even if it currently full
- Fixed a bug where in the guild search results, the join type could fail to load, causing a bunch of join problems
- Fixed a bug where leaving the guild hideout using the exit menu button would trigger the wrong end match screen
- Fixed a bug where money would be taken but the UI wouldn’t update (For example when repairing items, buying appearance unlocks etc)
- Fixed a bug where the friends list black background could get stuck up if you went to a match while it was open
- Fixes added for a bug where crewmembers would retrigger their Raidermode cooldown if they went into another match as a crewmember after having done a Raider mode by them self the match before
- Fixes for the crew timers for going to match issues (showing when they shouldn’t have, continuing when they should have stopped etc)
- Fixes added for a bug where when you first join a crew you cannot see other crewmembers in your background
- Fixed bug where you could unlock American female voice when you shouldn't have been able to
- Fixed M45 compensator not attaching to the M45
- Fixed bug where the wrong attach and detatch sounds were getting played on a bunch of the new attachments
- Klobb wielding NPCs now have .32 acp ammo instead of 9mm in thier pockets
- Heavy Liberator now has stats
- Fixed camera positions for the Klobb attachments in the weapon viewer
- Fixed camera positions for the M45 attachments in the weapon viewer
- Fixed camera positions for the Trench shotgun attachments in the weapon viewer
- Fixed camera positions for the Jhonson attachments in the weapon viewer
- Fixed camera positions for the Mat-49 attachments in the weapon viewer
- Fixed camera positions for the Delisle attachments in the weapon viewer
- Removed the stock attachment category for the Klobb in the weapon viewer as we don’t currently have any stock attachments for it
- Fixed a bug with melee weapon animation sets where if you ADS for a while while moving it would do a gun holding pose
- Fixed a bug where other players icon would get stuck in your top left if they or you left a crew
- Fixed bug where sometimes the name wouldn't fill in the notification part of the UI e.g. sending invites to people
- Fix for crew members still being set as “ready” when they come back to the main menu after a match
- Fixes for not being able to get a 4th person into your crew, when you try to invite them through the friends menu and not the guild menu or profile
- Fixed a bug where the friends menu tabs wouldn’t visually set as selected correctly
- Fixed a bug on a persons profile where their head and body appearance slots could show as as “none”
- Fixed buttons on the bar on the left getting stuck in a selected looking state
- Fixed misc spelling mistakes
- Fixed the rotation of weapons in the background Guild menu characters being wonkey
- Fixed a bug where in the main menu if you updated your guild patch design, it wouldn't update on your character in the menu until you came back from a match
- Certain 2x1 magazine items were horizontal rather than vertical, this is now fixed
- Required item/ingredients for crafting recipes no longer has squashed icons (for example Toolkit and Fuel)
- Weapon icons now have the correct brightness (matching other icon types)
- Fixed a bug where when you draw your Luger if it was empty the weapon toggle wouldn’t look correct until after the equip anim had finished
- Fixed a bug where if you joined a crew for a standard game and you were on Raider mode when you accepted an invite into a crew, none of the player slots at the bottom would show for you
- Fixed the hover over other players to see their name in the main menu not working anymore
- Fixes added for an issue that would effect stacks of starting ammo and bandages after one raid
- Found an issue where the badges required for leveling up guild's was not the correct value
- Npcs will spend less time looking through the floor when search for loot
Again big thanks for all your help, we hope this new P.T.E will be a lot more stable and bug free than the previous one and it take us one step closer towards the GUILDs launch to live branch. We will let you know of any activity in regards the the P.T.E. including when it will shut down.
Remember you can submit bugs and suggestions through out Official Discord! (look for the pte-guilds channels)
See you space pirates…
S.I.G.