Agents,
We received reports that Quarantined Entities in Section 13 are back at it again. We’re hearing that circumstances are similar to last time during CB2, with the main difference being difficulty adjustments based on the number of agents present in the missing. It is thanks to your efforts in the last two closed betas that we regained better control of Section 13 base to pair you with challenges that suit you best.
Thank you in advance for your participation and feedback, which help us create a better Blackout Protocol experience for all agents. Please make sure you stay tuned to our Feature Upvote board for leaving feedback, as well as our Discord server for any discussion or updates.
An important note for previous beta participants: in order for us to accurately assess how effective the changes from previous betas, you will lose all progression data and start your mission fresh. Please do not be surprised as it is the Death Nullification System doing its job.
Before we touch upon the nitty-gritty details of CB3 changes, we got a note from our creative director.
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Greetings, Agents.
First of all, I’d like to thank you for your continued interest and feedback for Blackout Protocol. Please allow me to share my team’s thoughts behind some CB3 changes before you dive into the full list below. CB3 changes are based on key feedback that we could quickly address, including those from Feature Upvote. It hasn’t been long since the last closed beta, so we do see room for further improvement and are continuing to work on further improvements.
Our greatest focus for CB3 changes was on the game’s difficulty.
I’d like to mention the solo difficulty adjustments first. In CB3, we applied difficulty modifiers when playing solo: you will see less Quarantined Entities spawn, or you may not encounter situations that are not suitable to tackle alone. To share more context, our previous focus for difficulty was on providing a solid balance for 3-player groups. However, based on feedback, we shifted our plans to provide difficulty adjustments for solo as well. To be more exact in the longer-term plan, we are aiming to provide the easy difficulty. If you play solo in CB3, you will see what we have put together for testing out this new balance goal. Since there is a lot more testing and balancing work to be done, you may see areas of improvement in CB3. Please feel free to solo in CB3 and share your feedback with us. Your input would be tremendously helpful in preparing the new easy difficulty, which we plan to add in Early Access.
Another change in CB3 is slight adjustments to the reload and wind-up time for some weapons.
With Blackout Protocol’s initial design emphasizing co-op experience, a criteria we had for weapons that are particularly effective in a teamwork setting was to require good co-op gameplay in utilizing them to their fullest, while still not overpowering other weapons. However, as we explored balancing for solo (and eventually easy) difficulty, we concluded that each weapon should be viable even when used alone by a single Agent. This led us to run an overall adjustment to weapons that previously had long reload and/or wind-up times. If you thought some weapons were cool but not quite viable in previous betas, we’d appreciate you trying those out in CB3 and providing us with your feedback.
The third change I’d like to share is adjustments to the unlock order and tier of some permanent enhancements. We believe this provides a smoother flow for Agents, where they are unlocking the permanent enhancements they need at their progression level, which would assist them with their consequent runs.
We also added various quality-of-life improvements and polishes. To share a few: we addressed the issue of ammo/medkit drops being too close to each other, re-enabled the private room feature after fixing the issue we had in CB2, and adjusted the size and trail color of tactical equipment for better visibility.
I believe there would be more opportunities after CB3 for me to share a preview of what my team is working on for Early Access. I look forward to bringing more interesting changes to share with you!
Sincerely,
Dongsoo Oh
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Changes from CB2
We have been working on making additions and improvements from our closed betas earlier this year. Below is a quick list of changes.
General Gameplay
- The game can now be played while offline
Community-Requested Changes
- Enemy balanced based on player count While we plan to implement difficulty selection in the future, we wanted to test out how well the adjustments work. During CB3, the difficulty will be adjusted based on the party size.
- Character balance adjustments for Scalpel The aim can now be adjusted after pressing Q, until the attack hitbox is triggered.
Roguelite Elements
- The cost of rerolling Synaptic Enhancements will now gradually increase with each reroll
Combat
- Adjusted weapon balance for the SMG, Sniper Rifle, Pump-Action Shotgun, Revolver, Flamethrower, Arc Cannon, Photon Cannon (previously Beam Cannon), Plasmoid Launcher, and Minigun
- Slightly increased the size of tactical equipment for better visibility
- Made UN-X soldiers to have a more robust combat AI
[UN-X soldiers now roll out of danger just like Agents do] - Removed some awkward animations of the Disposer Elite
- Added more space between ammo/medkit drops
UI/UX
- Changed the laser sight color of friendly characters to green
- Changed the color of trails for some tactical equipment when they are thrown
- Grenades: Red
- Flashbangs: Yellow
- Psychogen Bombs: Purple
- When spectating others, visual effects from panic will no longer affect the camera
- The system message that shows in the Safe Room, which notifies of unused Data Nugs and/or blueprints, will now include the name of the Agent who hasn’t used them
- Added sound effects for the DNS Defragmenter in the Safe Room
- Spending Data Nugs
- Obtaining permanent enhancements
- Changing selections
- Agents will now hear the sound effect for when their own active skill is off cooldown, instead of everyone’s
- Added a feature to switch between public/private rooms within the session
- Press Esc key in the preparation area outside the base to bring up the menu and access this feature
- Changed so that the loading screen now shows even when using the friend invite feature
Text/Localization
- Changed the name of Beam Cannon to Photon Cannon
- Minor text changes/fixes
Bug Fixes
- Fixed the crash issue with the claymore
- Fixed the issue where items would drop in unreachable locations
- Fixed the issue where Agents could join a session that already entered Section 13 base
- Fixed the issue where two Agents interacting with an object at the same time could grant items to both of them
- Fixed the issue where the Panic Gauge penalty from the Unstable Parts Synaptic Enhancement was not being applied when using the Arc Cannon
- Fixed the issue where the session would restart without the results screen
- Fixed the issue where the number of attempts on the results screen would be reset
- Fixed the issue where the BGM would not play in the title screen
Others
- Changed the access card item to an access key
CB3 Known Issues
We will update this section as we get more information.
- Please note that most languages have not gone through Localization Quality Assurance yet. If you find any issues, please feel free to let us know through our Discord server
- For example, one of the office level’s objectives may include variables, like “|hpp”
- ODS GeeK
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2111870/Blackout_Protocol/