Hello everyone!
Today I want to talk about what is moving forward here in terms of the next perk (Sharpshooter) and its weapons as well as some major balance changes that are coming to Survival over the coming weeks (some of these may come out via Live Update, Quality of Life patches or wait for the next content update if we feel there will be issues bringing them forward via the other methods).
Starting with the Sharpshooter I have a render of the Tier 3 M14 EBR rifle to share with everyone today.
I would also like to confirm the Sharpshooter grenade, the Liquid Nitrogen Freeze Grenade, capable of stopping zeds in their tracks. A favorite of the sharpshooter looking for that perfect headshot opportunity, if it doesn’t present itself, make it!
I hope to have the Tier 4 railgun to show off shortly as well as some of these weapons in engine/game as we start to bring them online. We will be announcing the release date of the Sharpshooter perk at E3 so be sure to tune into our coverage there!
Switching tracks I want to talk about balance. Earlier this year I said that game balance was a priority for us as we headed into this year and that has resulted in 3 systemic changes that we hope to bring forward to the community in the near future.
AMMO:
The first one that you are likely to see is a pass at weapon starting ammo capacity, total mag count and pricing. We’ve been working to bring perks and their weapon tiers more inline with each other in what their potential is. What does this mean? Many of the Tier 1 weapons will start with more mags when you initially spawn or acquire them. We are also looking at adding to the total capable mag count that players can pick up across several weapons.
To help balance this out with the economy as players move up the weapon tier they will start with less of the overall mag count and have to purchase those extra mags. As part of this there are some pricing changes for ammo to bring some of the potential damage and actual damage we see these weapons doing more inline with each other.
INCAPACITATION:
Also move forward is a change to how our incapacitation system works. There are several ways to incap zeds: Stun, stumble, knockdown, poison, fire panic, etc. However currently these are a binary system, they either happen if the weapon has more incap potential to a zeds resistance to that incap. Overall as we’ve watched the game play out we feel it has hampered the ability for interesting gameplay due to on/off often either being too overpowered or never triggered enough as well as confusing to many players.
This system is being changed to a potential incap build up and fall off over time. This means that weapons and shots will stack up incap potential until they overcome a zeds resistance to that incap, and it will fall off if the damage stops or the incap triggers. This should allow us to build in more interesting combos between perks and players as well as more interesting ways for players to deal with threats that come their way.
RESISTANCE/WEAKNESS:
As part of our effort to make Perks more balance as well as increase the interesting gameplay options and cooperation between players we are making changes to how zeds react to specific weaponry. This system will start at normal and grow as players rise through the difficulty ranks.
What this means that some weapons will be better at dealing with specific zed types instead of just generic “bullet” damage. With the goal that all perks can still deal with threats that come their way, but dealing un-aimed direct damage to them may not be the most optimal route. This one is still earlier in the prototyping phase so I do not have any specifics to talk about here yet but should have more to share moving forward.
Now to re-iterate what I said near the start, some of these items may not be able to make it out via Live Update or a Quality of Life Update and may need to wait for the next content patch. However once they are in we should be able to make changes to them via those two methods of updating moving forward.