Since our first Community Feedback update last Thursday, Patch 1.2 has been deployed with more than 500 fixes and improvements, addressing several of the issues we discussed with the development team last week.
While there is still plenty of work ahead, we’ve been encouraged to see reports of improved server stability, alongside fewer reports of issues such as console foliage shimmer. At the same time, your feedback is helping us identify the next areas that need our attention.
This week, we sat down with the development team again to discuss some of the biggest conversations happening across the community, including VOIP, console visual quality, persistent Recon markers, and more.
We also spent some time discussing some of your most requested features, including improvements to helicopter controls, Party Voice Chat, night maps, returning Hell Let Loose features, and FSR 4.1.
As a reminder, we have a few things planned for this week, including:
Our first Reddit Developer AMA, with an accompanying livestream on Friday 28 August at 12pm BST.
Patch 1.3 will go live addressing a host of your reported issues, some of which we’ll be talking about today.
Here’s what we learned from our chat with the devs:
Top Community Reported Bugs & Issues
VOIP & Audio
This week we have some positive news regarding the distorted and robotic voices affecting Proximity Chat that we discussed last week.
Working alongside our external VOIP partner at Epic Games, the team believes a fix has now been identified. Initial testing has produced positive results, and we are carrying out further testing at a larger scale before deploying the fix to players.
The fix will not quite be ready for Patch 1.3, but we are currently targeting Patch 1.4 for its release, subject to the results of that testing.
Outside of VOIP, work is also continuing on the wider audio experience. This includes ongoing improvements to audio directionality as well as further balancing across different sounds on the battlefield. These improvements will continue to be introduced incrementally through future updates.
Status: VOIP Fix Identified & Under Testing
Persistent Recon Markers
We have seen an increase in reports of enemy markers from Recon Planes and Flares remaining visible on the Tactical Map for longer than intended.
The team has been investigating this issue and has made improvements that will be included in Patch 1.3. However, reproducing the exact behaviour being reported by players has proven difficult internally, which means we don't yet want to consider the issue completely resolved.
For Community Server owners, rebooting the server will typically resolve persistent Recon Markers if the issue occurs.
While we continue to investigate, reports from players who are still experiencing persistent markers will be particularly helpful, especially if you are able to provide specific reproduction steps. If you encounter this issue, please continue sharing as much information as possible about when and how it occurred.
Status: Further Investigation Ongoing
Console Image Fidelity
Console image quality continues to be an important area of feedback, particularly around image clarity, foliage shimmer and overall sharpness.
Patch 1.2 introduced an initial change that reduced some of the shimmer visible on console. However, that change also affected when Dynamic Resolution Scaling (DRS) activates, meaning the game could operate at a slightly lower resolution in some circumstances.
For Patch 1.3, the team has made several further changes designed to improve image stability whilst also recovering some performance. This should reduce how frequently DRS needs to lower the rendering resolution, resulting in a slightly sharper image on average, combined with the improvements to stability.
These remain incremental improvements rather than the final solution. Longer term, our goal is to continue reducing visual shimmer while increasing image clarity and rendering resolution as further optimisation work creates additional performance headroom.
Status: Long-Term Improvements Ongoing
Keybindings & Controls
We continue to see reports around keybindings and controls, including bindings not saving correctly and other inconsistencies when remapping controls.
The team has put significant focus into this area for Patch 1.3, with approximately a dozen individual fixes made across keybindings and controller functionality.
While we can't guarantee that every reported edge case has been addressed, we expect Patch 1.3 to deliver an improvement to keybinding and controller behaviour. We'll continue monitoring your reports following the patch to identify any remaining issues.
Status: Multiple Fixes Coming in Patch 1.3
Stability & AMD
Stability continues to be an important focus for the development team, with particular attention remaining on crashes affecting some players using AMD GPUs.
Since our last Community Feedback update, the team has continued investigating crash reports and has made progress in identifying a number of individual stability issues that appear to occur more frequently on AMD hardware. Our engineers continue to prioritise this work, alongside working directly with AMD as part of the wider investigation. One workaround we have found is that disabling gore will likely reduce the frequency of AMD crashes if you suffer from them.
There isn't a single fix that we expect will resolve every crash, so improvements are likely to come through addressing individual stability issues as they are identified.
Alongside this work, FSR 4.1 is currently targeted to arrive with Update 1.5, which we hope will provide further improvements to the experience for players using supported AMD hardware.
Status: Under Investigation
Community Requests
As we move beyond launch, it’s been great to see the community conversation beginning to broaden beyond bugs and technical issues towards the features, improvements, and new additions you’d like to see in the future, particularly following our recent roadmap reveal.
We’ll be answering a number of your questions and requests in tomorrow’s Developer AMA, but we also wanted to touch on some of the most common requests in this Community Update.
These conversations are an important part of our Community Feedback meetings. Alongside bringing your most reported bugs and issues directly to the development team, we’re also highlighting the features, changes, and improvements you would most like to see as Hell Let Loose: Vietnam continues to evolve.
Returning Hell Let Loose Features
We’ve seen plenty of requests for features from the original Hell Let Loose to make their way into Hell Let Loose: Vietnam. One of the most frequently discussed, particularly among console players, is Party Voice Chat, which in Hell Let Loose allowed groups to continue communicating together before and during a match. We wanted to provide some clarity around why this currently works differently in Hell Let Loose: Vietnam.
For Hell Let Loose: Vietnam, we made the decision to move away from VIVOX for our VOIP system and instead move to Epic Online Services (EOS), which we believe will provide a better overall VOIP experience in the long term. Due to technical limitations, as well as our aim to provide a consistent system across PC and console, Party Voice Chat is currently only available while in the lobby. Once you enter a match, there are still plenty of ways to stay connected, with Proximity, Unit, and Command channels available to keep you communicating and coordinating with other players throughout the battle.
We’ve also seen requests for other returning features, including Commendations and more detailed player statistics. While we can’t share the full details just yet, we can confirm that these are planned to make their way into Hell Let Loose: Vietnam in the future, alongside further improvements arriving with the Battalions system.
We’re also really interested to hear which features you would like to see shared between the two games in the future, whether that’s features from Hell Let Loose coming to Hell Let Loose: Vietnam, or vice versa. Let us know in the comments which features you’d most like to see make the jump between games.
Status: Actively Reviewing Community Requests
Asymmetric Warfare & Traps
We’ve seen plenty of requests for greater asymmetry between the NVA and US Forces, with traps continuing to be one of the most frequently requested additions. We wanted to revisit this topic to provide some further clarity around our current thinking.
As mentioned in Developer Q&A Part 1, we are not currently planning to introduce traps to Hell Let Loose: Vietnam. However, this is not due to concerns around 'moral reasons', as we’ve seen suggested in some community discussions.
We absolutely recognise the importance of traps and the role they played during the Vietnam War, especially for the non-formal military forces such as the Vietcong. However, their implementation would represent a different style of warfare from the tactical, large-scale combined-arms battles that sit at the heart of the Hell Let Loose experience.
That doesn’t mean our work on asymmetry stops here. We’re continuing to explore ways to further differentiate how the NVA and US Forces fight, building on the unique strengths, tactics, and capabilities of each side.
While traps aren’t currently part of those plans, we have plenty more in development to further evolve battlefield asymmetry, and we’ll continue to consider community suggestions for the future.
Status: More Asymmetric Warfare In Progress, Traps Not Currently Planned
Night Maps & Weather
Another increasingly common request has been for more variety in the conditions you fight through, including night-time battles and different weather conditions. We know how dramatically lighting, visibility and weather can change the way a battlefield plays, particularly across the jungles, waterways and more open environments of Vietnam.
We raised both of these requests with the development team during our latest Community Feedback meeting, and we can confirm that both weather and night-time experiences are part of the wider plans for Hell Let Loose: Vietnam.
One of these is further along in development than the other, but we’re not quite ready to share timings just yet. We’ll have more to reveal about both in the future.
Status: Work in Progress
Quick Play
Finally, we’ve seen requests for a Quick Play option to provide a faster and simpler way of getting players onto the battlefield, particularly on console, without needing to manually find an available server through the Server Browser.
We discussed the current experience of finding and joining matches, and whilst improvements have already been made through Hotfix 1 and Patch 1.2, we understand how important it is for players to be able to get into a match quickly and easily.
Unfortunately adding a Quick Play option is not simple to implement, and would require a significant amount of development work. That said, if this is something you, the community, feel would meaningfully improve the matchmaking experience, it is absolutely something we are open to exploring further.
So, we want to hear from you. Are you happy with the current Server Browser experience, or would a Quick Play option improve how you get into matches?
Status: Assessing Community Request
Reddit Developer AMA | 28 August
Be sure to tune in to our first Reddit AMA tomorrow, where Rushy, Game Director at Expression Games, will be answering questions directly from the community.
Alongside responding to questions on the Hell Let Loose: Vietnam subreddit, Rushy will join Hell Let Loose Community Manager Ben for a livestream on the official Hell Let Loose Twitch channel.
We’ll be diving into questions submitted through the Reddit thread, discussing some of the biggest topics you’ve been asking about, and hearing directly from Rushy about Hell Let Loose: Vietnam.
So, be sure to drop your questions into the AMA thread for a chance to have yours answered either in the comments or live on stream.