Greetings Survivors,
Today we are happy to present you with yet another Q&A. We gathered a bunch of your suggestions from our official Discord (https://discord.gg/survarium) and took time to read through them, consider the ideas and proposals put forward and answered them as best we can. So we hope you enjoy the read.
On a side note: If you would like to submit your ideas for changes or make some suggestions just join our discord and check out the #feedback-suggestions channel.
Title: Remove smoke from Slaughter game mode.
Description: Smoke should be used tactically, it is not tactical when one smoke blocks 10% of the map. It gets really annoying when literally 60% of the map is covered in smoke and it's just people running around melee-ing each other.
A: Smoke is definitely a problem on smaller maps, and we will think about a way to tune it down or remove it completely for Slaughter game mode. However, you should keep in mind that if we do remove it, Slaughter will most likely turn into a camp fest.
Title: Melee overhaul.
Description: Kind of an alternate take on the previous suggestion. My idea this time is that there could be an armory of melee weapons with different abilities, rather than just hitting your target with your stock and somehow killing them. A few rough ideas for weapons could be a knife that has high damage but is hard to hit people with, similar to the current system; or like a machete that deals lower damage but inflicts bleeding with an attack that covers a wider area. Or even an anomaly spear that deals little damage over time in a large circular area, stuff like that. This could definitely be a vast improvement to the barebones and questionable melee system in place, especially in a game that's all about fine-tuning your loadout to perfectly fit your playstyle.
A: At some point we were thinking about introducing melee weapons into the game, but even estimation of the development costs (functionality, modeling items, animations) proved to be too much for a little to no gameplay variety: after all, the majority of kills are with ranged weapons.
So we decided to rework the way melee functions, which we did a couple years ago with 0.59b https://survarium.com/ru/game/updates/survarium-059#b
However, we will discuss the possibility of making melee hitting for less with the team. Perhaps it could ignore all armor but hit for 70-90% HP, so it could be used as a finisher, but not one shot. What do you guys think?
Title: Rework spawns and spawn protection in slaughter.
Description: honestly it's pretty self explanatory. The spawns in Slaughter are outright horrible. You can spawn next to the entire team like 4 times in a row. With the spawn protection it just doesn't work. It works with certain people in the match and not everyone in the game (also people can still shoot with spawn protection which is kind of dumb). Could probably change the spawn protection to work for everyone and it goes away when you shoot/sprint. The spawning problem can be fixed by the spawn protection problem.
A: We will think about it in the context of doing something about smoke spamming. However, the issue exists in every online shooter with respawns and small maps, and there's simply no one good universal solution that makes everyone happy.
Title: When you buy a gun or armor piece, the price is permanently reduced to 20% of the initial price.
Description: In a game like this, you often find yourself experimenting with different weapons and armors to find what's just right. The idea for this change is that when you buy something and sell it, but wish to buy it back later, the price is reduced to a little more than what it was sold for, so you don't lose as much value for experimenting. The change itself should be rather easy to implement and benefit every player.
For example, when you buy the VEPR it costs 60k, but you may find its performance subpar. Wanting your money back, you sell it. Fast forward a month and now it's significantly more powerful, but now you lost 51k. With the change, you would buy it back for 12k, meaning you lose only 3k.
A: First of all, you can always test any weapons in the shooting range. Secondly, the game economy was designed and balanced with some specific limitations in mind, one of which being inability to buy the same weapon with a huge discount. If we introduce it, it will break everything, and we will have to reduce match rewards. Which, in turn, will make it harder to acquire any weapon in the first place. Bottom line, we think that any discounts for items you already own is a bad idea.
Yes, you can't test a weapon in the shooting range with any set of modules and modifiers, but the idea is to let you get the basic experience of using that weapon, and if you like it, you can modify it further to suit your play style better.
Title: Ability to rent a gun and mods for round for a moderate fee.
Description: kind of self-explanatory. Just the ability to rent a gun with selected mods. My idea is that the gun costs 15% of its original price to rent, and each mod costs an additional 1k silver. To prevent people from just keeping the gun by renting it over and over, there is a 1 round limit every day. This could allow for experimentation without extreme financial repercussions.
A: The game economy was not designed around renting. Even if we were to introduce it, obviously, renting a gun should cost more than you get from a match (otherwise everyone will only rent). But in this case you don't get silver to then buy a weapon. Not the best approach, eh?
Moreover, in our opinion it kind of ruins the progression aspect of the game. If you can rent any gun with any mods you want, what's the point of getting modules and spare parts, or rerolling modifiers?
Sure, you already can get premium weapons anytime, but the selection is limited, and here we are talking about all the equipment.
Title: Ability to use non-premium helmets and masks as cosmetics.
Description: Kind of self-explanatory. Just wanna wear a cool looking scavenger hood without taking off my helmet and getting rid of the set bonus.
A: The idea of cosmetic items is that your opponents see it's a cosmetic. If you can use any item (premium or not) as a cosmetic, that ruins the whole idea. And most likely these items would then be used to trick opponents into thinking you have some different equipment.
Title: More profiles available in the match.
Description: Depending on the type of map or type of match, I would appreciate more available profiles to choose from. The current three are really not enough. I'll exhaust them on my favorite assault rifles and would like another profile on shotgun and sniper, for example. In other, similarly focused games, it's common to have 15 or more profiles to choose from (which of course doesn't mean they all get used). These profiles could be a bit more expensive again, so there would be additional incentive to earn some silver. But that's up to you.
A: It probably comes down to how many people actually need more than 3 profiles. We don't remember people asking for more profiles before.
Besides, if you could take more than 3 different equipment sets and switch between them in a match, that would make your loadouts too universal. The idea always has been that you need to compromise because you never know which map you may get into next.
Title: Trading system.
Description: Its self explanatory. You can trade everything but league items and gold.
A: The game was never designed with trading in mind. Adding it would require not only a lot of UI and backend work, but also rebalancing the whole economy (equipment prices at the very least). So no, it's not gonna happen.
Title: Small buff for medium armor.
Description: There's couple of medium armors (64 chest points), which in most cases have too many downsides compared to lighter sets (ex. Combat Set) or extremely heavy ones (ex. Heavy Set).
I suggest buffing just a little bit of some of them to make them more appealing:
- Army Set & Light Set - increase armor in gloves to at least 55 (60 with the upgrade). Right now using those sets is pointless as players can be easily hit in hands making extra armor on chest worthless;
- OZK-1 Set & Firefighter Set - decrease slowdown by at least 2%. It can be made by decreasing the slowdown of particular set parts or by adding a corresponding bonus. Right now the player moves in those sets as slow as in any heavy suit.
A: We are planning another balancing update soon, and we'll look into changing armor as a part of the update. No promises, though.
Title: Intermediate sights/optics.
Description: It would be nice to have like 1.5x/3x or 2x/4x, basically LPVOs(Low Power Variable Optics). I know there are some 1.5x and 2x collimators but I miss something where you can just switch zoom if you need to and don't have to switch between sights in close-range to mid-range combat situations.
A: With over 300 modules already in the game, we don't really feel like we need more.
Title: Upgrade weapon modules with spare parts or spare parts + silver.
Description: The current system of getting 3 random of CERTAIN QUALITY mods to get a 50% chance to upgrade a module is stupid. At least one should be able to upgrade a module with 600 spare parts (total sum of three modules). Remember, you want more players to stay. People don't enjoy grinding to get a chance to gamble.
A: Actually, we wanted to do something like that for a long time, but there was always something more important that came first. Perhaps in one of the future updates.
Title: New Anomalies and Artifacts.
Some new anomalies and artifacts to make them more attractive. For example, an artifact, when being used, gives the player a few seconds of thermal sight to spot campers. Or another one which grants higher jumping or makes the player camouflaged.
A: That's another thing we were hoping to do for a long time, and we have some ideas already. Hopefully, you will see a new artifact and anomaly in a few months. But first we need to test our ideas internally and see if they are even feasible (both in terms of implementation and gameplay).
Title: Heavy weapon rework.
Heavy weapons in the game such as light machine guns and anti-materiel rifles should be heavier and far less wieldy than they are now. Right now, light machine guns feel more like assault rifles with more ammo than actual machine guns that should be used for point defense. The anti-materiel rifles just feel like sniper rifles with more damage.
A: That's because Survarium is a game, and that's how similar weapons work in other shooters. We don't go for total realism, otherwise you'd need to mount an LMG or the Barrett M82 before firing or suffer the feedback. So yes, generally the anti-materiel rifles are just sniper rifles with more damage and longer reload, and the LMGs are assault rifles with more ammo and longer reload. And that's highly unlikely to change.
Title: Improvements to ELO system.
The ELO system could have few improvements in my opinion:
- Not being able to avoid ELO loss just by paying 5k silver (quitting or afk penalty)
- Reduce ELO for a long period without playing (so long time inactive players can't stay on top of leaderboard, example of simple implementation in discussions)
- Give the win or loss a (small) impact on ELO change on top of personal performance so a better win rate will lead to a better ELO.
A: At some point players' Elo was decreased for leaving matches/going afk, but many players abused it to lower their rating to then enter matches with weaker opponents. Those players were even willing to pay silver fines for leaving matches to lower their Elo quickly. So no, we are not going to return to decreasing Elo for leaving matches.
Then, reducing rating for not logging into the game for some time. Again, not going to do. Imagine some veteran players coming back in a few months and totally destroying the competition simply because their Elo dropped over time.
Which leaderboards are we talking about here? If those are on survarium.pro, we already provide all information in the API to filter players by login/match date, no need to decrease their ELO to remove them from leaderboards, it's possible via other filters.
Finally, the impact of win or loss. More often than not, players on the winning team already get more Elo because they win because of their better performance in the match. And vice versa for losing. And even if we do make a change like that, how do you define "small impact"? This could totally make people intentionally lose their matches to drop their Elo rating. (see why above).
Title: Fix the ancient bug of sprinting on top of things (rails, boxes, etc.)
Description: This bug has not been addressed for years! Really makes the game feel cheap, unpolished, and of low production value.
A: In truth, the locations were designed bearing in mind that the players could "climb" on items of a certain height when moving around. We could easily reduce that height and fix the "bug" you are talking about, but that would make many locations unplayable. Specifically, you won't be able to finish the team mission (well, maybe you could, but it won't be possible to collect all the boxes).
Title: Add an option to be able to choose between the current lobby and the hangar one (which can still be seen at the end of the tutorial).
A: The hangar lobby was replaced for legal reasons. Can't change it back, unfortunately.
The basement one could theoretically come back, but that's a lot of effort which we feel is better spent elsewhere.
Title: Magazine size on some weapons seems to be arbitrary.
Description: Some (better) SMGs have more than in real life and some (meh) less. Some already good ARs have upgrades to 40, but some of the meh ones stay at 20. I.e., there are a lot of requests to make more extended magazines (no need to create bigger 3d models for them since it's already arbitrary) or increase the size by default.
A: We will look into making some adjustments in the future balancing updates.