Hey everyone!
Big thanks to everyone who came out today to ask questions and provide some feedback. Many of the questions were already answered in the last Producer's Letter so I tried to pick some fresh ones.
Here's a recap of our Q&A from today. You can find the full Reddit thread right here - Chris Wynn
Q:
- Are you guys reconsidering bringing back the old headshot sound?
- Do you have any concepts for new guns in the upcoming future?
- What are you plans on buffing and nerfing some aspects of the game guns like the R380 what do you plan on doing with that? This goes along with the next question
- What are your ideas on making melee weapons useful?
- When will you update the skull store, and if you do what would you add to it?
- Are you guys planning on doing defensive crate drops and offensive crate drops ex: defensive drops could hold something like a lammy and med kits and nades, while the offensive one could hold the sniper, ghillie, and ar ammo.
- I am pretty sure this has already been addressed but ever since the new update aiming and 2 tapping has been a struggle even from pros like Ninja and Drassel were commenting on how the aim sens or something of the sort was messed up when the patch came out do you have answers for this was it intentional unintentional?
A:
- Yes, we are discussing ensuring that headshots are distinctive from body shots.
- Yes, we have started prototyping a new weapon now. I wouldn't expect any details or the ability to test something out until the summer. Weapons fill roles in the game and we want to be sure that each weapon has a clear role for the situation you are engaged with in the game, so our focus in on defining those roles and looking for holes in those roles.
- Related to my answer above, we are looking at every weapon's role right now to ensure each weapon has a distinct use. Player feedback and behavior is also a big element in those decisions. The recent changes to the Magnum were in response to what developed in team games and the Magnum being over powered in certain situations. We will always be making necessary balance changes based on stuff like that.
- This is longer term than the weapon stuff mentioned here, but also very similar. The role of melee weapons needs to be cleared and then balanced appropriately. It only goes longer term because the melee system in general needs a larger revamp. Things that we have discussed are things like having a dedicated melee slot and quick melee strike. Not sure yet what we will ultimately do.
- No firm ETA yet.
- Yes, an airdrop revamp is on the roadmap as well. We would like to make each airdrop themed around something so you can decide how valuable it is to you given the current place in the match you are. Some could be themed around medical, some more offensive, some more protective, etc. Designs are being discussed and vetted, and it is something we will get to closer to the summer.
- I just heard about this today and am trying to get details. So far all I have is that there may be a sensitivity issue, so I need more information before I can comment. Nothing was intentionally changed though.
Q:
When do you think we will have the leaderboards for Duos and Fives and what should it look like ?
A:
In progress right now. I can't quite yet provide an ETA, but it is being worked on at the moment. Quite a bit of work to get this one up, tested, and out to live.
Q:
Are you guys thinking on fixing the brightness in this game? There's alot of people who don't like it in the recent update, in buildings it is to dark, and there's like a fog all the time around you.
A:
Maybe, but I want this one to go longer to really get a sense of the differences. There should be a difference from being inside versus outside, I don't want to over-react to a recent change just because it is different.
Q:
Seems the number of hackers has increased tenfold since the last update. Will you guys ever upgrade your Anti-Ch3at system? if not what is going to be done to get the problem under control because right now it is out of control, in my opinion the worst it's ever been.
A:
We are banning a large number of accounts each day and we continue to detect and ban new cheats as fast as they are coming at us. There is a bit of a delay from the in game ban to being removed from the leaderboard. Something we hope to speed up in the future.
Q:
Could you allow the more customization options for crosshairs and hitmarkers?
I believe these changes will allow the community to choose their own playstyle regarding hitmarkers and what works best for them. Perhaps have some presets available for these settings.
For example, if I just wanted the old hitmarkers back I could turn off armor and helmet shimmer on breakage, turn on bold for headshots, make the colors red, make teammate and vehicle hitmarkers transparent.
If I wanted the new updates hitmarkers I could turn on the armor and helmet shimmer on breakage, turn off bold for headshots (though I don't know why ANYONE would want to), etc....
Or I personally would turn off vehicle hitmarkers, make headshots bold, make enemy flesh hits red, enemy armor hits yellow, and the old size and sounds. Shimmer idk.
A:
Customization in general has been a pretty popular topic, so it is something we need to talk about and see if it makes sense in the context of our roadmap. We are pretty locked in on the roadmap through the summer with a whole list of improvements, so it may not be something that we talk about for a little bit.
Q:
Any plans to change the armor and helmet destruction animations? Imo they're very distracting and take away from your gunfights.
A:
We are looking those animations in the context of close gunfight action. First step is to look to scale the effect based on distance. So if it is your own armor, or the opponent is close, that effect would be scaled down to not be as distracting. But at distance, still close to what it is now to be clearly readable.
Q:
- ambient noise from cars upon degradation - consider giving us the option turn off the noises.
- shadows/lighting/fog - consider reverting these additions to, not only locking shadows on, but this thick element of fog that surrounds the map, now.
- car spawns/render distance - consider reverting the change made re: car render distance upon parachuting. not being able to see cars at same distance whilst falling makes knowing the car spawns that much more important. can be very frustrating to commit to parachuting and landing near a spot where there is/are usually a car/cars only to find nothing. EDIT: apparently, this issue was addressed in today's hotfix patch.
- de-sync issues - consider this video which is, as of now, a video that is featured in the 3rd highest upvoted post of all time in this subreddit. in a competitive FPS/BR game, this level of desync can be appropriately referred to as unacceptable. while I appreciate servers being added for east coast, and the implementation of region lock, will the state of the servers themselves ever be addressed?
- rate of gas speed/spread - consider hastening the rate in which gas spreads. typically before the first wave is even completed, there are often times very few remaining players (~25-35).
A:
- The balance of the sound is being tweaked to be a lot lower in the overall mix.
- We are always looking at feedback around stuff like this, I don't want to over-react just because it is different. So I would prefer to take a little more time before making a decision on this one.
- Car spawn render distance was addressed in a patch today.
- Yes, I have watched that video, this leads to a longer answer as it all relates to a very long plan to address the network performance that has been in progress for quite a long time now. Step one was to improve the actual hardware that our servers are run on. We upgraded machines all over the world, added more capacity, and setup new datacenters. Second step is the region locking so that we can ensure better consistency in the players within the same match, this just went live and we will ratchet it down in the coming weeks. All of that was done to allow us to optimize the code with an understanding and control over the environment to do it as aggressively as possible. This is our current focus and will be the biggest change when we get to our next large content update. In the video, he talks about it as lag compensation, that code has already gone through a large number of changes which are still internal to improve the gunplay and synchronization between clients. We hope the creator of that video will re-run the test after we make the update so we can all see the impact of those changes.
- More than considered, we are doing this. We will be speeding up the gas a bit and changing the way it works so the final ring could be anywhere in the map. This will take us a little time, it is in progress as I type this, but working out the bugs and ensuring it is ready for primetime is probably going to be a lengthy effort as it is so core to the entire game.
Q:
All of the available game lobbies are being filled at the same time, causing low-population regions or low-population game types to not fill up completely even when there is an adequate number of players. Even if a game does get filled, it usually takes some time.
What was the point of filling them this way? Is it simply a preventative measure against teamers? Is this something you plan on addressing? Will we ever see a lower amount of time than 60 seconds before a match starts?
A:
The main point was to keep matches going as quickly as possible with as little time in between as possible. Previously the biggest delay in getting into a game was waiting for a server to spin up and start the game to be able to join. There was a nice side benefit for teaming, but that was not the main purpose. The downside is what we are seeing sometimes with low pop matches. We are coming up with ideas on how best to handle this, for now we are turning more servers off in off-peak times to try and concentrate the population more, but we are monitoring every day. We could see a lower time, but we have to be careful because there are some issues that crop up when it goes faster that we would need to resolve first.
Q:
We need bigger difference in both sound and colour when hitting lammy/helmet. they are way to similar. Are you working on that? :)
A:
Yeah, we are figuring out the best way to do this. Not sure we will mess with the colors or not (I am a little hesitant to have a rainbow going on in the middle of the screen), but certainly sounds to make it distinct.
Q:
How long is Preseason 3?
A:
Solidifying plans right now, stay tuned, hope to get some news out in the next week or so.
Q:
I just have one question, When is the next event for a new mask ect. Like the July when we could get Patriots pride helmet from crates?
A:
How does this weekend sound? We are putting together something for Easter that will run this weekend. More details on Thursday.
Q:
Let us cap our FPS again please! I don't want and I don't need more than 162 FPS thank you!
A:
I love the irony in this, but I will look at the caps as I know they were valuable for some players. The caps were disabled due to a bug that it was causing, but we can look at getting it operating correctly.
Q:
Will you guys be optimizing the game for better fps?
A:
Last content update had some pretty big optimizations. We are still working on more, but those last ones were pretty significant.
Q:
Is there ever going to be a way the we can get the old skins like the Patriot's Pride Helmet, Aerial Dawn skins etc.
A:
No plans right now. The people that did earn them have a lot of pride of earning them at the time they were available. That exclusivity is important to them. Not to say we may still offer them in the future, just no solid plans at the moment.
Q:
Any upcoming changes to the shotgun?
A:
Yes. We are working on it now as part of our next large content update. We are starting with the spread of the pellets, the number of pellets, and the randomized pattern of said pellets. Basically changing it to make this weapon more consistent and reliable, particularly in those close gunfights where you want it to be lethal.