Hello Gamers™,
This is it, 2020 is finally over.
Major updates for the year are also done, so we are going to have a brief blog this month.
I hope you’ve all had/are going to have a great holiday season and enjoy whichever holidays you celebrate. Calgary (where the New World studio I work for is) is on another lockdown now, so we are all being sequestered to our houses. Luckily I’m a huge nerd and the idea of staying in and playing games during my time off sounds pretty ok.
There aren’t any more streams planned for this year, so we will get back to that in January. I didn’t have anything to announce or show off so I didn’t want to waste everyone’s time and get you all hyped up for nothing.
The studio is closed from December 24th until January 3rd, so you probably won’t hear a lot from us for the next couple of weeks.
Since we spoke last we released Cold Blood. It’s now live and in the wild, and the addition of toggleable optics has been a smash hit so far.
We also made a change with 1.9 that was less popular - the adjustment of weapon availability for factions. After the change went live we saw all the feedback from everyone and decided that our decision was not being received as intended so we reverted the change and actually went further to turning Co-op into a sandbox, as requested.
If you haven’t read the letter from Mikee about this, I suggest you do, he explains the situation very clearly. As a matter of fact, I will just drop it here:
Hey everyone, This is Michael Tsarouhas or Mikee here, I’m the lead game designer on Insurgency: Sandstorm. Our team wants to let you know we have heard your feedback about our recent change where we removed weapons from the Security and Insurgent player classes in Co-op. We will be reverting to the prior Co-op loadouts, and in fact expanding them further. However, we would like you to at least understand the rationale for our initial decision. When we elected to remove the weapons, it was primarily based on our goal to create consistency between the Co-op and Versus experiences, and help with onboarding new players in our growing community. However, based on your feedback it seems clear that this concern about weapon consistency is not shared by the majority of players in our community, and that’s why we will be adding back the various weapons. We have a hotfix already planned for Monday December 14th which will give all Co-op Security classes access to both the Security and Insurgent weapons within each class. This will make the weapon availability very similar to how it was before update 1.9, except for small differences such as the M16A4 no longer being available for Marksman. Keeping that particular aspect is in line with our original intentions with the weapon availability change as it’s important to keep some measure of consistency in player expectations between Versus and Co-op. For example, having the M16A4 be available as a Rifleman gun sometimes and as a Marksman gun at other times was confusing while offering little gameplay value. We are also going to take things a step further. Based on your feedback, it’s apparent that our community would also appreciate more weapons being available for the Insurgent team in the Co-op experience. Now, instead of the Insurgent players in Co-op getting access to just a couple extra Security guns as they did before update 1.9, they will get access to all Security weapons within each of their classes. This will create more consistency within the Co-op experience itself and is also narratively appropriate with update 1.8’s introduction of rogue police and special operations teams to the Insurgents. Bear in mind that as with the M16A4 in Security Co-op being removed from Marksman class, the Mosin-Nagant will also be removed from Rifleman/Demolitions/Observer/Commander and kept exclusive to the Marksman. Sometimes we make choices that seem clear to us but don’t make sense to our community. While we can’t promise to take our cues and direction from the community in every decision we make, your feedback definitely influences our decisions. We’re sorry if our choice with 1.9 was frustrating. Other than the removal of weapons, we hope you’ve been enjoying toggleable optics, the new map Bab, new weapons, and all the other changes Operation Cold Blood offers, and will do so even more after the hotfix on Monday. Take care, Mikee
We are always listening to your feedback - that isn’t to say we will always be able to act on it, but it is my job to advocate for you all, and I’ll continue to do that.
Since I don’t have a lot to talk about this month, I thought this would be a good time to hear from you.
I really want to know how everyone is feeling right now and if there are some areas we should focus on moving forward. Along with some others on the team, I whipped up a survey to help me gather some sentiment from all of you.
It is the shortest survey I’ve made since starting at NWI, so please take the five minutes to fill it out - it really does help us make decisions.
Here is the link for the survey, I promise it’ll be quick.
The final featured community content for 2020 is here and it's... eclectic.
I can’t believe Sacrilicious finally found this easter egg (shoutout to Sacrilicious on Reddit)
Physics are cool. Tough, but cool (shoutout to InageMantra on Reddit).
Doors are tough. Cool, but tough (shoutout to -Grognak on Reddit).
Cosplaying as your in-game avatar? NICE (shoutout to fastengineerboi on Reddit).
Lego minifigs as Insurgents, also NICE (shoutout to uncle_sammy_poo on Instagram).
That’s it for this month. That’s it for 2020.
The next update(s) are in progress, and I will have things to show you in early 2021.
I hope you have a great New Years - please be safe, wear masks, and take care of yourselves.
Lots of exciting things are coming in 2021, and I can’t wait to start talking about them.
fatherHank