Hey everyone,
Welcome to Dev Brief #104!
With Update 8 arriving in the very near future, this week we’re taking the opportunity to share with you some actions we’re taking in time for its arrival following player and community feedback from the PTE, last week’s Dev Brief comments and the following conversations here on Steam, as well as on our official sub-reddit and Discord.
The actions we’re taking are focused on re-arming, which we revealed last week, hit box changes to maintain a low TTK and a change to friendly fire to reduce some instances of accidental teamkilling.
We’re also pleased to share that as part of our continued effort to support Hell Let Loose’s global playerbase, three new servers in Japan have been added to our Asia region selection and are live now!
Full details on all of the above can be found below:
Changes to Re-Arming
We’ve read all the feedback both in Discord and on the Reddit thread about our plans for re-supplying and re-arming Supply Boxes and Ammo Boxes. As such, we tested and then locked in the suggested changes that were most popular among the community after first implementing and testing them in a closed environment.
As such, moving into the trigger range of the Resource Nodes now halves the 5 minute re-arm time on these inventory items, while otherwise they’ll recharge on a global 5 minute cooldown. This will mean that Support players will retain their key feature without being entirely dependent on Resource Nodes, while being in the vicinity of a Resource Node will still have a positive effect on in-field efficiency.
In addition to this, we’ve increased the total number of Nodes able to be built, as we currently feel that even with the full complement built - teams were still running a large resource deficit.
Changes to Hitboxes
Our PTE sessions gave us some great insight into the real gameplay effects that the introduction of more specific hitboxes would have on TTK. We found that the inclusion of the upper arm (above the elbow) and area above the knee meant that targets travelling perpendicular to the shooter would often soak up far more damage than desired - making the TTK feel far longer than desired.
We know that much of the appeal of Hell Let Loose is in the lethality of the bullets and the feeling that you don’t need to expend entire magazines to kill a target. Therefore, we’ve adjusted the location of the “extremity” hitboxes to only incorporate below the elbow and below the knee.
In testing, we’d found that this strikes the right balance between rewarding accuracy, while also maintaining a quick TTK for rounds placed at center mass.
Changes to Friendly Ballistic Damage
We’ve looked long and hard at the teamkilling within the game, and the way in which the kills occur. Oftentimes noting that it’s nearly entirely accidental, and that any additional time after the killing shot is fired often reveals that your target was a friendly.
Therefore, we’re going to be trialling a new system in Update 8 that halves friendly player ballistic damage. Obviously, this will have no effect on damage dealt to enemies, but we feel that this will give single hit kill weapon-users the ability to realise their mistake without killing the friendly player. In our PTE, we found this has a perceptible effect in drastically lowering the number of teamkills across the game.
New Asia Region Servers
We’re very excited to announce that we’re now hosting three official Japanese-based servers on top of our existing Asia region support. We’ve watched players in the broader Asia region jump into the game but find that there are no appropriate servers with a good ping.
We’re now working on hosting Chinese and Korean servers.
Over the next month we’ll be working to address server absences in all other notable regions.
And Finally...
That wraps up this week’s Dev Brief!
Thank you to everyone who takes a moment to share their thoughts with us on Hell Let Loose on any of our platforms. As today hopefully shows once again, your voice matters and helps us shape the game - even including features that aren’t live in-game yet!
As per usual, we’ll be playing the update a large amount after introduction and will make any further changes based on community feedback. We look forward to watching the way these changes shape future gameplay and will be working to iron out any potential issues where and when they emerge.
If you’re yet to join us on the frontline, we’re currently 25% off in the Steam Autumn Sale!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/686810/Hell_Let_Loose/
See you on the frontline!