Hey everyone,
Welcome to Dev Brief #110!
This week we're showing you the reworked Barbed Wire deployable that'll be coming to Hell Let Loose as part of Update 9!
We're also taking a moment to address the current VOIP issues we're seeing players experiencing, as well as officially confirming a new weapon coming to the game, so stick around until the end!
The Barbed Wire Rework
For Update 9, alongside working through many other incomplete aspects of the game, we’ve managed to swing back and figure out a cost effective way to give barbed wire the desired effect we’ve all been waiting for.
Hell Let Loose’s damage system is designed to be relatively simple when it comes to addressing wounds. This is to not only reflect the relatively simplistic triage process during the war (with some forces not even having morphine widely available), but also to create a strong series of actions in order to bring someone back to fighting capacity.
As a result, we feel that the key with barbed wire is that it should cause noise rather than damage (and we all know how horrible the sounds of being trapped in barbed wire are) and completely slow you down for as long as you’re stuck to it. In addition, while some barbed wire can be navigated through, we obviously felt it was important that player-deployed barbed wire completely blocked you.
We’re therefore replaced the old, tiny barbed wire in the Engineer loadout with large - tall arrays that are far more effective at blocking locations and causing bottlenecks.
Please note: This is early footage and is subject to change.
Barbed wire can be blown up with Satchel Charges and well placed artillery. We’ll be testing this functionality in order to make sure it strikes a right balance of being a considerable obstacle without being too strong and impossible to deal with.
In the future we’ll be looking at letting heavy vehicles potentially crush barbed wire in order to clear it.
VOIP Issues
We’re aware that significant voip issues have been experienced for far too long. We’ve been doing a vast amount of digging and profiling, and (with help from the community and our QA team) have identified the issue.
The team are now working with the provider to rectify the issue as soon as possible. We will keep you updated via Discord and other channels as we work on this.
Sorry for any frustration caused by this, we really appreciate both your patience and reports whilst we get this fixed.
Introducing the MG34!
We saw many correct guesses in last week's tease, so today we're confirming that Update 9 will include a new weapon for German Machine Gunners, the MG34!
We'll be delving more into the MG34 and its role within the game in a future Dev Brief, so watch this space MG mains.
That wraps up this week's Dev Brief! Let us know what you think of the changes coming to Barbed Wire, we look forward to hearing your thoughts on it!
Have a great weekend everyone!
See you on the frontline.