Welcome Agents! We are back with a new patch to dig into for Steam Next Fest. This patch is not as wild as Alpha 2 on fundamental changes to the game, but mostly focused on addressing pain points from the alpha surveys and overall polish of the experience. Our focus is making combat more balanced and consistent, making low health issues resulting in third party deaths less frustrating and making the overall experience clearer and more engaging. Of course this also includes a healthy amount of less exciting bug fixes under the hood.
Once again, this is not everything we’ve learned and want to take action on from Alpha 2. We are still actively working on quite a few items touching some of the feedback we received there and we will share those with you when we have a better idea of where and how they’ll fit into the game.
First, you may ask, how do I join the Deceive Inc. Steam Next Fest event? Below are details on how to do just that as there are a couple of ways to participate!
The first way to participate:
- Browse to the Deceive Inc store page at https://store.steampowered.com/app/820520/Deceive_Inc/
- Next, if you scroll down slightly you’ll see a green section that states ‘Download Deceive Inc. Demo’. Just click on the download button and you will begin to install the game files
The second way to participate:
- If you happen to be browsing through the Steam DEMO HUB you can search for Deceive Inc at - https://store.steampowered.com/demos/
- From this page, if you scroll down you’ll be presented with a search bar. If you type in Deceive Inc you’ll be presented with the following:
- Just click on the Deceive Inc. image and you’ll be taken to the game’s store page. From the store page, just follow the instructions from the section above to download and play
You can also add Deceive Inc. to your Steam wishlist in preparation for the full release!
With that said, here are the changes you can expect with the latest version of Deceive Inc.
General Changes
Out of cover outline
Out of cover enemies will now have a slight red outline around their silhouette. This is mostly to help newer players with identifying threats and to make team fights more readable at a glance.
Health Tweaks
While we are overall very satisfied with the tweaks around food and health balancing, one thing that became quite obvious to us last alpha was that Spy Caches dropped by eliminated spies did not heal enough.
We are making them give 25 health now instead of 15 to help stay a bit more secure after a tough fight.
Social Interact fixes
Sitting and other social interactions will now work reliably (no side sitting anymore) and won't make you jump in the air when coming in and out of it.
Jump Fatigue Rework
Jump Fatigue now works differently. Before, Jump fatigue would lower the height of your jumps progressively. This had the undesirable side effect of preventing jumps over small obstacles if you jumped too much in a quick succession.
We pivoted jump fatigue to only affect horizontal speed now. Jumping too much will slow you down temporarily, but won't affect your jump height. This means Jump Fatigue keeps its desired role of limiting the amount of jumps players should be able to pull in a short succession in combat without limiting opportunities to jump over obstacles.
Earning Currency per match
Previously, Credits could only be earned while leveling up. This meant that as level slowed down in the progression, currency earnings would slow down significantly.
From now on, you will earn 100 Credit for leveling up (down from 150) but you will earn currency every single match based on performance. Currency amount will be scaled according to the amount of XP you have earned in a match.
We believe this makes the unlock pace more interesting and gives more incentive to perform well in a match.
Slow Status Effect
With the emergence of more Yu-Mi players last playtest, we found that the slow status effect was still performing more strongly than we'd like. We once again lowered the slowing effect. It now slows players by 30% instead of 50% to create a less frustrating experience.
Enhanced Gamepad Support
Reworked gamepad controls, camera quick turn acceleration and aim assist have been put in place to offer a better experience for gamepad users in this build.
Levels
Loot Spawning Changes
We’ve revisited spawn rules in all levels to make looting more interesting overall. You can expect more items in drawers, much more value from staff rooms and slightly rarer keycards.
This should contribute to lower speeds of playing rushing in the first phase a little bit, but mostly make looting and finding keycards more meaningful and interesting. We also hope to see Staff Rooms gain much more interest from the upgraded pools.
Hardsell Level Changes
Added windows that can only be opened from inside to many blue rooms in hardsell. This goes hand in hand with new blue doors on balconies to prevent entirely free access into blue rooms with the bounce mat. You can of course still open these with a keycard and by following NPCs going in.
Our goal with this change is not to reduce bounce mat mobility, but to slow down slightly rush play styles using the mat to get into blue rooms.
NPC population tweaks
We changed NPC pools a little bit since the last alpha. Expect a bit more technicians in vaults and a bit less guards roaming around. We hope to make escaping from guards less frustrating while keeping them present overall. This should also slightly nerf the strategy of staying in a guard disguise the entire match.
Agents
Weapon Balancing
Following last alpha's dramatic changes to weapon balancing, we are taking a more moderate approach to this patch. Our goal is mostly to raise the performance of agents that were found lacking in the new meta and reduce the power of agents that emerged as a BIT too deadly for what their role should be (Looking at you Larcin).
Damage Falloff
We reduced damage reduction from falloff on faster firing weapons a bit in this patch. This should help make them feel more consistent across a wide range of distances while still keeping their identity as lower performing weapons at long range.
Longer range weapons remain unchanged from this tweak.
Recoil on full-auto weapons
We fixed an issue with full auto weapons where their recoil would never reset by itself when you stopped firing. This would make them feel more unwieldy than intended and was not in line with all other weapons in the game.
Larcin Functionality Change
Passive mod 2: Larcin's pickpocket mod led to some unintended play styles that are detrimental to the long term health of the game. Players could use Larcin's melee to spy check every single npc they come across without any consequences.
To combat this we changed its behavior as follows: Larcin will now blow his cover if he pickpockets a NPC using this skill. If the target is a spy, Larcin will keep his cover like before while stealing.
While in cover, Larcin deals no melee damage using his melee on spies. His melee attack while out of cover won't cause a steal.
Yu-mi Functionality Change
Slingshot
Releasing input will no longer cancel shots, instead queuing the lowest charge time possible. This will make using Yu-Mi in close range much more responsive.
Passive
Yu-mi Passive mod 1 now works and refills her expertise gauge by 33% for every gadget destroyed.
Gadgets
General Tweaks
Gadgets overall had a cooldown time rebalancing to reward players that go back to pick up their gadgets instead of simply destroying them all the time.
Regen times are now:
Bounce Mat: 30 seconds
Drone: 25 seconds
Scrambler: 20 seconds
Umbrella Shield: 30 seconds
Tripwire: 25 seconds
Goo-pod: 25 seconds
Turret: 25 seconds
On the handling front, delay for dropping gadgets has been reduced slightly to keep them very reactive when used in a pinch.
Spyglas functionality change: Can now revive allies from afar in team mode.