Welcome or welcome back agents to the Open Beta Patch notes! To start things off, for those of you that played in the Steam Next Fest, you can expect a very similar build. Since Crossplay between console and PC is making its debut with Open Beta, we have to ensure compatibility between the different versions of the game. This does not mean we don’t take the feedback we received from Next Fest seriously, it simply means you will not see it in action right away and will have to wait a bit to see the bigger changes born from it.
That being said, we did make some server side changes that will affect the experience since the Next Fest Build. Let's start at the top with those before going through the general changes from Alpha to Beta.
New since Steam Next Fest
Guard Range Tweaks:
One major piece of feedback we often get is that guards can feel very annoying in their behaviors. This is most often due to the fact that guards could be “summoned” from the far side of a very large room adjacent to the one you were in.
In this build, we added a maximum distance check on top of the “closest rooms” check. What that means in practice is that you should get far less infinite guards coming at you after a fight and should be better able to read when a guard is potentially going to be aggro-ed. We hope this change makes the overall interaction with guards less annoying but also easier to plan around.
Spawn Rules Tweaks:
We’ve tried a few tweaks to spawning in the Next Fest build and we further refined these rules for the Open Beta. This should make rushing from blue rooms directly to purple less efficient, make green rooms more interesting in loot overall and make keycard distribution a bit more of an involved looting experience to give them more value.
As always we’ll keep looking and tweaking this to refine the experience.
And last but not least….
Operation Fragrant Shore is a go!
It’s time to grab your best vacation outfit agent, we are going to the caribbean! We are excited to see what kind of trouble you get into as you sneak and fight through the streets and capitol of the city of San Flores in a race to steal a mind influencing perfume.
NPC behavior tweaks:
We’ve added new ranks of suspicious npcs behavior that bridge the gap between “very suspicious” and “not suspicious at all”. This should help blur the lines a bit more and keep things more interesting as NPC behavior will be a bit more granular and nuanced.
As always, we value and look forward to community feedback. If you’d like to leave feedback regarding the above changes or for any other topic, you may do so by visiting: https://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/index.php?forums/deceive-inc.2333651/
Changes since Alpha
For those that played the Next Fest build, this won’t be new. For all other agents, these are the changes since closed Alpha 2: https://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/index.php?threads/deceive-inc-next-fest-patch-notes.2338860/
Planned Post Launch Changes
While we’ve been reacting to player feedback from the latest beta tests, not everything the team is working on will be ready in time for launch day. Please find a partial list of some of the changes that are likely (please note that future developments are subject to change as items are prototyped and worked on. Items listed here may not come in the exact form listed or at all) to come in updates after launch:
- Increased rewards for being the first to loot a Vault Terminal room
- Example: A guaranteed purple keycard
- Penalty for shooting civilian NPCs. The goal is not to punish agents who accidently take one down during a fight, but to prevent rampant murders and spy checks.
- Initial prototype makes agents scale up in “heat levels”, this results in them taking more damage from guards and other agents as they do. Heat goes down over time. (ONCE AGAIN THIS IS A PROTOTYPE SUBJECT TO CHANGE)
- The training room will display shot damage on the back screen
- Addition UI elements to help players understand the weapons better are also going to be added post launch
- Private Lobbies
- We know this is a much requested feature for friends to play with each other and it is slated for post launch development. We do not currently have an expected ETA on this feature to share.
- Agent Balance
- We’ll be continuing to adjust agent weapons and abilities, improving those that are underperforming and bringing down those that are overperforming.