As expected, emotions got high - my inbox seems about 50:50 split between love for the new direction and, well, less friendly words.
Since feedback is crucial for me to adjust the course for this new direction, at the end of this post you’ll find a poll to voice your opinion - please make your voice heard, positive or negative!
The new direction (and why the shift)
Originally, Last Oasis was supposed to be a game about people roaming the lands on walking land vehicles, fighting threats and each other while improving their vehicle. From there it went to a prototype where we tried this concept internally - and it was fun. Amazing fun. The thrill was high, fights were fun, victories felt great, losses were painful but still endurable. That was about 2 years before LO was released as early access.
However, if we jump forward to the status quo, this is the experience most people have when trying LO in Season 4: you follow the tutorial, build your first firefly walker, progress from the cradle to the canyon, drag a few boxes through the desert to hope to get some technology upgrades, if you’re lucky you get a dinghy walker, and then suddenly someone drives up to you, kills you, destroys everything you built up in the last ~6 hours and that’s it. Game over.
I’m sure you can see the discrepancy between the envisioned game and the actual game. For some people - those perfectly organized, with perfect information about the game - this intended walker fight experience exists. But for most people, experiencing the fun parts was impossible.
So the question for Season 5 was from the very beginning: How can I make sure that everyone gets to experience the fun parts, not just the top 5%?
That left me with two viable choices: either get rid of the survival sandbox aspect completely and turn it into an arena game, or double down on the survival sandbox.
If you played the beta, you can certainly tell that we went for doubling down on fixing the sandbox.
Why is water suddenly so important?
The first (and so far probably biggest) source of controversy is the water. Water is your bond to your base, and a reward for exploration. The better you become, the less of an issue water becomes. Rupu camps drop sources of water, fruits and pulps are sources of water, but they are rewards for going out into the world and coming back alive. If you spend your time close to your base, you will only find limited water sources like cacti.
As you progress, you find better water sources, tools, and containers - extending your reach.
And that is the main theme for Season 5: going on trips from your base, and trying to make it back alive with more than you went out with.
But why static bases? Why not let us have all of our bases on Walkers like before? Why settle down in this game about moving vehicles?
This is about risk management. If your walker is your base, your base is permanently vulnerable. And therefore your belongings are constantly at risk. A walker cannot be easily damageable and serve the purpose of a base simultaneously. Therefore, we intentionally split the functions.
Walkers are no longer intended to be your base - instead, they are your main exploration and combat tool
This means that if your walker gets destroyed (which can now happen through PVE), it is no longer a complete and utter loss for you. Depending on your frame of reference, this makes the game both more and less hardcore.
For those that managed to reach a Firefly or even a Dinghy during the Beta - you probably noticed that the first time was a bit difficult and needed some thinking, while the second time was much easier. This is by design. Walkers are easier to be destroyed, but you can quickly recover, build a new walker, and try again.
Why do I suddenly have to care about PVE dangers? Wasn’t it hard enough to survive PVP already?
The reason for making PVE in the cradle rather brutal was to teach a new gameplay: You are safe in your base, and you are at risk whenever you are outside.
This is a drastic change from the way LO used to be played previously, where environmental risks and survival were not an issue - until you run into another player, who will almost certainly take everything you own.
The new season is a completely different take on this: a constant risk, but it’s controllable by the player to how much they are ready to expose themselves. Players can control their rate of progression, and are no longer expected to instantly know the ins and outs of the game from the first hour.
Feedback
The reason for testing the cradle in its current state was to see if this direction can work.
We need your feedback for this! The most important question is really if you dislike the new direction in general, if you like the direction but dislike the balance, or if you think this was just a straight up better version of LO. Be honest, be constructive, be critical, be civil, and thank you all for taking the time to test this new variation.