And so it begins… New season, together with the whole new direction for Last Oasis, will begin early next week.
Exact time and date will be announced on Monday, but we wanted to let you know: We’re close.
As we’ve talked about in the past, LOverhaul is a massive rethinking of the game. Many of you got to experience a taste during the Beta Branch and gave us lots of critical feedback that we used to improve the experience and more appropriately balance the challenge with the fun. With our work on this overhaul, we asked the question: What could Last Oasis be if we started entirely from scratch?
If I were to sum it up as plainly as I can: LOverhaul puts solos and small groups first. All the testing of Season 5 has been done by solo players and small groups. We balanced around that and made sure that there would be no big obstacles to enjoy the game at your own pace.
Now, that doesn’t mean that the game is easy. The main difference, though, is that you, as a player, have a lot of control over the risks you expose yourself to, at the time and the order of your choosing.
What we’ve seen the most in our tests, is that some players find the game amazingly fun. Those players had a tendency to play more carefully, take their time to properly equip themselves and their walker for an upcoming encounter. Pick a deliberate goal to complete, figure out the best approach for that goal, and execute it.
Other players were struggling a lot and had trouble finding the fun in the new direction. Somewhat ironically, those were often experienced players who played LOverhaul like the previous seasons, where PvE was merely an inconvenience, and not the primary focus. If you rush into the world with a disregard for the dangers that await, you will struggle, fail, and, probably, not have fun at all.
The biggest gameplay change, really, is how important walkers are now as “gunships”. From the very beginning you’ll be able to equip your walker with driver-controlled guns of various types, functions, and sizes, as many Rupu Fortresses and mobs in general require you to use them in combat. That was, probably, the biggest challenge for veterans - you can no longer walk up to a camp and take it out without preparation. You need to use walkers with weapons, upgrade them, prepare ammo and gear, and only then attempt a raid.
Now, while we’re really happy with how the new direction feels, it is not perfect. During the beta branch, a lot of issues were brought up by you that were invaluable to us. Not only did it help us fix problems, but it also served as a baseline for balancing harvesting vs combat, for example.
We’ve discussed internally if we should host another Beta Branch, but came to a different conclusion: Season 5 as a whole must be a massive iteration and community driven development instead.
We will launch Season 5 next week, with the maps and progression that we consider properly balanced - Cradle and Canyon. Once it’s out, we will iterate on them together, just as we did during the Beta Branch. We will watch as you play, listen to the feedback, and improve the experience until it’s rock-solid. Then, we will reveal the next map with new challenges, new walkers, and new technology, until LOverhaul is exactly what it should be: a complete experience, from beginning to end. Each map and each piece of progression will be carefully balanced and all bugs squashed.
For those of you who don’t want to play this version until it’s fully ready or experience a game going through iterations rapidly, you will be able to host private LO Classic servers, which will stay in the preserved state of Season 4 on a separate branch.
Overall - we’re excited. And we hope you’re excited, too. It is the biggest change in the history of Last Oasis by far and the beginning of a new chapter.
- chadz