Happy New Year, commander!
The whole Eugen team wishes you all the best for 2020. May you win many battles and be ever-victorious in Steel Division 2!
We wanted to kick off the new year with a bit of a recap of 2019, which was quite momentous for us as we released Steel Division 2.
Let’s take a moment to celebrate what has come to pass, so we can focus fully on all the exciting new things that are just around the corner.
New players and veterans alike: gather around. Let’s see what 2019 meant for Eugen, Steel Division 2, and you, the community.
New Steel Division 2 Features - January to March
Around this time last year, we were knee-deep building up Steel Division 2 to the version you would see at release. This means that the Eugen team was hard at work getting all the new bits in - functional in the beginning, fun at the end. Compared to Steel Division: Normandy 44 we had a slew of new features we were aching to use, most of which we revealed in our dev diaries in the early months of 2019.
Army General
The biggest new feature of Steel Division 2: our dynamic strategic campaigns, the turn-based Army General mode. Making all the individual parts of the Army General to work took its time, from the way the information was displayed, the art style of the map, to the intricate interplay between different types of battalions, and much, much more.
Between January and the launch of Steel Division 2 in June, quite a bit changed within Army General.
In this dev diary, you can read how we envisaged combat to work in Army General. Can you spot the differences?
One thing left behind on the cutting room floor was full multiplayer integration. It wasn’t easy to exclude player-vs-player action, but in the end we made a choice to spend more time to give this functionality all the love and attention it required. And, lo and behold, in the very near future, you should be able to play an Army General campaign with or against your friend.
Defensive Structures
The new defenses (barbed wire, trenches, the bunkers ready-equipped with machine guns or AT pieces) are another new feature in Steel Division 2. We had been toying with the idea for a long time, and with our new game, we made an effort to implement defensive structures in a smart and fun way. We settled on creating a new game mode (Breakthrough) to accommodate the defensive structures, and to not allow them in a Conquest game. Also, we wanted to give our in-game divisions some additional power, especially if they lacked the latest tank models or elite infantry. That’s why Rating C Divisions (184th Rifle Division, Armia Krajowa, Korück 559, and 12. Tartalék) have eight open defensive slots and have access to the best bunker with a 75mm AT gun.
Read more about the Defensive Structures in this dev diary right here.
Deck Builder
A couple of neat things can be found in another new feature we brought to Steel Division 2: the revamped Deck Builder. While recognizable for any Steel Division: Normandy 44 player, the version seen in our new game carried some improvements. One of the biggest was the flexible economy rate you could set for each of your battlegroups. Another was giving the player the option to set the veterancy and allowing them to decide how many copies of a particular unit they wanted to bring.
Read more about the new Deck Builder in this dev diary.
Steel Division 2 Beta - March 27th
At the end of March, players who pre-order Steel Division 2 could play the game for the very first time in an exclusive time-limited closed beta. At this point, we already had to push back the launch of the game a number of times, but we really wanted our fans to sample the game ahead of the full launch. It would not only give us critical feedback but also see how the backend and all of our support infrastructure and machinery would hold up.
Luckily, it was a great success! We ran a number of additional betas, with the last phase running uninterrupted before the full launch of Steel Division 2.
Launch - 20 June
This was a big day for us: the launch of Steel Division 2. By this time, we had been working on the game for many months, and we were finally able to release it into the wild. Steel Division 2 came with a solid foundation (the first Steel Division) but was plenty different, not only thanks to the awesome feedback from you, the community. We also took the chance to introduce some features we always wanted while exploring a setting and timeline (Operation Bagration) we felt was frequently overlooked in the history books.
Steel Division 2 had arrived, and everything, from the initial positive reception to later reviews and healthy player numbers, was much more than we could have asked for!
Death on the Vistula DLC Launch - 17 Oct
Our first History DLC, “The Death on the Vistula”, launched on the 17th of October. As part of our efforts to widen the scope of the military history we try to depict in Steel Division 2, shifting the battlefield further west, but still within the historical context of the game’s Operation Bagration, made a lot of sense. Not only that, it allowed us to play with cool new units such as the Sturmtiger or, for instance, the heroic soldiers of the Polish Home Army.
We are planning to release two more History DLC’s. If you want to get access to all three expansions, don’t hesitate to get the History Pass by following the link below!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/988171/Steel_Division_2__History_Pass/
In case you have forgotten, the reveal of the next History DLC is almost upon us. Keep a close eye out on our Steam and Eugen forums, or social channels (Facebook and Twitter). You can also join us on our [https://discord.gg/TEeBArm]Discord channel[/url] or Reddit page.
Smart Orders - 17 Oct
The Smart Orders was one of the first Reinforcement Pack updates we pushed out for Steel Division 2. These are free updates available to all our players! We know that our games can be a challenge to get into, with a steep learning curve and lots of things happening at the same time during a tactical battle. To lessen the micromanagement load, we opted to develop a new feature: Smart Orders. This new information panel and unit order mechanic was released at the same time as our first History DLC, and made commanding your troops and vehicles on the battlefield much easier by automating some of their behaviour!
We will continue down the line to make Steel Division 2 more accessible by the upcoming Rules of Engagement mechanic. Read more about this upcoming feature in this blog post here.
Modding Tools - 15 Nov
The last date we want to look at was when we released the Modding Tools at the tail-end of 2019. The modding tools are something that we have wanted to release to our community for a long time, but it takes effort, manpower, and resources to get it done properly. In the end, we managed, and we have already started seeing the first player-created mods hit the game. We can’t wait for more!
Conclusion
That’s it for today’s post. You’ll hear from us soon.
See you on the battlefield, commander!