And the other things...

Hello folks!

We've been hard at work and redesigning the core of character builds. This has led to a significant rewrite, merge of perks, and implementation of S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

Below we will talk about changes to the character system, and mention our build manager that lets you conveniently change and share builds and features of unsafe towns.

S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system implementation

We’ve spent a long while redesigning the character system to allow more impactful, varied builds. With our new design, we’ve found a place for S.P.E.C.I.A.L., it is now is implemented into the game and provides small stat benefits, like a carry-weight bonus from strength for example.

But the most important task of S.P.E.C.I.A.L. is that it dictates the max perk level of its child perks.

Every S.P.E.C.I.A.L. has 4 perks assigned to it and the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. value divided by two is the max perk level you can pick.

For example: To pick level 5 Lifegiver player has to invest 10 points into endurance.

Marathon runner 5 requires 10 agility so to just have those two maxed perks, the player would already spend 30 out of 58 points. This encourages us to approach character building from a different perspective, trying to reach level 5 of perk is not anymore the main way to go.

The player begins with all S.P.E.C.I.A.L. being at level 1. The initial level of S.P.E.C.I.A.L. costs no points.

Perk points changes

Because of S.P.E.C.I.A.L. implementation, we’ve adjusted and changed how perk points work. Now instead of 15 perk points, the player has 58 total character points, with 2 gained per level up until level 30. The now-named Character points are used to increase both your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. and the level of your perks.

Perk changes and new perks

To make all the perks more impactful. Some of the perks were merged, we’ve additionally added new perks to the list. New and modified perks can be found below.

Perks in bold font are not fully implemented yet. Features related to them are still a work in progress.

• Cybernetics - Increases implant benefits by a percentage.
• Immunity - Increases resistance to poison and radiation and gives a small amount of threshold value.
• Party Animal - Used consumables stay active for longer [%] and have stronger effects [%].
• Engineer - Unlock Sandbags, Sandbags stacking, Flamer Turret, Sniper Turret, Burst Turret.
• Thick Skin - Increases resistance to Electric, Fire, and Explosion damage.
• Man Of Steel - % Chance to negate Knockback, Knockdown, and Knockout effects.
• Penetration - Lowers total enemy resistance [%] from your attacks.
• Relentless - Lowers active perk cooldowns [s].
• Squad Leader - Group gains benefits [%] if you're the leader of the party or travel group.
• Rancher - Allows you to have an animal follower. Your animal follower is stronger [%] with every level of this perk.

Build Manager

Build manager allows the player to simply load & save build presets, build presets are files that players can share. You only need to have enough points for the preset.

This is a huge Quality of Life feature, as instead of meticulously selecting S.P.E.C.I.A.L. and perk values and traits from someone, you can download a file from him, and without even restarting the client you can load the build into the manager and apply it to your character.

Browser-based build manager is also in progress and it will allow you to load/save build presets just like the in-game version.

Town Control Event

The old Town Control type is changed into Town Raid, where players can raid the town treasury after finishing the raid.

New Town Control is focused on winning by score by taking control of individual randomly picked control points all over town. There will be two sides in each town conflict. Town control fights are between these two NPC factions. For players to participate in town control for either side, the faction leader/officer needs to choose the side that the faction will support for taking control of the town. Factionless players and factions that didn’t pick a side can join the fight as individual 3rd parties, but they cannot take over control points and won´t be able to gain rewards related to loyalty to one of the sides.

Below we will try to simplify how town control mechanics work.

Every 10 seconds a Tick happens.

During the tick, players within control points will shift the influence over the point to their team. Every player increases influence by one, and the max influence over a point team can have is 6.

Based on influence, the score is distributed, for example:

The blue team gains 2 points per tick and the Red team gains 4 points.

Killing enemy team members and NPC will award some score but it will not be as influential as the control point score.

Players will get individual rewards based on their participation score on top of faction rewards.

If there was a significant difference in team balance, the underdog will receive a reward multiplier.

Factions get allegiance reward that provides permanent bonuses to their factions if they remain loyal to one of the town teams.

The winning team takes over the city, other than the visual difference, the factions that sided with them will have benefits in town.

Town Raid

Raid is similar to our classic town control system but is turned into a quick skirmish instead of rewards for 24 hours.

Raid and treasury is completely unrelated to Town Control Event.

The town’s treasury will keep generating stackable loot every specific amount of time. Players can decide to try to raid the town which alerts the guards and announces it to the server. The town Raid triggers when at least half of the town guards are dead.

At the end of the raid if the town didn’t manage to defend itself for a set amount of minutes, the treasury will open and whatever rewards were there, can be looted by anyone, even by some unrelated sneaking thief. The treasury will remain unlocked until more loot gets generated.

The town can be raided as soon as there is generated loot and the treasury is locked.

In a case of guards recovering to full power because of players being unable to beat them, or resigned from assault, the raid fails and the treasury will not open.

Rewards system

To ensure the player is accurately rewarded for his effort and can secure his rewards from PvE and PvP activities, as well as some matchmaking events and achievements - They are not directly sent to his inventory, but instead to player rewards storage, while being in a safe location, the player can request and receive all of the rewards he has collected. This helps us to ensure that the player doesn’t lose his reward at the end of the event and allows us to implement challenges that completing wouldn’t bloat the player's inventory before he gets out of the unsafe location, it will also allow sending basic items to offline players.

Quality of Life and fixes

Since our last Open Testing, we’ve improved some smaller things that players mentioned to us. There were hundreds of fixes and AI tweaks as we strive for as polished as possible experience, those smaller changes you will find out yourself. Below we will find the most often discussed QoL features.

• The outdoorsman was fully implemented; you can now detect and skip encounters. Detecting encounters levels up the skill.
• Cooldowns now have timer text on top to allow players to glance at the cooldown. It also mentions the effects of cooldown on mouseover.

Item descriptions were updated, and players will now find all the information on what items do if it’s a drug or a mod.

• The mouse movement was slightly rewritten to make the character react instantly to a right click, it will now also play animation on a picked hex.
• Previously broken, now previewing maps from entrances were implemented.

This concludes our news. We will hope you like the improvements and we will keep on polishing the game until satisfied. We will see each other on open world PVP beta with the faction system implemented!