Hello and welcome to the change list for our May Update. The first section covers some features and improvements that we wanted to go into a little more detail on, but continue reading for the full patch notes!
Photo Mode
We’ve received tons of comments about how great the world looks, and Photo Mode allows you to really make the most of it. This has been in our heads for some time and we’re happy to bring it to you now! Please feedback and let us know how we can improve on it. And don’t forget to share your new photos!
Photo mode can be open either via the emote wheel or main menu.
Skill Screen Revamp
We improved the look and feel of the page, as well as made the skills more easily understood at a glance.
Intro Island Improvements
We’ve taken a look at player feedback, as well as our own data, and saw a lot of people were not getting a good feel for the game during their initial experience. We’ve gone back and looked at ways to improve the feeling of the starting area to give new players a better understanding of the variety the game holds later on. We’re evaluating how these changes affect player behavior in this limited capacity as we know that the denseness of the experience in the game is something that is called out by all players. Going forward we plan to explore other ways of filling up the world, so consider this the start. The main changes to mention are:
Scenes
As you explore you’ll come across small “set pieces”, each telling a small visual story about the moments as the machines took over. Oh, and there’s loot to be found for your efforts!
World Simulation Tweaks - Machine spawns have been tuned and now include more variety
Sprint Run Toggle PC (Community Feedback)
We’ve worked to make sprinting a bit easier on the fingers. You can now toggle sprint on so you don’t need to hold down shift as you run.
Head-Bobbing Toggle (Community Feedback)
There is now a toggle to stop head-bob as it was negatively affecting some players
Pansarvärnsgevär 90 (Pvg 90) Iron Sights
Every weapon should be able to use iron-sights if you don’t have a scope. Happy hunting!
Tick Spawn In Building Interiors
Adding some suspense and surprise into the world!
Explosive Damage Tweaks
Explosive damage wasn’t behaving properly when it came to machines and their components. As of now, the damage will be applied correctly and should make explosive weaponry feel much more consistent.
Sprinting Heartbeat (Community Feedback)
We’ve heard the feedback on the heart beat sound being too loud and staying on the entire time you sprint. In response we’ve lowered the sound and re-worked it so that the sound gets quieter over prolonged running.
Sound Improvements
Hunting Rifle silencer shots re-designed and loot pick-up sounds now play immediately.
Save Game Backups (PC only)
In an attempt to help protect against lost save games, we now create both a savegame and a savegame.bac file. If the main savegame file becomes broken or corrupted the game will instead load from the .bac version. When this happens you’ll see a notification when launching the game. If this backup system should be needed a small amount of gameplay may be lost, but this will be extremely minor, perhaps just a few minutes. We are also investigating this feature for consoles, but have no ETA at this time.
Persistent Loot
Single items - Items outside loot containers, such as weapons and medpacks found at some safe houses, can now only be looted once per player
Containers - Will no longer respawn immediately on relog/fast travel. You’ll need to move between areas to loot efficiently. Loot will however begin to spawn again in cleared areas once a few hours have passed.
Loot Balancing
We’ve tweaked the amount of loot depending on region. Harder regions offer more loot while easier regions/starting area offer less loot. Our intent was to not overwhelm new players, while allowing players who have advanced farther to get their hands on more things that will help them against the increasing Machine threat in later regions.
Location Loot Counters
Location summaries no longer include loot boxes as it created a sense that you had to loot all the random containers in an area. It was confusing and didn’t offer much to the experience.
“Locations Discovered” and “Locations Completed”
We’ve fixed how these sometimes showed the incorrect numbers.
Main changelog continues below:
Community Feedback
These are various changes across different categories that were taken directly from community requests
- Interaction radius for dead machines has been improved, they are now easier to loot.
- Display setting changes now require an “apply” click for the change to take effect
- It’s no longer possible for uninvited players to join your game with the “Invite Only” setting turned on.
- The stealth indicator will now disappear once you’ve engaged in combat.
- Auto-aim assistance will no longer lock onto the components of destroyed machines
The silencer will no longer block the front sights of hunting rifles when used without and attached scope.
Achievements / Trophies - Those who have completed the requirements for the “Elementary” and “I Just Called to Say I Love You” will receive credit for these when you log-in after updating.
Animation - Weapon-change animations will now sync correctly when viewed from the third-person (in multiplayer etc.).
Audio - Destroyed machines will no longer continue to play sound effects.
- Fired bullets that land out of audio range will no longer “hang around” that location until you move to it.
- Moving through foliage will properly play sounds again.
Character
The third-person pose shown when holding a Sjöqvist shotgun has been fixed to show the correct one.
The character preview when starting a new character sometimes did not accurately reflect the options that were selected
Environment - Improvements made to lower the amount of floating props/objects/textures both inside buildings and around the world in general.
- Various terrain “tears” fixed.
- Corrected placeholder title on the newspaper prop in the Hunter’s Lodge at Björknäs.
- Corrected issue that could cause players to become stuck in tent openings when entering them.
- Various fixes to overlapping assets that were causing areas to be blocked (for example in Skvadern Bunker).
Hardware - Holding down the fire button while switching weapons / items no longer automatically fires the item that was switched to.
Inventory - Apparel now properly stacks within a type
- The preview and text description will no longer stick around after an item has been dropped
Loot - Removed deprecated item that could sometimes be looted by players (you may have seen it before as marked with a crosshair in your inventories)
- Corrected non interactable loot location at Tokeröd Farm.
- Various loot objects that could not be reached corrected.
Machines - Tanks were in some cases not using their full complement of available weaponry, they’re now a bit more dangerous!
- Ticks now correctly deal melee damage.
- Harvesters and Tanks will no-longer take damage from their own gas attacks.
- Machines that are spawned via Mission triggers will now correctly keep their accumulated damage during the game session.
- Tanks should no longer continue to collide with buildings after being rag-dolled.
- The Tick “container” on Tanks has been corrected to use the correct one.
- Improvements made to lower cases of machines leaning at odd angles when traversing terrain.
- Improvements made to Runner animations.
Map - Discovering the “Fiskebäck” settlement will now correctly add a map icon.
- Resolved UI issue on Map screen.
Menus - Clothing stats now display correctly.
- UI corrections to Key Binding menu.
- Missing art has been added to mixtape collectibles.
- The main menu now has its original background image.
Missions
Some of these mission fixes will correct issues for those attempting missions for the first time or those who are playing a fresh save. We understand how important these fixes are for currently stuck players and we’re working to correct these retroactively in our next update. By re-working our Mission system under-the-hood, we will be correcting current issues and helping to future-proof new missions.
- “Calling for Help” can now be completed.
- Fixed issue with Minken Bunker warboard that could occur if objectives were completed out of order.
- Corrected some mission descriptions to offer more accurate instructions.
- Fixed issue where players could needlessly loot the same mission object multiple times.
- Corrected misleading mission text for “The Farm” mission. Additionally, corrected waypoint marker locations.
- Increased variety of enemy types inside bunkers related to Warboard missions.
- It is no longer possible for progress in “Road to Salthamn” to be blocked by picking up mission triggers early.
- Improved “Sanctuary” mission to make objectives clearer.
- “The Girl Who Cried Wolf”, corrected inconsistency with mission markers and mission item. Added new waypoint markers where appropriate.
Multiplayer - Options for Multiplayer (Invite Only Vs. Open etc.) will now persist when switching characters.
- The game will no longer generate an infinite black screen when trying to connect to a game session that is no longer present.
- It is now possible to correctly join a multiplayer game from a single player session when using the Steam overlay.
Progression - Fixed issue that would prevent players reaching level 31.
Skills - The Hacking skill when used on out-of-combat enemies will no longer cause them to become entirely docile.
Stability - Various crash fixes
UI - Removed VoIP Icons that were incorrectly displayed on PC version of the game.
- Missions requiring interaction with answering machines now display the correct icon on the mission log item entry.
- Corrected issue that could occur when attempting to re-bind left-click.
Weapons - In some cases aiming down sights could shift your aim to the right, this has been corrected.
- Placed objects will no longer despawn early when players move away from them.
- Animations now sync correctly when firing after sprinting.
- When reloading the Granatgevär it should now longer cause a floating projectile to display when viewed from third-person.
- Fixed issue that could result in camera raising too fast when firing weapons on full-auto.
Experience - Due to the way experience was counted for destroyed machines players were often credited with unreasonably low amounts, this has been corrected.