Hey Everyone!
Update 21 is here and has a strong focus on the much-requested mods in co-op and introduces custom asset importing as well as many other improvements!
Systems:
New: Single Shell reloading now has a maximum duration
This makes reload upgrades on single reload weapons much more desirable
Ammo gain effects now work when the weapon is completely empty
Ballistics Prediction Quest now only requires 5 cursed weapons found
Dodge chance is now capped, so stacking dodge bonuses can no longer exceed the intended ceiling of 70%, leading to the game becoming unlosable.
Balance Tweaks:
RPG Homewrecker perk damage scaling doubled. Max hp damage cap from 1000 to 2000
Fast Swap cooldown 15>12 seconds
Money shots reworked
Microwave Emitter damage from 140+ 4% current health + 4% max health to 6%/6%
Microwave Emitter now properly shows the % damage in tooltip
Liquid grenade now gains 1% > 2% power with each usage
Nitro Methadone now lasts 20 seconds instead of 10
Brawndo now properly works again
Commando blade kill resets now also count for charges
Sidewinder damage from 4.5 to 3.6
High Power now gives 60>70% power, clarified tooltip
Doomba Neutrino bomb drop rate 30% > 70%
Sniper LS30 Nightowl now has a reworked perk
Eliminator Beacon of light damage scaling tripled, base damage doubled + new sound
Eliminator Beacon of light stun is consistently 1.5 seconds in both enter and exit
Eliminator mastery now correctly causes the AOE effect
Eliminator Hitman custom kit now reduces projectile firing cool-downs by 1s on eraser usage
Eliminator Infiltrator Kit tooltip reworked
Eliminator Infiltrator kit now starts with the LS30 Blackout rifle
Fixed Reflector drone in co-op not dealing damage
New Eliminator starter:
The LS30 Blackout gives Eliminator a bit more of a marksman type of specialization which was always intended but didn't really come across so well. The second kit already provided a perfect benefit for a precision playstyle but the framing didn't really work. Blackout now rewards careful play with powerful stat benefits and is a more rapid-fire variant of the Sniper version.
New Uncommon Machine Gun:
The new L8 provides a sturdy and reliable mid-game option for Heavy gunner and other classes alike. It might not have the best accuracy but it's large capacity and consistent output allows it to kitted in a flexible way and potentially scale well.
New Legendary Launcher:
The classic Annihilator returns with powerful laser explosions and a new alternative ammunition type. Use at your own risk!
You've asked for it many times and it's finally here!
U21 had a big focus on modding and we worked hard on making mods work properly in online co-op gameplay! When opening up a lobby, you can now select as host which mods to share with the lobby and joining players can conveniently and correctly download the latest version they need.
Tons of new community content is right at your fingertips!
(Remember you can press control on a character to inspect the actions, in case you suspect a mod spamming or see performance issues with a certain mod. Naturally we can not provide support for any custom mod content or performance issues coming from a mod)
Varied elements of the editor have been improved and we made a general pass on the UI elements and menus. This is not 100% perfect visually yet, but under the hood a lot of clean-up has happened. The Editor was a quite old and complex UI but now got a lot more maintainable and much easier to use for everyone!
New: Audio Pitch Preview
This one is big, you can now easily try pitch effects in the audio selection!
New: Stat Preview
Stat elements now show the stat they contain, making things less obscure
New: Unified Navigation
No longer are buttons scattered randomly from screen to screen, all navigation is now at the same place.
New: Depot overview
You now have a much easier to understand depot overview
Additionally all the depot sub-menus have been reworked.
We will also follow up with some updated video tutorials soon.
Asset importing is finally here!
You can now import:
2D Icons
Weapon Sprites
Sounds
Music
3D Models (Beta)
and more!
Check the Import Custom Assets button in the Depot Settings.
Note: While 3D Model importing is technically possible, for characters this requires more setup from us and is not as trivial. Weapon models can already be imported with the correct slots. A example GLTF can be found here:
https://www.file-upload.net/en/download-15598968/Mesh_Wepon_Example2.gltf.html
We did a bunch of improvements all around UI and UX:
New: Setting to disable auto-reload
ESC now reliably closes in game menus
Improved navigation of the play button. Starting the game now always is in the top right
Improved disconnect message when quitting
Improved mod menus
Clamped Burst delay decimal display in the weapon menu
Chat is now accessible from the in game pause menu
Unlocking a class in the lobby now refreshes the menu immediately
Shooting range in tutorial now properly displays dialog lines again
ModifyAction result tooltips now show scaling and stats like ModifyStat results
Picking up a weapon no longer desyncs the Q-cycle slot order.
Difficulty selection is now disabled when entering the tutorial to reduce confusion
Improved difficulty selection UI:
Main menu backgrounds now have less contrast
Main menu intro scene performance slightly improved
Varied improvements to menu consistency
Fixed varied minor UI issues
Fixed popups having wrong sizes sometimes
Reload speed is now correctly shown in the weapon menu
Weapon AOE display got corrected in some cases
Databases have unused text removed
The compendium now shows:
Cursed items, alchemy items and only accurate attachments and loop perks
Weapons now show their weapon type in the menu (launcher, smg ..)
Weapons now show if they come from a mod
Improved reliability for important network messages
We’ve added an extra game-level reliability system for important messages, instead of relying only on Steam P2P’s built-in reliable messaging.
This should help fix cases where players could sometimes get stuck between levels, enemies or objects did not appear correctly, or other important game events failed to show up.
Late last year, we switched to Steam P2P for peer-to-peer support after many players requested it. Since then, feedback has shown that Steam P2P’s reliable messaging has not always been reliable enough for our needs, so we’ve built our own additional reliability layer on top of it.
Update 20 already added this system for entity spawning, which addressed reports of enemies not appearing. This update extends the same approach to all “must-receive” messages.
Other
We’ve also made intermediate disconnect messages in chat less noisy when the connection quickly recovers.
As usual, we worked on a lot of fixes:
Minimap icons for summons now disappear when the summon de-spawns instead of lingering
Aiming Reset Strength UI visual bug fixed. The setting always worked as intended, but the UI sometimes displayed a different value than the slider showed.
X-57 Spider boss now waits longer to engage to prevent long networking coop delays to cause the spider to attack very quickly or in bad cases even during cutscene.
Explosion damage now respects a configurable application interval, so overlapping explosions can't tick damage every frame.
The Body Recoil Multiplier stat was being read but not applied in all cases.
Fixed a input keybinding issue where clicking multiple mouse keys could cause issues with charge firing weapons when the trigger is held.
Fixed the specific weapon-slot hotkey issue where when not having 3 weapons equipped, the hotkey would throw errors for 3rd empty slot.
Stacking weapon perks could underflow weapon power into negative values — capped and clamped.
Negative results from "Modify Shield" actions are now applied (previously silently ignored when the value was negative).
Audio settings now survive switching the OS audio output device — previously they'd silently reset to defaults.
Fixed random music crackling that built up over a session and used to require a full game restart.
Steam achievements that failed to register on the platform side are now retried on every game, so completed achievements no longer get stuck unawarded
(in these cases the game knew you have them but steam wouldn't show them.
Fixed lost & found giving variants which persist on all weapons
Fixed varied cases of tooltip typos
Save/load no longer overrides tileset order post game meaning starting a run after later, the tilesets wouldn't properly randomize
Reloading a save no longer reverts weapons that or on the floor or in chests to their base/standard variant.
After reloading a save, the minimap now properly shows the looted state of chests, previously would show them all as available.
Added safeties for potential attachment issues after loading
Fixed a performance degradation of enemy behaviour in some cases in the level post loading back in
We also welcome back a former Employee, Michal, which is has the role of a full time QA (Quality Assurance) Specialist, helping us from now on with finding and solving issues and improving overall Game quality : )
Have fun! - Team FFG