Player Count
I bet you thought you'd never see this change! Most social deduction games (especially ones with powerful abilities and voice chat) stick to a smaller player count for a lot of reasons. A 16 player lobby is too chaotic, and makes games last too long. I've always said that 12 is the best amount of players to play with, and now it's the standard!
Werewolf player count changed from 16 to 12.
Game Engine
This is a huge change behind the scenes, and has meant having to rebuild steam integration from scratch, so expect some bugs!
Upgraded from Unreal Engine 5.3 to Unreal Engine 5.8
Upgraded the render pipeline to render with increased clarity.
Haven
Adjusted to 12 houses.
Slightly reduced the size of the main play area.
Added ground clutter and plans to the main play area.
Added more "stuff" to the market, making it feel slightly more lived in.
Restricted access to the spin the bottle area to ghosts only.
Kingsreach
Adjusted to 12 houses.
Heavily reworked the size of the main play area, making it much smaller.
Adjusted both sides of the map to be "closer" to match the now smaller main play area.
Restricted access to the area across the water to ghosts only.
Egypt
The Egypt map is getting a rework to make it more distinct from the map it was based on, Kingsreach.
Temporarily removed.
Game Pace
Most games should be significantly shorter now because of the game maxing out at 12 players, which allows for days and nights to be slightly longer.
Day Discussion extended by 2 seconds per alive player.
Night Action phase extended by 30 seconds.
Role Changes
Standard
Judge
The judge is too easy to ignore by simply adding him to the list of accused players each day. This change forces the Town to interact with him in a meaningful way.
Can no longer be accused or converted.
Executions made by the Judge are now unstoppable.