Hello everyone!
First of all, I just want to give a massive THANK YOU to everyone who has checked out Chapter Two! The launch went (mostly) awesome, and it's been so cool watching everyone discover and react to all of the spooky segments, story surprises, boss encounters, and more!
If you enjoyed Chapter Two, please consider leaving a review for the DLC itself! I know most folks playing Chapter Two are CULTIC fans who probably left their initial review on Chapter One, but reviews on both are a big help, and I would greatly appreciate your time and help with this!
Unfortunately my first week post-launch has been incredibly busy with life stuff, so I've only had time so far to squeeze in a few hotfixes for the most critical issues and balancing tweaks. With those out of the way, I'm gonna be taking today and tomorrow off to ... sleep haha. I've been working 12-14+ hour days pretty much every single day, weekends included, since May trying to get Ch.2 wrapped up, and I am absolutely cratered out. HOWEVER - Nick and I will continue to monitor the Steam boards and catalog feedback/bug reports as they come in, so I can hit the ground running when I get back to it on Thursday.
Where's the Ammo?
This was by far the largest complaint/issue that players have been reporting since launch - folks finding their pockets and magazines empty when there are still breathing cultists to deal with. CULTIC has always had a focus on ammo economy and a toolset of ways to conserve ammo and deal with lower-level threats, but since Chapter One was pretty generous with ammo, I didn't realize how many players had never really engaged with those mechanics!
I have read every thread and post about it, and I hear you - a couple of the hotfixes provided a small blanket increase to shotgun/magnum ammo pickups and increased the resources available in boss fights to prevent those from being such drains on your resources - but I do want to ask players to meet me halfway on this one!
For every player struggling with the ammo supply, there are several players that are swimming in ammo by utilizing CULTIC's toolset to conserve stronger ammo types. I don't want to trivialize the game for players that are playing the game more "optimally", but I don't want to leave the players who want more of an action approach out in the cold either. One of CULTIC's playtesters put together a REALLY in-depth guide on Ammo Management, digging into a lot of details, tips, and tricks on ammo economy. I'd strongly recommend giving this a look and seeing if there are even one or two tips you can incorporate into your playstyle to help you out. It's far from necessary to hatchet every single trash enemy, but even small ammo savings here and there add up when there's a Peacekeeper who is just asking for a full revolver cylinder to the face!
This is not to say that there will be no more ammo adjustments, I'm still weighing options - but I promise everyone that there is more than enough ammo laying around to turn the entire cult into applesauce - Chapter Two is just asking for a little bit more resourcefulness
I Have No Idea Where I Am
The second most common complaint is players getting lost in the Chapter Two maps. Nick and I were worried this would be the case, given their sheer size, and while some players are having no trouble navigating, and others may get a bit lost but enjoy the exploration, the last thing I want is for players to feel frustrated and give up on the game because of it.
There are definitely areas for improvement with signposting... but even with some improvements, the level of signposting it would take to guarantee no one gets lost in maps this big would border on obnoxious and hamper the game's atmosphere... so instead, I'm working on something a bit more ambitious:
I've never done an "Automap" like this before but I found a way to basically dump my navmesh out to a 3D model, which basically eliminates the MASSIVELY time-consuming step of having to hand-build a map mesh for each level, making this kind of task far more realistic for me. Honestly this has been super fun to experiment with, and I think it'll definitely be doable. There's room for flexibility with a map like this, and it'd be pretty easy to get "objective markers" for stuff like finding the Demolition Charges in The Swamp. Finding those key items isn't meant to be the challenge, they're just there to give the player an impetus to explore the full map, so I think it'd be a big help to just have that stuff on the map.
The video above is how far I was able to get with the automap system from scratch in one afternoon, so I'm pretty confident I can have the whole thing done pretty quickly, maybe have it ready for beta branch in a week or two. I'll keep you folks posted!
For those that aren't having issues exploring or don't want a map, I get you - but there are a fairly significant number of players that aren't able to enjoy the game at all due to this, and I don't want to gatekeep the experience based on something that's not really supposed to be part of the difficulty. The map won't be required, and I can probably even include an option in Gameplay for what level of detail the map gives you - does it show objectives, etc.
That about does it for this Dev Update! Please continue submitting your Bug Reports and Feedback/Suggestions to the related sub-forums, it's a huge help having them there and not getting buried in General Discussions! Thanks again everyone for being part of the Chapter Two journey.
I'm gonna go rest now