Hello everyone!
Our biggest gameplay-changing system to date is finally ready:
The Black Market missions!
We have spent a lot of time balancing this system as much as possible and fixing bugs, of which there were quite a few, as we have added many new modifiers that greatly affect the gameplay.
Let's introduce this system step by step:
We have redesigned the look of the Black Market so that you can now find two categories in it. The valuables that you have already stolen in order to sell them at a daily changing rate and the new category “Missions”.
This is what the user interface looks like once you have selected the missions. Lots of information, lots of numbers, some nice shiny stars and the usual skulls staring back at us. Let's go through them one by one.
Together with the Black Market Missions, we have introduced a new currency called “Data”. You need this to be able to generate Black Market Missions. Depending on the modifiers of a mission, these missions are sometimes more and sometimes less expensive to generate. You can also exchange your money for data and your data for money, depending on what you need more of.
Here you can decide for yourself how difficult (but also rewarding) your black market mission should be. A maximum of 5 modifiers are active at the same time, one positive and one negative, and a maximum of 5 tiers that simultaneously influence the values of the positive and negative modifiers.
We have rated the Black Market missions with stars. Half a star each for increasing the tier and half a star each for adding a modifier, so that you can achieve a total of 5 stars (tier 5 and 5 modifiers).
Once you have generated a mission, it will appear directly in your mission inventory on the left side. You can have a maximum of 32 missions. Here you can also use the mission buttons to hide or display the information, delete the mission again or equip it so that it is activated for your next heist (more on this in a moment).
In addition to generating missions, we have also added four randomly generated weekly missions that you can select for free, but beware: once a mission is activated, it disappears forever after you have completed your heist. Regardless of whether you succeed or fail.
You can now see from the skull symbol whether you have selected a Black Market mission and if you hover over it with the mouse, you will also see the positive and negative modifiers that you will activate for the upcoming heist.
You can also select a Black Market mission from the operator itself if you have forgotten to do so directly in the Black Market.
A new icon is now available on the tablet in the heists, which gives you information about the current mission and active modifiers. Just like in the menu, you can hover over the skull icon to get more information on active modifiers.
The Black Market mission system should be fine in its current state after countless tests, but we are always open to feedback and suggestions.
We won't reveal which modifiers are available apart from the shared screenshots to let you discover as much as possible for yourself, but there are quite a few to look forward to.
IMPORTANT: The modifier that increases the number of safes spawns one code per safe. So if there are three safes, for example, there are three codes that you can find and use.
Other
In addition to the Black Market system, we have implemented your previous feedback and extended the time between hunts on all difficulty levels so that you are not constantly being hunted (especially on higher difficulty levels).
We have also changed the font of the safecode for better readability.
In addition to this update, we have also improved the netcode so that we can expect a more stable connection and have reduced possible errors.
What's next?
After this update, we will now focus on the major gameplay changes that will bring new tasks and make Midnight Heist much more replayable. We want to have a major update ready by Halloween, which will also bring other smaller changes such as new skins, new mini-games and ongoing adjustments to existing systems.
Since the Black Market mission system turned out to be more difficult and extensive than we thought, we would like to point out that even after endless testing, bugs are still to be expected. You can send them to us as usual and we will take care of them as soon as possible.
If you are not yet on our Discord server, you are welcome to join. Feel free to exchange experiences with the community or send us feedback and ideas. Please follow the link below:
Join our community Discord server
Until then, see you in Midnight City
Dan and Andreas