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This week, we’re introducing the second phase of our armor changes and improvements, addressing durability and resistance and how armors are dealt damage alongside characters. Our goal here has been to simplify and structure this system in a way that allows for scalability, and better ‘tiering’ of armors and more situations to use them in.
We’ve also gone through our top 250 tickets with some community members, and addressed a few that were quick and important wins for the game. At the bottom, we have also included the briefing for your new mission, SPELUNKING: ASSISTED STOCKPILE, and a Q&A for the upcoming Open World game mode.
Armor Durability Changes
This week we wanted to tackle some issues we had with Armor balance.
In the original implementation, we only processed durability loss based on how much damage the armor absorbed. The higher tier armors (which naturally resist more) ended up taking significantly more durability damage because of this, and the resulting perception was that Cloth armor appeared more durable than than Composite Armor.
For example, if a bear delivered 100 damage and your armor provided 50% resistance, 50 damage would go to your character's health and the other 50 would be applied to the armor. However, if you had 25% resistance on your armor, only 25 damage would be dealt to the armor and 75 to your character. This meant armor with more resistance would lose durability considerably faster.
In addition, this also meant that damage which wasn't resisted at all resulted in no durability loss being dealt to the armor. This limited our ability to provide new situations/scenarios where players will need to factor in their armor set before proceeding, making their armor choices and access to better armor more important to general gameplay.
To rectify this, and make it simpler to balance armor sets compared with one another, we've changed this to no longer take into consideration how much damage was resisted, rather, simply how much damage was dealt at the source before any resistance was applied.
In the new format, the bear would deliver 100 damage to the armor and 50 damage to the player with a 50% resistance higher tier armor set. With a lower tier 25% resistance set, it would deliver 100 to the armor and 75 damage to the player.
This means that we no longer need to give higher tier armor excessive durability values in order to be perceived as comparatively "strong" gear. This is an important factor with the addition of new sources of durability damage, albeit typically low values such as storm damage, that would have been of no significance otherwise.
We'll be sure to keep an eye on community feedback with these changes but the hope is that these changes result in armor quality being a more important factor for players. This should reward players who keep their gear maintained, and make investing in higher tier armors feel more worthwhile. Ultimately, this means we can find opportunities to introduce new gameplay mechanics to take this even further.
Changes from Top 250 Feature Upvote Tickets
We’ve been working with some of our Discord[discord.gg] community members on sorting through our top 250 Feature Upvote[icarus.featureupvote.com] tickets and choosing some quick wins and larger tasks, which may have flown under the radar, to roll out this week. A big thanks to Twist and Derkatron for your time and support, you’re both integral to this game. With their help we were also able to remove outstanding suggestions which had already been fixed in the past but remained on the board.
New Mission - SPELUNKING: ASSISTED STOCKPILE
We’ve added a new mission for you to tie off week forty-six, requiring you to explore Icarus’ caves and hidden crevasses.
Designed for rookie prospectors, this mission provides some workshop gear to even the playing field, so get out there, get some ore and look out for those worms! Your briefing for SPELUNKING: ASSISTED STOCKPILE is as follows:
// OPERATOR: UDA
// BIOME: Forest, Olympus
// BACKGROUND: Workshop personnel request additional supplies from the surface.
// MISSION: Supply pod with requested ore samples.
// TERMS: Prospector will be provided pre-fabricated workshop gear, courtesy of Shengong.
Open World Mode Q&A
With Open World very close to being added to Icarus, we wanted to cover a few pressing questions the community has had since we originally announced it.
Will I be able to leave in my dropship and come back?
Yes. You can leave and return to your Open World session at any time.
Can I have multiple active Open World sessions?
Yes. You can have multiple active Open World sessions going at any time, and multiple sessions of the same map.
What is happening with my existing Olympus Outpost?
Don’t worry, your existing Olympus Outposts will convert over to an Open World session when the update goes through.
Can I personalize the difficulty settings for my Open World prospect?
You can set your difficulty just as you have been in Outposts up to this point. In the future, you will be able to adjust difficulty on the go.
Will resources regenerate?
Resources in Open World will not regenerate at this time. However, this isn’t set in stone and expect this in future in a different format than Outposts currently do.
Are their World Bosses in Open World?
Yes, and they will respawn as well.
Is it possible to leave and return with a different workshop loadout to and from my Open World prospect?
Yes, this is possible.
Can I earn exotics in Open World?
No, exotics will not spawn in Open World currently.
Are Open World sessions stored locally?
Open World sessions are saved locally on your PC’s harddrive.
Can a prospector who joined my Open World host it themselves later?
No, the Open World session will stay with the original host.
Can you choose your landing zone in Open World?
Yes, you will be able to choose from an array of available landing zones when dropping in, so you don’t have as far to travel to your chosen building location. Any multiplayer team members will have to follow your landing zone selection, rather than selecting their own.
Can you choose a different landing zone when you return to the map or are you locked to one?
No, you will be locked into the landing zone you choose on your first descent.
Why didn’t you leave Olympus as an Outpost?
We want outposts to be a controlled sandbox environment, with respawning resources where players can test and create builds. We felt that the Olympus Outpost was leaning more towards the future of Open World than our vision for Outposts, and belonged in that part of the game. Expect more updates to this more to reflect this intention.
How are Open World and Missions related and are there plans for it?
Currently, Open World and instanced Missions are separate, but you character can switch between the two. For now, if you run a Mission on a map, you won’t see any buildings from your Open World session - that might give you an unfair advantage in some missions. However, in future we have plans to tie these modes more closely together, allowing a seamless experience between the two.
Changelog v1.2.21.102850
New Content
We’ve also gone through our top 250 tickets with some community members, and addressed a few that were quick and important wins for the game. At the bottom, we have also included the briefing for your new mission, SPELUNKING: ASSISTED STOCKPILE, and a Q&A for the upcoming Open World game mode.
Armor Durability Changes
This week we wanted to tackle some issues we had with Armor balance.
In the original implementation, we only processed durability loss based on how much damage the armor absorbed. The higher tier armors (which naturally resist more) ended up taking significantly more durability damage because of this, and the resulting perception was that Cloth armor appeared more durable than than Composite Armor.
For example, if a bear delivered 100 damage and your armor provided 50% resistance, 50 damage would go to your character's health and the other 50 would be applied to the armor. However, if you had 25% resistance on your armor, only 25 damage would be dealt to the armor and 75 to your character. This meant armor with more resistance would lose durability considerably faster.
In addition, this also meant that damage which wasn't resisted at all resulted in no durability loss being dealt to the armor. This limited our ability to provide new situations/scenarios where players will need to factor in their armor set before proceeding, making their armor choices and access to better armor more important to general gameplay.
To rectify this, and make it simpler to balance armor sets compared with one another, we've changed this to no longer take into consideration how much damage was resisted, rather, simply how much damage was dealt at the source before any resistance was applied.
In the new format, the bear would deliver 100 damage to the armor and 50 damage to the player with a 50% resistance higher tier armor set. With a lower tier 25% resistance set, it would deliver 100 to the armor and 75 damage to the player.
This means that we no longer need to give higher tier armor excessive durability values in order to be perceived as comparatively "strong" gear. This is an important factor with the addition of new sources of durability damage, albeit typically low values such as storm damage, that would have been of no significance otherwise.
We'll be sure to keep an eye on community feedback with these changes but the hope is that these changes result in armor quality being a more important factor for players. This should reward players who keep their gear maintained, and make investing in higher tier armors feel more worthwhile. Ultimately, this means we can find opportunities to introduce new gameplay mechanics to take this even further.
Changes from Top 250 Feature Upvote Tickets
We’ve been working with some of our Discord[discord.gg] community members on sorting through our top 250 Feature Upvote[icarus.featureupvote.com] tickets and choosing some quick wins and larger tasks, which may have flown under the radar, to roll out this week. A big thanks to Twist and Derkatron for your time and support, you’re both integral to this game. With their help we were also able to remove outstanding suggestions which had already been fixed in the past but remained on the board.
- Crafting on tables will now pause when inventories are full, preventing the loss of items which when finished crafting would be popped into the world nearby[icarus.featureupvote.com]
- Debuffs reducing ‘maximum stamina’ no longer prevent jumping - notably in ice caves. This also means players can jump repeatedly while out of stamina to better navigate rocky terrain[icarus.featureupvote.com]
- The UI can now be hidden in photo mode and while mounted[icarus.featureupvote.com]
- We’ve fixed a couple of issues preventing progress in PAYDAY and VOYAGER (restarting the prospect won’t be needed for these fixes)
New Mission - SPELUNKING: ASSISTED STOCKPILE
We’ve added a new mission for you to tie off week forty-six, requiring you to explore Icarus’ caves and hidden crevasses.
Designed for rookie prospectors, this mission provides some workshop gear to even the playing field, so get out there, get some ore and look out for those worms! Your briefing for SPELUNKING: ASSISTED STOCKPILE is as follows:
// OPERATOR: UDA
// BIOME: Forest, Olympus
// BACKGROUND: Workshop personnel request additional supplies from the surface.
// MISSION: Supply pod with requested ore samples.
// TERMS: Prospector will be provided pre-fabricated workshop gear, courtesy of Shengong.
Open World Mode Q&A
With Open World very close to being added to Icarus, we wanted to cover a few pressing questions the community has had since we originally announced it.
Will I be able to leave in my dropship and come back?
Yes. You can leave and return to your Open World session at any time.
Can I have multiple active Open World sessions?
Yes. You can have multiple active Open World sessions going at any time, and multiple sessions of the same map.
What is happening with my existing Olympus Outpost?
Don’t worry, your existing Olympus Outposts will convert over to an Open World session when the update goes through.
Can I personalize the difficulty settings for my Open World prospect?
You can set your difficulty just as you have been in Outposts up to this point. In the future, you will be able to adjust difficulty on the go.
Will resources regenerate?
Resources in Open World will not regenerate at this time. However, this isn’t set in stone and expect this in future in a different format than Outposts currently do.
Are their World Bosses in Open World?
Yes, and they will respawn as well.
Is it possible to leave and return with a different workshop loadout to and from my Open World prospect?
Yes, this is possible.
Can I earn exotics in Open World?
No, exotics will not spawn in Open World currently.
Are Open World sessions stored locally?
Open World sessions are saved locally on your PC’s harddrive.
Can a prospector who joined my Open World host it themselves later?
No, the Open World session will stay with the original host.
Can you choose your landing zone in Open World?
Yes, you will be able to choose from an array of available landing zones when dropping in, so you don’t have as far to travel to your chosen building location. Any multiplayer team members will have to follow your landing zone selection, rather than selecting their own.
Can you choose a different landing zone when you return to the map or are you locked to one?
No, you will be locked into the landing zone you choose on your first descent.
Why didn’t you leave Olympus as an Outpost?
We want outposts to be a controlled sandbox environment, with respawning resources where players can test and create builds. We felt that the Olympus Outpost was leaning more towards the future of Open World than our vision for Outposts, and belonged in that part of the game. Expect more updates to this more to reflect this intention.
How are Open World and Missions related and are there plans for it?
Currently, Open World and instanced Missions are separate, but you character can switch between the two. For now, if you run a Mission on a map, you won’t see any buildings from your Open World session - that might give you an unfair advantage in some missions. However, in future we have plans to tie these modes more closely together, allowing a seamless experience between the two.
Changelog v1.2.21.102850
New Content
- Updating Armor Damage Equation so the Damage Dealt to armor is no longer tied to the amount resisted but instead directly off raw damage. This means that all armors will now take damage even if they dont have a specific resistance for that type (Something that resists only fire will be damaged by anything). It also means that resistance & armor durability is no longer inherintly linked and therefore better balancing can occur, both Durability and Resistances can be scaled independantly
- Adding GameplayConfig datatable for default values for various gameplay constants
- Updating Armor Damage Equation so armor accually takes damages
- Reduced all armor durability values by 50% as part of armor damage mitigation refactor
- SPELUNKING: Enabled Mission.
- SPELUNKING: Moved supply crate to be closer to first objective, rather than close to dropship
- Update quest queries to resolve build validation.
- SPELUNKING: Update quest steps to better guide players to cave entrances
- SPELUNKING: Fixed quest completion not being granted on prospect completion.
- SPELUNKING: Added Aluminium to quest objectives
- Tweaked chatbox for readability
- Modified DefaultScalability config to improve view distance settings. Default settings were too aggressive resulting in extremely short view distances which offered little to no performance gain, as distant objects are well optimized and don't cause a huge performance hit
- Deleted some old unused StaticMeshFoliage assets
- Improved Culling Distance settings on various StaticMeshFoliage assets to draw at more appropriate distances (some way too far, some way too short)
- Added Dithered LOD Transition support to MA_ITM shader as many foliage assets use this shader and without it, culling doesn't work properly
- Modified DefaultScalability config to improve view distance settings. Default settings were too aggressive resulting in extremely short view distances which offered little to no performance gain, as distant objects are well optimized and don't cause a huge performance hit
- Deleted some old unused StaticMeshFoliage assets
- Improved Culling Distance settings on various StaticMeshFoliage assets to draw at more appropriate distances (some way too far, some way too short)
- Added Dithered LOD Transition support to MA_ITM shader as many foliage assets use this shader and without it, culling doesn't work properly
- submitting all dead prospectors with aging variations BPs, textures, and materials
- Clean out 15GB worth of unused assets in the Megascans folder
- Added DataTable validation for D_MapIcons to prevent invisible icons due to invalid colour
- Clean up a ton of unused assets. Lots of triplicate unused Material Functions and shaders/materials. More removal of unused Substance and Megascans assets
- Fixed cave worm spawn on reload, if a player saves and reloads inside a cave then caveworms previously killed do not immediately respawn on load
- Crafting jobs are now aborted if output storage becomes full, instead of the previous behaviour where each item was dropped into the world
- Fix divide by zero assert seen in PIE
- Update HideUI function to work while Mounted
- Permit UI to be hidden when mounted
- Gate attempts to open Inventory/Crafting/TechTree/Map/Menu Toggle when UI is hidden
- Fixed an issue where the player would try to attack an arrow embedded creature/object with a melee weapon, the arrows would block the hit and the intended object would be unharmed
- PAYDAY: Updated quest step to factor placed extractors, preventing issues where you could find the exotic deposit but not progress the mission. - PAYDAY: Updated Prospect view tooltip to indicate that it unlocks the workshop radar and extractor
- Update HideUI function to work while Mounted and Photo Mode
- Permit UI to be hidden when mounted
- Permit UI to be hidden when in camera mode
- Gate attempts to open Inventory/Crafting/TechTree/Map/Menu Toggle when UI is hidden
- Gate attempts to open containers and context menus when UI is hidden
- Unhide UI on death
- Unhide UI on ESC
- This means that the game is playable to a large degree when the UI is hidden
- Fixed a bug where if you had too many stamina debuffs your stamina would drop so low that you wouldn't be able to jump and would get stuck if you fall into any hole/crevice
- Prevent cave worm spawn on reload, save respawn timeouts for cave worms, this means that if a player saves and reloads inside a cave then caveworms previously killed do not immediately respawn on load
- VOYAGER: Fixed a progress blocker when the ship launches earlier in the quest.
- VOYAGER: Fixed typo in quest description
- Fixed bug where player couldn't remove last item from crafting queue
- Fixed bug where on-player crafting would not start if there were no backpack inventory slots available
- Crafting jobs that run out of storage space now leave the paused crafting job in queue for visibility
- Added 4 variants of LC_Sapling_A to the project. Created foliage types, blueprints, and added to the Flod Data table
- Spawning TU & AC Foliage on Blue/Green Quad, DLC Map
- SW Impassables - fixes to 11 and 14, added 15-17, plus GL and TU variants
- Finished first pass macro replacement with impassables, green quad
- Spawning SW Trees, Ground Foliage & CleanUp on Blue Quad, DLC Map
- Manual Foliage Placement in the Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
- Fix geothermal material disabling sulfur on medium/low
- Removed VertexPainting from Ice Shader, added RVT Points shader functionality and BPs
- Added new Crossbow Bolts, Explosive, Scatter, Bleed and Tazer
- Decal painting, landscape painting and foliage manual painting in arctic biome and underwater dressing, Green Quand, DLC
- Submitting dead prospector sinotai with aging variations BP's - test
- SM_Breakable_Scoria all variations mesh, material, blueprint and textures update
- Added version 2 of HRB_Crop_Tomatoes with colour adjusted to fit the grasslands biome and optimised mesh. Added 5 growth stages, a dead variant, and a wild variant. Created a blueprint and foliage type for the wild variant
- Removed unused BlueprintNativeEvent specifier on TerrainAnchor GetAnchorBounds to solve crashing when playing in editor
- Added Tomatoes to GL_Foliage PFS
- Added TU_Dirt to SnowLite Trees foliage
- Removing large lava biome rocks from the interactable list because they are way too big to be used as minable voxels
- Changed Shader on IcePillars/Icicles/GlacialCliff to MA_SnowIce and added Thickness mask option to shader
- Changed DF Self Shadowing bias on Assets using Serac Shader to fix weird shadows, also enable mesh distance field to ice cave floors
- Disable Pixel Offset on Frozen Lake Shader fix collision issues
- Decal painting, landscape painting and foliage manual painting in GL biome, Green Quand, DLC
- Spawning SW Trees, Ground Foliage & CleanUp on Blue Quad, DLC Map
- Manual Foliage Placement in the Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
- Adding new Crafting Recipe for T2 mission communication device
- Delete CF_Fern_01 FLOD row to fix build validation
- Adding Mega Tree on Blue Quad, DLC Map
- Test for Shared quad landscape painting and foliage spawning, Green and Purple Quad, DLC
- Reduced spawn rate of general resources on DLC1 Spawner
- Fix Shader on old ice stalagmites and self shadowing issues with ice cave entrances
- Add simple collision and physical materials to swamp plants, update collision settings, and update audio tags in FLOD table
- Added SW_ReedA with 5 variants, including updating the foliage types
- Reduce spawn rate of large rocks on GL
- Add ability to apply surface type and water depth parameters to felled tree impact sounds, specifically so that we can handle swamp trees landing in shallow water
- Submitting Deer variant, including carcass, fur and winter variation
- Spawning SW Trees, Ground Foliage, Added Riverbanks to Deepwater Swamp & CleanUp on Blue Quad, DLC Map
- Exotic Delivery Radio - Static+Destructible mesh, textures, materials added
- Exotic Delivery Radio - textures missed in last commit
- Resave D_TreeAudioData to prevent validation error
- Decal painting, landscape painting and foliage manual painting in GL biome, Green Quand, DLC
- Manual Foliage Placement in the Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
- Removed some meshes from Terrain 019 that are meant for voxels
- Removed large swamp meshes from the voxel table because they're too big
- Fixed lava lakes/rivers in Terrain 019 not displaying properly after generation
- Adding Transport Pod Base Class, Exotic Delivery and Supply Pod Inherit from this, allows for common functions in each class
- Adding Dynamic Travel Quest which allows a variable location rather than a hard set one
- Added new Exotic Delivery Interface Item which can call down an exotic delivery ship
- Adding new Quest Steps for Promethus Missions
- Adding a base class for retrieve item, renaming quest retrieve item class to reflect its operations (it also spawns a crate)
- Added new Quest Functionaility for Retrieving items
- Adding all base implementation setup for the Bat Dog, all data table entries and base montage, blueprint and animation setups
- LC Flax/Sapling, Rocks, Stalactites Foliage Setup + Spawner
- Decal painting, landscape painting and foliage manual painting in GL biome, Green Quand, DLC
- Spawning Ground Foliage, Reeds to Swamp, Added Riverbanks to Deepwater Swamp & CleanUp on Blue Quad, DLC Map
- Manual Foliage Placement in the Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
- Adding Promethus Terrain Selection to Development Builds
- Connecting Faction Missions to Talent Graph for Prometheus
- Committed Completed Quest Objective Structure
- Adding Cheat functions for setting / getting account flags
- Adding new Map Icons for Various Transport Pods
- Adding New Texture tweaks for various drop pods
- Adding Basic Mission Structure in for two Prometheus Missions
- Swapping Contaminated Bear Creature to be Bat dog in Prometheus Intro Mission
- Adding in all base Needler setup, still needs ranged attack implementation and burrowing, but mimics the crocodile at the moment, physics asset setup to come, data table, blue print, montage and anim setup in
- Fix issue where sometimes neither water splash nor jump landing sounds would play when player jumped in shallow water
- Riverbanks LOD roughness fix
- Moved Avalanched Meshes to Red Quad from Blue Quad, DLC Map
- Basic audio setup for swamp cypress tree, including rough implementation of water trunk land sound
- Macro Tops - Trimmed down versions of SW macros for use in map as flat rock shelves/pieces. SW, TU, GL variants
- First pass of resource node audio setup for swamp foliage
- Increased Flat Fade Distance on Reeds to fix view distance
- Adding attack, Idle close and Idle distance audio and events for Striker
- Adding in alien fossil cave temp
- First pass on Glacier mesh and materials (red quad)
- Adding base Predator bird setup and new swoop animations, still missing the corpse behavior and dive bomb logic
- Missing dive bomb and swoop animations from last Predator bird commit
- Added UMG_AreaSelect for open world mode
- Added generic triplanar material for Avalanche on DLC1 Map
- Decal painting, landscape painting and foliage manual painting in GL biome, Green Quand, DLC
- Added Macro Tops, Reeds to Swamp, Added Riverbanks to Deepwater Swamp & CleanUp on Blue Quad, DLC Map
- Manual Foliage Placement in the Swamp and Volcanic Biome, Purple Quad, Prometheus
- Added potato foliage assets. Created blueprints, foliage types and added to FLOD data table
- Adding Tech for providing prebuilt bases for use on terrains and missions
- Adding some prebuilt bases for missions
- Finishing up Another quest for Prometheus
- Adding Various quest markers and quests to the Prometheus Map
- Adding new Swamp and Volcanic Atmosphere types
- Adding in P Bird sweep audio and event and adding to animation
- Adding in full base setup for deer variant, D_AIsetup character and corpse blueprints, missing corpse description text and custom skeleton mesh