What a spooky month! Weve been busy with 4 major Alpha updates to Steam and hit some major development and balancing milestones for the game. Throughout the month weve worked on a major rebalance to all of the games weaponry to help all the gunfighting options have enough character and exciting strategic differences, extending the games scaling and Power Level system so longer games are continually challenging, refined the stealth gameplay, added story and dialog to improve the context of the game start. Now at the end of the month, weve officially started the massive UX overhaul project. There are always way too many dev milestones to list them all here, but lets check in on a few!

UX Implementation Begins!

The UX project has been a real beast -- it officially started in July 2022 with study of reference games, before launching into an exploration phase that resulted in large-scale wireframing of every screen, hover and interaction in the game. Now the beautiful visual design is complete for 2/3 of the game and with the latest Alpha update, weve officially started rolling in the first changes including a custom cursor that highlights nicely over clickable map elements. This will be a long road to the animated, beautiful vision outlined by the project but the stone has started rolling!

Major Gunfight Milestone

After months of studying player feedback and reviewing all the combat rules and systems, we were excited to roll out a Major Milestone GUNFIGHT in mid-October to the Cyber Knights weapons system. The goal of the design update was to further develop marked functional differences in weapon types which enable teams to push those weapons into niche roles based on the mods you install. We had been chipping away at this update through September but it was time to finish the rest in one big sweep. In this major update, we made major changes to the rules for:

• Accuracy, including adding Glancing Hits
• Full Auto, including ability to surge damage on single targets
• Well, pretty much all the weapon stats actually :D

With changes to the fundamental rules for Accuracy, Full Auto and major stat rebalances including ranges, shot volume, recoil rates, Armor Crit %, reload AP, it was an exciting moment for players to re-evaluate their load outs and see how the new system fit their play style. A lot more weapons are exciting and viable for a lot more reasons now and the field of smart tactical choices is much wider.

Controller Support

With the alpha now running officially on Steam, weve been excited to be working with players across the spectrum of controllers on testing out the game -- XBox, Playstation, Steam Controller and the Steam Deck as well. With the help of the alpha community, weve already made some configuration tweaks on the Steam end and are preparing to improve the smoothness of our controller support throughout the game as part of the UX project.

Stealth, Auto-Duck, Projection

Stealth is a key component of many heist teams strategy and weve continued to refine and improve the stealth game throughout October. Some big rule changes have been put in place, including a rule that states that Suspicious enemies (theyve heard something but arent really aware there is an intruder) are still considered Surprised. It may sound small, but its a +25% Accuracy boost and enables weapons like Blades, Sniper Rifles and Pistols to use their Stealth Critical rules Were also working to phase out any need to manage your running / crouched state. This is a hassle and only really matters when you are moving, which is control you can exercise when setting and confirming a movement destination but not something you should ever need to otherwise worry about. To ensure that being crouched has no impact on combat or stealth, your team members will now automatically duck if an enemy is about to see them and being crouched would keep them hidden. With a hiss of something like "Head down!" they just drop out of sight. Ah, simplicity! Finally, were catching up more and more to visual style and polish, so it was exciting to make the Vanguards Projection Talent look very cool.

Creative Surveys All Sent

Last month, the final major creative survey went out to invite the Power Broker and Heist Edition backers to start their creation process for allies, villains and heists. This concludes the round of survey offerings for 2022, which have covered adding names to the game, Recruitable Characters, Buffed Recruitables, and now the Power Broker and Heist. The final major survey will be for Encode Your Legend in early 2023. All of these will be on-going projects as our team sorts through the raw creative input, reaches out if we have questions and then imprints those ideas into the game for all to enjoy. If you havent received a survey email but should have, please reach out to us here or email andrew@tresebrothers.com

Reward and Stretch Goal Progress

For completeness, we include the progress bar infographic in each and every update. If you have any questions about rewards or stretch goals, check out the graphic or reach out to us. This month, weve started working on the Digital Artbook as we have finally gathered all of the concept art and 3D renders needed to assemble the final product. We cant wait to share that one with all of you!