Welcome back, agents! We could not be more thrilled to see so many of you jump into the Open Beta, discover Fragrant Shore and experience crossplay for the first time in DI. We are incredibly grateful for the reception you have given us. With that said, we also have our work cut out for us: We’ve received large amounts of feedback (THANK YOU!) and we are excited to dive into it to make the game better.
Before we get into some of our big takeaways, a few notes: Some of the items you’ll see here we’ve already been working on from previous feedback, that means some of that feedback will land on launch day, but far from all of it. We will note when things are expected to come (on launch or post-launch) to keep expectations aligned with the reality of our work on the game.
This does not mean we think some of this feedback is less important, it simply means that to ship the game we had to make a cut-off eventually and push some things to post launch patches. Now let’s start things off!
TOP Team Priorities
Agents Balance Overall balancing of agents is always a very popular topic and we are keeping an eye on agent balance. You can expect a deep dive into balancing changes in the launch day patch notes as well as a continued commitment to update and tweak the game in further post-launch patches around community feedback.
Overall Performance Issues We have had reports of some performance issues/fps hitches and we are looking at our options to optimize the game further. We have targeted some areas that could definitely benefit from more performance work and this progress will be ongoing in post-launch updates.
Weapon Damage Transparency We’ve talked about giving more transparent information around weapons in the past. Our first step with this will be a fully interactive DPS board in the training range and pre game lobby. You’ll be able to shoot at dummies set up at multiple different distances to get a feel for damage, distance based drop-off and location damage.
We want to go farther with this in the longer term, but this is an important first step in giving you more information on your loadouts. The next step a bit further down the line will include a full rework of the agent select screen to show granular stats of weapons.
Here’s a sneak peak of the dps screen: You can expect this to hit the game in a post-launch update.
Polish to gunplay We are making a lot of tweaks to gunplay to refine the experience post-launch. This ranges from tweaking character hitboxes to make hits more reliable, refining recoil on weapons to make aiming smoother and reducing and making the ADS transition snappier.
Overhaul to gameflow We’ve been combing through feedback since the last few playtests and have been working on some upgrades to the overall gameflow structure of matches.
The first thing you’ll see from this work is a change to a room without vault terminals in the insertion phase of the match. We’ve had a lot of good feedback on the fact that these rooms are not only disappointing, but don’t give much incentive to keep looking after opening a vault terminal.
The tweaks we’ll be adding post launch will guarantee a purple keycard in rooms without a vault terminal and remove the possibility of finding one in rooms that do have one.
This is not the whole extent of the change and we will outline it in more detail soon, but the overall idea is to guarantee a room without a vault terminal is still a worthwhile destination.
Expect this to hit the game post-launch with a detailed run-down in the meantime.
Teams Communication We’ve received a lot of feedback around non-verbal communication in teams and making it more detailed. We are currently working on a contextual ping when downed to ask your teammates for a revive, but we will look at other opportunities in the future to make the ping more fully fledged and helpful in matches. Feel free to give us more suggestions around this topic in the future.
Team mode adjustments and tweaks We’ve been gathering feedback around the nature of team matches and how they play out and we have some targeted changes we are testing internally around team mode.
This includes a change to intel that means you won’t be able to loot the same intel as your teammates. We’ve been playing this change for a while and we really like how it slows down the rush heavy nature of teams and gives a bit more strategy and communication to overall looting. We think this makes the overall economy and teamplay aspect of the game more interesting and are excited to see your feedback on it.
We are also aware of a large amount of feedback on the revive mechanics of teams and are in the early days of prototyping a new revive mechanic we MIGHT introduce in the future.
Once again this is all post-launch and we will give you the details soon.
Melee Attack reliability Melee attacks have gotten better since the days of closed alpha 1, but they still have a good amount of misses that should not happen.
We have ongoing work on melee reliability that should make it much better in the future.
Controller Experience With our first foray in a fully crossplay test, we received a lot of feedback around how to make the controller experience better.
While some of this feedback will take some time to materialize (like adding more options to fully customize the experience), you can expect improvements in the launch day build of the game.
You’ll see some tweaks to aim assist to make it a bit more useful and adjustments to the quick turn speed when fully holding your joystick to give more control between fine aiming and fast movement.
We’ll continue looking at feedback from our console players and make adjustments in the coming patches.
Vertical Audio Problems with vertical audio were once again mentioned quite often for this beta. We have been working on this internally and have made progress on making these easier to discern. We expect to have a good first step on this topic soon after launch. We are also looking into tweaking NPC reactions to multi-level fire fights to remove some confusion from their reaction to danger.
Agents - The Beta Is Over - Please Fill Out The Survey
Agents, this beta has come to an end, and we look forward to seeing many of you later this month!
But before we part today, we have one last mission for you. Taking a few moments to fill out a survey to help us improve the game: https://forms.gle/jQ28DNSwkZ957Qdk6
Dev Stream - Talk and Test
Join us (The Tripwire Community Team) as we host the Sweet Bandits (The amazing devs behind Deceive Inc.) as we play the Open Beta and chat with you the community!
Deceive Inc. Open Beta Changelog
Welcome or welcome back agents to the Open Beta Patch notes! To start things off, for those of you that played in the Steam Next Fest, you can expect a very similar build. Since Crossplay between console and PC is making its debut with Open Beta, we have to ensure compatibility between the different versions of the game. This does not mean we don’t take the feedback we received from Next Fest seriously, it simply means you will not see it in action right away and will have to wait a bit to see the bigger changes born from it.
That being said, we did make some server side changes that will affect the experience since the Next Fest Build. Let's start at the top with those before going through the general changes from Alpha to Beta.
New since Steam Next Fest
Guard Range Tweaks: One major piece of feedback we often get is that guards can feel very annoying in their behaviors. This is most often due to the fact that guards could be “summoned” from the far side of a very large room adjacent to the one you were in.
In this build, we added a maximum distance check on top of the “closest rooms” check. What that means in practice is that you should get far less infinite guards coming at you after a fight and should be better able to read when a guard is potentially going to be aggro-ed. We hope this change makes the overall interaction with guards less annoying but also easier to plan around.
Spawn Rules Tweaks: We’ve tried a few tweaks to spawning in the Next Fest build and we further refined these rules for the Open Beta. This should make rushing from blue rooms directly to purple less efficient, make green rooms more interesting in loot overall and make keycard distribution a bit more of an involved looting experience to give them more value.
As always we’ll keep looking and tweaking this to refine the experience.
And last but not least….
Operation Fragrant Shore is a go! It’s time to grab your best vacation outfit agent, we are going to the caribbean! We are excited to see what kind of trouble you get into as you sneak and fight through the streets and capitol of the city of San Flores in a race to steal a mind influencing perfume.
NPC behavior tweaks: We’ve added new ranks of suspicious npcs behavior that bridge the gap between “very suspicious” and “not suspicious at all”. This should help blur the lines a bit more and keep things more interesting as NPC behavior will be a bit more granular and nuanced. As always, we value and look forward to community feedback. If you’d like to leave feedback regarding the above changes or for any other topic, you may do so by visiting: https://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/index.php?forums/deceive-inc.2333651/
Changes since Alpha For those that played the Next Fest build, this won’t be new. For all other agents, these are the changes since closed Alpha 2: https://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/index.php?threads/deceive-inc-next-fest-patch-notes.2338860/
Planned Post Launch Changes While we’ve been reacting to player feedback from the latest beta tests, not everything the team is working on will be ready in time for launch day. Please find a partial list of some of the changes that are likely (please note that future developments are subject to change as items are prototyped and worked on. Items listed here may not come in the exact form listed or at all) to come in updates after launch:
Increased rewards for being the first to loot a Vault Terminal room
Example: A guaranteed purple keycard
Penalty for shooting civilian NPCs. The goal is not to punish agents who accidently take one down during a fight, but to prevent rampant murders and spy checks.
Initial prototype makes agents scale up in “heat levels”, this results in them taking more damage from guards and other agents as they do. Heat goes down over time. (ONCE AGAIN THIS IS A PROTOTYPE SUBJECT TO CHANGE)
The training room will display shot damage on the back screen
Addition UI elements to help players understand the weapons better are also going to be added post launch
Private Lobbies
We know this is a much requested feature for friends to play with each other and it is slated for post launch development. We do not currently have an expected ETA on this feature to share.
Agent Balance
We’ll be continuing to adjust agent weapons and abilities, improving those that are underperforming and bringing down those that are overperforming.
Join us for the final Deceive Inc. Beta
Starting at 2 PM EST March 10th (tomorrow)!
Like with previous betas, an option to download the beta will appear on the store page near/at the start of the beta. Good luck Agents!
Agent Brief: Madame Xiu
CODE NAME: Madame Xiu LEGAL NAME: Unknown Age: Unknown COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: China LANGUAGES: Chinese, English AGENT ROLE: Scoundrel
“I have a very keen eye, and someone in Dubai has the other one”
PERSONALITY EVALUATION
Secretive and cryptic, Madame Xiu’s identity is shrouded in inscrutable shadows: from her real name, to all her mysterious dealings past and present. Many unfortunate souls have found too late the cost for inquiring about the lady. According to Madame Xiu, everything has a price and any deal or transaction can be made… but like dealing with the genies of old, make sure you’ve read the fine print of the contract, and don’t be surprised by what price she charges.
BACKGROUND
Once the so-called “Queen of the Underworld”, Madame Xiu’s shady network is presumed to reach all corners of the world and all levels of the social ladder. She has been known to expertly play both sides of the law, providing any information her clients want. Some even theorize that she might have had a hand in the foundation of Deceive Inc., directly or indirectly...
FILE UPDATE: Operation Siege was instigated based on intelligence provided by Madame Xiu
“The house always wins, in the end”
WEAPON: Zhulong
A fully automatic crossbow, Zhulong gives Madame Xiu the lethal touch she may need at close to mid range encounters. Deadly and accurate, it fires small bolts at high speed to quickly drill down those caught in her gaze.
AGENT PASSIVE: Viper’s Knowledge
Madame Xiu’s vast network of informants gives her an inestimable edge: whenever other Agents break their cover near her, regardless of her line of sight, she knows. Rivals should think twice before engaging guns blazing, as you never know who may be watching and learning.
AGENT EXPERTISE: Cobra’s Deceit
Just when you think you got a hold on her, Madame Xiu is seemingly able to slip away, as if she was never there in the first place. Leaving a decoy at her previous location, the lady can use this trickery to quickly get out of inopportune situations or play with the mind of her Rivals.
When Rivals see signs that Madame Xiu is around, they’d better be ready for what happens next. And just remember, it isn’t personal: it’s strictly business.
Deceive Inc.: State Of The Build (Post Steam Next Fest)
Next Fest takeaways
Welcome back, agents! To start things off, we wanted to thank everyone who took the time to play Deceive Inc. and leave their feedback and suggestions during the Steam Next Fest. We’ve had an unprecedented amount of it to go through and we came away with some obvious key areas we’ll want to act on.
We also want to set expectations on changes and tweaks to the game. The march open Beta will feature crossplay with all platforms including consoles for the first time! This great opportunity also comes with the added constraint of ensuring compatibility between all versions of the game. What this means is that you should not expect any major change for open beta apart from server-side tweaks to the game. While we are already working on solutions and features to address some of the main feedback, we want to be clear that these tweaks can take a bit of time to materialize. We will keep you informed on the state of these changes as we move forward in the game’s launch and beyond.
With that said, let's get into it.
Early Fights and Spawning locations We know that the current spawn systems for agents are not granular enough to ensure a good experience every match. We are adding new hooks that will allow us to better hand pick suitable locations and drastically reduce fights in the first seconds of a match. While the initial setup of this system is not a purely server-based change, further iteration on it once in place will allow fast action on problematic player spawns.
Pacing/Spawn Balancing While our recent tweaks to balancing did work in slowing down the early game pace a bit, we are still not exactly where we would want to be. We put in place a suggestion on reducing intel spawns in Guard rooms during next fest and were overall happy with the results. It was clear though that we needed a bit more iteration on this guard room balancing to ensure less cases where almost nothing is in these rooms.
We also had clear feedback that Diamond Spire did not have enough intel spawn and as such we are upping its loot pool significantly.
Jump Fatigue We heard the message loud and clear: The new jump fatigue balancing is way too severe and obtrusive. We are both reducing the lowering of agent speed built up by jump fatigue and shortening the time it takes to recover from it. You will also need to jump closer in a row to trigger it.
Jump Fatigue is intended as a solution to mashing jumps infinitely in a gunfight, we do not want it to impede navigation in normal gameplay.
Weapon Stats There is a huge demand from you all on having a transparent look into the weapons of the game. We are already hard at work in making that a reality. There are two main aspects to this we are working on. This is not something we can just wedge in a short time table, but expect this as an update after the initial launch window.
Training Range Tools: We are adding damage numbers to the dummies in the training range/ in the pregame lobby. You will now be able to test weapon damage at a variety of different ranges with all characters. Theory craft away!
Weapon Tooltip Redesign: We are early in the process of redesigning weapon tooltips in agent select entirely. We want to expose every element of a weapon’s stats from damage to fire rate and everything in between in a 100% transparent form. We will share advancement of this with you all as it moves up in development from concept to reality.
Shooting down innocent NPCs abusively We’ve received this feedback many times over different playtests but the influx of players new to the game brought it up even more in this playtest: It does not feel appropriate for the theme of the game to have players just shoot any innocent NPC coming into a room without any penalty.
We have an internal prototype of a mechanic to help deal with this. We want to make the intent clear: We do not want this mechanic to interfere at all with players playing the game normally and guessing wrong from time to time on who is a player. We are building a mechanic that specifically targets players who voluntarily eliminate non-guard NPC in numbers that are beyond normal gameplay.
As you can probably imagine, a mechanic like this is easy to get wrong. This is why we have been playing with it in our internal playtest for a while and are continuing iteration on it. We will show more of this well before it makes its debut in-game to make sure we do not miss the mark on this one.
Guard Annoyance We often get the feedback that guards are both too annoying and not strong enough. It’s a difficult dilemma to parse, but we have some good angles we want to put in action:
Range of action: Depending on where you pick a fight, guards can come from seemingly nowhere in infinite numbers. We already have a tweak for this that will make sure that guards come from a far more predictable range in all situations. This should mostly affect fighting in public areas or near large rooms.
Dying by guards: We are working on a new system that affects guard accuracy depending on more factors. With this, we can make sure to give players more chances to survive when low on health against guards. This should also limit greatly dying from guards after a clutch fight.
Overall Threat: We want guards to be a bit more dangerous overall when you do encounter them. After removing the aforementioned annoyance, we will look into how to make them a bit more significant. Our top priority is to make them less annoying and more reliable before this.
Vertical Audio We’ve had plenty of feedback around the difficulty of understanding where fights are occurring in vertical situations. We’ll dig into this to find the best way to make audio more easily understandable for players.
Another thing that goes hand in hand with this is ensuring NPCs do not trigger fear through different floors which can lead to even more confusion on where a fight is coming from.
Package Carrier Vision We’ve had repeated feedback that carrier vision is currently too strong. While we definitely need it to be very strong for players to even consider grabbing it, there are a few things we can tweak to make it less lopsided.
We are toying with tweaking ranges on the detection but also changing what you see while scanning. We have a working version of this internally where you now see the spy instead of the npc disguise they have while scanning. What this means is that quickly scanning an opponent does not give a guaranteed identification of what they look like if they are in a crowd of npc.
We hope this will give more opportunity to bamboozle the carrier while keeping the ability strong and game defining.
And that’s a wrap! As you can imagine this is far from all the feedback we received, but in the spirit of keeping things tidy we had to choose the main subjects we will be looking into.
Once again, we’d like to extend a huge thank you for playing Deceive Inc. and the valuable feedback that was sent to us. See you on the field!
Steam Next Fest Gameplay Survey - Next Fest Beta Is Over
Please give us a few extra moments as this Steam Next Fest beta draws to a close and take our survey to help us improve the game.
This will help us learn as the team works towards the open beta and launch next month!
Less than 24 Hours left in the current test!
Agents, we are less than 24 hours away from the end of the current test, with the next opportunity being the Open Beta next month before launch. We would like to thank all of you who have played, given feedback, taking the gameplay survey, reported issues and more! And remember, you can have a chance at winning a brand new monitor just for doing those things, so be sure to enter:
Enter here (follow the link to enter!) for a chance to win an Alienware AW2521HF gaming monitor! All you need to do is play the Deceive Inc. Demo. Additional entries will be rewarded for the following things:
Upload your favorite gameplay clip (this must be your own gameplay clip, not someone else's)
Be a member of the Deceive Inc. Discord server
Sharing the giveaway on social media
Taking the current Deceive Inc. survey to help us shape improvements to come
Official Stream Recap
Join us in catching up on some of the official #steamnextfest live streams we've done!
