Deep Dive: Combat Overhaul Welcome back agents, this week we are digging into the work that has been ongoing to make the combat and weapon ‘feel’ of DI more satisfying and approachable. Keep in mind that this is a very large topic so not everything will be covered in this small brief and everything we will showcase is subject to change. You can look forward to more changes when the update releases.
Visual Updates To give a better weapon feel to the game’s arsenal, we are going back to revisit some weapon mods that did not have their own firing and reload animations to give them a more unique feel. Beyond the visual differentiation, this allows us to make bespoke animations that fit their fire rate and reload speed much better, removing the sluggish “slowed down” feeling of some weapons. Here’s Chavez Duke which was a pretty egregious example of an artificially slowed down animation to fit its stats.
Duke Animations Before
Updated Duke Animations
Some unique flourishes have been added like chavez cocking the hammer in between each shot to better fit the weapon’s fire rate.
Recoil Changes and Damage Falloff On the more directly gameplay affecting side, a big emphasis has been put on reducing the incidence of recoil on gameplay. This has been a major area of continued feedback that we hope to address in a big way with this update.
First of all, [U]recoil has been smoothed out across the entire cast to be much less of a detriment to the gameplay[/U]. This means tracking your shots is less of a challenge than before. To compensate this from a balancing standpoint, we are making damage falloff a bigger part of the game with weapons losing potency over distance, making fast death at a longer range much less likely.
These two elements combined together should help make the gunplay more accessible and easier to use with falloff keeping situations from feeling out of hand when getting attacked and tracked from far away.
Here’s an example on Red’s base weapon
Before After
Collision between out of cover spies A frustrating part of close quarter fights in DI comes from the fact that two spies can phase through each other, making melee hits hard to land and the fight hard to understand. This is why with this update we introduce the concept of collision between two out of cover spies!
This means that while in cover, everything will behave like it currently does, but when two out of cover spies collide, they will body block each other allowing for much more precise melee attacks. Here’s an example of it in action:
Directional Hit Indicators Another big piece of the combat puzzle is better feedback to understand what is happening in the middle of a fight. One of our focuses on that front is remaking the directional hit indicator to be more precise and add more information packed into it.
You will now have a direct idea of the amount of damage you took in a given direction with the thickness of the indicator.
Before
After (Small Damage)
After (Bigger Damage)
Controller Aim-Assist Rework To close things out, we also wanted to give an update on the work done to make the controller experience more pleasant. We are updating the way aim-assist works in multiple ways.
The first and biggest is in how aim-assist is set up: Controller Aim-Assist has been reworked moving away from limited fix-points targeting on characters to using the character’s collision as the aim-assist target. This means that aim assist wil now pick-up the character as a whole making it possible to snap to any limb and help stick and move the reticle along the whole body rather than switching between individual points along the character’s body.
The second aspect of the change is the prioritization of hostile targets over passive-ones , meaning that civilians will now be ignored by aim assist when engaging hostile guards or spies.
Finally, training dummies and some deployed gadgets like the remote turret will now be picked-up by aim assist and treated as valid targets, making shooting them down in a pinch far easier to pull off.
PSA: Expected Deceive Inc. Downtime Feb 1st-2nd
Agents,
One of the backend services that Deceive Inc. uses will be going down for a brief period of maintenance. This will be happening on Feb 2nd at 1:00 AM UTC. For those agents in around the world, this translates to:
US PST - Feb 1st at 5 PM(UTC -8)
US EST - Feb 1st at 8 PM (UTC -5)
EU CET - Feb 2nd at 2 AM (UTC +1)
Asia KST - Feb 2nd at 10 AM UTC +9)
Expected downtime is 30 minutes to an hour where players can expect matchmaking to be interrupted and unavailable. If maintenance does not go as planned, the downtime may be extended. Thank you for your understanding and patience.
Deep Dive: First Aid Vial Brief
Deep Dive: First Aid Vials As we continue our deeper look into the new elements coming with [B]Operation Overhaul[/B], we’ll be going in detail with the element that generated the most questions in our original list of additions: The First Aid Vial.
We wanted to clear some of the biggest misconceptions around this new lootable item to make sure everyone is on the same page on how it will affect the game. Let’s get into it!
What does it do? To start things off, let’s go through, in detail, what the vial can and cannot do. (All this balancing is currently being tested by external testers and is heavily subject to change.)
You can carry up to 3 first-aid vials on yourself at a time.
They heal for 20 HP each.
Using a single vial takes 3 seconds.
Any form of damage, running or trying to shoot will interrupt the action.
You can find first aid vials in maps or buy them directly for 3 intel each in staff rooms.
Any expertise that puts you in a state will prevent you from using them (Chavez Invincibility, Larcin’s vanishing).
These vials come with a new rebindable keybind to make sure they are as easy to use as possible (X by default on PC, D-pad Left on consoles).
What is the intention? We have multiple reasons to want to introduce a source of healing on the go. The primary one is to open up the gameplay to be much more dynamic.
You have new choices to make in a match and a new resource to potentially want to spend time/intel on stacking up on. This resource removes some of the stress you would have from seeking a healing station/ being camped at one with the downside that the intel per heal ratio is less favorable.
The other part of the equation is to allow additional survivability that leads the fight to lean more heavily on what makes DI interesting. Using character abilities, gadgets and your weapon to weave in and out of battle and stay alive. In team mode, this can allow you to not entirely abandon your team once in low health and instead try to take cover to regain a bit of health to help out or at the very least live to fight another day.
We are excited for you all to try it in action and see how it affects the decision making and gameflow of a match.
The elephant in the room: What about the shield? We know the shield is the biggest part of the equation on the anxiety felt by some players around the apparition of first aid vials, and we want to confirm that we are playtesting major shield changes that aim to address that fear. We are not ready to disclose the specific details of this change as it is still going through iteration following feedback.
Red Ability Backend Fix
We are rolling out a live update that will fix an issue with the exposed status effect, leading to instant heartbreak when charmed by Red.
This requires no download on your side and will take effect in the background.
Untitled
We are rolling out a live update that will fix an issue with the exposed status effect, leading to instant heartbreak when charmed by Red.
This requires no download on your side and will take effect in the background.
Expanded Ping System Brief
Agents, as promised, we’ll be diving into individual elements of operation overhaul to showcase the work that is being undertaken by the team. This week we are looking at the expanded ping system! As always this is actively work in progress and is subject to change before it hits the live game.
The ping system now has two new elements: Contextual pinging and the radial ping menu.
Contextual pinging allows you to ping specific objects in the map, giving a unique visual to your ping that tells your teammates what you are pinging at a glance. No more wondering what exactly your teammate is trying to tell you from afar!
The radial ping menu is a new way to ping that is accessed by holding the ping button.
It gives you access to a variety of ping icons to communicate more advanced concepts like “defend this area”, “keep an eye out” or “don’t go there”.
Our hope is, by upgrading the ping system we will make non-verbal communication easier and open up better team-play opportunities! Stay tuned for more previews of what we are working on in the near future.
Operation Overhaul Brief
What’s next?
Agents, happy new year! The team is back in full force and is ready to share a sneak peek on what our focus is for our next patch. Let's call it…. Operation Overhaul.
Like we discussed in the state of the game post last year, we are carving ourselves some time to tackle core systems, polish existing elements and add new exciting gameplay elements that address long standing feedback from the community. While we currently expect everything listed in this post to be part of a single update, Operation Overhaul is a larger initiative that will encompass more changes than this across multiple future updates.
With that said, this is an early sneak peek in the feature set of operation overhaul. This is not the entirety of what we are working on and everything shown here is still actively work in progress and subject to change. Expect us to go in depth with these items over the next weeks to showcase the work of the team.
With all that said, let’s get into it.
A early look at Operation Overhaul
Combat Overhaul Let’s start with the largest area of focus: Combat. The elements tweaked for this update cover a wide range of topic including, but not limited to:
Reworking weapon animations and feel.
Improving Recoil to make it smoother across the board.
Improving reliability in melee range engagements.
Reworking Aim Punch to be less disruptive.
Increase clarity and directionality of damage received feedback.
Reworked muzzle flashes and bullet tracers.
Major changes to the infiltration phase A point of feedback we’ve tracked for a good while is the desire for players to spend more time and have more reason to look inside the vault areas of each map. With operation overhaul we will introduce a change to the gameflow of matches that will encourage players to explore the vault in search of a new gameplay element that will be key to opening the doors of the objective room.
We are still playtesting this change heavily and balancing it out to make sure it achieves the intended effect, but we think it will end up making the vault area fresh again!
Guards and heat tweaks We are revisiting guards' behavior to scale their response based on heat. You can expect guards to be less of a nuisance if you behave as a perfect spy, but much more of a threat if you start shooting indiscriminately.
We are also looking at tweaking the effects of heat accordingly to fit this new reality.
Contextual Ping Pinging specific items will now show your teammates a corresponding icon. This includes intel, keycards, doors and more!
First Aid Vials Heal yourself on the go thanks to the all-new First Aid Vials. You will find them hidden around the map or you will be able to pay intel to get them in all staff rooms. This will be a new form of items that we call a consumable, able to be stored for later use in a pinch.
Map Rework Continued Continued update to Silver Reef and all-new flanking routes and opportunities in Diamond Spire are on the menu for our next batch of reworks.
Aim-Assist overhaul for controllers We are spending time to rework in-depth the way aim-assist works for controllers. This will change how we decide to prioritize targets and make sure that what is considered a target’s body is much more accurate than before.
Spy Bots To help new players get a hang of the game, we will introduce spy bots to Deceive Inc! This will allow a smoother learning curve and will open up future opportunities by having a “player AI” at our disposal for further iteration. This has been a highly requested, but far from simple, addition to the game that we hope will make a lot of people happy!
As we’ve seen some questions around it, we would like to note that this is not a traditional update/catalog combination, as the team is focusing their efforts on the core loop. We look forward to sharing more with you in the days ahead Agents!
Notice: Holiday Rumble has now ended - Update Required
The update is now live! Players will need to update to matchmake.
Previous message:
The holiday rumble event will be extended by an extra day. You have until tomorrow, January 10th, to grab the event items for free!
Once the event is over, all holiday rumble items will move into the store and will remain available for purchase with bonds
Notice: Holiday Rumble Extended a Day
The holiday rumble event will be extended by an extra day. You have until tomorrow, January 10th, to grab the event items for free!
Once the event is over, all holiday rumble items will move into the store and will remain available for purchase with bonds
Deceive Inc. State of the game 2023
Deceive Inc. State of the game 2023 Welcome or welcome back agents! With the year coming to an end, we thought this would be a good time to look at what we delivered so far and where we are looking next for Deceive Inc. We are incredibly thankful for our community and their passion for the game. We’ve been driven by the feedback we receive from you all to push the game further and make it a better experience for everyone.
Let’s start things off by having a look at all the major drops we’ve made this year since launch:
What we have done this year Major Updates:
Launching the game!
Season 1: Misery Empire
High alert Update
Season 2: Neon Nights
Upper Echelon Update
Season 3: Of Kings and Queens
Holiday Rumble Update
New Content:
3 New agents
A new map
3 Catalogs, each with 50 unlocks
The addition of private lobbies
Duo Queue
The heat System
The Echelon System
Multiple new gameplay elements from team revives to lost and found boxes
Our first map rework with the silver reef vault area
Our first live event with Holiday Rumble
What Lies Ahead Now of course we all know the REAL reason you are reading this post is to have a glimpse at what’s ahead for Deceive Inc.. In the spirit of transparency with our community, we wanted to provide a peek behind the curtain of our intentions in the coming year.
We want to make the game better in its fundamentals and to do so, we need to take the time we need to iterate and make bigger swings than we have done in the past. To this effect, we’ve put into place a program with testers composed of involved members of the community to evaluate changes to the game and their impact on the experience. We are working on 4 core aspects that touch a lot of pieces of the game. Our key areas of focus in no particular order are:
Improving the combat experience Deceive Inc at its core is a first person shooter. The stealth aspects make it unique and give flavor to every encounter, but if the fundamentals of combat are not strong, the experience cannot thrive.
To this effect, we are looking at considerably overhauling this part of the gameplay, from animation adjustment, sound overhaul to handling tweaks, everything is on the table to elevate this part of gameplay to a higher standard.
What you can expect is an overall tighter feel to combat, more unique look and animation to different weapon mods and a more diversified gameplay experience when playing different weapon types.
Readability and usability There can be a lot going on in Deceive Inc and not at all of it is easy to understand and parse. With this focus, we are looking at ways to make the action easier to understand, abilities easier to use and keeping a special attention on the gamepad side of the experience to make it better.
This focus is of crucial importance to make the experience more accessible to new players.
Improved level flow We have learned quite a bit about our own game in the past months, and we are coming back to our maps with a new eye on what makes a map, well, good. This focus means we will revisit levels to make area flow better, add more cover to make encounters more exciting and overall make sure that every map is at its best.
We will focus on different maps one after the other so expect these improvements to drop one after another in multiple patches, starting with the Silver Reef vault overhaul for the holiday rumble update.
Match to match satisfaction While all previous items should help with the satisfaction a player gets from playing a match, something the overall satisfaction is a focus in itself.
This focus is all about better celebrating what players do well in a match and rewarding those actions. It also means revisiting match elements that are big frustrations and contribute to long term dissatisfaction for our players. A good example of an item that touches this are guards. They are often frustrating in how they interact with players and fight and making sure they are more easily understandable and that players have clear tools to mitigate their annoyance is a big factor in reducing frustration.
All these focuses have active development going on right now with some of it being tested by our external testing program as we speak. Not all of these items will land at the same time, some will ship in the shorter term, some will take more time to materialize. We will have some exciting new elements to share with you in the future as we make progress on all of this.
Now, with all these major reworks on the way, what does that mean for a new Agent?
We also have work ongoing on a new addition to the roster, but our new commitment on making the fundamentals of the game stronger means that they will not drop as soon as you might have expected in the past.
We think this new agent will be a [B]VERY[/B] exciting addition to the game, both from a gameplay and lore enthusiast perspective, so please bear with us as we make Deceive Inc. a better game in the new year.
For now, we wish you all a great holiday period. We’ll see you all on the other side!
A reminder of all the ways you can keep up to date with all on-going Deceive Inc. news and also a great way to communicate with other Deceive Inc fans!
*Please note, all content mentioned is subject to change based on on-going development testing. We will of course continue to update the community on any and all changes.
