Big update from us with regards to the update line up!
Lets dive into what's changed recently!
Update Notes:
Server Core Upgrade!
We have updated the server core to a much later version of the original core, allowing us to improve the current functionality moving into a more stable and featured version.
New versions come with more features from previous versions and can also allow us to improve code reducing overhead and improving in game / lobby experience!
Lobby Updates!
We have performed a minor update to the lobby, reviewing the current setup and understanding that the lobby could be a bit too much, we decided to remove some elements to make it more clear and clean to remove confusion for new players.
Removed Regiment List
Removed Tournament List
Modified how the server list shows
Modified so it now shows if it's a bot or player based server
Modified the bottom bar which is now displaying at the top
Small updates for the Lobby at current, we are working on a new and fancier looking lobby. This will take some time to complete as it will be a rewrite to the current one being used now.
Game Design Updates
We are in the process of performing some minor changes to the game itself, displaying the map at the bottom right rather then the left side and moving some of the user interface to different area's.
It's not a massive update but its a start and we find that moving this around will help attract new players and also show to our current user base that we are working on it where time is available to us.
Other News
So regiments aren't gone however we are looking to remove/disable them during the low levels of players, having everyone playing as a general group will help build relationships with players and ideally this would then lead to regiments. Rank at the moment we feel should be expressed through game time and experience. We feel having regiments at this stage would just overrule players in which don't have their own regiment or want to progress this at that time.
MP's and Councils
We are now reviewing current MP's and Council members to bring the active in front of inactive. We understand that not everyone has full focus on this game due to the loss of attention over the main release. However we feel in order to bring the community to an active state we will need to review the state of these two groups.
We will be seeking new Council members and MP's going forward once we have gone through our current members in these groups.
New Dev's
So you may have seen there is a "New Dev" Discord group, this new group is to show new contributors in this project who are actively looking to improve this game.
Kading Crew
We all know the below two who have been the life and blood of this game from day one, We are still working with them and they are also assisting where they have time to help us get more updates out and to discuss ideas and plans to better improve!
Florian (Game Code, Network Code all things code)
Antoine (Main Game Core, Animations, Designs, GFX anything Unity)
p.s Don't kill me i could be wrong with the above ːsteamhappyː
Members to this point
Vankerkom (Experience in multiple languages from C# to Java)
Myself (Hitman Alex) Main focus is getting everything to a good order, while also working on understanding Unity to improve in game design.
Finally i wish to thank every member who has reached out and discussed these recent changes from the game being back online to players jumping on and helping new players get used to our game. Without you we couldn't see a reason to put love back into this game. We hope with your input and support we can build up DWF's active base and attract new players!
This is all for now again many thanks for all your support, and my close friend Daan (Vankerkom) who has put hours of sweat and effort into getting this game back on path toward new features and functions.
Reboot Games
Divided We Fall is back online with new developers!
We'll kick off this re-launch by playing games with the community members. Your opinion matters, if you haven't joined our discord then come and join us at: https://discord.gg/0hADRmF7Pw1nWCRO.
Coming soon: Play Divided We Fall for Free!
This decision has been in our minds since the inception of this sequel to Call of Combat. Now it's happening and it's coming very soon. Bring your friends and get your nade fights going! The free version of the game will give access to pretty much everything the game has to offer including:
- All weapons
- Regiment competition system
- Leaderboards
- All official maps
- Map editor and custom made maps
- Access to the good old Call of Combat
- Modding system
- Steam achievements
We are also adding a paid DLC which will be automatically given to all those who already own the game. On behalf of the KAVA team, thank you for your support.
The paid edition will unlock the following:
- Officer ranks
- Special uniforms for your soldiers
- A promotion points boost
Divided We Fall will need the community, bring your friends and get those regiment games going!
Divided We Fall: time for change
Situation assesement
These three years were a blast, it was good fun, we worked with a lot of amazing people, it was really cool. The game is officially out of Early Access. There was a lot of very positive feedback about the progress since the game’s Steam debut. But it did not exactly go as expected.
Florian and I will still be going after bugs and crashes, and we will gradually bring more modding tools to the game in order to empower all of you, in the community. We are looking for smart ways to bring the game to more people. More explanations about that in the second section below.
But first, some context: The game was officially launched over a month ago. We expected it to be the moment of truth for Divided We Fall, the moment where we can grow the community with a very high peak of activity. The activity ended up being a lot smaller than expected.
During the whole Early Access, we worked a lot on the feedback we got:
Too much grenade spam? We made a lot of improvements on the gunfight mechanics, we made guns a lot more useful, and added extra control over them (did you know you can instantly shoot if you double click on an enemy?). We also made sure that all weapons had their own special uses.
Too hardcore for new players? We added a tutorial, we improved the interface to make it more friendly, we added a proper hotkey system, we added special new player rooms.
Not enough player activity? We added bots so that veterans could hone their battle skills and new players could learn the basics while waiting for games to start. This big launch was also the opportunity to boost player activity.
Thanks to these improvements and the special free week at launch, we expected the number of players to go reach a couple of hundreds or even maybe thousands if we were going to be lucky. Florian had to spend a lot of time on making sure the authentication servers would handle the load.
But this is the game industry, it is impossible to predict anything, every decision you take is a bet. We assumed that in the worst case the activity wouldn't be much lower than the Early Access a year ago, because why would it be? The peak amount of concurrent players in game was 70, and games were played 24/7 for about two weeks. When it comes to player activity, it would have been disappointing for the official launch, but that's what we were prepared for, in our planning, these numbers were more or less our worst case scenario.
It ended up a being lot worse.
We are not sure what hit us the hardest, but a lot went wrong at the same time.
Because we focused on getting AI in and making sure we could manage the load on our servers we neglected stability and testing. And although we tested more than the Early Access launch, the game was less stable. That was very annoying for everyone, it was our responsibility but we patched all major issues within two days.
Then, there were some commercial problems. We expected Divided to be featured on the front page of the Steam store, because it was the case on the Early Access launch, and because we thought the free week would make it extra likely to show up there. That didn’t happen. We are not sure if there is even a real reason for that. Valve uses complex algorithms to decide how a game is brought to its user's attention. Maybe the mixed reviews complaining of the lack of activity during Early Access made it impossible for Divided to reach the front page. Also sales never skyrocketed, which might also have an influence on this algorithm.
We know there were some technical issues at launch: the store page completely disappeared for an hour when it launched, and then the game was not listed on any "new releases" sections for over a day. We have no way of knowing what happened, that is just the way it is.
We do not know which had the biggest negative effect, but the healthiest response is to take responsibility for it: we fucked up, we made a lot of mistakes that we know of, but there are parameters completely out of our grasps. Maybe we were particularly lucky at the Early Access launch. Maybe it's something else entirely. We will probably never know for sure. If we somehow figure it out properly, I'll write about it in a later post.
Some people say that the success of a game rely on three factors: one third depends on a good product (in the sense of a product that people want), on third depends on good marketing (in the sense of reaching the people that want that game) and one third relies on luck.
Good luck is the exact opposite of what we got.
Our marketing was probably the best we could have had. Maybe it wasn't enough, but given our resources, it could have have hardly been much better.
Maybe the game just isn’t good enough. This is probably the main insecurity a game developer can have, we might have made some severe design mistakes along the way. However, at this stage, there isn’t one clear big improvement that we are confident that can turn the tide. Maybe the game would have needed a lot more budget for a much higher production value and much more marketing budget.
This is disheartening because we’ve put a lot of work to make this game. A LOT! Florian and I spent most of our working time on Divided We Fall for more than three years. With no salary. And although the outcome is very disappointing for everyone, these three years were still totally worth it. We worked with amazing people, freelancers, students and volunteers helping on creating a very unique game that is true to its ancestors. And in spite of the result, we are very proud of the whole team who managed to take it this far.
Next objective
This launch was pretty much our best shot at creating a big activity boost in Divided We Fall. It's time to switch strategy.
KAVA was a very risky bet, we knew it from the beginning. It is an indie video game company built around the sole purpose of developing the new version of Call of Combat but in a more professional way. This objective has been completed. Its secondary mission was to generate enough revenue to sustain a team of game developers. That objective failed very dramatically. The current situation does not even allow us to continue with the same level of involvement. In the past three years, we spent at least three days a week on this.
KAVA will not stop. It just won’t be full time anymore. We will keep fixing bugs for Divided We Fall for as long as there are people playing. Big plans like destructible terrain, new factions and extra weapons will not make any sense unless activity grows to much higher levels than now (we still have some hope, maybe next year). When it comes to additional content, we will be releasing new modding tools. You can already create new maps, and organize tournament very easily and efficiently. You will soon be able to create your own game rules, and invite players in your custom room.
The main goal now with Divided We Fall is to make it as much like Call of Combat as possible, it was a game nurtured and maintained by the community, and Divided We Fall needs to be given back to the community as well. It will take a few steps:
In shorter term, here is what we work on:
We will keep fixing bugs and crashes
We will bring Call of Combat permanently in the lobby
We will bring the first wave of new modding tools for the community, which will allow you to create special rooms where you can change a lot of rules (Ammo, capture time, gun accuracy, movements speed and a lot more). As you experiment with it, any setting that seem to create consensus in the community can become an official game mode! I will post a forum topic with the instructions.
In longer term, we want to make Divided We Fall more accessible by making it free to play. The goal is to make the game free in Steam with some limitations (rank, soldier skins, name changes, etc...), and add a dlc that unlocks everything for the same price as the current game. We will make sure that everybody who purchased the game will get this dlc automatically. Going free to play isn't that straightforward. We are investigating what are our options in Steam. All of this might take some time (probably several months), meanwhile all of you are free to come to the discord channel, who knows, maybe there will be some free keys ready to be distributed when tournaments are organized. Stay tuned!
Don’t forget that Divided has a lot of community tools already built in like the map editor, the tournament organization system, the player and the regiment leaderboards. We will stick around, we will help the community, but more than ever, the future of Call of Combat and Divided We Fall lies also in your hand!
Good luck soldiers!
Updates and fixes!
This has been a pretty fun launch. We have been working day and night fixing a lot of issues that players could have been having. The game has reached a pretty stable state now, but don't hesitate to let us know if you run in any bug or crash here or on the Discord Tech support channel.
v1.04 - October 4 2017
Fixes - Spectator and synchronisation issues vastly improved
- Made AI spawn more balanced
- Fixed some map changing crashes
- Fixed host synchronisation issues that could cause crashes
- Weapon pickup and body looting should be fixed
v1.03 - October 3 2017
Fixes - Server crash reduced
- Picking up weapons should be improved and fixed
- Auto-nade bug behind trees is fixed
- Synchronization issues should be reduced
- Tutorial is improved and issues should be fixed
There was also a v1.02 just after release where we fixed a bunch of immediate issues, but in the panic we didn't keep track of the details that we changed (the git commits from that moment are a bit hectic)
Release Day!
Man are we excited! Thanks to our continued efforts, both from us and everyone who helped by playing and testing the game, we are leaving Early Access behind us and are releasing Divided We Fall today!!!
For this special occasion we are kicking things off with both a Free Week and 25% discount. And.... in-game you can now spot the all new cooperative game mode, which allows you to play alone or with friends against AI bots!
https://youtu.be/OJttqDYGL3Y
Of course we’re not putting our feet up but will continue to work on improving and expanding Divided We Fall. We have a ton of cool stuff planned, such as destructible and elevated terrain, melee combat, a morale system, and additions to the AI and map editor. But more on that later.
For now, thanks to all who helped us in realizing our dream! We hope you enjoy the game (and our brand new release trailer)!
Time For Action!
The Throwback Weekend is upon us! It’s time for the festivities to start, in anticipation of the Divided We Fall release coming up on Monday (October 2nd).
You can now join us for some good ol’ Call of Combat action (accessed through Divided We Fall). Apart from a good time, you will also end up with a Steam Key to gift to friends, by simply playing for more than 2 hours.
How’s that for a good deal?
We hope to see you all online this weekend!
Mark your calendars for the official launch on October 2nd!
These past weeks have seen some major updates in Divided We Fall to perfect the game, based on the constructive feedback given by all of you.
Here is a short summary of what has been updated:
https://youtu.be/_e8GhvbbSKw
We would like to thank you all very much for your help, support and advice this past year. We’ve definitely learned a lot and the game has seen amazing progress.
Now we have a few surprises up our sleeves – first, we would like to announce the official release of Divided We Fall on October 2, 2017!
And then, to go with the release, we are hosting a ‘Throwback-weekend’ event just before the launch where you can win an extra key for the game and play the old beloved Call of Combat. At launch expect many more players online, and perhaps something else too...
We hope you will join us in these festivities and help us support newcomers to the game. Also, it would be great if you could leave us a review at release. We would love to hear your thoughts on the new and improved Divided We Fall and we’re sure other players would love to hear about it too!
Thank you all once again - We’ll Stand Together October 2!
Team KAVA
Brace yourselves!
Announcement coming!
Big things are around the corner! Low activity will soon be a thing of the past. We are preparing a major marketing campaign, and we aim at having the highest activity in Divided We Fall / Call of Combat history.
Stay tuned for a big announcement next week.
Early Access has provided us with a lot of feedback, here is how we are improving the game to prepare for the future of Divided We Fall.
Gameplay improvements: We are improving the interface for more gameplay clarity, and for those who missed it we have massively revamped a lot of gameplay stuff: grenades, weapons, strategic interface, gunfight controls.
Game modes improvements: We are readjusting game modes, especially respawn, to improve new players experience (open game modes were the best introduction for new players in Call of Combat)
Preparing the release: With a marketing campaign we aim at bringing a lot of new players at once. Our goal is to bring a lot of new players, a lot more than Call of Combat ever had.
Regiment recruits: We are working on improvement with regiment recruit systems, and we're adding more info to regiment description pages like its history, its intentions (whether it's elite or community oriented), so that new players can have more informations when choosing a regiment to join.
Medals & ribbons: We have started working on finally implementing the medals, which is the very last feature that Divided doesn't have compared to Call of Combat.
Surprise...: We have secretely been working on a massively requested feature that will be unveiled at release.
Controls and hotkey settings: We have been working on UI and controls improvements (hotkey menu incoming!).
At the end of the Kickstarter campaign, we declared that we would never surrender, and we have yet to deliver our biggest blow.
Major Update Inbound
Biggest update since Early Access
This will be our biggest update in the Early Access period. Listening to all player feedback (both Call of Combat veterans and new players), we have brought a series of improvements both to tactical fights and to strategic planning.
Controlled gunfights
In this new update, gunfights have been made a lot more dynamic. During this Early Access, you gave us a lot of feedback about the balance between guns and grenades. So we decided to make guns better and easier to use efficiently.
Quick fire: We have added the possibility to quickly override how soldiers aim and make them fire instantly as soon as you double click on an enemy. This makes close quarter combat a lot more dynamic and adds options during intense grenade fights.
Hold aim: Now, you can also hold your soldiers' aim by holding the left mouse button in order to time your shots perfectly. This is useful if, for instance, you are waiting for the right moment when your target goes out of cover and becomes vulnerable even for a split second.
Grenades dynamic
We have also brought some cool changes to the grenade mechanics, all accessible by holding down the right mouse button.
Increased range: You can throw grenades a little bit further than normal range. Just start the throw at maximum range and see the range increase.
More accurate throw: Grenade throwing can now be inaccurate, especially under suppression. Holding the button will give you a more accurate aim though!
Grenade cooking: You can also cook the grenade and make it blow up quicker after the throw. Be careful, because it can blow up in your hand if you wait too long.
Weapons total revamp
We have revamped all extra weapons in order to bring more variety in combat and tactics.
SMG: It is now more reliable in short range under suppression, and we added the ability to fire while running for more close range devastation. The instant fire override is also quicker than with other weapons.
LMG: The ultimate suppressing weapon. The LMG will not be the most lethal weapon, nor the quickest, but it will allow you to create a wide kill zone that the enemy will not want to go through. It needs a bit of time to deploy though, so don't use it for close quarters combat.
SNIPER: Now a lot easier to use, especially with the new holding aim feature. It will now require less micro-management.
Both the sniper and the LMG have a new "area sweep" mode, where you can set a sweep angle and let your soldier cover that area automatically.
Suppression and pinning
Watch out, because too much suppressive fire will pin your soldiers down. Being pinned means that your soldier will have greatly reduced firing and grenading abilities, plus he will refuse to stand up when moving. The LMG will be the main weapon that can easily pin down multiple enemies, but enough concentrated fire from other weapons can achieve the same effect.
Strategic and planning
Last week we pushed an update with major changes to battle planning and briefing, you can read more details here.
Orders and strategic view - Commander can now deliver multiple orders to each player.
- Commander can also draw red arrows to indicate what might be the enemy's battle plan.
- Subordinates can suggest one order themselves, that the commander can either accept with one click, or override with new orders.
- Commander can finally select multiple players for the same order!
Weapon distribution easier - You can now give weapons to anyone, including your superiors
- Subordinates can also request weapons simply by clicking on the weapon name on the left screen
- If some weapons are left unassigned by any player, they will appear near the deployment zone when the game starts
Other major improvements since Early Access
Reinforcement game mode: After death your soldiers will respawn for some fun continuous action. Don't die too often though, as the time between respawns will increase quickly!
Map editor: Anyone can now try to create the next most popular map!
Tutorial: We have created a training ground for new players to get the main concepts of Divided We Fall. You can load it directly from the lobby.
New lobby: the first Early Access release was using a modified version of the Call of Combat lobby. Then Scowen came in and created a very nice looking modern lobby.
Major optimization pass: With some shader magic, and newer Unity versions, we managed to get over 100% framerate improvement on modest hardware.
What is the plan before release, you ask?
- Leveling, medals (like in CoCv1) and improved point system (losing pps, anyone?)
- General UI polish and improvements (feedback wanted)
- Improved regiment system
- We are also working on a couple of features that we are currently keeping as a surprise
