Two months ago, we updated Just Survive…and it wasn’t the prettiest update we’ve done in the game’s history.
We’ve taken a different approach to how we deal with Live patches since then. We’re communicating with you, the community, as much as we can about what we’re up to (and what you’re seeing) on Reddit and on Discord. We’re using Test heavily and repeatedly. If you’re unfamiliar with what we’ve been up to on Test since that last update, take a peek at these past Reddit posts here, here, and here and you’ll see what I mean. We listened to your feedback. We addressed issue after issue, tweaked, and resubmitted back to Test – not directly to Live. We intend to continue using Test just like this in the future.
This Live patch addresses a long list of issues so I’ll highlight just some of the more important ones: lag was a major issue with the last update. We’ve reduced it. Vehicle and base exploits were huge issues. We’ve addressed those. Loot balance was a little inconsistent before. We’ve tweaked that, too. Perhaps what’s been most important to me to address is simply how we interact with you, the Just Survive community. This starts by earning your trust back. It’s been a long two months, but I hope the team’s efforts with this update confirm our devotion to this game and to all of you.
In my first two months here, I’ve learned a ton about Just Survive and more importantly, about you guys. I can say beyond the shadow of a doubt that the core player base here is one of the most devoted I’ve personally ever seen in my career. That’s beyond inspiring to me. I’m not going to lie to you - we’re not always going to see eye to eye. We’re going to break a few things along the way. And we might not always fix things in the order you want us to. But I can promise you that I’ll always be straight with you and communicate with you on a regular basis. This means frequent updates on Reddit. It means doing AMAs now that we’ve restored the Live version of the game to something you will enjoy playing again. It means Community Outbreak streams with the JS team.
Most exciting to me is that it means finally being able to talk about what we have planned for 2017. What most people don’t know yet is that we have a core portion of the team that has been working on nothing but the future of Just Survive. We’ll finally get to start talking about that soon. Fix now, cool later. Right? We’re getting a lot closer.
Just Survive isn’t dead. Far from it. We’re just getting started.
We've made a ton of fixes you can see the full list of here!
Hello from Landon Montgomery -- New H1Z1: Just Survive GM
Hello Survivors!
My name is Landon Montgomery and I’m celebrating my second week here at Daybreak as the new General Manager of H1Z1: Just Survive. I wanted to say hello to the community and take a moment to give you some detail on me and my role. As GM, it’s my job to oversee Just Survive top to bottom and deliver on the existing and future promises of the game. Speaking of which, we have some really cool design plans forming up as I write this that I’ll be stoked to share with you in the coming months. Right now however, I’m focused on getting the live build to a solid, high quality state for the Just Survive community.
Leading up to and during the short time I have been here, I’ve been able to assess the Just Survive history both internally and externally. And, while I recognize that the past year has been a little frustrating for the loyal crowd, I know that the internal team is excited to push forward and do right by you, the players. It’s one of the reasons I’m here and why we’re actively building up the Just Survive team. We’ve added several key roles and we are excited to introduce these additional team members in the coming weeks.
In addition to forming a solid team, my main objectives for the development team are to communicate with you on a more frequent and consistent basis while also delivering against what we have communicated. Collectively, we want to focus on solid updates and quality content. The team is actively reading and listening to your discussions on Reddit and social and we have lots of ideas that we want to implement, but our key focus will be consistent delivery of well tested updates that don’t break other things.
Easy to say, right? So, why should you listen to me?
I’ve been in the game industry since 1996. I joined a studio back then by the name of Virtus where I co-developed the first id authorized third-party Quake level editor, Deathmatch Maker. After that, I spent time as a level designer and artist at Bethesda Softworks before moving to join the startup Rebel Boat Rocker. We worked on a FPS in the late ‘90s for EA called Prax War, but it was eventually cancelled. This turned out to be one of the luckiest moments in my life, and as a direct result, I was able to co-found Gearbox Software.
I did a bit of everything at Gearbox. By day, I was the COO. By night, I was an artist/animator/director/producer and so on. We all wore many hats those first few years. I spent some of the best years of my life at GBX. We’d worked on so many great IPs, from Half-Life to Halo, Tony Hawk to James Bond, and we’d successfully launched our own original IPs, Brothers in Arms and Borderlands. I’d accomplished so much of what I’d dreamed of doing at that point in my life, but decided it was time to shift focus to another important job– I just wanted to be a good dad. As a result, I was able to spend the first years of my little girl’s life right there with her. I got to see all of the magical first moments in person and I loved every minute of it.
Eventually I started to miss the gaming industry and took a contract gig with Nintendo that reignited my passion for developing games. It is my default setting and I knew it was time to come back.
When I started talking to Daybreak I came out here to San Diego to see things in person and realized almost immediately that I had to join this team. My past two weeks on site have solidified that the people here are amazing, the talent pool is deep, the passion and energy is through the roof, and the opportunities and abilities of the studio are super compelling. I’m really excited to be a part of this family.
We have so much planned for the Just Survive community and I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe in what we have in store for you all. In the coming weeks and months, I’ll be able to share some of these things with you. For now, I want to focus on stabilizing the live game and moving forward from there. You all deserve that and so much more to boot. I’ve seen what lies in store of for you guys. It’s beyond what’s been discussed to date and its cool stuff.
As we onboard new team members, we’ll likely do an AMA in the coming weeks so stay tuned for that. For now, I hope that the team and I can demonstrate our absolute dedication to Just Survive and you, the fans.
Lan
[H1Lan]
Dev Blog - Next Update
Hello fellow survivors!
My name is Justin (aka Mourde, pronounced “moored” if you’re interested) and I’m a Senior Systems Designer who recently joined the H1Z1: Just Survive team. Some of you may have already seen me posting on Twitter and Reddit, but for those of you who haven’t – hi! With an impending Just Survive update on the horizon I wanted to take a few minutes to review the changes you’ll be seeing. We’ve got a lot to go over. We’re bringing back a much-requested feature with some improved functionality, porting over some features originally developed for King of the Kill we think can add to the Just Survive experience, and we’ve got a couple bug fixes in there as well. So let’s dive on in and start with Bullet Crafting!
Bullet Crafting is back! Ammunition can now be salvaged for unique components with a right-click interaction from your inventory. These components can be used to discover recipes which will enable you to craft other bullet types. There is some loss built into this process though, so make sure you’re certain you don’t want that ammo before salvaging it! In addition, some will require additional parts beyond just what you gain from salvage. For example, shotgun shells take plastic (keep those empty water bottles handy…) and some of the more powerful ammunition will require metal scrap for assembly as well. To craft all these bullets you’re going to need to discover the recipe for the new Weapon Workbench. This will now be the go-to crafting table required for anything that’s using explosives or gunpowder. So, in addition to ammunition, other recipes like weapon disassembly and IEDs will require that you have proximity to this crafting table.
Moving on, we have ported the ignition/hotwire system from King of the Kill over to Just Survive. This means that any vehicles you find will have a new hotwire item present in the vehicle inventory. To start the engine, you’ll need to use a right-click interaction on the hotwire item, unless you’re lucky enough to have found one with a key! If the vehicle, you, or any of your passengers have a key with them, the vehicle will start right up. The real convenience of this is that you don’t need to spend time pulling the spark plugs anymore to keep your ride from getting jacked out from under you! Just keep your ears open for the hotwire sound (an engine attempting to turn over). If you hear that, hotfoot it back to your vehicle and blast that carjacker before they know what hit ‘em! For reference, your friendly neighborhood zombies also have a small chance of dropping a key, so keep your eyes open. One more small addition to vehicles - if you happen to end up upside-down, you can now exit the vehicle and interact with it to flip it back over. So commence the stunt jumps!
Beyond all this we’re chipping away at the bugs you’ve been reporting. While we regretfully are still working on a few base exploits, we have hit up some smaller quality of life issues. Baggy Blue Jeans for instance can now be skinned and we’ve updated a few miscellaneous item descriptions which had erroneous text in them (such as the Lighter). Also, if you drop the Skinning Knife, you can pick it up again. Finally, we’ve disabled dead players respawning as a zombie NPC. While the idea of this feature is sound, we’re not happy with its execution at this time. We’re taking it offline until such time as we can re-evaluate how it fits in to the bigger picture and ensure it’s working in a way that we’re happy with.
That’s all we’ve got for now, survivors. Thanks for playing!
-Mourde
Bullet Conversion
Edit: We've made a few changes since last week!
It’s been a little while since our last Just Survive Producer’s Letter, so we wanted to take a few minutes and give you an update on one of the things the team has been actively working. It’s been a regular topic of conversation for many of you and we have some good news! It’s about Bullet Conversion.
First and foremost we want to thank everyone for their feedback. While most of you agreed the previous bullet conversion mechanics could have potentially created a glut of ammunition, many expressed you’d still like this mechanic to return in a different way. So, Bullet Conversion is coming back, but with some big changes.
We really wanted the process to feel similar to how other item salvaging/creation works in H1Z1: Just Survive. As such, ammunition can be salvaged with a right-click interaction for a variety of materials -- Refined Gunpowder, Lead Alloy, Brass Shards (and Plastic Scraps in the case of shotgun shells). Also important is ammunition recipes can be discovered with these materials. Once discovered, they can be crafted at the new Weapon Workbench, which will be coming in a future update. The Weapon Workbench is a brand new crafting table (recipe must also be discovered) which can be placed once crafted Note that all weapon-related workbench recipes will be moved to this table as well.
Ammunition crafting costs have been balanced, so you will have to make some decisions about whether it’s worth the cost of breaking down a round to create a new one. You will lose something by disassembling and re-assembling bullets. (It’s the apocalypse, after all.) Additionally, more powerful ammunition (based on DPS) will cost more materials to craft. There will be no 1 to 1 bullet conversion.
With respect to bulk, we want to make sure you weren’t doubling your carrying load (or worse) when salvaging bullets, so we’ve reduced the bulk cost on Refined Gunpowder to 1. Brass Shards, Plastic Scraps, and Lead Alloy will cost 0 bulk. This will ensure that all ammo can be broken down without dropping any parts. In fact, from a carrying point of view, it will be advantageous to break down some ammo (such as shotgun shells or .44 rounds) as they will end up costing less to carry when broken apart. Just remember it will cost more to re-assemble them later!
To give you a more detailed idea of how this will function, let’s take a look at two rounds: a low end bullet and a high end one. For the low end we’ll use the .380 Round, as it possesses the lowest DPS at 230.35. For the high end we’ll use a .44 Round with a DPS of 1351.5.
.380 Salvage Yield:
.380 Assembly Cost:
.44 Salvage Yield
.44 Assembly Cost
As you can see, all ammo salvaging has some level of loss. Higher end bullets yield more materials, but also require more to assemble. We feel this system gives the right level of decision balance to the process, and is a more consistent way to deal with ammo as a resource in the world.
These changes are still in process, and we look forward to getting them in your hands soon so you can provide specific feedback. In the meantime, let us know what you think about the ideas presented here. I know everyone is eager to hear more about longer term plans and roadmaps. Our immediate goal is balancing the core of the game that is there now and then moving into new ideas. As those solidify, we will talk more about them at the right time.
Let us know what you think!
Bullet Conversion Changes
It’s been a little while since our last Just Survive Producer’s Letter, so we wanted to take a few minutes and give you an update on one of the things the team has been actively working. It’s been a regular topic of conversation for many of you and we have some good news! It’s about Bullet Conversion.
First and foremost we want to thank everyone for their feedback. While most of you agreed the previous bullet conversion mechanics could have potentially created a glut of ammunition, many expressed you’d still like this mechanic to return in a different way. So, Bullet Conversion is coming back, but with some big changes.
We really wanted the process to feel similar to how other item salvaging/creation works in H1Z1: Just Survive. As such, ammunition can be salvaged with a right-click interaction for a variety of materials -- Gunpowder, Lead Alloy, Brass Shards (and Plastic Scraps in the case of shotgun shells). Also important is ammunition recipes can be discovered with these materials. Once discovered, they can be crafted at the new Weapon Workbench, which will be coming in a future update. The Weapon Workbench is a brand new crafting table (recipe must also be discovered) which can be placed once crafted Note that all weapon-related workbench recipes will be moved to this table as well.
Ammunition crafting costs have been balanced, so you will have to make some decisions about whether it’s worth the cost of breaking down a round to create a new one. You will lose something by disassembling and re-assembling bullets. (It’s the apocalypse, after all.) Additionally, more powerful ammunition (based on DPS) will cost more materials to craft. There will be no 1 to 1 bullet conversion.
With respect to bulk, we want to make sure you weren’t doubling your carrying load (or worse) when salvaging bullets, so we’ve reduced the bulk cost on Gunpowder to 1. Brass Shards, Plastic Scraps, and Lead Alloy will cost 0 bulk. This will ensure that all ammo can be broken down without dropping any parts. In fact, from a carrying point of view, it will be advantageous to break down some ammo (such as shotgun shells or .44 rounds) as they will end up costing less to carry when broken apart. Just remember it will cost more to re-assemble them later!
To give you a more detailed idea of how this will function, let’s take a look at two rounds: a low end bullet and a high end one. For the low end we’ll use the .380 Round, as it possesses the lowest DPS at 230.35. For the high end we’ll use a .44 Round with a DPS of 1351.5.
.380 Salvage Yield:
1 Gunpowder
1 Lead Alloy
1 Brass Shard
.380 Assembly Cost:
2 Gunpowder
1 Lead Alloy
1 Brass Shard
.44 Salvage Yield
1 Gunpowder
3 Lead Alloy
1 Brass Shards
.44 Assembly Cost
2 Gunpowder
3 Lead Alloy
1 Brass Shards
1 Metal Shards
As you can see, all ammo salvaging has some level of loss. Higher end bullets yield more materials, but also require more to assemble. We feel this system gives the right level of decision balance to the process, and is a more consistent way to deal with ammo as a resource in the world.
Salvage Tied from Ammo:
Ammo Recipe Cost:
These changes are still in process, and we look forward to getting them in your hands soon so you can provide specific feedback. In the meantime, let us know what you think about the ideas presented here. I know everyone is eager to hear more about longer term plans and roadmaps. Our immediate goal is balancing the core of the game that is there now and then moving into new ideas. As those solidify, we will talk more about them at the right time.
Producer's Letter 8/19
It has been quite some time since I have taken the time to talk about Just Survive and where we are headed with it. I realize there will be some vagaries below in terms of details, but that is not because I am trying to be secretive and more due to us going through a lot of discussing/planning to get things lined up.
Let’s start by talking about the short term. When I reference the short term, I am talking about the next 2 months or so and our focus is on cleanup and bug fixing. We’ve seen your feedback on things like the zombie resurrection and dying in bases and other recent bugs and want to get those fixed up. Other changes are being revisited as we look at the feedback and reaction to recent changes to see if those still hold up. We also are examining any positive changes that we did not bring over from King of the Kill such as the ability to flip vehicles over. From a new feature perspective, we have some cool functionality which will add goals to the game by giving a score for how well you are surviving in the environment. This score will accumulate over a set period of time before the server is wiped (including the scores) and then it starts all over again. You’ll be able to compare with others and see if you can best your previous score. This is well in progress internally, but we need to spend some time playtesting and tuning it before it is ready to go out to all of you. Once we get closer I will provide a lot more detailed info on how the scoring works, the trade-offs, and decisions that you will need to make as a player.
That takes us into longer term planning and what our thinking is in terms of focus for at least the foreseeable future. This work is beginning now, but they are some large endeavors and will take some time to implement, tune, test, and deploy. This is why they end up in the longer term bucket. We are getting back to the core of the experience; re-examining and re-balancing all of those elements of the game. From melee, wildlife, zombie AI, base building, recipe balance, body sim, all of it.
Bullet conversion is also back on the table and we are going to look for your feedback to help decide how you would want it reimplemented if at all. We are committed to raising the quality getting it to a place that we are proud of by making it distinct and enjoyable. It’ll get back to some of what I talked about when I first joined the team. I want the experience to be challenging and really drive towards making you feel the tension of having to survive in a brutal world. Along the way as we group this work together for updates, we will be sure to talk about the details and timelines. Your takeaway should be essentially no corner of the game is going un-examined.
Special note on Z2. We are still wrapping Z2 up to be ready for King of the Kill, bug free and fully optimized. Once we hit that milestone, we need to do some work to prepare it for Just Survive. It is hard to give you a timeline until we really dive into the work, but as soon as we have an idea of when that lines up, I will be sure to talk about it and our plans to start getting the new map into Just Survive.
Our team lost a few great team members this week. This is normal in game development, as they had a great new opportunity to explore that really spoke to them. I know they will do great there, as I know we will fill in and continue to drive forward with where we ultimately see the game going.
More than anything, I am really excited. The discussions and plans that we have been putting down are really going to result in a great experience. As usual, we have more ideas than we can possibly handle, but we are getting the priorities straight and I am really optimistic over where the game is going to go.
Game Update + Wipe 8/11
Servers will be coming down at 9:45PM PT for approximately 4 hours on Thursday 8/11. This publish requires a player and world wipe due to bug fixes regarding base tampers and durability.
New Features
A set of unique zombies have been seen roaming the area. These zombies hold the secrets to a new set of exotic and powerful weapons.
Players who succumb to the harsh realities of H1Z1 will now come back as one of the horde. These zombies will appear wearing the same gear they had when they died.
Quality of Life Changes
Respawn selection has had some improvements added
You will no longer be able to respawn within an area around where you died.
This area is a 9 grid diameter around your corpse
You cannot respawn within that grid for 5 minutes
If you die close to the grid any overlapping grid will inherit the lockout time form your previous death
Text chat is now enabled. Press enter to open chat bar
Made the following changes to the limited base building rules
Bases can now be built in the Villas
Campfires can now be placed anywhere
Flares can now be placed anywhere
Added limited base building to the Krakow server
Performance Enhancements
Improved server performance to reduce lag on high-pop and zombie intensive servers
More parallelization of core game and graphics systems for better performance on multi-core cpus
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue the prevented Zombies from damaging vehicles
Fixed an issue which allowed tampers to be stacked
Fixed an issue that allowed players to prevent the loss of durability on certain tools
Players now start with a basic compass instead of an improvised one
Combat Feedback
Reticle now indicates that firing is disabled and character will enter a passive stance.
Thrown weapons now display a tracer, only visible to the person throwing them, making their path of flight more apparent.
Vehicles
Vehicles handling has been improved
Vehicles are less susceptible to flipping
Vehicles have been modified to have varied characteristics:
The police car is the fastest.
The off roader has the best handling.
The pickup truck is the toughest.
Passengers in the rear of the pickup truck can stand up to shoot forward and crouch to take cover and shoot behind.
Flipped vehicles have more realistic friction, won’t be drivable using turbo
The following vehicle sounds have been improved:
Engine and turbo
Tire squeal when turning on pavement
Braking sounds.
Vehicles also now have horns [Default: J].
We’ve made some physics tweaks that should have vehicles exploding unexpectedly far less and doing the correct amount of damage when they do explode.
Server Maintenance 1 AM PT July 28th
All Just Survive servers will come down for maintenance beginning at 1:00 AM PT (8 AM GMT) for maintenance. Downtime is anticipated to be approximately 3 hours. Players can note the following changes:
The new Ronin Crate is now available
Loot bags & items inside them have been marked tradeable.
Unlocked crates can no longer be traded or sold on the Steam Marketplace.
The R380 pistol is now available again with improved stats!
Important Information Regarding Marketplace Items
On July 25th, 2016 we will be removing the ability to sell certain older H1Z1 crate items on the Steam Marketplace. Crate items have been marked trade only since Mercenary Crates were released last year. This change brings the older (pre-Mercenary Crate) items in line with the rest of the crate items in the game. Please note that crates themselves can still be traded and sold on the Steam marketplace.
Producer's Letter For July 13th
Hey everyone!
It’s been a while since I posted one of these. Although I do apologize for the extended dry period, I do want to clarify my update cadence going forward. As you noticed last update, our current build was on the Test Server for a good amount of time. This supports our general philosophy that publishes remain on test until they reach a quality level we are comfortable with. I know some of you are thinking, “Yea, there were still bugs in that publish”. Fact is, H1Z1 has been receiving a lot of changes under the hood and we just adopted some of the combat improvements from KOTK which we feel are relevant to JS. This includes many bug fixes and performance adjustments. As much as we would love to avoid a single issue, as soon as we publish an update to the masses, issues tend to show themselves more rapidly. We are happy that we could turn a lot of these around quickly and we want to thank all of you who helped us out by reporting issues.
Moving forward, you can expect an official updated from me AFTER we do a live publish. This way, you get the new stuff and you see what’s coming next. Pretty straightforward!
So, what’s happen in development? As usual, no guarantees for release date of the following topics. They’ll go live when they’re ready and they will hit the Test Server first!
Weapon enhancement recipes You’ll now be able to kill rare zombies to find prototype weapon parts. You’ll combine these prototype parts with normal weapons to discover a recipe. The newly crafted weapon will have special abilities and stats. They will also have finite lifetime and cannot be repaired. So, save these for a “Special” occasion.
Upon death You player will now rise as a zombie. So you or your friends will have to….um….kill you again to get your stuff back. Should be fun!
Boss zombie experimentation I don’t want to spill the beans too much on this one. As we continue growing Just Survive, we’re always looking for ways to introduce new play loops into the game. Having boss encounters plays well with many of the things we want to do going forward. So, don’t be surprised if you run across a more vicious situation sometime soon. And you thought bears were scary! Hah!
Survival Score Servers: We’re putting together another server ruleset. This one is designed around the notion of “How well did I survive?”
It’s going to work something like this:
A few designated servers will be on an auto wipe system. Every XX weeks (1, 2 or 3 possibly) the world will end. The server will wipe itself and give a final score to each player. This score is accumulated and displayed in the UI as you are playing. You’ll get points for things like zombie kills, recipe discovery... Etc. Think of it as a more advanced version of the death screen when it presents your end stats. Past scores will be available for some undetermined length of time also.
We are still designing and working out the kinks with this one and you can expect to play it on the Test Server first to provide your own feedback.
Expect to hear more about this in the future.
Limited Base Building Couple fixes:
The Villas are being opened for base building
Campfires, torches and flares are no longer restricted from the rule
Sorry Krakow players….we missed you in the rule update. You are getting the rule also.
Exploiters We are fully aware of the current exploits going on. We do not speak publically regarding steps being taken when dealing with this sort of thing. But I will say, if you are caught exploiting, you will be banned. Please pass it along
Loot For a long time now, loot has been in a state which wasn’t on par with a survival experience. We’ve read all your posts; we’ve gone invisible and observed many players. We’ve checked high, low and medium pop servers. We spoke to many players live in chat.
I’m sorry if we’ve given you the easy life in the past but times need to change a bit. In a nutshell, the current loot drop rates are intended. Building a base was never intended to be a simple task btw…
That’s all I have for now.
Peace out and see you all in game!
