This will be a regular series where we’ll take a look at what the team is focusing their attention on this week, as well as their response to some of the top community feedback and suggestions we’ve received. You can also get a peek at the content and blogs planned for this week.
Developer Focus Here, we’ll talk about some of the top topics that the team is working on this week. This isn’t their only focus - we’ll be highlighting only the main topics they’re focused on:
Console: Getting Scavengers ready to come to console is a huge priority. We’re constantly testing the console version internally to get it ready for public testing. We still don’t have a date when that may happen, but will let you know as soon as we have more information.
Bugs and Issues: Right now, the team is focused on fixing the bugs and issues that you have been reporting.
Continue Working on Upcoming Features: Our next game update is getting closer and we’re knuckling down to complete those features.
Improving Anti-Cheat: We’re continuing to improve our anti-cheat measures. Providing a fair game for all our players is very important, and we won’t stop working to prevent cheating.
Performance Optimization and Stability: Optimization and improving stability continues to be a core focus for our team. We’re interested in hearing any performance issues you may experience, so we can work to correct them.
Player Retention: Another continuing focus for us is to improve our player retention.. We want Scavengers to be a game that players are excited to return to, time and time again and we’ll be working on this through systems for both new and experienced players.
Top Community Feedback
We’re on this Scavengers journey with you, and we want to improve and refine the game with the feedback and suggestions from our community. Although the team is constantly going through your feedback and incorporating them into our updates and hotfixes, we haven’t had a really good way to let you know what might be coming in the medium to long term.
So, every week, we'll share our thoughts on some of the top community feedback topics that we’ve been seeing on our platforms. We may work on some of these for a future update; some of these could be part of a long-term plan and might not have a date for when they’ll arrive in Scavengers. Others, we may be investigating or considering adding, but can’t promise that you’ll see them in the game. Finally, for some, we want to continue hearing your feedback and thoughts on, to ensure we’re considering the right way to approach it. Let’s break them down:
Future Update:
For these, we’re planning to add them to Scavengers at some point, but don’t have a confirmed release date yet. They are part of our mid to long-term plans, so it could be months before they are available in-game.
Proxima Grenades: We’ve heard your feedback on the Proxima grenades. It’s not much fun to see a player on the enemy team run at you, loaded with Proxima grenades. While we’re not removing the ability to attach a Proxima grenade to an ally, we will be making changes to how it works in a future update.
End Game Content: We’re getting feedback that after Researching the high tier weapons and Talents and creating your ideal loadout, there isn’t much left to strive for. We’re investigating different ways we can continue to engage and excite our dedicated, end game players.
Interesting:
We’re interested in adding these to the game and are currently looking into how it might work. We don’t have any definite plans, so they may or may not be added in a future update.
Kill Feed UI: Right now, the UI isn’t where it should be so that you can clearly and easily know who killed you. This is something that we’re interested in addressing at some point in the future.
Research QoL Improvements: There are several quality of life improvements that could be added to the Research system, including making it clear what materials are needed for locked Research projects. We’re interested in looking into what QoL improvements we can make for our Research system.
Make 1st Place Finish Rewarding: You’ve fought the entire match, defeated AI and players, collected the most Datapoints, and successfully extracted... only to feel the rewards are less than satisfying. We want a first place finish to feel exciting and are looking into ways to make that happen.
Upcoming Blogs
Here’s where we’ll keep you updated on what blog content you might see!
This is a light week as we prepare communication for the upcoming game update.
There will be a small Hotfix this week to address game crashes.
We love seeing Scavengers fan art, videos and livestreams and are excited to share that content in a Community Roundup.
We’re committed to creating Scavengers with our amazing players. Please share your feedback and suggestions with us!
June 8th Hotfix
Explorers,
The downtime has ended and the servers should now be back online!
In this hotfix, we’ve fixed the Blink and Mag Break Talents and ensure Research materials are tracked properly. Keep reading to learn the full details.
Real Money Shop Transactions
With this hotfix, we have expanded the Shop functionality. Players are now able to purchase Chip bundles through Steam real money transactions. You can read more about this in our recent blog.
Bug Fixes
Fixed: Research materials are now tracked correctly
Fixed: Blink Talent no longer sometimes makes the Explorer permanently invisible
Fixed: Taking damage now correctly removes the Blink Talent buff
Fixed: Blink Talent now works properly with Kali’s ability
Fixed: Mag Break Talent now correctly gives stamina while sprinting
Fixed: When Mag Break Talent is active, crossbows now award the same amount of stamina as bows
Fixed: Removed duplicate ‘Classic’ skin for Sidekick
Fixed: Corrected an issue where shooting a target with armor or shield left them with 1 HP
Adjusted: Smooth Moves Talent now only speeds up the next reload after dodging (5 second duration)
All the changes, updates and hotfixes we roll out are direct results of all the amazing feedback, bug-reporting and suggestions that come directly from our community. Thank you and please keep sharing your feedback with us!
Downtime Notification for June 8th
Explorers,
Scavengers will have a scheduled downtime on Tuesday, June 8th at 8:00 AM PT / 4:00 PM BST to deploy a hotfix. During this time, the game will be unavailable.
The downtime is expected to last approximately 2 hours.
Please note that the estimated duration of this update time is subject to change.
Turning on Real Money Transactions
Explorers,
We’ve been working on expanding the functionality of the Shop and we’re just about ready to take the next step - turning on real money transactions by offering Chip bundles.
You’ll be able to purchase these bundles in-game through Steam. Any purchases that you make are permanent. They are yours to keep forever and we won’t wipe or revert them in the future.
Enabling real money transactions now is an important part of Early Access as it allows us to set up systems in the Shop to prepare for future expansions. We’re taking the time to test and develop the Shop’s functionality during Early Access. Our current goal isn’t to generate a lot of revenue - the focus is on developing key systems.
Right now, the cosmetic skins available in the Shop are pretty lean, as we want to focus on functionality of the transactions over the breadth of options (for now). These cosmetic skins cover a variety of items, from Backpacks to Keepers, weapons and Explorers, but the selection is limited. We’ll continue to design new and exciting cosmetic items to be released in the future.
We would love to get your thoughts and feedback as we continue to develop Scavengers with you!
Our Focus this Week!
Explorers,
We’re back with our latest Weekly Focus blog!
This will be a regular series where we’ll take a look at what the team is focusing their attention on this week, as well as their response to some of the top community feedback and suggestions we’ve received. You can also get a peek at the content and blogs planned for this week.
Developer Focus
Here we’ll talk about some of the top topics that the team is working on this week. This isn’t their only focus - we’ll be highlighting only the main topics they’re focused on:
Hotfix: We’re getting ready to roll out another hotfix tomorrow! This one is focused on fixing reported bugs and issues, including several hot topics within the community. Full Hotfix Notes will be released tomorrow, but check out the highlights:
The Blink Talent no longer allows an Explorer to become permanently invisible and the Mag Break Talent correctly gives stamina while sprinting
Smooth Moves Talent now only speeds up the next reload after dodging
Real Money Transactions: We’re getting ready to update the Shop with new Chip bundles, which will be purchasable with real money.
Upcoming Game Update: We’re closing out some feature work for our next game update! This includes changes to the respawn system that we were working on last week. We’ll share more details on upcoming features as we get closer to the update.
Improving Anti-Cheat: We’re continuing to improve our anti-cheat measures. Providing a fair game for all our players is very important, and we won’t stop working to prevent cheating.
Performance Optimization: Another ongoing goal of Early Access is to continue optimizing the game.
Top Community Feedback
We’re on this Scavengers journey with you, and we want to improve and refine the game with the feedback and suggestions from our community. Although the team is constantly going through your feedback and incorporating them into our updates and hotfixes, we haven’t had a really good way to let you know what might be coming in the medium to long term.
So, every week, we'll share our thoughts on some of the top community feedback topics that we’ve been seeing on our platforms. We may work on some of these for a future update; some of these could be part of a long-term plan and might not have a date for when they’ll arrive in Scavengers. Others, we may be investigating or considering adding, but can’t promise that you’ll see them in the game. Finally, for some, we want to continue hearing your feedback and thoughts on, to ensure we’re considering the right way to approach it. Let’s break them down:
Interesting: We’re interested in adding these to the game and are currently looking into how it might work. We don’t have any definite plans, so they may or may not be added in a future update.
Dropship Timer: The 5 minute timer after the Dropship lands works great for last-minute team fights as the game ends. But when there’s been a full lobby wipe and your team is the last one standing, waiting out that timer isn’t much fun. We’re looking into adjusting it so if there is only one team left standing, the Dropship will extract sooner.
Organizing Friends List: We’ve heard your feedback that the Friends List organization isn’t intuitive or clear enough. We’re interested in seeing what changes can be made to make it easier to know who is online and who is already in a game.
Friend and Party Pending Invites: Making it easier to know when you have a pending invite, especially if you missed the initial notification, is also something we’re interested in investigating.
Challenges: There’s nothing as frustrating as having a Challenge that you just can’t complete, especially ones where your level is too low to complete.
Matchmaking Improvements: We’ve heard your feedback - the disparity between new players and those who have unlocked higher Research tiers can feel huge. We’re looking into what can be done to improve matchmaking but that won’t likely come for a while.
Upcoming Blogs
Here’s where we’ll keep you updated on what blog content you might see!
We’re rolling out another hotfix this week. Keep an eye out for Hotfix Notes detailing the issues fixed. This hotfix also enables real money transactions in the Shop which we’ll talk about in a separate Real Money Transactions blog.
We have a new Dev Insights blog coming up this week! We share some behind-the-scenes thinking and planning that goes into making Scavengers.
The team answers more questions in another Questions of the Week blog! Share your questions on Discord, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram and it could be in a future blog.
We’re committed to creating Scavengers with our amazing players. Please share your feedback and suggestions with us!
ScavLab May Event Recap
Explorers,
On Saturday, May 29th, we ran our first public, large-scale gathering with ScavLab and it was incredible! A HUGE thank you to everyone who joined in with us!
If you missed the event, here’s the lowdown on what we got up to.
WHAT HAPPENED:
Over 4,000 of you joined in to help us test ScavLab, and we had an absolute blast, sliding, gathering datapoints and battling Thresh with you!
For us, ScavLab is an experimental platform that we’re building, and being able to do so with players as patient and supportive as you makes it all the more worthwhile and fun! Because of its experimental nature, we expect hitches and the occasional crash along the way, and we did see a hiccup at the start of the event.
Our server crashed, just as everyone was booting into ScavLab. This had nothing to do with the number of players joining, but it was still an unplanned incident that we were able to fix. You all patiently waited (thank you!); we resolved the issue quickly and everyone was back in ScavLab with minimal disruption.
This is only the second time we’ve done this and each time, we’ve doubled our participants, so we’re learning a lot with each step! We’re also thinking of running some more casual, lower-stress events to continue testing new mechanics in the future. We’ll let you know when we have more details on these gatherings.
PARTICIPATION REWARD:
To say thank you to everyone who joined us for this first-ever public gathering - and for your patience, while we fixed the server issue - we’re awarding the following free goodies:
200 chips
Orbital debris (rare resources)
Custom title: SIMULATOR
These items have already been gifted to you, and you should find them in your accounts now.
CHECK OUT SCAVLAB:
If you missed the event and want a taste of what it was like, check out our video!
[previewyoutube="thpJebPxXSo;full"] While most of this is from our closed event in April, it’s a very accurate representation of what happens in a ScavLab event - masses of players, giant Josh and Messenger Chris, hordes of enemies, freefall sliding and all!
For those of you completely new to the concept of ScavLab and wondering exactly what it is, you can also check out our previous ScavLab blog for more information!
Our ScavLab team continues to work on testing and experimenting with this exciting space, so stay tuned for future news and updates!
June 3rd Hotfix
Explorers,
In this hotfix, we’ve reverted the controller sticky aim changes and continued fixing bugs and issues. Keep reading to learn the full details.
Revert Aim Assist Change
In the May 26th update, we increased the strength of sticky aim. We hoped that this would improve the experience for those of you using a controller. Based on your feedback, however, we realized this isn’t the case - we actually made it worse. In this hotfix, we’re reverting our change.
Revert: Decreased the strength of the sticky aim for controllers to pre-May 26th update levels
Bug Fixes
Fixed: All players can purchase items in the game Shop
Fixed: High value objectives no longer spawn inside the circle storm
Fixed: Challenges correctly reward Chips when completed
Fixed: Slide audio is no longer stuck in a loop
Fixed: Players are now correctly credited the Scrap used if the Keeper is canceled when opening the Supply Drop
Fixed: Players can no longer accidentally purchase an item in the Shop twice
Fixed: Curtain Call emote now works in-game
Fixed: Players no longer desync after reviving a teammate
All the changes, updates and hotfixes we roll out are direct results of all the amazing feedback, bug-reporting and suggestions that come directly from our community. Thank you and please keep sharing your feedback with us!
What’s Happening This Week
Explorers,
We’re excited to share our first Weekly Focus blog!
This will be a regular series where we’ll take a look at what the team is focusing their attention on this week, as well as their response to some of the top community feedback and suggestions we’ve received. You can also get a peek at the content and blogs planned for this week.
Developer Focus
Here we’ll talk about some of the top topics that the team is working on this week. This isn’t their only focus - we’ll be highlighting only the main topics they’re focused on:
Fixing bugs and known issues, improving performance optimization, and making improvements to the anti-cheat: These are always a top focus for the team. We’ll continue to release hotfixes to deal with those pesky bugs and issues while continuing to address some of the tougher issues.
Console: Getting Scavengers ready for a console release is a huge focus for our team. The recent progression wipe was a part of that prep work, and now we’re holding internal playtests. We don’t have a date for the console release; however, we are working hard to get it ready for our players.
Hotfix: We’re getting ready to roll out another hotfix this week! This one is focused on bug fixes and improving how the controller feels based on your feedback.
Expanding the Shop: We’re working on expanding the functionality within the shop as well as adding more content to it.
Quality of Life Improvements: In a future game update, we’ll introduce some quality of life improvements that you’ve been asking for! We’ll talk more about these improvements as we get closer to releasing them.
Resurrection and Respawn System: We’re working on changing how the resurrection and respawn system work. We want death in the game to feel a bit more risky and think these changes will hit the spot. We’ll have more details as we get closer to releasing the updated systems.
Top Community Feedback
We’re on this Scavengers journey with you, and we want to improve and refine the game with the feedback and suggestions from our community. Although the team is constantly going through your feedback and incorporating them into our updates and hotfixes, we haven’t had a really good way to let you know what might be coming in the medium to long term.
So, every week, we'll share our thoughts on some of the top community feedback topics that we’ve been seeing on our platforms. We may work on some of these for a future update; some of these could be part of a long-term plan and might not have a date for when they’ll arrive in Scavengers. Others, we may be investigating or considering adding, but can’t promise that you’ll see them in the game. Finally, for some, we want to continue hearing your feedback and thoughts on, to ensure we’re considering the right way to approach it. Let’s break them down:
Future Update:
For these, we’re planning to add them to Scavengers at some point, but don’t have a confirmed release date yet. They are part of our mid to long-term plans, so it could be months before they are available in-game.
Weapon Stats: We’re definitely interested in adding some weapon stats directly in the game at some point in the future!
Player Stats: We’ve heard you - you want to be able to track your own stats, to see how well you’re performing in a match. This is definitely something we want to add in the future.
Shoulder Swap: This has been a regular feedback point since even before Early Access started. You want to be able to swap your weapon to make peeking around corners easier! This will likely come in a future update but we don’t currently have an ETA on when it will be included.
Under Investigation:
We’re interested in adding these to the game and are currently looking into how it might work. We don’t have any definite plans, so they may or may not be added in a future update.
Reconnecting to a match: Currently, when you crash or exit the game, you have no way to reconnect to your current match. We’re investigating how to improve that, so that we can get you back into the action and playing with your squad.
Dealing with AFK players or Leavers: We’ve heard you loud and clear. It’s no fun when one (or two!) members of your team leave right after the match has started or before respawning. We don’t have any definite plans, but we’re looking into how we can make this experience better for our players.
More Feedback Requested:
This is where we need your help! We’ve heard your feedback, but would love more input on a few things. These items aren’t guaranteed as part of our long-term plans, so please continue sharing your feedback on these topics on Discord!
Switch between Toggle and Hold: Crouch, sprint, Inventory, leaderboard - there are multiple elements within the game that could alternate between toggle and hold. Our question to you is: What element(s) would you like the option to switch between Toggle and Hold? And, are you happy to have one setting switch for Toggle and Hold that controls everything?
Flexible Key Bindings: We’re heard your feedback that you’re interested in customizing your key bindings. We’d like to know - how do you see this working? Is it complete customization to rebind all actions? Or is it the ability to bind specific items to certain keys? Perhaps it's something else altogether. Let us know what you think!
Upcoming Blogs
Here’s where we’ll keep you updated on what blog content you might see!
This week is a light week on the blog front but keep an eye out for the Hotfix Notes, shortly before the hotfix goes live.
We held our first public ScavLab event this past Saturday, May 29th and have a quick ScavLab May Event Recap for those who weren’t able to attend!
We’re also starting back up our Questions of the Week series, where the team answers your development questions! Share your questions on Discord, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram and it could be in a future blog!
This week also features our second Community Roundup, where we highlight cool fan art, videos and livestreams from the Scavengers community!
If you’re a creator making awesome Scavengers art, neat GIFs, great guides and awesome creations in general, please share them with us! Tag us into your work and they could be featured in the next roundup or on our social channels!
We’re committed to creating Scavengers with our amazing players. Please share your feedback and suggestions and let us know your thoughts on our focus topics.
Early Access Month 1: For Keeps
Hi Explorers,
JoshingtonState back again! Hard to believe it’s been a month since we launched into Early Access—it feels like the time has come and gone so quickly.
Your feedback and engagement throughout all of this has been incredible, and we hope that with this week’s latest update, you’ll be even more excited about the future of Scavengers. I’ll do my best to reflect on the journey so far, share some thoughts on what’s next, and show some of our thinking on major decisions.
WHY WIPE?
We’ve heard some of you wondering why we’re wiping so early. We considered many options (like wiping multiple times or only wiping closer to launch), but ultimately decided to do it now for three major reasons:
One, that it would be better to wipe earlier than later so as not to punish early adopters (your engagement should matter!)
Two, having no wipe looming means we can get even more valuable data and feedback on Scavengers’ progression systems. Knowing you’re playing ‘for keeps’ means things really matter and that should be reflective of your playtime. Is it worth it to grind out to the highest tiers of research? Maybe not if a wipe was coming, but now that it’s all yours forever, please let us know what you think
Third and finally, getting past final wipe means we get one step closer to console testing, as well getting our other systems online, like cosmetics and shop purchases
We’ve also heard your concern around Scavengers potentially getting ‘top-heavy’ favored toward veteran players with better loadout options, especially if they can get paired against new players. As a result of this feedback, we’ve already made some changes to the ordering and structure of unlocks via the research system. We’ll continue keeping a close eye on this and have heard some of your suggestions (level or skill-based matchmaking seems to be a common one) as well!
Hopefully that explains our thinking, but rest-assured we’ll continue to tune and update all aspects of Scavengers to build a fun game for everyone.
ONE MILLION EXPLORERS HAVE PLAYED SCAVENGERS
Scavengers has also seen over two and a half million hours played since the start of Early Access! This is a huge milestone, and it’s thanks to all of you. Maybe more of you will come in after our final wipe, but we’re not chasing numbers; we just want to make Scavengers the best experience for those who enjoy PvEvP survival shooters. It is nice to share though ;)
YOU’RE ALL INVITED TO OUR NEXT LIVE SCAVLAB EVENT!
We’re operating on a ‘first come, first served’ basis and can hold up to 5,000 of you—I hope you’ll show up! If you weren’t here before the launch of Early Access, we threw a private, pre-launch, community gathering in ScavLab, our experimental gameplay testing platform that can host thousands of players simultaneously. During the event, we had a massive sliding/data-collection race, bounced players around the mountains, and battled thousands upon thousands of Thresh on a lake.
This time around, we’ll be trying out a lot of the same features and gameplay mechanics as last time, but hopefully with more of you in attendance. In this edition of ScavLab, I’ll be hanging out—live!—with all of you, as well as sharing some future content teases for Scavengers.
To get into ScavLab, you do not need to download anything new: just log into Scavengers on May 29, before 11am PT / 7pm BST and queue up for ScavLab (you’ll see it in your queue selection) before it kicks off. If you want to join the ScavLab conversation already happening, join our ScavLab chat channels in Discord!
CONSOLE?
Still working on it! As I mentioned last month: “. . .expect this to be a matter of months, not weeks. Staying nimble and focused on one platform helps us ensure Scavengers is fun to play before going wide and multi-platform.”
WHAT ELSE ARE YOU WORKING ON?
Anti-cheat, performance, optimizations, and bugfixes. These remain priorities for us, even with our larger updates in the works. We hope that as Early Access progresses, your game performance and experience has been improving and, if not, please continue to give us feedback. We’re listening!
Thinning the “dropship rush” crowd. We’re still working on some longer-term solutions, but have heard a lot of your feedback that the final few minutes of getting onto the dropship feel like pure chaos. We attribute a lot of this to too many groups making it to the endgame. Expect to see us making more adjustments here, but directionally you’ve already seen a number of balance changes made to incentivize ‘thinning’ out the endgame crowd (like rewards for full-team wipes). We also want to add...
More PvE strategy. We mentioned this last time and are still working on this, but similar to creating more incentives for PvP, we also want to create more PvE strategy and incentives, including things like the ability to leave early with your prizes (so ‘opting out’ of the final rush, but with its own risks and tradeoffs)
More direct communications. We’re going to start trying out a “weekly focus” series to more clearly communicate what the team’s prioritizing in the coming week. You may see less of my updates as a result, but know that Scavengers has always been a team effort, so we’re just trying to communicate as a whole team as well
… and that’s all for today! Once again, be sure to join us in ScavLab on May 29, at 11am PT / 7pm BST as we hang out and share a few hints at what’s to come. You don’t need to download any new client, just start the regular Scavengers client and queue up!
Keep warm.
Josh & the Midwinter Team
May 28th Hotfix
Explorers,
We are deploying a hotfix to address some known issues. We’re continuing to investigate and correct other issues that have been reported by you during Early Access. Keep an eye out for additional bug fixes in future updates.
Bug Fixes
Fixed: Cruz’ sprint speed is no longer reduced when he gets hit
Fixed: Party leader unable to leave the match after canceling the return to Sanctuary message
Fixed: Players now receive the correct weapon when crafting Kali’s Heartseeker X-Fyre
Fixed: A teammate’s death interrupted the Keeper for another player
Fixed: Incorrect upload speeds at the Data Uplink for teams with less than 3 members
Fixed: Explorers can no longer fall through an area in Barricade
Continue fixing server crash issues
Under Investigation: Removed the ‘Party Join Failure’ message while we investigate why players are unable to dismiss the message. There is a small chance that you may not exit the game with your party - we are currently investigating this issue as well
