We must remember Chernobyl, because the past may return if we do not remember and respect it.
Survarium
35 YEARS SINCE THE CHERNOBYL DISASTER. WE REMEMBER!
We must remember Chernobyl, because the past may return if we do not remember and respect it.
Survarium Q&A - March 2021
Join our official Discord and submit your own suggestions if you'd like to see them answered. The ones with the most upvotes will be passed along to the devs whenever possible!
1. New maps for Search and Destroy mode.
There's many players who almost always play only Search and Destroy game mode. There's also many players voicing concerns about the already not so new Duga map. Add a part of Duga map or some other map to S&D mode and pump some fresh air for the part of the community that likes playing this mode. There's only 3 maps + 1 variation for this mode. Plus, players are forced to play it in Ranked.
Answer: S&D has always been the least popular game mode in Survarium after Battery Retrieval: both by percentage of total matches and the number of people playing in the mode. You might argue that's because there are not many maps, but actually S&D was not that popular from the start. So we won't spend effort by adding content for something that less than 10% of the player base enjoys.
In fact, we were thinking of disabling both S&D and Battery Retrieval because they are so unpopular just to speed up the matchmaking for other modes. But eventually decided that variety is more important, and you can choose other game modes when queuing to improve the matchmaking.
By the way, 25% of all S&D matches in the last month were played in Ranked mode. Also, 35% of all ranked matches are S&D. But it's only because it's easier to gather a 5v5 match. From this standpoint, perhaps it makes sense to add another map, but we'd rather buff the rewards for the mode. Still, would you guys play the mode outside of Ranked?
2. Menu tutorial for new players.
Huge majority of new players are very confused by the UI, the game does a poor job at explaining what can be done through the UI and where. For example, a lot of new players don’t know where to customize the weapon, how to change the faction, how to add more medkits… There needs to be an interactive tutorial for new players that highlights sections of the UI asking the player to take a look at it and explaining what can be done there via text box. This is pretty important as confusion very quickly turns into frustration and a bad first impression of the game. Everyone I ever told this game about has complained about this to me.
Many other games do this, and many players expect to either have a very self explanatory UI where nothing is hidden under subsections, or they at least expect the game to show them how to use it and where to find everything that is useful.
Answer: Unfortunately, the UI has never been a strong part of the game. And veteran players know that it's been reworked twice already. In fact, a few years ago we were going to tweak major parts of it again, but after estimating the amount of work that would require, we realized that the team simply doesn't have resources to do that.
Another huge issue is that the game is using Scaleform for the UI - a technology that was fine when the development started, but is outdated at the moment and is really hard to support. This is why it's so hard fixing some old bugs with the UI or changing even small parts of it.
And switching for another technology for the UI at this stage would take months, if not years, to recreate the UI we already have, so it's not an option.
3. Improving painkillers.
Right now they're meant to boost bleeding immunity. No one is really using them, so maybe it's time to buff them. The idea is to buff the bleeding immunity effect and add stopping power immunity. It has to be done with the corresponding skill in Survival Tree. Buff painkillers so much that with maxed skill they would provide 100 % stopping power immunity (player characters would not lose their speed and stamina after getting hit) and 75 % bleeding immunity. The effects would work for eg. 7 seconds. Base stats for it would be 50 % bleeding immunity and 75 % stopping power immunity. To achieve this, you would need to change the passive skill from multiplying to simple addictions, eg. 50 % + 5 % = 55 %.
Answer: We've been just thinking about buffing or changing rarely used character skills in all the trees. We can't tell anything specific at the moment (including release dates), but you can expect some skill rework in the future.
4. Improving the way fractures work with high explosive damage reduction.
In the current version of the game grenades are easily breaking legs, but the damage drop-off is just too significant to deal any damage. The players often find themselves crippled with less than 20 damage dealt. The same issue exists with C4 damage over distance. The idea is for grenades and C4 to deal much higher damage from up close but without causing fractures. Damage mechanics for mines are good so far, but hand grenades are extremely underpowered. To kill anyone, the grenade must explode under their butt and only if they have no explosive immunity, or you’d need to throw a second grenade.
Answer: The explosive damage was nerfed because many people complained that grenades were too powerful. If we remove fractures and increase damage again, the game will turn into grenade spam, especially on smaller locations (all Slaughter maps at the very least). We really doubt that's what the community wants.
One possible solution would be to decrease the number of grenades you can carry to one, maybe two. But the idea is that grenades and explosives in general are meant for crowd control, not making easy frags on smaller maps. So lower damage plus debuffs from explosives seems like a good solution to us.
5. Seeker and Executioner sets nerfs.
The Seeker set has the movement of a medium set while aiming and it’s basically a heavy set. Nerf “movement speed while aiming” from 2 % to 1 %. This is an issue because it makes you harder to hit in 1v1 fights no matter the range, by allowing you to move quicker to the sides.
Executioner set basically has the best bonuses and all of them together makes it overpowered. Time to activate medkit should be reduced from 20 % to 10 %.
Answer: These suggestions make sense, we will look into that.
5. Painkiller and antitoxine duration display in the UI.
Things like oxygen level in gas tanks and active artifact effect duration have a timer that displays how much their effect lasts, it’s located at the bottom near the medkits. But painkillers and antitoxins do not display any kind of info in regards to their duration, and their use is very much situational so it’s important to know when will the effect wear off.
Answer: Yes, we will consider displaying those in the UI. Hopefully this will be done in the next major update.
6. Clan wars system expansion
Survarium finally has clan wars again and soon, the first season of the Survarium Clan League will start. But are there plans to expand the clan system in the game? Will there ever be a clan ladder with perhaps exclusive prizes? Having to organize a tournament manually is very hard to do, as you have to individually manage between players and teams. There should exist a system with a built-in league where teams can click and sign up with their clan. Something similar to the Faction Challenge.
Answer: Yes, there are plans, but probably not a ladder. The whole idea behind Clan battles is to provide a tool allowing you to find out who is the best. So manual matchmaking was the idea right from the beginning to give you flexibility in choosing time and date of the battles. We think that no matter how VG tries to automate it, you will be unhappy - just the way you were when we had a Faction Wars event with a fixed schedule.
7. 2021 plans for Survarium
It’s no secret that the team always draws up an approximate plan of each update for the next 6 or 12 months and adjusts it along the way if needed. How did the COVID situation affect you with all of this? What plans did you have for 2020 that you were not able to implement in time and will we be able to see this in 2021? I.e., this question is asking for a small sneak peek of what we can expect and what’s not achievable with your current resources. Seasonal events with new camouflages are a given, but do you have something else up in the chamber?
Answer: Yes, we have, and some of it we already implemented this year, like the Paintball game mode, a bunch of new decals, and changes to the rules of Slaughter and TD modes.
One thing we've been discussing for a long time now is introducing a new anomaly with a new artifact, and also reworking existing anomalies and artifacts to make them more relevant. But we can't give you any dates, it's done when it's done.
Another thing is new rewards for Ranked tokens. And probably a new weapon. Also, more customization options (decals, camos) in general. And rework of the skill trees, as already mentioned above.
Covid affected us the same as the rest of gamedev: we mostly work from home, so some of the work processes have changed. But as you can see, the game gets updates all the same: Survarium received 5 major updates since Covid came to Europe a year ago, and we basically had the same update frequency as before (25 major updates in 5 years since 0.40).
9. Max level players.
Have you thought about new activities or things to do for those players who have been level 100 and Prestige level 10 in all factions for a very long time? Some kind of bonus, harder or unique missions, some kind of extra.
Answer: There are 274 people at the moment who have achieved all that, and the majority of them are still playing. We are grateful for long term support, but you have to understand we can't spend the team's resources to do something big for such a small part of the community. Maximum we could do is probably more prestige levels with some rewards. Perhaps some new achievements and decals. What do you think those rewards could be? What a player that achieved everything in the game could possibly want?
Patch 0.66c is Live. Play Now!
Please find the complete list of changes of the Patch below. Have a good time playing the game!
Not playing Survarium yet?
Download the latest version of the game here!
The List of Changes in Survarium 0.66c
General Changes
- Fixed spots where it was possible to get an unfair advantage (looking through objects, leaving the location boundaries, etc) on the following locations: Rudnya, School, Vostok Radar Station, Chemical Plant, Tarakanovsky Fort, Vector Laboratory, Cologne Bridge, Duga Radar Station.
St. Patrick's Day Event in Survarium
- The event starts on March 12 (3 PM GMT) and ends on March 22!
- Play in PvP matches (including ranked and Paintball), receive special event currency (mugs of ale, clover leaves, and pots of gold) and exchange it for the unique decal and weapons with St. Patrick Day camos!
- The higher you place in a match, the more event currency you get!
- Exchange the event currency for "Horseshoe" and "Clover оrnament" decals, and FAMAS "St. Patrick 2021" assault rifle with an unique camouflage and three random modifiers. Huge thanks to John Rivian and ODESSAmamaUA for the rewards design.
- The "Horsheshoe" decal provides +10% to experience and +10% to silver. The "Clover оrnament" decal provides +10% to reputation. Set of both decals additionally provides +5% to experience and +10% to spare parts.
- You will also get the Green Hat 2021 for the first PvP win during the event.
- The Green Hat provides a +1 bonus to the amount of the event currency.
- Premium account provides +25% bonus to the amount of the event currency.
- You can also purchase the event currency in the Survarium web shop or in the game shop.
Download Survarium 0.66c and check it out! Hopefully you'll like the changes.
See you on the battlefield!
Patch 0.66b is Live!
Please find the complete list of changes of the Patch below. Have a good time playing the game!
The List of Changes in Survarium 0.66b
GENERAL CHANGES
- Anomalies in Paintball mode were removed (according to poll results).
- Shooting from a marker in Paintball mode was improved: decreased recoil, changed position of the weapon in hands and when aiming, increased size of paintballs.
- In Paintball mode all players now have 4 bandages instead of 2 medkits.
- In Paintball mode energy consumption was decreased.
BUG FIXES
- Fixed an issue with Snow-20 mask having too low armor.
- Fixed an issue when set bonus "slowdown when aiming" was not working. Bonus values changed from -10% to -1% and from -20% to -2%.
Download Survarium 0.66b and check it out! Hopefully you'll like the changes.
See you on the battlefield!
SCAVENGER HUNT 5: WIN 2000 GOLD! (Facebook Exclusive)
TIP: To make searching easier choose the "training with bots" option in the game mode menu and select "harmless bots". They will ignore you most, if not all of the time.
NOTE: Any public disclosure of the location will disqualify your entry. Keep it to yourself. We will contact you to establish proof.
T&Cs
Winner chosen at random from all received entries that guessed it correctly. Contest will run for 7 days until Monday the 8th of March 2021 at 20:00 GMT after which time we will announce the winner in the comments and as a news post. Good luck!
Enter on facebook.com/survarium
Patch 0.66 is Live!
The List of Changes in Survarium 0.66
GENERAL CHANGES
- Introduced unique decals for reaching player character's levels 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100.
- Level 100 decal provides +10% to reputation, the rest provides +1%, +2%, +3%, +4%, +5%, +6%, +7%, +8%, +9% to experience correspondingly.
- Introduced unique decals for maxing out prestige rank (prestige 10) in each of the factions.
- Each max prestige rank decal provides +10% to spare parts.
- If you already meet the requirements for receiving one or more of these decals, you will automatically receive them after Survarium Update 0.66 goes live.
- Changed logic of awarding free stash maps. Now you should get free stash maps faster (weekly restrictions still apply).
- Introduced new locations' screenshots on the loading screens.
CHANGES TO TEAM DEATHMATCH AND SLAUGHTER
- The number of resurrection points now depends on the number of players in a match. With only 14 players there's 10 points less, with 12 players – 20 points less and so on.
- The difference between teams' points to end a match prematurely is now 40 for matches with 12-15 players and 30 for matches with 8-11 players.
- Team Deathmatch on Takaranovsky Fort, Vector Laboratory, Cologne Bridge, and London is now limited to 120 points, and to 100 points on other locations. Slaughter on the aforementioned locations is limited to 150 points.
- Resurrection points are now subtracted only when a player character dies. Bots' deaths do not count for this. The only exception are practice matches when one of the teams has only bots (AI controlled characters).
NEW GAME MODE - PAINTBALL
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- Try the new game mode! Paintball is a team deathmatch in which all characters are armed with a paintball marker and have the same equipment.
- Two teams – blue and red – fight in a match. Eliminate the opposing team players to win! The game mode is available on the following locations: School, Tarakanovsky Fort and Vostok Radar Station.
- The game mode is temporarily available under PvP and Create custom match tabs. The game mode has no bots (AI controlled characters).
WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT
- LMGs
- RPD. Aim time decreased from 0.4 to 0.35 sec. Slowdown when aiming decreased from 25% to 20%.
- RPK-74M. Aim time decreased from 0.35 to 0.3 sec.
- Fort-401. Aim time decreased from 0.4 to 0.35 sec. Slowdown when aiming decreased from 25% to 20%.
- FN Minimi. Aim time decreased from 0.4 to 0.35 sec. Slowdown when aiming decreased from 25% to 18%.
- PKP “Pecheneg”. Damage increased from 39 to 40. Aim time decreased from 0.43 to 0.38 sec. Slowdown when aiming decreased from 28% to 20%.
Pistols - Colt Python. Bullet speed increased from 350 to 500 m/s.
- Mauser M.712. Damage increased from 40 to 42. Rate of fire increased from 550 to 700 rounds per minute.
Assault Rifles - Valmet Rk.62. Aim time decreased from 0.35 to 0.3 sec.
- FN FNC. Aim time decreased from 0.32 to 0.3 sec.
Shotguns - Increased the number of pellets for shotguns.
- Vepr-12. Rate of fire increased from 300 to 330 rounds per minute. Effective range decreased from 20 to 16 m. Shot grouping decreased.
- Saiga-12K. Damage increased from 160 to 175. Rate of fire decreased from 330 to 280 rounds per minute. Shot grouping increased.
Equipment sets - Zubr UM-4 equipment set. Added a new set bonus "Health restored by a medkit +50%".
- Bison equipment set. Increased set bonus "Health restored by a medkit" from 20% to 50%.
Masks and Helmets - Pmk-7S gas mask. Armor increased from 40 to 50.
- Gas mask "Barrier". Armor increased from 40 to 50.
- Veles mask. Armor increased from 40 to 50.
- Maradeur gas mask. Armor increased from 40 to 45
- Maradeur MKII gas mask. Armor increased from 40 to 45.
- Fearsome mask. Armor increased from 40 to 45.
- Explorer hat. Armor increased from 25 to 40.
- Gas mask "Smaragd". Armor increased from 25 to 40.
- Respirator Zanaves. Armor increased from 15 to 25.
- Malachite respirator. Armor increased from 15 to 25.
- Amber respirator. Armor increased from 18 to 25.
- Scavenger hood. Armor increased from 20 to 30.
- Hunter’s hood. Armor increased from 20 to 30
- Master hood. Armor increased from 25 to 45
- Leshy’s hood. Armor increased from 25 to 45
- Protective mask. Armor increased from 25 to 45.
- Mounting helmet. Armor increased from 35 to 40.
- Stalker helmet. Armor increased from 39 to 45
- Helmet skinner. Armor increased from 39 to 45.
- Piligrim mask. Armor increased from 40 to 55.
- Voyager mask. Armor increased from 40 to 55.
- Helmet vityaz-s. Armor increased from 55 to 60.
- Mask "Defender". Armor increased from 55 to 60
- Assault mask. Armor increased from 55 to 60
- Scout’s helmet. Armor increased from 55 to 58.
- Sokol-M helmet. Armor increased from 55 to 58.
- Sentry helmet. Armor increased from 45 to 54.
- Helmet ghost. Armor increased from 45 to 54.
- Delta helmet. Armor increased from 42 to 49.
- Delta 2 helmet. Armor increased from 42 to 49.
- Delta mask. Armor increased from 35 to 45.
- Delta 2 mask. Armor increased from 35 to 45.
Vests - Combat Bulletproof Vest. Slowdown increased from 5% to 6%, energy consumption increased from 17% to 21%.
- Veteran Bulletproof Vest. Slowdown increased from 5% to 6%, energy consumption increased from 17% to 21%.
BUG FIXES
- Fixed an issue when there were no sounds of bullets flying by the player character.
- Fixed an issue when the game launcher did not save chosen language.
- Fixed an issue when an item in a visual slot increased anomaly protection gauge.
- Fixed an issue when player character could receive a high acceleration.
Download Survarium 0.66 and check it out! Hopefully you'll like the changes.
See you on the battlefield!
The February Ranked Season in Survarium Has Started!
Good luck, Survivors!
Survarium Q&A - January 2021
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Q: Ammo consumables (also known as Premium ammo). Combine all 3 ammo generation into 1. Make it work like boosters with 5000 silver per match if you do not have any. Add it as a 4th selectable booster item instead of being in inventory UI. It is not just about obtaining it, but about streamlining it.
VG: We've been thinking about removing these ammo consumables for a long time now because very few people actually use them, but it builds up to that P2W perception of the game some players seem to have. The only reason for not removing premium ammo is that it's not clear how we compensate for the ammo that some players have.
Q: Dismantling modules. Let us scrap gun modules for spare parts/gold (for modules that are bought with Gold) for 1/nth of the price. Module costs 200 spare parts to make? Get 20 spare parts for scrapping it. Module costs 100 gold? Get 10 gold for scrapping it.
VG: That's something we could do, but we need to think about what percentage that could be. In the examples above it's 10% of creation cost, are you all fine with it? Should it depend on the module quality (more for higher rarities)?
Q: Ammo sliders. Bring back the old ammo slider system inventory so the player can decide
how he wants to distribute his ammo between his weapons. Players miss it and are
constantly requesting it.
VG: When we removed the sliders, we reworked the amount of ammo available in the equipment preset. Essentially, these amounts now account for the fact that you cannot take more primary ammo, and it's not intended for the player to have more. If we were to bring the sliders back, we'd have to either decrease the default amounts for both primary and secondary weapons, or add other kinds of restrictions. This would only lead to more work for the development team and more confusion for the players.
Q: Ability to exclude up to 2 maps. Add 2 slots in the match search menu to be able to exclude up to two maps that we don't like playing. A lot of survivors don't like Duga (and this map is also badly optimized), so this shouldn't necessarily mean longer wait times if the majority disable it. In fact, I have Slaughter disabled because of some of its maps and I would enable it if I could ban them, meaning shorter time to find a match.
VG: If we introduced such a change, that would've actually increased matchmaking times. If every player disables a couple maps, those two would likely be different for every player. This is just a wild guess, of course, but we'd imagine that among 16 players of similar ELO looking for a match at the moment, there would be no one map suitable for all of them.
So we either have to start a match with fewer people on a map that is not disabled for those people (which makes matchmaking worse overall), or ignore some of the players' choices for restricted maps (i.e. putting them in a match on a map they disabled). Both solutions are bad.
You're probably expecting that all players would disable the same 2 maps (say, Duga in general or Vector in Slaughter), but numerous polls demonstrated that's not the case: even maps that are generally disliked by the community are still favorite ones for at least 5-10% of the players. So overall disabling/restricting maps is a bad idea. In fact, it's not done even in the game with significantly higher online.
What we could do, though, is timed map rotation like we did with game modes in ranked matches. What do you think?
Q: More than 2 decals. There are a lot of decals: from events, game achievements, gold. Would be nice if survivors could put more than 2 decals on vest and pants, or at least on vest to get all those bonuses. They would level up and grind faster thanks to those bonuses.
VG: Bonuses on decals are balanced keeping in mind that you can use only two of them. When creating new decals, we usually try to come up with a previously unavailable combination of bonuses. If we were to introduce an option to equip more decals, we'd have to rework the bonuses (decrease the majority of them).
The real question here is, we think, do you want more decals for the visuals? That is a more valid reason for adding more decal slots to the equipment, and we can totally do that. However, that would slightly increase match loading times (because all decals and camos are baked into one texture to display in a match).
Q: Random super rare drops (incentive). Add super rare drops that would give gold or spare parts or Premium, and make them extremely low chance to drop. These would drop from PVP matches, like stash maps or attachments do currently. For example: "gold ingot" 0.006 % drop chance, gives 500 gold. "bucket of spare parts" 0.01 % drop chance, gives 1000 spare parts. Or "golden ticket" 0.008 % drop chance, gives 7 days of premium. It adds anticipation and incentive to play more, and would even further reduce p2w claims. Yet the drop chance is so low that it wouldn’t really affect the income for VG.
VG: If they'd have an extremely low drop chance, how would that motivate you to play more? We'd think that daily missions and login rewards would incentivise the players to play more often, but even that (100% chance rewards) doesn't work if you don't want to play the game. Having said that, we'd like to concentrate on improving core gameplay instead of introducing more casino rewards to the game. However, an alternative solution would be awarding the player with some gold (say, 10) for completing all daily missions.
Q: More extended magazines. 30 round magazine weapons are receiving 40 round magazine variations. Please also do this with the weapons that have just 20 round magazines: MP7, AS Val, Groza, 9A-91… Having at least 30 round extended magazines would balance the difference. Also, AKM / AKMSU / Valmet Rk.62 were designed to use the same kind of extended magazines, please add the option for the same mags on Valmet.
VG: Yes, we are constantly adding more and more new modules. In fact, we have statistics of how popular and effective different weapons are, and use that to introduce balance changes (although you might think that some buffs and nerfs are totally random), new weapons and modules.
Q: Camouflage Preview. Make available previews for suits' camouflages. People can’t see how a camouflage would look like before spending their gold (for suits' camouflages) or Silver. Especially for suits' camouflages, because gold isn't something you get often in the game as a free player.
VG: Yes, that's been on the "to do" list for a long time, but there's always something more important (at least as we see it). Anyway, we will look into that.
Q: Crack of supersonic bullets. If enemy misses, you don't even hear the bullet whine, you only hear something if the bullet hits an object. Every gun with supersonic bullets (330+ m/s) should create a sound “crack”.
VG: But there's a sound when a bullet flies by your character. Do you need the crack for realism or to better understand that somebody is firing at you? If for realism, we'd like to remind this is still a videogame, and gameplay experience is more important. If for the latter, we had even bigger plans, i.e. some kind of a suppression effect when somebody is shooting at you, like in BF series. Still, we'd like to understand if is there a problem from a gameplay perspective, and then decide how we approach that.
Update: A developer has confirmed that there are sounds of bullets flying by, but they're not working. This will be fixed with 0.66.
Q: Foliage displacement. When survivors are moving through and sitting in foliage, they should be pushing the grass downwards. This would not only make the game visually more realistic, but also prevent people from just hiding in foliage, where they’ll be impossible to be seen in.
VG: We can only imagine how much work that would entail. Actually, we can only think of examples of how it's done in some AAA singleplayer games, and only for grass. For a multiplayer game, that means every foliage movement should not only be visualized, but also synchronized among all players in a match. We are not saying it's totally impossible, but it's certainly a hard task that would require significant changes to the game engine and network code. All that effort would be better spent elsewhere, for instance, adding a new game mode (wink-wink) and new content.
Q: Turn Premium Weapons Into Skins. Premium guns seem to serve one niche in the game, which is to give players instant access to a good gun. A lot guns are premium-exclusive, such as the VSS and Barret .50 cal. The problem should be obvious. As such, these guns should be unlockable and only obtainable through traditional methods, with premium giving major XP and silver boosts that allow players to glide through the tiers, which would give the weapons a niche, with good attachments and modifications by default like they already have, much like PAYDAY 2 skins.
VG: A lot of stuff is perceived as P2W. We also introduced an option to buy silver items for gold even if you don't have corresponding faction rep quite a while back. We always thought the community was generally fine with that. If we restrict it, it won't change the issue - instead they'd complain they can't buy it
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The January ranked season in Survarium has started!
Squads, bots, killcam and hit-markers are not available in ranked matches. If your ability to search for a ranked match isn't available, open the "Seasonal League" tab (cup icon at the top right of the screen) and go back to the lobby or restart the client. Good luck in ranked battles!
Happy New Year!
