This post includes the first of many previews for the upcoming 0.14 update. Also tune into our Devstream on Tuesday for a LOT more info on this.
Disclaimer: Any feature or piece of content shown here is a work in progress and subject to change in the future.
Development Priorities
I got a lot of great feedback during yesterday's roundtable (For those of you who don't know. On Friday evenings the community hops into #roundtable on the Discord to chat about Foxhole and other random things). There were a lot of questions as to why certain gameplay issues that we previously talked about addressing haven't been looked at yet. The simple answer is that our entire schedule has been backed up and we haven't gotten to it. We underestimated how much time it would take to get World Conquest into a stable state (something we're still working on) and as a result, things like North-South conquest, population balance issues, and scaling problems / queues have added some unexpected update cycles to the schedule. I wanted to take the time to review the priorities on our place to make things more clear.
The top priorities going into this year were:
1) One World V1
2) Player Profiles / War Reports
3) Communication Tools
4) Town Revamp
The priorities now are mostly the same but have shifted slightly to:
1) Population Scaling Issues (reducing queuing) [Update 0.14]
2) Communication Tools [Update 0.15 - 0.17]
3) Logi Improvements [Update 0.15 - 0.17]
4) Town Revamp [Update 0.18]
5) Player Profiles / War Reports [To be determined]
The big thing I want to highlight is population scaling since this isn't an obvious issue for existing players. In about a month from now, we expect another bump up in player numbers similar to what we saw over the winter holidays. The conquest currently barely handles the population we have now without queuing and a huge reason why this happens is because the number of "active front" regions (i.e. contested regions with bases claimed by both factions) is usually 1 or 2. This essentially puts an upper limit on the number of players that can participate in the front line battle and is a harmful bottleneck for new players. To that end, our immediate focus for 0.14 is on using amphibious warfare, map expansions, and other features to enable more active fronts to support the expected influx of new players.
Beyond that, we've been working on some pretty cool communication tools in the background for awhile (and in fact wanted to release some of the work for 0.14) but they simply need more development time to get right. Finally, we know that logistics has been neglected for far too long so we're going to be putting a lot of work into that in the coming months.
I hope that helps to understand where things are at in terms of development now and in the near future.
Update 0.14 - Amphibious Assault
We're less than a month away from the next big update for Foxhole! I wanted to give a brief overview of what to expect.
Amphibious Warfare Revisited
The focus of this update will be on revamping amphibious warfare and using it to increase the average number of active fronts in the conquest, which is part of our strategy for addressing population scaling. Expect new amphibious content and many improvements to make water a more useful mechanic in the game.
Final in-game model of the Warden Gunboat
Gameplay Issues & Bugs
We've also heard you loud and clear on the biggest issues: FOB spam, structure decay, and reload bug. We're gonna be pushing hard to address some of these in 0.14. Things will become clearer in the coming days so stay tuned.
At the end of the current war, I will be opening up a Reddit thread to collect feedback on North-South map balance. We hope to incorporate some of the feedback into 0.14 and more of it in the subsequent update.
As usual, we will include good number of bug fixes in the next update as well.
Feature Previews
We'll be talking more about 0.14 in the coming weeks. Take note of the following dates:
1) May 29th - Devstream
- New vehicle reveal - New water mechanics
2) June 5th - Devblog
- New Conquest map - Skirmish map extensions
Release Date
We are currently aiming to release 0.14 between June 13 to June 19th. The final release date will become more clear in the coming weeks.
Gunboats 2.0
The first 0.14 amphibious feature we'll be revealing is the revamped Gunboat. We have redesigned this vehicle for both factions and this time we're actually going to be releasing the Warden version simultaneously instead of putting it on indefinite hold.
Final in-game model of the Colonial Gunboat
There are a couple of functional changes we are making. First, we've removed the platform portion of the Gunboat so instead of having a deck to walk around on, players will enter the vessel directly. We made this change to reduce the number of incidents of players falling off the deck and we also wanted to ensure that passengers, especially gunners were better protected. The driver also doubles as a commander/spotter. Second, the turrets have been swapped and Light Field Artillery turret has been buffed with further range and a faster rate of fire. We hope that Gunboats will become even more useful in clearing out shore defenses before a landing occurs.
Concept art for the revamped Warden Gunboat
Finally, the Gunboat has been moved up in the Tech Tree to ensure that it's available to assist in shore landings, which we hope will be a more frequent activity in 0.14 and beyond. It's important to note that the revamp of the Gunboat isn't a stand alone change. It's only one piece of the puzzle in making amphibious successful in Foxhole.
Concept art for the revamped Colonial Gunboat
Forts
The concepts for this new World Structure were revealed on the Community Stream a few days ago. I believe Tiberius pretty much nailed it's functionality. To meet our current map design goals, we wanted to place bases in more places on the map, but we didn't want to water down Towns by suddenly spamming a bunch of extra ones into the world. To address this we will be introducing the Fort structure.
Forts will have base functionality but will be preplaced in the world. You can consider them to be "Mini Town Halls". They will have health and armor that is in between that of a T1 and T2 base. While they will be placed in a variety of locations, we are heavily targeting remote places like borders and shore landing zones.
Ultimately, Forts are a bit of a map experiment for us so don't be surprised if we heavily balance this structure or change it's functionality after it's initial debut in 0.14.
Initial concepts for the Fort
Concept B on this page was the final selected concept
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