Second Extinction™ News

Welcome to Freak of the Week!

Here you get to take a closer look at the mutated monstrosities that have taken over earth.

Next one on the list is the big and bad - THE BULL! Weighing over 10k kilograms you should run for your life not to get belly-flopped by this powerhouse.


[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

UPDATE: More bug fixes have been added to the list since it was originally posted, and the patch is now live.

Extinction Elites, 

Thank you for your continued efforts in exterminating the dinosaur threat. Your live reports from the ground have been vital in helping us direct our efforts.

As we were ramping up towards launch, we have been prepared to receive community feedback on any major issues. This coming patch that will drop on Monday October 26th aims to resolve as many of these as possible, while paving the way for future content and quality of life updates.

Patch Highlights:

Stability fixes
Ultrawide monitor support for 21:9 1st Pass implementation 
Navbar popping up in-game
Finding matches in matchmaking has been made easier
Possible to remap keyboard for movement controls
Multiple audio dropout issues fixed

Following this introduction, you can find the full list of fixes and improvements. Additionally, there are a few other issues we are currently investigating:

Weapon input delays, as well as issues involving aiming down the sights or equipping the Shotgun or Carbine
The game crashing when selecting “Forgot Password during the Apex Connect Screen

Keep fighting the good fight and sending in your reports. We look forward to hearing from you!

//The Second Extinction Team

A more detailed but not exhaustive list of improvements follows –


BUGS 

Blockers / Crashes / Critical

• Fixed multiple game freezes/ suspended after using Alt+Enter to go to fullscreen
  
• Fixed multiple game crashes or black screen when switching monitors
  
• Better handling of different resolutions in fullscreen
  
• Better reporting of Vulkan related crashes, and the game will detect the graphics driver version and warn you if you are on old drivers
  
• Better error reporting from graphics issue (people get more information & crash-report contains more info as well)
  
• Fixed issue with research & material overflowing where it could not be spent.
  

ENEMIES

• More accurate collision on large dinos so players cannot pass through them when alive or dead.
  
• Fixed various spawn issues with enemies appearing underground and on steep slopes ⭐
  
• Fixed multiple animations missing, not playing or looping on enemies
  
• Various Enemy VFX issues fixed ⭐
  
• Enemies now jump down cliffs and slopes to stop them dying from always falling.
  
• Fixed an issue where the enemy was Invulnerable after the player respawned
  
• Hit-reactions are now more responsive ⭐
  
• Burrows spawning logic has been improved when fighting Rexes so they spawn in good space for best gameplay
  

HEROES

Rosy 

• Rosy no longer triggers her reloading line on partial reloads and her dialog plays less frequently  ⭐
  
• Static Barrier now replicates for other players
  

WEAPONS & EQUIPMENT

Healing Station 

• Now heals other party members ⭐
  

General 

• Fixed exploit allowing players to infinitely trigger airstrikes
  

AUDIO

• Wrong or spamming FX on various weapons and upgrades fixed
  
• Multiple audio dropout bugs fixed
  
• Buzzing noise in-game after exiting the map screen fixed
  
• Various bugs of repeating sounds and VO fixed
  
• Various incorrect VO messaging fixed
  
• Various missing or not triggering sounds fixed in front end and in-game
  
• Sound balancing and polish for Character VO, Abilities, Weapon upgrades and The Bull
  
• Fixed spatialization and cooldown issues with Rosy’s VO
  
• Fixed the incoming dialog lines persisting forever
  
• Fixed T-Rex footsteps cutting out
  
• Fixed Raptor footsteps cutting out
  

VISUALS

• Multiple LOD, collision and clipping issues fixed throughout world
  
• Lighting leaking into caves in various locations fixed
  
• Snow appearing in incorrect places fixed
  
• Screen effects now reset if players quit to menu when downed
  
• Resolution scale causing issues with weapon shadows now fixed
  

MULTIPLAYER

• Replication fix for Drone activity
  
• Improvements to host migration and better handling when clients leave games
  
• Improved messaging when clients leave lobby
  
• Enemy hit reacts sync better across the network
  
• Matchmaking requirements softened to increase matches
  
• Fixed issue where the Party UI displays the health incorrectly
  

Apex Connect

• Stability fixes to upgrade an account.
  
• Various controller fixes
  
• Clipped text fixes
  

UI 

Frontend

• Fixed issue where the navbar appeared where it should not
  
• Improvements to the insertion map and loadout screen
  
• Fix for Emotes not updating when selected
  
• Nameplate names and descriptions added
  
• Fixed issues where the weapon armory navbar is shown in-game when a player leaves the party
  

HUD 

• Ammo pickups no longer give a notification for other player’s weapons
  
• Party nameplates and health behaving incorrectly fixed
  
• Issue fixed where the supply stash gives ammo for weapons that the player is not using
  

MISSIONS AND ACTIVITIES

• Various edge case mission blockers improved or fixed
  
• Activities will now  reward research points on completion
  
• Activities soft lock edge cases fixed for Black box, Gas pump, Burrow infestation ⭐
  

MISC

• No longer possible to jump out of moving dropship
  
• “I don’t bleed” achievement is fixed to be rewarded only when criteria is met
  

GAMEPLAY 

• Fixed various player ability issues, like Amir's Precision Strike equip, Rosie's barrier ability effects staying on with no poles and combat high interruption issue
  
• Fixed issues where the Mine Seedling and Airstrike abilities are using placeholder assets
  
• Burrow infestation activity & killing fixed to now give research points
  
• Gas pumps don't give research after each gas canister or after the full activity is completed
  
• Dragons Breath shotgun upgrade fire loop improvement
  

IMPROVEMENTS AND QUALITY OF LIFE

HEROES

Weapons

• Grenade Launcher - Damage falloff has been increased encouraging more skilled placement of shots while still performing its role as a crowd controller through staggering and knockback ⭐
  

PROGRESSION

Leveling

• Reduced threshold to reach player level 2 from 750 xp to 500 xp ⭐
  

Mission Scoring

• Improved thresholds of earning titles at mission completion
  
• Reduced research penalties when being downed from 20 to 10, and respawn penalty from 25 to 20
  

ENEMIES

Rex

• Rex is more aggressive in its attacks and utilizes combos more often, has slightly more health
  

Raptors

• Diggers have improved collisions to make shooting off bone plates more reliable
  
• Electric raptor’s flashbang attack has been reworked
  

General

• Global balance pass to enemy attack alignment to ensure attacks land more consistently
  

UI and Front end

• Remapping of movement controls added
  
• 21:9 implementation - Works fully in-game. Still some bugs and further work needed in the front end
  

AUDIO 

• Improved spatialization of T-Rex footsteps
  
• Improved raptor footsteps and ability to find and hear them in space and when behind the player character
  

⭐= changes made from community feedback

Hello, Extinction Elites,

What a week! Since launching Second Extinction into Early Access we’ve been overwhelmed with all the positive response and feedback to our little Dino Murder Simulator. We couldn’t be happier with the love you have shown us. But we also wanted to address some of the feedback you’ve shared directly, and let you know about our plans for the coming weeks.  

We have noticed a few of you raising some questions and issues around both matchmaking and forming a party in multiplayer. We wanted to let you know that you’ve been heard! On top of exploring potential bugs we wanted to clarify how things should work.

With matchmaking there are a few things to highlight. We are looking into why some of you are struggling to find matches but don’t have any firm leads as of yet. On launch day and on one other occasion Playfab did encounter some downtime and this would have blocked some of you from finding matches. Playfab is a piece of middleware that provides us online player accounts and matchmaking.

Our matchmaking takes a simple approach; everyone can be matched with anyone else but it’s sorted by location and by player level. We’re looking to experiment with removing player level entirely but will update you if and when this gets rolled out to live.

Below we describe the two ways in the Frontend to matchmake with players in Second Extinction;

Lobby screen: "Find Party" will try to search for any group of players that are currently also looking for a group.

• The player gets added to a party in deployment (that is looking for a random player)
  
• The player joins a party in the lobby screen (that was also looking for a party)
  

Deployment screen (after mission select). "Find Random Player" will open up your lobby for other players.

• Another player will join your party (that was looking for a party or also in deployment looking for a random player)
  
• You join another party also in deployment.
  
• (note that for each result you will not change mission type)
  

Finally, we want to let you know that we have a long-term goal of improving both the flow and the messaging to make it clearer what you can and should do in different circumstances to make Matchmaking easier overall.

Whilst talking about matchmaking we should also mention Hot Joining. We only allow this option for players who have been in a party and then for whatever reason left the game. Selecting the option “Re-join last session” will allow you to sync up with your party assuming the mission is still going. We have also improved a bug (see the hotfix, patch 0.1.0.1) with hot-fixing that was losing people all or most of their experience points and materials on rejoining a session, with the patch, this will be improved but is still not 100% correct and needs further work.

With regards to the occasions where you are not able to form a party of 3 we believe this is primarily down to network connectivity errors on the player side. Having said that we have one of our multiplayer engineers investigating right now if there is anything we can also do on the game side. As a peer-to-peer game, if you or one of your party has low bandwidth then that will cause odd behavior in the game (dumb or popping enemies) but also can block both the finding of matches or direct team joining.

We recommend players try inviting people one at a time, if it fails instantly you know it is the host or that person who is having connection issues. You can also try rotating the host amongst the players. We will be looking into what messaging we can add to help clarify what is happening at different stages.

We hope you find this write-up useful and appreciate the feedback. Keep it coming! 

P.S: Rosy sends her regards. Her baby is running dry, and she’s gotta reload! 

Cheers,

Prezzi. G

Hello Recruits,

Thanks for all the support and kind words, and most of all: thanks for playing!

We are working on a hot fix coming as soon as possible to deal with some crashes on start up, rejoining parties and on shutdown. This patch will also have a fix for the "locked in map" issue. We don't have an exact date and time but its in test right now. In the mean time if you are hitting issues please use the FAQ trouble shooting guide and keep pinging up messages on what you are finding.

On the back end we have already pushed out an update to the Apex Connect Server. Version 6.1.9 is deployed which includes some optimizations with loading the policies, fixes to twitch entitlements sometimes not paying out.

We also have a much bigger QOL (quality of life) patch getting ready to go into test. This patch fixes a huge host of different sized issues. More info on the contents and timeline for this sweet patch will be with you real soon.

Lots of love

President Gibson

Hey Extinction Elites!

Happy Early Access Launch!

We’re super happy to have you with us in this exciting period. The team here has put a lot of hard work, energy, excitement, passion, and enthusiasm into this game and we are so excited to see our baby take its first wobbly steps into the wild.

Much has been said already about the game and what it is now - you shoot lots of dinosaurs in gory and satisfying ways. But I want to spend this moment to talk a little about our team here and what we hope to accomplish going forward.

Early Access, to us, means a couple of things:

First, it’s a way to get the community involved in the development of the game. I’ve loved reading about the cool dino mutations that some have thought up of, or the ideas about new gameplay that have been suggested. If Second Extinction is our baby, you - the community - is its teacher. We want to realize the potential of the game but within reason - there are some things this game is not, and that is both by design and purpose…. But there are also things that we wouldn’t be against exploring if that is what we, together, discover would be interesting.

Secondly, Early Access means putting the focus on building the game up to a launch-ready state. Right now, it’s really really fun to shoot dinos. But can we make it more? Is it only fun to shoot them in one particular way, or can you shoot them in many other ways? Do you like min-maxing gear and getting the most optimal damage output or is finding weird combinations of things that work more interesting? Is Jürgen OP, or is Rosie really the sleeper solo-only character? How much do you want to pimp out your characters in unicorn hoodies or would you rather have more serious cosmetics? Features and systems are just as interesting and important as the next dinosaur species.

We’re a pretty small team here in Malmö with big ambitions and we want to do what’s right for both the game and the community. We’ll keep the lines of communication open and strive to be as transparent as possible - if you haven’t yet, join the Discord, follow the social media channels, or post on the forums. We’re also going to try to update the game frequently, and we’ll be constantly looking at your feedback on how things are going.

Ultimately, we’re on a journey together that will go beyond Early Access into launch. On behalf of the team, I look forward to working with you all as we look to Reclaim Earth.

Cheers,
Julianne “Elusive” Harty
Product Owner