Section 13 News

[h2]Patch Schedule[/h2]

• PST: 10:00 AM, December 12
• EST: 1:00 PM, December 12
• CET: 7:00 PM, December 12
• ICT: 1:00 AM, December 13
• KST: 3:00 AM, December 13

Agents,

We are deploying a major patch (Ver. 0.14.0) dubbed “Up Close & Personal” to bring the long-awaited melee weapons, along with other changes and improvements to the game. The team has been working hard on building a solid foundation for the game, and we are happy to bring something new to you with this patch! As we continue to go through the list of suggestions and issues, we will be deploying hotfixes and patches frequently until we can ensure Agents can all comfortably enjoy the game.

We also bring a dev log from Dongsoo Oh, the creative director for Blackout Protocol, discussing what comes in this patch. Please take a look at it if you want to learn more about how your feedback is helping us shape the game!

For the list of changes in this patch, please see below.

[h2]New Content[/h2]

• Added 9 melee weapons
  • Melee weapons will drop from enemies
  • For melee weapons that Agents have picked up at least once before, more information can be found in the Armory section of S2P Archives
  • When not equipped with a melee weapon, Agents will be attacking with their fist like before
  • Melee weapons work with a durability system and will break when the durability reaches 0. When the durability is low, the melee weapons icon on the HUD will flash red
  • List of melee weapons (in alphabetical order)
    • Baseball Bat
    • Claw Hammer
    • Crowbar
    • Fire Axe
    • Lead Pipe
    • Mister Chicken
    • Pipe Wrench
    • Shovel
    • Sledge Hammer
  • We are also continuously reviewing various ideas, like more melee weapons and interesting mechanics around them!
• Added a feature that allows joining in-progress/disconnected sessions
  • The host can allow joining mid-session when creating the room
  • For in-progress sessions, other Agents will be able to join the room as long as the squad has not reached the very first Safe Room (at the end of the Parking Lot level)
    • Joining in-progress sessions are restricted to the very first level–the Parking Lot. This is to ensure Agents joining mid-session are not at a disadvantage, as they would have missed out on multiple Synaptic Enhancement and weapon drops if they joined later
  • If an Agent disconnects from a session, they can find the room again in the lobby list marked with the “Recent Session” tag. They can then join the session again, and will have access to all Synaptic Enhancements and weapons they had up to the time of disconnecting
    • Re-joining a disconnected session can happen on any level, even if it’s beyond the Parking Lot
    • Please be advised that, if the host disconnects, the session is dissolved and it will not be possible to re-join
• Added save slots
  • Agents now have access to a total of 3 save slots. Any existing progression data will be saved in slot 1 by default
  • Agents can switch between different save files (as well as create new saves/delete existing saves) in the title screen (the menu is located on the top left)
• Added UI that defines key terminology in the following places
  • Synaptic Enhancement selection
  • Permanent enhancement selection
  • Character info screen’s Enhancements section
• Added 3 new badges
  • Agents can now select which badges they want to sport under the Settings menu. If you don't select any, the game will automatically choose and display some for you
  • New badges are given after meeting the following conditions, respectively
    • Unlocking at least tier 1 blueprint for all weapons
    • Unlocking access to the last tier of permanent enhancements
    • Reviving allies 50 times

[h2]Changes/Improvements[/h2]

• Adjusted weapon balance
  • Arc Cannon
    • Adjusted weapon mechanics, including charging, snapping to targets, arcing, etc.
    • Adjusted various stats, including range, damage, arcing properties, etc.
    • Adjusted weapon perks (more information below)
  • Flamethrower
    • Adjusted the burn mechanics, including burn damage, burn interval, time until burn triggers, burn duration, etc.
    • Increased the base damage of the weapon
    • Adjusted weapon perks (more information below)
    • Improved the weapon effects to more accurately portray the range and angle
• Adjusted weapon perks
  • Arc Cannon
    • Adjusted the values of weapon perks that affect the weapon’s range
    • Adjusted the value of the weapon perk that slows the enemy the arc is anchoring on
    • Removed the damage buff from the perk that removes anchoring properties
    • The weapon perk that puts allies hit with the arc into Astral state will now only appear in Squad Mode
    • Removed the weapon perk that reduces the relevant department’s point requirement for subsequent weapon perks
    • Removed the weapon perk that reduces friendly fire damage
  • Assault Rifle
    • Moved the silencer perk from tier 2 to tier 3
    • Moved the perk that increases rate of fire while continuously firing from tier 3 to tier 2; reduced the rate of fire buff amount (especially since it can now stack with the damage increase perk in tier 3)
  • Flamethrower
    • With the changes to burn mechanics, we added/adjusted various weapon perks around burn
    • Removed the weapon perk that reduces the relevant department’s point requirement for subsequent weapon perks
    • Removed the weapon perk that reduces friendly fire damage
  • Pump-Action Shotgun
    • Moved the perk that heals per pellet hit from tier 2 to tier 3; adjusted the HP recovery amount
    • Moved the perk that increases rate of fire from tier 3 to tier 2; reduced the rate of fire buff amount
  • Revolver
    • Moved the silencer perk from tier 2 to tier 3
    • Moved the perk that gives penetration chance from tier 3 to tier 2
  • Sniper Rifle
    • Moved the silencer perk from tier 2 to tier 3
    • Moved the perk that increases reload speed & removes movement speed penalty during reload from tier 3 to tier 2; reduced the reload speed buff amount
• Adjusted Synaptic Enhancements
  • Soul Harvest: Killing a target grants a chance to increase max HP
    • Reduced the amount of max HP increase per kill
  • Adrenaline Boost: Recovers HP when entering Panicked state
    • Reduced the HP recovery amount
• Adjusted enemy balance
  • Skirmisher
    • Reduced the max Panic Gauge scaling, which will result in tougher spawns having a lower Panic Gauge threshold than before (i.e., easier to make them panic)
  • Ravager
    • Made improvements to the AI
    • Reduced the max Panic Gauge scaling, which will result in tougher spawns having a lower Panic Gauge threshold than before (i.e., easier to make them panic)
  • Exosuit
    • Added a wind-up motion and a visual indicator before it fires the Gatling gun
• Adjusted maps for balance
  • Deep Storage
    • Various improvements for the map, including better visibility, slightly larger area, and slightly simpler layout
  • Secret Rooms
    • Adjusted some elements that affected difficulty
    • Adjusted enemy variations
    • Added new layouts
    • Adjusted the rewards for some layouts
• Under the Settings menu, Agents can now choose whether the scroll wheel weapon switching includes tactical gear or not
• Made other various changes and improvements

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed the issue where the Security Synaptic Enhancement was not adding a point to the Bionic Department
• Fixed the issue where there could sometimes be a roll-dodge happening without input, when playing with a controller
• Fixed the issue where the Medical Equipment in the Safe Room would not heal to max HP, if the Agent had the Heat Exchange Synaptic Enhancement
• Fixed the issue where the flashlight could sometimes illuminate through certain walls
• Fixed the issue where enemies did not get properly alerted with firing noise from the Arc Cannon
• Fixed the issue where credits were not properly dropping in Swarm Defense Mode
• Fixed other miscellaneous bugs and issues

[h2]Known Issues[/h2]

• For the Flamethrower weapon perk that reduces burn duration, we plan to edit the text for clarification for some languages
• Under the "Display Badge" settings, some languages may list the badge slots as message slots
• There may be cases where, even if you set the "Display Badge" setting to show 0, some badges may still show in-game
• Agents who already unlocked the last tier of permanent enhancements may not be given the badge automatically

Please note that if you are playing at this time, your game will not be interrupted. You will be prompted to download the patch the next time you open Blackout Protocol. It is possible for teammates to play with mismatched game versions, which could potentially impact gameplay. So please install the update as soon as possible for the best experience.


- ODS Team

DISCORD | TWITTER | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | YOUTUBE | TWITCH | KICK

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2111870/Blackout_Protocol/

Hello, I'm Dongsoo Oh, Creative Director of Blackout Protocol.

With the upcoming 0.14 update, our detour from the initial roadmap to focus on core features is now complete. Although we’ll continue to make adjustments, we believe it's time to build on the foundation we’ve established and resume adding new content.

With that, let's briefly take a look at what’s included in this update.

[h3]#1: New Save and Networking Features[/h3]
To enhance the overall player experience, we’ve added multiple save slots, and the ability to join or rejoin Squad Mode games mid-session.


Previously, all progress and unlocks were saved automatically, and the only way to start fresh was to delete your entire save data. In today’s update, we’re adding three save slots, allowing players to enjoy the game as they wish.

The new save features can be accessed from the top left on the title screen.


In addition, to make the multiplayer experience a little more reliable, we’ve implemented the ability to join ongoing games. For now, you’ll be able to join a game already in progress so long as the players in it haven’t yet reached the first saferoom (though we may adjust that later, based on feedback).

What this means for you is that, when you’re playing multiplayer, instead of having to wait around outside doing nothing, now you can jump right in and just start playing.

Similarly, if a player leaves a game in Squad Mode for various reasons (e.g. an accidental disconnect), they will now be shown an option to rejoin that specific session, as seen below. Upon re-entering, the game will retain all progress, Synaptic Enhancements, weapons, etc. The rejoin feature has no restrictions whatsoever, allowing players to resume a session at any stage anywhere in the game.


These features have been a high priority for a long time, as they contribute significantly to quality of life. But actually implementing them entailed some tricky technical challenges that took us some time to sort out. We hope you enjoy them.

[h3]#2: In-Game Glossary[/h3]
This update, we’re also adding a glossary of key terms to help players better understand how things like weapon perks, Synaptic Enhancements, and Agent Upgrades interact.


In roguelite games like ours, a precise understanding of underlying mechanics is essential to enjoyment. At the moment, some systems in Blackout Protocol are a bit opaque. We’ve attempted to address that in various ways, and will continue to do so. Today, we’re introducing one of those ways: an interactive guide to in-game terminology, that will allow those super-engaged min/max type players to delve into the nitty-gritty, to their heart’s content.

In addition to the glossary, we also worked on a more in-depth official guide under Steam community’s Guides section. You can look for the nice "Official Guide" thumbnail to locate them. We hope they are useful for answering common questions and onboarding new players.



[h3]#3: Melee Weapons, Tweaks, and More[/h3]
In addition to the core development work mentioned above, we’ve already resumed the development of new content, some of which is dropping in this update.

First, we’ve overhauled the Flamethrower and Arc Cannon, two AoE weapons that are great against big crowds of enemies, but become dangerous against smaller groups, limiting their versatility. To that end, we’ve buffed the flamethrower’s damage, and fixed various bugs to burn damage, both of which should make it more useful against individual enemies, particularly those with high defense. We’ve also fixed various bugs with the arc cannon that should make its damage output a bit more reliable and less chaotically swingy.

We’ve also completely overhauled the perks for both weapons, getting rid of a bunch of kludgy old ones and replacing them with a progression that feels a lot more impactful and noticeable. We’ll be making similar changes to perks for other weapons in the future, which we hope will increase how much players engage with the perk system during play.

(It’s worth noting that these weapons will now do slightly more friendly fire damage, as a result of removing some perks related to that. But we’re planning a broader revisit of the friendly fire damage ratio for all weapons in the near future, so that’s a temporary situation.)

Finally, and much more excitingly:

We’ve added melee weapons to the game!



Melee weapons have been a major goal for us since the very start of Early Access, and we’re excited to finally be able to share them. Although some of our recent adjustments to the movement system have changed the role of melee weapons from how we initially conceived it, we’re confident they still fill a unique and much-needed niche in the game: giving players more options to conserve ammunition and escape situations where they find themselves cornered.

But this is just the beginning for melee weapons. We plan to expand their role and versatility in future updates, and we welcome your feedback in that regard.

[h3]#4: Other Stuff[/h3]
Finally, we’ve added some new player-card badges. These can be obtained by clearing the game under a variety of specific conditions, and can be equipped from the settings menu.

Last of all, we’ve made a bunch of changes to the optional challenges encountered in Restricted Areas, including tweaks to enemy spawn layouts and adjusted rewards.

It's already been almost six months since Blackout Protocol started Early Access. In that time, we’ve been all-hands-on-deck to provide a steady cadence of improvements to players as quickly as possible.

As we approach the end of the year, the development team will be updating our previous roadmap to better align with the game’s current state and future outlook. Players can look forward to all that stuff sometime early next year.

Our entire team wishes you a joyous holiday season and a restful year’s end.

Thank you,

Dongsoo Oh
Creative Director

Hello everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving! 2023 went so fast and I can’t believe it’s already November.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
2023 was exciting for everyone at Ocean Drive Studio! We started Early Access for Blackout Protocol, released Lost Eidolons on PS5 and Xbox Series, dropped the Dropkick Navvy demo, and of course, we announced Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch.

All of us working on these various projects are grateful for the ongoing support from everyone and hope to deliver something even more meaningful to our community in the upcoming months.

To share our plans going forward:

[h2]Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch[/h2]

As Lost Eidolons is a very important franchise for us, we are going to keep investing in the genre and IP. For Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch, our plan is to share regular updates via our Dev Logs, and plan to stream and showcase development progress. We are hoping to share the demo build with everyone early 2024—that is, unless we find critical issues during internal playtests! Please follow our social channels and Steam community hubs for more updates. All links below.

[h2]Blackout Protocol[/h2]

It was busy 4 months after we released Early Access in July! We learned a lot from the community feedback and have been working to improve the foundation of the game, pivoting from the content roadmap we announced at release. As we hope to have addressed most of the improvement points of the core gameplay, we think we can start adding new content again. If you haven’t tried out the game yet, now is the perfect time to give it a go since you will see the much-improved version of Blackout Protocol thanks to our community feedback. And it’s on Autumn Sale!

[h2]Dropkick Navvy and Unannounced Title[/h2]

Right after PAX West, we released an early demo entitled Dropkick Navvy: First Step! We are collecting feedback and reading the reviews for the game to better plan the development roadmap for the full game—Dropkick Navvy. If you haven’t tried the demo yet, please give it a try especially if you love physics based, sandbox games!

We have also been working on an unannounced title for quite a while! This unannounced title is one of the biggest development projects which we plan to officially announce in late 2024. So keep an eye out for future announcements.

Again, thank you so much for all the support you have given us and have a fantastic Thanksgiving Weekend!

Best,

Jungsoo Lee

[h2]Patch Schedule[/h2]

• PST: 10 AM, November 22, 2023
• EST: 1 PM, November 22, 2023
• CET: 7 PM, November 22, 2023
• ICT: 1 AM, November 23, 2023
• KST: 3 AM, November 23, 2023

Agents,

We are deploying a minor patch (Ver. 0.13.3) to implement a bug fix. As we continue to go through the list of suggestions and issues, we will be deploying hotfixes and patches frequently until we can ensure Agents can all comfortably enjoy the game.

Below is the bug that had been lurking around and got squished this time.

[h2]Bug Fix[/h2]

• Fixed the issue where the game could crash when moving between levels

Please note that if you are playing at this time, your game will not be interrupted. You will be prompted to download the patch the next time you open Blackout Protocol. It is possible for teammates to play with mismatched game versions, which could potentially impact gameplay. So please install the update as soon as possible for the best experience.


- ODS Team

DISCORD | TWITTER | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | YOUTUBE | TWITCH | KICK

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2111870/Blackout_Protocol/

Agents,

Blackout Protocol welcomes the first Steam seasonal sale after we entered Early Access: Autumn Sale 2023! Blackout Protocol will be on a 25% discount to celebrate the coming of fall.

If you’ve been eyeing the game, now is the time for you to snag it. If you’ve been enjoying your time down in Section 13, you can give the gift of a good co-op experience, which involves an ample amount of lead being sprayed around.

See you down in Section 13!


- ODS Team

DISCORD | TWITTER | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | YOUTUBE | TWITCH | Kick

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2111870/Blackout_Protocol/