Commanders, the 3rd Public Playtest Weekend for Survivor Mercs is happening now!We are looking for your feedback to further improve the game. The past weeks were quite busy as we reworked and improved some core systems. This helped us improve performance already and will allow us even more improvements in the future - to hit that sweet, sweet stable 60 fps.
Here's your operations briefing of what to expect:
[h2]NEW: View Range[/h2]
We received a lot of comments about the Commander Traits with visual impairment. After careful consideration, we decided to retire some of these effects, as some of you suffered from nausea and generally had a bad experience with them.
Instead, we are introducing a fog-of-war / view range feature. Your Commanders have different view ranges and might even get specific view patterns in the future. Your Mercs also extend your view range slightly. This feature is still a very early version of what we imagine it to be. And we did not yet fully retire all other visual impairment Traits.
Expect it to become visually more polished in the future and actually have a more dramatic impact on the gameplay, e.g. by influencing how some of your Mercs perform or select their targets.
[h2]NEW: Merc Skill Trees[/h2]
The second big feature are skill trees for your Mercs.
You can now select between different skill lanes that you can level-up individually. This will allow you to build your squad into a certain direction during each operation. Some skill lanes are exclusive to each other, e.g. Shredder can load slug or buckshot ammunition. Other skill lanes might have prerequisites to open them up, e.g. Curveball can throw more grenades after you increase his Arm Training skill to a certain level.
Please note that the skill trees are not yet visualized. We are currently working on displaying them in the Barracks. But we didn't want to wait any longer to receive your feedback and see the squad builds you come up with.
[h2]Other Improvements[/h2]
You will note that the Commander Selection Menu has an improved navigation and is less confusing. You can now also revive your last fallen Commander with DNA or select up to 3 new, randomly generated clones. More features and improvements for this are already in development.
The Extraction Point is now available after you drop below 50% of your HP or after 4 minutes into the operation. But beware! Calling it in will alert the enemy and send some elite forces your way.
You will no longer receive Gear just from level-ups. Now you have to capture Beacon Objectives to call-in new Mercs or new Gear! But you can get some generic upgrades from a level-up that will increase your overall Commander's and squad's combat capacity.
Mercs receive a Survivor Bonus if they are at least level 10 when you extract, or when you defeat the final Boss. Each bonus grants a free level-up for one of their skills once you call them in.
You will discover a lot more new and improved things, and even if we fixed a ton of bugs, you might encounter some completely fresh ones!
The game's balancing is also a bit more on the difficult side of things at the moment. This is a constant, ongoing process but it is a deliberate choice since there are some features on the horizon, mainly Bunker upgrades and new content that will impact the balancing a lot.
We are looking forward to receiving your feedback on our Discord server and are forever grateful for your support in making Survivor Mercs better and better!Now lock, load and loot, Commanders! Join the playtest on the
Steam page of Survivor Mercs.
[h3]Kill your savegames![/h3]
Note: if you participated in the playtest before, please delete your savegame to prevent problems or hiccups with the new content and features.
Go to C:\Users\\AppData\LocalLow\Wolpertinger Games\SurvivorMercs and delete these files:
AppData.save
AppData.1.save
AppData.2.save
