Gene Shift Auto News

Hey all, this version places a larger focus on SURVIVAL by introducing the Survivor's Income.

When you're a survivor you will passively gain cash and XP over time. When you're a zombie however, this income is paused.

You can see your Survivor Income growing up the top-right of the screen. The cash and XP shown will be given to you when you get your next kill. Then the income resets and starts counting up again. This means that you don't have to go crazy hunting for kills, as you'll get paid the same rate anyway.

GSA is a Battle Royale and so it should have high-stakes around dying. But previously death only really mattered during overtime. Now death always matters, and the fastest way to farm is to play wisely and focus on quality kills only.

Enjoy!
bencelot

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[SURVIVOR INCOME]

- The Kill Reward is now called Survivor Income, and it now only grows while you're a survivor.

- It will grow at $1200/min in round 1, $2400/min in round 2, and $3600/min in round 3.

- For XP it grows at 120/min in round 1, 240/min in round 2, and 360/min in round 3.

- During overtime it will grow 2x faster, making it extra beneficial to be alive in this time.

- Survivor Income is capped at $9999 and 999 XP. Make sure you get a kill before it caps out or you'll miss out on income.

- Cash and the Survivor Income are now shown up the top right of the screen, near the buy menu.


[ECONOMY CHANGES]

- We no longer lose 10% of our cash on death. Being a zombie and missing income is the new penalty.

- Supply Drops and Rare Loot now give more cash and XP in round 2, and even more in round 3.

- Streak Points now give +$5000 when you hit 5/10/20/30 instead of 5/10/15/20/25/30.

- Vendor upgrades continue to get more expensive up to a cap of $20,000 instead of $10,000.


[GAMEPLAY CHANGES]

- The final 6 players now get +5/10/15/20/25/30 max hp instead of +100/200/300/400/500/600xp.

- Players once again gain +5 max hp per level instead of +10. However there are more health kits in the map to compensate.

- Max health is now capped at 500 instead of 300.


[VENDOR UPGRADE CHANGES]

- Weapon damage now gives +6% instead of +5% per tier.

- Weapon bullet speed is now +25% instead of +20% per tier.

- Weapon rate of fire is now +8% instead of +6% per tier.


[CLASS CHANGES]

- Caster skill vendor upgrades are once again +50%, not +100%.

- Caster's active skills now restore +20% of MAX health instead of a fixed +30hp when cast. They also get +70% cooldown speed instead of +50%.

- Heavy's shield goes back to -3hp below 50%.

- Heavy's health kits drop half as often, but give twice as much health. Easier to use.

- Scavenger passive healing is now +100% faster instead of +150% faster.

- Assault move speed is now +10% instead of +12%.

- Sniper damage at range is now +20% instead of +25%.


[SKILL CHANGES]

- Executioner damage now ranges from 8 to 32 instead of 10 to 40%.


[WEAPON CHANGES]

- Nailgun clip size is now 30 instead of 25.

Hey all, this version adds a new class called Scavenger!

Scavenger is all about looting. If you collect 50 bits of loot in a row without dying, you will hit the jackpot and suddenly double all of that farm. Scavenger also gets free loot for damaging enemies, and can heal much faster by standing still.

This version also changes how the skill upgrades from vendors work. Skill upgrades no longer affect just one individual skill (eg: +20% Firestorm damage), but instead affect ALL skills that apply (eg: +10% to all damage skills). This is cool because we can make synergies. For example Firestorm, Executioner and Radiate all have the +DAMAGE tag, which means buying that upgrade will buff all 3 of them at once!

Other neat changes are the ability to shoot while driving cars and some changes to the economy.

Enjoy!
bencelot

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[GENERAL CHANGES]

- Class icons are no longer shown during the warmup round.

- Removed the skill stats tracking system that displayed skill medals. These didn't really do anything and added too much confusion. These will be reintroduced in a different way in a later version.

- Daily challenges now give +5000xp instead of +2000 (or +10,000xp if you have Deluxe DLC).


[GAMEPLAY CHANGES]

- 2x as much loot falls into the centre during showdowns.

- Players who join a game halfway through, in R2 or R3 spawn with a tier 1 gun in addition to their USP. Skills are no longer auto-levelled for players.

- When zombies get 4 hearts they will now respawn somewhere nearby, so they can continue their existing fight.

- Players now gain +10 instead of +5 max hp per level, but level up slower and fewer random health kits exist in the map.


[SKILL UPGRADES]

- Skill upgrades purchased from vendors now affect ALL skills, allowing for some cool synergies between skills that share the same tag.

- There are 6 tags you can upgrade: Cooldown Speed, Skill Damage, Skill Duration, Skill Size, Skill Speed, Skill Healing.

- Check the skill tree to see what tags each skill qualifies for. Most skills are affected by multiple tags.

- Vendor upgrades are now more expensive, costing $6000, then $8000, then $10000.


[VEHICLE CHANGES]

- You can now fire guns while driving cars! Doing so gives you +15 degrees of inaccuracy.

- Vehicles have less health and provide a bit less protection to compensate.

- Improved vehicle netcode. It shouldn't rubberband if your car explodes anymore.

- More vehicles spawn in the map and bots drive them more frequently.


[ECONOMY CHANGES]

- When we die, instead of losing 10% of our kill reward, we lose 10% of our unspent cash.

- Missions no longer give upgrades, instead they give a fixed +$3000 and +300xp per mission.

- Getting 5 streak points now gives $5000 instead of 500xp.

- Tightened up the levelling curve, slowing down the rate we level up, and giving new skills on levels 1/2/4/5/7 only.


[NEW CLASS: SCAVENGER]

- Added the 5th class called Scavenger. Scavenger is all about looting the map, getting dangerously close to enemies, but trying to survive. It's 3 perks are:

- Copy Coin: If you collect 50 loot items without dying, you'll duplicate all of them. Dying will halve the amount currently collected.

- Pickpocket: Damaging enemies makes them drop random loot, on a 8 second cooldown. The closer you are the more loot they drop.

- Static Aid: Your passive regen will recharge and heal +150% faster whenever you stand still.


[CLASS CHANGES]

- Heavy's ROF increases by +3% instead of +2% per level.

- Heavy's shield will now also activate when standing still.

- Caster loses the Skill Lottery perk that gave you a level 1 legendary. Instead, the new skill-based vendor upgrades are +50% more powerful.


[SKILL CHANGES]

- All skills have been buffed slightly, by making their level 1 version stronger. For example Vampirism used to give +4/8/12/etc healing. Now it starts at +8/12/16/etc.


[WEAPON CHANGES]

- USP fire rate is now 360 instead of 300

- Deagle DPS remains the same, but now has 25hp x 240 rpm instead of 20hp x 300 rpm (more impactful)

- UZI bullet speed is now 85 instead of 75m/s

- SPAS spread is now 20 instead of 22

- AK47 damage is now 10 instead of 11, but fire rare is 515 instead of 450 (feels better). AK47 recoil is worse.

- Ruger fire rate is now 80 instead of 72

- Barrett fire rate is now 48 instead of 50

- Tasers fire rate is now 360 instead of 300

- Nailgun fire rate is now 900 instead of 720, with damage at 9 instead of 10. DPS is thus 135 instead of 120 (highest in the game!) But the clip size is only 25 instead of 30.

- Seek Rifle rpm is now 400 instead of 360, bringing DPS up to 107 instead of 96

- Minigun clip size is now 50 instead of 40


[BUG FIXES]

- Fixed the max wanted steam achievement (for real this time)

Hey all, hope you had a great new years break. Just a small balance patch.

FYI, these balance changes are based on feedback in Discord, but also on data collected from every player and every match. If a skill gets a higher win rate than average it might get a nerf. Same for weak skills getting buffs. Over the last year I've seen that the skills are getting close to a consistent, balanced win-rate. Yay science!

The other interesting change this version is that rare loot is now visible on the minimap, and gives more XP too. It will show with a little question mark icon, giving players a new type of objective to fight over.

Enjoy!
bencelot

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[GENERAL CHANGES]

- The score chart now automatically displays between rounds.

- Warmup rounds are a bit faster.

- Changed the colour of enemies from red to slightly purplishly red.


[GAMEPLAY CHANGES]

- Pressing E on regular civilians now makes them follow you.

- When a zombie picks up their 4th heart piece, they will remain for another 0.5s before they revive. This gives time to pickup other loot.

- Rerolling now costs $2000 for regular drafts and $5000 for boosted drafts. However, if you reroll on a boosted draft you are now guaranteed to get that same rarity after rerolling.

- Rare loot crates now give an extra +100xp and show up on the minimap when they're active.

- Heart fragments now give +50xp instead of +20xp for survivors. However, they no longer drop on kill for survivors.

- Players now get 10 instead of 5 score per level up.

- The skill point leveling curve is now 15% slower.

- Our second legendary skill appears at level 12 instead of 15.

- Bots are less accurate with snipers and M4A1.


[CLASSES CHANGES]

- Assault no longer has +20% bigger shifts, nor does it reduce combat slowdown. Instead, Assault has a new perk which makes it reload weapons +70% faster.

- Sniper's bullets now have +20% range instead of +5m range (+20% works out to +10m range on normal rifles).

- Heavy's health kits appear 20% instead of 15% of the time, and will pop out directly behind you if possible, also more consistently.

- Caster no longer gains extra cash or XP from kills. Instead skill draft rerolls are 50% cheaper ($1000 instead of $2000, or $2500 instead of $5000 if boosted).


[SKILL BUFFS]

- Self Repair takes 2.0 instead of 3.0s to heal

- Illicit Income gain per wanted level is +3% instead of +2% per level

- Cluster Bomb throws nades 0.1s more frequently

- Force Fields bounced bullets deal 10% more damage and steer a bit faster

- Blade Fury slashing damage is now 100hp/s instead of 60hp/s

- Invis only does reduced damage for 0.7 instead of 1.0s

- Rambulance post-vehicle healing duration is now 5s instead of 4s, and regen is +5hp/s for all levels

- Shockwave cooldown is 2s faster for all levels

- Medical Supplies now fires loot at you from player kills too


[SKILL NERFS]

- Vampirism healing gains 4% instead of 5% per level

- Clip Magnet seeking is 2 less per level

- Proximity Rounds charging range is now 30 instead of 40m

- Bullet Time slows enemy bullets down to 20% instead of 16% speed, and doesn't seek as much at higher levels.

Choose your champion!

This version adds a long awaited class system. There are currently 4 classes, but more will be added next version. On the loading screen you can choose to play as Assault, Sniper, Heavy or Caster. Each class has 3 powerful perks, which creates a unique playstyle that combos best with the various skills and weapons in the game.

Everyone's class icon is shown above their heads, allowing us to see what others are playing and counter them. There is a subtle rock, paper, scissors mechanic amongst the classes too.

For example, the Sniper class deal extremely high damage bullets - but only at range. So charge up close to counter them! The Assault class moves extra fast and can close the gap easily, making Assault a natural counter to Sniper. However Assault is countered by Heavy, because Heavy has a shield perk that reduces all enemy bullet damage by 3, which really harms the high ROF guns that the Assault likes to use. Sniper rifles however blast right through this shield, and so Heavy is countered by Sniper.

And then there's Caster doing his own thing, spamming active skills all over the place.




These classes replace the old Perk system. The old perk system had solid perks in it, but the system itself was too confusing and static. It was too much effort to think up a new combo between matches, and so we mostly just stuck with the same old perks game after game. Classes take the best of the old perks, tweak them a bit, buff them a lot, and make it extremely convenient to change classes between matches. With a single click you can try a whole new playstyle each game! Here are the perks of the new classes.



ASSAULT PERKS (Movement & Aggression)
- Super Shifts: You can fire your weapon while shifting, and your shift distance is +20%.

- Run & Gun: Move +15% faster. You also won't slow down as much when firing your guns.

- Death Fueled: Gain +10hp/s for 10s whenever you kill an enemy player civ or cop.

SNIPER PERKS (High Damage at Range)
- Rifle Range: Bullets gain damage the further they travel, dealing up to +25% damage at 70m. Also gives +5m range.

- Black Market: You can purchase tier 2 and 3 guns 1 round earlier.

- Backup Bomb: Whenever you throw an explosive you'll throw another one for free shortly after.

HEAVY PERKS (Huge DPS, but Immobile)
- Crisis Cover: Enemy bullets deal -3 damage to you whenever your health goes below 50%.

- Final Focus: Gain +30% rate of fire and +30% bullet speed whenever your health goes below 50%.

- Beaten Heart: Gives a 15% chance to drop a +20hp health kit whenever you're hit by an enemy bullet.

CASTER PERKS (Yer a Wizard Harry!)
- Active Healing: Active skills have -30% cooldown time and instantly heal you +30 health when cast.

- Skill Lottery: At level 1 you will see 2 Epic skills in the draft.

- Flashy Finish: Gain +$500 and +50xp from each kill. This is doubled if you kill with non-bullet damage.




We can level up our classes too. Whenever you earn trophies at the end of the match (based on your placement) you'll make progress towards your chosen class. When you get enough trophies you can level it up, which gives you some currency but more importantly unlocks new gun skins.

There are 35 new cosmetics added to the game. This includes a "Silver" skin for every gun, and a few "Golden" skins for the most popular ones. As your total class level increases you'll gain access to new skins, until every gun is shimmering in either silver or gold.

Due to the camera angle, characters appear quite small in GSA, and the guns appear even smaller. To solve this, every gun skin has a huge bright glow, simulating the blue moonlight reflecting off the gun's barrel - or the "sunlight" if you have a golden skin.




Another huge change - there is now a REROLL button in the skill draft. Whenever you level up you'll see 2 new skills. But you now have a 3rd option to spend $1000 to reroll the draft and see 2 other skills instead. You can keep clicking this until you find a skill that works with your build.

This gives cash an interesting new use, and if you're trying to create the perfect skill build you might spend MOST of your cash on rerolling. But if you're more versatile and can make any skill work, then you can save your money to buy bigger guns instead. This system subtly rewards players who have mastered all the skills in the game, and are able to adapt to anything they're given.




It is no longer possible to disable skills in the skill tree.

This feature had good and bad points. The good: It was fun to be able to create a unique build by disabling skills, and it was also nice to avoid skills that you didn't like. The bad: It was a fairly tedious requirement to do this if you wanted to play competitively, because you just had to copy the meta skills and play nothing else. Not only was it a pain to have to manually disable all of the other skills, but it just made the game stale where all the top players were using the same 18 skills over and over again.

GSA is a PvP roguelite, and 18 skills just doesn't provide enough variety to do "roguelite" justice. Now that rerolling exists we have a way to skip the skills we don't like. And now that classes exist, we have a way to choose our playstyle between matches too. So disabling skills is gone, and with everyone now using all 54 skills the game feels more fresh and roguelitey than ever before!




Our account level is now calculated in a different way, which means that your level number might be a bit higher or lower than before. It is now exactly 10,000 xp per level. Also, Skill Coins have been renamed to ACID.

This is in preparation for a complete progression rework that will come out next version. This rework will capture the fun of skill build creation in a far more intutive way, and without the staleness of the old build system.

For a sneak peak at what's to come, next version we will earn "Flasks" whenever we level up our account, and combine that with ACID (skill coins) to earn DNA on our skills. With enough DNA we will be able to equip our skills to our skill build, in either the Rare, Epic or Legendary slots.

This will become the main progression system and there's a lot more to it, but the details can wait till next version when it's actually released. If you're curious though come ask in discord!

Anyway, come online to try out the new classes, and have a great Xmas!
Ben.





[DELUXE EDITION DLC CHANGES]
- Getting the DLC now gives you an instant +10,000 ACID. All existing DLC owners have had this added to their accounts.

- Daily Challenges now give 2x XP as well as ACID for DLC owners.

- 17 of the 35 new gun skins are exclusively reserved for DLC owners.

- The Supporter's medallion is no longer shown next to DLC owner's health bars in-game (as that shows the class icon now instead).


[OTHER GENERAL CHANGES]

- Removed the Trophy Challenge for now (The +200 ACID from class level ups does this better).

- We no longer earn ACID at the end of each match (Again, class levels ups do this better, as more trophies = faster class level ups).

- Tweaked the ACID values from daily challenges, to offset the extra ACID earned from weeklys and class level ups.

- Improved the graphics in the map, making it night time.

- Your most actively played class now shows next to your name in the leaderboards.

- At the start of each month, you'll now earn ACID based on your previous months rating (50% of the rating, rounded down to the nearest 250).


[GAMEPLAY CHANGES]

- Added more jump pads to the map.

- Removed the ability to guarantee skills and disable skills. Instead we can now reroll skills for $1000.

- If you reroll a rare or epic draft, you might not see boosted skills after you reroll. But the game WILL remember that you are "owed" that epic and will try give it to you later.

- Removed the perks system entirely. All players now have access to all 4 classes (which don't have to be unlocked like perks did).


[SKILL CHANGES]
- Regeneration healing rate is improved, but it is now disabled for 1s after firing your gun.

- Rambulance now heals you for 3s after you exit a vehicle. Healing ranges from 5 to 35 hp/s.


[SKILL BUFFS]

- Force Field no longer makes you move faster. Instead it will bounce enemy bullets back at them for 10/20/30/40/50/60/70% damage

- Venom cooldown is faster at low levels and deals +5 hp damage.

- Shockwave restores +1 hp per bullet at all levels.

- Blade Fury can once again hit the same enemy up to 3 times instead of 2 times.

- Invis reveal range is only 10m instead of 15m, and damage penalty 70% instead of 50%.

- Skill Shots non-bullet damage ranges from +5 to +35% instead of +4 to +22%.

- Energy Vortex has +4 hp/s lifesteal for all levels.

- Armed Robbery has a higher chance of dropping hearts and upgrades (+5% for all levels).

- Soul Drop trigger height is now 5m and cooldown only 5s instead of 6m and 6s.

- Radiate duration now ranges from 2 to 5 instead of fixed at 3.

- Mirror Image clones do +5% damage across all levels, but cooldown is now 15s instead of 12s.

- Beefcake now gives +12 instead of +10 max hp per level.

- Shrapnel damage now ranges from +15% to +105% instead of +10% to 70%.

- Arcane Power damage now increased by 8 instead of 7 per level.

- Proximity Rounds charge time now ranges from 4.5 to 1.5 instead of 4.0 to 1.0s, but has a 40m charging radius instead of 30m.

- BackTrack health restored is now 40 to 100% instead of 15 to 100%.

- Shift Supply now also increases shift distance by +10/15/20/25/30/35/40%.

- XRay Vision range is now 100 to 600 instead of 50 to 350.


[SKILL NERFS]

- Clip Magnet seeking now ranges from 8 to 20 degrees instead of being fixed at 20, but the recharge time is a bit faster to compensate.

- Executioner damage now increases by 6% instead of 8% per level.

- Self Repair takes 3s instead of 2.5s to fully heal.

- Blade Mail protection now ranges from -6% to -42% instead of -10% to -50%.

- Bullet Time cooldown is now 20 to 14s instead of 20 to 8s.

Heyo, this is a small patch to make showdowns cleaner.

A recent change made it a bit too easy for zombies to respawn, especially if there were a lot of skilled players in the server who knew how to move fast. This made the final showdowns a bit too chaotic and a bit of a coin flip to see who would win.

So to make showdowns more clean between the final survivors, zombie respawns are harder. Killing another zombie now only drops 1 heart piece, and they no longer drop the amount they were carrying. We also require 4 instead of 3 hearts to respawn. To compensate for this, we no longer lose our hearts when we die (which was a bit frustrating anyway).

Enjoy!
bencelot

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[GAMEPLAY CHANGES]

-Zombies no longer lose their heart progress when they die. But they now require 4 hearts to rez instead of 3.

-Killing an enemy zombie now drops exactly 1 heart. It doesn't drop extra fragments based on how many they've collected.

-Added green bubble visual feedback for all healing skills

-During overtime, the poison gas deals increasing damage based on your time inside it, and this rate is now remembered until you die.

-Tweaked the order we unlock boosted skills. Instead of getting a legendary on level 5, and rares/epics on 8/11/14/17. We now get our legendary at 6 and get rares/epics at 5/10/15. If you reach level 20 you'll get a second legendary.

-Whenever we see a brand new legendary or epic in the draft, we only get 1 draft option (in the next major version, we'll be able to unlock boosters that let us control these)

-Fixed a bug where you couldn't reload if you have only fired a single shot of your gun

-Your existing skills now show when you are offered new skills

- Map spawns 18 instead of 20 vendors

- Flare gun now deals 10hp flame damage for 1s

-Added 3s extra to the end of each round to collect loot


[SKILL CHANGES]

-Radiate impact radius is 20m instead of 16m

-Stimpacks can no longer heal you in the poison gas

-Flying Dagger now works for zombies.

-Flying dagger damage now ranges from 70% to 100% instead of 105% to 135%

-Force Fields burst damage is now 30 instead of 20

-Clip Magnet now shows a green seeking halo when you have available bullets