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Squad Server Spotlight - January 2022

Hello Squaddies,

It’s Jenny here, the Server Licensing Manager at Offworld Industries, with another Server Spotlight. Now you might be asking yourself what exactly is a Server Spotlight, well this is a chance for me to highlight some of the great community run Servers that help provide amazing experience for Squad players from around the world! Hopefully after reading about some of these great servers, you’ll want to check them out for your next game! 

Whether they are old or new, it's always good to highlight the fantastic stuff our established Server Owners are doing every day.

[h3]Enclave[/h3]



Started with the community in mind, Enclave is a Server that wants to ensure that their players can voice their opinions and be heard! Here player opinions can directly influence gameplay. From the start, the Enclave community has grown through the influence of its members. The server staff welcome all types of players from any background, experienced players, new players, and those all the way throughout that spectrum, giving them a chance to enjoy the game and to be part of the Enclave community.

Link: Discord (URL Link)

Jenny's Notes: I recently visited this server and thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent there. The atmosphere is welcoming and engaging, while the admins continue to support their players within their community. I did join one of the admins’ squad and they clearly explained to their squad what they will be doing and offered support to new players. I highly recommend visiting this server, just to hear Commander Bear's Helicopter speech, which is as fun as it is informative.


[h3]BaD: Broken as Designed[/h3]



With experience over the years in various online gaming communities - the team behind the BaD: Broken as Designed Server have been involved in many great organizations. Wanting to build one that could really last the test of time they built from their collective experiences, apply the good, and create a welcoming space for all.  [BaD]'s primary goal, their only goal really, is to serve as a place for folks to gather, be themselves, and play games.

The team at BaD hope that their name, "Broken as Designed", conveys the nature of their community.  Perhaps a little more relaxed than true "mil-sim" (as an example, they do not have ranks  and all of their members are equal).  Perhaps a bit tongue-in-cheek.  Plus, being competitive at heart, they find that  it's always fun winning while having "bad" in their tags.

Link: http://www.brokendiscord.com (Link URL)

Jenny's Notes: I really enjoyed this server, while I was on it the admins jumped into squads supporting new players. Helping the newer players they explained how to use their mics and how to type while in the game. All of the players were very engaged in the game with admins and experienced members from this community working alongside new players. I highly recommend visiting this server.


[h3]The 8th Infantry 'The Fighting Eagles' [8.FE][/h3]



Created in Jun 2019, this community was started by two friends who had very quickly grown to love the game of Squad!

The pair met many new people through playing the game and their time in Squad  reached a point where it became more than just friends playing together and morphed into a tight knit community that aims to attract players with a compelling playstyle, camaraderie, and the server community’s ability to play the game in a serious manner while also having fun. Before the friends knew it, they had gained enough members to warrant giving their community a name! Wanting to honour the US 8th Infantry Division ‘Pathfinders’ they chose the server’s name.

On The 8th Infantry everyone has a part to play, there are so many ways to play the game and in so many other games teamwork is an option that is not always necessary. In Squad your shooting ability is not everything, A good medic supporting his squad is more important to the team than a great marksman any day.

The team behind the [8 FE] server also enjoy the Squad clan community as a whole, priding themselves on having good relations with fellow clans and communities as well as participating in squad community events.

The Eagles are a mix of young and old, serving and non-serving, all races, creeds and religions, experienced players and people who have just bought the game.

What makes this community amazing is their sense of family, they believe in looking after their own, their community is a place of betterment, encouragement and enjoyment, Not just in Squad but in all walks of life.

The admin team commits to seeding every Thursday and Sunday, with a good mix of time zones across North America & Europe.

Link: Discord (LINK URL)

Jenny's Notes: I had lots of fun on this server, I received a nice warm welcome and joined a squad with one of the members. They focus on supporting new players on their server, giving them assistance to teach them on how to play the game in a way that works for their server. I saw the admins act professionally while dealing with any issues that occurred during my visit. I would highly recommend joining this server for a few games!

Squad's 2021 In Review



Hello Squaddies,

2021 has been quite the difficult year. Here at Offworld, we had certainly hoped to accomplish more. We’ve touched on this with you all previously, but we wanted to share some final thoughts and a recap with our amazing playerbase as we prepare for the holiday break…

We started strongly with the release of V2.0 at the start of the year. This update included a number of significant changes to Squad including a significant Map Layer Overhaul which was similar in scope to an engine update, new content for your favourite factions, balance and gameplay changes, and long-awaited improvements to the Helicopter flight model. Also included was a new map based in Canada’s Goose Bay. For a full list of what we delivered with V2.0 see our launch blog [URL Link].

As is the case in game development nothing ever goes quite to plan and within a week we had identified and addressed a number of critical issues which were fixed with the V2.3 Hotfix [URL Link]. We would address more issues, and make some gameplay improvements with the V2.4 Update a few weeks later [URL Link]. The V2.4.1 Hotfix would arrive the next week with more fixes.

By the middle of April we had another significant update to Squad with V2.5 containing more bug fixes for V2.0 but also new replay functionality, allowing players to relive their most exciting moments from Squad. V2.5 came with a number of other updates, which are worth going over in its launch blog [LINK URL]. A few days later we addressed player concerns over the ability to abuse the client-side “demo recording” functionality to expose enemy positions during gameplay with the V2.6 Update [LINK URL].

Also in April the JoinSquad forums returned after being offline. If you have not had a chance to do it please register for the forums as it’s a great place to chat with your fellow players about the game. We’ll be utilizing our forums even more in the new year, so we hope to see you all there! [LINK URL]

The team continued to improve gameplay, and address outstanding issues in May’s V2.7 Update [LINK URL]. Unfortunately that build had more issues than normal and so the team refocused again releasing the V2.8 Update shortly afterwards [LINK URL].

While we had done extensive work providing gameplay updates and focusing on addressing technical debt in Squad, by that point in the year the team realized that players were anxious for more content. With our emphasis for new content on Amphibious we realized that we would likely not have anything out in a timely manner. Thus knowing about the great work our Mod Community was doing with Squad we ran the Open Modding Event with the aim of increasing usage of mods within the player base as well as allowing Licensed Servers to support mods. This Open Modding Event started in May and ran through the first week of June [LINK URL]. There was some technical work that we had to do on Squad behind the scenes to best support mods, and ensure that a mod would not have the ability to prevent players from even being able to run the game but we were glad to be able to provide this new support to our modding community, and let more players access mods on a greater variety of servers.

Near the end of June we began to hold playtests for what would become the start of the V2.12 Update that is currently in progress. With a significant overhaul to how lighting and shadows work in Squad the update touches on a great number of aspects of the game and has proven harder than we anticipated to release due to how much of the game the Shadows and Lighting overhaul impacts..

June also saw the release of Squad V2.9 containing a slew of gameplay updates and bug fixes aimed at improving your overall experience while playing Squad [LINK URL]. V2.10 was released in the first week of July to address some issues that stemmed from the release of V2.9 [LINK URL].

In August the Squad team released V2.11 with changes to spawn mechanics at HABs/FOBs, and a number of quality of life changes, including Saveable Keybinds, and most importantly the new map Anvil which was originally developed by Midnight Interactive for the Australian faction [LINK URL].

We understand that players are keen for the Australian faction to come to Squad. When we purchased it from Midnight Interactive it became apparent that significant additional work was needed. We have to ensure that the faction works with the improvements made by the dev team during layer overhaul as well as improvements and fixes made to the game engine. With other priorities being the focus of the Squad team we have not had the opportunity to dig into the bulk of the work to complete the faction and bring it up to releasable standard.

In September we resumed testing for the V2.12 Update, which also features gameplay improvements alongside the lighting and shadow upgrades [LINK URL]. Given the technical issues that we have had with other releases, and the wide ranging changes in V2.12 we are being cautious with the release, striving to ensure that it is rigorously tested before it’s release. We have already pushed it back after running into technical issues with the update, but now barring any further issues being discovered during the Playtest sessions we aim to release it in the first part of 2022.

In October we had the first Squad Developer Q&A and took questions on our forums [LINK URL]. It’s part of a renewed focus on open two way communication between us as developers of Squad and you the players. Your feedback is always welcome, and in fact has been extremely helpful throughout the history of Squad’s development and the lessons that we took from the Q&A [LINK URL] will help guide us as we go forward into 2022 and beyond. We also promised a second Q&A in December, but with the team focused fully on preparing V2.12 for launch in 2022 we are postponing it. The next Developer Q&A will come in the New Year.

It is clear to us as a development team that we have not released enough content for Squad this year and that we promised much more than we delivered.

Some of this was because we had to focus on improving what we call technical debt, fixing underlying issues with Squad that are not noticeable to players on a day-to-day basis but can greatly affect future development on the game.

Another issue was dealing with patching issues with Updates after their release. While having to address bugs, and fix issues after a major release like V2.0 is common in software development for a small development studio like Offworld Industries, having to shift to fixing issues unfortunately throws further development out of schedule far more than it would at a larger studio where a game team can have multiple groups organized to tackle parallel tasks. That is not an excuse, or an apology, it is simply a reality that as a studio we have to live with as we organize our priorities, and when making promises to you the player community.

At times in our eagerness to tell you about the things that we are working on that excite us, and that we know will excite you, we have naively overpromised and under-delivered.

We are looking at ways of improving our internal work flows to catch more issues before they’re released. We are also working towards staying focused on content creation and release so that we can get out the long promised updates like the USMC faction, the Australian faction, and the Pan-Asian faction as soon as possible.

As 2021 closes we are proud that we have begun to improve communication between you the players, and us the developers of Squad. In 2022 we hope to continue that improvement, and pair it with an increase in content being released for the game.

Whether you’re a longtime veteran of the game, or a fresh recruit in 2021, we’re thankful for your support of Squad and look forward to seeing you in the game soon.

Sincerely,

- Offworld Industries

Happy Holidays From Offworld Industries



Dear Squaddies.

From everyone at Offworld Industries we wish you a wonderful holiday season with your friends, family, and loved ones as we celebrate the end of another year!

This year has been a busy one at Offworld Industries, as we detailed in our recent post looking back at 2021 [URL LINK]. We are excited about what lies ahead for both Squad and our studio, and look forward to sharing more of that with you in the new year.

We are continually grateful for your support, and for your openness in sharing your feelings, and hopes for the future of Squad with us. You have given us such great feedback this year and we hope that you can tell how passionate we are about delivering the best game possible today and in the future as we focus on delivering more content in 2022! Please continue to share your thoughts with us via our channels such as the Join Squad Forums [Link URL], our Twitter account [Link URL], our Discord Server [LINK URL] and our Facebook page [Link URL].

Please note that the Offworld Industries studio will be closed from December 20th until January 3rd. You will still be able to reach our Customer Support Team through our Support Portal [Link URL], but please keep in mind that responses will take longer than usual during the holiday closure. In the meantime please visit our Technical FAQ for commonly reported issues [LINK URL].

Thank you again for your support and happy holidays from the OWI Team!

- Offworld Industries

Squad's Holiday V2.12 Playtest Event



Hey Squaddies,

With the Squad team’s focus on releasing the V2.12 Update early in 2022 we will be running an extended playtest over the holiday break, as a method of obtaining details on how the update runs in a live environment and hopefully uncovering any significant issues prior to launch.

We have partnered with a number of our Licensed Servers to provide an opportunity for players to experience the new Squad V2.12 build from December 17th to January 4th.

Already we have confirmation that one of our Licensed Servers is planning to have events over the holidays on the [|56|] Canadian Gaming – Advanced RAAS Update – V2.12 Test Bonanza.

They have provided us with these details about their events:

  • Description: Squad Playtest Special Events.Test out all of the forthcoming V2.12 Features and provide helpful information to OWI and help with the testing of their next update. Join us while we play all the new layers of Yeho, Goro, Kohat, Narva and we might even throw a new lighting Basrah in there. Months worth of free whitelisting will be given out.
  • Dates: December 18th, 25th, and January 1st
  • Time: Event starts 11am EST (Server Seeding Starts @ 10:40am)
  • INSTRUCTIONS
  • These playtests will occur on the “Squad
– Public Testing” application, so players will need to have the “Squad – Public Testing” application.

To get the best results and to be able to join the playtest, follow these guidelines

  • The “Squad – Public Testing” application will be available in your Steam Library ONLY if you own Squad. It can be found by searching for “Squad – Public Testing” within the Steam Library search bar.
  • Downloading the “Squad – Public Testing” application is equivalent to downloading another copy of Squad, so please ensure you allow yourself enough time to download it and enough HDD space to have it installed.
  • The build(s) we will be using during the playtests are not currently available. This means if you install the “Squad – Public Testing” application now in preparation for the tests, there will be an additional (smaller) download closer to the time of the tests. Please keep that in mind, and set your Steam Library to auto-update if possible.


[h2]RELEASE NOTES[/h2]

This latest V2.12 Playtest is similar to the previous versions (Link URL) with the addition of the following changes:

  • Added some holiday spirit, in the form of deployable Christmas Trees, snowmen, and throwable snowballs in the v2.12 build. These deployables are available on all Belaya, Goose Bay, Gorodok, Mestia, Manic-5, Skorpo, Yehorivka map layers.
  • Removed the “Ultra Low” option on Low Setting – this will degrade performance for players running on low, especially with min spec hardware. This is because we are using a build built from the Content stream rather than the “Shadows Fallback” stream
  • Adjusted forced settings to work with particle scalability and texture mips bias – This could potentially bring further optimization for users running on LOW.
  • Added binoc zoom in/zoom out sounds – minor Quality of Life improvement
  • Added mechanical jostling sounds for Rifles/MGs when soldiers are sprinting – minor Quality of Life improvement
  • Anvil minor optimizations and bug fixes. Lighting layers now use HDR skies. – minor Quality of Life improvement
  • Playfab Client Performance Stats – This is the big one which will give us more data to potentially use in decision making and troubleshooting remaining issues blocking the release of v2.12


Let us know what you think of V2.12 and share your experiences with this forthcoming Update in our forums (URL Link) which we’ll be checking in January. Thank you for your support and we’ll see you on the field this holiday season!

- Offworld Industries

SQUAD V2.12 PLAYTEST THIS SUNDAY

Hello Squaddies,

Offworld Industries will be holding an additional public playtest on Sunday, December 12th at 16:00 UTC.

These playtests will be a chance to give feedback on the performance of the upcoming v2.12 update, which includes the following features:

Shadows & lighting overhaul
  • Buddy boost (being able to jump on your teammates to get over walls)
  • Capture zone scaling (capture speed will now scale with the number of players in a capture zone)
  • Joining the public playtest will help us see how these changes perform. It is also a chance to try out upcoming gameplay changes and fixes for v2.12.
  • We are looking to get a broad range of players so that we can be sure that the shadows and lighting overhaul will work for players on all types of systems. The performance of V2.12 on lower end hardware is a potential blocker for its release and we want to confirm that it will perform to an acceptable level.


These playtests will occur on the “Squad – Public Testing” application, so players will need to have the “Squad – Public Testing” application.

To get the best results and to be able to join the playtest, follow these guidelines

  • The “Squad – Public Testing” application will be available in your Steam Library ONLY if you own Squad. It can be found by searching for “Squad – Public Testing” within the Steam Library search bar.
  • Downloading the “Squad – Public Testing” application is equivalent to downloading another copy of Squad, so please ensure you allow yourself enough time to download it and enough HDD space to have it installed.
  • The build(s) we will be using during the playtests are not currently available. This means if you install the “Squad – Public Testing” application now in preparation for the tests, there will be an additional (smaller) download closer to the time of the tests. Please keep that in mind, and set your Steam Library to auto-update if possible.


Take your chance to leave an impression on v2.12, and we’ll see you on the field.

– OWI