Squad News

Attention Squaddies,

We know you have questions, so let’s talk in depth about the emotes that will be coming along with the rest of the 4.2.

Emotes are animations which you can use to support VOIP communications, interact with each other, celebrate in-game situations, or brighten up down time. We hope they will enhance the social, gameplay, and cinematic aspects of your Squad experience. Our approach to introducing emotes is grounded in authenticity. Above all we wish to preserve the spirit of Squad and protect the immersion that each of you seek in its cooperative experience.

Firstly emotes will come in two flavors: Emotes and Gestures.

[h2]Emotes and Gestures[/h2]

Emotes are full body animations. When triggered they will display a 3rd person view of your character. Moving, aiming down sight, jumping, crouching or going prone, switching gear or similar action will interrupt the emote. Emotes can only be used in the main base or during the staging phase, as they show a 3rd person view, we wanted to make sure players couldn't use this feature to give themselves an advantage by peeking around corners.

Gestures are an upper body hand sign animation that you can trigger. Unlike Emotes it only involves movement of the hands and arms. Gestures happen in 1st person, without obstructing your movement. Gestures offer more leeway before being interrupted, you will be able to move while performing them, however aiming down sight, jumping, going prone, firing your weapon, switching gear or similar action will interrupt the gesture. Gestures are available at all times throughout the battlefield.

[h2]Using Emotes [/h2]

The emotes you have acquired can be equipped on the Customize screen which can be accessed from the Main Menu. It will display a preview of the emote as well to help you make a choice. A checkmark on the emote will also inform you of which one you currently have equipped.



Now that we have our emotes equipped, let’s use them!

Before anything, there is a new keybind that activates emotes (X by default) and can be changed in Settings. While in game you can press the assigned key to bring up a radial menu.

Hold the Emote key to open the emote wheel and click on an emote of your choice to activate it. This cannot be done while aiming down sights.



On the release of Squad 4.2 we will have a few available options for you to try. Free options will be directly available on release. Other options will be available for purchase a few hours later (Grunt and R&R Pack). Both the Grunt and R&R Pack will be available for 3.99 USD upon release. Prices may vary depending on regional currencies. Take a look at the exhaustive list below to know the content of each pack.


[h3]Free - Inventory[/h3]

Every player will be receiving for free one Emote and two Gestures in their inventory directly. The Wave Hello (Emote), Point Forward (Gesture) and Move Out (Gesture).

Wave Hello - Emote


Point Forward - Gesture


Move Out - Gesture


[h3]Free - Recruit Pack[/h3]

The free Recruit Pack will be available to all players on the launch of Squad 4.2. You can claim the pack for yourself from the Main Menu, open the Store and select the Free Recruit Pack. Clicking "Claim" will take you to the Steam store, where you can acquire it for free. It should quickly appear in your inventory of the Customization Menu afterward. The pack includes two Emotes (Salute and Shrug) and two Gestures (Come Here and Thumbs Up).


Salute - Emote

Shrug - Emote

Come Here - Gesture

Thumbs Up - Gesture

[h3]Grunt Pack[/h3]


For all of you grunts out there we have the Grunt Pack, it includes one Emote (Slow Clap, best used when your heli pilot misses the landing pad... again). and four Gestures (Horns, Finger Snap, Fist and Palm, and High Ready).


Slow Clap - Emote

Horns - Gesture

Finger Snap - Gesture

Fist and Palm - Gesture (PLA Faction Exclusive)

High Ready - Gesture (Only available with Rifles, Handguns and LMGs)

[h3]R&R Pack[/h3]

If you want to let loose a little, the R&R Pack is there for you. It includes one Emote (Facepalm, because really, we all have those moments) and four gestures (Hang Loose, Applause, Shh and Finger Wag).


Facepalm - Emote

Finger Wag - Gesture

Applause - Gesture

Shh - Gesture

Hang Loose - Gesture


Thank you for your continuing support as we continue improving Squad through creating new content, features, and other improvements for you to enjoy.

OFFWORLD OUT.

Attention Squaddies,

With the upcoming release of Squad v4.2 we will be introducing something new for both Squad and Offworld as a studio! Alongside the usual improvements, bug fixes, and a game engine update v4.27 will be the first update where we add a new form of content to Squad with the introduction of Emotes! Emotes are animations which you can use to express yourself, interact with each other, celebrate in-game situations, or brighten up down time. We hope they will enhance the social and cinematic aspects of your Squad experience.

As a thank you for all your years of support for Squad, all players will be receiving a free Emotes pack on initial release. There will also be two packages of paid Emotes that will be sold through an in-game connection to the Steam Store. We will walk you through them and how they appear in Squad very soon in another blog and we will be showcasing more about Emotes as we get close to the launch of v4.2!

Emotes are a totally optional feature in Squad. If you do not feel like buying additional Emotes you do not have to, and your playing experience will be no different than it is now without Emotes. Those of you who enjoy the additional customization and way of showing off your personality in game that Emotes provides are able to purchase additional ones at what we feel is a reasonable price.

After years of releasing free updates for Squad this is our first foray into monetizing Squad beyond the initial purchase. We understand that paid content in gaming can be controversial and that previous leadership at Offworld had stated that paid DLC would never be added to Squad. Given this we wanted to inform you of this change prior to the release of v4.2 early.

So why this shift, this far into the life of Squad? As we look into the future we see a long and healthy life for Squad. It has a large and dedicated playerbase. We have plans for more updates and to support the game beyond 2023. While many of these planned updates will be free, we also realize that we need a way to continue to fund the development of Squad. Paid content like Emotes is one such way to help fund that development and continue our work on improving the game.

Rest assured that we are continuing to work on free updates for Squad.

We will be providing all Kickstarter Backers that qualify for physical rewards with all Emote packs available at launch for free. This will take us a bit of time as we work to reach out to everyone, so we thank our Kickstarter backers in advance for their patience as we continue to work towards creating the outstanding physical rewards. Thank you for your continued support of Squad.

At ease,
Offworld Industries





Will there be servers set up with no emotes allowed? Can they be toggled off by server owners?

This will not be an option. However, we have made sure that emotes will be as unobtrusive as possible. We want them to be part of Squad without affecting the gameplay and keep Squad a great experience whether or not you purchased additional content.

Does this mean we will see more monetization in the future? What about gun skins or uniforms?

The introduction of emotes and this new form of support for Squad is something we are excited to try. We will be closely monitoring the popularity of emotes and the interest of the community in them. As you well know some initial backers of the Kickstarter have currently access to a variation on weapon skins and we are not excluding the possibility to broaden the selection we offer. However we will communicate more on the topic if and when the time comes.

Will you start charging for maps or factions in the future?

Our approach to the future of Squad is to keep it as inclusive as we possibly can. Creating maps and factions takes a lot of time and effort and we wish for our entire community to be able to enjoy the fruits of our hard work.

What will be your refund policy?

Our refund policy hasn’t changed and will stay in its current state. You will be able to purchase emotes through the Steam Store and to make your claims as per usual through it.

Squad will be updating its game engine the team wants to playtest it on a full server to help identify any unforeseen issues that we may need to address before that happens. As such we are holding a playtest this Thursday January 12th at 21:00 UTC / 13:00 PST.

The main goal of this is to get 100 players active on a server.

We would like all players that are able to to jump into the game at that time on the Squad - Public Testing game that's below Squad in Steam.*




A successfully attended public playtest will go a long way to improving the update's success when it's launched in 2023, and help us discover issues that would be frustrating if we did not see them early. We ask all players who can to join us on Thursday January 12th at 21:00 UTC / 13:00 PST on the Squad - Public Testing game to road test this future engine upgrade.

Tell your friends - tell your neighbours, tell anyone you know who plays Squad and get them on!
Thank you all for the continued support of Squad!

* If you have previously been playing on a Beta please ensure that you're not on a Beta build for this but just the standard Squad - Public Testing app.

Attention Squaddies,

From everyone at Offworld 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 2022 [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.

Please note that the Offworld Industries studio will be closed from December 16th until January 3rd. Please continue to share your thoughts with us via our channels such as our Twitter account [LINK URL], our Discord Server [LINK URL], and our Facebook page [LINK URL].

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!

Over and out,

Offworld

Hello Squaddies,

As 2022 nears its end it is a good time for us to reflect on Squad’s past year. 2022 was a positive year for us, a busy one in terms of content released for Squad. We shifted our development rhythm to deliver smaller but more consistent updates. Yet we also released three new factions this year with the Australian Army, the American Marine Forces, and lastly the People’s Liberation Army joining the battle! On top of that we released two new maps as well, Black Coast, Harju, while revamping older maps with the addition of navigable waters. We also added gradually more new vehicles, for a total of an extra 8 new vehicles added to existing factions.

The year began rocky with the v2.12 launch causing many players framerate issues. Thankfully we were able to address these issues quickly with a Hotfix that was developed with support from our players who were able to help us test potential solutions until we found the right one!  The update improved the visuals of Squad, but we know that we have to continue to improve performance and optimization and we will continue to do so in 2023. The internal creation of a dedicated performance monitoring team will help us move further into this direction as we keep building the future of Squad.

April brought with it Squad 2.15 (LINK URL) and our friends from Down Under, the Aussies, with the arrival of the Australian Army. In terms of other innovation, 2.15 came with several reworked systems and other improvements, notably new FOB fortifications like the Observation Tower, Tire Fire, and added one way visible camo nettings to many of the existing fortifications to improve the static defender survivability. These new deployables and changes offered a better payoff in relation to time spent to build and supply the FOB, making it more viable and enjoyable to dig in and defend. We also updated the flag capture rates to now scale based on the number of friendlies/enemies on the flag and encourage capture teamplay.

Following up in May was Squad 2.16 (LINK URL) introducing the new Seeding Mode to help servers build to a higher player count after starting up for the day by offering faster-paced gameplay on smaller map layers, with forward spawn points that help players get in the fight quicker. This allows servers to transition smoothly from the Seeding Phase to the standard Squad gameplay of Live Phase.

In June we hit big with Squad 3.0 (LINK URL) and the introduction of the American marine forces, the addition of the Black Coast map and the rework of many older maps to take full advantage of the new navigable water system and modify vehicle and soldier behaviors to react accordingly when moving into and across water. With the addition of amphibious capability into the game we extended by a large the tactical options available to players and the variety of gameplay! The update also came with many fixes and tweaks, along with a slew of new weapons and vehicles for players to try.

From July we soldiered on and released regular smaller scale updates monthly: Squad 3.2 (LINK URL), 3.3 (LINK URL), 3.4 (LINK URL), and 3.5 (LINK URL), leading all the way to December. Each update focused on some fine tuning of weapons, kits, vehicles and of course, game performance and many bug fixes. These updates brought other improvements as well, such as the improved UI for Squad Leader, an update to the Vehicle Recovery System to allow helicopters and some other vehicles to be reset, or the addition of Harju in 3.4! We also added gradually more new vehicles, for a total of an extra 8 new vehicles added to existing factions. And let’s not forget that sneaky CAS helicopter that found its way in for a brief time (looking at you 3.3)!

Finally this brings us to December and Squad 4.0 (LINK URL) and the long awaited introduction of the People’s Liberation Army into Squad. We are very excited to see the player response to our newest faction. The PLA bring with them interesting tools in their kit unique to their faction, like the new Z8 troop transport helicopter, or the new PF98 Launcher and its range finder.

To conclude 2022 has been an incredible year for Squad! We believe the game is in a strong place currently. That said, we still have a lot to do and great things planned for 2023!

Thank you to everyone who supported us this year! From our Server Owners who are dedicated to ensuring players have a great experience, to our Community Platest Group who help provide invaluable feedback on the game as we’re developing it, and finally to our players because without you none of us would be here working together to build the future of Squad into 2023 and beyond!