Hell Let Loose News

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #108!

To see out 2020, Max has put together an end of year review as we look at some of the biggest content drops that Hell Let Loose received over the last twelve months, as well turning our gaze to 2021...

Over to you, Max!




Hi everyone,

2020 has been an enormous and historic year - with the loss of loved ones, jobs and even just the normal rhythms of life. Amidst that, we’ve been very fortunate to be able to continue work on Hell Let Loose, and have been thankful for the support we’ve seen for the game from the existing community and new players.

Because of this, we’ve been able to expand the team and increase production on all fronts. As a result, 2021 will be a huge year for Hell Let Loose. We’ll be seeking to leave Early Access, introduce a whole new front and the Soviet forces - an entirely new army. On top of that we’ll be continuing to polish, optimise and expand the existing game.

2020 was a very challenging year for us as a dev team. It marked significant milestones in our overhauling of previous systems and has set us up well for the future - with hastily formulated solutions (line trace ballistics, the way we handle mapping, our entire animation system etc.) finally given new life with our desired solutions.

In a quick look back, here are some of the major pieces of content or overhauls added to the game:

Update 5 in February saw the introduction of Purple Heart Lane, the US heavy tank variants and the overhauled non-verbal communication system.

Update 6 in late April introduced Hill 400, as well as our ballistics overhaul, the addition of the Scout cars, the Recon Plane Commander ability among many others.

Update 7 in mid July introduced the total FPP and TPP animation overhaul, the total firearms sound effects overhaul, Carentan and the Foy overhaul among many other changes.

Finally, Update 8 was introduced in early December and saw the introduction of transport and supply trucks, satchel charges, hammers, blowtorches, the Grease Gun, the overhaul of Hurtgen Forest, the overhaul of the supply and fortification systems, the introduction of a hit box system and the total overhaul of all explosion and heavy weapon sound effects and visual effects.

Because of the support and interest of the community, we’re in the fortunate position of being able to confidently plan many more years of content to come. In what is now an established tradition, we’ll continue to share what we’re working on with you in the weekly dev briefings.

Finally, thank you for your patience in the journey of our development. While we always strive to fix, polish, optimise and expand the game in the right order and as fast as possible, we know that we often make mistakes or introduce issues - or may have prioritised something high on the list only to discover a more pressing issue emerges. While it’s happened before, we know it’ll happen again and we thank you for your patience in allowing us the time to work to fix these issues. Our commitment is to work as quickly and efficiently as possible to address all community feedback, as well as continue to expand different aspects of the game.

While we’ve often said the Hell Let Loose journey has just begun, it’s appropriate to now say that 2021 will be the end of the beginning. We’re very excited for the year ahead and are looking forward to working with you to continue to refine the game. With the Western and Eastern fronts coming into play, we still have huge development milestones to tackle - melee combat, Campaign mode and flamethrowers to name only a few. We have many more different maps to create - each with entirely new gameplay challenges. We have new vehicles, new weapons, improvements to the meta, new effects, new sound effects, new cosmetic options, new Commander abilities and more.

We hope you have a wonderful new year and look forward to seeing you on the frontline in 2021!

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Dev Brief #107!

This week we're talking about the meta! Specifically what we feel is working, what we think isn't and what we're doing to change it.

We were originally planning to talk about this over the last few weeks, but due to Update 8 and Patch shenanigans we had to push this topic back slightly... But now the time has come!

Project Lead Max has put together the team's thoughts on what we're seeing and what we've learned from all of your feedback on how the meta plays and feels at the moment.

Now, lets get stuck in shall we!




Hi everyone,

Now that the dust has settled on both Update 8 and Patch 14, we thought we’d take the chance to address several large metagame issues that we’ll be looking to solve in the near future. In order to best address them, we’re keen to not only discuss them here, but use this dev brief as a jumping off point for wider community discussion.



Initial Issue

Previously, defensive players would often be incredibly overwhelmed and hamstrung by attacking players who would sneak into the strongpoint (or just behind it) and drop down a Garrison (referred to as a “ninja garrison”). This would then negate all measures the defenders had in place, by enabling the attacking team to dump their entire force onto the point extremely quickly.

The key issues here were that this completely dissolved the “frontline” aspect of the game and enabled near instantaneous leverage of entire teams into action behind or on top of the enemy line. In effect - 1 (and at most - 2) players could leverage the entire attacking team into a single location, with the defending team unable to parry this attack by virtue of it being so easy to initiate.

In order to preserve the sense of a front line, and better telegraph the loss of ground and enemy thrusts, the ability to place Garrisons in “red zones” was removed. This was largely to see if teams could successfully leverage an assault with 3-4 Officers using OPs in the red zone instead of the single Garrison.

Positive Result

The positive result has been in far more stable front line combat. The movement back and forth of teams directly correlates to their positioning, and attacks can be telegraphed and thwarted by defenders.

Negative Result

The downside has been the often-stagnation of teams into pure attack or defense - largely due to the asymmetry of leveraging assaults. Instead of being able to move 4-5 Officers into an attacking position using a Garrison, multiple individual Officers must now attack together in order to present a significant enough front to successfully push a defended strong point.

For example, in the following image we can see more than 6 individual Officers have manoeuvred to the same location in order to place down OPs. While this is encouraging to see, the inability to quickly deploy attacking Officers (and therefore OPs and units) into flanking or attacking positions (that have won ground against the defenders).






Ultimately, we do not want to return to the days of ninja garrisons that enabled one or two players to leverage the entire attacking team into the point in the blink of an eye. At the same time, we want to enable attacking teams to be able to properly establish an assault with a Garrison from an offset or close location in territory that has already been cleared and won by them (instead of only ever being able to move individual OPs forward).

The intended design for Garrisons is such that a team can place one in order to support an attack or defence - but that they are not the key instrument in the attack. We have designed the shorter spawn times on the OPs, as well as the less restrictive placement rules to facilitate OPs as a way of moving your individual unit forward from the Garrison up to the point (or, sustaining your unit on a defensive point while the Garrison is designed to sustain the individual units from a lower risk position).

With this in mind, the best outcome we feel would be to enable the placement of a Garrison in the first row of red zone (critically - not deep behind enemy lines) in order to enable a forward assault starting point, but ideally not within 250m of the strongpoint itself (therefore preserving the ability for the defenders to engage in meaningful combat without immediately being overrun).

How to achieve this:

We feel that there are several options here, each with different levels of work attached.

• Change the rules to exclude enemy garrisons from 250m of the defenders strong point. We feel that this would solve the issues experienced by defenders, but also enable attackers to open up flanking fronts to assault the strongpoint (critically, enabling a spawn location for Officers to begin their assaults using OPs). While this idea would most likely solve the issues, we feel that stopping players from building near the very place they want to attack will feel unintuitive and too gamey.
  
  
• Alter the fragility of Garrisons in red zones. This could be done by making them inactive with a larger enemy radius (ie. if an enemy is within 100m of the Garrison, it becomes locked), able to be destroyed by large proximity (ie. removed if an enemy is within 100m) etc. This would encourage players to place attacking Garrisons in safer locations that promoted more telegraphed attacks.
  
  
• Enable players to build Garrisons in adjacent sectors in the row, but not in the active sector (similar to Offensive mode). The key issue we see here is that central sectors will always struggle more as they will need to fight a two front war - although this is something that will always be present within the game to a degree.
  

Airhead

Typically with Hell Let Loose, we like to try and make sure most game problems are solvable by the Commander, the Infantry or the Armor. This issue when it comes to the Commander leans heavily on the use of the Airhead.

In playing consistently with this feature, we feel it’s wise to greatly increase the time the Airhead is active from one minute to five. Design around the airhead is to create a fragile but potent spawn location that can be used by attackers to begin an assault from within the redzone. While this is working - the short duration it’s active means that the opportunity is often missed. To counter this, we will be extending the duration, while also messaging to the team that an Airhead is active.

Halftracks

We’re yet to add halftracks, but our design for them positions them very much as a mobile garrison that is able to be used within the red zone. While “one man with a box” is extremely difficult to counter by defenders, we feel that a large and fragile vehicle represents an acceptable visual and sound signature to enable Garrison functionality within the defenders territory.

Our feeling here is that the halftrack - used cautiously - could work as either a fallback spawn point for defenders, a wide flank launch point for attackers - or a creeping garrison pushing directly towards the strongpoint.



We want to preserve the frontline push and pull of the teams, but better enable attackers to “solidify” their gains into enemy territory by being able to place a Garrison, instead of being arbitrarily locked to sector edge garrisons.




Issue:

Something that can be seen both in the competitive scene as well as the public scene is that the nature of scoring wins and losses in Warfare mode promotes stagnant “hold the middle” gameplay. Teams will often push to the center, take the neutral sector and then hold the point for the duration of the game. This leads to boring gameplay - including forced total time limit game - and overly simplistic victory conditions.

Proposed Fix:

Instead of awarding victory based on whoever has the most territory at the end of the game, we will change the sector reward value to represent a score. Capturing the third sector will still award victory, but the scoring will be cumulative instead of fixed.

• For capturing the middle territory, your team will be rewarded with 1 point.
  
• For capturing the first enemy row, your team will be rewarded with 2 points.
  
• For capturing the second enemy row, your team will be rewarded with 3 points and Victory.
  
• For retaking your own previously captured rows, you will only be rewarded with 1 point for each row retaken.
  

For example:

• Team 1 takes the neutral territory and is rewarded with 1 point.
  
• Team 2 attacks and takes the neutral territory off them. Both teams are 1-1.
  
• Team 2 attacks and takes the first row of Team 1. Team 2 is rewarded 2 points and now has a total of 3 points. 3-1
  
• Team 1 attacks and retakes their first row. 3-2
  
• Team 1 attacks and takes the center row. 3-3
  
• Team 1 attacks and takes the first row of Team 2. 3-5
  
• Team 1 attacks and takes the second row of Team 2, winning the game: 3-8.
  

Public Games:

In this way, we feel that public games will become far more dynamic, and that aggressive teams will be rewarded for successfully pushing forward. In order to encourage this, we may look at rewarding greater total victory experience to teams that capture row 3, as opposed to trigger a score victory.

Competitive Games:

In terms of the competitive scene, we feel that this is a great way of scoring games across a season - encouraging each team to try to win the highest number of points within a game to enable them to compete on a broader scale.

Instead of a binary “win/loss”, this would represent a much deeper idea of how the game progressed, as well as create greater competition as each team is trying to earn as many potential points as possible to keep them in best standing for a season.

Eg.

• Team 1 wins 9-4 in game 1 against Team 2.
  
• Team 3 wins 5-3 in game 2 against Team 4.
  

The result would be:

• Team 1
  
• Team 3
  
• Team 2
  
• Team 4
  

As opposed to the current system in which Team 1 and Team 3 are considered equal - despite Team 1 playing a better game.




Our ongoing commitment to you - our community - is to attempt to find the best solutions for each issue that arises over the course of development - from TTK issues to fences to armour hitboxes to metagame. While we often don’t get things right the first time, we are committed to continuing to find the best possible fixes and solutions that capture the spirit of the game, while also dealing with endemic issues.

Next week the team will continue talking through through the meta issues, as we’re aware that there are quite a few. Increasingly in development we’ll start to use dev briefings as a platform by which we can share our thinking about key issues. Obviously, we’re also aware that with a community this size - answers are very rarely monolithically correct, and that many people may love an idea or feature, while others may despise it. As developers, this is a very difficult line to tread, but we’re keen to keep as much transparency as possible during our update cycles.

In any case, we’re very excited to work with you to improve Hell Let Loose as much as we can. We’re already hard at work on continued polish, optimisation, future content and solutions to the issues discussed above. We’re particularly excited to follow the conversations around this dev brief and will be keen to see the conversation evolve.

We'll see you on the frontline!

Hey everyone,

Before we delve into the patch notes we just want to say thank you to everyone for your support and feedback following Update 8's arrival!

Today's patch is a possible thanks to the community's feedback, patience and comments both here on Steam as well as our other social hubs.

If there's something you've fed back that hasn't been addressed or mentioned today, fear not - just because it isn't in here doesn't mean it isn't on our radar.

Now, let's get stuck in shall we:

• Bypass server queue not allowed - bug fixed where it was causing mass disconnects on map change.
  
• Vote kick threshold raised - will require a much higher % of the team for a vote to succeed. This is one of the most painful features we’ve ever worked on in HLL. Too low and people continually troll by kicking people - too high and it’s useless. Ultimately we’re looking at the ability for server owners to enable/disable vote kick and also player reporting and admin logging for U9.
  
• Vivox/Voip issues, we are watching this closely and have made one or two bug fixes.
  
• Fix for super grainy/sharp broken AA. While these changes benefitted TAA, they multiplied the effect on other forms of AA. We will be hand implementing these settings to TAA for Update 9.
  
• Fix fallen burned tree collisions on Hurtgen forest so players can step over them.
  
• Make all wire fences ignore collision from bullets, tank shells and heavy weapons.
  
• Changes across the BAR, Thompson, MP40, K98k, Garand, G43, M3 Grease Gun weapons to reduce damage drop off at range, as players landing difficult, accurate shots were punished for their efforts.
• We also increased the shots to kill on extremities for some of these weapons, while returning the STG and BAR to their OHK status. The result is that all of these weapons now play closer to their U7 variants, while still punishing shots that hit the lower legs and feet.
  
• Fixed: The SFX for exiting ocean water can be heard within 500m.
  
• Slightly lowered semi-automatic recoil. It now sits just above half way between the original and the new. We played with this every day since the Update and found that the new recoil was slightly too strong.
  
• Applied bullet penetration to many irritating materials that we’d missed (wire fences, small wooden posts).
  
• Fixes for collision occurring on things it shouldn’t (grass on the top of embankments, some reeds, some other foliage, window and door openings on some buildings).
  
• Fixed a few dozen map bugs reported by QA and the Community.
  
• Partial fix for grass loading slowly. Much more should now have loaded when you spawn, but there’s still more work we can do here.
  
• Removed medals from the player nameplate HUD icons, as their scaling often totally broke the visual and was more distracting than useful. We’ll look at implementing this after we revise the idea. The medals are still present in the scoreboard and Barracks.
  
• Various server crash fixes, and improvements made to address reports of ‘rubber-banding’.
  
• Fixed Sapper being available before level 3 for the US Engineer.
  

That wraps up today's patch notes!

As always we'll be watching for and collating your feedback on these changes and fixes as we continue to craft Hell Let Loose throughout Early Access.

If you haven't already downloaded the free 'Winter Warfare Helmet Pack' you can do so for a limited time below:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1205050/Hell_Let_Loose__Winter_Warfare_Helmet_Pack/

We'll see you on the frontline!

Hey everyone,

Welcome to Developer Briefing #106!

This week we're using the Dev Brief to give you a preview at an impending patch that, all going well, will be arriving on the frontline next week.

Your feedback and willingness to be open and honest with us about all aspects of the game has been greatly appreciated. The team have worked tireless since U8 launched to not only collate everyone's feedback across all our channels - but take action on it!

I'm going to pass you over to Lead Developer Max now to let you know where we're at, as well as what we're addressing in Patch 14.




Hi everyone,

It’s been a huge week for us with the release of Update 8 and we’re really excited to watch how many of the changes have been enjoyed by the community - especially the changes to FX, the soundscape, quality of life, new Hurtgen and many more.

Simultaneously, we’ve spent a lot of time in game with you, as well as reading all of the feedback across all our channels.

While we do test as much as possible during QA and then in the PTE’s, we often miss things due to the sheer size of the game.This is equally frustrating for us as a team, because we’d much prefer to ship an update with very few obvious issues as possible.

All going well, late next week we’ll be releasing a patch that will cover as many of the quickest fixes we’ve been able to accomplish this week (a huge thanks to the production and QA team to get this out the door!). Obviously, more complex issues will take longer to resolve, but we wanted to make sure you knew that many of the issues you were experiencing were unacceptable and we’ve prioritised a fix.

Without further ado:

• Bypass server queue not allowed - bug fixed where it was causing mass disconnects on map change.
  
• Vote kick threshold raised - will require a much higher % of the team for a vote to succeed. This is one of the most painful features we’ve ever worked on in HLL. Too low and people continually troll by
• kicking people - too high and it’s useless. Ultimately we’re looking at the ability for server owners to enable/disable vote kick and also player reporting and admin logging for U9.
  
• Vivox/Voip issues, we are watching this closely and have made one or two bug fixes.
  
• Fix for super grainy/sharp broken AA. While these changes benefitted TAA, they multiplied the effect on other forms of AA. We will be hand implementing these settings to TAA for Update 9.
  
• Fix fallen burned tree collisions on Hurtgen forest so players can step over them.
  
• Make all wire fences ignore collision from bullets, tank shells and heavy weapons.
  
• Changes across the BAR, Thompson, MP40, K98k, Garand, G43, M3 Grease Gun weapons to reduce damage drop off at range, as players landing difficult, accurate shots were punished for their efforts.
• We also increased the shots to kill on extremities for some of these weapons, while returning the STG and BAR to their OHK status. The result is that all of these weapons now play closer to their U7 variants, while still punishing shots that hit the lower legs and feet.
  
• Fixed: The SFX for exiting ocean water can be heard within 500m.
  Slightly lowered semi-automatic recoil. It now sits just above half way between the original and the new. We played with this every day since the Update and found that the new recoil was slightly too strong.
  
• Applied bullet penetration to many irritating materials that we’d missed (wire fences, small wooden posts).
  
• Fixes for collision occurring on things it shouldn’t (grass on the top of embankments, some reeds, some other foliage, window and door openings on some buildings).
  
• Fixed a few dozen map bugs reported by QA and the Community.
  
• Partial fix for grass loading slowly. Much more should now have loaded when you spawn, but there’s still more work we can do here.
  
• Removed medals from the player nameplate HUD icons, as their scaling often totally broke the visual and was more distracting than useful. We’ll look at implementing this after we revise the idea. The medals are still present in the scoreboard and Barracks.
  
• Various server crash fixes, and improvements made to address reports of ‘rubber-banding’
  

Run Speed:

We tweaked the player run speed for U8 in order to watch the resulting flow of combat and the effect it would have on intentional movement across and around the front line - rewarding intentional movement and decreasing the amount of “zig zag” “mosquito” movement.

We’ve often gone back and forth with regard to a stamina system for Hell Let Loose. We’ve frequently decided against it, as the core essence of Hell Let Loose is the emphasis on the courage to push forward bravely and efficiently - knowing that to take any ground requires forward movement. If we start rewarding players for slow or static play (whether by making out-of-stamina players find it harder to aim, or by increasing the aiming stability of stationary, crouched or prone players) we felt that it would fundamentally discourage the core of our attacking gameplay.

Counter to this, we’ve also been aware that our previous run speed was high enough (and our player acceleration matching this), that enemy targets could go from a walk to full sprint incredibly quickly, and that quickly strafing side to side in a gunfight was often advisable.

As such, we wanted to find the best of both worlds - making sure our system didn’t punish forward movement (or reward static play) - while also creating a more realistic time to accelerate and total movement speed.

We are still playing this change and watching the way this affects the metagame.

We also wanted to note that our crouched player run speed is slightly slower than our standing one. However, due to the camera being closer to the ground, there is a perception that it’s faster or as fast as the standing speed.

Finally, we fully acknowledge that this change to player speeds should have been acknowledged in the patch notes. Its absence was not intentional and was a result of the change taking place very early in the dev cycle. We’ll make sure in the future that we work harder so this does not happen again.




There is still a huge amount more to address from both this Update, let alone what we’ll be doing for Update 9. If we haven’t mentioned a specific issue in this dev brief (metagame, armored issues and gameplay etc.) or addressed it with this patch - it does not mean that we feel it’s acceptable or are totally happy with everything that is unmentioned. Hell Let Loose is in Early Access, and as such will continually be worked on in coordination with community feedback.

We’re very excited to get this patch out and are looking forward to revealing more of what is to come in both Update 9 and 2021. Hell Let Loose is still relatively young in its development and there’s so much more to come. Fortunately, the incredible feedback you give us - as well as the passion you have for Hell Let Loose - gives us enormous amounts of energy to keep polishing, improving and optimising - let alone creating new content.

While continued development and updating a live game is a rollercoaster, we’re looking forward to an even bigger year for Hell Let Loose in 2021.




That wraps up this week's Dev Brief and today's update from Max!

As a little reminder, if you haven't grabbed the free 'Winter Warfare Helmet Pack' DLC you grab it for a limited time below:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1205050/Hell_Let_Loose__Winter_Warfare_Helmet_Pack/

Have a great weekend everyone.

We'll see you on the frontline!

Hell Let Loose, a gorgeous and quite fun World War 2 shooter, has released its latest update this week. Update 8, code-named "The Red Ball Express," has overhauled the support and engineer roles with the addition of trucks. Specifically, supply and transport trucks. Support soldiers can now use their trucks to deliver large batches of supplies and/or large groups of soldiers to the front, and those supplies can then be used by engineers to build lots of super-tough fortifications...
Read more.