Last Oasis News

Hi Nomads!

Before we start this week’s devblog, I’d like to acknowledge the absolutely massive amount of feedback we got for the previous one and the follow-up post we did on it. It has been great to see the response from the community to both posts and be able to gather very valuable, very early feedback on (even if just) one of the reworked systems for S5.

As we’ve done before, we’ll be splitting the devblog into sections, the first one dedicated to the design and specifics of this new system, and the second dedicated to putting forward our reasoning for why reworking this specific feature, what are our intentions with the changes, and some technical considerations on it.

You can rest assured that it won’t be the last controversial topic we get into - keep an eye out for the end of this post, we’ll be talking a little bit about the next two future devblog topics - but for now, let’s get into the quality rework.

[h2]Design[/h2]

Our first step for this rework is to completely get rid of the old system, and start fresh with a new one with a different approach from design perspective, and a different implementation from technical perspective. The replacement is to be a Rarity system, which is essentially Common-Uncommon-Rare-Epic-Legendary kind of tiers, with the possibility of adding more in the future (one of our considerations, and actually a community suggestion, is to implement any future additions to the system through extremely rare drops, which we think is a very cool idea).

At the moment, the rarity system is very much a work in progress, with only the crucial parts implemented into our internal version of the game - for the beta branch, it will be in a very early iteration design and balance wise, we don’t expect it to have the full functionality described below, we hope to discuss with you and work with your feedback when it comes to some of the more radical changes coming with the system, especially when it comes to the balance aspect of it.

One of the primary design goals for this system is to remove a lot of the unnecessary complexity and create more discrete jumps in tangible value of Walkers, items, structures, etc. - right now it’s not very clear in-game whenever something has clearly improved thanks to having a higher quality level than default, and that’s something we will be focusing on fixing with changes.

Although we’ll be keeping some of the core functionalities from the old quality system, our number one priority is that it works properly with, and reinforces the changes we’ve done to the progression system - changes we will reveal more about in a future devblog.

The actual effect we intend rarity to have on S5 gameplay is very far reaching - the system is designed to interact with a lot of things in the game, and we’ll have a much more detailed look into it down below.

Speaking of core functionalities, Tools are a very important part of the game’s progression system, and have always been a core requirement to get into the old quality grind - for next season, we’re adding more tools to the game (as well as performing a rebalancing pass on existing ones) that were missing before across the different tiers. For example, right now there’s only Sickle and Scythe, which require bone and ceramic, but it does not go further than that, and also caused issues with the old quality system due to tool tiers being very far apart for both tools. We’re changing that in order to make it so the tools follow the same resource / tier that weapons do. We’ll be taking a look into the entire rebalance across the board pretty soon, though, this is a small part of that process, and more related to how tools interact with rarity system and harvesting rare materials from creatures and resource nodes.

[h2]Rarity System Effects & Intention[/h2]

Our intention with this rework is two-fold, there’s both technical and gameplay / design reasons why we needed to change the way quality worked in the game.

For the technical side of things, the old quality system wasn’t meant to work with some of the things we want the new system to interact with - some examples for this are the creatures, both Mobs and Rupu, the POI around the maps, and even smaller things such as quests from the Trading Station.

The rarity system is built with these effects already in mind. We want our POI system to take advantage of this feature, we want the mobs and Rupu that spawn on POI and around the world to have different stats and behaviors based on their rarity, and of course, the loot tables for them and any interactable loot coming from sources of higher rarity.

While with the old quality system it was not possible to easily determine a creature’s quality level, it will now be possible to easily tell, from a distance with a rangefinder or up close by looking at the mob, whether or not it’s a higher rarity creature. This is rather important for us because of how the mob difficulty scaling across maps and rarity will be balanced, and we want to make sure that players aren’t charging head-on toward enemies that at default rarity they can easily defeat, but at higher they become a lot more dangerous.

This is not to say the only new effects this system will have are dedicated to mobs. There are many other things in the game that the quality system was not interacting with (or it had a very poor interaction that improved very little), some examples are Walker hulls, as well as Walker parts - in the case of hulls, it only ever provided more module slots, which was in all honesty a very small reward for a (at times) pretty big grind. In the case of Walker Legs and Wings, it never did anything at all. That’s something that will be changing in the next season, higher rarity Walker hulls and Walker parts should provide improvements to HP and armor, bonuses to acceleration, on top of module slots.
With our focus on having oases with scarcer materials and renewed dangers, we want to make sure that the rewards are on point with the difficulty of getting them.

Secondly, and this time related to gameplay / design: our old quality system was not very intuitive at all. From the moment the game launched, the vast majority of players needed to use guides outside of the game in order to understand how to progress using quality resources, how to craft quality items, and generally how the system itself worked - and that wasn’t all, we also had these weird workarounds in-game that players came up with, in order to achieve specific quality levels for resources (like the craft-disassemble method that was used to get specific high quality resources using low-end resources).

We’d like to avoid that completely, and instead focus on a more straightforward system that is easier for players to understand and play with (in-game, we want to keep away from implementing features and mechanics that require you to pause what you’re doing in the game, and go look it up on a wiki), while also retaining and improving the gameplay centered around hunting for high quality resources, and actually making that a bigger part of the game.

As mentioned in the beginning of this devblog Hardpoints system would not be the last controversial S5 feature we showcase, so here’s a headsup: Our next two devblogs might be the most controversial changes we have decided upon so far - as chadz mentioned last week, we consider Season 5 practically an entirely new experience, and with that come completely re-designed core features of the game

— Neon

Oh boy, looks like we hit a controversial vein with that last devblog - at the time of this post, it has:

• Comments: 263
  
• Up Votes: 226
  
• Down Votes: 243
  

That's certainly something. Feedback on discord and reddit paints a slightly more optimistic, but similar picture.

[h2]Transparency and Communication[/h2]

We made a promise a few weeks ago that we'll do a better job with being more transparent, announcing changes early, and listening closer to feedback. We absolutely meant that.

I first want to go a bit more in detail about our intentions for this direction. In the end of this post, you'll find a poll where we ask you to give your opinion on which option you think is best moving forward - in case you wanna skip the wordy parts.

I already mentioned that I [chadz] - as a sandbox player - enjoy the ability to freely place structures wherever I want. It gives me the ability to outsmart other players and come up with solutions that maybe no one else thought of before.

Therefore, even internally in our team, the decision to introduce hardpoints was controversial. So why did we think this was a good way forward?

To answer this, I need to expand a bit on the vision for Season 5. S5 of Last Oasis is not S4 with changes sprinkled on top. It is practically an entirely new experience, guided by a new vision - because the old vision clearly didn't work. The most honest and direct proof of that is that player numbers dropped from originally 30k to below 1k. Big changes are needed.

Therefore, we tried to look at the bigger picture. And the bigger picture is that each season of LO added bandaids on top of bandaids to fix game design flaws of the previous seasons, all the way back to the first public beta test. And we decided it's time to rip all of the bandaids off for S5.

One of our guiding ideas was "If we were to make LO from scratch, with the knowledge we have today, what would we do differently?". And this led us to a few principles we considered important.

For those of you that have already been reading between the lines of the recent devblogs, you've already realized that S5 is more or less entirely focused on PVE.

[h2]Pillar #1: PVE[/h2]

One of the very basic principles for S5 is this: If I want to, I should be able to boot up LO alone (or with a few friends) on an empty private server, and have a great experience. That does not mean we're abandoning PVP, not at all, but it does mean that we're admitting that the initial premise of LO was wrong (we tried to focus on PVP, with only rudimentary PVE elements).

Instead, great PVP comes from great PVE. The PVE gives the reason for the PVP.

So what does that mean practically?

It means that everything about progression is about to change - drastically. It means that advancing through different types of Walkers and Rigs will be a major gameplay element. It means that equipping your walker with the right tools/weapons for the right job is a necessity, that finding and looting those tools is now part of that gameplay. And that hard decisions will have to be faced by players. Because with PVE comes, necessarily, environmental dangers and challenges that need to be overcome.

[h3]A story of S5[/h3]

Let me walk you through a scenario in S5.

You've progressed to the stage where you have a basic Dinghy. It's a dedicated combat walker for you, equipped with two stingers for the pilot, a repeater and a ballista for your two friends.

There’s still one spot left to build a small weapon or additional storage, but the Dinghy reached its hardpoint limits. Your crew figures it’s time for an upgrade, and you know, through experience (or wikis) where you’re likely to find it.

You decided to go up against a group of Nurr Raiders (that's Rupu riding Nurr, equipped with ranged weapons), and by knowing the lay of the land you’re on, you found them rather soon:


It was a fierce battle, your crew prevailed, but your walker took some heavy damage. It will take considerable resources to repair. Furthermore, you lost the repeater on deck, which will be painful to replace.


However, on the upside: The raider loot was exceptionally good. Going through the spoils of combat, you've found the ability to construct either a Hammerhead Rig for the Dinghy, or a Stiletto.

You now have a tough decision to make. Stick with the Dinghy? Or go for the Stiletto?

The hammerhead Rig looks like a good upgrade - it has more medium spots, allowing you to equip an additional weapon and woodworking station so you can craft ammo on the go, making you more mobile.


Alternatively, you can consider the Dinghy a full loss with all the damage it has sustained. Spending all the resources to repair it is a big sunk cost.

Instead, you also consider going for a full upgrade, straight for the Stiletto. It costs considerably more resources, but even with the default Rig, it has many more spots available, making it possible for you to take on bigger mobs.

This is just one crude example of many, many more choices that you will face in S5. The difficulty in those choices is what we consider good gameplay.

This little story also shows another new major pillar of S5 that we haven't revealed too much yet, but will soon: Scarcity.

[h2]Pillar #2: Scarcity[/h2]

I don't want to reveal too much about this part yet. In a nutshell: nearly all gameplay elements in S5 will be tied to the abstract concept of scarcity. Resources, Tech, Travel, Walkers, Weapons... and Hardpoints.

The idea is that players will be facing lots of choices about committing to decisions, investing resources, using what you have available right now, and striving for the things you want.

There's more pillars that guided our design throughout this LOverhaul which we'll reveal soon, but I hope this gives you a little bit of a better insight.

With this little exercise in storytelling and vision sharing done, let's get back to the topic at hand: Hardpoints vs Freebuilding.

[h2]Hardpoints vs Freebuilding[/h2]

What we aim for in S5 is well balanced progression. What works against that is cramming your walker full of structures.

Look at these examples of previous seasons:



They are amazing feats of meticulous placement by players.

But they are also the very opposite of scarcity.

I understand that some of you think it's necessary to protect against zergs, but we have another major feature lined up that addresses that directly, rather than this bandaid.

The current system is awful for performance, it's horrible for movement on deck, and it completely evaporates our design decisions for S5. I think they are perfectly fine for private realms, I just see it going strongly against our vision for LOverhaul.

[h2]Feedback[/h2]

However: We truly don't want to force anything on you that you don't want. Therefore, at the very least, the option for either freebuilding or rigs will be a setting players can decide on private realms.

But that's not a perfect solution, because most of you are probably excited to play on the main realm and want a default and vanilla version of S5 that's good and enjoyable.

This is where we get to the beta branch. Before we will launch S5, we will test all these options on the beta branch, open for everyone to join and to give feedback. There are many degrees of possibilities between full Freebuilding and strict Hardpoints:

• Hardpoint Locations and Rotations: Rigs define the exact location and rotation for exactly one structure. Some Rigs are better suited for broadsides, others are better for frontal attacks
  
• Hardpoint Locations: Rigs define the exact location for exactly one structure. Players are free to rotate as they see fit
  
• Free Placement on Walker, no structure amount cap: Maximum freedom, but Walkers have no specific role, their design matters very little, it's bad for performance, and the gameplay surrounding rigs is eliminated
  
• Free Placement on Walker, amount of structures capped by Walker: sacrificing some freedom, Walkers matter slightly more, it fixes some performance issues, rig gameplay is gone
  
• Free Placement on Walker, amount of structures capped by Rig: Rigs don't define the position of structures, but their amount. Similar as the option above, except the rig gameplay is back in a limited way
  
• Free Placement inside Hardpoints: Rigs define the allowed areas of structures, but players are free to place the structure anywhere within. Each Hardpoint can only contain one structure.
  

Those are the various degrees of options I see possible right now.

I have no doubt that there are many more, possibly better options than those listed above. If you have suggestions, let us know. Again - we do not want to act against you, our very playerbase. We’re on the same team.

We want you to give feedback, but for that feedback to be valid, it's important that you understand the full picture of LOverhaul, which we're trying to paint throughout these devblogs.

To help with the decision finding for a good building system, I've added a preliminary poll here so you can leave your opinion:

https://strawpoll.com/polls/DwyoqvopegA


Once the beta branch is available, we will test various options that sound promising, gather feedback, probably run another poll, and figure out a good solution that works for the majority.

I hope I managed to give some insight into out intentions and thoughts and am curious what you all think.

-c

Hi Nomads!

This week’s devblog will be dedicated to our rework of the building system for Walkers.
One of the major changes coming to S5 is the removal of free placement of structures on Walkers, and introduction of the Walker Hardpoints system.

While this might sound controversial at first, with free placement having been a thing for so long, for us it quickly became a very logical step when we started working on rebalancing Walkers for the next season and looking at the options we had for a replacement - some of the options still allowed for more creative freedom for making crazy Walker builds, but they just didn’t solve the issues we identified when we began this overhaul of the game, for example, melee combat on Walkers.

Melee combat is a massive feature of the game, the same as Walkers, yet both things don’t usually go hand in hand or work together very well. This is one of the factors that we were looking at when deciding the best option to go with. Boarding enemy Walkers, fighting swinging with grappling hooks from the wings and onto Walker decks is a lot of fun, but most of the time you’re always getting stuck with something, either someone decided to build 50 flags around their Steering Levers, or they just really love campfires, there’s always something that makes the boarding action a lot more awkward and less fun, and that’s something we wanted to tackle from the start.
By no means our biggest objective with this change, but it’s one that we think will make gameplay around Walkers a lot more fun, both for boarding and for repelling boarders.

We considered many different options before making the decision to move forward with hardpoints and removing free placement entirely - among those options there were ideas such as the balance route by essentially increasing weight of structures on Walkers across the board, having limited amounts of specific structures available to place in a per Walker basis, etc. - but ultimately we came to the conclusion that those options just didn’t have as many benefits and ended up adding more abstract restrictions without proper explanations in-game.

[h2]Walker Hardpoints System[/h2]

One of the main things we want to accomplish with this new system is to reinforce the strengths and weaknesses of different Walkers across different classes.

In our old balance, weight, speed and acceleration were the major factors contributing to making a Walker be good, meta, etc. We want to move away from this design, and try to bring the big boys like the Titan, Schmetterling, Tusker (to name a few), more into the spotlight, and encourage the use of balanced fleets, rather than a single type of war-Walker.

This emphasis on improving the gameplay around larger Walkers is not a new thing, but we think we will have much better results with this new building system and the changes we’ve mentioned on the previous devblog.
With this system, we have a much better chance at emphasizing and reinforcing the intended uses of each Walker in their respective classes. For example, the Titan Walker will have very offensively-oriented hardpoint rigs, designed to be used in sieges and to fight against large, slow moving battle mobs, whereas something like Mollusk, or its big brother the Domus, or even the Tusker, those would be all about added (and more protected) vast amounts of cargo capacity compared to other Walkers of their class.

Hardpoints are essentially spots that allow structures to be built on Walker decks. They come in different sizes or categories, which accept different buildables.
Hardpoints are pre-designed for each Walker to match their class, deck space and layout.

For now we’re looking at 5 hardpoint categories, below I’ll add a few examples of the buildables that fit on each category.

• Small - small chests, water containers, ammo boxes, etc.
  
• Medium - medium chests, ballistae, scattershot, fiberworking station, etc.
  
• Large - larger crafting stations such as furnaces, woodworking stations, larger weapons like the catapult, battle fan etc.
  
• Edge - as the name suggests, these are placed on the edge of Walker decks, and they are designed for Gun Pods, Tool Pods, Climbers, and some of our small remote weapons.
  
• Decorative - these are meant to allow cosmetic/decorative structures without sacrificing proper, functional Hardpoints on the main Walker deck for aesthetic purposes.
  

Regardless of the rig the Walker is equipped with, each hardpoint allows the placement of only one object, regardless of the size. All hardpoints are backwards-compatible, though, so this means a small structure can be built in Medium and Large hardpoints.

Although each Walker will come with a base rig installed by default, there will be ways to upgrade the rigs, change them around, etc. Rigs themselves will be part of the new loot, and a tradeable item in the game.






[h2]Specialized Rigs[/h2]

Specialized rigs are intended to provide different layouts for hardpoints on a Walker deck, with more optimized purposes, such as cargo, war, farming, etc. They become available once the Walker passes a certain upgrade threshold, at which point it’s possible to reconfigure the Walker’s hardpoint layout with a different, pre-defined layout through a specialized rig.

For example, while a base Dinghy rig will have a variety of Small and Medium hardpoints, a Dinghy equipped with the Hammerhead rig will be able to have 3 weapons on the front of the Walker, with 3 Medium hardpoints.

Right now the progression related to Walkers through any sort of upgrades is pretty limited, think for example the quality only really changing the amount of module slots available, so we’re pretty excited to work on and show you guys a new mechanic that is changing that situation.

For the first iteration that will be available during testing, we’re going with a simple implementation for the specialized rigs, taking inspiration from community builds and we also plan to update the base rigs based on the initial feedback from testers.

We fully understand that the removal of freely building structures almost anywhere on Walker decks is a rather massive change that will affect how creative players can get with their builds, but we’re confident that the specialized rigs will help a lot with that.

—Neon

Hi Nomads!

This week’s devblog will be focused on the upcoming changes to siege weapons in Last Oasis, balancing the ammo progression, improvements to the remotely controlled weapons system, and Automata, which are a new addition designed to enhance the capabilities of Walker pilots.
We will also be touching on balance changes related to the armor rating system and damage types affecting both structures and Walkers.

As was mentioned in our first announcement, a lot of old design decisions have been overturned in favor of following our new direction for the game - the upcoming changes to siege weapons, base raiding and Walker combat balance are no exception.

Some of this work required us to re-do the old armor rating system from the ground up, into what we believe is a much more intuitive one, which should also ensure the proper interactions happen correctly.

For this devblog, we won’t be talking about base raiding a lot, but the section dedicated to armor rating and damage types update is very much going to affect the meta there. Our current focus for base raiding changes is to go back to a much simpler iteration and let go of some arbitrary rules we implemented in the past. We’ll talk more about this in the future, for now we’re focusing on Walker vs. Walker combat balance and design, and of course, Walkers versus the environment.

[h2]Remote Weapons[/h2]

The remote controlled weapon arsenal in the game has been updated with some new additions, in the form of Stingers, which are small, dart-shooting defensive weapons mostly meant for low level encounters. Early on there will be three different versions available, all with varying capabilities.

The earliest version being the smallest one, it comes in the form of a deck edge-built small ballista that uses dart ammunition. Better versions improve on the arc of fire and rotation, but will still use dart ammo, as these are not meant to be primary weapons for Walker fighting or base raiding.
Early versions of remote weapons are similar in functionality to our old Remote Ballista, but much more compact, and are buildable on every Walker class.

The main intention behind them is to provide players with defensive capabilities on the Walker decks, while we retain the ability to design and balance the larger siege weapons for objectives like hunting and fighting PvE threats, raiding, and Walker vs. Walker battles. This is not to say these small weapons won’t help you with these early PvE encounters and PvP fights at all, but remember that as you progress from the early maps to more difficult biomes, you will start to gain access to more powerful weaponry and tools for those purposes.

[h2]Armor Ratings and Damage Types System[/h2]

We have completely reworked the armor ratings and damage types system into a much more straightforward and intuitive version. Below will be some information on the new armor ratings and the damage types as well as some examples of where they will be applied.

Armor Ratings: There will be 5 armor ratings, with essentially linear progression in their protection levels:

• Soft Armor - Meant for players, most of the smaller creatures (Phemke, Nurr, Killin, Papak), Small Walkers (Firefly and Spider Walker), Crafting Stations and Siege Weapons. Overall, this armor is dedicated to things that can be damaged with melee weapons and some of the earliest ammo available, dart ammunition, scattershot pellets, and early ballista bolts.
  
• Medium Armor - Medium Walkers (Dinghy, Stiletto, Mollusk, etc), Small Walker legs, Light and Medium wood structures.
  
• Hard Armor - Large Walkers, some of the bigger creatures (Okkam, Koa, etc).
  
• Reinforced - Capital Walkers, Balang, Clay and Stone Bases, Worm Scales.
  
• Solid - Concrete Bases, Silur. This is specially reserved and will see sparse utilization, as very few damage types and ammo is capable of efficiently damaging it.
  

Damage Types: There will be 4 base categories for damage types, which will also be used as a basis for special damage types like Gas, Fire, Insect, etc., for example making Fire Darts deal Light Fire Damage.
Below are some examples of ammo in the game using specific damage types:

• Light - Darts and Scattershot Pellets. Used by compact remote Stinger, and Scattershot Gun.
  
• Piercing - Ballista Bolts, high end Darts, and Scattershot Pellets. Used by early Ballista, higher end Scattershot Gun, and Repeater.
  
• Heavy - Larger Rock based ammo, smaller Boulders, and high end Bolts. Used by more advanced Ballista, Catapult, and Slingshot.
  
• Shattering - Strongest damage type in the game, fully effective against every armor rating in the game. Used by Rokker and Catapult.
  

Early on in the game, most ammo types are at their weakest, using resources such as stone, bone and chitin. They transition into more powerful versions when they begin requiring iron, obsidian, nibiran mineral, and ceramic shards.

This transition will be clear in-game once you can see the ammo recipes, but a shortened explanation would be that Darts, for example, cannot have Shattering damage type. Darts in the early game are crafted using materials like stone, bone or chitin, and have a Light damage type, but when crafting them using more advanced materials like ceramic and iron, they receive Piercing damage type.
On top of that, if it’s specialized ammo (i.e. Explosive Darts), they will show their special type next to their damage type, for example, Light Fire in the case of Explosive Darts, Piercing Explosive in the case of some bigger bomb ammo that create shockwaves of damage.

This system will also make it so that when progressing and acquiring better weapons with stronger ammo, the ones you already had can become more efficient and won’t be immediately outclassed by new ones. For example, a Ballista won’t be immediately outclassed by a Rokker from the moment you acquire one, since although Bolts start at Piercing damage type when crafted with low end materials, they can be improved up to Heavy damage type when crafting with more advanced resources and can continue to be efficient.

[h2]Automata[/h2]

Fundamentally, our ranged weapons are either remote weapons controlled by the Walker pilot, like Stingers and the old Remote Ballista, or mannable siege weapons controlled by a player gunner.
Automata are an attachment which allows Walker pilots to turn every mannable into a remote weapon (or tool) that can be controlled from the Steering Levers of a Walker.

Although similar in functionality to the smaller remote weapons, an Automaton will allow the Walker pilot to control any deck weapons that would otherwise require to be manned by a Nomad.
They are meant to enhance the role of a Walker pilot during PvP and PvE engagements through more remotely controlled tools and options.

At the moment they are a pretty simple and straightforward mechanism, but we have a lot of considerations for future changes. For example, having ways to disable an Automaton on enemy Walkers, different types of Automata with different capabilities/stats (think rate of fire, accuracy, etc.), and more.

For now I will leave you with a few pictures of my mechanical friend and his best friend, the Ballista. You can get one too!



Don’t look at their legs.



Nomad and machine.



They sometimes like to dance.

[h2]Siege Weapons Design & Future of Walker Combat[/h2]

When looking at our current arsenal of weapons in the game, we felt like something was missing between Ballistae and Catapults, and when it comes to breaking down massive walking ships, it feels really off to rely mostly on “burning toothpicks”, as one of our designers puts it. We actually intend to move away from the use of fire bolt design wherever possible.
With that said, we’re introducing a new weapon to the game, currently named “the Rokker”, it’s designed to be a good middle ground weapon for Walker to Walker combat, not quite like a Catapult or a Slingshot, and certainly not a bigger Ballista, this one would be more akin to a very early cannon. Overall, it’s meant to provide the heavy punch where the use of a Ballista does not feel right.

Do keep in mind that these are not the only things that will be affecting Walkers and combat, there is more that we will soon be talking about, but I’ll give you some hints - Pretty much everything Walker-meta related will be changed massively. Starting with limitlessly building stuff on Walkers and continuing with a new system we have for Walker building, you can expect almost everything there to be completely changed - and while everyone will have to relearn, we think that’s one of the most exciting things about it, the prospect of completely new mechanics and features.

There is still quite a lot to talk about and we’re not even halfway there with the changes, but we’ll continue revealing each part of the LOverhaul slowly so we can properly get feedback from you guys.
Most of these features are not set in stone, we want to make sure this is crystal clear, we are committed to working with you guys from the very beginning of our tests, and into the season.

We haven’t yet started showcasing the technology progression changes, but you can most certainly expect one of our future devblogs to go in full detail about it, as it’s one of the biggest changes we have in store for Season 5.

We’re very excited to hear how do you think Walker combat and gameplay in general will play out with these new additions and changes. One of our big objectives for next season is to properly bring rarity to the game, as in, a lot of things won’t be abundant by default and easily accessible - rather they will need to be sought after while facing great dangers in the form of PvE threats, and other players looking for those resources.

One final note: Our creatures devblog was not lacking in text and descriptions, but it certainly could’ve used a few more images, so I’d like to leave you with our Nurr Raiders. These agile Rupu Nurr Raiders live off desert lairs, they are very good at harassing isolated targets, and rather dangerous in large groups. Best to approach them with caution, and bring an Automaton or two for your front weapons.







—Neon

Hi Nomads!

As one of the most important elements of Last Oasis, creatures and AI in general were one of the very first things we started with when we began planning the LOverhaul, so it felt like the right thing to dedicate our first devblog to them.

In this devblog I’d like to tackle some of the changes we’ve done to the old creatures, new creatures coming to the game, design choices we’ve made for them, some of the technical challenges along the way, and what’s in store for the future when it comes to creature behavior and design in general.

For these devblogs I will always be approaching the developers in charge of designing and implementing any changes or additions we talk about here, so we might be getting into the technical aspects of these features a lot. I’d also like to point out that some specific terminology was used in some cases that probably doesn’t mean much to you now, but as we continue to release more devblogs it will make more sense. An example would be the reference to tiers with mobs, this will be explained in-depth in a future devblog.

First part of the devblog is dedicated to the design and direction side of things, and getting into a bit more detail about Gogo and his minions, as well as showing off some of the new creatures coming to the game. The second part will be much more technical with a word from chadz, but hopefully readable still. :)

[h2]DESIGN AND DIRECTION[/h2]

As you know, until now, our creatures didn’t really have a lot of interesting behaviors or gameplay related to them, with some very few exceptions, our systems simply didn’t support that, since before EA release of the game in 2020 we didn’t have enough time to polish them and create a much more satisfying experience.

Most of them were not really fine-tuned toward certain experiences, rather living in the oases mostly as resources to harvest and small challenges for players to fight for.
Due to those reasons, we had quite a lot of technical debt to clean up before getting to work on a better system in order to have a base that was easily expandable and worked properly with new mobs being added in the future, or changes to old ones.

Having a system that makes it so a designer can easily change what the mobs are doing, with precision, was a massive consideration for the rework. But before we talk about our system changes, I want to give the word to Lukasz (Klerych on Discord) and get into the design side of development for mobs, and their new variations.

While the new systems were being worked on, we were also making sure we have a proper approach for designing gameplay around mobs and AI in general.
Until recently, we didn’t have a very formalized approach for creatures and how they fit in the world of LO, but now it was pretty much a requirement as we intend to make them one of the core aspects of the game - mobs are essentially connected to all the new systems and progression coming in S5.

Hunting them, acquiring resources related to them, etc. is going to be a major part of next season’s gameplay. Our intention is to have a progression that works in a way where you always have some bigger threats to tackle and defeat (or be defeated and find another way to acquire those resources, for example through trading).

Early on in the game, the mobs you encounter will be similar to the ones you encounter now, Rupu, Phemke, and the likes, but with new twists and behaviors that connect to our new technology acquisition system and the changes to Walkers (this will all become much clearer once we showcase these changes in upcoming devblogs, for now I can only mention it lightly). An example of the progression through hunting mobs is how initially you will need to find and hunt down Phemke in order to get to the next Walker and progress forward onto larger creatures and much bigger threats.

For Season 5, the creatures in LO will be split in two important groups - there will be wild versions of the creatures, some of which either roam the oases, or guard their lairs (which will be points of interest to acquire special resources), and a much more dangerous, tougher version of them, internally called “Battle Mobs”.

These creature variations will come equipped with battle rigs, designed to put up a fight against players on their Walkers. They will be much tankier than their wild counterparts, have a variety of siege weapons available to use against you, and possess a different AI and aggro system that fits Walker combat much better than fighting versus players on foot.

I asked Lukasz for an example to give you guys of an encounter with one of our new giant creatures I teased last week, “Gogo”, also known as the Mountain Crawler, and talk a bit more about how the design process goes for when we decide where mobs are placed, how they are balanced, how they fit in the world of LO, and more.

The Wasteland is the center region of the Kali Spires map. Until now, it was mostly empty and the majority of threats were other players roaming and looking to empty your Walker storage, on S5 that will be quite the opposite.
The Wasteland is now going to be inhabited by packs of Stiletto-sized Rock Crawlers (two or three per pack) on the edges, while closer to the center will be home to the imposing Gogo, the Mountain Crawler, equipped with heaps of Rupu-operated guns on it’s rather large back.

Gogo’s design is rather simple, it’s intended to be a massive open world raid boss, one of the highest difficulty creatures in the game before you meet sandworms. Although the creature itself is not very territorial, the Rupu that made its mountainous carapace their home are, and they’ll engage anyone that tries to get too close or is foolish enough to attack their monstrous mount.
Even at its lowest tier, Gogo will be extremely tough, with one of the highest armor ratings in the game, meaning that it will take some heavy weaponry and possibly require at least a few Capital-class Walkers or several Large Walkers in order to defeat it and acquire new resources and high tier loot (among other things, defeating Gogo will be a requirement to acquire one of our Capital Walkers, the Titan).

When it comes to design, the main decision driving process for Lukasz is mostly the immersion and the experience they can create, whether it be readying up your Walkers and going on a hunt for specific creatures, or avoiding them as you live your life in the oases. One example is our OKKAMs, they would not fit very well in Ancient City’s wetlands, but they are a great foe to battle in the ashlands region of the Sleeping Giants oasis.
The creatures that appear in each part of each biome/oasis, it should really feel like they could live there. Because, you know, they do live there.
Accessibility is also a massively important part of this. Recognizing dangerous zones as a player, knowing where to look (and avoid), for these creatures is very important. You wouldn’t want to make a base in the Kali Spires’ wasteland in the center of the oasis, with giant Gogo and packs of mountain crawlers still roaming around.

It’s also important for us to be able to bring more content, more gameplay to maps that don’t have much of that, a great example of this being the Kali Spires, which will be home to new threats and rewards for players to find and fight their way through. I already mentioned Mountain Crawlers and the smaller variations, but we’ve also made some changes to the Rupu tribes of the Spires.

To close off the design part of this devblog, I’d like to leave you with a few pictures of some of the creatures we’ve been working on:



The Papak are one of the creatures you can now expect to find on the lava lakes of the Volcanic biome. A rather odd-looking, frog-like hostile creature, Papak use their long tongues to attack nomads and their Walkers from a distance, usually leaping away when Nomads in melee range. This variation of Papak is an agile, fire-breathing, jumpy creature that chases down Nomads looking to make a Flot off obsidian harvesting near their lairs. They also have a tendency to explode when in near-death situations. There are other variations that live in different biomes and have different attacks and behaviors, such as the Mist Papak, a variation of the creature that resides in dark and damp crevices where mushrooms can be found.



The Koa are large, elephant-like creatures that peacefully roam the forests of Sleeping Giants biomes, and are usually found wherever there are large lakes, and big patches of trees. Peaceful creatures by nature, they generally avoid Nomads and their temporary settlements, but when tamed and trained by the Rupu, they become a fearsome and tough challenge to take on. With a rather large amount of space on top of them, it is the perfect place for Rupu to build their War Howdahs.

[h2]AI SYSTEM CHANGES[/h2]

We’re not done talking about mobs yet, and definitely not done talking about our new Battle Mobs and the angry Rupu they carry, but for this second part of the devblog we’ll move into the more technical aspects of the AI and creature changes.

For the past few months chadz has been working on reworking pretty much the entire AI system from scratch, cleaning up some of the technical debt accumulated over time, and came up with a much more stable, expandable system.

With this system in place, a lot of our current and future work is made much more efficient, and involves less developers working on the same feature, also allowing designers to change mob attributes easily, add behaviors, and more.

Our main approach was getting an AI that works properly with Walkers, which is a very challenging thing to get into, as there aren't really any references from other games at all.
One of the first parts that got changed was the aggro system for mobs. While it sounds very easy (you hit mob, mob gets angry) - when you get into all the details it gets very complicated very quickly. You have different players with different walkers at different distances with different damage potential.
Our new aggro system might also have some complications still, but it’s looking much better and mostly ready to be tested by real players in real situations. It was also important to make it very unscripted so that it fits within our sandbox experience.

Movement work was also another difficult part of the rework (don’t talk to chadz about creatures moving backwards for now please), we’ve always had a lot of issues with that in the past, but most of it should be gone now. Mobs should be much more accurate at plotting trajectories toward Walkers and players on foot, recognize actions the player is doing, figure out the speeds at which Walkers are going (this was particularly important otherwise it’s rather easy to exploit creatures into doing specific things to cheese them, like wiggling left and right to confuse Nurr before he attacks).

We’ve also implemented a much better targeting system for mobs and their Battle Mob variations, as this was actually the basis for the entire AI rework and a massive requirement for this feature to work and be fun.

One of the key intentions with the rework is to make the creatures smarter and stronger, but stronger in a fair way. They very specifically try to actually be in a range where you can attack them with board weapons and such. They are meant to be a tough challenge, but still a fun and fair fight.

While there is still lots of work to be done to improve these systems, we have built a good, proper base that will help make the work on both the old and the new creatures coming to the game much easier. We’re talking a day of work for one or two developers, compared to a week of work for several developers in order to implement a new creature, or make changes to their movement or behaviors, etc.

We’re not gonna get it right on the first time, nearly guaranteed. But this time there’s a difference, the technical debt has been cleaned up, and the whole thing is expandable.
It’s always been so painful for us to see suggestions but us not really being able to implement it in an efficient way. This time people can actually bring suggestions and we can properly work on them without spending a lot of resources, thanks to these new systems. We can actually respond to feedback without having to work for periods of time that wouldn’t be acceptable to us, or involving developers whom are already busy with other work.

Any improvements we do to one mob, it’ll be an improvement to all mobs, which will eventually work towards an actual living world. Because of many mistakes we did in the early development, that just wasn’t possible before because it was a very rigid system. A lot of that has been cleaned up now.

I also wanted to touch on the differences between creatures like Rupu, and something much more complex like Nurr, Okkam, etc. so I asked him to provide some insight into the technical differences between them.

The big difference between these two is collisions.
Humanoids have very few interconnections, you don’t have stuff like one humanoid pushing another humanoid that pushes another humanoid. They don’t push themselves around. But Walkers and physical mobs, with all kinds of different shapes, need a different approach to collisions. For example Nurr being long and thin, Okkam is a big four legged creature with empty space between the legs, etc. And then you throw the Walkers in there, environmental obstacles, and you try to make that work together.

At the very least they need to collide and react accordingly without getting sent into low Earth orbit immediately after touching each other. Other games have quite straightforward approaches to their mobs. Each mob checks if it has an obstacle, and if not, it’s allowed to move. We can’t really do that because we have so many physical actors. We need a system that’s very robust with all kinds of mechanics.

The big difficulty here is making all the physics interactions work. If you can avoid it in your game, don’t make physical creatures. It’s a world of pain. In our case, we can’t really avoid it, unless we wanted to make our creatures very very simple, almost boring and non-interactable.

You’ve probably seen it in other games where vehicles suddenly launch into the air with intense velocities. That’s usually a result of a physical object (vehicle) suddenly trapped in a completely static object (environment or non-physical mob), therefore only the physical object will violently go very fast to resolve that collision.
Of course it’s happened to us a lot, but we’ve come to a point where it’s so much better because all objects have physics, therefore the systems know how to resolve it.

For the most part, the changes to these systems are a lot less visual than other changes in LOverhaul, they’re not something you can properly look at and see the work done in the background and all the things that make it tick, but we hope the improvements toward the gameplay around our mobs will showcase the work on the background.

I know this is a rather long post, and I would’ve loved to do more visual content for it, but I also wanted to get it out to you guys quickly and talk about the technical aspects of it, not just design and showcasing new creatures. I’ll leave a small FAQ below with condensed information:

[h3]Battle Mobs, what are they?[/h3]

Battle Mobs are essentially boss-type creature variations. Rather than the wild versions of Last Oasis mobs, these have been tamed by the rupu tribes. They come with big (and small) howdah mounts on top of them which can have a wide variety of siege weapons as well as armor plating. Some small ones use mostly short range personal weapons like javelins and the like, but the larger ones will come equipped with larger weaponry such as rupu versions of Catapults.

[h3]With these creature changes, are there any coming for the Sandworms?[/h3]

Yes. Our current Worm is balanced for a rather small engagement, 5-15 experienced players can make short work of the Worm and not incur on many losses in terms of Walkers.
To us, the Worm is part of the game’s endgame gameplay, and we want to reflect this with more balance changes for it.
The Worm will become much more of a final boss battle in Season 5. There will be no certainty of returning from a Worm Sighting event map alive and with all your battle walkers ready to fight, none whatsoever. Our intention continues to be that the dangers in the map would be so harsh as to intentionally make it not worth it to fight each other in the early stages, and only really think about betrayal after the loot is within reach.
We’ve got a lot of ideas for new Worm attacks and mechanics, and while they might not be possible to get implemented during S5, we know we can balance the current Worm much better even without them.

On a final note, next week we’ll continue with our second devblog, this time dedicated to changes to siege weapon design, how they affect gameplay related to hunting mobs, and how it ties into our new raiding balance changes. We’ll be showcasing some changes to the fundamentals of siege weapons, including some additions to the controlled weapon arsenal. Because if we are to show you new mobs, we also need to show you what kind of guns you’ll be shooting at them with.

—Neon