Reddit Q&A - March 14th

Executive Producer, Chris Wynn sets aside some time to talk with the community this week. 

Hey everyone!

Big thanks to everyone who came out today to ask questions and provide some feedback. Many of the questions were already answered in the last Producer's Letter so I tried to pick some fresh ones. 

Here's a recap of our Q&A from today. You can find the full Reddit thread right here - Chris Wynn

Q:

1. Are you working on making the safe zones more dynamic? 30 players left after first wave and the safe zone is too big going on hard to search out players.
2. Any thoughts on having a more rewarding experience? Untradable item crates, scraps, etc.
3. What's being done about the server stability issues? Game becomes almost unplayable at night fluctuating pings going over 1k.
4. Is skirmish mode almost here?
5. A lot of issues with hit reg we all see people trading all the time most of the time from the desync, what's being done about this?
6. What's being done with the memory leak? Meaning people restarting the game every so often because of game performance.
7. Any progress on the training ground?
8. Any word on the team rankings?
9. What are you guys doing about the audio issues in the game silent footsteps, shots fired and such?

A:

1. It is actually dynamic. But we need to do some tuning on it for sure. One of our objectives for our next milestone (which we will be planning next week) is to do an overhaul of the gas system to use more of the map and looking at the sizes and timings of the rings.
2. I have lots of thoughts, but this is a ways down on our priority list right now. Core gameplay and experience is filling most of our time for the foreseeable future.
3. A ton, this is still our #1 priority. We made some changes over the weekend to address some of those odd ping spikes. I would be interested to know if people are still seeing those. Take a look at my last Producer letter for more server details.
4. It is, but I have to keep de-prioritizing it when other stuff comes up. Our goal was to have it in this next update, but then we had some emergency server fixes that needed to go in over the past few weeks and that work consumed the resources working on skirmish, so I had to push it back.
5. 3 part plan for hit reg. Part 1 is to improve the server performance to ensure the environment is stable and consistent. This is ongoing and a ton of improvements have already happened with more in the next several weeks. Part 2 is feedback when you are engaged in gun fights to be more clear as to what is happening. Did you hit armor, or flesh, or a vehicle? This is audio and visuals combined. Part 3 is to do a deep dive into our mechanics and server client code to ensure there is nothing happening that should not be happening. We have just begun the client side of this, the server side should start being looked at within the next two weeks. This will become our top priority as soon as servers are stable and performant.
6. We continue to work on this as we learn new things. This one is tricky because it doesn't affect everyone, it seems to only exist on some people's machines. We just engaged with a larger QA organization that is distributed around the world, this is something we are asking them to keep an eye on and send us details if they get it.
7. Training is going through a large overhaul internally that will take some time to work out. I wouldn't expect any changes for quite some time, but we have some thoughts.
8. Answered elsewhere in this thread last night.
9. Similar to #7.

 

Q:

When will you guys add Top10/Rankings for Duo/fives!!

I really want this since its really all i play with my friend and we got 3 wins already but nothing to show for it...

A:

Right now we are focused on two things. Servers and getting the next content update ready to go live. Next week the entire team will be planning the next milestone's work. Team scoring is pretty high on that list. Our hope is that it will be ready for the following content update (roughly 6 weeks after this next one goes live). But I can't commit to timing until we get through that planning. There is a chance that not all of the work will fit within one milestone, but that will be our goal.

It's not that it is difficult necessarily, there is just a lot of work that comes with it. You have to score the matches, store those scores on a server for the leaderboards and manage all of that data. Servers have to be setup in each region for that data and then you have to build all of the UI to display it all in game. Once all of that is done, you have to test it all and ensure all of the bugs are worked out.

 

Q:

Most of the issues i have with the game are being addressed in the comments already but I have a few questions i haven't seen asked.

1. Any plans to scrap backing performance and just giving silver based on placement and adjusting marketplace accordingly? Also maybe silver for kill thresholds ie 5 10 15 etc?
2. Any plans for Central USA servers as 70 ping can lead to lag problems as much as 100+.
3. Can we change the shotgun to a slug (1 projectile) instead of seemingly inconsistent bird shot that it seems to shoot? Mainly for consistency and not shooting off a helmet but not killing them.
4. Can we see the feedback from the surveys that have been posted?
5. Can we get the ability to flip a car that lands on its sides?
6. Custom Crosshairs?
7. When will player boxes not be allowed to go through each other while in game, it works in pregame but in game so many shotgun issues are because you can walk through people when will this be fixed?
8. Removing 0hp from being a thing.
9. Team colors for easily finding out which teammate is who that are universal for the team?
10. Final Kill doesn't show in the killfeed / kill counter disappears after a win in 2's and 5's sometimes leaving questions as to who got final kill.

A:

1. This system isn't working as well as we would like. Somewhere down the round we will probably make some changes there, but for now, it is not a very high priority.
2. Probably not. One thing that is difficult for us and server distribution is that to keep large scale matches firing up really rapidily we need a pretty high player count to sustain it. When population drops the experience suffers, so I am hesitant to split that population up more than we absolutely have to in order to create the best experience. Let's get the east coast servers up and running and evualate from there.
3. We have plans to change the shotgun. We have not yet committed to a direction, but we are talking over several options. The slug option, or variations of slug+pellets are framing most of the discussions. Part of the next milestone and the planning that we will be doing next week as a team.
4. Yes, I would like to follow up those surveys with a fairly in depth post on what we learned. Need to bug /u/KenAdamsNSA to get on that.
5. Will look into this.
6. Not sure I understand, we do have custom crosshairs.
7. Yeah, this is for sure on our list. Part of a physics overhaul that is going to take some time to pull off. Pretty difficult work, that system is very intertwined with all of our code, we have to be careful with this one.
8. Will investigate
9. Yeah, we may get to this in the next milestone, but it may need to move back one milestone. We would like to color the name of your teammate in the UI and then use the same color to draw their outline so you know exactly who is who.
10. Let's see if this one is resolved in a way with the new team spectate cam being released in our next update.

 

Q:

Will the smoke signal be turned back up for crate drops? They are impossible to find now. The smoke render distance seemed to have gotten messed up at the same time the regular smoke grenades started to have issues as well. 

A:

Yeah, need to look into this. A fix that we just made a week or two ago was to fix the smoke not rendering over a certain distance. It should improve this as well. Just need to make sure that it did.

 

Q:

Why isn't the training map full of guns? It would make it a lot easier to practice aim / sniping etc.

A:

We are doing a bigger rework of something to accomplish this. But a short term change that we may look at is ensuring more items spawn in training and more frequently.

 

Q:

Roughly how long until the next content update gets to test servers?

A:

We are working towards getting it all there by the end of this week. There are some risky changes in there that we will need to be sure we get plenty of testing on. Going to need a lot of help from you guys next week to beat on it a bit on a test so we can find everything.

 

Q:

Is it possible for you guys to address the split servers on AU? During the night we sometimes have 2 lobbies running side by side with only 40-50 people in it when we could have 1 decent sized game going...

A:

Will investigate. Seems like we got this worked out at some point. Did it recently start happening again?

 

Q:

When will KOTK be coming to X1 and PS4!?

A:

When it is good. Our priority is still the PC game and getting that where we want. Once we are good with that and then make some adjustments that are necessary for a good console experience, we will start to think about release windows and all of that.

 

Q:

Is shotty & sniper skirmish gonna return aswell so new players can practice with sniper?

A:

It will for sure return as a skirmish once we get them back online. First skirmish will be Ignition, second skirmish will be shotties and snipers only.

 

Q:

Any chance on getting higher bullet speed? The current bullet speed is very low and unrealistic.

A:

Actually our bullets travel faster than their real world counterparts. However, as part of some weapon balancing, this is one of the variables we are looking at to improve the experience overall.

 

Q:

When "play again button" will come?

And what is with macro lag? Everytime 8 seconds of freeze, very random unfortunately :(

A:

I said before that as soon as we eliminated queue times we would revisit the play again button. Queue times are gone, so this is something that we plan on taking a look at in our next milestone.

Will need to investigate the random freezes.

 

Q:

Whens the next update due in? Wanna trade my skins between friends but don't want to have them locked for a week ahaha

A:

Looking to get everything to test by the end of the week. Then assume a week or two of testing before it goes live. Trade lock changes will be part of it.

 

Q:

What kind of sushi do you like?

A:

Not a fan of seafood, I avoid the sushi.

 

Q:

The issue of the crosshair movement not being on par with the recoil of a gun was brought up over a month ago.

It came with video's showing you guys what was wrong, if I remember correctly there were multiple answer from daybreak staff.

How far are you up this alley?

I'd love to see if adjusted in the next milestone, given it will be around 3 months after the issue was brought up.

A:

Yeah, this turned into a bit of a bigger deal than we thought diving into it. We still have someone looking into the problem with the goal being we get it worked out for the next update. May not happen in time for that release and we would have to work into the next train leaving the station for release.

 

Q:

Are you concerned that next week KOTK will have direct competition for the first time, being from Battlegrounds, and will more focus be put on fixing persistent long term issues like hit reg if KOTK player numbers start to drop?

A:

I am excited to see Battlegrounds join us in Early Access. We are at the forefront of a new genre in games, and to really get that genre to explode it needs to be a collective effort of multiple experiences. We set our roadmap at the beginning of the year to focus on improving the core gameplay and player experience for King of the Kill. We are going to stick to that roadmap until we feel like we met that goal.

 

Q:

Hello, I have just one question. I don't really know what the skirmishes are per say. However, it is something different which I would like to do and I believe a player needs crowns to participate. That is the problem, I am never going to buy crowns ever. It isn't so much that I don't want to support you guys but more of I am broke haha. Is there any plans for skirmishes that can be played with a skull fee? I appreciate your time. 

A:

No need to pay an entry to play a skirmish. Skirmishes are just different rulesets that we will run over the weekend for a little something different.

 

Q:

Did you ever think to have a notification pop up when a former teammate wins a team game.

the other day i joined 5s as a single player. had a great time with my random teammates, however they died in the first circle, i went on to win it by myself. i thought it would be nice for them to know that there team won.

"Congratulations, your former teammates (insert winning teammates names here) Won the Match!"

A:

Cool idea, maybe a follow feature for anyone that you might be interested in keeping tabs on.

 

Q:

Now that NA will get two regions, will you show any love for Asia as well?

A:

We recently moved our Asian datacenter to Tokyo. we found that Tokyo provided a better connection to Asia compared to Singapore. Since doing so, games have been a lot better. We are going to make another change in Asia moving from a host provided server service to our own bare metal servers which will give us more control to make things even better in Asia.

 

Q:

Will there be any way to get Nightmare Mask for people outside america?

A:

We will be showing up at some other international events throughout the year and plan on bringing some codes to each of those. I don't have the full schedule in front of me so stay tuned to the official twitter feed to stay up to date.

 

Q:

Day/night cycles?

A:

We have held off on doing these because night time is a bit of a performance hog (all of the lights). I am a bit sensitive to making performance worse, so it hasn't been something that we have jumped into yet. Will probably experiment at some point in a skirmish or something.

 

Q:

Are you working on a system that allows players to load into the game then give a countdown before the parachute can be controlled. League of legends did something similar and it makes it a more enjoyable game to play for people with slower computers or internet speeds.

A:

We have a system that isn't working properly that we are going to revisit that tries to get an even match start for everyone.

 

Q:

You should consider answering a majority of these questions on stream or have a video type announcement. Seems more personable and easy to connect with.

A:

We do a regular Community Outbreak show on Twitch where some of this happens. I would like to go on, or be a guest on someone else's stream soon. We have just been pretty busy with other efforts that I haven't put the time into arranging that yet.

 

Q:

Will the map be updated anytime soon?

A:

Next content update will have the latest version of the Arena. Has some optimizatios, fixes to floating objects, stuff like that.