Reddit Q&A - May 2nd

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. We tried to stick to the theme of things that are on the Test Server, as you can see in the last Producer's Letter. 

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 currently working on anything substantial to thwart hackers. I know its an on going effort but there seems to be no real reduction in the last few weeks.
2. The new POI are great, do you have any plans to change the spawn locations to take advantage of these new POI, especially "Beverly hills " (H6) and the "Crate Jungle" (E3).
3. I love the "new" skirmish mode, Please enable night mode. pretty please, with a cherry on top.
4. Many players are still getting the infinite running man glitch that was introduced last patch. Any progress on tracking this bug down ?
5. Many players are also still getting a late spawn. Sometimes several seconds, a game reset seems to fix the issue.

A:

1. Yes, we are constantly finding known hacks and adding those to our banned list. Thousands of accounts are banned each day. The current build on Test has updated versions of all of our anti-cheat software. We have people dedicated to purchasing hacks from the market and then using those to ban anyone using them. We are also auditing all of our anti-cheat systems and looking to hire an anti-cheat programmer to further add to our arsenal to fight against them.
2. One thing that is currently in progress and is one of our highest priorities after getting this current patch to Live is a rework of the gas ring dynamics. This also comes with spawn improvements that may address your question here.
3. Not sure that it will be as fun at night. Sniping will be quite a bit different at night than it is during daylight, and I'm not sure it would be as satisfying.
4. This one is really difficult to track down because we cannot make it happen, it is seemingly random and almost never happens internally. We are adding some logging to hopefully catch it when it happens to be able to eradicate as quickly as possible.
5. Interesting, will have our QA team look into this.

 

Q:

Will the Twitch Prime Offroader Skin be fixed?

A:

We have a fix in place going to Test later today and then to Live once we promote that version up.

 

Q:

ETA on when patch will go to live?

I don't even feel like playing on live with how different the update is on test.

A:

Appreciate that you are enjoying Test. As always, we want to ensure that the patch is ready to deploy and is not introducing new issues. We are still in the testing process with the goal to eliminate all known bugs this week. Then we like to test an unchanging build for a little bit before pushing it to Live.

 

Q:

There will be an improvement soon of the Team Follow Cam ? : - No loading screen when you swap of teammates. - Up FOV in 3rd person, it's really bad atm. - Delete the free look cam ( WAY TOO OP).

A:

Currently on Test we disabled free look and matched the FOV to the default cam.

 

Q:

1. Can we get clarification on what you guys changed to movement? Everything feels faster, from barefeet, to conveys, to strafing -- Was this intended?
2. Why is the AR recoil so inconsistent (as shown here: https://clips.twitch.tv/TardyWimpyRhinocerosYouWHY)?
3. Is there a fix coming to 2-taps where you hit off a helmet, then makeshift/lammy absorbing second headshot?

A:

1. As we are always working on future initiatives, the Test server may not always 100% reflect what will be going to Live in the next update. As the name implies, it is a chance to test and tweak different elements of gameplay to gather community feedback. We adjusted the speed to see how it would play out. We definitely see the positive feedback around it, but unfortunately there is a large drawback that players can appear to warp from one position to another. We will continue to tune movement as it is a focus in an upcoming content release.
2. We are looking into this.
3. This is something that we are investigating as well to see if we can get to the bottom of what is happening in these cases.

 

Q:

How long will the sniper/shotties skirmish last? Will it last a week or two? What are the plans for the next skirmish? Will skirmishes be updated every weekend like it says?

A:

Each weekend through at least May. Maybe June as well, but I don't know quite yet. We have a whole list of other skirmishes to give a go. Shotties and snipers is so popular, we will probably run for a little longer before switching out to a new one.

My personal favorite idea is a red light, green light mode. If the light is red, no weapons work, but when it turns green, all weapons are unlocked.

 

Q:

How satisfied are you with the shotgun right now? 

A:

Assuming you mean the new shotgun currently on the Test server. I think it is working much better. We have some further changes going up today to address two things that we saw that we still didn't like. The first is doing a little more damage overall to prevent the cases where you shoot an opponent and they are left with less than 5 health. That should be a kill shot. The other situation is head shots should be more lethal, so we upped the damage multiplier on head shots for the update later today. 

 

Q:

Any chance you could add a 5 - 10 second delay from when people start falling with there parachutes so we can all load in at the same time?

A:

We have a system that tries to make the start even for everyone. What is currently on Test has some new tuning done for it to see how it does, and we can further tweak if we are seeing a lot of unfair starts.

 

Q:

When it comes to network and internet speed I really don't have much knowledge. And I don't know how playing with 175 players may effect your ping ( ms ) in game . But I know I am getting almost same ping in othergames whatever speedtest shows . So help me to understand , How I am getting 62 ms on speedtest but 90 ms in game ?

A:

You are measuring to different things. One is to a server setup to measure the time it takes to talk to your computer and the other is a game server. Also probably not measuring the same thing in the same way.

 

Q:

Do you have any plans on implementing increased recoil for AR-15 spam? I think many players would enjoy this and it would add a tiny "skill gap" to the game.

A:

I have seen this one come up a lot lately. As we continue with a large overall gunplay balance, this is something that we will take into account.

 

Q:

Having played only shotty sniper on the test server (other than killing greg

1. Vehicle skins should be on marketplace, not to make it easier for new players to see vehicles, they should have to learn the game and spawns like everybody else. (overall make the game take time to learn and get good at)
2. The Highlighted loot makes missing items virtually impossible, at least make people pay attention when looting, and it looks cartoonie (cartoony?)
3. With the last update I've been getting screen tearing alot, and this patch is even worse about that, including FPS, I like new POIs, but maybe less stuff outside of cities so FPS is consistent.
4. Also why loot bag priority change in inventory? it's scrambled now, used to be bandages, medkits, ammo, etc now no real set order?

A:

1. We have to keep new players in mind as well. A piece of feedback that we have received a number of times is that a new player cannot distinguish between a drivable car and non-drivable car. I don't think this will remove a skill gap at all as driving and positioning still need to be learned to play at a high level.
2. This was done to increase pace of play. We want you to be able to size up an area at a glance to know what to get and what to ignore, keep you focused on the fight as much as possible.
3. Have you tried turning on v-sync?
4. Will be addressed.

 

Q:

Have you considered increasing the speed of patch iteration? Currently we see long periods of internal testing between gameplay patches, often time the community is not in favor of changes that are made, and sometimes changes do not work correctly or have unintended side effects. KOTK has an extremely large playerbase, especially for an early access games, and it could be utilized much more. Instead of internally testing a patch and possibly taking a week to find a bug, if nightly patches were pushed to the test server the community could greatly aid in reproducing and tracking down the source of bugs.

A:

We have patched much more frequently over the last six weeks. I don't have the exact number in front of me, but there has been a number of them.

Our cadence is structured roughly like this right now:

- Hotfixes can go at anytime they are warranted or needed
- Game Patches are going every two weeks, usually with a collection of bug fixes or small changes
- Content Updates are every six weeks, this is when we make larger changes to the game. What is on Test right now is our next Content Update.

 

Q:

Has the sniper been changed at all in the test server? It feels different overall.

A:

No changes to the sniper rifle on Test.

 

Q:

What is the word on FPS limit. This was working fine until last patch and was wondering if it would be fixed in this patch.

A:

Hoping to get it resolved this week, but it may not happen quite in time for this update. If not, we will work it in as soon as we can.

 

Q:

Hi,

  I just have 3 questions about the balance of the game regarding the last update.

1. With the new areas, will you keep the same amount of cars all over the map or will you add more cars?
2. Do you plan to add more areas in the future or to revamp old ones?
3. Finally, I sometimes find 4 Kevlar in the same building and sometimes no kevlar in a whole area and I think it unbalance the game a little bit (you will say you have to aim the head and not the body :D ), but an idea could be to spawn at least one kevlar for each area, then random. What do you think of that?

  Thanks for the Q&A anyway!

A:

1. Right now, no plans to add more cars. We have spawning and gas ring changes coming up and I want to see how those play out before adding more vehicles.
2. We are evaluating that right now, we have not yet made a decision.
3. We are working on a brand new loot system to directly address issues like this one. We are just about to start testing it internally to see how it is performing before committing to a release timeline.

 

Q:

1. Do you have any plans to change where Laminated Armor spawns, or adjusting how they affect early game in any way? I don't agree with many of the communities opinions about "skill gap," as most of them are just people complaining, but lammies definitely ruin games for players during the very first phase of the game.
2. The test server is a great idea, and the Nightmare mask promotions are a great way to get more people playing them, but when you're not doing that promotion, it's almost impossible to play a full game on the test server and really judge how the game plays. Do you have any plans on an incentive for players to play on it? I'm happy to test new features out and provide feedback, but it's not the same environment as the main game, which doesn't help with testing things.
3. With a shotgun rework now on its way, do you have any plans for reworking the AK-47? From my point of view, the gun seems almost irrelevant past the 80 or less player mark of the match. Dying to one past that mark is a very, very rare sight indeed. I would love to be playing with more than just 2 ARs and a Shotgun in my inventory.

Love the game, guys. You're all doing great, keep up the great work.

A:

1. I touched on this in another answer.
2. We have talked about a reward system where your play on Test could count towards your Live progression, but that is pretty far down the priority list to be honest. We are using the different giveaways as a fun way to do something a little different in the game.
3. We are currently looking at every weapon in the game, the shotgun was in the most need of a rework so we are pushing that one out now, but we plan on addressing the entire suite of weapons.