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How is the Green Hell update going so far? We wanted to share with you our design goals and ideas that we'll be implementing for the next update and beyond.

We've tried to be as short as possible, but sometimes we can't help but go on and on about our passion projects, so we'll also add a "TLDR" note to each paragraph 😅.

But first...

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• Welcome to Hell - New (Mini) Trailer!

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We have a new micro trailer for the 0.6 update! Maybe a bit late, as our dedicated trailer wizard (Kalafiorek) was on sick leave (we are a tiny indie development studio, after all). Still, we wanted to make one for every update that brings a new map, so here it is. Hope you'll enjoy it and share it with your friends!

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• Skill-trees, meta-progression, synergies

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TLDR: Brand new multiple skill-trees, ability modifications & new synergy possibilities.

We're delving into the new skill tree and meta progression systems, which will hopefully allow us to add a lot more nuance to both the build crafting process and the depth of the game itself.

Our plan is to release several new skill trees. One will be a global tree, similar to the one that already exists, but with the potential to add more nodes and seamlessly unlock major gameplay mechanics (e.g. military training) by advancing your Survival Level.

There will also be a separate skill tree for each Survivor in the game. The leveling of these may remain similar to the current model, where you just have to play the preset character as your team leader (other team members can do the killing), but we're also thinking about a classic experience system, where each Survivor you have on your team will gain a certain amount of experience, divided by the number of teammates and their time on the field.

ㅤ(Work in progress: first mockup of Survivor experience gains / bars)These trees will offer the existing weapon & ability unlocks, but we also want to introduce selectable ability modifications (e.g. make Ghost's Shuriken either do chemical damage over time or stun enemies) to customize your play style, as well as adding cross-class synergies, like "your ability does X if you have Y on your team".

As for transferring between systems, we've discussed this at length, and we think we'll be able to transfer your previously earned points on a 1:1 basis, up to the amount you could unlock in the existing skill tree. This won't transfer your excess skill points, so as not to take away from the fun of unlocking new things we're yet to add. Of course, we'll do our best to keep your already unlocked weapons & abilities intact.

Going forward, we want to better manage the skill point economy without making the game too grindy, so we're thinking about limiting the max level to the current max amount of unlockable nodes, separately for each skill tree. This way, different Survivors can have different max levels in a given version of the game, depending on the amount of nodes in the skill tree), but you will no longer accumulate a crazy amount of "useless" points in each Early Access version. We don't really mind leveling indefinitely, but we'd prefer it to be a feature you can use in a fully released version of the game.

ㅤ(our old mockup; we're working on making it look nicer)

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• Game being too easy / too hard

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TLDR: Difficulty levels for casual and seasoned players alike, hardcore challenges, enemy AI tweaks.

Many of you have raised your voices about the difficulty of the game. This is one of the most important things we'll be addressing in the next update. As always, we'll be looking at the balance of the core systems and making adjustments as necessary.

We've decided to add multiple difficulty levels for the game modes on each map. These difficulty levels may have modified enemy waves, changed zombie stats/horde level, or even offer some new challenges. The higher the difficulty, the better the experience/rewards.

You will most likely be able to advance to the next difficulty rank once you complete the set game mode on the set maps. We'll be able to both tweak the base difficulty to be a bit more forgiving, provide a greater challenge for those who want it, and allow for different ways to play the game and unlock new things.

We'll continue to tweak the current and maximum speed and/or AI of various enemies, especially the pesky runner zombies, which have often been the cause of headaches for many players. Overall, we'll be trying to make fast enemies less annoying while keeping the fast gameplay of YAZS intact. We're also experimenting with changes to the Horde wave AI. These changes could help in modes like Extermination, where slower zombies can take a while to get to your position.

As mentioned in the past, we're also planning to add fully optional, non-Steam achievements to your in-game profile that will offer no gameplay benefits or unlocks other than visual things (like Hall of Fame-type displays or main menu indicators).

These challenges will offer tasks ranging from very hard to insanely difficult, in case you feel like pushing the limits of what's possible. Be sure to give us your ideas on what kind of such challenges you'd like to see added to the game!

All in all, we can't possibly make everyone happy, but we can sure as heck try, and do our best to make sure that you all have tons of fun playing YAZS, no matter what your gaming level is.

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• Improving items & Military Training (passive upgrades)

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TLDR: Bigger numbers, much better items, more build variety and deeper gameplay depth.

We've gotten a lot of feedback from you that the military training numbers, especially the "Infinite" variety, are still a bit too low. Since their introduction, we've been buffing them to be higher, but it's a really tough thing to balance, for several different reasons, such as:

[expand type=list of reasons]

• They can be taken an infinite number of times & they can occur very frequently (depending on your banishes).
  
• Their only role is to serve as *small* boosts to team strength that can be taken an infinite number of times.
  
• Making them as strong as normal Military Training would invalidate that system and make getting the MT much less enjoyable (less fun).
  
• Stat caps exist, so stats can be maxed out either way if the player chooses to pursue a particular stat.
  
• Making these too powerful would promote a gameplay loop of banning weapons and abilities just to get to the stats, which wouldn't be healthy for the whole game on multiple levels.

[/expand]
Still, we never want to leave the game in a state where the player feels bad about getting an upgrade, so we plan to do several different things to improve the situation. Here are a few examples:

We're expanding the current implementation of stats so that each of the survivors has their own stats in addition to the global ones. This already exists somewhat in the game, as seen in the case of the Tank's "Fury Unleashed" ability, which only affects his own stats. Refining this system would allow us to both increase the depth of gameplay in terms of build variance, as well as buff and tie some of the in-game bonuses to individual characters: Military Training cards could now be much more powerful, when slotted on the Survivor of your choice.

We've also heard you say that the items are boring, and we've listened. As such, we are reworking all the items! Because we want to make them much more exciting and tie into synergies and build crafting, we will be limiting them all to a single stack, but with the option to upgrade them to their ultimate versions during the run! This also means that we will most likely limit the number of items you can have at one time, but don't worry, this will mostly only affect the endless modes, and we will do our best to make it worthwhile by making their effects much more powerful!

Here are some of the ideas. Please note that these effects are not final:

As you can see, some of the effects will be simple, while others will offer more in-depth strategies and synergies. We want you to have fun playing the game, whether you're in the mood to min-max your build for harder challenges, or if you just want to take simple damage bonuses and watch the fireworks.
On the other hand, we will continue to revise the stats to reduce the hard caps on them, instead offering diminishing returns once certain percentages are exceeded. This would allow you to continue to grow in strength beyond the previous limits, while also allowing us to offer you larger numbers without worrying about breaking the game... a bit too soon 😉

ㅤ(Work in progress: First mockup of re-design of the pause menu around per-Survivor stats.)These are some of the ideas we have in mind. What do you think about them? Adding these will take some time to implement, so as always, we ask for your patience as we work to (hopefully!) improve the game.

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• Survival Guide & Jukebox

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TLDR: Freakin' Jukebox, dude! How awesome is that?

In order to answer many gameplay related questions, we're implementing an in-game Survival Guide, which will serve as both a place to quickly find answers to potential questions, as well as a sort of in-game tutorial.

Since the game is still in Early Access, we'll do our best to keep it updated as changes are made to the in-game systems. We can easily update it and add new entries, so if there's something you think needs to be better explained, you can let us know and we'll include it.

We're also thinking about tying one of the achievements to the player reading all of the currently unlocked pages (or more accurately, browsing through them, looking at each page at least once) to promote the feature and reduce a lot of potential confusion about the gameplay mechanics. What do you think about this idea?

On another topic, we've heard that many of you would like to have a greater choice of background music, both new and classic. With that in mind, we'd like to share with you our idea on how to address this topic.

With the upcoming addition to the game, YAZS will be the first title in the genre (to our knowledge) to offer an in-game music player that will allow you to play, change, queue, and loop your favorite themes while playing the run.

Yes, this also means the ability to play the "classic", Creative Commons licensed tunes that came before our official soundtrack was added. Since these may not always be 100% safe for content creators, we'll be sure to add a toggle to bring them back into the game, which will be appropriately described and disabled by default.

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• That's all folks! (TM)

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There are other things we're working on behind the scenes (quality of life, etc.), but this news post is long enough, and we don't want to spoil all the surprises in one go. As you can see, the next update will be a big one, so we thank you for your patience while we cook this tasty dish for you. As always:


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