AtomicAlienZ

I have a couple questions to the devs:

• If I understood that correctly, you deliberately want the game to be slow?
  
• How does Thorns contribute to "interdependent co-op" for instance?
  
• I get it, you roll things out and balance them later, do you think most of the classes kits are balanced or we're in for more nerfbatting because some guns are still good or even OK?
• In particular: will Driller's secondaries ever be buffed to be usable?
  
• Are perks that don't change almost anything going to be buffed?

One more but very important question: which hazard you guys regularly play when testing your game? I've seen you guys get decimated on EDD and I want to know, was this intentional and for teh lulz or do you really have no idea how the game feels on h5?

1) I don't think that's the goal. 2) It doesn't go against it. 3) Balancing is an ongoing process. Eg. Breach Cutter is getting a little love soon. 4) There will most likely be changes here, but in the end that's up to the designers. Can't see why not. 5) Wat 6) Have you seen us win on both EDD and Haz 5 too? Because we have, and that should answer that question.

Zexis

I guess the takeaway here is we don't want any dwarf outside of Scout to be too mobile. I get it, but I will miss JB nonetheless. Made me feel like I was playing Metroid or somethin

I really liked it too but I think the game as a whole is better without that perk. That said, it was super fun so we will definitely look into doing something like this in the future, just not as a perk or a mod.

Alpha-Trion

Now call him a leaf lover

NO U!

GreedyRadish

Maybe a beer? The beers already offer abilities that would be too good if we had permanent access to them.

Something like that, yeah. We have not decided on a design yet but a jump beer could certainly work.

CptCap

I really liked it too but I think the game as a whole is better without that perk.

I agree, but as someone who plays solo from time to time, I am really sad to see it go.

When playing alone JB cut the amount of busywork by a ton. Even if all classes are able to traverse terrain just fine, not having to stop every 15 seconds to climb over something made the game much more fun.

Is there any plan to add more solo specific things (like perk effects) beside bosco?

No concrete plans right now but I could imagine doing a Bosco Overclock-ish thing as a way to add some more tools to solo missions.

a8bmiles

Born Ready now also reloads the Flaregun and the Platform Gun

What about the Zipline Gun?

It should work but I'm not sure... Maybe we only did it for tools with more than one charge in the magazine... I'll check tomorrow. I'm not a programmer but itshould not be a big deal to make it work with the zipline.

AfroFlower

Found it weird they added new audio for when your out of flares but for some reason it doesn't sync the audio like the rest of what the dwarves say.

Wait, are you hearing other dwarves complain about being out of flares? I thought that was a voiceline only for the individual player... Will check.

Machlol

Yes, perks are reset.

P.S. if you have completed a lot of milestones, don't just focus on clicking on one at a time and wait for the animation to finish. Click them all across as fast as you can. By the time you click the last milestone in the row, the first one is ready to be clicked. Speeds up the process quite a bit. :)

If you only knew how many times I had to do that while testing and retesting that thing...I never want to claim another milestone in my life.

Suikanen

I was having mad fun as an Engineer with the Jump Boots and a Fat Boi launcher, ribbing at my frequent duo-mining buddy the Scout that he's just been made redundant because I can now reach very high ground relatively quickly (platform, boots, a little rest, platform, boots, etc) and I can light the ceiling with a nuke in a pinch, not to mention annihilate swarms like it was my main job. I guess there was some truth to that.

I'm actually glad the boots got removed. Sure, they were fun as hell to use, but that was one active slot locked down into the comfort zone, preventing me from experimentation and optimizing builds: builds that might seem unfun on paper, but would help me to overcome the kinds of challenges that have been giving me and my buddy a hard time returning to hazard4 after a break from our main classes.

Jump Boots was a major self-reliance perk. That's good for the individual, but bad for the team, encouraging the kind of lone wolf behaviour that grabbing enemies and cave leeches have been put into place to dissuade from.

We have now been given the stick, and some of us have learned our lesson.
Devs, if you're reading this: when are we getting more carrots?
I feel we need more meaningful perks that help us buff and save our friends, like Field Medic, to encourage team play and mini-roles within a team. I wish there was enough different "buddy-buff perks" for the whole team, so that instead of everyone running "that one good buff perk" we'd have teams asking questions like "Hey is anyone running Karl's Bastion?" (you know, that active perk that turns Molly into a Thumper that repels bugs) or "Hey next one's an Elimination. Should we try to take two Keep Firing! perks (that active that allows you to increase everyone's reload speed for a while) instead of a Field Medic on this run?"

PS. Please don't massacre my Boi. It's the reason Engineers get up in the morning to solve practical problems.

No plans for more perks right now. Once the new perk system gets ironed out we have a backlog of weapon and OC balancing that needs to get done. But I could definatelly see us adding a few more perks down the line.

AfroFlower

Nah just saying I found it weird how its "not" synced between all players, I understand it being spammed could be a problem tho? I just like the immersion when all players hear the same things ya know?

But real question....Can you make it so the drop pod dwarf chatter(when loading into mission for first time) is synchronized? Cus that's the only time squad and I notice we dont say the same things.

I'll poke our sound guy about it.

hamburglersghost

Great update, and excellent communication!

Is it safe to assume the console update is already in Microsoft's hands?

Yep.

a8bmiles

We have always stated that this is a Co-op First game and every design decision has to be with the co-op aspect in mind. But the Jump Boots detracted from the class dependencies unless everybody had them on.

If your goal is to not step on other classes toes, then you should also remove the Rocky Mountain Ale. The "1 less hit per terrain" benefit dramatically reduces the need for a Driller. Driller is already regarded by a good portion of the community as the least valuable class, and having this drink active further reduces the value of having one on your team.

I see what you're trying to get at, but a random beer buff that appears in a pool of many is not going to have the same effect.

hamburglersghost

Rock and stone!

Rock and Stone!

hamburglersghost

On xbox- Anyone else lose all dwarf sounds/voice lines after the update?

You can turn the volume up in the options menu.