Squad Developer Q&A March, 2022
OWI_Wedge
Posts: 40 Admin
Hello Squaddies,
Welcome to the latest Squad Forums Developer Q&A where you, the players, get to ask the people who made Squad all about the game! We hope this will continue to be a great channel of communication between us at Offworld Industries and our players.
A few rules for this Questions thread:
- Post your questions as a reply to this post, in this specific thread
- Please do your best to keep the questions short and to the point, it’s too easy to misunderstand a question if it’s contained in several paragraphs of notes.
- Any debate surrounding the questions should be done elsewhere in the forums and not in this thread.
- We will not be answering every question, but depending on the volume we may save some questions for future weeks. There also may be questions we just don’t answer.
- Make sure that you ask a question, this isn’t a time to debate a design decision with the team. If you want to ask about the reasoning behind something in Squad that’s fine, but don’t use your question to tell us why you’d have done it differently.
- Keep the questions polite and constructive. We will be deleting any questions that we feel are in bad faith or are obviously trolling. Word your questions right and they’re more likely to get addressed.
- Good: “Why did the team do X?”
- Bad: “Why did you idiots do X and ruin the game?”
- Anything that is not a question may be removed to keep this thread easily readable. If you have a comment about someone else’s question please take that outside of this thread.
Thank you for taking the time to submit your questions, and we look forward to answering them!
- Offworld Industries
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Comments
What are your plans around keeping the community involved with, and excited about, the game? Games like Post Scriptum, Hell Let Loose, and Operation: Harsh Doorstep tease features, additions, layers/maps, etc. with screenshots and, at times, videos. There's a LOT in the works with Squad, and I think the community as a whole would benefit from these previews, not just those eligible to participate in closed play tests.
Do you have any new ideas on how to extend the commander role?
Why do optic rifles have less recoil than ironsight rifles of same model?
Are you able to talk about some of the challenges you're facing/have faced when implementing seaborne/amphibious vehicles?
Can we at some point expect any new German-made light 4x4 vehicles for the Canadians beginning with the letter "G"? :P
Are there any apprehensions towards implementing controverisal or "illegal" weapon systems that are in service with current or upcoming factions (i.e. cluster munitions, AP-mines, flamethrowers etc.)?
Any hints on where "Black Coast" is "set"? Caucasus?
What's something you (the team as a whole or whoever is answering as an individual) are especially proud of? :)
Since we know that the roadmap is still further out, can we get some inside knowledge on what has been done with tech debt. We know its there, but how far along is it? Which systems recently been re-built, either from the ground up or redone. Since we wont have a roadmap for some time yet, can we get a look at how things are progressing for the related systems at hand which is causing a burden (the tech debt).
We know that v2 logi bug was an issue which was related to resource code, that has been overhauled or completely redone. I think the community would like to know which and what systems are being addressed as tech debt. Though it can branch off into other systems like right click with coax is linked to inventory and so on. Since this is hindering any content being introduced (besides content that is still being created and worked on), i think it would be nice to see what's been done. And its been over a year since any major updates (besides anvil) Would love some clarity on things the team is working on.
This could be stuff from the legacy roadmap, which had some interesting systems. Like the javelin, USMC, or even the amphibious vehicles with the new water shader. Would love to see some content that is in that roadmap, we're still waiting on the next squad chat. Which for this stuff, you dont need to do a time event of squad chat, we had progress reports before V12 kicked off that didnt involve the livestream, in my opinion that just takes time to set up, i rather see "whats being worked on" than a live stream that takes a bit of time to set up, and schedule.
What do you see as the player "lifecycle" in this game? How do you see new players growing into veteran players? What does that look like? How long do you expect that to take? How do you retain veteran players? How do you attract new players?
Almost 4 months ago in your "Learnings from our first Q&A" you seemed to finally accept some responsibility for onboarding new players ("taking responsibility for that burden") and no longer leaving it up solely to veteran players. What tangible things have you been working on to resolve this? Why did it take OWI so long to realize this burden has been left to veteran players? Why do you think this is just a "recent" trend ("it’s clear that the burden is beginning to grate on many of you") and not one that has existed for the past 7 or so years and peaking during sales times?
Your previous (and first) Q&A was originally limited to this joinsquad forum. After some feedback (and no questions), you opened it up to Reddit. Why are you now going back to locking this Q&A behind your forums which require an email account to login with? I prefer the anonymity of using Reddit and not sharing my email address with your company. Is this a larger effort to bring the discussion of Squad into your own forums so it can be managed by you and not a 3rd party Reddit mod or a different community? Will we start to see more of this kind of control over Squad discussions? Will we see less interaction and responses from OWI on other less official forums?
Could the team please focus on squashing bugs and making QoL fixes along with something to educate the playerbase on how the play this game? Please focus on bringing up the quality of the current games rather than introducing new features and mechanics few understand while everyone else focuses on the new shiny toys.
How does it make you feel that after half a year of changing how the HAB Overrun mechanic works that few in the community know this rule and understand how it works? That veteran players who have thousands of hours in the game over years and read every patch note, still don't understand how HAB Overrun works because they missed your amendment to the patch made last year? Or do you not see that as an "onboarding" problem?
Similar to the above question, but with the Capture Speed Mechanic you recently changed. In the dozens of threads I've seen on Reddit related to this change, I'm saddened to never have seen an OWI person (we've been pinging you, please answer) in there to clarify these questions about the game mechanic. Can you clarify these questions now? Can you see how confusing your patch notes on this change was? "This allows a 120s AAS flag to be captured in as little as 80s. Initial Neutral flags have an additional 1.3x speed multiplier." - many an argument has been made about this language and the way you phrased it. Please settle it so every single one of us don't have to test this in a live game... how fast can you capture an initially neutral flag? Is it 60s (120s normal capture time *1.5multiplier for having 8 teammates *1.3multiplier for being an initially neutral point) or some other number as many people believe those 2 conditions (having 8 on flag while also being initially neutral) are mutually exclusive where I read it as being inclusive of each other?
Speaking about Capture Speed... what is your impression on how the community accepted this mechanic change? Did we like it? Did it have the intended effect on gameplay you expected? What were your initial expectations? Will we continue to see core gameplay mechanics like this continue to change and morph all these years after the game has been fully developed and released?
Finally, on 11/25/2021, with 6 days remaining in November, you posted "We will start collecting questions for our next Q&A in the second half of November, with the intention of answering them in December." It is currently the middle of March and you've begun to collect questions for the 2nd Q&A. Is this the pace we'll continue to see out of OWI? Should we expect these answers in December? What happened to all the questions you didn't answer in the first round?
What is the expected span of the player locomotion overhaul? Would things like crawling while reloading/bandaging be removed to slow things down? What about a/d spam to avoid fire, especially at range?
Additionally, are there any updates to the physical supply/logistics video? Virus posted a video awhile back showcasing a working prototype, very interested in that particular branch of development.
1) Do you have any plans to give the game better Proton/Linux-support? Like implementing AntiCheat for Linux (so we can avoid the workaround) and the known issue of players losing FPS when server is changing maps.
Look at Valve Github for more info.
2) Do you have any plans to properly implement built-in support for AMD FSR and Nvidia DLSS, to give players better performance?
Any plans to overhaul the militia faction? If so, what do you plan on changing about them to make them a more unique faction?
Gorlami14 makes excellent points in his video, titled "Squad's Player-Base is Splitting. Here's Why (and what can be done)", he talks about more in-depth tutorials, a field manual, and guides that will go more in-depth about Infantry and Squad Leading with basic game-winning tactics.
Has anyone on the team seen similar videos? How seriously are these knowledgeable content creators taken, are any of these suggestions on the docket?
Was the sound on the G3 changed intentionally in 2.12? Not the sound itself, but the location of it? Ever since that patch the sound seems to be detached from the players firing by 5-10m, making it a nightmare to locate bushwookies. Is this a bug or a feature?
The cover image of this post is from the Bundeswehr Mod.
Does that mean you bought the mod, or parts of it?
Will we see elements of this mod in Squad Vanilla?
Will bullet penetration be improved further in the future? There are has been an abundance of moments where mag dumping into a wooden shed does not put a target down and other moments when it does. The inconsistency with bullet penetration with weapons that use calibers such as 5.56 and 7.62 is an annoyance at this point in the game's life. Objects like wood, drywall, and sheet metal are all objects that should be no brainers to shoot through but at the moment, an enemy and I will exchange entire magazines and not kill each other then it is a mad sprint to the doorway to get an uninterrupted shot on one another. This is not a one-off anecdotal experience, this is multiple sessions, multiple maps, and multiple times.
Will we be seeing DLSS being added, especially now Post Scriptum is getting the feature, according to Nvidia and Unreal engine it's quite simple to implement?
Will AMD FSR and NVidia DLSS be implemented for Squad, or is this not a priority for now?
Hello, Love squad.. Nothing in the hardcore team play genre like it, Will OWI support mods like Steele division and MEE as they are very very good and adds a lot more to vanilla. At the moment not a lot of servers for these great mods, mostly because of the download required. How can you fix it and force more mod play on servers. In OCE we dont get much access to these mods.
Also when can we get official stat tracking for players (like pubg etc)?
Since nobody wants a Q&A about a Q&A I'm going to tackle this question:
"Your previous (and first) Q&A was originally limited to this joinsquad forum. After some feedback (and no questions), you opened it up to Reddit. Why are you now going back to locking this Q&A behind your forums which require an email account to login with? I prefer the anonymity of using Reddit and not sharing my email address with your company. Is this a larger effort to bring the discussion of Squad into your own forums so it can be managed by you and not a 3rd party Reddit mod or a different community? Will we start to see more of this kind of control over Squad discussions? Will we see less interaction and responses from OWI on other less official forums?"
We ran our previous Q&A here on the forums, and will continue to do so. The forums are a valuable platform for us, and we are working to grow their usefulness to the community. It is likely that we will launch other programs on the forums in the future as well.
We are happy to engage on Reddit where our posting can be a value to discussion around Squad and the community. We have been quite interactive on Reddit and our rate of posting there has increased significantly recently. That may ebb and flow as we continue to support our own channels - but we have no plans to stop engaging there.
We understand that people like lots of different engagement methods and with a large player base we are working to engage them elsewhere as well including Discord, Twitter, Facebook, and more. We will continue to review engagement opportunities and platforms as they come up.
As pointed out there's also people who don't like forums for valid reasons. Hopefully those people who don't choose to sign up will see a variation of their question asked by someone else. If last Q&A is any indication we expect the most pressing issues expressed on other platforms to make their way here.
In the past, there was a discussion to significantly change how optics were used in the games as today it increases the players entire vision along with the optic taking up the whole screen. The change was to only the optic portion magnified similar to how this is done in games like Escape from Tarkov.
I think this a great idea and I remember seeing footage of this with MoiDawg almost years ago but nothing since. I think it would be a great asset to the game as there little reason to use iron sights over an optic in the overwhelming majority of situations.
Was this featured dropped? If so, why?
I would like some insight as to what the goal is with blur. The current implementation is nauseating for many players, myself included, and I have been playing the game a lot less as a result. Is the blurring even when out of sight intentional or an error? This has been talked about at length without even an acknowledgement on your part.
What is your opinion of the current state of the game?
Any updates on QoL changes we can expect to see soon?
Any updates on some of the major bugs at the moment like the recently worsened audio glitches?
What do you wish to see more out of your community?
Performance once again.
I've been playing since the inception of vehicles. I'm using a custom build PC, I5-8600K 3.6GHz, overclocked at 1.1volts for 4.1GHz. I am using 32GB of RAM at at least 2300MHz. (not certain) and an RTX 2060 6GB VRAM. Squad is also installed on an SSD.
Yet, my FPS typically drops to 1 for about 1-3 seconds and results in teleportation, death or stuck vehicles. Flying like this is absolutely not an option.
I have done everything under the sun to provide a fix for this, reinstall, restart, clear cache, right now I'm playing on medium settings. This alone feels like a travesty.
We need real solutions.
Will there be sounds update like reverb in the near future or this year?
V3. Is coming soon ? 3weeks ?
News about 2022 roadmap?
What's next you guys will overhaul?
This is what I want to see the most.
New content is great and all but over the years tons of problems have piled up. Folks are constantly complaining about these issues but we don't really hear much from the developers so we're stuck coming up with our own conclusions. More often than not those conclusions aren't the most charitable. You'd be doing yourselves a whole lot of good if you were to explain in depth as to why certain issues are still around or why some part of the game is holding development back.
On a similar note are there any plans to bring back monthly devblogs? We need some regular window into the goings on in development. As it is now, we really only learn about something a couple weeks before its released when it hits the testing servers.
Will Insurgency mode be worked on?
I donated to the Kickstarter back in 2015, I bought a Squad Leader package. In the contents of it, it stated that a founder tag would be available in the forums. Is this still a thing?
Hello! I quickly had to create an account just to ask - Would it be possible to devote some developer time to investigate whether EasyAntiCheat can be tweaked or attuned to let Linux-through-Proton players join the game?
I played Squad on Windows before, but Linux became more appealing few months ago and I've made the switch. Now I wonder about returning to Squad. So far I could easily launch, play solo/tutorial sessions, but not connect to online servers (on launch EAC throws an error about 'IGameClient' that I couldn't fix with my limited knowledge).
Thanks for your time!
Any plans for a map based in the USA?
Any plans for a DLC or some way in which current players could contribute to the further development of the game?
As far as I am aware you guys are still using UE4.23, is there any plans to update to maybe 4.27 or 5.0 to improve the production pipeline and take use of all the new features. I know that an engine upgrade would bring bugs an issues but it might be worth it.
Are there currently any plans of adding support for modifier keys and support for contacting SL 10+?
There are a lot of people playing with TKL Keyboards, who don't have any keys left without using any third-party tool to contact SLs directly. And in many occasions there are more than 9 SLs and contacting SL 10+ leads to flooding the command channel with unecessary chatter for all other SLs.
First I wanna say that I'm playing since 2015, 1800 hours on record and I love this game, I bought a new computer 2 years ago just because of squad.
I understand that you guys had a hard time with the engine, and 2021 were the year of fixing, but I gotta to repeat the question, do you guys plan to go back on adding more content soon?
And another question, adding factions maps, weapons and vics are cool, but they don't change the meta of the game much, do you guys plan anything that will "change the meta"? I heard some time ago that there was plans to add army layers, players would be abble to chose tank div, armored div, infantary div, etc, at the start of the match, that really got me excited, this would change the meta and bring a lot of replayability to the game, but I never heard about it again, is this out of the plan now?
And about commanders, commanders kinda fell like the dude that launch the arty, and not much else, you pretty much see commanders running around like regular inf. I would love to see commanders more active as commanders playing a "RTS in squad". What is the plan for commanders in the future? And what about the irregular army commanders, any plans?