H1Z1: On Death You Will Now Rise as a Zombie

H1Z1: On Death You Will Now Rise as a Zombie

Hey everyone!

It’s been a while since I posted one of these. Although I do apologize for the extended dry period, I do want to clarify my update cadence going forward. As you noticed last update, our current build was on the Test Server for a good amount of time. This supports our general philosophy that publishes remain on test until they reach a quality level we are comfortable with. I know some of you are thinking, “Yea, there were still bugs in that publish”.  Fact is, H1Z1 has been receiving a lot of changes under the hood and we just adopted some of the combat improvements from KOTK which we feel are relevant to JS. This includes many bug fixes and performance adjustments.  As much as we would love to avoid a single issue, as soon as we publish an update to the masses, issues tend to show themselves more rapidly. We are happy that we could turn a lot of these around quickly and we want to thank all of you who helped us out by reporting issues.

Moving forward, you can expect an official updated from me AFTER we do a live publish. This way, you get the new stuff and you see what’s coming next. Pretty straightforward! 

So, what’s happen in development?

As usual, no guarantees for release date of the following topics. They’ll go live when they’re ready and they will hit the Test Server first!

Weapon enhancement recipes

You’ll now be able to kill rare zombies to find prototype weapon parts.  You’ll combine these prototype parts with normal weapons to discover a recipe.  The newly crafted weapon will have special abilities and stats. They will also have finite lifetime and cannot be repaired.  So, save these for a “Special” occasion.

Here’s an example of what you can expect:

 

Upon death

You player will now rise as a zombie. So you or your friends will have to….um….kill you again to get your stuff back. Should be fun!

Boss zombie experimentation

I don’t want to spill the beans too much on this one. As we continue growing Just Survive, we’re always looking for ways to introduce new play loops into the game.  Having boss encounters plays well with many of the things we want to do going forward. So, don’t be surprised if you run across a more vicious situation sometime soon.  And you thought bears were scary! Hah!

Survival Score Servers:

We’re putting together another server ruleset. This one is designed around the notion of “How well did I survive?”

It’s going to work something like this:

A few designated servers will be on an auto wipe system. Every XX weeks (1, 2 or 3 possibly) the world will end. The server will wipe itself and give a final score to each player. This score is accumulated and displayed in the UI as you are playing. You’ll get points for things like zombie kills, recipe discovery... Etc.  Think of it as a more advanced version of the death screen when it presents your end stats.  Past scores will be available for some undetermined length of time also.

We are still designing and working out the kinks with this one and you can expect to play it on the Test Server first to provide your own feedback. Expect to hear more about this in the future.

Limited Base Building

Couple fixes:

The Villas are being opened for base building

Campfires, torches and flares are no longer restricted from the rule

Sorry Krakow players….we missed you in the rule update. You are getting the rule also. 

Exploiters

We are fully aware of the current exploits going on. We do not speak publically regarding steps being taken when dealing with this sort of thing.  But I will say, if you are caught exploiting, you will be banned. Please pass it along.

Loot

For a long time now, loot has been in a state which wasn’t on par with a survival experience. We’ve read all your posts; we’ve gone invisible and observed many players.  We’ve checked high, low and medium pop servers. We spoke to many players live in chat.

I’m sorry if we’ve given you the easy life in the past but times need to change a bit. In a nutshell, the current loot drop rates are intended.  Building a base was never intended to be a simple task btw…

That’s all I have for now.

Peace out and see you all in game!