Scavengers: les notes de mise à jour de l’early access

En early access sur PC ce mercredi 28 avril, Scavengers aura connu de nombreux playtests avant d’accéder à cette nouvelle phase de son développement. Mais quels changements depuis la dernière bêta?
On passe en revue le patch notes. Vous pouvez le découvrir dans son intégralité et en anglais en fin d’article.

Une histoire de performances

On le sait, les performances matérielles du jeu étaient un mauvais point. Avec le passage du jeu sous la dernière version 4.26 de l’Unreal Engine, Midwinter nous promet une amélioration notable des performances et ce, dès la configuration minimale.
Bien que cela sera notable lors de l’early access, c’est quelque chose de récurrent tout au long de la vie d’un jeu et Scavengers n’y échappe pas.

Do you speak French?

En anglais de chez l’Oncle Sam jusqu’ici, le titre est désormais disponible dans la langue de Molière.
De quoi permettra aux joueurs francophones d’effectuer au mieux leur mission et surtout, de suivre le tutoriel d’introduction au jeu. Bon, il n’était pas dans un anglais des plus soutenus mais tout de même.
En plus du Français, le titre sera aussi disponible en italien, coréen, espagnol (Amérique Latine), chinois simplifié et en japonais.

Les explorateurs se personnalisent

Parmi les nouveautés notables, on retient que les Exploreurs ont désormais davantage de possibilité de customisation. Nouvelles animations de finish moves (achever avec style un adversaire agonisant) et la possibilité de faire des emotes en appuyant sur la touche B de votre clavier ou en appuyant vers le bas sur la croix directionnelle d’une manette.
Les options de personnalisation des différents personnages sont à retrouver dans la section Apparences quand vous cliquer sur un explorateur.

En vrac

L’audio du jeu a été amélioré suite à la dernière bêta. Par exemple, les armes principales et secondaires ont de meilleurs bruitages et les événements en jeu ont tous de nouveaux effets sonores.

L’U.I. est navigable entièrement avec une manette pour les fans du genre et un mode Streamer est disponible. Ce mode Streamer cache principalement le numéro d’identification du joueur prévenant des sollicitations non demandées.

Notons enfin, l’amélioration de l’art et des icones de l’interface.

Midwinter publie aussi un guide de démarrage pour les nouveaux joueurs consultable sur cette page.

Scavengers: Patch notes de l’Early Access

EXPLORERS

We’ve introduced even more ways to customize the Explorers:

• Custom executions to finish off downed opponents
• Explorers can now emote! You can use your emote by pressing ‘B’ on the keyboard or ‘dpad down’ on a controller
• Backpacks can be swapped
• Keeper skins can be customized

When you click on an Explorer, all customization options can be found in the Appearance section. Select the appearance you like and you’re ready to go!

Tarik

• The Stun Trap ability is now less obvious to enemy Explorers, creating more opportunity for tactical surprises
• New Weapon Variant: Longstriker Taskmaster
  • Increased magazine size
  • Better hipfire (firing while not aiming down the sight or optics) accuracy
  • Reduced recoil
  • 2-shot burst fire with lower damage
  • Shield-shredding energy damage
  • Longer reload time

Cruz

• New Weapon Variant: Cazador Shiver
  • Deals Cold damage
  • Slows down the movement speed of the enemy target

Kali

• Kali’s ability Active Camo ability is improved, making her a lot less visible to enemy Explorers. Perfect for those looking to sneak and surprise attack.
• New Weapon Variant: Heartseeker Shockwave
  • Low projectile velocity
  • Arrows stick to targets and explode after a short delay
  • Longer bow draw and reload time

Letty

• New Weapon Variant: Rosie Sledgehammer
  • Slower projectile speed
  • Increased damage and explodes on impact
  • Smaller magazine size
• New Weapon Variant: Rosie Vendetta
  • On hit, Rosie Vendetta has a chance to restart nearby teammates’ shield regeneration. There is a higher chance with headshots

Jae

• Jae’s Overshield ability has been updated:
  • Overshield no longer replenishes based on melee damage dealt
  • While his ability is active, Jae needs to down or kill his target to get a boost added to his Overshield

RESEARCH

• Research is now tier-based:
  • You’ll need to level up your research stations on Sanctuary to access the variety of projects that Mother has to offer you
  • Tiering up research requires the completion of a specific number of research projects per tier, as well as upgrading the research stations
• Talents are now a part of research! Play matches to earn resources and materials so that you can customize your Explorers’ play styles
• You can now spend chips to quickly finish your research projects
• Throwables now have their own research category
• Some research projects are now restricted by talents and research tier

AUDIO

• We’ve improved the weapon audio across all Explorer weapons, Outlander weapons, and secondary weapons
• We’ve updated the VO and added new voice lines for Mother, the Explorers, and Outlander enemies
• There’s new audio when a player is downed or killed, letting you know immediately when you or a teammate have downed or killed another player
• We’ve also added sound effects for when a player you recently damaged gets downed, to help keep you informed during a multi-team battle
• We’ve done an audio pass to improve the player experience for key events, rewards, and more

UI

• Controller players rejoice: we’ve added d-pad navigation to all screens! This means there is no longer a virtual cursor for navigation, which should speed up and ease the controller player experience
• You can now select your game mode from the lobby. This will allow you to swap between the tutorial and a Scavengers session
• We’ve added a “Streamer Mode” option in the Settings menu. When enabled, this will hide the player’s unique ID number in the main menu so no one can see it while they are streaming the game or capturing footage. This prevents strangers from being able to invite the player without their explicit permission
• We’ve made improvements to the loadout and Explorer customization screens
• We made a UI art pass on the front end screens to improve their overall look and feel
• The iconography throughout the game has been improved as well

CORE GAMEPLAY

Lobby Changes

• There are now Challenges in Scavengers that you can complete in matches to earn Salvage rewards. These can then be used in Research
• Leaderboards have been added to the lobby, so you can aim for a top spot in a few categories!
  • These leaderboards cover total damage dealt, PvP kills, successful extractions, and more
  • The leaderboards run on a 72-hour rolling window, so leading players will need to work to maintain their spot at the top

Datapoints

• Enemies now drop datapoints when killed. The higher the enemy rank, the more data they drop!
• Datapoint bank sites now upload faster

Spectators

• We’ve made improvements to the spectator experience:
  • Added status effect updates for the player you’re spectating
  • Improved spectate cycling between each player
• Information for the Dropship and resurrection are more clearly displayed while spectating
• Spectating players now see changes to the spectated player’s camera position, including sighted weapons

Storms

• The border storm now scales according to the match size. This means that depending on how many players joined the match, the size of the circle storm will start accordingly and enclose so that there’s a greater chance of running into other Explorers in any match size.
• Roaming storms are now colder and the border storm will freeze you to death faster. Remember to keep the nearest fire in sight!

Radar System

• The radar system now hides players under certain circumstances:
  • If you’re using a silent weapon like melee or a bow, you won’t show up on players’ radars even when within ping range. You also won’t show up if you’re crouching, sliding, in shelter, in a storm, or standing still
  • Players in vehicles can no longer see pings for other Explorers nearby, unless they are shooting. They’ll have to exit the vehicle for their radar system to kick in after about 10 seconds of being out of the vehicle

New Boss Encounters

• We’ve added new dynamic boss encounters throughout the match. These bosses appear as the hostile weather escalates and are worth a lot of datapoints. However, beware of other players looking to reap these rewards as well
• Supply drops now open faster but cost scrap to open. They are now guaranteed to give three high-end weapons to properly kit the team that gets it
• We’ve added an uncommon shield level, so players can now level up their shields 3 times within a session
• All default Explorer weapons start at uncommon level. Higher level variants can be unlocked via the Research system

Camps

• We’ve removed scrap camps and scrap is now found throughout the world. This includes crates, boxes, and furniture you can scavenge in old ruins, as well as enemies that you kill, and resource camp chests. All small resource camps are the richest sources of scrap
• We’ve added new resource camps on the map. Utility camps now offer consumable boosts and a variety of grenades

End of Match Updates

• The Dropship doors must be opened in order to enter
  • Use your Keeper to open the larger doors.
  • Smaller entryways can be opened by your Explorer
• We’ve made some major updates to post-match score recap:
  • The end of match leaderboard now shows the status of your team prior to the match end, followed by the final score. This includes your team being wiped, losing a player, or seeing a change in datapoints in the Dropship showdown
  • We’ve added a summary of key match stats and XP earned towards Explorer level

GENERAL GAMEPLAY UPDATES

• We’ve added a new slide jump animation to make your slides feel even more awesome!
• We did a balance pass across all weapons in the game, based on your feedback and game data from the Closed Beta
• We’ve improved the animations for the Outlanders and Scourge enemies
• The AI are now aware of vehicles driving at them. Watch out for larger enemies who have special tactics to prevent vehicles from mowing them over
• Shooting a vehicle now does damage to the shields of any Explorers sitting inside
• Vehicles will also no longer one-shot splatter Explorers

SOCIAL FEATURES

• You can now add (and remove) friends to your friends list! Enter your friend’s username (including the unique user ID number and hashtag) to find them and add them to your friends list
  • You can find your full in-game name in the bottom right corner of the main menu
• Parties are persistent after matches, so you can keep jumping back into the lobby with the same party match to match
• Team voice chat carries through to the post-match screen now, so you can celebrate your victories with your team
• Players can be reported for poor behavior via the system menu

GENERAL UPDATES

• In the time since Closed Beta, we’ve upgraded to Unreal Engine 4.26, which has brought a suite of performance and editor improvements to the project
• We’ve been continuously pushing on performance since Closed Beta. Players should see improvements to performance across all specs (up to our minimum specs). This is an area of continuous focus and while we have made substantial gains, we still have more work to do
• We’ve improved our implementation of Easy Anti-Cheat to prevent cheats from being used in Scavengers
• We’ve improved the first-time player experience so that jumping into Scavengers isn’t overwhelming to our new Explorers. We know there’s a lot to learn, so we’ve improved the ramp of players’ introduction to the depth that Scavengers has to offer
• We’ve added more languages to Scavengers: French, Italian, Korean, Latin American Spanish, Traditional Chinese, and Japanese
• The tutorial has been updated based on your feedback from the closed beta
• We’ve fixed tons of bugs that you reported in the last playtest! As always, thank you for reporting them