Adding more animations and variety to the horde @H1Z1JustSurvive https://t.co/SJegsDqSJA

— Sebastian (@crowempires) March 2, 2016

Hi everyone, and thanks for taking the time to give this a read.  I know that many of you have poured countless hours into H1Z1 and all of the developers thank you for that.  We are in a phase where we are regrouping and refocusing, so your dedication is really appreciated.

I wanted to start a weekly update to share some visibility into what the team is currently focused on and highlight some of the latest work.  I will write this up every week and shoot to post an update each Friday.  If I am out of the office then I might not be able to write up an update, but I will try and get the news out when it will not happen. 

It will be pretty brief, I am prioritizing speed and timeliness over a beautifully written piece.  I just want to get a more regular system in place to provide updates out to all of our players.  Each week I will provide a brief update on the current priorities and focuses for the teams, along with updates to the next planned update.

With that out of the way, let’s take a look at what the H1Z1 teams have been focused on over the last week.

 

Bug Fixes that affect both games

We are increasing our focus on quality of life issues and getting focused on fixing a lot of the lingering bugs in the game.  Here are some of the fixes that we made over this last week.

• Helmets are the same now, no differences between motorcycle helmets and military helmets, they will behave the same.
• The camera is now a lot better to use for looking up and down.  This is great for looking at items on the ground, the player head is not so obstructive for picking up objects.
• The shotgun has been tuned and fixed.  We believe you will not see any more ghost bullets.
• Prone spamming is out.  There is now an animation cost to going prone and standing up.
• Real 3d models are in the world for pickups.  No more wondering if it is a regular backpack or military backpack.  What you see is what you get.
• There is a hit indicator on the reticule, be sure when you hit and do not hit an opponent.
• AU servers should now have shorter queue times.

 

Current Focus for Just Survive

The JS team has been working on introducing new zombie types (3 brand new zombies) and enhancing the AI.  In addition they are now able to pull from our full library of wearables so zombies will have way more variety in them.  I don’t have an ETA at the moment, but we are working on putting up a couple of servers that will have restricted base building areas around the populated areas of the game to see how that plays out and address issues that we see around base building.

Bug fixing will become a larger focus for the JS team, I have read some quality of life posts on Reddit and other places to help prioritize where the fixes will go, so if you have posted any bugs that you have seen then I probable read it and incorporated it into our plans.

 

Current Focus for King of the Kill

For KotK we have a new mode prototyped and will get out to our test server in a few weeks for large scale testing.  Most of the KotK focus is on gameplay balance and fixing bugs like the ones above.  We are paying attention to what you all are telling us and will continue to have bug fixing as a priority.

 

Next Planned Release

Tentatively March 8, 2016

Source: h1z1.com

During the recent Just Survive livestream we saw a hint of the new crate in the inventory, during the King of the Kill stream we got to see a lot more of the potential items for this new crate, some of which we saw added during the last Test Server update but some are yet to be added.

We have tentitiveley added the new Wasteland Crate to our item database and will be adding any new items as soon as they are added to the game files, you can see some screenshots of the new items below. There is also hint that this new crate will be available as unlocked versions via marketplace bundles too.

If you missed the livestreams you can catch them both below!

Along with the split that happened last week, Daybreak introduced a new feature that affects all newly acquired items in H1Z1. At first I was somewhat okay and understanding of the restrictions imposed on items gained from in-game drops, bag and crate openings and other rewards. However, today comes with a short announcement from Daybreak regarding restrictions applied to all items purchased from the Steam Community Market and any items gained via trading.

You may have noticed a 7 day trade lock recently instituted on new items from both H1Z1: Just Survive and H1Z1: King of the Kill over the last few weeks. As of today all items purchased or traded through Steam on either game will have the same restrictions placed on them. These changes will affect trades that are currently in process.

Source: h1z1.com

This change will likely have a detrimental effect on the H1Z1 trading community as a whole, any items you receive via trading you will not be able to trade again or sell (if marketable) for 7 days. For those who do a lot of trading these restrictions are guaranteed to get in the way.

Most skin gambling sites will likely have to close of find inventive ways around the issue, and the likes of OPSkins will likely run into issues as a result of this change.

As it stands today, H1Z1 is currently the only game on Steam that enforces these restrictions on items gained via trading. We hope that Daybreak sees that these intrusive restrictions can not be in the best interest of themselves or the trading community and at very least removes the trade locks for items received via trading.

Servers will be coming down at 1PM Pacific for up to 2 hours. This is for KotK and JS.

Hey everyone! We wanted to provide a quick update to address concerns some of you have brought regarding queue times and server stability for both King of the Kill and Just Survive.

First, we want to thank each of you for all your patience during the split and appreciate all the feedback you’ve provided. Right now, some of you may be experiencing queues for King of the Kill that are longer than intended. We currently have folks working on this and have some fixes going in our next update to improve it.

This next update for both games will also include fixes which should improve some of the related issues we’ve seen folks talking about such as loot spawning, falling through the map, and general desync.

Thanks again for all your patience! Be sure to follow us on Twitter for updates @H1Z1JustSurvive and @H1Z1KotK.

Source: Reddit r/h1z1

My new game head. Using the hi-res textures to finally try out @marmosetco Wow! What an amazing rendering toolkit. pic.twitter.com/WoLdSx0360

— KH (@KizmoDev) February 19, 2016

Coming soon to a test server near you! Some camera adjustments for both H1Z1 Just Survive and King of the Kill. pic.twitter.com/WRob6FSTmj

— Leonard Gullo II (@Kalyper) February 19, 2016

Coming soon to a test server near you! Some camera adjustments for both H1Z1 Just Survive and King of the Kill. pic.twitter.com/WRob6FSTmj

— Leonard Gullo II (@Kalyper) February 19, 2016

NPC Changes:

• Zombies now randomly pick an animation set upon spawning, allowing for more combinations of clothing and animations.
• Zombies will now move at certain speeds based on their animation set, which should eliminate feet sliding and animation blending issues.
• NPC spawns have been tweaked. Day and night NPC spawns using varying ratios making the night more dangerous
• Day: Higher number of walkers and prey type wild life
• Night: Higher number of runners and predator type wild life

Animation 

Fixed player jumping. The player model and physics capsule are now properly aligned which allows you to successfully jump on or over objects that you couldn't before, even though it looked like you should be able to (those fences!). Polish to jump standing One Hand animation (made poses match between Start, Middle, End).

Weapons & Armor

• Lowered AK-47 damage from 32 to 29.
• Increased AK-47 re-fire delay from 125ms to 160ms.
• The amount of damage Explosive Tipped Arrows deal to vehicles has been reduced slightly to prevent them from one-shot exploding full Condition vehicles.
• Kevlar will now break after 2 gunshots instead of 3.
• Motorcycle helmets now absorb slightly more damage, preventing instantaneous death from a single shot to the body following a headshot.

These changes are intended to accomplish a few things:

• Reduce the overall power of the AK-47, because it was far too strong.
• In particular, we felt the AK-47 was too strong at medium-long range versus the AR-15 and too strong at close range versus the Shotgun. The adjustments to its damage and fire-rate are meant to address that imbalance.
• Reduce how often one dies with no recourse.
• 3 AK-47 shots reducing health to 3% with Severe Bleeding, which didn’t allow time for bandaging. The new AK-47 damage gives enough time to get behind cover and apply a bandage or first-aid.
• It should no longer be possible to die in two shots while wearing a motorcycle helmet when at full health.
• Explosive Tipped Arrows will no longer explode full Condition (or even fairly healthy) vehicles, allowing for a chance to react rather than instant death.
• Like the AK-47, we felt Tactical Body Armor was too powerful, so its effectiveness has been reduced.

Vehicles

• Vehicles will no longer take damage from M47 Gas Grenades.
• Vehicles on steep slopes should behave more realistically when their tires start to slip. Particularly on the ATV, in conditions where it used to get bogged down on hills.
• ATV handling adjustments to the center of mass make it less likely to flip unexpectedly. Certainly still possible to flip, but it should be more stable overall.
• Vehicle death explosion effect improvements. When a vehicle does blow up the smoke/fire on the burning chassis looks much better and lasts for longer.

Customizable Reticle

You can customize your reticle on the settings page. Select the color and pattern. When you select “Fixed First Person” the reticle will reset to default color and pattern and behavior (White and dot and different reticles per weapon) You can still change the color and pattern afterwards but in first person each weapon will retain its reticle pattern. Unselect “Fixed First Person” and all reticles are the custom one.

Additional Fixes

• Fixed an invulnerable base design that used the “door within a wall” object.
• Multiple changes to resolve threaded physics bugs on the zone.
• Fixed an issue that caused a higher than normal amount of wolves to spawn
• Fixed an issue that caused some areas to spawn little or no loot
• Fixed an exploit that made it possible to shoot through vehicles in third-person if the player’s weapon model clipped through the vehicle model. If a player’s weapon model is clipping through another model, projectiles will correctly strike the surface of that model even if the player’s aim reticle is above that model.

If you win an Air Drop ticket in Battle Royale it will not be granted to your inventory. This is a stray asset that will be removed in a client side hotfix.

Source: Reddit r/H1Z1

Greg Henninger (Community Manager) has posted a notice that trading will be disabled until the split happens on the 17th Feb.

In preparation for the game split, all new Steam Market trades will be suspended starting today (2/12/2016) at 3PM Pacific. Trading will come back online after the game split on 2/17.

Source: Reddit r/H1Z1

As a result of this annoucement and no H1Z1 items can be traded currently we will be closing our trading portal here on Survivors Rest until after the split. This will also give us an opportunity to implement and test our changes in preperation for supporting both games and their items after the split.

We will be closing all current trade listings and preventing any new ones from tonight until after the split.