HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!
Apologies for having missed the last devblog, but there wasn't too much to write about anyways as we had just wrapped up development on update 0.8 and the studio was closed over the holidays. After a week off, the dev team is back in studio and going full steam ahead on One World / World Conquest. We hope it won't be too far into the New Year before you get to experience the very first bits of this new way to play Foxhole.
Before we get started, I really wanted to thank each and every one of you on behalf of the dev team for voting in IndieDB's Indie Game of the Year Awards. Foxhole placed #1 in the awards, a huge honor that really goes to everyone that is part of the Foxhole community, from the moderators and devs to the creative contributors and active players.
In 2017, we focused on a lot of iterative work during the second half of the year. I guarantee you that the first half of 2018 will be very different. There will be some big shake ups. Not everyone will agree with how Foxhole will evolve, but do trust that the intention behind every design change is to make Foxhole as close to it's original vision as possible. We are excited for what's to come this year. Let's get started!
Disclaimer: Any feature or piece of content shown here is a work in progress and subject to change in the future.
Observation Tower
During our Holiday Devstream, we revealed that the World Conquest mainland will contain unique strategic world structures that could be claimed by either faction. With our renewed focus on information as a big factor in wars, the first of such structures will be the Observation Tower.
In certain parts of the mainland, there will be destroyed Observation Towers (left over from past wars) that can be reclaimed. They will provide Map Intel for over great distances, making them valuable objectives to fight over in World Conquest.
Concepts for the Observation Tower
Finished in-game model for the Observation Tower
Technology Center
The Technology Center is another One World exclusive structure to look forward to. This will be the place where the new Technology Tree will be managed. Players will submit Technology Parts here to unlock structures, vehicles, and items in one place (rather than at separate structures like it is now).
The Technology Center will be available both on the Home Region and at certain locations on the World Conquest mainland.
Technology Center Concepts
Technology Center In-Game Model
Holiday Stream & Follow Up
If you missed our Holiday Devstream, you can watch it here now:
Holiday Devstream
Follow Up Q&A
We asked everyone to post questions that they wanted answered on the stream. Since we didn't get around to answering every question, I said that I would follow up afterwards. Well here it is!
Questions were taken from here and here. Some questions have been reformatted for readability. Duplicate questions or those already covered in the FAQ were excluded. Due to the volume of questions, I had to be pretty brief in some cases and I didn't answer multiple questions from the same person.
Are there any plans on fixing the APC anytime soon? Imo it is currently the most broken vehicle in the game. Of course talking about shooting from the vehicle and that it is very hard to kill anyone in the back of the APC.
It's a top priority for us to rebalance the APC.
When will the release come?
Foxhole will exit Early Access "when it's ready", which will likely be later this year or next year. No promises though.
Will there be any plans to move away from Discord as the primary source of long-distance voice comms and integrate something directly into the game?
There's a good chance of this happening. We want to make it easier for all kinds of users to talk and work together with one another.
Howdy, What are your future plans for Logistics and how Factories will evolve around the soon to come "blueprint" idea you guys talked about during the One World Stream, I rather enjoy where it is now, sitting in scrap field is rather soothing and easy and some people really get a kick out of it, so I'd like to know if you're going to keep it that way or have any ideas on how to make it "simpler" or more interactive, and do you plan on changing how crates or stockpiles anytime soon (I hope not, I enjoy my euro truck simulator when I'm doing logi) ?
"Scrapping" will be sticking around for awhile longer, but is definitely subject to change. To be clear though, we never want to reduce the feeling of player driven production in Foxhole though. We may explored other ways to achieve this though. Crate and Stockpile system will stay the same as it is now for the foreseeable future.
Do you have any plans on introducing railway systems and trains after One World update? It would greatly increase logistics effectiveness overall in such a huge map.
Trains probably won't be coming anytime soon, but we do hope they will play a key role in One World at some point.
What are your thoughts on adding a map creator for Foxhole so players could make maps that could possibly be submitted to a contest the you devs could have where people submit a playermade map that follows guidelines and a theme on how to make the map. And after the devs vote on which one they like the most, the map could be featured on one of the servers for a week or two. I got this idea from the Day of Infamy devs, which I explain a bit more here.
The idea is very exciting, but isn't part of our roadmap at this point. If something like this does happen, I'd imagine it would be in the far future.
Lastly with One World on the rise, can we expect different 3x3 grids to fight on later on? For example maybe another set of 3x3 below the current one (below the Bulwark) or above the current one.
We'd love to expand the world further in the future, but before we do that we'll probably go back and revamp all the existing regions first. There's still a lot we want to perfect in our current map making process.
What are the plans to make resource gathering less of a boring slog?
Some players enjoy resource gathering as it is now, but we are always looking for ways to make logistics more exciting.
I apologies if this was already covered in a previous stream but I am curious. How will trans-zone transportation work in the One World? Would it work like, say, if you drove a truck from Endless Shore to Deadlands and you drove out of Endless Shore on a road at the SW corner of the map, will you end up spawning on the road at the SE corner of Deadlands and still in your truck? Again, you probably already covered these but I'll leave this question here just in case.
Yes, you will end up spawning at the corresponding road in Deadleads as you described it.
Easier way to get trucks? not easier as in resources, just when you spawn in with QM role in mind and limited trucks / low amount of players on at time / nobody wants to donate truck / give you a ride, on some maps in particular going from scratch to a truck is very time consuming, requisition a truck from off map / from town hall? don't know how just a suggestion.
There was an idea kicking around from the community for a "vehicle garage" system that worked sort of like a Stockpile for vehicles. It was very interesting to us and is something we'd like to explore in the future.
Many players have voiced concerns over the supply drops could we get a few words about what the ideas have been for implementing supply drops thus far?
The feature is still heavily work in progress so we don't have too much to say about it now. I wouldn't focus too much at this stage as it won't play a huge role in One World in the initial versions. Once World Conquest is working well we will be looking to integrate it in a useful way.
With world conquest around the corner would you be opposed to a vehicle stockpile? Like some form of garage where we could store them until its time to roll out?
We're very interested in exploring this idea, but not in the immediate future.
Will the current maps be updated or with world conquest around the corner will they more or less remain the same?
The current maps were partially designed to be balanced as a single region. We will be heavily reworking them to be much more focused on fitting into the one unified world.
Expect a lot of shakeup in the near future. The maps as they are now will only stay this way for a limited time.
What did you want when you redid the half-tracks? like did you want to have people use them as a moving hmg or as a troop carrier?
We don't like to define one specific use for vehicles since Foxhole is a sandbox game. We have a few ideas on how they should be used and then we want players to figure things out for themselves.
I see this system as the FIX to the QM metasytem. If players could have better intel, QM may no longer be needed. Everyone can vote with their efforts! Trucks NEED a way to watch their orders and allow squads to claim them. Maybe even password protected? Level 1 weapon factories shouldn't sit dormant!
In the future, we hope to provide more useful information to help logistics players do their jobs better. We hope to get them more visibility on what kind of items and support is needed and where it should be provided.
Anymore plans for more support for community driven events like community boot camp , or dev wars?
We want to continue supporting community events as much as possible in the future.
With team balance being met usually on the merit of both teams being full, how will the one world balance teams at the start?
We aren't ready to talk about it yet, but there is a plan for making wars balanced regardless of player count on each side.
Currently the map displays the location of the players. What plans are there to display the location of the in-game created squads?
We have two big priorities in the coming months. The first is to get One World up and running and the second is to improve our Squad tools. Showing where your squad is might be part of these improvements.
Is this REALLY accurate (the tech yield numbers)? Or was this featured because it was an interesting creation anyway.
It's quite accurate.
Will you guys every consider having the TH not be a set building? instead allowing players to turn ANY building in a town into a TH? While it makes sense making the factories be set buildings, the TH is nothing but a store house, and should be able to be built on ANY building in town.
No current plans to allow this, but the idea has a lot of merit and makes more realistic sense. I wouldn't rule this out entirely.
Destroy-able town buildings. This might be asking for a lot, but I think it would be SO much cooler if all the buildings in each of the towns started out as whole buildings untouched by war and destruction. These buildings would work pretty much like any other building in the game, except they'd have 3-4 different damage states and wouldn't be repairable.
There's a lot of us on the team who would love to see this happen, but it would be a big undertaking. We'll see...
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