This PTR update introduces new Curveball events, water physics affecting the speed of vehicles, night-time improvements and a collection of quality-of-life features. We want to hear your thoughts and highly value your feedback on the following.
New Curveball Events
Bangernomics - Keeping your rides running smoothly even before the apocalypse was a pain. Nowadays keeping these heaps of junk on the road is even more problematic. This Curveball affects the handling and performance of your vehicles.
Smoke Storm - The wind has carried over a dense, thick plume of smoke from a mysterious explosion at a chemical plant a few miles out of town. This Curveball creates a suffocating smog that lowers your visibility.
Vehicles Slow Down in Water
The speed of vehicles will now be affected when entering and traversing through water. In this PTR update we want to gauge how much this brings to the gameplay experience and simulation.
Quality of Life Improvements
Stronger Flashlights - In this update we have made the flashlights stronger, making them a far more useful tool for both exploring the world at night, and dark indoor locations during the day.
Better Night Time Lighting - We have also slightly adjusted the overall night time lighting to make it a bit brighter and more readable.
Home Base Mini-map Marker - A new marker on the mini-map will always point in the direction of your home base, so you don’t need to keep placing down a waypoint each time you want to head home. This new home base marker can be toggled on and off in the HUD settings menu.
Threaten Enclave Check - We have added an ‘Are you sure?’ confirmation on the act of threatening another Enclave, giving you a chance to back out.. if you’re having second thoughts.
Enlist Followers from the Community Screen - You no longer need to run around searching for a specific follower. When in range of your home base you can now directly enlist a follower to join you from the Community screen.
Disengage from Locked Doors - It’s now really easy to walk away from a locked door without using force to open it.
Cancel out of a Failed Grapple Animation - Previously, when trying to grapple or assassinate a Zombie from the front you could be locked into a failed animation which prevented you from performing other actions for an extended period of time. This could prove frustrating and was often no fault of the Player. It is now possible to dodge out to cancel this animation.
Freak Spotted Voice-Over - The "Freak spotted" voice-over can be misleading, as it sometimes plays when a Survivor detects a Freak that's not actually visible. To improve accuracy, the spotting call will now only trigger when the identified Freak is within the Survivor's line of sight.
Cinematic Kill Cam Toggle - During decapitations of undead enemies, the game can transition to a "Zombie Finisher" camera animation. While undeniably cool, this effect isn't universally preferred and can sometimes disrupt gameplay at inopportune moments. It can now be toggled on or off within the GAMEPLAY settings menu.
Zombified Community Members Marked - Upon becoming a zombie, deceased community members are now marked with a coffin icon, making identification and retrieval of their belongings easier.
Removed Unfair Zombie Lunges - Removed the unintended, unfair situation in which zombies could suddenly magnetize towards you with a grapple / tackle attack, despite dodging past or away from them
Comments
17 comments
Alfredongonzalez4
AJ Gonzalez
SoD2 team: You guys never cease to amaze me! Great QoL improvements!!! Many of these I've longed for... negating magnetized zombie lunges; xncl failed grapple (often the zeds zig-zag so quickly that there isn't time to realize you're /not/ doing a rear execution); dead members are marked with a coffin; and a confirmation that you wish to threaten an enclave will be amongst my favorites, I'm sure! Thank you so much, team!
Me parece perfecto sobre todo la iluminación de la linterna sigan así!
Hi, guys. I have +700h in the second sod. And I had recently lost two members of my team full of c4 when they tried to fight against Black Heart. So I still on the map but can't find them. Often I find zed-members ) at missions or barns but now it's really difficult to find them.
So watching zed-members on a map is not cool or immersive.
I think the - Zombified Community Members Marked should work like that - we use radio requests to find them and get a radiant area on a map where we can search. I think it would be more fun and immersive. Thank you!
btw Zombie Lunges and Failed Grapple Animation will be really useful )
Hello you awesome bunch. Is their any confirmation if and when this will going live & whether Xbox One X owners are included (as this is my version of the console), or will this strictly be for Xbox Series S & X owners? Thank you in advance for your anticipated response.
PTR is exclusive to Steam!
Cant wait but im super disappointed you guys cant figure out the zombie spawn issue, makes it super difficult for me at least to play continously. Hope you guys figure it out
My comment was more aimed towards if and when this update may be making the Alpha build…
Mark Hanson you're clearly using terms your not familiar with. You're asking when this PTR update is going live for non-beta testers, I assume. That has nothing to do with "Alpha" anything, unless you're referring to the Xbox Insiders Beta testing that has an "Alpha" tier — and State of Decay has nothing to do with that program. You just want to know when it's going live to the public.
Sheesh, how do I even get subscribed to these posts to begin with?!
Good evening, it would be nice to add new animations, especially facial animations, because the dolls often look emotionless and static
I've been waiting 😂safe to say alot of people are excited! Come on gents it's almost the end of june when is it getting dropped . Also...would a new map be possible in the future just as a treat before sod 3?
I have never once commented, but I can not express to you enough how grateful I am for these quality of life changes. I was literally just dealing with about half if not all of those about 15 minutes ago and I just scrolled on here to see if anything new was coming and to my surprise all my pain will be going away. I can't wait to see how the removed unfair zombie lunge plays out in-game because if it works exactly how we are all hoping I'll be so happy to touch daybreak again. Also if you guys haven't already I hope you can adjust the speed of vehicles in water based on the type of vehicle. Like I'm pretty sure my truck moves faster in a small amount of water then my car would. But other than that, THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH!!
I'm beyond excited for these changes to come to Xbox! Not sure how I feel about the water slowing down vehicles, though. But, it'll be great to finally be able to see at night! I also can't say I've noticed any issues with zombies "magnetizing" onto my characters with their lunges. However, I have noticed that bloaters have an oversized hitbox against vehicles, and that their gas unfairly, immediately clings onto and fully envelops vehicles before the bloater even visually explodes. Now, THAT would be a great fix worth waiting for! :D
Hey Ayrdanger, fellow State of Decay fan here. I want to preface that I'm not employed with Undead Labs, Wushu Studios or Xbox Game Studios (Microsoft) - nor do I represent any of them, lol [end disclaimer]... But I do want to offer some advice that may help with that annoying bloater situation. Update 36 is live/in effect/NOT in PTR and one of the QoL updates is:
"Minor Bloater improvements: The VFX and damage of the gas burst are better matched, so it no longer looks and feels like you were damaged unfairly.
To compensate the Bloaters will now also try to get slightly closer to your survivor before exploding."
So check out your game -whether you're on console or PC - & ensure Update 36 is installed!
I could take you through an extensive list of troubleshooting beyond that but I'd rather do the right thing for you and send you to the Support Ticket Request page if you need more help (and this Update Article here isn't the appropriate troubleshooting platform anyhow):
https://support.stateofdecay.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
Happy State of Decay(ing)!!!
Hi, Raine!
I did notice that in the patch notes when U36 launched, and I have noticed a difference in how Bloaters perform against my survivors on-foot. Unfortunately, they still seem to be able to explode from about 6' away when driving past them at full-speed, and their gas will instantly envelop the car the millisecond their explosion sound triggers (usually once the very first particles of their gas become visible). Honestly, this seems like an engine issue more than a design issue, so I'm not holding my breath for a "true" fix until maybe SOD3.
Yes, I'm certain my game is up-to-date, but thanks for the idea! Now, back to grinding out this last achievement. I have all of them except True Grit. Currently at 47 days, and I REFUSE to let my intrusive thoughts about starting another fresh community win! 😤
Matthew Sanges - I am very aware of the terms that I am using and do not wish to cause any negativity on here as this is a friendly forum.
I simply was asking that the update was being tested in the Beta Testing version of the build… I was asking if there was a notable date that anyone may be able to provide or an date that was being aimed for.
I am not a massive fan of debating something that has already happened and certainly after a considerable amount of time has passed since.
Happy gaming x
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