Hi, hope you could get some sleep past night! Or did you have some nightmares? 🙂

Today we’re releasing the first update for the game. This update focuses on fixing the most important issues found so far: Investigators not being able to coordinate properly, and difficulty of locating a nearby tape.

Some of these fixes are temporary until we can get a better solution, but they should be enough to improve overall experience.

Improvements:

• Improved tape visibility, so it’s easier to locate once you’re near it if you’re not playing with headphones.
• Ghost’ shouts are shown with a different color.
• You can see a player’s nick over his head when you’re close.
• A player using quick chat is highlighted when you’re close (only investigators).

Bugfixes:

• Fixed some missing walls in the Hospital level.
• (Hopefully) Fixed being unable to connect to some games.

Gameplay changes:

• Investigator skill cooldown reduced for large parties (~20% shorter cooldowns)
• Changed the “I’m lost!” quick chat text to “There’s a tape nearby!”
• Added a time penalty when abusing the Shout skill.
• Ghosts can see players from further distance, and they can also be seen from further when they shout.
• When a monster catches an investigator while using the blackout power, all flashlights are fixed right away. (To avoid weird situations where people are just left waiting for the flashlight to recover to save a nearby partner).

Our next step will be to monitor game statistics during the weekend, checking victory rates for each side and game lenghts. Our target is between 66% and 80% win rate for the creature, and we’re currently at 70%, so for now it’s all coming up nicely 🙂

For next week, we’ll try to focus work on finding/fixing most important causes for players not enjoying the game, so if that’s your case and you’re not having fun, please pass by the forums and share your impressions. One of the things we’ve noticed and will try to fix is that some games can get too long (20+ minutes) because there’s currently no time limit and games can drag out too much if neither team advances on their goals.

(By the way, average game length is ~10 minutes for matches where the creature wins, and ~13 minutes for matches where investigators win).

Have fun!