Hello survivors!

It's finally time for the second part of the OVERKILL's The Walking Dead BETA. Starting today and running over the weekend.

We have a lot of improvements and fixes for you, though as always, if you find any bugs, make sure to report them on our Steam forums.

Thank you all for joining us, we'll see you in camp.

Balancing

Shiv
The shiv was underperforming, the increased damage will be especially noticeable versus the Heavy, who will feel the effect much more than before.

• Damage increased 150 > 300

Smoke Grenade
Smoke Grenade was becoming a bit too staple as both an offensive and defensive ability, so we lowered the duration at the base level significantly. We love Heather being a ninja while standing in smoke, but we want to be sure other characters have room to shine as well.

• Base duration lowered 20s > 10s

Flashbang
Players (and let’s be honest, some of us devs) were having trouble judging the range of effectiveness on the Flashbang. We’re giving a small range buff on the stun so it’s easier to use and to increase the viability of the Flashbang when compared to the Smoke Grenade.

• Base stun radius increased 5 meters > 6 meters

Molotov
The Molotov didn’t feel efficient against walkers, so we gave Grant a special recipe to mix in. TL;DR Stronger vs. walkers, just as strong vs. humans.

• Base burning duration shortened by 75%
• Base damage per second vs. walkers increased by 270%
• Base damage per second vs. humans increased by 175%
• Burn Unit Upgrade: Damage per second upgrade increased 25% > 140%
• Fuel Upgrade: Burning duration upgrade increased 1.5 seconds > 3.0 seconds

Weapons per character
We want to really encourage the weapon proficiencies for each character, and we know damage is the quickest way to a walker slayer’s heart.

• Any character using a weapon they are proficient with will now deal an additional 10% damage while using that weapon.

Car Traps
We noticed many people accidentally (or “accidentally”) setting off car alarms, then in their moment of panic, beating up the car, trying to turn off the alarm. We really enjoy this reaction, and have allowed players to take the fight to the streets, beating up on cars to turn off the alarms.

• Allowed players to deal damage to cars with alarms. Dealing enough damage will silence the alarm. Permanently.

Family Heavy Unit (shielded)
We noticed that the Heavy's weaknesses weren't obvious enough to players, so we've made it easier to stun and leave him exposed on normal difficulty. This will give players more opportunities to experiment and familiarize themselves with the enemy. To compensate, he now takes less damage when shot in the head when his helmet is off.

• Lowered the Heavy's helmet health on normal difficulty, from 800 to 400
• Lowered the amount of damage needed to stun the Heavy when damaging his shield on normal difficulty, from 300 to 150
• Lowered the amount of damage needed to stun the Heavy when damaging his legs on normal difficulty, from 600 to 100
• Decreased the headshot damage multiplier on the Heavy, from 1.5 to 1.0

Family Sniper Unit
The Sniper was very punishing and hard to notice when bullets started flying. We’ve increased the time it takes for him to shoot when he has acquired a target.

• Increased aim time before the bandit sniper takes his shot 2 - 2.5 seconds > 4 - 4.5 seconds

Hordeometer
The horde meter was even more intense than we had hoped for, so we've increased the time players have to recover between waves of walkers (so it’s not a tsunami of dead flesh anymore)

• Players will now have longer breather moments when the horde meter is level one or higher

Respawn
Due to the difficulty level of the game we noticed people dying a lot more often than expected so we tweaked the respawn times to keep you playing, not spend all the time waiting in spectator mode.

• Base respawn time lowered 60 seconds > 40 seconds
• Respawn time increment lowered 30 seconds > 20 seconds

Everytime the player has damage immunity they also have grapple immunity against walkers. We also increased the immunity after respawn to allow players to orient themselves after reentering the action!

• Players are now immune to being grappled when respawning
• Damage immunity increased 3 > 4 seconds

Progression

BETA Access to levels
Players were having some difficulty with the first mission, and we don’t want to keep people in the beta from experiencing the entire offering, so we’ve unlocked all of the missions from the beginning.

• Unlocked access to The First Shot, Hell or High Water, and Anderson Camp Hub at the start of the game.
• Lowered cost of route to 0 for players who already have save data, but don’t want to restart to unlock Hell or High Water

Camp Vendor
To help those continuing to have a bit of trouble, we’ve also unlocked Peggy Ann, Anderson camp’s resident weapon vendor, to help make your weapon selection a bit easier. Provided you have the camp supplies, of course.

• Peggy Ann, weapon vendor extraordinaire, has been unlocked at the start of the game for all players.

Menus, UI and HUD

• Disable Steam voice chat by default so you can use your favourite software without hearing echoes
• Added user settings for mouse sensitivity per popular demand
• Change Loading Screen Z Order to avoid floating icons on some loadings
• Improved health bar animations

Bug-squashing

• Removed empty spawn pawn entry in spawn zone that could lead to floating weapons before a player fully joined
• Fixed crash when starting executable directly
• Fixed issue with clients ragdolling alive enemies
• Fixed nav mesh issues in Camp Anderson that made walkers not be able to access some corners - So you can’t hide from them anymore!
• Fixed crash when starting without Internet connection
• Fixed crash that happened sometimes on mission end
• Fixed crash on game start due to the player spawner sometimes not having his character fully set up
• Fixed crash in analytics thread
• Fixed walker capsule location issue that led to “invisible grapples”
• Fixed issue with low LOD in menus that made characters not look as cool as they are in real life
• Fixed issue where preview was unavailable for equipped cosmetics
• Fixed issue where clients got black screens on loadings
• Fixed issue with defender human AI ignored players while defending
• Fixed issue where Sniper AI sometimes can't find players in Camp Anderson yard
• Fixed issue where walkers would float if the connection had severe lag or ping drops
• Fixed issue where drop-in clients can get misaligned with ladders
• Fixed issue where melee hits weren't properly replicated, leading to some missing hits
• Fixed issue where clients suffering from high latency would sometimes fly after vaulting/mantling
• Fixed issue where expeditions weren't spawning properly
• Fixed banner text being stuck on screen for too long
• Fix for a party host canceling matchmaking during party joining remote session
• Added missing transition between walking backwards and vault
• Fixed bug with interaction progress
• Hid credits button

Hope you'll enjoy this update!

Note: If you missed our last stream, check it out here, and discover all the content coming to OVERKILL's The Walking Dead on release… and after!

OVERKILL_Saul