Hello everyone, and welcome to the community retrospective for Steel Hunters v0.40! For those of you who are joining us for the first time, an extra-warm welcome! In these articles, we take a moment to look back at the previous version and some of the highlights and learnings gained.
We hope you've enjoyed the start of Early Access as much as we have and are tearing up the Hunting Ground as Taurus in v0.41.
It hasn't been the easiest launch, but that was expected when we decided to go live 24/7. We in the Steel Hunters team truly want this to be an inclusive process, which is one of the main reasons we went into Early Access. We’re aware that we haven't been fast enough with addressing and incorporating your feedback, but we’re planning a follow-up post to address this soon.
With the kickoff of Early Access, we’ve been doing weekly Twitch streams in multiple languages—even doing them daily for the first week of v0.40. We hope that you all managed to catch some of these and have enjoyed them as much as our Community team enjoys running them! Come on down, most Mondays to Thursdays from 16:00 UTC, and say hello in the chat.
If you're lucky, special guests from our dev team also sometimes join, including members of the Narrative or Hunters Teams!
We also ran a Twitch Drops campaign and hope you're all showing off your Burgundy Arrow (now Crimson Arrow!) Razorside skin on the Hunting Grounds. We're really excited to use this technology to share additional rewards with you!
The Rose Fragment Prophet campaign is running until the end of May, so we hope you're enjoying Steel Hunters content even when you’re not mid-battle. Find more information here!
Now, we'll be the first to admit that our Early Access launch was not without its problems. From the server capacity issues on Day 1 to AMD problems causing crashes, we’ve done our best to meet these challenges head-on to provide you with a stable gaming experience. Thank you for making sure you were heard, as reports help us identify the cause faster. Whenever you run into any bugs, please let us know!
We hope everyone managed to complete their BattlePass, despite Week 1 being disabled for the first few weeks. We apologize for any confusion this might have caused and hope it didn't cause too much frustration as you worked toward the Mind Bender Weaver skin. Between that Skin and the Jungle Menace and Dissonant Crawler Skins from Discord, Weaver fans are truly spoiled for choice (and are quite numerous as we'll see soon)! We heard your desire for alternate ways to earn BattlePass Points, and decided to apply this as fast as we could by introducing two daily missions that reward them in v0.41. We know it isn't quite where anyone wants it yet, and grindable Points would be the logical next step. We’re planning some large-scale improvements to the BattlePass System and other aspects of the game, so keep an eye out for more info!
We try and keep our maintenance to a minimum to prevent downtime for players, so we appreciate your patience when we roll out these hotfixes mid-version. These will be a fairly common occurrence, but we’ll do our best to let you know when they’re coming and what problems we’ll be tackling in advance.
We also plan to include balance changes in these as we get more data on Hunter strengths, so check out for the Update Notes for v0.41.2.
Speaking of Hunters, we have some fun stats to share from v0.40! Read on to see the pick rate percentage of each Hunter in Last Stand (PvP) battles:
The data speaks for itself; excluding Razorside, who has an inflated rate as the popular default Hunter, the Scrappers are the most popular Hunter faction! Weaver and Ursus alone account for 25% of Hunters played! If it's the animal designs that you love, we hope you're enjoying Taurus. And don't worry, he won't be the end of them either.
Thank you very much for participating in the two feedback surveys that we ran during version 0.40; we love to hear from you. We received a lot of detailed responses from our players all over the world regarding both game modes and progression.
While you enjoy the dynamic, tense action of Last Stand, a lot of that is focused on the beginning and end of a match, and the Hunting Grounds section can feel a little lackluster. You also highlighted both the strengths and weaknesses of our "Duo Symbiosis" gameplay, and how it can be frustrating as a solo player at times. We can't promise any immediate changes to the flow of Last Stand itself, but the team is hard at work on the future of game modes.
Progression is another area where we received some solid, vocal feedback. Many of you mentioned how you like our System Tree and how it's simple to understand, but criticized how hidden some of our progression paths are, especially for account level. It is a bit unintuitive to find, but it’s the key to unlocking new Hunters through Construct rewards and is a great source of Platinum. We’re investigating this, but something that will be coming sooner rather than later is an account level indicator in the Hangar. You can see a sneak peek below!
Our economy and currencies are a hot topic that we’re looking at overhauling. We’re currently testing a variety of wide-ranging improvements designed to ease the friction you’ve been facing with Credits and Starfall. We’ve introduced a 50% cost reduction for System Tree Unique Nodes as a band aid, but we’re well aware that it’s not enough, and leveling Hunters gets increasingly tougher as you progress.
We're also taking a very close look at matchmaking issues tied to our current progression system, especially Arena Tiers and the power spikes that occur through the System Tree.
I wanted to organize a small community event without involving the dev team since they were already fully focused on the Early Access launch. To match the Easter theme, I came up with a light Easter egg idea and wanted an activity that any player could easily take part in. Jumping felt like the perfect fit—it's simple, accessible to everyone, and even works as a hidden surprise for those who stumble across it without realizing. - CM Kikibrik
We were glad to see that so many of you enjoyed our little Easter event. It was the brainchild of our very own French CM Kikibrik! There are so many hoppers among you. How many of you solved the puzzle on your own, and how many just received the prize as a small surprise? Let us know!
We're aware that there was an issue with the database on the first day but are glad we managed to resolve it nearly immediately and make sure everyone got their deserved rewards.
The daily login reward was also seen as a nice way for us to reward our active players with an Easter treat. And you all seemed to enjoy it too, so expect to see more small events like this in the future. We see them as a fun way for us to interact and reward you, our community, for your support.
We plan to remove jump from the dash charges in the future, so maybe we'll have to increase the number of jumps to complete similar events...
We feel that going into Early Access with v0.40 was the right choice. Having our servers up 24/7 has been an excellent opportunity for the team to experience live operation with all its ups and downs, unpredictable hurdles and funny discoveries alongside all of you! We feel your passion for the game and world of Steel Hunters and can't thank you enough for joining us on this journey. So, get out there and hunt some steel!
All the best,
Raegnim
Live Ops' Resident Cat with Human Ears
