Hellgate: London – London 2038 Development Update #21

This year’s first developer diary for Hellgate: London’s London 2038 multiplayer mod discusses the team’s plans to adjust some drop rates, muses about equipping Templars with 2-handed guns, and more. So, if you’d like to know what to expect from this ambitious mod in the near future, you should check this out:

Hello, hello!

For the first diary entry of 2022, I’ll keep things short and sweet. Because well, vacations happened so work slowed down – hopefully understandably so.

Still, work has been done, and now that our butts are back on the chairs we should be just about ready to get this thing flying.

So!

The drop rate stuff

This one is probably the thorn that shouldn’t have been lodged into this patch’s side, but here we are. This also seems to be a very primary concern, and the delays have pushed a solution back for a good while now – so let’s start here. Rather, let’s share exactly what’s about to come as a solution to this, um, tumultuous chapter.

In brief, our earlier drop rate nerf 3 essentially reverted an old buff of our own. This entailed what we might dub “enriched” treasures; that’s treasures that aren’t what the game would like to roll, but what we thought it should roll. Hence the name, “enriched”.

Now, this we can’t fully undo. We’ve taken in plenty of feedback, discussed it, and entertained solutions – but the key reason behind even doing this in the first place was that said buff no longer fit into our vision for the game; item grade value, material availability, Luck effects (still not a fan, myself), power curve, you name it. So it just can’t be fully undone, as poorly as it was received.

BUT!

What we can do, and what’s on the pipeline, is compromise between the two. So the coming patch will re-introduce “enriched” treasures, and both Champions and bosses will have a chance to roll these instead of the original stingy ones. This will also leave us with room to maneuver, should our data and your feedback still declare the initial results disappointing.

I’ve hinted at this 6 before, but now seems like the time to be clear about this, hm?

Templars packing guns

…I’m out of humor fuel, sorry.

The second front of note comes with… let’s find a way to put this. No, let’s not.

2-handed Templar guns.

If you’re on our Discord, chances are you might’ve seen this teaser image 20 I shared back in November. If you aren’t, or you haven’t, well, there you go.

So, what happened was, we were sitting on the idea for one such gun for a long time. As in, since 2017. It always seemed logical to do so, as both trailers and comics featured such guns – and the Templar faction does handle the Cleanser with remarkable finesse.

Eventually, the need for new items to award players for challenging new content came. So this Templar Firefox (words I never expected to string together) came to be; my colleagues did not protest, so it stayed.

Then came the holidays, so there was ample time for my half-a-content-dev self to dig around and occupy myself. Well lo and behold, it turns out Flagship did intend to have such guns! “Duh”, some might say, but the CH strings and data stuff were there.

So this little project is what I’ve been venturing into on my time off from time off; some 2-handed Templar guns for a new spin on the ever-popular gun gameplay. IF the team collectively agrees on the final products, and IF we fine-tune them perfectly before the other pending stuff is done, what you might expect are:

• 3 Common+ weapon types (+3 mk2 versions for midgame+); those are not just faction-swapped guns, but ones that recycle existing models while behaving in different, faction-fitting ways.
• 3 Unique variants of the aboves’ mk2 versions; we couldn’t have an entire CH page occupied by 1 Unique item with no Common+ base and 3(+3) Common+ types with no Unique variants, now could we.
• 1 Templar Firefox; yes, Templars are getting a Unique Firefox. We’re living in weird times.

Oh, did I mention there’s also new mods some of those just so happened to fit? Why, yes.

Data stuff

Finally, and briefly, remember that I’m really not a dev? Well, Marc, an actual dev, just so happened to pinpoint a chunk of data errors we’ve introduced over time. At least some of those are definitely mine, hence the introductory statement.

So, while I can’t promise that fixing those will definitely fix any other issues they silently cascaded into, those sneaky errors have since been fixed. If you too get excited over clean data’s potential benefits of unknown natures, rejoice!

FIN

Do I need a new closing h2? Yes, probably.

So that’s all I’ve got this time, dear reader. Until next time, may the forces of Evil continue to become confused on the way to your house.

All the best