SYNTHETIK 2 update for 21 December 2021

Hey everyone!
We know its only been 2 weeks since the last one but we've got another update before the Holidays!
As follow-up to the BOOSTER update, the BOOST PLUS update is continuing on the improvements around items and abilities but more of this work will need to be finalised in the near future.
Here is what is new:

ACTIVE POWER SLOTS!

• NEW Active Power Slots
• Items which have the trigger "On class ability use" can now be toggled to use a power slot
• In the Upgrade menu "U" you can click the power slot button to activate at no cost
• You have 2 potential power slots

• This will allow manually activating the item with a hotkey
• It also increases the Effect Power of the item, the first slot by 30%, the second slot by 15%
• By default, your first 2 items will automatically have the power slots enabled

Shrike: Power slots are an ideal solution for all the issues with random active items, they allow you to have items on hotkeys but within a limited number, so you can never have 10 hotkeys at the same time, nor do you have to scramble with a fixed slot that is incompatible with other items. The power boost adds another layer of choice and could be extended to other items as well potentially. With this system, a player can also keep his items on reactive, or the amount of slots could be scaled up or down, or turned off by default (per example on Consoles) and the System shows even more potential for other upgrades.

CURSED ITEMS

• NEW Cursed Item Chest
• NEW Item - Incubus
• NEW Item - Core of daring
• NEW Item - Bloodrite
• NEW Zir Shrine Event: Feat of Strength
• NEW Zir Shrine Event: Steal Relic

Shrike: You can now find cursed items in special chests, or from a new Zir shrine event, they generally offer increased rewards or power but at a difficulty cost

• NEW Item - Ghost Spawner
• NEW Item - Twin Grenade

Some items have been tweaked or their activation changed in favor of power slots.
There is definitely more potential in the new system than is in use right now, we have some ideas
already how to make even more use of power slots in the near future.

ITEMS

• Item shops and rarity of items in shops have been increased for better choices
• Now with crazy item upgrades and power slots, we are also testing having a cap of 6 items
• This allows making more impactful choices and loadouts and reduces information overload

Shrike: This may sound like a negative at first but we think this does improves the quality of the gameplay and people who tested the beta seem to agree. Right now the items do not feel a lot like a loadout with an idea or strategy behind, but more like a random assortment of things like you would see in a passive upgrade driven game. Reducing the amount lets you keep track of what is going on and plan an actual loadout and strategy. In Synthetik 1 we had 8 items, now we have 8 items and 3-4 abilities, with the change this be closer to S1 (10 vs 8). Same as with the map sizes, bigger did not turn out to be better.

With upgrades being a lot deeper now and the power slots, I think this is a good change towards more clarity and impactful choices, and stray away from "just collect things until full" - Shrike

COMPOSITOR

• We are slowly phasing out or reworking the current compositor upgrades

• This is due to the current system not making much sense in the way it is used technically

• The cool ones will either stay or become perks for terminals you can obtain

• NEW - All abilities now can use the same upgrades as the items

• Right now, the composites are staying as rare upgrades while more work is being done

• The idea is to have later rare composites based on slot or technology type of the item/ability

• Both item & ability upgrade types now go up incrementally in cost

• initially they should have a cap of 4 just like attachments, but we try this instead first

• We still want to allow rare 6-8 upgrade god-items, but at 600 cost it was clearly game-breaking

• Overall, the new upgrade system, while not fully complete yet, does show a lot of power already!

TERMINALS

• Varied new terminal events
• Reworked varied events to be more interesting
• 2 shops per map now appear more often
• Item and weapon shops offer more rare goods
• Weapon shops and gambling shrines are more rare
• Item shops more common

Overall terminals are starting to get in good shape and already offer a good amount of varied choices and formats now. Some icons also have been replaced.

RARITIES:

• Rarities had an issue fixed and now should behave as intended
• This means in some shops the epic and legendary things are now as rare as they should

The general rarity weighting looks/should look like this:
50% - Common
30% - Uncommon
15% - Epic
5% - Legendary

In some loot/shops this was already the case more or less, but in some this will make a noticeable difference, so balancing is shaken up and we will gather feedback on this topic.
Weapon/Item shops notably drop higher rarity level loot however

LEVEL IMPROVEMENTS:

• Silo and Training got some design changes and improvements.
• Some overly big and convoluted maps got more compact
• Varied map improvements in terms of cover placement, collisions and spawn camping
• Still an ongoing process, post your gripes in the level-issues channel on discord!

Shrike: We are trying to keep sizes more consistent throughout the game and reduce
on overly huge maps, as they do not make for great gameplay, have a lot of backtracking,
confusion and make the balancing of item/weapon drops very hard.
We will continue with some adjustments to the Oilrig and Mainboard levels

• Enemies AI shoots less unneccessary on cover positions
• Arena Masters have more health
• Armored defender armor increased
• Bosses are now invulnerable in cutscenes
• Reduced Silo Jet Boss health by 15%
• Increased Sawblade Boss health by 15%
• K9s have a different attack sound
• Riotshield enemies have a much more generous backside attack area
• Enemy shotgunners damage reduced a bit

UNLOCKS:

• Each class now has one pistol costing only 75 Data (down from 150)
• Each class now has one spec costing 2 unlock tokens,
• Exp requirement for level 5 reduced (15000>10000)

This makes you unlock some things fast in short playtime but doesn't let you unlock everything easily. Some new handguns are planned for the Armory update!

OTHER:

• Amount of upgrade parts grants increased when above 350 parts
• Precision Strike damage doubled
• Reduced Facemelter damage
• Chrono charge increased volume
• Unstable chrono charge deals more damage
• Varied specs had wrongly setup ability categories fixed
• Grenadier Multi Talent duration 1>1.5s
• Launchers now eject shells on reload
• Improved chat colors
• Changed Cheat menu to not cause a massive lag at the start, work in progress
• Orbital Authority and Power kick have improved shake
• Orbital Authority now deals more damage, executes targets if below 35%
• Buffed Riotguard Judge lifesteal
• Weapon swap no longer needs to complete the fire timer of the last shot
• Facemelter now dosn't trigger if an enemy is within 5m range
• Twice is the charm and double misfire now increase extra shot amount and work
• Updated class menu a bit to be more clean and use class colors
• Due to being super cursed, prismatic chain is being removed until reworked
• Spike strip now is stronger, lasts 90 seconds
• K9 item secret
• Varied UI improvements
• Varied unlisted changes which got forgot

FIXES:

• Tons of things that were reported have been fixed
• If you see any action or other related things which do not work as intended,
  please report them in the discord channel for action bugs (or Steam if must)
  and they will be fixed.

SOUNDS

• Many feedback sounds and player weapon sounds are now in 2D instead of 3D
• This makes them have the proper volume they should and appear closer to you
• Varied sound improvements
• Known issue: Some sounds are overblown

PERFORMANCE:

• Some smaller improvements, mostly for low settings
• Remember to update your drivers if you haven't - this may definitely help!

• NEW - Merge Depot

• You can now merge depots you got from other people into your own

• This will also allow us to add mod content much easier to the game if wanted

• Weapon burst now works at 0

• Particles can now be scaled

• Added a couple more tooltips

ATTENTION MODDERS:

• IMPORTANT! Make sure your class abilities have the category "Action Archetype: Any" category
  If you want your abilities to use the orange upgrades. This means they can use any upgrade.
  It is also recommended for all items or class abilities to have the new technology category set for the future. We always try to be as little disruptive to mods as possible but with adding new things this is not always possible.

PRIORITIES:

The biggest priorities for the near future:

• Wrapping up the action system and making upgrades and scaling work fully in all regards
• The "Armory" Update with focus on everything all around weapons
• Improving map flow, variation and decreasing some sizes
• There are always the typical UI, UX, Bug, Performance, Sound
  and general improvements and multiplayer of course.
  Don't forget out roadmap on synthetikuniverse.com.

Here is a very rough overview of our current intentions.
Alright, that's it! We hope you enjoy and wish you merry holidays!

Have fun! - Team FFG