Greetings, Nomads!
We’ve recently wrapped up our second Season 6 test and are excited to share our thoughts with you. Season 6 has been our most collaborative season yet, bringing both great opportunities and unique challenges. We deeply appreciate everyone who has taken the time to test, provide feedback, and adapt as we navigate the bumps along the way.
Our Vision for Season 6
In our last post, we said that S6 would be a return to the PvP roots of Last Oasis. our aim is to capture the spirit of what made the game special while moving it forward. To us, forward means improving the games accessibility while keeping the core.
We want to share a personal anecdote from our time playing that demonstrates the gameplay we’re trying to achieve. Our clan was debating between jumping into a proxy fight, trying to loot an asteroid event, or contesting the Ancient Rupu Camp, while also considering the event tile that was going to spawn soon.
These are the exact type of situations we want - various events all over the map, both local and world, that groups of various sizes can contest, that provide valuable things, and generate opportunities for player-versus-player conflict at various commitment levels.
Let’s talk a little bit about how we got there and how we intend to continue developing along this path.
Season 6, So Far
Walkers have always been part of what sets Last Oasis apart from other games, especially those in its genre. As part of Season 6, one of our major goals was to restore walker-centric gameplay, which we achieved in many ways
Most testers seemed to agree Walkers are critical for quickly getting to asteroid and Ancient Rupu camp events, which are timed POIs that provide critical progression and competitive advantages. Since event tiles currently prevent building or unpacking, taking a walker prepared to engage in combat is critical for protecting yourself on the event tiles, which again are crucial for progression.
In addition, we added the Anti-Personnel Turret, which is an automated walker weapon that targets enemies on or grappled to your walker. In the past, it was common for highly skilled players to simply eschew using walkers, undermining core gameplay loops and defeating players who had committed a much larger investment of time and effort. We observed that the APT was massive in leveling the playing field against nomads trying to circumvent the use of a walker while still making it possible to board walkers and fight when in large combat.
At the same time, just as many people have had the experience of running into a much larger, more experienced, and more prepared force. We made several changes we hope will result in a more competitive experience.
First, we have made it much harder to fully destroy walkers. At 25% HP, the armor value of walkers changes to “Heavily Damaged”, which can only be damaged by Charged Boulders, crafted from Meteor Cores, which are harvested from asteroid events. Given the limited nature and more involved process, this should reduce the frequency of fully destroying walkers, while still allowing enemies to impact the logistics of one another.
Second, we’ve massively increased the soft cap water consumption, while only spawning maps at 6, 12, and 25 caps. We think this is a better system than a hard cap - as we experienced in Season 2 there are significant issues with a clan hard cap - while still keeping the amount of people that can be brought into the fight at a reasonable level.
We found that during our tests, our walker crew and walker power limits were not quite restrictive enough. For the next test, we’ll have much more restrictive limits, which should help to make walker combat more about tactical gameplay and be more skill-based.
Further Improvements
Largely, these changes have worked out to create a fairly dynamic experience, with frequent PvP at small and large scales. But there are some things that aren’t yet working.
One of the most disliked systems in Season 6 is the quality system. Survey respondents felt that it didn’t provide good incentives for progression, it creates challenges for inventory capacity and base management, and being locked to events provides some planning challenges for a lot of players. We don’t anticipate making major changes to this system prior to Season 6, but we did want to let you know we were hearing the complaints and we’ll continue to monitor and consider how it can be altered.
Another major complaint was walker PvP. While we largely like the impact of rigs, weapons were a bit too weak considering the limitations. We suspected weapons would need a buff, but prior to making major changes we wanted to see combat with larger walkers like Buffalo, Hornet and Falco. We’ll continue to monitor and tweak this until we get a result that is fun and competitive.
Our experiment with the Trade Station—providing infinite invulnerability and crafting—was met with criticism. This was an initial test to explore its potential as a social hub and safe zone. We believe the Trade Station can play an important role in Season 6, and we’ll keep refining it to achieve the right balance of risk and reward.
Looking Ahead
Season 6 is still very much a work in progress, but we’re starting to see glimpses of our vision come to life. As we prepare for the next test, our focus will be on:
- Fixing critical bugs and crashes from the last test.
- Finalizing map preparation.
- Tuning balance adjustments based on player feedback.
- Continuing development on new POIs and events.
Thank you for joining us on this journey. Your feedback and enthusiasm are what make this possible. Stay tuned for updates on the next test, and we look forward to seeing you in the Oasis!
