We’ve been listening to all your feedback and concerns about the state of the game since releasing our first 0.50 dev blog and want to take a moment to be open with you.
First and foremost, we want to express our wholehearted gratitude for your ongoing patience. We completely understand your frustrations and realise it has been some time since our last major content drop.
The main reason behind this is that we were hoping to deliver a nice surprise for you in ZERO Sievert, in the form of co-op multiplayer. As a feature that's been requested often since the game launched in Early Access, we spent a number of months working to investigate the possibility - we also thought it would be really cool to head out hunting with a friend or two alongside. As this hope progressed, we ultimately realised that due to ZERO Sievert originally being designed as a single-player experience, we would need to rewrite a large portion of the game's foundation - and with the months ticking by, we decided it was better to close that chapter of development and instead focus back on what was originally planned for 1.0.
We know that this conclusion will come as a disappointment to many of you and we hope you understand that while it did result in us being quieter (and for a longer time) than we originally wanted to be, we spent that time on something we thought would really improve the end result. Your continued enthusiasm for ZERO Sievert and its future is incredibly valued and we want to express our heartfelt appreciation for your patience during this time and our sincere apologies.
What that does mean, however, is that we're back to being fully-focused on the original path to releasing from Early Access.
So - what is next?
1.0 IS COMING IN 2024!
First of all, we are beyond excited to share that 1.0 will be coming this Autumn. Since moving away from multiplayer plans, we've been full steam ahead and have some great content planned for launch. We will be sharing more of our plans and roadmaps soon so that you can follow our journey towards 1.0... and beyond!
CHANGES TO 0.50
With that small announcement out of the way, Luca has also been hard at work finalising the late-game content for ZERO Sievert, and because the City Map is quite an important part of that, we've chosen to build that map (and what it leads to...) into the 1.0 release instead of releasing it in 0.50. The late-game plans for ZERO Sievert have evolved since we originally spoke about a new map coming in 0.50 patch, therefore it was structurally quite tricky to split out what we originally envisaged for the City Map from the way the game’s storyline was going to reach its conclusion.
We're not going to spoil what that actually means... but we do think it will be something worth waiting for. However, we did want to share a little sneak peek of what we have been working on in the last couple of months, so here's a little teaser for you!
[previewyoutube=_W33ctnqbAU;full][/previewyoutube]
0.50 will also now be brought to you in multiple phases (0.50, 0.51 and 0.52). This means that we can keep bringing you new updates and get as much feedback from you and veteran testers to make any crucial changes to 1.0 from your direct input.
LOCALISATION (0.50 currently planned for June 2024)
One of the other things we've refocused on since moving away from multiplayer is the long-awaited (and frankly overdue) addition of new languages into the game. We know that lots of you have been asking for this for a very long time, so we're glad to be able to welcome new players to the ZERO Sievert community with the following languages:
- Chinese (simplified)
- Japanese
- Korean
- German
- Spanish (ES)
- Spanish (Latam)
- Brazilian Portuguese
QUALITY OF LIFE UPDATES (0.51 currently planned for July 2024)
Some improvements to the gameplay based on your feedback - a list of what this will include will come nearer the time.
SKILLS SYSTEM (starting in 0.52, currently planned for August 2024)
The code for the foundation of the Skills system has been written. Currently the focus is on veteran (closed beta) feedback, so we can take in all suggestions and further improve these skills to create a really immersive and dynamic playstyle. August will be when we are planning to launch these into the wild.
Something we can share with you today is how the skills system will come in 3 main parts:
Gun Mastery Passives
The more you use a gun the better it will become. Different types of guns (pistol, smg etc) will have the chance to improve in different ways.
Gun Mastery Skills
As you improve your playtime with a specific gun there are slots where you’ll be able to select a skill for that gun.
Hunter Skills
These Hunter Skills will be able to be picked from a skill tree. These skills focus on the survivability of the character and how they traverse the brutal world of ZERO Sievert. For example, these skills may help the player scavenge more loot, stay alive longer, or overcome situations in a non-aggressive way.
Our aim is really to enable you to customise your playstyle how you want, so that whether you're a silent sniper-type or a raging gung-ho maniac you'll have something to help you perfect your approach.
At this point we'd really like to thank our Veteran/Beta testing team, who are going to be helping us sense-check a (very) early build - but we can't wait to get this out to our whole community and see what you think!
We hope you are excited about all the things that are on the way to you soon - 0.52 is currently the last game update we are planning before 1.0 launches! Thank you again for your continued support for ZERO Sievert and utmost patience during the development of our Early Access title.
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