Letter from the Development Team Oct 29

Hello, Extinction Elites!

It’s been two weeks now (wow) since we launched the game in Early Access. The reception has been incredible, and it’s been amazing to see how you have responded to the game.

Launching a game is equal parts exciting and terrifying, as we both get to see your reactions to shooting dinosaurs first hand, but also need to face performance unknowns that come with the myriad of PC builds and configurations that are out there. While things went smoothly, it’s not to say everything went perfectly. Our last two patches were meant to hopefully fix most of the issues that caused problems. With that said, anyone who is experiencing crashes, load errors, and other performance problems should reach out to us via Customer Support so we can try to find a solution. Please be patient with us – we are a small team, after all, and our poor QA team is juggling a lot currently.
Ultra-wide support (i.e., 21:9 resolution) was an unfortunate oversight on our part, but now you should be able to play in all that widescreen glory! Same thing with some key remapping.

Another thing that we’re keeping an eye on is matchmaking. Second Extinction is predominantly a co-op game, so being unable to find others to play with is not a great experience. The last patch removed some of the barriers for matchmaking, so hopefully, you’ll notice a change; but I’ve heard some of the suggestions around matchmaking – like custom lobbies, an LFG-type browser – and we’ll look into scoping that out for implementation.

As much as it is a co-op game, solo play is quite popular! The missions aren’t really intended to be played solo – only for those who enjoy a significant challenge – but we can’t argue with the players 🙂 Hopefully, the free roam mode that’s on our roadmap will help satisfy those solo play desires in a less… intimidating environment.

Speaking of significant challenges, I’ve noticed a few people setting up their own. That Pacifist Challenge was pretty cool… and we look forward to seeing what creative solutions you come up with to continue doing these sorts of activities when we introduce the MIssion Difficulty settings in the next update! We’ll have a bit more information for you on that next update soon.

Lastly, one of my favorite things to do has been reading all the feedback and suggestions from the player base. I’ve noticed some common threads:

• A desire for in-game communication
• Melee weapons
• Better information when it comes to upgrades, dino health, and weapons
• Reload cancellation
• Longer loot pickup times
• Bestiary

All the feedback we receive will be looked at and evaluated – that’s part of the fun of Early Access. While I can’t say just yet when or how we will implement these suggestions, know that we are listening. You’d be surprised at how deceptively complex some of these are to implement, especially in any short time period. But we’ll keep you updated, I promise!

Keep on killing those dinosaurs, and thank you for being part of our Early Access process.

Cheers,
Julianne Harty
Product Owner

P.S. If you haven’t already, go follow our Twitch Channel. We stream the Weekly Action Report on Tuesdays and Gameplay Fridays (including previews of what’s coming up).