Hey guys,

As most of you know, we experienced some fairly severe server instability in the last few weeks. I was just about to headshot someone when I was unceremoniously dumped out of the game!

To take care of the issue, we have done a great deal of research into the problems and we believe we have the proper fixes in place.

The first issue occurred last week when we had a hardware problem. This led to critical errors and inevitably to a complete server crash. We were able to track down the faulty hardware and replace it. Problem solved, right?

Well, not exactly. The critical errors and crash introduced some database corruption that led to the problem players experienced when trying to accept loot after a match and transfer it to their backpack. This corruption led to lag, then instability, leading us to another restart.

This database corruption has now been fixed, so between the hardware replacement and the database update, these server crashes should be a thing of the past.

We continue to monitor the servers for stability and we’re redoubling our efforts to identify and stamp out any problems before they affect the community.

--KevinB
 

The daily tournaments are off to a great start, and now it’s time to take them up another notch! First of all, we’ll be changing the start time to 2 p.m. EDT, 6 p.m. server time beginning Tuesday, to reach an even bigger audience. In addition to this change, we’re adding real cash money prizes for the winners this Saturday only! These prizes will be available to all subscribers, including our international community.

We’ll be changing tournament start times to meet the needs of our international audience. The 9 p.m. EDT start time was good for our U.S. players, but not as accessible to our European fans. With this change and the new cash prizes, we expect to see our biggest turnout yet on Saturday.

This Saturday only we will be giving each of the first place winners in all three divisions (assuming teams compete in all three) a $10 cash prize, with a $20 cash prize going to one MVP in each division. The MVP in this tournament will be the player with the best kill-to-death ratio in a minimum of two matches. Cash prizes are in addition to the current in-game prizes.

Prize winners will have a choice of receiving an online pre-paid credit card in the amount of their prize, a one-time PayPal payment in the amount of their prize, or a gold bar payment with a bonus over the prize amount. Winners will be notified through an in-game email and will have a customer service ticket opened in their name. Winners must respond to the ticket within 30 days to claim their prize.

Hey guys,

First of all, from in-game chat I think most of us can agree that the patch that launched March 9 was a big success. I hope we all agree that we are going in the right direction! We’re not taking a break, however, and our next patch will be coming in April. We don’t have a solid date yet, but it’s likely to be mid- to late-April with a very small chance of slipping to early May.

I just got a big stack of design documents from the dev team this week and I’ve been carefully reviewing them for some highlights to share with you all.

PVP
We’ll start out with the PvP Scoring system as this has been a pretty hot topic since we introduced it back in December. You’ll all be happy to know that we have listened to the community and most of these changes are based on your feedback.

First of all, we’re drastically limiting the circumstances under which a player can receive a negative score. We understand that players can feel cheated when they win an instance, but still manage to lose PvP score (I know I feel that way!). It’s still going to be harder for higher level characters to gain score, but overall, this revamp will better reflect a player’s skill as a killer.

At the same time, we’ll be removing the cap that’s currently in place so the true cream can rise to the top.

Handicapping
Another hot topic has been the handicap system that’s based solely on player PvP scores. Players provided us with a lot of feedback on this subject, and again, we listened to what you want and we’re going to deliver.

The new system coming in April will take into account player level and their kill-to-death ratio in determining the relative strength of players compared to one another. We’ve already implemented changes to more fairly apply the handicap to player attributes, and we will continue to balance and tune the system for a more fair and balanced game for all players.

Leader Boards
With the April patch, we will be resetting the leader boards and letting them repopulate. With the new PvP scoring system, we believe this will give the players a much better representation of who the top killers are in Sunrise City and who is to be feared when you see them enter a match!

One more thing …
I’ll leave you with a tease of something else we’re working on for April. Have you ever hesitated to cap that last point in Turf because there was still time on the clock and you didn’t want to get less XP for that match, so instead you stood around and farmed the opposition for three or four minutes? Well, we’re making a change so that instances that end before the timer runs out don’t penalize players in XP!

Much like the March patch, we will continue fixing bugs and improving the game, so you can also expect a fix to the sniper rifle issues and other issues.

These changes are in addition to the Night Clubs and the Prologue tutorial that were delayed out of the March patch and, if things progress as we hope, will be in the April patch.

We are listening to you and we value your feedback, so please keep it up! We want to know what you think!
 

As you've read in previous posts, there was a major patch scheduled for release today. As of this writing, the game is finished patching and the new content is live!

Just a friendly reminder that this is a major update, so if you have any issues that you think might be a bug, it's extremely helpful if you report them using the Customer Service ticketing system. We think you guys will enjoy the new content and the patch underwent extensive testing, but we all know what people say about the best laid plans ...

If you're curious about what's in the patch, head over to the full patch notes. There's a huge list of bug fixes and other improvements, but here are some of the highlights:

New Features

• Reworked F2P model
• Daily Tournaments
   o Tournament implemented on three maps
      Olympia Mill & Lumberyard
      Isopach Oil
      Othello Sky Bridge
   o Tournaments are 4v4 Shootout matches
• 32 Player Map
• New Premium Items added to Black Market vendor

Functional Changes

General
• Virtual Memory error fixed in all test cases

AI
• Weapon fixes and tuning for all bots
• Added delay before first shot for Clearshots and Shockwaves
• Adjusted bot grenade ranges
• Bots given access to abilities
• New Bot types added

Client
• Connection timeout increased to aid low-bandwidth users

Boosts
• Drugs rebalanced
   o Bess action time changed depending on drug level
   o Niks duration changed and regeneration rate increased
   o JellyJoy no longer nulls Stamina
   o Climax bonus values decreased
   o Majoun bonus values decreased, healing rate increased and negative resistance values decreased
   o Wood duration changed
   o Kesey effectiveness reduced
   o Frenzy effectiveness reduced
   o K-Dust effectiveness reduced

Game Play
• AR, SR, LMG, SMG and Pistol recoil and spread adjusted for balance
• Spread adjusted for semi-automatic weapons
• Pistol and Sniper burst fire disabled
• Rocket Flight trajectory improved
• Rocket explosion particles updated
• Weapon effects updated
• Grenade fall trajectory improved
• Player death animation and explosion reaction animations improved
• Stack auction prices adjusted
• Bots added for Federals faction
• Lobby NPC draw distance increased
• Robbery bag return process made accumulative
• SHOT score subtraction for suicides added
• Players awarded points for returning money bags in ROB
• Bags fixed on radar display in ROB
• Visual indicator added for points awarded when capturing enemy flag in SNG
• SNG flag return time adjusted
• SNG matches that are tied default to kills to determine winner; display updated to reflect this
• Uncontrolled TURF positions return to Neutral when unattended
• SFG enemy waves changed and game length increased by difficulty
• SFG Defense Core HP increased, Triad Destroyer’s HP increased
• SFG Changed view of Triad bots
• SFG Fixed bot grenade cool downs
• SFG Removed Courier from Easy difficulty
• SFG Level gated entry to Safeguard matches
• Damage display added over target

Help
• Help pop ups added in craft window

Gang Hall
• Gang Leader can invite non gang members in hideoutLoot
• Loot drop chance increased

We hope you enjoy the new patch, guys, and don't forget to check out the full patch notes to see the complete list of changes!

Hey guys,

Back with another patch update, and this time it’s a solid date! This is a very large patch and we’ll start the process with the servers going down at 10 a.m. GMT, 5 a.m. EST, 2 a.m. PST on Tuesday, March 9! We expect the process to take up to five hours.

We are confident that we’ve beat the virtual memory error for the majority of user systems. There may still be a few issues left, but we believe the situation will be fixed or at least greatly improved for almost all of our users. We’ve already gone over a few things like improved bot AI and the 32-player map, so I thought today I would run through a few more of the changes you’re going to see in more detail.

Premium, Deluxe and Free to Play Changes

We’re making some major adjustments to our subscription tiers to provide better value to our players.

The Free to Play tier has undergone some radical changes. This is an unlimited play time offer, but players will earn experience, cash and loot at about half the rate of their paying counterparts. They also will be limited in access to bank tabs (two versus six for paying customers) and will pay more in-game cash for vendor services, auction house sales and other in-game services. Free to play characters also can’t start or lead gangs, but they have full gang membership opportunities and privileges. We believe these changes will make F2P much more viable to players.

Next up we have the Deluxe subscription tier. This is now the baseline subscription and comes in at $4.99. At this level, you get one month (30 days) of play time and a 10 GB stipend.

Finally, we have the Premium subscription which comes in at $9.99 and includes one month (30 days) of play time and a 120 Gold Bar (GB) stipend.

Economy Balancing

The current CrimeCraft economy has gotten significantly out of whack, so we’re making several adjustments designed to get our money system back in balance. Most important among these are nearly across the board price increases and the price they pay for items from characters will be going down. The vendors and trainers of Sunrise City will in general be charging twice as much for their services and many of their wares. Gang creation and maintenance costs also will be going up.

That’s right, the high cost of inflation has come to the streets of Sunrise City. Level 50 characters, who have been getting in-game cash instead of experience, will also see a cut in their take home pay.

Item Durability

Most items in game, with a few exceptions, have an associated durability rating. As you use an item, it gets damaged and suffers wear and tear. Currently, items can be repaired to full strength an infinite number of times. Starting with the new patch, this will change. Each time an item is repaired, it will lose a small percentage of its total durability rating and eventually it will break. All of the high-level, advanced weapons also will become bind on equip.

These steps also have the added bonus of increasing the value of the Gunsmith profession and their ability to craft high-level multi-slot guns.

Tournaments

Starting on March 9, we will have our first daily tournament. Players must form teams of four and register to compete with the first tourney kicking off at 3 a.m. March 10 server time, 10 p.m. EST March 9, 7 p.m. March 9 PST.

These tournaments will run Monday through Saturday and teams will compete in Shootout matches on three maps, Isopach Oil, Olympia Mill & Lumberyard and Othello Sky Bridge. At launch we will be offering prizes including multi-slot weapons, high level boosts and in-game cash. Tournaments will be a great way to offset some of the costs of the economy changes that have been made as winning team members can earn up to 4500 credits.

Once the patch is live, you’ll be able to hit ‘T’ in any lobby and see all of the details for prizes and start times.

Scavenger Tool

We are adding a third AUG slot for the Scavenger Tool, a new item players can attune to find crafting ingredients for a specific profession and tier. The Scavenger Tool is made by characters from a recipe and Broken Electronic Parts, which can be purchased from any crafting trainer.

We’re also making some changes to the crafting system that will improve the experience for all professions, and with the Scavenger Tool, players will find the path to level up their professions to be much easier. That said, there will be additional changes coming to crafting in future patches that will continue to improve the game.

Wrap Up

These are the four big change areas you’re going to experience once the patch goes live on March 9. You’ll also see smaller changes, like two new outfits, Made Man and Murder Maid at the Premium vendor and a lot of bug fixes. These fixes will be outlined in extensive patch notes to be posted on March 9. This is a big step forward for CrimeCraft and we believe it is the most polished patch we have produced to date.

Don’t forget, however, that there’s still more in the pipeline. We’ve got Night Clubs and a full tutorial that didn’t quite make this patch. We’re also instituting a policy for player suggestions that will keep us more responsive to community needs moving forward. It won’t be long till I’m announcing our next patch, so keep an eye here on the forums for more news!